AbstractInterdisciplinary research on the pile-dwellings in the Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia, has been carried out, with brief interruptions, since their discovery in 1875. Since 1995 these efforts have been coordinated by the Institute of Archaeology of the ZRC SAZU. Systematic excavations and interdisciplinary research were carried out on prehistoric pile-dwelling sites, and dendrochronology was introduced as a basic method for determining the time frame of their existence. To this end, wood was collected from 16 sites for wood identification, dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. Between 1995 and 2017, nearly 8800 samples of waterlogged wood, mainly from the piles the dwellings were built on, were collected and examined. Approximately 20% of the samples were oak (Quercus sp.) and ash (Fraxinus sp.), with more than 45 tree rings selected for dendrochronological study. Oak and ash tree-ring chronologies were established for most of the sites. Site chronologies that overlapped were merged into longer chronologies. Dating was carried out using 14C dating supported by a wiggle-matching procedure, and for the 4th millennium BC settlements with the help of teleconnection with German-Swiss reference chronology from sites approximately 500 km away north of the Alps. For the oldest settlementResnikov prekop, which was already inhabited around 4600 BC, we could not establish a chronology due to the insufficient number of wood samples. The most important tree-ring chronologies of oak are: BAR-3330 (time span 3771–3330 BC) dated by dendrochronology, as well as SG-VO (3285–3109 ± 14 cal BC) and ZA-QUSP1 (2659–2417 ± 18 cal BC) both dated by radiocarbonwiggle-matching). BAR-3330 helped us date eight sites, SG-VO two sites, and ZA-QUSP1 three sites indicating the end of the Copper Age on the Ljubljansko barje. Slovenian oak chronologies from different periods have the potential to be teleconnected with those from other regions.
Radiocarbon dating is one of the most useful and widely used chronometric techniques available for archaeologists and other paleo-scientists. Although generally used for answering specific research questions, radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites have become increasingly used to reconstruct population change at meso and macro temporal and spatial scales, and Bayesian modeling of locally and regionally available dates is facilitating interrogating the synchronicity, correlation, and interaction among various socioecological variables. Because the results of these meta-analyses largely depend on the available data, comprehensive compilations of radiocarbon dates and their associated information are critically important. Moreover, a thorough assessment of these compilations can reveal research spatiotemporal foci, trends, and biases, which should be considered when meta-analyses are attempted. In this review, based on the recently compiled Bolivian Radiocarbon Database, I provide a general assessment of the temporal, geographic, and thematic interests that have driven archaeological and paleoecological research in Bolivia over the last seven decades. Along with a detailed review of research in three broad geographical regions (Andean highlands, inter-Andean valleys, and tropical lowlands), I encourage researchers interested in meta-analysis to critically consider biases in data compilations by means of increased engagement with local experts and interdisciplinary collaboration.
In the years 2016–2019, interdisciplinary research was carried out related to the German Nazi concentration camp KL Plaszow. Its key component was non-invasive and invasive archaeological works. They resulted in uncovering thousands of artefacts and the documentation of the material heritage related to the camp, which has been preserved to this day in the local landscape. The discoveries made were also a trigger for broader reflection and investment activities. The results bring new insight into the role and meaning of the past, present and future of the landscape of KL Plaszow. Such a landscape ties the dead and the living, various people with their objects and comprises the legacy of unimaginable events during the Second World War.
