H.W.K. Berghuis, Yousuke Kaifu, Unggul Prasetyo Wibowo
et al.
Eastern Asia yielded a rich fossil record of Pleistocene hominins, ranging from Homo erectus and the diminutive island species Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, to post-erectus grade late archaic Homo (including Denisovans), and finally to anatomically modern humans. The Sunda Shelf played an important role in the dispersal and evolution of hominin populations. The shelf has been widely exposed during most of the Pleistocene, forming a landmass known as Sundaland. Today, the area holds the world’s largest shelf sea. Thus far, hominin fossils from submerged Sundaland were not available. Here we report on the finding of two hominin cranial fragments from the submerged Sunda Shelf, retrieved during a dredging work in the Madura Strait, off the Java coast. The specimens derive from the sandy fill of a late Middle Pleistocene submerged valley of the Solo River and consist of a frontal fragment and a parietal fragment. Metric and morphological comparisons with Pleistocene skulls from the Asian mainland, Java and Flores point to a relation with the late Homo erectus of Java, in particular with the crania from Sambungmacan. The Madura Strait hominins were probably part of an MIS6 population that lived along the Solo, which in this period continued eastward over the exposed shelf area of the Madura Strait. Probably, the large perennial rivers of Sundaland offered good living conditions for Homo erectus, in a late Middle Pleistocene climate setting that was relatively dry.
This paper presents a hypothetical digital reconstruction of a prehistoric wooden hut from the archaeological site of La Draga (Banyoles, Northeast Iberia). La Draga is a waterlogged Early Neolithic settlement (ca. 7300-6700 years ago), located on the eastern shore of lake Banyoles, and presents an extraordinary preservation of wood and vegetal materials usually not recovered in prehistoric archaeology. The wooden architectonical elements recovered in La Draga were analysed and the information extracted has been used to create a 3D hypothetical reconstruction of the pile dwellings constructed and used by the inhabitants of La Draga in prehistoric times. The multidisciplinary research team working in La Draga has produced a significantly wide panorama of the elements composing this Neolithic site, including paleovegetation and paleoenvironmental studies, analysis of artefacts, and spatial organisation. This paper reproduces the reasoning behind the geometric completion of architectural form and texturing of the digital model. The methodology employed includes the creation of successive layers of development of the 3D model, enriched with archaeological information and with the gradually increased participation of the human expert in the interpretation and visualisation of data. A basic spatial model was constructed first, the architectural model of the base plane of the structure was then modelled, and finally, it followed the overhead plane of the structure. Two different modelling software –Rhinoceros 3D and Blender– were employed during the process and provided different renderings of the final model. Emphasis is also on the degree of uncertainty of the final hypothetical reconstruction and on the use of computer simulation techniques to increase reliability. In this paper, the knowledge-based decision-making process was based on datasets, logical deductions, as well as on assumptions. All decisions to add substantive information to the hypothetical reconstruction have been explained to ensure the scientific rigour and transparency of the reconstruction.
En los últimos años, ha habido un incremento en la calidad de los datos sobre cerámica romana, en relación con una clasificación y cuantificación más precisas. Esto significa que los investigadores pueden combinar datos cerámicos de amplios territorios para observar tendencias generales en comercio, transporte y consumo. El presente estudio de circulación de ánforas en la provincia de Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis, es sólo un ejemplo del potencial de combinar este tipo de información y representarla con mapas de interpolación, aunque una investigación similar se puede mostrar con gráficos y datos estadísticos.
Nuestro artículo pretende convertirse en una reflexión metodológica de cómo la cuantificación de la cerámica romana, en este caso ánforas, puede facilitar nuevas evidencias sobre temas relacionados con el comercio y la distribución.
Zahra Almasipeyman, Hassan Derakhshi, Hamid Reza Ghorbani
et al.
