Archaeobotanical investigation of two Scythian-Sarmatian period pits in eastern Ukraine: Implications for floodplain cereal cultivation

Abstract

Two Scythian-Sarmatian period pits dated to the 5th–1st centuries b.c. were discovered while excavating the Chalcolithic site of Zanovskoe, located on a floodplain of the Donets River in the steppe region of eastern Ukraine, Lugansk oblast. No contemporaneous settlement sites are known in the region. Archaeobotanical analysis was conducted on charred plant macrofossils recovered from pits at the site. The crop assemblage consisted of hulled barley and broomcorn millet, from which AMS radiocarbon dates were obtained. Other identified plant species mostly constituted arable weeds and wetland plants. The archaeobotanical assemblage implies floodplain cereal cultivation strategies among the steppe inhabitants during this period.     

Cultivation of Naked Barley by Early Iron Age Agro-pastoralists in Xinjiang,China

ABSTRACT

We report an archaeobotanical analysis of flotation samples taken from Shirenzigou, an Early Iron Age agro-pastoralist site dated between the fourth and first century BC, located on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, China. The charred macro-botanical assemblage is dominated by naked barley grains with a few broomcorn and foxtail millet grains. In the context of Trans-Eurasian exchange of cereal crops, southwest Asian crops (wheat and barley) and two Asian millets (broomcorn and foxtail) were introduced to Xinjiang a few centuries to a millennium before Shirenzigou was occupied. The choice of barley cultivation in preference to wheat and millet may have been possibly driven by the relatively extreme local environment and the scheduling requirements of mobile pastoralism. Barley is well suited to this environment, and the choice of naked barley in preference to hulled barley may have been driven by the whole grain tradition prevailing in East Asia.     

Bread and surpluses: the Anglo-Saxon ‘bread wheat thesis’ reconsidered

This paper presents a fundamental new assessment of crop husbandry in the Mid Saxon period in England (c. AD 650–850), using data from charred plant remains. While recent archaeological studies have begun to emphasise the importance of agricultural development in this period – focusing especially upon field systems and livestock – crops have received comparatively little attention. This study challenges one popular model of Anglo-Saxon arable farming, here dubbed the ‘bread wheat thesis’, which posits a Mid Saxon shift whereby bread wheat supplanted hulled barley as the most important cereal crop in this period. The empirical basis for this model is here re-examined in the light of an updated archaeobotanical dataset from selected regions in southern Britain. No evidence for bread wheat supplanting hulled barley is discovered. It is argued instead that rye and oats became substantially more important in the 7th–9th centuries, regional patterns in cereal cultivation in this period correlate with differences in the natural environment and Anglo-Saxon farmers were able to produce greater arable surpluses from the 7th century onwards.     

The Roles of Pit Houses and Gendered Spaces on Viking-Age Farmsteads in Iceland

Abstract

THE SMALL SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN buildings (jarðhús) with slab-built ovens that have been found on many Viking-Age farmsteads in Iceland (late 9th–11th century) have been subject to wide-ranging interpretations, from short-lived, expedient dwellings to saunas, women’s workrooms, the houses of Slavic settlers and in one case a cult building. This paper tests these hypotheses by making a thorough revaluation of pit-house dates, architectural forms, internal structural features and artefacts, and presents new geoarchaeological evidence from the pit house at Hofstaðir, NE Iceland. This lends strong support to the interpretation that they were women’s workrooms, primarily for the production of woollen textiles. Their abandonment in the later 10th and 11th centuries may be interpreted in the light of changing religious beliefs and social structures, the growing importance of homespun cloth as a valuable export commodity, and the rise in status of the women who made it.     

Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland: an Archaeofauna from the of Akurvík,North-West Iceland

Abstract

Excavations in 1990 in North-West Iceland documented a stratified series of small turf structures and associated midden deposits at the eroding beach at Akurvík which date from the 11th–13th to the 15th–16th centuries AD. The site reflects a long series of small discontinuous occupations, probably associated with seasonal fishing. The shell sand matrix had allowed excellent organic preservation and an archaeofauna of over 100,000 identifiable fragments was recovered. The collections are dominated by fish, mainly Atlantic cod, but substantial amounts of whale bone suggest extensive exploitation of strandings or active whaling. This paper briefly summarizes the excavation results, presents a zooarchaeological analysis of the two largest radiocarbon dated contexts, and places the Akurvík collections in the wider context of intra-Icelandic and inter-regional trade in preserved fish. Analysis of the Akurvík collection and comparison with other Icelandic collections from both inland and coastal sites dating from 9th to 19th centuries AD both reinforces evidence for an early, pre-Hanseatic internal Icelandic fish trade and supports historical documentation of Icelandic participation in the growing international fish trade of the late Middle Ages.     

