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Fields of conflict: A political ecology approach to land and social transformation in the colonial Andes (Cuzco, Peru)

Posted on June 21, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 20 June 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Steve Kosiba, R. Alexander HunterThis paper presents a political ecological framework for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to examine changes in agricultural land in ancient and early historical contexts. It raises several issues pertinent to archaeological epistemology and science, with a particular focus on the limitations of using fixed data categories to examine fluid environmental processes and ecological relationships. The paper draws on political ecological theories that define land as a social process, moving beyond economic conceptions of agricultural land that rest on productive capacity and phenomenological theories that examine the physical environment in terms of cultural perception. It combines qualitative (archival) and quantitative (archaeological) data in a GIS methodology to address how linked changes in physical land attributes and labor routines can affect regional ecologies and foment social conflict. In empirical terms, the paper traces changes from maize to wheat fields during Spanish colonization (ca. 1533-1670) in Ollantaytambo, Peru, a monumental Inca town near the capital of their empire. It reveals how ecological transformations that occurred during this century–widespread deaths throughout, abandonment of Inca fields, and introduction of European biota–in part framed conflicts between Andean people and the colonial regime, and also empowered local farmers to claim land in previously undeveloped areas.

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Spatial thinking in archaeology: Is GIS the answer?

Posted on June 20, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 17 June 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Gary Lock, John PouncettBeing human embodies understandings of space and spatial relationships which are embedded within the material world and are underpinned by complex frameworks of knowledge and experience. Just as this applied to people living in the past, so it applies to those of us concerned with trying to understand those past lives through the archaeological record. Most, if not all, archaeological material has a spatial component and it is not surprising, therefore, that spatial thinking has been central within archaeological endeavour since the beginnings of the discipline. Specific forms of spatial thinking have changed with developing theory and methods and with changing analytical and technological opportunities resulting in the rich variety of approaches available to us today. Within this development, the rapid adoption of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology since the early 1990s has had a major impact on archaeology and related disciplines and its use is now almost taken for granted. Although the use of GIS in archaeology has always been, and still is contentious at the theoretical level, the attractions of the technology are usually seen to outweigh any restrictions or disadvantages. In this paper we situate the use of GIS, including the papers in this volume, within the wider arena of spatial thinking in archaeology in an attempt to assess the impact that this technology has had on how we think spatially.

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Charred honeycombs discovered in Iron Age Northern Italy. A new light on boat beekeeping and bee pollination in pre-modern world

Posted on June 14, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: July 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 83 Author(s): Lorenzo Castellano, Cesare Ravazzi, Giulia Furlanetto, Roberta Pini, Francesco Saliu, Marina Lasagni, Marco Orlandi, Renata Perego, Ilaria Degano, Franco Valoti, Raffaele C. de Marinis, Stefania Casini, Tommaso Quirino, Marta RapiIn the ancient world beeswax and honey were of crucial importance not only for nutrition, but also for a range of activities including various artisanal practices. A rich body of iconographic and literary evidence has proven very informative, but archaeological data are strongly underrepresented in studies on ancient beekeeping. A multidisciplinary excavation project of the Etruscan trade center of Forcello near Bagnolo San Vito (Mantua province), led to the discovery of charred honeycombs in a workshop dated to 510-495 BCE. Morphoscopical, palynological and chemical analyses (IR, LC-MS, GC-MS) were conducted on these honeycombs and their associated materials (bee-breads and a mixture of melted honeycombs) in order to reconstruct beekeeping practices and the local environment. Palynological data indicate that honeybees were feeding on plants from both aquatic and ruderal landscapes. The palynological record from the bee-breads suggests the practice of itinerant beekeeping along rivers, an activity described by Pliny the Elder (Natural History, XXI.43.73) a few centuries later in relation to the town of Ostiglia (Mantua province) ca. 20 km downstream the investigated site. Hence, confirming the historical source, beekeeping in Iron Age Northern Italy appears to be characterized by a remarkably high degree of specialization. In addition, the pollen content of the melted honeycombs provides evidence for an unprecedented Vitis vinifera (grapevine) honey. The pollination syndrome suggests that bees fed on nectar of pre-domesticated or early-domesticated varieties of Vitis vinifera, confirming the archaeobotanical record of pips from Iron Age Northern Italy.

