Hasil untuk "Prehistoric archaeology"

Florencia M. Chechi, Matías Hernández

The development of mining in La Rioja from the colonial period to its peak in the 19th century left numerous remains of facilities that drove the activity, especially in the Famatina region, but these have not been the subject of systematic study. Between 2024 and 2025, as part of a CONICET research project, three archaeological campaigns were carried out in the ruins of the old Capayán smelter with the aim of surveying the preserved structures and collecting surface material. Analysis of both records identified a productive sector and a domestic one. The presence of foreign objects raised questions about the possible users and how they arrived in the region. Two alternatives were evaluated: one route from the Pacific, through the trans-Andean ports, and another from the Atlantic, where the railway would have played an important role as a means of transport.

José Manuel Monroy Kuhn, M. Jakobsson, Torsten Günther

Archaeogenomic research has proven to be a valuable tool to trace migrations of historic and prehistoric individuals and groups, whereas relationships within a group or burial site have not been investigated to a large extent. Knowing the genetic kinship of historic and prehistoric individuals would give important insights into social structures of ancient and historic cultures. Most archaeogenetic research concerning kinship has been restricted to uniparental markers, while studies using genome-wide information were mainly focused on comparisons between populations. Applications which infer the degree of relationship based on modern-day DNA information typically require diploid genotype data. Low concentration of endogenous DNA, fragmentation and other post-mortem damage to ancient DNA (aDNA) makes the application of such tools unfeasible for most archaeological samples. To infer family relationships for degraded samples, we developed the software READ (Relationship Estimation from Ancient DNA). We show that our heuristic approach can successfully infer up to second degree relationships with as little as 0.1x shotgun coverage per genome for pairs of individuals. We uncover previously unknown relationships among prehistoric individuals by applying READ to published aDNA data from several human remains excavated from different cultural contexts. In particular, we find a group of five closely related males from the same Corded Ware culture site in modern-day Germany, suggesting patrilocality, which highlights the possibility to uncover social structures of ancient populations by applying READ to genome-wide aDNA data.

Nikolina Nikolova

Xinyi Liu, D. Lister, Zhijun Zhao et al.

Today, farmers in many regions of eastern Asia sow their barley grains in the spring and harvest them in the autumn of the same year (spring barley). However, when it was first domesticated in southwest Asia, barley was grown between the autumn and subsequent spring (winter barley), to complete their life cycles before the summer drought. The question of when the eastern barley shifted from the original winter habit to flexible growing schedules is of significance in terms of understanding its spread. This article investigates when barley cultivation dispersed from southwest Asia to regions of eastern Asia and how the eastern spring barley evolved in this context. We report 70 new radiocarbon measurements obtained directly from barley grains recovered from archaeological sites in eastern Eurasia. Our results indicate that the eastern dispersals of wheat and barley were distinct in both space and time. We infer that barley had been cultivated in a range of markedly contrasting environments by the second millennium BC. In this context, we consider the distribution of known haplotypes of a flowering-time gene in barley, Ppd-H1, and infer that the distributions of those haplotypes may reflect the early dispersal of barley. These patterns of dispersal resonate with the second and first millennia BC textual records documenting sowing and harvesting times for barley in central/eastern China.

Gülşah Eser, Kubilay Arpacı

Prof. Dr. Axel Waldemar Persson (1888-1951) was a leading name in the field of archaeology with his archaeological excavations and academic studies. Persson, who had been excavating various parts of Greece since the 1920s, obtained excavation permission in Türkiye with the decree in 1935 signed on the basis of the reference of Gustaf VI Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden. In this context, Persson carried out drilling works in Milas Genciktepe in order to find traces of the Carian civilization, and with the decree in 1936, he took the management of the Genciktepe Excavation. In order to protect and exhibit the finds from this excavation, the request to convert the Milas Firuz Bey Mosque into a museum was raised with Persson’s initiatives in 1938. In the following period, his studies in Türkiye were interrupted with the beginning of World War II. Persson returned to Türkiye with the Labraunda Excavation in 1948 and continued to work as the head of the excavation until his death.This study aims to examine his works in Türkiye in a holistic way, based on the information obtained from the literature review, as well as archival documents and the national press. The research has concluded that Persson wanted with his archaeological excavations in Genciktepe and Labraunda to prove his understanding that the civilizations that had ruled in the Aegean during the Prehistoric period had had a common culture.