Petroglyphs, as one of the earliest forms of art, are highly valued evidence in fields such as archaeology, art history, and anthropology. A significant number of petroglyphs have thus far been identified and documented throughout Iran, with Northwestern Iran, particularly the eastern part of the region (Ardabil province), standing out in this regard. This province is home to a large collection of petroglyphs, most notably concentrated in Mashkinshahr County, at such sites as Shahar Yeri, Sheikh Madi, Ahoo Darasi, Moshiran, and Khanum Alilu. During a recent survey at the Qonaq Qiran village, Ardabil County, a total of 50 petroglyphs were identified and documented.The present descriptive-comparative study utilised field and library research to classify these petroglyphs typologically and to attempt relative dating. The recorded motifs were categorised into three general groups: human figures, animals, and symbols. They were thus comparable with the known depictions in northwestern Iran and other regions. Considering the archaeological context of the regional landscape, a tentative dating of this rock art site was suggested for the first millennium BCE.
Saman H. Guran, Masoud Yousefi, Anooshe Kafash
et al.
Abstract While the interbreeding of Homo neanderthalensis (hereafter Neanderthal) and Anatomically modern human (AMH) has been proven, owing to the shortage of fossils and absence of appropriate DNA, the timing and geography of their interbreeding are not clearly known. In this study, we applied ecological niche modelling (maximum entropy approach) and GIS to reconstruct the palaeodistribution of Neanderthals and AMHs in Southwest Asia and Southeast Europe and identify their contact and potential interbreeding zone during marine isotope stage 5 (MIS 5), when the second wave of interbreeding occurred. We used climatic variables characterizing the environmental conditions of MIS 5 ca. 120 to 80 kyr (averaged value) along with the topography and coordinates of Neanderthal and modern human archaeological sites to characterize the palaeodistribution of each species. Overlapping the models revealed that the Zagros Mountains were a contact and potential interbreeding zone for the two human species. We believe that the Zagros Mountains acted as a corridor connecting the Palearctic/Afrotropical realms, facilitating northwards dispersal of AMHs and southwards dispersal of Neanderthals during MIS 5. Our analyses are comparable with archaeological and genetic evidence collected during recent decades.
Isabell Schmidt, Bruno Boemke, Irmela Herzog
et al.
Abstract Background Archaeological sites are increasingly threatened by climate-related hazards. In response, heritage management authorities initiated projects to document damage and plan risk assessment measures. We present a project initiated after the heavy rainfall and subsequent flood event of July 2021, which involved extensive fieldwork to document the damage to archaeological sites in the Rhineland. We use this database to characterise and assess the damage and investigate site-specific and geospatial factors to identify potential predictive parameters for site damage. Results During fieldwork, we found that the flood damaged 19% of the 538 archaeological sites surveyed. The majority of damaged sites are relatively recent, dating from the medieval or modern periods, and are associated with the use of water power. Damage was mainly caused by erosion, floating debris and washout, e.g. mortar. In a case study, we tested the option of comparing pre- and post-disaster Airborne Laser Scanning elevation data to identify damages. It showed that not only the damage detected during fieldwork was found but also additional areas of loss. In general, however, and quantified based on the entire dataset, the ordnance survey Airborne Laser Scanning data were of limited use for monitoring flood-related damage and could not replace fieldwork. Our statistical analysis of possible risk factors, including both site characteristics and geospatial parameters, using Naïve Bayes Modelling and chi-squared tests, showed that no set of parameters could consistently predict the preservation or damage of archaeological sites across all catchments. In contrast, some external geospatial factors correlated with the occurrence of damage. Conclusions The study highlights both the strengths and limitations of the approaches used to assess and predict the damage to the archaeological heritage in the 2021 flood zones of the Rhineland. It also demonstrates the complexity of the data and spatial processes involved, which limits generalisation but can still inform decision-making for archaeological site management and on-site protection measures in flood-prone areas. With the prospect of more frequent heavy rainfall due to climate change, the specific needs of the archaeological heritage should be integrated into broader prevention and disaster management plans.
