Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences最新文献

Palù di Livenza is a Neolithic pile-dwelling site located in north-east Italy, inscribed since 2011 on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in the transnational serial property “Prehistoric pile-dwellings around the Alps”. Its study is crucial for investigating the transition from the Recent to Late Neolithic periods in the region. Eighteen vessels from 5 structural phases, dated approximately between 4300/4200 and 3600 BC, have been analysed using X-ray computed microtomography, X-ray diffraction, inductively coupled plasma optical emission and mass spectrometry, as well as portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), in order to investigate the pottery forming techniques, the technology and the provenance of the vessels based on their minero-petrographic and chemical characteristics. The results of pXRF analyses have been further evaluated through principal component analysis (PCA). The results obtained indicate that most of the vessels, including the four-spouted vessels typical of the Square Mouthed Pottery culture, were locally produced using the coiling technique. The vessels were tempered with carbonate material that has dissolved due to taphonomic factors and/or large fragments of other rocks originating form geological formations outcropping nearby the archaeological site. The identified fabric groups, in use throughout the entire duration of the settlement, seem to suggest that no significant technological changes occurred at the transition between Recent and Late Neolithic. Interestingly, the PCA analysis of reliable chemical elements revealed that, despite the overall similarity of the assemblage, certain samples with distinct chronology and typology demonstrate remarkably homogeneous chemical characteristics. This suggests slight variations in the raw materials and/or recipes used over time.

Cattle and, to a lesser extent, sheep/goat and pigs, were crucial components of Norway’s socio-cultural and economic dynamics in the Middle Ages. Zooarchaeological analyses of faunal samples from different urban sites reveal that changes in cattle husbandry practices occurred in Norway over the medieval period, and especially in its early phases. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of medieval Oslo, where an in-depth zooarchaeological study provides the first comprehensive review of cattle husbandry strategies. In the first centuries of the medieval period (11th -mid 12th c. AD), cattle were mainly raised for milk and meat production, while fewer young and more numerous older individuals, most of which probably oxen, were present from mid 12th -13th c. AD onwards. This hypothesis is supported by biometrical analyses of cattle postcranial bones, indicating changes in the sexual composition of cattle herds over time. Therefore, from ca. mid 12th -13th c. AD onward, cattle seem to have been more used for ploughing and, only once old, to have been culled for their meat. In turn, this evidence suggests that more arable lands had to be ploughed, especially in eastern and central Norway. Here, demographic growth and settlement expansion would have led to an increase in food demand; at the same time, more favourable climatic conditions might have contributed to an increase in the availability of arable fields. This article suggests that medieval Norwegian farming was not static as historically thought, but rather connected to wider-scale agricultural innovations characterising other parts of medieval Europe.

Hunting strategies in the Paleolithic period represent a significant and complex challenge, influencing the lifestyles of early human populations dependent on the seasonal activity of herds. Varying seasonally, a composition of a herd caused changes in the speed of animals movements, their aggressiveness, hides and the fatness and flavor of their meat. The morphological criteria for determining grazer sex and age have long been established in zooarchaeology. However, many traits associated with bison sex are poorly defined for archeozoological collections due to the fragmented and scattered nature of the bone remains. The objective of presented study was to demonstrate the potential utility of proteomic tooth enamel analysis detecting the AmelX and AmelY peptide fragments for prey-sex determination in cases where morphological criteria did not work. In the study, the tooth enamel samples from 18 animals were analyzed, including eight modern specimens of known sex, and ten Pleistocene specimens of unknown sex from four different Paleolithic sites. A blind test conducted for the modern collection yielded a 100% accuracy. This outcome prompted the development of the criteria for sex determination in the bison based on proteomic analysis of tooth enamel.

This paper compares various ‘earthen’ construction materials and building techniques from three Middle Bronze Age tell (multi-layered settlement) sites in Hungary: Százhalombatta-Földvár, Kakucs-Turján (Vatya material culture) and Borsodivánka-Marhajárás-Nagyhalom (Otomani-Füzesabony Cultural Circle (OFCC)). It employs microscopic analyses – archaeological soil micromorphology and phytolith analysis within thin sections – to examine floor, wall and fire installation materials at a high resolution. The term ‘earthen construction materials’ is used in archaeology extensively to refer to anything from soils to sediments that sometimes lack proper classification or terminology. Through a closer look at the types of materials used at the three analysed sites, we describe more clearly what comprises ‘earthen’ construction materials. Using this data, we then employ a chaîne opératoire approach to think through various stages in the sourcing and preparation of building materials. In analysing this, the paper makes visible the decisions by Bronze Age builders and discusses their possible reasons, which include environmental conditions and socially learned practices. Further, by comparing three contemporary sites within a micro-landscape, our analysis highlights that even small variations in the environment and therefore the available raw materials impact building materials and techniques, and that different groups of people can make different decisions even when facing similar environments.

Waste management is paramount to town planning and ancient civilizations across the world have spent resources and mobilized labor for waste disposal and reuse. The study of waste management practices offers a unique window into the daily lives, social organization, and environmental interactions of ancient societies. In the Indus Valley Civilization, known for its urban planning, understanding waste disposal in rural settlements provides crucial insights into the broader socio-economic landscape. While extensive research has documented sophisticated waste management systems in urban Indus centers, little is known about practices in rural settlements. This gap limits our understanding of regional variations and rural-urban dynamics within the civilization. In this paper, using isotopic and microscopic proxies, we characterize the waste disposed of at the rural Indus settlement of Kotada Bhadli to reconstruct the sources of waste, including heated animal dung, and burned vegetation. We propose that rural agro-pastoral settlements in Gujarat during the Indus Era systematically discarded such waste in specific locations. By characterizing waste produced at Kotada Bhadli, we are also able to reconstruct the natural environment and how the natural and cultural landscape around the settlement was exploited by the residents of the settlement for their domestic and occupational needs. Our identification of the attention paid to waste disposal by the inhabitants of Kotada Bhadli adds significant data to our understanding of waste disposal as an insight into past lives.