I. Domingo, A. Chieli

This paper offers a broad and critical overview of current discussions on the potential uses and the characterization of pigments in prehistory, with a special focus on prehistoric rock art. Today, analytical approaches to pigments and paints allow us to go beyond the identification of the elemental and molecular composition of these archaeological remains, to explore also raw material procurement, transformation and use strategies of interest to investigate the technological and socio-cultural practices of prehistoric artists and their change over space and time. The paper also summarizes the palette of prehistoric artists, as well as the techniques and analytical strategies used to date to characterize prehistoric pigments and paints (colours, raw materials, binders and recipes) used in prehistoric rock art.

Anne Hauzeur, Gilles Monin, Harold Lethrosne et al.

for axe head production in Bartonian (Eocene) silicite close to the mining complex of Jablines. They are attributed by the associated set of tools and the archaeological background to the later part of the Paris Basin Middle Neolithic (c. 4300–3700 BCE). The main characteristics of the knapping places are bifacial shaping to produce axe head preforms. Petrographical analyses show at first examination a close relation to the same silicite beds as those exploited at Jablines. Beside this, some of the artefacts indicate another way of raw material gathering which could match with the Bartonian silicite procurement on a larger scale. The workshop places may be distinguished as places of different function, mostly devoted to the first steps of preparation (roughing and shaping processes), but another to shaping stages, and a last one essentially concerned with the finishing of manufacturing rough-outs. Considering the very rare fragments of preforms collected on the site and the high quality of the rejected waste products, the skill level was high. From the first flaking of the block, contrary to what is usually inferred, indirect percussion was used since the first flaking of the block. These workshops add to the information from the other known similar places in this region of the Marne area, including the mining complex of Jablines itself. There were no settlements next to the mines, but in the surrounding areas, and the related distance remains to be explained.

María Díaz de Torres, Óscar Iván Espinosa Soto

La prehistoria no es una etapa de la historia ajena al gran público. Sin embargo, a pesar de los avances en la investigación prehistórica y las acciones divulgativas, la prehistoria se sigue representando bajo fuertes estereotipos y clichés. El presente trabajo analiza la visión social de la prehistoria y lo prehistórico a través del estudio de catorce piezas publicitarias audiovisuales de temática prehistórica. El estudio se ha hecho en base a cuatro líneas de análisis: el concepto de prehistoria, la imagen del entorno, la humanidad prehistórica y los comportamientos asociados a la prehistoria; lo que permite obtener una aproximación al imaginario colectivo y las distorsiones presentes en la sociedad sobre la prehistoria y lo prehistórico.

Dagmara H. Werra

This monograph on the Neolithic flint workshops of the Bębło mining complex (Cracow district, Lesser Poland Voivodeship) appeared in 2021, published by the Archaeological Museum in Kraków with financial aid from the Ministry of Cultural and National Heritage, National Heritage Board of Poland and the Marshal’s Office of the Małopolska Region. The editor of the publication is Elżbieta Trela-Kieferling. The book appeared in the series „Biblioteka Muzeum Archeologicznego w Krakowie” [The Library of the Archaeological Museum in Kraków], edited by Dr hab. Jacek Górski. It is the tenth volume in the series, which has appeared since 2006, and is a commemorative volume, dedicated to the initiator of the series, Dr. Jacek Rydzewski.

