The paper discusses the potentials and challenges of geoarchaeological research into long-term prehistoric settlement dynamics. As an example, the study employs a dataset of 367 Bronze Age sites from the Weiße Elster river catchment in Central Germany, spanning the area between the Northern German Plain and the Central Uplands. The recorded sites are systematically processed to create a cohesive dataset with a standardized chronology, consistent classification of site types, and clear spatial delineation. A key focus is on analyzing how archaeological, geographical, and culturally intrinsic filters influence the visibility and preservation of Bronze Age sites across time and space. To investigate settlement dynamics, the study uses chronological frequency distributions, site density metrics, spatial relationships between periods, and Site Exploitation Territories (SETs). The results reveal that the basic trends in Bronze Age settlement dynamics can be identified through the dataset. However, there are limitations. Due to culturally intrinsic filters, each period is represented by a distinct combination of settlements, burials, and stray finds. The reason for this is that some periods can only be identified by artifacts made of a certain material, such as pottery or metal. This is also observed in neighboring regions, suggesting broader regional patterns. Site density analyses show that local communities in the Northern German Plain primarily settled along the Weiße Elster River during the Early Bronze Age (2150–1600 BCE) and Middle Bronze Age (1600–1300 BCE). In contrast, sites from the Transitional Period (1300–1150 BCE) show no clear settlement pattern. The Urnfield Period (1150–800 BCE), is marked by a high concentration of sites in the Northern German Plain and increased land use in the Central Uplands. SET analysis aligns with these findings, further highlighting a dominance of loess soils near Early Bronze Age settlements. Site frequencies remain relatively stable between the Early Bronze Age and Transitional Period but surge sharply during the Urnfield Period – a pattern primarily observed in adjacent study areas in the Central Uplands. Notably, both the start of the Middle Bronze Age and the Urnfield Period are characterized by a widespread abandonment of settlements and burial sites from earlier periods.
The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is the major chrono-cultural phase associated with the emergence and evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa. Despite its importance, the MSA has not been evenly investigated across Africa, and West Africa in particular remains poorly understood. Although new research is beginning to fill in this crucial gap of knowledge, the existing MSA chronologies in West Africa only rely on Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating. In this context, the increasing use of a multi-method dating approach appears essential to strengthen this emerging geochronological framework. Here, we apply such approach to constrain the age of Bargny locality, located in close proximity to the modern Senegalese coast (South of Dakar), and which documents one of the oldest MSA occupations in West Africa. Specifically, we combine OSL and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) methods to date the MSA sites of Bargny 3 (BG3) and Bargny 1 (BG1). A mean OSL age of 127±8 ka may be proposed for the MSA of BG3, which is in good agreement with a mean Ti-H ESR age of 125±14 ka from the same unit. Interestingly, similar ages are obtained by OSL (144±7 ka) and Ti-H ESR (138±14 ka) for the MSA horizon from BG1. While these results illustrate the great potential of the combined OSL-ESR dating approach to establish robust chronologies, they also contribute to improve the geographical and chronological resolution of the MSA record in West Africa. More specifically, they also corroborate the presence of MSA occupations along the Senegambian coast around the MIS 6-MIS 5 transition. In combination with the associated estuarine environments and mangrove forest, the evidence from Bargny adds to the known diversity, and likely complex behaviour, of early human populations living by Africa’s coastlines.
A principios del siglo pasado un erudito calagurritano Pedro Gutiérrez Achútegui comenzó a formar una colección de materiales arqueológicos a la que pertenecen las piezas objeto de este estudio, que se encuentran integradas actualmente en el Museo de la Romanización de La Rioja en Calahorra. En estas páginas hacemos un recorrido por las cinco salas que componen el Museo, indicando la distribución de las piezas dentro del discurso expositivo, cómo se integran en la temática de cada una de los espacios y su relevancia dentro de la romanización de La Rioja. El Museo de la Romanización se inaugura en 2009, con el fin de rememorar la importancia de una ciudad bimilenaria como Calagurris Ivlia Nassica dentro de la Hispania romana, que obtuvo el rango de municipium civium romanorum con Augusto. Dicho centro museístico está dedicado a la exposición, conservación, investigación y difusión de la huella del mundo romano en La Rioja y se une a la red de espacios expositivos distribuidos por la Comunidad Autónoma de La Rioja.