Interpreting the expansion of sea fishing in medieval Europe using stable isotope analysis of archaeological cod bones

Archaeological fish bones reveal increases in marine fish utilisation in Northern and Western Europe beginning in the 10th and 11th centuries AD. We use stable isotope signatures from 300 archaeological cod (Gadus morhua) bones to determine whether this sea fishing revolution resulted from increased local fishing or the introduction of preserved fish transported from distant waters such as Arctic Norway, Iceland and/or the Northern Isles of Scotland (Orkney and Shetland). Results from 12 settlements in England and Flanders (Belgium) indicate that catches were initially local. Between the 9th and 12th centuries most bones represented fish from the southern North Sea. Conversely, by the 13th to 14th centuries demand was increasingly met through long distance transport – signalling the onset of the globalisation of commercial fisheries and suggesting that cities such as London quickly outgrew the capacity of local fish supplies.     

Agricultural and household activities in Vestfold,Southeast Norway,as illustrated by pollen data and the charred remains of crops and wild plants

This paper presents and interprets two data sets from Vestfold, Southeast Norway: the pollen record is from a small lake basin, isolated from the sea in Mid Mesolithic (8100–6400 cal BC), and with a record of sediment deposition up to recent time. Charred plant remains from six settlement sites ranging in date from the Late Neolithic (2400–1800 cal BC) to the Merovingian Period (cal AD 570–800). Soil from archaeological contexts that was recovered from several prehistoric settlement features (two- and three-aisled houses, a rock shelter and a pit) has also been investigated. The number and concentrations of identifiable charred macro remains are low from all features except one, but the records contribute to the interpretation of agriculture and wild plant use. Carbonised cereals dated to the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age are reported from a two-aisled house. Naked barley was the main cereal identified and a few weed seeds were found with the cereal grains. In a rock shelter nearby, cereals and seeds of flax were found, demonstrating cultivation in the Late Bronze Age. Pollen of ribwort plantain recorded in lake deposits in Nordbytjern, 0·5?km to the southwest, also indicates agricultural activity in the southern part of Vestfold during the Late Bronze Age. Archaeobotanical samples from Early Iron Age houses contained low concentrations of carbonised cereal remains, mainly hulled barley, but also wheat and oat. Seeds/fruits of weeds, plants of moist/wet habitats and grasses increase in abundance from the end of Roman Period. The high concentration of hulled barley found in a pit at the site of Ringdal 13 confirms that hulled barley was a cereal used in the Iron Age. Throughout the Iron Age, cereal pollen has a continuous curve in the Nordbytjern pollen diagram, demonstrating the significance of cereal cultivation in Vestfold. Flax was also cultivated in the vicinity of and probably processed in Nordbytjern. Large numbers of rush seeds and sedge nutlets indicate a possible involvement in basketry and cordage making and/or as animal fodder.     

The Poisoned Arrows of Amor: cases of syphilis from 16th-century Iceland

While syphilis spread rapidly in Europe during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, scholars have doubted that the disease reached Iceland at that time. Still, discoveries of nine cases of venereal and congenital syphilis during a recent excavation on a monastic site, Skriðuklaustur (1496–1554) in East Iceland, indicate that the disease became an epidemic there, as it did worldwide. These findings may also be regarded as an important source of information on the contacts and communications of a country, which is commonly regarded as having been socially isolated from the outer world, with its neighbouring countries during the medieval times.     

Reassembling the household for Icelandic archaeology: a contribution to comparative political economy

SUMMARY: Between the 11th and 19th centuries, household archaeology in Iceland comprises rural, dispersed farmsteads notable for their boundedness and stability, suggesting productive and reproductive autonomy. Insights from Actor-Network Theory and entanglement theory help ‘disassemble’ this assumption by shifting our focus first to the agencies, flows and dependences that comprise a political economy without assuming the household’s relations of production a priori. Architecture, settlement patterns, landscape and midden accumulations from the Langholt region in Skagafjörður, North Iceland, along with historical data illustrate that households in Iceland are actually marked by social dissolution, alienation and instability through dramatic political-economic dis- and re-assembling which in turn produces the stability in the material manifestation of the household. These data caution against a simple relationship between the household and archaeological farmstead, and suggest that measures of dependency and instability are critical to a comparative method for unravelling entanglements between capitalist and non-capitalist political economies.     