Although lithic raw material provenience studies in Hungarian archaeology have started in the late 1970s, little attention has been paid to the methods prehistoric people with which acquired these raw materials for tool production. With our palaeoethnological approach, we investigate the relationship between human groups and the world surrounding them, aiming to recognize which environmental factors played a role in their lithic raw material economy and tool production. Prehistoric people weighed a range of such factors against each other when deciding about the utilization of a lithic raw material source. The occurrence-source-archaeological site (OSA) model presented in our article helps to describe the interaction between siliceous rock resources and humans. Any place where stone suitable for knapping can be found is considered to be an occurrence. If the lithic raw material from an occurrence is found in the archaeological material, we call it a source, as it was utilized by humans. All places where remains of human activity are found are usually considered archaeological sites. Siliceous rock occurrences are considered raw material sources with a long history prior to human interaction, travelling from the original bedrock to alluvial deposits, due to the geologic-geomorphologic processes of formation, transformation, and transport. The characteristics, of these occurrences, including location, determine not only the distance of transportation but also the quality and condition of the blocks available. Based on these assumptions our research has two aims: to locate lithic raw material occurrences available for prehistoric people and to recognize their decisions about extraction. For the first one, we mapped occurrences of several siliceous rocks in the region. To reconstruct lithic raw material utilization and preferences, we conducted a techno-economic analysis. We studied two areas and their characteristic lithic raw materials in northern Hungary: limnosilicite from the foothills of the Mátra mountain range (Mátraalja), and Buda hornstone or chert from the Buda Hills.
The utilization of both materials is documented at archaeological sites of several prehistoric periods. Both rocks occur in the study areas at several locations that can be considered prehistoric extraction sites. According to Turq’s source area typology, allochthonous sources are not present, but primary and secondary autochthonous as well as sub-allochthonous types have been identified in both areas. However, the exploitation of primary autochthonous limnosilicites could not be demonstrated in the Mátraalja. At the moment, the exploitation of secondary autochthonous and sub-allochthonous sources can be hypothesized for all concerned prehistoric periods.
Terms of “Neolithic cultures” are still used to describe spatial and temporal differences in pottery styles across central Europe. These terms date back to research periods when absolute dating methods were lacking and typological classification was used to establish chronologies. Those terms are charged with problematic, biasing notions of social configurations: cultural homogeneity, spatial boundedness, and immobility. In this article, we present an alternative approach to pottery classification by using ceramics from dendrochronologically and C14-dated sites of the 40th–38th c. BC located in the northern Alpine Foreland. The newly developed methodology uses a computational unsupervised classification based on profile shape and additional nominal characteristics using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding and Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise for cluster analyses. Its role in our project was to provide a quantitative, algorithm-based approach to classify large datasets of pottery while simultaneously account for a large number of variables. This enabled us to find similarity structures that would escape human cognitive capacities on which typological classification is based on. It formed one pilar of a mixed method research approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods of pottery classification. Our results show that the premises of cultural homogeneity are untenable but can be methodologically overcome by using the proposed classification approaches.
The quantifiable and reproducible representation of variability in material culture has continued to play a key role in the elucidation of shifting patterns of production organization in prehistoric archaeology. The study of standardization of ceramics has traditionally illuminated on how agents shift means of production to a common goal. However, while geometric morphometric (GMM) approaches to standardization quantification overcome issues of reproducibility faced in traditional literature, the lack of widespread radiocarbon dating in Japan requires adherence to traditional methods of temporal control. This study seeks to extrapolate ceramic standardization in a quantifiable means, while also maintaining temporal control utilizing traditional methods. In a pilot case study of the agricultural transition period of the Yayoi period of the Japanese peninsula (∼900/800 BC–300 BC), results of mortuary vessels show that while a previous model based on visually determined traditional methods assumed that ceramic manufacture was centralized in the Hakata Bay subregion of the northern Kyushu island region; utilizing GMM analysis to extrapolate variable standardization is able to identify a decline in morphological variation, despite increases in population density and potential variability between migrant and indigenous production patterns. These results further illuminate the strong correlation between production intensity and its effect on standardization practices in material culture production, as seen in modern ethnoarchaeological literature.
