Provenance of Weeden Island “sacred” and “prestige” vessels: implications for specialized ritual craft production

ABSTRACT

Weeden Island mortuary ceremonialism united distinct cultures across the Late Woodland social landscape. The Weeden Island pottery series is central to recognizing regional ceremonial parity, with prestige (elite) and sacred (cult) wares showing strong similarities among distant sites. Finely made vessels and their ostensibly shamanistic themes led archaeologists to consider the liturgical and political roles of ritual specialists, whose tasks might have included vessel manufacture in centralized locations. This research evaluates the prospect of craft specialization and centralized production of sacred and prestige wares through comparisons of the provenance of vessels from three Florida localities: Palmetto Mound (8LV2), the mounds at Melton (8AL5, 8AL7), and McKeithen (8CO17). Results of Neutron Activation Analysis and petrographic analysis show that the majority of the sampled vessels were made far from the mounds in which they were deposited, from a variety of locations but especially within the area between Kolomoki and the Tallahassee Hills. We argue that production was not centralized but may have been specialized to the extent that an integrated ritual network was necessary to coordinate rules of manufacture and use that were evidently observed by all participants.     

Taming Surface Water in Pre-Islamic Southeast Arabia: Archaeological,Geoarchaeological, and Chronological Evidence of Runoff Water Channeling in Masāfī (UAE)

In semi-arid to arid environments, water is the most constraining resource for agricultural communities. In Southeast Arabia (Sultanate of Oman and United Arab Emirates), the demographic growth and the increase of sites at the beginning of the Iron Age II (1100–600 b.c.) is generally attributed to the development of groundwater harvesting techniques, and more precisely to qanāt technology. While only little is known on the origin of this technology, even less is known about other hydraulic techniques, which could have been used as a complementary source of water. An irrigation system, recently discovered near an Iron Age settlement in the oasis of Masāfī (UAE) was studied thanks to the combination of various methods—archaeology, geoarchaeology/micromorphology, spatial analysis, and chronology—which have allowed us to identify the technological development of small-scale runoff farming and to link this practice to social as well as environmental issues.     

New Perspectives on Sincu Bara, a First Millennium Site in the Senegal Valley

The 67-ha site of Sincu Bara was discovered and extensively excavated in the 1970s. Three primary aspects of its archaeological interest were its vast size, its location in the Middle Senegal Valley, where some of the earliest regional polities in West Africa arose, and the extensive and diverse assortment of copper-based metal artifacts it produced. Deposits with brass appeared to be associated with radiocarbon dates as early as the fifth century AD. It appeared that most of the deposits related to a single, long-lasting occupation by people who arrived with sophisticated copper-based metallurgy in the fifth century and remained at least until the eleventh century, without discernible modification in their material culture. Results of new excavations in 1991–1992 indicate that this interpretation must be substantially modified, since considerable change in material culture, including the introduction of copper-based metals between AD 800 and AD 900, has now been documented. This article summarizes the data from these new excavations and suggests that earlier interpretations were based largely on material from disturbed, severely mixed deposits, which gave a false picture of homogeneity through time.Les soixante sept héctares constituant le gisement du Sincu Bara étaient découverts et fouillés dans les années soixante dix. Son intérêt archéologique est lié aux trois aspects: sa grande superficie, sa location dans la vallée moyenne du Sénégal où les premières unités politiques de l'Afrique de l'Ouest existaient, et finalement, la diversité des objets métalliques en cuivre que le site a livrée. Il apparaît que la plupart des dépôts appartient à une seule occupation de longue durée par un peuple qui est arrivé pendant la cinquième siécle AD, en possession de la connaissance de métallurgie à base de cuivre et qui montrait au moins jusqu'au onzième siécle peu de modification dans leur culture materielle. Les résultats des fouilles de 1991–1992 montrent que cette interpretation doit être modifiée, car il y a eu du changement considérable dans le matèriel, comme l'introduction des métaux à base de cuivre entre AD 800–900. Dans cet article, nous avons résumé les résultats des nouvelles fouilles et nous suggérons que les anciennes interpretations ont été largement fondées sur du matériel perturbé, des dépôts mixtes qui donnaient une image fausse de l'homogenité pendant cette période.     

