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Canyon Creek revisited: New investigations of a late prehispanic turquoise mine, Arizona, USA

Posted on September 29, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: November 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 87 Author(s): Saul L. Hedquist, Alyson M. Thibodeau, John R. Welch, David J. KillickTurquoise has been used in the American Southwest since “time immemorial,” and remains an important material for contemporary indigenous groups of the region. Detailed studies of ancient turquoise mines are few, however, and inferences of turquoise procurement and provenance have been limited. Our intensive investigation of one mine, the Canyon Creek locale in Arizona, integrates archaeology and geochemistry to enhance understanding of the mine and its output. A detailed description of the mine’s morphology and geologic setting lays foundations for interpreting an isotopic analysis of specimens from the mine’s four localities. The analysis reveals extremely radiogenic Pb isotope ratios, which distinguish Canyon Creek turquoise from that of other known sources in the American Southwest. Its distinctive isotopic signature makes Canyon Creek turquoise readily identifiable in archaeological assemblages. The presence of turquoise from Canyon Creek at late prehispanic settlements in east-central Arizona helps clarify the mine’s chronology of use and regional distribution. Our observations suggest the mine was larger than previously supposed, and that it provided an important source of turquoise for inhabitants of the region during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD.

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Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the alluvial landscape of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, central southern Turkey: The implications for early agriculture and responses to environmental change

Posted on September 29, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: November 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 87 Author(s): Gianna Ayala, John Wainwright, Joanna Walker, Rachel Hodara, Jerry M. Lloyd, Melanie Leng, Chris DohertyArchaeological discussions of early agriculture have often used the Neolithic village of Çatalhöyük in central southern Turkey as a key example of the restricting effect of environment on agricultural production and organization. Central to these discussions is the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the landscape surrounding the site. This paper presents an important new dataset from an intensive coring programme undertaken between 2007 and 2013 in the immediate environs of the site, designed to improve significantly the spatial resolution of palaeoenvironmental data. Using sediment analyses including organic content, magnetic susceptibility, particle size, total carbon and nitrogen contents and carbon isotope analysis, coupled with 3D modelling, we are able to present a new reconstruction of the palaeotopography and sedimentary environments of the site. Our findings have major implications for our understanding of Neolithic agricultural production and social practice.We present four phases of environmental development. Phase 1 consists of the final phases of regression of Palaeolake Konya in the later parts of the Pleistocene, dominated by erosion due to wind and water that created an undulating surface of the marl deposited in the palaeolake. Phase 2 occurs in the latest Pleistocene and early Holocene, and indicates increased wetness, probably characteristic of a humid anabranching channel system, in which there are localized pockets of wetter conditions. In Phase 3a, this infilling continues, producing a flatter surface, and there are fewer pockets being occupied by wetter conditions. The fluvial régime shifts from humid to dryland anabranching conditions. The earliest period of occupation of the Neolithic East Mound coincides with this phase. Phase 3b coincides with the shift of occupation to the West Mound in the Chalcolithic, when there is evidence for a very localized wetter area to the southeast of the West Mound, but otherwise a continuation of the dryland anabranching system. Finally, Phase 4 shows a shift to the pre-modern style of fluvial environment, modified by channelization. This reanalysis demonstrates the importance of extensive spatial sampling as part of geoarchaeological investigations.With this new evidence we demonstrate that the landscape was highly variable in time and space with increasingly dry conditions developing from the early Holocene onwards. In contrast to earlier landscape reconstructions that have presented marshy conditions during the early Holocene that impacted agriculture, we argue that localized areas of the floodplain would have afforded significant opportunities for agriculture closer to the site. In this way, the results have important implications for how we understand agricultural practices in the early Neolithic.

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Editorial Board

Posted on September 23, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: October 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 86

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Little Ice Age catastrophic storms and the destruction of a Shetland Island community

Posted on September 23, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: November 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 87 Author(s): Matthew Bampton, Alice Kelley, Joseph Kelley, Michael Jones, Gerald BigelowSubarctic communities are useful bellwethers of human adaptability to climate change. Previous studies have compared the socio ecological adaptations of culturally comparable but geographically separated communities such as medieval Greenland and Iceland. In the Shetland Islands during the Little Ice Age (LIA) unusual storminess in the 16th and 17th centuries deposited wind driven sand in the township of Broo, Dunrosssness, and on its surrounding estates. Documents, historical records and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dated sand layers show the history of deposition, and reveal two episodes of sand movement one from the mid 16th century, the second from the late 17th or early 18th century. Artifacts, records and stratigraphy suggest Broo’s inhabitants successfully resisted the 16th century sand incursion, but were driven from their homes by the early 18th century. Adjacent communities embedded in the same socio economic culture survived the same events and remain viable settlements to the present day. Wind simulations demonstrate that storm conditions are likely to produce markedly lower wind velocities in the area around Broo than over the surrounding landscape making it singularly vulnerable to sand inundation. In this instance human ingenuity and resilience could not counter the misfortune of location. We conclude that in this marginal environment small geographical differences had profound and lasting impact on survivability during an episode of catastrophic environmental change.

