This paper discusses the results of the archaeological investigation of a pit with human remains dating to the mid-sixth century BC. Some 66 pits from three different periods – the Early Copper Age (early fifth millennium BC), the Early Bronze Age (early third millennium BC), and the Iron Age (sixth–fifth century BC) were uncovered during the 2021 rescue excavations at a pit site near the village of Brestak in northeast Bulgaria. Pit 2 is of particular interest due to the unusual context with bones of three human individuals: a complete skeleton of a pre-adolescent child, remains of a six-month baby, and leg bones of an adult (articulated femur and tibia bent sharply at the knee joint).
Human remains have been recorded at a number of pit complexes in the territory of Ancient Thrace, mostly dating to the first millennium BC. The opinions of modern researchers on the interpretation of such finds diverge greatly, with the two major theories opposing human sacrifice against unconventional graves.
The author proposes a set of characteristics which distinguish the material evidence of ritual human sacrifice from burial practices. With reference to the adduced parallels and excerpts from classical authors, the context in pit 2 at the site of Brestak is interpreted as a multiple human sacrifice with evidence of ritual dismemberment.
On 6–8 May 2025 took place the 12th International Conference of the UISPP Commission on Flint Mining in Pre- and Protohistoric Times titled “Excavating in the Land of the Devil: Past and Current Research on Prehistoric Flint Mines” (see Werra ed. 2025). It was organised by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IAE PAN), Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, English Heritage, and the UISPP Commission on Flint Mining in Pre- and Protohistoric Times. The conference was hosted jointly by Worthing Museum and Art Gallery (West Sussex) and English Heritage Grime’s Graves and the Grime’s Graves Visitors Centre (Norfolk, East of England). The symposium was organised at the initiative of Dagmara H. Werra (IAE PAN), Jon Bączkowski (University of Southampton), and Anne Teather (Past Participate / Bournemouth University).
Dalma was a pivotal culture during the 5th millennium BCE, located in the Northwest and Central Zagros regionsof Iran. Excavation at Tepe Gheshlagh, a major site in the Dalma Centre of the Talvar Valley in Bijar County,between the Eastern Central Zagros and the Southern Lake Urmia Basin, revealed a sequence of habitation thatspans the Early, Middle, and Late Chalcolithic periods. While previous research hinted at interactions between thesetwo cultural spheres, there was a lack of information regarding intermediary centres. Radiocarbon determinationsplaced the earliest settlement at Gheshlagh, characterised by the Dalma tradition, dating back to 5500‒5000 BCE.To gain a deeper understanding of the Dalma pottery manufacturing process, laboratory studies were conductedto identify the texture, constituents, and provenance of the sherds from the site. Among the assemblage, twosherds of Ubaid type were found to differ structurally from the typical local pottery, viz. Dalma Painted Ware. Asa result, XRF, XRD, and petrography techniques were applied to investigate the pottery industry and the utilisedcompounds. A total of twelve sherds were singled out for XRF / XRD analyses, while 15 others were analysedby petrography. The XRD tests identified silica, calcite, quartz, iron, aluminium, Biotite, and mica (muscovite)as the main phases present in the samples. The XRF analysis confirmed the presence of Silica, calcite, aluminium,and mica constituent elements. Furthermore, petrographic analysis detected quartz, chert, calcite, siltstone, iron,and plagioclase, which aligned with the findings from the XRF / XRD measurements. Additionally, petrographyidentified two pieces as being imports from other regions, thus pointing to the local inhabitants’ extra-regional ties.
Lia Nuralia, Singgih Tri Sulistiyono, Iim Imadudin
et al.
This research aims to describe the dominance of power of the Dutch as colonizers over Indigenous Indonesians as the colonized. The domination of power is seen in the role of cultural brokers at the Cisaga Plantation in Ciamis, West Java, Indonesia, during the Dutch colonial period. Large plantations were the main arena of colonialist exploitation of natural resources and human labor. Domination is visible in the industrial landscape of the plantation through several built facilities. The research method used is an archaeological research method with an industrial archaeology framework through the application of Max Weber’s concept of domination. The results obtained show that there are differences in architecture, layout, as well as land height and distance between buildings. These physical conditions describe the domination and subordination of power based on social class, social status, occupation, and ethnicity. The colonialists were from the upper class and had high social status as officials and company owners of European race and white. The Indigenous Indonesians were lower class, low social status, manual workers, Asian race, and colored. The plantation officials adhered to the principle of indirect orders. The executor of the orders to the plantation workers was the Indigenous foreman as a cultural broker. In reality, the dominance of power was in the hands of the Indigenous Indonesians themselves.