Dark Age Traffic on the Bristol Channel, UK: A Hypothesis

Exotic pottery from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Gaul in the late 5th to 7th centuries is recognized as the characteristic find from Dark Age sites in Ireland and western Britain. But there is no consensus on the mechanisms by which they arrived. Interpretations range from diplomatic gifts through souvenirs to commerce. This attempt to resolve the issue is based on sites around the Bristol Channel. The quantities of pottery and numbers of sites are used to generate a rough estimate of the number of ships carrying the pottery to the area. It is argued that the estimated volume represents commercial trade.
© 2007 The Author     

A Late Iron Age settlement in Wādī Banī Ḫālid: First season of the joint Omani-Italian archaeological project

This paper introduces the first results of the joint Omani-Italian archaeological project at Wādī Banī Ḫālid (northern Šarqiyyah governorate, eastern al-Ḥaǧar), where a dense Iron Age and ancient Islamic occupation was detected. The aim of the project is the definition of the Iron Age settlement patterns along the eastern al-Ḥaǧar landscape and its relationship with both the coastal areas and the al-Ḥaǧar inner piedmont sites of central Oman. In fact, this project follows previous studies of the coastal environment between Muscat and Raʾs al-Ḥadd, where several seasonal fishermen villages were investigated, and their connections with inner permanent sites, such as Lizq, recognised during the Early Iron Age II (1300–600 BCE). Therefore, Wādī Banī Ḫālid stands as a peculiar case of an Iron Age territorial unit, a natural scenario made of a narrow alluvial valley which provided natural conditions for the development of a complex culture. Moreover, the material culture emerged after a first excavation campaign proved that the main occupational phase of the imposing fortified settlement WBK1 is the Late Iron Age (late first millennium BCE to third–fourth centuries CE), thus hopefully allowing new questions to be posed for the definition of Late Iron Age cultures and the chronology in central Oman, which is mostly known based on the excavation of funerary evidence. For this reason, the first part of the paper focuses on the results of the first season in Wādī Banī Ḫālid, and the second part discusses the links between Wādī Banī Ḫālid and the south-eastern Arabia general framework during the Late Iron Age.     

Sourcing Iron Age softstone artefacts in southeastern Arabia: results from a programme of analysis using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry/Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-MS/OES)

Iron Age softstone vessels manufactured in southeastern Arabia are widely distributed across that region and in lesser amounts throughout Western Asia. Results from a pilot programme of analysis using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry/Optical Emission Spectrometry on vessel fragments from two southeast Arabian sites are presented. These results indicate the existence of geochemically distinct groups that are separated by both transition metals and rare earth elements. While this indicates the potential for the application of the provenance postulate in softstone analysis, these promising results need to be further tested by an expanded programme of analysis which includes quarry fragments.     

The Hellenistic and Roman Syracuse (Sicily) Fine Pottery Production Explored by Chemical and Petrographic Analysis

The chemical composition and petrographic features of 51 samples of fine pottery selected from the archaeological site of Syracuse have been established by means of optical microscopy and X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry, with the aim of creating a reference group for the ceramics produced in this important Greek colony during the Hellenistic–Roman period. This reference group is constrained by the analysis of six kiln wasters and of raw materials outcropping in the studied area. Among the studied findings, the main part is assignable imputably to local production, while some specimens probably come from Greece and other colonies (Messina and Gela). The Syracuse fine pottery is characterized by inclusions formed mainly by quartz and micaceous and fossiliferous groundmass. The used pastes were more or less purified through the removal of the sandy‐to‐coarse silty granulometric fraction. The multivariate statistical analysis of chemical data permits the identification of production at Syracuse on the basis of comparison with the kiln wasters and the Plio‐Pleistocene clays.     

Life at the end of the Holocene moist phase in south‐east Arabia — the Late Neolithic site of Jebel Thanais 1 (JTH1)

The surface site of Jebel Thanais 1 is located in the Emirate of Sharjah (U.A.E.) at the western flank of the Jebel Faya/Jebel Buhais anticline structure. A dense scatter of lithic artefacts and fireplaces indicates Stone Age settlement activities in this area. Radiocarbon dates obtained from fireplaces date the occupation of the site to both the beginning and the very end of the fifth millennium cal. BC. During the second half of the fifth millennium the deterioration of climatic conditions in south‐east Arabia had a noticeable impact on settlement patterns and subsistence strategies. While coastal habitation sites from this time are well known along the shores of the Oman peninsula, only a few poorly dated sites allow insights into habitation and raw material procurement strategies and lithic technology in the interior. Investigations into the spatial structure of the site and an analysis of lithic finds will contribute to a better understanding of this period.