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Geometric morphometrics and finite elements analysis: Assessing the functional implications of differences in craniofacial form in the hominin fossil record

Posted on September 21, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 21 September 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Paul O’Higgins, Laura C. Fitton, Ricardo Miguel GodinhoThe study of morphological variation in the hominin fossil record has been transformed in recent years by the advent of high resolution 3D imaging combined with improved geometric morphometric (GM) toolkits. In parallel, increasing numbers of studies have applied finite elements analysis (FEA) to the study of skeletal mechanics in fossil and extant hominoid material. While FEA studies of fossils are becoming ever more popular they are constrained by the difficulties of reconstruction and by the uncertainty that inevitably attaches to the estimation of forces and material properties. Adding to these modelling difficulties it is still unclear how FEA analyses should best deal with species variation.Comparative studies of skeletal form and function can be further advanced by applying tools from the GM toolkit to the inputs and outputs of FEA studies. First they facilitate virtual reconstruction of damaged material and can be used to rapidly create 3D models of skeletal structures. Second, GM methods allow variation to be accounted for in FEA by warping models to represent mean and extreme forms of interest. Third, GM methods can be applied to compare FEA outputs – the ways in which skeletal elements deform when loaded. Model comparisons are hampered by differences in material properties, forces and size among models but how deformations from FEA are impacted by these parameters is increasingly well understood, allowing them to be taken into account in comparing FEA outputs.In this paper we review recent advances in the application of GM in relation to FEA studies of craniofacial form in hominins, providing examples from our recent work and a critical appraisal of the state of the art.

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Bronze Age iron: Meteoritic or not? A chemical strategy.

Posted on September 19, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: Available online 18 September 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Albert JambonBronze Age iron artifacts could be derived from either meteoritic (extraterrestrial) or smelted (terrestrial) iron. This unresolved question is the subject of a controversy: are some, all or none made of smelted iron? In the present paper we propose a geochemical approach, which permits us to differentiate terrestrial from extraterrestrial irons. Instead of evaluating the Ni abundance alone (or the Ni to Fe ratio) we consider the relationship between Fe, Co and Ni abundances and their ratios. The study of meteoritic irons, Bronze Age iron artifacts and ancient terrestrial irons permit us to validate this chemical approach. The major interest is that non-invasive p-XRF analyses provide reliable Fe:Co:Ni abundances, without the need to remove a sample; they can be performed in situ, in the museums where the artifacts are preserved. The few iron objects from the Bronze Age sensu stricto that could be analyzed are definitely made of meteoritic iron, suggesting that speculations about precocious smelting during the Bronze Age should be revised. In a Fe:Co:Ni array the trend exhibited by meteoritic irons departs unambiguously from modern irons and iron ores. The trend of Ni/Fe vs Ni/Co in different analysis points of a single object corroded to variable extents provides a robust criterion for identifying the presence of meteoritic iron. It opens the possibility of tracking when and where the first smelting operations happened, the threshold of a new era. It emphasizes the importance of analytical methods for properly studying the evolution of the use of metals and metal working technologies in our past cultures.

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Spatio-temporal approaches to archaeological radiocarbon dates

Posted on September 19, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: November 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 87 Author(s): E.R. Crema, A. Bevan, S. ShennanSummed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates are an increasingly popular means by which to reconstruct prehistoric population dynamics, enabling more thorough cross-regional comparison and more robust hypothesis testing, for example with regard to the impact of climate change on past human demography. Here we review another use of such summed distributions – to make spatially explicit inferences about geographic variation in prehistoric populations. We argue that most of the methods proposed so far have been strongly biased by spatially varying sampling intensity, and we therefore propose a spatial permutation test that is robust to such forms of bias and able to detect both positive and negative local deviations from pan-regional rates of change in radiocarbon date density. We test our method both on some simple, simulated population trajectories and also on a large real-world dataset, and show that we can draw useful conclusions about spatio-temporal variation in population across Neolithic Europe.