AbstractThis paper is based on ethnographic research with Ju|’hoan San in Botswana starting in 1970 and on translation and transcription work with Ju|’hoan San trackers from Namibia who travelled to the Caves du Volp in the French Pyrenees in 2013 to do archaeological work. The Tracking in Caves project, headed by German archaeologists Andreas Pastoors and Tilman Lenssen-Erz, was investigating fossilized human footprints in the caves dating back to around 17,000 calBP. The paper discusses three main verbal formats that can provide useful information to the archaeology of tracking: (1) narrative in the form of folktales and other oral forms referring to animal behaviour, (2) talk in the form of accounts of actual hunts, and (3) consensual discussion in the form of deliberations among trackers as they seek to gain many types of information from tracks. The paper outlines how the trackers and the archaeologists, after an initial period of misunderstanding and miscommunication, mutually learned from each other and eventually bonded on the basis of the scientific method. It does so by drawing on evidence from narrative, talk, and consensual discussion. By investigating verbal data provided by People’s Science, the Tracking in Caves project shows us that skill in tracking, using the tools of egalitarian communication and based on extensive environmental knowledge, has been an enabling feature of the long human story.
Este trabajo versa sobre la utilidad de la implementación de nuevas tecnologías, tales como drones, fotogrametría, entornos virtuales e impresiones 3D, para la generación de conocimiento y soporte de los procesos de registro, análisis, conservación, difusión y divulgación del patrimonio arqueológico. Específicamente expondremos la aplicación de estas técnicas para la reconstrucción y recreación tridimensional de las baterías costeras y el devenir de la batalla acontecida el 20 de noviembre de 1845 en Vuelta de Obligado (Buenos Aires, Argentina). El fin último perseguido fue facilitar la trasmisión del conocimiento generado tras las investigaciones arqueológicas en el sitio, buscando lograr una representación lo más completa y fidedigna posible del proceso histórico. Asimismo, estas recreaciones no solo proporcionaron otros modos de percepción, sino que permitieron una explicación más clara y precisa del sitio, el registro arqueológico y su interpretación, favoreciendo la comprensión de la complejidad del campo bélico de la batalla. Los modelados de creación propia logrados (no procedentes de la realidad o de paralelismos) admiten no solo su uso como recurso didáctico y de divulgación patrimonial para colegas, científicos y la sociedad en general, sino que además nos permitieron generar, a modo de herramienta, nuevas preguntas o expectativas arqueológicas respecto al sitio.
Artykuł dotyczy brązowych, niezdobionych tzw. nagolenników pustych wewnątrz. Pro-blematyka tego typu zabytków została przedstawiona na przykładzie pochodzącego najprawdo-podobniej ze skarbu znaleziska z okolic Tykocina. W skład depozytu wchodziła również „bran-soleta” z zachodzącymi końcami, „aplikacje” oraz dwa drobne fragmenty innych przedmiotów, zapewne ozdób. Niezdobiony wariant tzw. nagolenników pustych wewnątrz jest reprezentowany zdecydowanie mniej licznie niż wariant zdobiony. Większość okazów z terenu Polski pochodzi z Pomorza; poza nim spotyka się pojedyncze egzemplarze. Nieliczne znaleziska wariantu niezdo-bionego z terenu Niemiec również występują w rozproszeniu. Omawiany typ wyrobów nie jest jednorodny. Chronologia większości znalezisk przypada na okres halsztacki C.
Tłumacz: Barbara Majchrzak (Tekst) i Iwona Zych (Tabele)
Auxiliary sciences of history, Prehistoric archaeology
El presente trabajo pretende dar a conocer, de forma más sistemática que las breves noticias parciales hasta ahora publicadas, una variedad de marmor polícromo empleado en época romana en construcciones y elementos en diferentes ciudades béticas, con especial concentración en el valle del Guadalquivir. El estudio incluye su caracterización petrográfica básica, así como la identificación de los principales contextos de uso, con valiosos datos tanto en lo que se refiere a la dispersión de los materiales como al volumen y naturaleza de la extracción. Asimismo se avanza en una propuesta de carácter territorial destinada a identificar los lugares más propicios para la ubicación de la cantera antigua, desconocida hasta la fecha, así como los resultados del posterior trabajo de campo realizado a partir de dichas hipótesis de localización.