In the second half of the fifth millennium BC, a new model of supply and processing of siliceous rocks appeared in western Lesser Poland (Małopolska). The existing methods of production of blades and flakes from small cores obtained at a short distance from the settlement were supplemented by those enabling the production of much longer blades from cores made from raw material obtained by mining. The significant increase in the size of lithics meant that this moment was referred to as “the metric change” (Polish: przełom metryczny). It was assumed that this was due to internal technological development within the early Neolithic communities of the Lengyel-Polgár cycle. This paper introduces a different explanation for this phenomenon. It is argued that the new model of supply appeared as an already developed model that was implemented by experienced outsiders. A thesis that the indicated technological caesura is not categorical and new patterns in a relatively small area could co-exist with previous ones.
Eleanor M. L. Scerri, Khady Niang, Ian Candy
et al.
Abstract The African Middle Stone Age (MSA, typically considered to span ca. 300–30 thousand years ago [ka]), represents our species’ first and longest lasting cultural phase. Although the MSA to Later Stone Age (LSA) transition is known to have had a degree of spatial and temporal variability, recent studies have implied that in some regions, the MSA persisted well beyond 30 ka. Here we report two new sites in Senegal that date the end of the MSA to around 11 ka, the youngest yet documented MSA in Africa. This shows that this cultural phase persisted into the Holocene. These results highlight significant spatial and temporal cultural variability in the African Late Pleistocene, consistent with genomic and palaeoanthropological hypotheses that significant, long-standing inter-group cultural differences shaped the later stages of human evolution in Africa.
Este estudio se centra en analizar el sistema de delimitación de las aceras suburbanas de Pompeya en el Pagus Augustus Felix Suburbanus localizado en la necrópolis de Porta Ercolano y, al mismo tiempo, en conocer cómo se demarcaban las tumbas de esta necrópolis. Para analizar estos espacios se ha llevado a cabo un estudio de los termini como elementos delimitadores de espacios, que estaban fuertemente protegidos por la legislación. Este estudio contribuye al conocimiento de las zonas suburbanas de Pompeya y de cómo se realizaban las acotaciones de los espacios en esas áreas. Esta investigación se ha podido realizar debido a que Pompeya es considerada una cápsula del tiempo, que nos brinda la posibilidad de conocer su organización urbanística no sólo en su área urbana, sino también en sus zonas suburbanas.
Abstract
This study focuses on the delimitation of the suburban sidewalks of Pompei in the Pagus Augustus Felix Suburbanus located in the necropolis of Ercolano Gate, as well as on the delimitation of the tombs of this necropolis. To analyze the delimitation of these spaces, a study of the termini was carried out. The termini were strongly proteced by the urban laws. This study contributes to the knowledge about the suburban areas of Pompeii and the delimitation of the spaces therein. Pompeii largely preserves its original features and enables to know not only the urban planning, but also the suburban layout of an ancient Roman city.
Prehistoric archaeology, Auxiliary sciences of history
Rasmi Shoocongdej, Podjanok Kanjanajuntorn, Wesley Clarke
We are delighted to present this special section of the SPAFA Journal as the outcome of selected papers from the “Integrating Local Perspectives into Southeast Asian Archaeology” panel presented at the 21st Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Conference in September 2018 in Hue, Vietnam. The panel seeks to explore a broader range of viewpoints in conceptualization and practice by integrating local or indigenous knowledge into the archaeology of Southeast Asia.
This section consists of several novel research articles, each article having its own uniqueness presenting regional research issues such as indigenous cosmology, prehistoric periodization, and heritage management.
These articles not only advance our archaeological knowledge but also reflect a range of theoretical and methodological issues from local and non-local viewpoints in contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies in Southeast Asia. The papers in this section may serve as a functional venue for a cross-discipline dialogue and cross-cultural comparative study. We wish to thank the contributors for presenting their work at our panel, and also sharing their research in this section.
Canan Çakirlar, Youri van den Hurk, Inge van der Jagt
et al.
More than fifty years ago, Anneke T. Clason published the first English-language archaeozoological study on Dutch faunal assemblages. Inspired by the anniversary of this landmark publication, this paper presents a status overview of Dutch archaeozoology organized in twelve themes (e.g. rituals, Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, medieval period). The paper also discusses the common methods applied in Dutch archaeozoology, and includes extensive supplementary material that summarizes data from gray literature in Dutch. Our aim is to provide a guide to archaeozoological questions pertaining to the Netherlands and open a window for researchers working outside the Netherlands to the highly active world of Dutch archaeozoology.