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A GIS of affordances: Movement and visibility at a planned colonial town in highland Peru

Posted on June 13, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 12 June 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Steven A. Wernke, Lauren E. Kohut, Abel TraslaviñaArchaeological GIS is moving towards increasingly detailed, embodied, multidimensional simulations and analyses of human experience in the past. Most of the emerging GIS research synthesizing spatial modeling and subject-centered approaches has been concerned with practices and perceptions of landscape. This paper tightens the analytical focus to the more intimate scale of a single settlement, combining models of movement and visual experience within a planned colonial town in highland Peru. Such a rendering is important, since controlling movement and visual experience were central to the colonial project that built this and other such towns in the Viceroyalty of Peru. This study centers on an exceptionally well-preserved, relict planned colonial town in highland Peru to investigate affordances of movement and visibility within it. Several GIS-based simulations and analytical techniques are brought together, including drone-based high resolution three dimensional modeling, spatial network analysis, walking models, and cumulative viewshed analysis, to simulate aggregate visual experience as people moved through the town. The results are suggestive of how the layout of the town specifically routed transit to facilitate the visual prominence of the church and original Inka plaza of the reducción, as well as the prominence of indigenous elite households. Both continuities and discontinuities of movement and visual experience relative to Inkaic and Spanish colonial spaces are evident. By extension, this paper also provides a pathway for quantitative and reproducible modeling of site-scale movement and visual affordances as dimensions of subject and community formation in other global contexts.

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Modeling Métis mobility? Evaluating least cost paths and indigenous landscapes in the Canadian west

Posted on May 28, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 27 May 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Kisha SupernantGeographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses in archaeology have been criticized by archaeologists for being reductive, environmentally deterministic, and reproducing a disembodied experience of the landscape. However, research over the past 20 years has demonstrated the power of GIS data and analyses to explore complex social questions about past human experiences. Indigenous knowledges of landscapes have not often explicitly informed GIS analyses in archaeology, even though archaeologists and indigenous communities around the world are forging collaborative relationships. This paper proposes an integrated approach GIS-based least cost analysis, where Indigenous traditional knowledge, historical documentation, and archaeology can be brought together for a more nuanced and locally-grounded model of past landscapes. A case study from the movement of the Métis people of Canada is used to test typical models of cost path movement used in archaeology against known historic trails information, followed by a discussion of possible future applications of movement models and variables related to local Indigenous knowledge of current and past landscapes.

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Echoing landscapes: Echolocation and the placement of rock art in the Central Mediterranean

Posted on May 28, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: July 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 83 Author(s): Tommaso Mattioli, Angelo Farina, Enrico Armelloni, Philippe Hameau, Margarita Díaz-AndreuMany societies give special importance to places where echoes are generated, and often these places receive special treatment including the production of rock paintings in them. The identification of the exact places where echoes come from, or echolocation, is an ability only shared by a few individuals in each community. Unfortunately for archaeologists, however, their activity leaves no trace in the archaeological record. In this article we propose that the Ambisonics technique, a method developed in the field of acoustical physics, can be applied to identify the likely use of echolocation among societies for which no ethnographic information remains, such as most of those who lived in prehistoric Europe. A description of how this method has been applied in two case studies, the rock art landscapes of Baume Brune (Vaucluse, France) and Valle d’Ividoro (Puglia, Italy), is provided. In these two echoing areas only a few shelters were chosen to be painted with Schematic art, leaving around them many others undecorated. In the description of the fieldwork phase of the test, issues related to the sound source, the sound recorder, and spherical camera and how the Impulse Response (IR) measurement was made are discussed. The processed results indicate that there was a positive relationship between sound-reflecting surfaces and the location of rock art. This leads us to propose that in both areas there is a strong probability of echolocation having been employed by Neolithic people to select the shelters in which to produce rock art. The results obtained in our study also have wider implications in our understanding of how prehistoric peoples perceived the landscape in which they lived in, understood not only on the basis of tangible elements but, perhaps more importantly, because of intangible aspects such as sound and, in particular, echoes.