AbstractThe spoor of animals and humans alike contain rich information about an individual and about a momentary activity this individual performed. If the – arguably hard-wired – human ability to read spoor and tracks is sufficiently trained, a footprint allows to glean from it various physical, kinetic, medical, social and psychologic data about an individual, as has been observed among various populations across the globe. The Ju|’hoansi San from northern Namibia still today practice traditional hunting so that tracking is a skill that is required and trained on a daily base. For a good tracker, the information she or he gets from spoor is equally rich on animal and human footprints, and it is not necessary that the tracker has been exposed before to the individual whose spoor she/he reads. In order to allow an assessment of how tenable are the interpretations by contemporary hunter-gatherers of prehistoric human footprints, this chapter elucidates methodological aspects of tracking and situates this ability in an epistemological framework.
Reseña de Hidalgo Prieto, Rafael (Coord.): Las Villas Romanas de la Bética, vol. I y II, Ed. Universidad de Granada (ISBN: 978-84-338-6107-8), Universidad de Córdoba (ISBN: 978-84-9927-325-9), Universidad Pablo de Olavide (ISBN: 978-84-617-7532-3), Universidad de Sevilla (ISBN: 978-84-472-1861-5), Universidad de Málaga (ISBN: 978-84-9747-8298), Sevilla, 2016, 823 pgs.
Prehistoric archaeology, Auxiliary sciences of history
El texto analiza, desde una perspectiva integral, la evolución de Madrid andalusí. A partir de su fundación, en el siglo IX, hasta el siglo XI, el hábitat original, surgido alrededor del primitivo recinto emiral, impulsado por el emir Muḥammad I, crecerá como un ḥiṣn hasta trasmutar en una madīna. Aquí, se estudiará, no solo la arquitectura militar, también la planta “urbana” del asentamiento, junto al perfil económico desarrollado por sus pobladores. Igualmente, rompiendo un corsé historiográfico, hemos pretendido delinear, dentro de lo posible, los límites territoriales de Maŷrīṭ.
This article examines, from a holistic perspective, the evolution of Islamic Madrid. From its founding in the ninth century to the eleventh century, the original habitat, emerged around the early emiral enclosure, powered by emir Muḥammad I, ḥiṣn to grow as a transmute in madīna. Here, you will explore not only the military architecture, too "urban" plant the settlement, alongside economic profile developed by its inhabitants. Similarly, breaking a historiographical corset, we have tried to outline, as far as possible, the territorial limits of Maŷrīṭ.
Prehistoric archaeology, Auxiliary sciences of history
In this paper we explore the impact of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) on prehistoric communities in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Early and Middle Holocene. Our focus is on the social implications of the four major climate cold anomalies that have recently been identified as key time-windows for global RCC (Mayewski et al. 2004). These cooling anomalies are well-dated, with Greenland ice-core resolution, due to synchronicity between warm/cold foraminifera ratios in Mediterranean core LC21 as a proxy for surface water temperature, and Greenland GISP2 non sea-salt (nss) [K+] ions as a proxy for the intensification of the Siberian High and for polar air outbreaks in the northeast Mediterranean (Rohling et al. 2002). Building on these synchronisms, the GISP2 agemodel supplies the following precise time-intervals for archaeological RCC research: (i) 8.6–8.0 ka, (ii) 6.0–5.2 ka, (iii) 4.2–4.0 ka and (iv) 3.1–2.9 ka calBP. For each of these RCC time intervals, based on detailed 14C-based chronological studies, we investigate contemporaneous cultural developments. From our studies it follows that RCC-related climatic deterioration is a major factor underlying social change, although always at work within a wide spectrum of social, cultural, economic and religious factors.
Este estudio ofrece un análisis del material cerámico procedente de la fase visigoda de la parcela R3, en el espacio conocido como Vega Baja de Toledo. El análisis tecnológico, productivo, formal y funcional de este material ha permitido la distinción de cuatro grandes grupos cerámicos que posibilitan la obtención de conclusiones históricas en relación a la Vega Baja, a la propia ciudad de Toledo y al universo productivo de época visigoda.
This study provides an analysis of ceramic assemblage of R3 plot of the Vega Baja area known as Toledo. The technological, productive, formal and functional analysis of this material has allowed the distinction of four ceramic groups that allow obtaining historical conclusions regarding the Vega Baja, to the city of Toledo and the Visigothic productive universe.
Prehistoric archaeology, Auxiliary sciences of history