周至佛坪厅故城遗址一期考古调查简报

<正>为给周至佛坪厅故城保护方案的制定提供依据,使其得到及时有效的保护,2006年11月,西安市文物保护考古所和周至县佛坪厅故城保管所联合,对故城遗址进行了一期考古调查,调查从11月11日开始至25日结束。现将调查收获简报如下。     

Geoarchaeology of Beirut's ancient harbour,Phoenicia

This paper presents geoarchaeological results from the ancient harbour of Beirut (Lebanon). As at Sidon, knowledge of Beirut's ancient tell has advanced significantly over the past decade, thanks namely to redevelopment of the city centre and excavations centred on the modern port. In spite of this research, understanding of the city's coastal palaeoenvironments during antiquity is poor. Buried Iron Age harbourworks presently 300 m from the sea attest to pronounced coastal changes during the past 3000 years. These processes have been significantly accentuated during the last two centuries by redevelopment of the port, which remains in use some 5000 years after its foundation. Here we elucidate the coastal stratigraphy east and west of the Bronze Age tell to yield new insights into the evolution of the Beirut seaboard, in addition to the complex history of human–environment interactions. These chronostratigraphic data are subsequently used to (1) precisely locate the main anchorage haven during antiquity; and (2) propose a chronology for its evolution.     

Geoarchaeology of Sidon's ancient harbours,Phoenicia

Geoarchaeological data from Sidon's ancient harbour areas elucidate six evolutionary phases since the Bronze Age. (1) At the time of Sidon's foundation, during the third millennium BC, medium sand facies show the city's northern and southern pocket beaches to have served as proto-harbours for Middle to Late Bronze Age societies. (2) Towards the end of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, expanding international trade prompted coastal populations into modifying these natural anchorages. In Sidon's northern harbour, transition from shelly to fine-grained sands is the earliest granulometric manifestation of human coastal modification. The lee of Zire island was also exploited as a deep-water anchorage, or outer harbour, at this time. (3) Although localised sediments evoke developed port infrastructure during the Phoenician and Persian periods, high-resolution reconstruction of the northern harbour's Iron Age history is problematic given repeated dredging practices during the Roman and Byzantine periods. (4) Fine-grained silts and sands in the northern harbour are coeval with advanced Roman engineering works, significantly deforming the coastal landscape. Bio- and lithostratigraphical data attest a leaky lagoon type environment, indicative of a well-protected port. (5) The technological apogee of Sidon's northern harbour is recorded during the late Roman and Byzantine periods, translated stratigraphically by a plastic clays unit and brackish lagoon fauna. (6) A final semi-abandonment phase, comprising coarse sand facies, concurs silting up and a 100–150 m progradation of the port coastline after the seventh century AD. We advance three hypotheses to explain these stratigraphic data, namely cultural, tectonic and tsunamogenic. Finally, our results are compared and contrasted with research undertaken in Sidon's sister harbour, Tyre.     

Geoarchaeology of Tyre's ancient northern harbour,Phoenicia

Tyre's ancient northern harbour has been a source of scientific intrigue and debate for many centuries. Today an insignificant fishing harbour, looking north and sheltered from the dominant winds by a sandstone reef system, is all that remains of the famous Bronze Age, Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine anchorage havens. In light of this many scholars have long questioned whether the modern port corresponds to its counterpart in antiquity. Here, we provide litho- and biostratigraphical evidence for an ancient harbour approximately twice as large as the present, comprising the modern day harbour and city centre. Four distinct sedimentary units have been identified, translating the different Holocene palaeoenvironments: (1) The Holocene transgressive contact is dated ca. 7800 BP, and lies at the base of a silty-clay lithodependant unit. Our proxies are consistent with a low energy, lagoonal type environment, protected by an extensive reef system. (2) Transition to a coarse sand fraction after ca. 5500 BP is concomitant with the accretion of a semi-protected pocket beach. This environment served as a proto-harbour during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA). (3) After the MBA, artificial harbour sedimentation is represented by a fine-grained silty-sand unit with stress on the natural biosystem. This unit attests to a closed, marine-lagoonal type environment, which existed until around 1500 BP. Dredging activity during the Roman and Byzantine periods explains the absence of 1st millennium BC strata. (4) The economic decline of the ancient city after the Byzantine period is marked by the opening of the basin to greater marine influence, with a progradation of the harbour coastline. Natural sediment infilling diminished the size of the harbour to its present dimensions, lost until now, beneath the Medieval and Modern centres.     

Mediterranean heritage: ancient marvel,modern millstone

ABSTRACT. The wealth, variety and seaborne accessibility of Mediterranean societies since late prehistory have made the region's cultural heritage the world's most widely acclaimed. But since the fall of the Roman Empire the Mediterranean has been increasingly disadvantaged, its history compromised, its legacy beleaguered. Two millennia of invasion and rapine, religious vendetta, foreign conquest, imperial dominion and colonial subjugation have left Mediterranean peoples with fewer resources and weaker infrastructures than those of transalpine and transatlantic nation‐states. The consequences for the care and control of Mediterranean heritage are parlous. That heritage is both the region's self‐defining pride and its economic mainstay, yet a crippling burden to protect and maintain, let alone to interpret and celebrate. It is everywhere beset by natural and human attrition. Weathering and erosion, illicit excavation and pillage, tomb robbery and the international antiquities market exact tolls that legal codes and police forces are all but impotent to stem. Recent social and political trends suggest potential remedies for some of these dilemmas.     

Underwater Excavation at Ederline Crannog, Loch Awe, Argyll, Scotland

A trial excavation was carried out on the near-submerged crannog at Ederline Boathouse, Loch Awe, in July 2004. A trench measuring 3 × 5 m was opened on the northern side, in c .3 m of water. Around 1 m of organic deposits was encountered, along with structural timbers and animal bones. Despite a previous 4th century BC radiocarbon determination from a structural timber, a sherd of E ware from a sealed context gives an Early Historic date for the deposits excavated in 2004. The results from this first intrusive investigation of a Loch Awe crannog demonstrate that these sites are complex and long-lived.
© 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society