DISOBEDIENT BOYS AND PROMISCUOUS GIRLS

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, numerous public investigations have been carried out around the world on the abuse of children in out-of-home care. In the case of Iceland, commissions were appointed by the Icelandic government in 2007 to examine the historical abuse of children and youth in institutions monitored by local or state authorities during the second half of the 20th century. All the institutions subject to national investigations in Iceland were created during the postwar era, the earliest one in 1947. This article addresses the discourse on institutions and out-of-home care from a long-time perspective. It is shown that ideas on those institutions came to the fore during the early 20th century and were closely linked to progressive ideas on child welfare at the time. World War II and the British occupation of Iceland shaped the views on institutional care, and the postwar era was a period of intensive institutionalization of children and youth. The study also shows that the rhetoric concerning disobedient youth was heavily gendered. Whereas boys were accused of petty larceny, truancy and vagrancy, the main evils of girls were related to their morals, promiscuity being their chief vice.     

New evidence on the introduction,cultivation and processing of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) in southern Sweden

Subfossil remains of Cannabis sativa L. (hemp) have been found at Lindängelund in the region of Malmö, southern Sweden. These represent the earliest robust evidence so far for hemp retting in Scandinavia. Finds of seeds, stems and pollen of C. sativa from a waterlogged context on a settlement dating to the Roman Iron Age demonstrate that the plant was locally cultivated and processed during the 1st–2nd centuries AD. An introductory phase in Scandinavia is proposed (c. AD 1–400) during which the cultivation of hemp was apparently small scale and processing was probably carried out within settlements. In the succeeding centuries, c. AD 400–550 (the Migration Period), remains of hemp are mostly found in pollen records from lake sediments, and less frequently in the archaeological record. This could indicate that the process of hemp retting relocated from settlements to lakes shores where activity became larger in scale and more integrated with the prevailing agricultural system.     

Metal Working in the Northern Lowveld,South Africa A.D. 1000–1890

Abstract

The Iron Age archaeology of the northern Lowveld of South Africa is notable for the abundance of mining, metal working, and salt production sites recorded in the region. We report the results of scientific studies of the metallurgical remains recovered from 1965 to 1978 by Nikolaas J. van der Merwe, David Killick, and colleagues in various campaigns of survey and excavation in the Phalaborwa region, a major center of precolonial metallurgy. Both iron and copper ores occur in a carbonatite complex at Phalaborwa and were smelted in low-shaft furnaces of two different designs. Two radiocarbon dates of ca. 1000 b.p. are available for the mines themselves, which have now been completely destroyed. All other radiocarbon dates for the archaeological sequence at Phalaborwa fall in two groups, the first from the 10th to 13th centuries A.D., the second from the 17th through the 20th centuries A.D. Both iron and copper were smelted in both periods; tin-bronze and brass appeared towards the end of the earlier period.     

Archaeological and Historical Materials as a Means to Explore Finnish Crop History

ABSTRACT

In Northern Europe, barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) has been cultivated for almost 6000 years. Thus far, 150-year-old grains from historical collections have been used to investigate the distribution of barley diversity and how the species has spread across the region. Genetic studies of archaeobotanical material from agrarian sites could potentially clarify earlier migration patterns and cast further light on the origin of barley landraces. In this study, we aimed to evaluate different archaeological and historical materials with respect to DNA content, and to explore connections between Late Iron Age and medieval barley populations and historical samples of barley landraces in north-west Europe. The material analysed consisted of archaeological samples of charred barley grains from four sites in southern Finland, and historical material, with 33 samples obtained from two herbaria and the seed collections of the Swedish museum of cultural history.

The DNA concentrations obtained from charred archaeological barley remains were too low for successful KASP genotyping confirming previously reported difficulties in obtaining aDNA from charred remains. Historical samples from herbaria and seed collection confirmed previously shown strong genetic differentiation between two-row and six-row barley. Six-row barley accessions from northern and southern Finland tended to cluster apart, while no geographical structuring was observed among two-row barley. Genotyping of functional markers revealed that the majority of barley cultivated in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was late-flowering under increasing day-length, supporting previous findings from northern European barley.     

Crop Fertility Conditions in North-Eastern Gaul During the La Tène and Roman Periods: A Combined Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeobotanical and Archaeozoological Remains

ABSTRACT

Considerable archaeobotanical datasets describe cereal cultivation in north-eastern France, from the Iron Age to the Roman period. This study aims to complement these by using stable isotope analysis on charred cereal grains. Soil fertility was investigated through δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C analyses of 1480 charred cereal grains, dated from the Late La Tène to the Late Antiquity periods. In the Île-de-France, charred grain Δ¹³C values suggested good hydric conditions, with drier episodes in the 1st and 3rd century AD; while in Champagne, the lower Δ¹³C values for spelt reflect the lower water holding capacity of the chalky soils. A wide range of cereal δ¹⁵N values (0.8–8.7‰) implies a wide range of soil fertility conditions. Jouars-Pontchartrain and Palaiseau (Île-de-France) yielded the highest cereal δ¹⁵N values, whereas Acy-Romance (Champagne) delivered among the lowest. From these three sites, the δ¹⁵N values of red deer bone collagen were used to estimate the reference δ¹⁵N values for unmanured plants. Unlike in Acy-Romance, there were significant differences in Palaiseau and Jouars-Pontchartrain, indicating that the cultivated cereals inherited their high δ¹⁵N values from manured soil. At Jouars-Pontchartrain, the δ¹⁵N value (almost 9‰) suggested a high trophic level manuring source, possibly from pig and/or human faeces.     