The following article analyzes a classical highly-curved Persian šamšir (sword) that is kept in the Malek LibraryMuseum in Tehran, Iran. The blade is highly-curved, has a wedge shape, and a flat fuller. However, the typical styleof most highly-curved Persian sword blades has no fullers. The blade is made of patterned crucible steel (pulād-egŏhardār). Persian patterned crucible steel was considered one of the best types of steel not only in Iran but alsoin other countries. Based on the pattern and visisble structures of the surface of the blade, patterned crucible steelwas classified into different categories. The crucible steel pattern on this example is pulād-e jŏhardār-e xati thatmeans “lined watered steel. The blade has a gold-overlaid maker’s mark of Assadollāh Isfahāni and also carriesthe name of Šāh Abbās. These are integrated in four gold-overlaid inscriptions on the obverse side of the blade.The upper cartouche reads: Al-Soltān Šāh Abbās (the ruler Šāh Abbās), the upper middle cartouche is a bodduh(a magic square), the lower middle cartouche reads: Amal-e Assadollāh (the work of Assadollāh), and the lowercartouche reads: Isfahāni. The inscriptions seem to be later additions to the blade. The crossguard is made ofpatterned crucible steel and pierced in floral and geometric designs on both sides. The scabbard chape is made ofsteel. The handle scales are made of bone. The wooden scabbard is a new replacement covered with new leather.The general dimensions of the saber follow many historical examples.
Sara Sadeghi, Ardeshir Javanmardzadeh, Manijeh Hadian Dehkordi
et al.
Rock arts, especially pictographs, feature peculiar characteristics in the history of Iranian art. Most scholars regard them as a form of visual art. Given the long history of representation in rock art spanning the Paleolithic period up to the present, they have been considered from various archeological, anthropological, artistic, symbolic, and historical and decorative arts perspectives to pin down their themes, meanings, and date. The present work examines a series of pictographs from the Kuhdasht region of Lorestan using a combination of field, laboratorial, and library research approaches. Notably, this is the very first study in Iran addressing the pigments of pictographs at a rock art site. A popular local tradition holds that the ancient artists used a mixture of blood, oak syrup, and soot to prepare the paint used at the site. Hence, the motifs, rock types, and pigments of the Charta region were analyzed to characterize their chemical composition and the elements constituting the pigments. To this end, a Dino Light digital loop microscope was used, and point tests and petrography were then carried out using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). The elemental analyses revealed the nature of the red pigment. The motifs at Charta include representations of tools, geometric motifs, and human figures, portraying fighting or pre-fighting scenes. The chemical composition of the red pigment consisted of a high iron (Fe) content as well as smaller percentages of Ca, Mg, Al, and Si. The abundance of iron element detected in the elemental analysis of the specimen’s surface and the intensity of the peaks related to the composition of iron oxide in the FT-IR spectra might more strongly indicate the presence of these compounds in the pigment.Therefore, the pigments were mainly made of iron oxides, such as red ocher or hematite, magnetite, and magnesium. Thus, the artists invariably used highly durable and resilient mineral pigments, which based on the micrographs of the paint layer cross-sections were directly applied to the rock and, thus the absence of any sort of primer. No organic element was detected in the pigment composition.
Norbert Faragó, Réka Katalin Péter, Orsolya Viktorik
et al.
From the period of the Neanderthals to those of the Late Neolithic populations, the Bükk Mountains region played an important part in the lives of various prehistoric societies, and the varied geological history of this territory provided distinct circumstances for the production of stone implements. The major goal of our research is to outline the current state of information concerning the prehistoric use of the diverse silicified source materials of the Bükk mountains. The results of these studies are presented concerning four selected local rock types, cited in the archaeological literature as the silicified sandstone of Egerbakta, the radiolarite and hornstone (black chert), the silicified marlstone and the quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite). Except for the latter, little attention has previously been paid to studying them in detail. Our new petrographic analyses revealed two variants of the raw material from Egerbakta: a silicified sandstone and a diatomaceous detrital chert. The other samples turned out to be radiolarites. This result confirmed what was already suggested for the hornstones (black cherts), however, it has new consequences for the “silicified marlstone”. Regarding the prehistoric use of the selected raw materials, archaeological data show interesting dynamics through time. The Mousterian groups of the region used a large spectrum of rocks for lithic tools with a preference for hornstone (black cherts) and radiolarite in the southern part, and the quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite) in the northeastern part. The Bábonyian/Micoquian assemblages are characterized by a bifacial toolkit and an apparent preference for quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite). At the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, a new attitude appears in the region: the Aurignacian groups almost completely ignored local sources. During the Neolithization of the Carpathian Basin, the lithic assemblages of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture became more and more habituated to the locally available rock types, albeit their raw material economy was based on limnosilicites and obsidian. Another change took place during the Late Neolithic when supra-regional sources became dominant over local or regional sources.
Natalie Pickartz, Wolfgang Rabbel, Knut Rassmann
et al.