Tematem artykułu jest zdobiony paciorek szklany, odkryty na stanowisku nr 1 w Wolinie. Przedmiot pochodzi z warstwy VIII, datowanej na okres od 4 ćwierci X w. do 1 poł. XI w. Paciorek ma kształt zbliżony do wycinka środkowej części kuli, jego korpus wykonano ze szkła opakowego barwy czerwonobrązowej, zaś ornament – ze szkła opakowego żółtego. Dekoracja przedstawia skomplikowany wzór, który kojarzył się z pismem arabskim. Analiza paleograficzna nie potwierdziła tego założenia, sugerując jedynie małe podobieństwo do pisma. Przeprowadzona mikroanaliza rentgenowska szkła ujawniła, że paciorek wykonano ze szkła ołowiowo-krzemowego. Dalsze badania wykazały, iż paciorki zrobione z tego typu szkła rzadko występują w świecie arabskim, a najbliższe analogie do omawianego przedmiotu pochodzą z Wolina, Yorku i Berlina-Spandau.
Tłumacz: Bata Kita
Auxiliary sciences of history, Prehistoric archaeology
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinča culture sites
of Belovode and Plocnik has been strengthened with the joint collaborative
work with the UCL Institute of Archaeology in the past 6 years. This
collaboration yielded scientific demonstration of the world’s earliest copper
smelting amongst the excavated materials, c. 7000 years old. In the six years
since the first publication of this finding in 2010, a number of detailed
analytical studies followed, together with another breakthrough discovery of
the world’s earliest tin bronze artefact. This artefact was excavated in a
secure context within a Vinča culture settlement feature at the site of
Pločnik, which was radiocarbon dated to c. 4650 BC. On the basis of the early
metallurgical results from Belovode, the UK Government funded a large
international collaborative project from 2012-2015. This included Serbian,
British and German teams all of whom brought substantial experience and
cutting-edge technology to the study of the evolution of the earliest known
metal-making in its 5th millennium BC Balkan cultural context. This project’s
forthcoming publications, including a major monograph published by UCL Press,
which will be free to download, promise to shed new light on the life of the
first metal-making communities in Eurasia, and also outline integrated
methodological approaches that will serve as a model for similar projects
worldwide. The open, balanced and respectful research atmosphere within our
core project team is currently being challenged by an unsubstantiated
controversy. This controversy arises from accusations against the project
team members by Duško Šljivar, a once an extremely supportive and prominent
member of our team. Each of these accusations by Duško Šljivar is completely
contradictory to his own previous documented work, and have therefore easily
been refuted. The work by Duško Šljivar in question encompasses: two decades
of excavations at the sites of Belovode and Pločnik; including
single-authored and joint publications prior to 2012, including those with
Miljana Radivojević and Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković; and official field
documentation, either signed off solely by him, or together with his
co-excavator at the site of Pločnik, Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković. The first
accusation, published in 2014, saw Duško Šljivar deny, together with another
colleague, the veracity of his original field journal notes on the context of
the previously mentioned tin bronze foil, for which he received an immediate
and successful rebuttal. In the second accusation, published in Starinar LXV/
2015, Duško Šljivar continued with the same practice of denying his own
official field journals and publications which he (co-) authored with a
series of false accusations relating to the manipulation of the original data
from the excavations of the sites of Belovode and Pločnik by Radivojević and
Kuzmanović-Cvetković. In the third accusation, Šljivar argues that his
copyright was infringed, and that field journals were used without
permission. This is despite the fact that these accusations are legally and
formally unsupported, and that he shared his data and materials during the
course of a long collaboration and co-authorship on a number of articles with
both Radivojević and Kuzmanović- Cvetković over the course of the last two
decades. In other words, in order to validate his accusations and to seek to
damage our untainted academic standings, Duško Šljivar has denied all his
professional and academic achievements, research articles, field diaries and
formal documents that he ever (co-) wrote and/or signed on the topic. He even
goes as far as to exclude a landmark joint publication in an international
peer-reviewed scientific journal (Radivojević et al. 2010) from his citation
list in order to support his claim that a formal agreement on the joint
publishing of Belovode metallurgy results has never been fulfilled. Šljivar