Notes on Pomanders

During 1984–85 an area of over 1,500 square metres was excavated on Hartlepool Headland (NZ 528 336) by Cleveland County Archaeology Section. This is the second part of the report on that work, the first, covering the Anglo-Saxon monastic occupation was published in Archaeol. J., 145, henceforth referred to as Daniels 1988b. Following Anglo-Saxon occupation, cultivation took place on the site, to be succeeded in the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries by the establishment of two properties. An earthfast timber building was sited at the front of the northern property, parallel with and probably on the frontage. Behind the building the area was subdivided by a sequence of fence lines and there were indications of cultivation. This phase of occupation ceased with some evidence that the building had burnt down. In the mid-thirteenth century the boundary between the two properties was re-established with a small house (Building III) being built in the southern property. In the northern property three buildings (II, IV, and V) were constructed gable end on to the street and separated by narrow lanes from which access was gained to suites of rooms which were not interconnecting. Throughout the life of these buildings a number of the ground floor rooms contained sequences of ovens used for food processing some of which were evidently used for domestic and others for commercial purposes. The buildings went out of use at the end of the fifteenth century, from which time the area was cultivated prior to its redevelopment in the nineteenth century.     

YNYSPENLLWCH: THREE CENTURIES OF TIN MAKING IN SOUTH WALES

Abstract

This paper reviews three centuries of tin making at Ynyspenllwch. As the first tin works in Glamorgan, established in the 17th century, and one of the oldest in South Wales, the development of the site from 1647 down to its closure in the early 20th century is an instructive example of the power requirements and output for this type of metalworking complex. The study takes the form of a landscape and historical assessment of the site, supported by detailed analysis of the main wheel pit.     

Vegetation,land, and wood use at the sites of Bat and Al‐Khashbah in Oman (fourth–third millennium BC)

About 4200 charcoal fragments have been identified from the fourth‐ to third‐millennium BC archaeological sites of Bat and Al‐Khashbah in order to gain an understanding of plant resources available at the sites. Acacia sp., Ziziphus sp., and Tamarix sp. were the main taxa identified at both sites and indicate a similar vegetation composition as today. Phoenix sp. (date palm) charcoal also has been found at both sites. Whereas the cultivation of date palm for the 2700–2300 BC layers from Bat was likely, given other circumstantial evidence (i.e. local cereal cultivation and floodwater irrigation), it is unclear whether date palm was cultivated at Al‐Khashbah. Especially for the older periods (3300–2700 BC) it is possible that nomadic pastoralists were exploiting and/or managing wild date palms. The find of Avicennia marina at Al‐Khashbah indicates long‐distance contacts with the coast.     

PORTS — LAND AND AIR

Abstract

This article presents on overview of the archaeology of ports on land and at sea during the 19th and 20th centuries in Britain. Particular attention is paid to the development of quays, wharves, and staithes, and on land the rise of the airport.     

The earliest evidence of domesticated wheat in the Crimea at Chalcolithic Ardych-Burun

Abstract

This paper reports the discovery of the earliest evidence of domesticated wheat in the Crimean peninsula from the Ardych-Burun shell midden site, Ukraine. The Ardych-Burun site dates to middle of the 4th millennium cal b.c. For the first time, the chronology of a Ukrainian Chalcolithic period site has been established through direct radiocarbon dating of cereal grains retrieved from it. This discovery allows for a wider discussion of the chronology and geographical origins of domesticated plant species in Ukraine and the role the Caucasian corridor may have played in the spread of agriculture into eastern Europe. The presence of cereal crops in the southern Crimea enriches our understanding of the subsistence strategies of the coastal population, which was previously linked only with pastoralism, hunting, and the exploitation of marine resources.     

The Historic Landscape of the Saga of the People of Vatnsdalur: Exploring the Saga Writer's Use of the Landscape and Archaeological Remains to Serve Political Interests

Abstract

The saga of the People of Vatnsdalur (Vatnsdaelasaga) provides a case study for a new approach to the Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur). This treats the saga as a cultural product of the 13th century that can give insights into its creator's ideas and worldviews. Fieldwork at five sites in the Vatnsdalur valley in NW Iceland seeks to establish what these places were like in the 13th century. This knowledge, alongside the saga and place-name evidence, illustrates how the saga writer, presumed to come from a powerful 13th-century family, systematically used the landscape and archaeological remains in the valley to serve his political interests when describing 10th-century events.