Amy Goldberg, A. Mychajliw, E. Hadly

G. Dong, Yishi Yang, Jianye Han et al.

G. Artioli, C. Canovaro, P. Nimis et al.

Following animated discussions in the 1990–2010 period concerning the validity and potential application of Pb isotope data to yield information on ancient metallurgy, recently lead isotope analysis has been extensively applied with alternate success and difficulty to the early stages of copper/lead/silver/tin metal flow in the Central Mediterranean area, arbitrarily defined as including Italy, the Mediterranean Islands, and the surrounding regions for comparison purposes. A wealth of data are now available in the literature, many of them interpreted within local contexts and limited geographical extension, and often within a shifting conceptual modeling frame. A brief review of the recently published data indicate that the metal flow in prehistory and protohistory is far more dynamic than presumed on the basis of the traditionally assumed archaeological models. It is suggested that the isotopic tracers, if correctly applied and interpreted, may substantially help in decoding the metal exploitation and trade patterns at different scales, from the local links between mines and smelting sites to wider regional or long-distance trades. The abundant dataset available are however in need of thorough interpretation in terms of wider archaeological and archaeo-metallurgical questions, possibly by the use of advanced statistical methods and unconventional data mining protocols.

David Vendrell Cabanillas

El siguiente artículo presenta un vaso procedente del Museo Nacional de Dinamarca en Copenhague, el cual se trata de una cratera de cáliz falisca de figuras rojas fechada a principios del siglo IV a. C. y procedente cerca del Monte Soracte (próximo a la localidad italiana de Sant'Oreste). En ella vemos, por un lado, una escena de baño femenino y, por otro lado, una escena de conversación en la palestra; unas imágenes que reformulan los modelos artísticos áticos creados desde mediados/finales del siglo V a. C. A tal efecto, se lleva a cabo una descripción detallada del vaso y un análisis estilístico, compositivo e iconográfico con el fin de formular una hipotética afiliación y autoría, y una nueva lectura interpretativa.

Víctor Sergues

Cet article est la révision d’une inscription funéraire romaine remployée comme bloc de construction à Sofuentes (Saragosse). Les données épigraphiques, onomastiques et tracéologiques permettent de restituer ce monument et de le situer dans son contexte : celui de l’apparition des premières épitaphes latines populaires en Hispanie citérieure, qui sont le résultat de mutations socio–culturelles

Julio F. Merlo

Las investigaciones en arqueología histórica realizadas en la ciudad de Tandil y los trabajos que se efectuaron en sitios de frontera del siglo XIX (distritos de Olavarría, Nueve de Julio, Coronel Suárez, General Alvear y Los Toldos) han permitido avanzar en el conocimiento de las sociedades de frontera logrando entender las funciones de los enclaves fortificados. Estos propiciaban el ingreso de inmigrantes eurocriollos (militares y población civil) para articular con las comunidades originarias. Mediante excavaciones arqueológicas, análisis topográfico, cartográfico y documental de la época se pudo reorientar la ubicación del Fuerte Independencia, fundado en 1823, que luego dio origen al desarrollo urbano del pueblo de Tandil. Este trabajo muestra los resultados preliminares del análisis de documentos y de la cultura material recuperada en las excavaciones realizados en el patio de la Iglesia Danesa, sondeos efectuados en propiedades privadas, área comprendida dentro del perímetro de la fortificación y en el Parque de la Independencia, zona donde se ubicó el cementerio de la fortificación y vestigios materiales de pueblos originarios que se instalaron en el lugar. Las investigaciones se orientaron con la finalidad de establecer la ubicación y la funcionalidad de la fortificación desde su fundación hasta el crecimiento urbano de la ciudad.