Littoral resources have been consumed by humans since at least the Middle Palaeolithic. Examples of the use of molluscs have been documented along the shores of Europe during that period but it was not until many millennia later that European hunter-fisher-gatherer societies exploited those resources intensively—see the case of Nerja cave during the Younger Dryas. This economic activity caused the accumulation of shells at archaeological sites during the Mesolithic, resulting in the formation of the so-called shell middens, a very common type of deposit along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe. Despite the large number of research projects that have studied the exploitation of coastal environments and the way of life of Mesolithic populations, questions such as the relationship between human mobility and mollusc exploitation patterns still remain. The archaeomalacological study of the shell midden in La Chora cave (Cantabria, Spain) confirms that people foraged for shellfish at several places along the coast, mainly in the estuary of the River Asón. The main difference between La Chora and other Mesolithic sites is its longer shellfish collection radius as the inhabitants travelled over 10 km to the open coast to collect shellfish. This study has expanded the available data about the subsistence strategies of Mesolithic groups in a little-studied area and improved our knowledge of mobility patterns among Mesolithic societies in the northern Iberian Peninsula.

The Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal), with evidence of human occupancy dating back ∼ 400,000 years, is one of very few Middle Pleistocene cave sites to provide a fossil hominin cranium in association with Acheulean bifaces and the by-products of fire usage. Zooarchaeological, taphonomic and tooth-wear analyses suggest that the accumulation of the faunal remains and their modification are anthropogenic. Large game constituted the basis of subsistence, with equids and cervids being preferentially targeted. Woodland and open landscapes formed the ecosystems supporting the populations of the mammals that were preyed upon by the inhabitants of the site. Most of the animal carcasses were carried to, and fully butchered at the site, which was used as a residential base camp. The features of the Aroeira faunal assemblage foreshadow the subsistence strategies developed by the hunter-gatherers of the Middle and the Upper Palaeolithic and testify to their very ancient roots.

The origin and process of the domestication of wild animals have long fascinated scientists. However, there are no reliable methods to distinguish between tamed and wild animals. Here, we present a new method to identify tamed and wild juvenile brown bears (Ursus arctos) using retrospective isotope analysis of the femur. We used femurs from the nine bear cubs and the tibia from one domesticated dog excavated from the Nijibetsu Shuwan Kumaokuriba site, Hokkaido Islands, Japan (late 19th century–1939 AD). These bears were potentially tamed by indigenous Ainu people, and the domesticated dog was used as a reference of a tamed animal. We subdivided these bones into 10 sections along the growing axis, extracted collagen and measured the stable nitrogen isotope ratios (δ¹⁵N). The bone sections of the domesticated dog had constant δ¹⁵N values that were as high as that of salmon, suggesting that tamed animals exclusively consumed a marine diet fed to them by the Ainu. Notably, two of nine brown bear cubs showed a temporal elevation of δ¹⁵N to the similar isotope ratios of the dog tibia, which is unlikely to occur in the wild condition, strongly suggesting that they were tamed and fed by the Ainu people.

Accessory vessels, including platters, dishes, beakers, flagons, jars, and amphorae, are a common feature of Romano-British burials, raising questions as to their provenance; for example, were such vessels recycled from the domestic sphere or made specially for funerary purposes? Furthermore, uncertainty surrounds their purpose: did they contain foods for the deceased, possibly for their final journey to the underworld? Interestingly, organic residue analysis of vessels from Baginton, a site adjacent to The Lunt fort, Coventry, an early (mid to late first century) Roman military cremation cemetery did not yield evidence for food offerings and may have reflected the use of seconds or damaged vessels in burials, perhaps to provide a symbolic meal. In contrast, here we provide, for the first time, direct chemical and isotopic evidence for ‘meals for the dead’, comprising mainly dairy products, often mixed with leafy plants, extracted from somewhat unusual accessory vessels found in a small, enclosed inhumation cemetery, perhaps associated with a family group, which dates to the late (third to late fourth century, or early fifth century A.D) in urban Canterbury. Thus, we can confirm that accessory vessels found in later Romano-British burials were, in this instance, used in the laying out of funerary meals, presumably to nourish the soul on the journey to the underworld. These preliminary insights on vessel use and burial practices across the span of the Roman occupation of Britain thus provide a strong hint at the diversity of Roman burial practices.

Despite the presence of a theoretical model describing the settlement patterns of Palaeolithic sites in Northwestern Iberia, it has not yet been empirically tested using statistical analysis. This study explores the settlement patterns of the Palaeolithic period in Northwestern Iberia within two regions that share similar chronology and research traditions: the Northern and Central Mountain ranges of Northwestern Iberia. Employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics, the methodology has provided robust empirical support for several aspects of the theoretical model. The study rigorously tested the theoretical model proposed in the existing literature using statistical analysis and a comprehensive dataset of 50 variables. The findings highlight significant regional distinctions in the settlement patterns of Palaeolithic sites within both areas of Northwestern Iberia. This research not only confirms certain hypotheses related to Palaeolithic site locations but also underscores the need for further examination and refinement of others, particularly considering the notable regional variations.