Magnetic mapping is a common method for investigating archaeological sites. Typically, the magnetic field data are treated with basic signal improving processing followed by image interpretation to derive the location and outline of archaeological objects. However, the magnetic maps can yield more information; we present a two-step automatized interpretation scheme that enables us to infer the social structure from the magnetic map. First, we derive the magnetization distribution via inverse filtering by assuming a constant depth range for the building remains. Second, we quantify the building remains in terms of their total magnetic moment. In our field example, we consider this quantity as a proxy of household prosperity and its distribution as a social indicator. The inverse filtering approach is tested on synthetic data and cross-checked with a least-squares inversion. An extensive modeling study highlights the influence of depth and thickness of the layer for the filter construction. We deduce the rule of thumb that by choosing a rather too deep and too thick a layer, errors are smaller than for layers too low and too thin. The interpretation scheme is applied to the magnetic gradiometry map of the Chalcolithic Cucuteni–Tripolye site Maidanetske (Ukraine) that comprises the anomalies of about 2300 burned clay buildings. The buildings are arranged along concentric ellipses around an inner vacant space and a vacant ring. Buildings along this ring corridor have increased total magnetic moments. The total magnetic moment indicates the remaining building material and therefore the architecture. Lastly, architecture can reflect economic or social status. Consequently, the increased magnetic moment of buildings along the ring corridor indicates a higher economic or social status. The example of Maidanetske provides convincing evidence that the inversion of magnetic data and the quantification of buildings in terms of their magnetic moments enables the investigation of the social structure within sites.
María Cecilia Panizza, María Gimena Devoto, Fernando Oliva
e propone un acercamiento al estudio de las evidencias materiales de ocupación del espacio a fines del siglo XIX, en dos sitios ubicados en el sector sur del Área Ecotonal Húmedo Seca Pampeana (AEHSP). El primero, San Carlos, se encuentra en el predio de la estancia Santa Ana en el partido de Coronel Suarez, en el sudoeste de la provincia de Buenos Aires. El otro sitio es la casa del primer intendente de la localidad de Puan, Rómulo Franco, localizada en la isla de Puan en el partido homónimo, próxima a la cabecera del distrito bonaerense. Ambos sitios presentan estructuras habitacionales remanentes, donde se evaluaron las distintas fases constructivas de las estructuras que se observan en la actualidad, con el fin de contribuir a determinar la funcionalidad del sitio. Para el análisis se consideraron las posturas teóricas de la arqueología de la arquitectura, las cuales implican estudiar la relación del ser humano con las construcciones que usa o elabora. Se intenta identificar cómo el medio es modificado y cómo los espacios construidos son diseñados con el objetivo de favorecer ciertas percepciones. Si se determina cómo los espacios son pensados y organizados para propiciar cierta percepción respecto a su entorno y a la construcción en sí misma, se puede acceder a la racionalidad del grupo que la creó y usó.
Dark glass ellipsoid beads decorated with coloured glass threads are a relatively rare bead type that to date have mostly been found in Central Europe and the Near East. The author has located four examples of these beads in British museums, all from datable levels. This paper describes the British beads in detail and compares them with similar finds elsewhere. She also investigates the making of the beads using hot glass beadmaking skills.
Auxiliary sciences of history, Prehistoric archaeology
Sławomir Sałaciński, Barbara Sałacińska, Wojciech Borkowski
Jan Kowalczyk exhibited great interest in the issues related to the prehistoric acquisition of flint raw materials and their working. He was involved in research and conservation issues at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s in the Neolithic and Early Bronze mines of striped flint in Krzemionki Opatowskie, exploited by communities of the Funnel Beaker, Globular Amphorae and Mierzanowice cultures. In 1967 and 1970 he was an inspirer and co-participant of Bogdan Balcer’s research within the Świeciechów-type flint deposits in Świeciechów, near Annopol. The raw material was mined here using open-pit methods, constituting the oldest form of mining. The mines were at the same time centres of mass flint production. Świeciechów flint was used from the Paleolithic period throughout the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.
Javier del Hoyo Calleja, Mariano Rodríguez Ceballos
Abordamos el estudio de dos inscripciones ya conocidas, de las que damos nueva lectura e interpretación, y apuntamos su posible relación con Clunia. Asimismo, editamos otras tres piezas inéditas y tres grafitos hallados todos ellos en Valdeande (Burgos).
Zooarchaeological meta-analyses hold promise in answering the “big questions” of archaeology, but they are also fraught with methodological peril. In regions with a long history of archaeological research, like the American Southwest, such meta-analyses will invariably involve the use of older collections. These assemblages can pose a challenge for zooarchaeologists: the faunas were often haphazardly and/or inconsistently collected, and documentation of collection methods can be difficult to find (if available at all). In this paper, we illustrate several problems common to older collections using examples from Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581) and Comanche Springs (LA 14904), and explore these issues further through a meta-analysis of the distribution of Old World domestic animal taxa in 17th century New Mexico. We find that while the inclusion of older collections in zooarchaeological meta-analyses poses challenges, if the problems in these data are addressed, such collections can provide useful information.