European Journal of Archaeology最新文献

This article presents the results of AMS radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, and FRUITS dietary modelling to investigate dietary variability among sixty individuals buried at Varna in the mid-fifth millennium bc. The principal pattern was the isotopic clustering of some forty-three per cent of the population, which suggests a ‘Varna core diet’, with the remainder showing a wider variety of isotopic profiles. While there is a slight trend for heightened meat and fish consumption among male individuals compared to female and undetermined individuals, the authors found no clear correlation between dietary variation and the well-attested differentiation in material culture in the graves. Three children had isotopic profile and estimated diets unmatched by any of the adults in the sample. Two scenarios, dubbed ‘regional’ and ‘local’, are presented to explain such dietary variability at Varna.

The mountain communities of late-first millennium bc Italy have been regarded as non-urban societies that reverted to city life mainly owing to Roman intervention. A growing body of archaeological evidence is uncovering the diversity of settlement forms and dynamics in the region's pre-Roman past, which included sites encompassing a range of functions and social agents. This article presents an in-depth, microscale analysis of one such site, Monte Vairano in Samnium, drawing on perspectives from comparative urbanism. Monte Vairano developed urban characteristics such as a complex socioeconomic profile and political cohesion, as well as potentially more unique features such as an apparently balanced distribution of wealth. These results can shed further light on the diversity of ancient urbanization and its sociopolitical implications in late-first millennium bc Italy and the Mediterranean.

Research concerning transactions in the early first millennium bc in the westernmost Mediterranean has tended to focus on colonial coastlands occupied by scattered Levantine outposts, whereas cross-cultural interactions in hinterland regions have remained ill-defined. This article presents an assemblage of Egyptian vitreous artefacts, namely beads, a Hathor amulet, and further items from the seventh-century bc rural village of Cerro de San Vicente (Salamanca) in the interior of Spain. Macroscopic and chemical analyses demonstrate their likely manufacture in Egypt during the Middle and New Kingdom (second millennium bc), attesting to a far-reaching Phoenician maritime network that connected both ends of the Mediterranean. The authors interpret the items as liturgical objects, rather than mere high-status trinkets, that formed part of a widely shared Mediterranean world view and associated ritual mores. They consider the impact of cultural syncretism, which reached even remote and allegedly isolated peripheral settings in Iberia.

The Tyrolean ice mummy known as Ötzi presents some of the earliest direct evidence of tattooing in the human past. Despite decades of study, it remains unclear how the Iceman's tattoos were created and what tools and methods were used. Popular discussions of the Iceman describe his tattoos as having been made by incision, first cutting the skin and then rubbing in pigment from the surface. The authors review the scholarly literature on the Iceman's tattoos and summarize ethnographic, historic, and anthropological research on global patterns of tattooing to contextualize the Iceman's marks within pre-electric tattooing traditions. The results of recent experimental tattooing studies are then compared to the physical signature of the Iceman's marks to evaluate existing claims and provide informed hypotheses as to how those tattoos were created.