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Bone deep: Variation in stable isotope ratios and histomorphometric measurements of bone remodelling within adult humans

Posted on September 19, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: November 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 87 Author(s): G.E. Fahy, C. Deter, R. Pitfield, J.J. Miszkiewicz, P. MahoneyStable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope studies of ancient human diet increasingly sample several skeletal elements within an individual. Such studies draw upon differences in bone turnover rates to reconstruct diet during different periods of time within an individual’s lifetime. Rib and femoral bone, with their respectively fast and slow remodelling rates, are the bones most often sampled to reconstruct shorter and longer term signals of diet prior to death. It is poorly understood if δ13C and δ15N vary between bone types within a single individual, or if this variation corresponds with bone turnover rate (BTR). Here, we determined δ13C and δ15N for ten different bones from ten adult human skeletons (n = 5 males; n = 5 females). Isotope values were compared to the rate that each bone remodeled, calculated from osteon population (OPD) density. Results reveal that isotope ratios varied within each skeleton (δ13C: max = −1.58‰; δ15N: max = 3.05‰). Humeri, metacarpals, and ribs had the highest rate of bone remodelling; the occipital bone had the lowest. A regression analyses revealed that higher rates of bone remodelling are significantly and negatively correlated with lower δ15N. Our results suggest that the occipital bone, with its slow rate of bone renewal, may prove useful for isotopic studies that reconstruct diet over longer periods of time within an individual’s lifetime. Isotope studies that compare individual skeletal elements between populations should standardize their methodology to bones with either a slow or fast turnover rate.

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Vertical transhumance of sheep and goats identified by intra-tooth sequential carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopic analyses: Evidence from Chalcolithic Köşk Höyük, central Turkey

Posted on September 15, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: October 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 86 Author(s): Cheryl A. Makarewicz, Benjamin S. Arbuckle, Aliye ÖztanVertical transhumance is a crucial animal management strategy that provides livestock with fresh pasture on a seasonal basis while simultaneously expanding the scale of landscape usage by the pastoralist component of complex agro-pastoralist societies. Here, we explore the use of vertical transhumance in Anatolia during the Early and Middle Chalcolithic periods (6200–4500 cal BC), a time of socio-political transformation that presaged the rise of early state level societies in the region supported by a pronounced intensification in the exploitation of domesticated sheep and goats for their wool – a valuable commodity. We examine the carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) composition of sequentially sampled tooth enamel from Chalcolithic sheep and goats from Köşk Höyük. The pattern of inverse cyclical isotopic variation characterized by high summer season δ18O values coincident with low δ13C values suggests livestock were moved to moist, high elevation pastures supporting 13C-depleted graze during the summer months or supplied with 13C-enriched fodder during the winter months. Inter-individual variation in absolute δ18O values and the amplitude of intra-tooth oxygen isotopic change reflects either differences in the spatial location of pastures, differences in the relative contribution of 18O enriched leaf water to caprine body water, or a combination of both. The incorporation of pasturing strategies involving vertical transhumance into livestock management systems, in conjunction with zooarchaeological evidence for increasing pastoral specialization and wool production at Köşk Höyük, suggests an intensification of smallstock production that provided important economic support for increasingly complex political landscapes.

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Identification of inter- and intra-species variation in cereal grains through geometric morphometric analysis, and its resilience under experimental charring

Posted on September 15, 2017 by ARCAS

Publication date: October 2017Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 86 Author(s): Vincent Bonhomme, Emily Forster, Michael Wallace, Eleanor Stillman, Michael Charles, Glynis JonesThe application of morphometric analysis in archaeobotany has the potential to refine quantitatively identifications of ancient plant material recovered from archaeological sites, most commonly preserved through charring due to exposure to heat. This paper uses geometric morphometrics, first, to explore variation in grain shape between three domesticated cereal species, einkorn (Triticum monococcum), emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare), both before and after experimental charring at 230 and 260 °C. Results demonstrate that outline analysis reliably reflects known variations in grain shape between species and differences due to charring observed in previous experimental work, and is capable of distinguishing the species, with near-perfect results, both before and after charring. Having established this, the same method was applied to different accessions of the same species, which indicated that three different grain morphotypes of einkorn and two, possibly three, of emmer could be identified in the uncharred material, and that at least two different morphotypes for each species could be distinguished even after charring at temperatures up to 260 °C. This opens up the possibility of tracking evolutionary change in crops, both chronologically and geographically, through morphometric analysis.

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