This book is made up of 16 papers that are a collection of results from a European Culture Project (OpenArch) that ran from 2010-2015. It was edited by Linda Hurcombe and Penny Cunningham. This work is dedicated to the late shipwright Brian Cumby, who was deeply involved with making replicas of several prehistoric boats. Accordingly, this book concerns itself with bridging the difficult gap between the present and the past. This is done with experimental archaeology in an attempt to create present replicas of past buildings, boats and associated structures.
Miguel del Pino Curbelo, Amelia del Carmen Rodríguez Rodríguez
Se propone un sistema de clasificación para los recipientes cerámicos de tradición aborigen de la isla de Gran Canaria. Este sistema integra aspectos tecnológicos, formales y funcionales partiendo de conjuntos arqueológicos debidamente contextualizados. Se discuten los resultados haciendo referencia a las diferencias cronológicas, a la función y características de los yacimientos. Asimismo, se discuten los datos comparándolos con aquellos existentes en la bibliografía especializada. Los resultados apuntan a la coexistencia de diferentes grupos funcionales, consecuencia del desarrollo de cadenas operativas muy diferentes, mantenidas durante largos periodos de tiempo. A pesar de esta continuidad, se han observado variaciones diacrónicas y espaciales entre los conjuntos, especialmente en cuanto a su morfología y patrones decorativos, que podrían deberse a cambios en las relaciones sociales aborígenes, ocasionados por factores internos y externos, y a la cristalización de grupos identitarios diferenciados dentro la isla, al menos en momentos avanzados de la ocupación prehispánica.
En este trabajo presentamos un conjunto de candiles cerámicos inéditos procedentes de diversos yacimientos de un mismo entorno. Procedentes de la prospección superficial nos proponemos, a través de su análisis, identificar qué relación tienen estos materiales descubiertos con la minería medieval desarrollada en Sierra de Lújar (Granada); un intento de descifrar el carácter autóctono de unas producciones probablemente locales y un uso específico adaptado a la actividad minera de esta época. Este registro cerámico, como expresión tecnológica de un determinado marco temporal, territorial y productivo, también contribuirá al reconocimiento de una actividad productiva, asumida en relación con las fuentes escritas exclusivamente, hasta el momento, para la zona.
We are presenting a set of unpublished ceramic candles from different deposits of the same environment. From the surface exploration, what we propose, through its analysis, to identify the relationship of these discovered materials with the andalusí medieval mining developed in Sierra de Lújar (Granada); An attempt to decipher the autochthonous character of probably local productions and a specific use adapted to the mining activity of this time. This ceramic registry, as a technological expression of a given temporal, territorial and productive framework, will also contribute to the recognition of a productive activity assumed in relation to the sources written exclusively, so far, for the area.
Prehistoric archaeology, Auxiliary sciences of history
Autor wskazuje na coraz częściej pojawiające się w polskich opracowaniach archeologicznych określenia (a także ich znaczenia) zaczerpnięte przede wszystkim z języka angielskiego, ale i niemieckiego. Ograniczają one stosowanie niektórych wyrażeń od bardzo dawna występujących w polskiej terminologii archeologicznej.
Tłumacz: Iwona Zych
Auxiliary sciences of history, Prehistoric archaeology
SummaryThere has been little attempt within archaeology to understand the social meanings specifically attached to old age, or the implications of the social construction of old age for the reconstruction of prehistoric social formations. This stems partly from the low social value placed upon the elderly in modern societies, which makes us tend to view them as irrelevant, and partly from the difficulty of accurately ageing the skeletons of older individuals, which can make them appear invisible in the archaeological record.A case study from the Traisental of Lower Austria is used to illustrate how the changing meanings of old age are recoverable from archaeological cemetery assemblages. Analysis of material culture patterning is combined with assessment of different forms of bodily degeneration to identify changes over time in the way that old age was socially recognized and the possibility that different kinds of bodily infirmity had very different social implications.