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Visualising scales of process: Multi-scalar geoarchaeological investigations of microstratigraphy and diagenesis at hominin bearing sites in South African karst

Posted on May 25, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: July 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 83 Author(s): Tara Edwards, Elle Grono, Andy I.R. Herries, Frank J. Brink, Ulrike Troitzsch, Tim Senden, Michael Turner, Aleese Barron, Lauren Prossor, Tim DenhamMulti-scalar geoarchaeological investigations were conducted on several samples of sediment (dolomite cave sediments, ferricrete ridge, speleothem, tufa and tufa cave sediments) from four early hominin fossil-bearing sites (Taung Type Site, Haasgat, Drimolen Main Quarry, Elandsfontein) in different South African karst environments. The study was designed to test the value of geoarchaeological techniques for identifying and characterising environments of deposition and diagenetic processes involved in site formation within different mediums and different karst environments. The traditional petrographic method is weighed against two relatively new methodological contributions to site formation and diagenesis: Computed Tomography (CT) and automated Quantitative Evaluation of Minerals using Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (QEM-EDS), employing QEMSCAN® technology. An integrated micro-sampling approach is outlined for successful cross-correlation between techniques. The study demonstrates that different analyses vary in their ability to visualise different types of process – primary and secondary. Thin section petrography remains the ‘gold standard’ for analyses conducted at the micro-scale, while QEM-EDS and CT offer exciting potential to perform meso-scale analyses and are best utilised as complementary rather than alternative techniques to petrography.

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Editorial Board

Posted on May 24, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: June 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 82

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What can GIS + 3D mean for landscape archaeology?

Posted on May 23, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 22 May 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Heather Richards-RissettoUntil recently Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have held center stage in the archaeologist’s geospatial toolkit, and there is no doubt that archaeologists have moved beyond the map—but into what? In the early years, criticisms voicing GIS as environmentally-deterministic were abundant. What methods and tool have archaeologists used to overcome these criticisms? New geospatial technologies such as airborne lidar and aerial photogrammetry are allowing us to acquire inordinate amounts of georeferenced 3D data— but do these 3D technologies help overcome criticisms of environmental determinism? Together—GIS + 3D— can link georeferenced 3D models to underlying data adding a ground-based humanistic perspective lacking in the bird’s eye view of traditional GIS. This paper situates GIS and 3D within a semiotic framework to offer some ideas on using 3DGIS to intertwine environmental and cultural factors to work toward new approaches for landscape archaeology.

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Mapping liminality: Critical frameworks for the GIS-based modelling of visibility

Posted on May 23, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 22 May 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Mark GillingsSince the widespread adoption of GIS by archaeologists in the early 1990s, analyses of visibility have steadily gained traction, becoming commonplace in landscape and regional analysis. This is in large part due to the routine way in which such products can be generated, bolstered by a raft of landscape-based studies that have placed varying degrees of emphasis upon human perception and direct bodily engagement in seeking to understand and explore the past. Despite this seeming popularity, two worrying trends stand out. The first is the lack of any coherent theoretical framework, applications preferring instead to seek justification in the very first wave of experiential landscape approaches that emerged in the early 1990s. Needless to say, the intervening 20 or so years have seen considerable development in the conceptual tools we draw upon in order to make sense of past landscapes, not to mention considerable finessing of the first-wave developments alluded to above. Second is the tendency to relegate viewshed analysis to certain types of predictable problem or question (i.e. viewshed analysis has become typecast). These trends have been compounded by a host of other issues. For example, whilst there have been refinements, tweaks and variations to the basic viewshed (and the frequency with which they are generated and combined), not to mention establishment of robust calibration criteria for controlling them and statistical approaches for assessing the patterns tendered, these have yet to be brought together in any coherent fashion and their veracity critically assessed. Likewise, a failure to establish an agreed vocabulary has resulted in a number of proverbial wheels being reinvented time and again. The argument presented here is that viewsheds have considerably more to offer archaeology but to realise this entails confronting these issues head on. That this is possible and desirable is illustrated through discussion of a new theoretical framework for visibility-studies that draws upon developments in assemblage theory and the author’s own work on affordance and relationality. To demonstrate the value of this approach in encouraging different ways of thinking about what viewsheds are and how we might begin to draw creatively upon them, a case-study is described where viewsheds are folded into a detailed exploration of landscape liminality.

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