G. Dong, Yishi Yang, Xinyi Liu et al.

We report dozens of direct radiocarbon dates on charred grains from 22 archaeological sites of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages in the Hexi Corridor, northwest China, a key region for trans-Eurasian exchange in prehistoric and historical times. These charred grains include remains of wheat and barley domesticated in southwest Asia and broomcorn and foxtail millet which originated from north China. Together with previously published radiocarbon dates, we consider these newly obtained radiocarbon results in the context of material cultures associated with them, to explore an episode of trans-continental cultural exchange foci at the Hexi Corridor. Our results show that millet cultivators who used painted potteries from the western Loess Plateau first settled the Hexi Corridor around 4800 BP. Communities who cultivated wheat and barley moved into this region from the west around 4000 BP, bringing with them technologies and materials not seen in central China before, including bronze metallurgy, mud bricks, and mace heads. This was part of the east–west contact which became evident in the Hexi Corridor since the late fifth millennium BP, and continued over the subsequent two millennia, and predated the formation of the overland Silk Road in the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220).

Catrine L. Jarman, T. Larsen, T. Hunt et al.

Abstract Objectives The Rapa Nui “ecocide” narrative questions whether the prehistoric population caused an avoidable ecological disaster through rapid deforestation and over‐exploitation of natural resources. The objective of this study was to characterize prehistoric human diets to shed light on human adaptability and land use in an island environment with limited resources. Materials and methods Materials for this study included human, faunal, and botanical remains from the archaeological sites Anakena and Ahu Tepeu on Rapa Nui, dating from c. 1400 AD to the historic period, and modern reference material. We used bulk carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses and amino acid compound specific isotope analyses (AA‐CSIA) of collagen isolated from prehistoric human and faunal bone, to assess the use of marine versus terrestrial resources and to investigate the underlying baseline values. Similar isotope analyses of archaeological and modern botanical and marine samples were used to characterize the local environment. Results Results of carbon and nitrogen AA‐CSIA independently show that around half the protein in diets from the humans measured came from marine sources; markedly higher than previous estimates. We also observed higher δ15N values in human collagen than could be expected from the local environment. Discussion Our results suggest highly elevated δ15N values could only have come from consumption of crops grown in substantially manipulated soils. These findings strongly suggest that the prehistoric population adapted and exhibited astute environmental awareness in a harsh environment with nutrient poor soils. Our results also have implications for evaluating marine reservoir corrections of radiocarbon dates.

Madeleine McLeester, Jesse Casana, M. Schurr et al.

Abstract Locating the subtle and uneven deposition of human activities across the landscape continues to challenge archaeologists. Existing tools (e.g. excavation, shovel testing, pedestrian survey, and terrestrial geophysics) have proven effective at locating many types of archaeological features but remain time-consuming and difficult to undertake on densely vegetated or topographically complex terrain. As a result of these limitations, key aspects of past communities remain largely outside of archaeological detection and interpretation. This flattening of past lifeways not only affects broader understandings of these communities, but can also negatively impact the preservation of archaeological sites. This paper presents the detection of archaeological features through an analysis of drone-acquired thermal, multispectral, and visible light imagery, alongside historical aerial photography, in the area surrounding Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), a late prehistoric village located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, IL. Our investigations discovered a probable housing area and a ritual enclosure, increasing the area of the site from 3.4 ha to 20 ha. The proposed housing and ritual areas of this village also help contextualize finds from the ongoing archaeological excavations at Middle Grant Creek. More broadly, results demonstrate the valuable contributions that these relatively new archaeological survey methods have in shaping our understandings of the archaeological landscape and highlight the importance of integrating them into the archaeological toolkit.

Javier Andreu-Pintado

La presente noticia da a conocer un nuevo epitafio funerario romano hallado hace varias décadas en las cercanías de la ciudad romana de Cabezo Ladrero, en Sofuentes, Zaragoza, en la aragonesa Comarca de Cinco Villas, en territorio vascón, y que, sin embargo, sólo ahora ha visto la luz gracias a la colaboración del Ayuntamiento de Castiliscar y de un vecino de la localidad. El monumento, seguramente una estela de cabecera triangular, se presenta como uno de los más antiguos testimonios del hábito epigráfico funerario en el conuentus de la colonia Caesar Augusta y nos aporta nuevos datos sociales, y acaso geográficos, sobre una de las familias conocidas de la prosopografía local, la de los Iunii.

Dongju Zhang, G. Dong, Hui Wang et al.