also omitted the published rebuttal (Radivojević et al. 2014) to
unsubstantiated claims on alleged manipulation of contextual data of the tin
bronze foil from the Vinča culture site of Pločnik put forward in a joint
article by him and another colleague (Šljivar and Borić 2014). In order to
end this malicious debate, we present our rebuttal from 2014 and further
elaborate upon it by showing the original quotes from the Pločnik field diary
on the day that the tin bronze foil in question was found, and from the
concluding remarks of the diary in question. We again clearly demonstrate
that there has never been any doubt regarding the secure context of the tin
bronze foil within the Vinča culture material, that the Vinča horizon is the
only cultural occupation at the site of Pločnik and that no intrusion has
ever been observed in the context of this find, not on the day of the
discovery, not in the conclusions or the excavation field diary, and not in
the first publication of the said find by Duško Šljivar. We have presented a
detailed account of this particular case in order to show Šljivar’s
contradictory and inconsistent account of the official fieldwork
documentation that he co-authored. It would appear that either Šljivar made a
false field diary entry regarding the context of the tin bronze foil on the
day of its discovery in 2008, or he presented incorrect information in the
later joint commentary. The former hypothesis that Šljivar made a false entry
in the field diary in 2008 in order to potentially mislead later scholarship
does not seem plausible, especially as the object of dispute was not
identified as tin-bronze on the day of discovery, but merely as another
copper object from Pločnik and therefore not nearly as important to early
metallurgical scholarship. To underline further the absurdity of the
situation in which we found ourselves with Šljivar, we should also mention
Šljivar’s initial agreement to co-author the paper we published in Starinar
XLIV/2014, from which he withdrew without offering any constructive comments,
only to publicly publish his views as well as professional and personal
insults directed towards us in Starinar XLV/2015. The situation where Šljivar
had the opportunity to act in his best professional interest was while our
article was still in preparation and he chose not to do it; this leads us to
assume that professional interests were not his priority on this matter.
Finally, Šljivar’s deceitful and erroneous claims were executed in a spiteful
language that is unfit for a scholarly journal, and damages both his
reputation and the decision of this journal to publish them. We further
elaborate on these developments in the broader context of Serbian
archaeology, quoting the legislation on the intellectual copyright of
excavation directors over the archaeological materials that they have
excavated. The current law on Cultural Monuments recognizes the exclusive
rights of excavation directors to publish their research for the period of 12
months after the excavations ended. After this period, other interested
parties in the field can access the materials and any related field
documentation. This demonstrates, alongside previously mentioned scientific
arguments, that we have worked with the Belovode and Pločnik materials in
accordance with the valid legal regulations. We conclude that there is no
formal support for the exclusive interpretation of lives of communities in
the sites of Belovode and Pločnik c. 7000 years ago, and emphasise the value
of our original scientific contribution as illuminating a particular economic
activity of the inhabitants of these two prehistoric villages. Finally, we
call for the reinforcement of existing procedures in Serbia so that our
profession can prevent any future misconduct such as that exemplified in the
attempt by Duško Šljivar.
Presentación de la primera dedicación votiva a los dragones de la epigrafía latina hispánica inscrita sobre una pequeña ara romana de Saguntum e hipótesis de interpretación de la misma.
Zarówno katolicy, jak i później protestanci odczuwali potrzebę głębszego przeżywania wiary także w warunkach domowych. W obu wypadkach sięgnięto do Ostatniej Wieczerzy, kiedy Jezus zwrócił się do apostołów, by pili wino i jedli chleb, które przemienią się odpowiednio w krew i ciało Pana. Katolicy wierzący, iż przemiana taka istotnie następuje, wykorzystywali do rozlewania wina cynowe dzbanuszki typu Hansekanne, wewnątrz których znajdował się znak pielgrzymi lub plakietka dewocyjna, najczęściej ze sceną Ukrzyżowania. Protestanci traktowali tę przemianę jedynie symbolicznie i wykorzystywali gliniane dzbanki ze sceną Ukrzyżowania znajdującą się jednak na zewnętrznej powierzchni naczynia. Ponadto znany jest gliniany półmisek ze sceną Ukrzyżowania, na którym zapewne umieszczano chleb, aby dokonać jego symbolicznej sakralizacji.
Tłumacz: Iwona Zych
Auxiliary sciences of history, Prehistoric archaeology