Harvesting molluscs in the Eneolithic: a study of freshwater bivalve accumulations from the tell settlements of Borduşani-Popină and Hârşova (Romania, 5th millennium BC)

Freshwater bivalve shells are frequently identified in faunal assemblages from Neo-Eneolithic tell settlements along the Danube River valley in South-East Romania (5th millennium BC). Up until now, significant accumulations of freshwater bivalve shells have been identified only in household refuse areas of the settlements, where they form consistent shell layers. The origin and formation of such shell accumulations and, more generally, the role of bivalves in the animal economy of the prehistoric populations that inhabited the settlements, are poorly understood. Two freshwater bivalve shell accumulations were studied in household refuse areas of Eneolithic tell settlements, one at Bordu?ani-Popin? and the other at Hâr?ova tell. The occurrence of similar accumulations in the two settlements indicates generalized practices between the two communities. This first study of such accumulations addresses the relationship between bivalves and other animal species used in alimentation by the two Eneolithic communities, as well as the relationships between these communities, their environment, and the evolution of the settlements. Bivalves were harvested in the close vicinity of the settlements and large quantities were obtained only towards the end of the summer season. During this season there is an inverse relationship between high water levels in the river and the availability of bivalves for harvesting. Bivalves played an important role in the alimentation of the prehistoric populations – at Hâr?ova tell their contribution to alimentation in terms of energetic yield surpasses that of fish, at least for the short period of time represented by the stratigraphic sequence analysed. Bivalve shells were used, along with other types of household refuse, in construction techniques aimed at limiting soil humidity in the settlements and inside the dwellings.     

When wildcats feed on rabbits: an experimental study to understand the taphonomic signature of European wildcats (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Felis silvestris silvestris</Emphasis>)

Studies of the feeding ecology of the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) demonstrate that leporids, mostly European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), dominate their diet in regions where they are present. The remains of wildcats have been found at Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological sites, raising the possibility that they actively accumulated leporid bones in caves and shelters shared with other terrestrial carnivores, raptors and humans. We present the first taphonomic study of rabbit remains consumed by this terrestrial carnivore, with the ultimate aim of understanding their role in bone accumulations at archaeological sites. An experimental study was carried out with a wildcat female, who was fed with nine complete rabbit carcasses. Non-ingested remains and scats were recovered for the analysis of anatomical representation, breakage and bone surface modification. This revealed that non-ingested remains and scats of the European wildcat can be discriminated from most other agents of accumulation. The referential framework provided will permit the discrimination of hominids and wildcats as agents of fossil accumulations of rabbits.     

Neotaphonomic measures of carnivore serial predation at Ngamo Pan as an analog for interpreting open-air faunal assemblages

Here I present a neotaphonomic account of natural bone accumulations that have resulted from carnivore serial predation at Ngamo Pan, a vast complex of seasonal water holes located in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. Reconstructing the taphonomic histories of faunal assemblages from open-air archaeological sites is burdened with a host of interpretive complications, and this study is offered as a referential means for evaluating instances where stone tools and bone accumulations are associated in apparent archaeological contexts. While the presence of stone tools implies some involvement on the part of humans, open-air sites near water would also have served as prime locations for serial predation by large carnivores to ambush prey—a situation that, over time, can mimic archaeological bone accumulations. The taphonomic and zooarchaeological signatures of carnivore serial predation at Ngamo Pan show marked similarities with the open-air faunal accumulation from Kalkbank, a late Pleistocene site in Limpopo Province, South Africa, located along the margins of a relict pan. Many potential archaeological sites within the interior of southern Africa dating to the Middle Stone Age are known from open-air settings near permanent or ephemeral bodies of water, and the ability to decipher between hominin and non-hominin carnivore involvement with bone accumulations is paramount in determining the hunting and scavenging behaviors of our early ancestors. As much of our understanding of hominin subsistence during the Middle Stone Age is drawn from coastal cave locations, this study is intended to encourage a broadening of our perspective on the taphonomic histories of faunal accumulations dating to the Middle Stone Age by incorporating supplementary evidence provided by these open-air sites.     

Accumulations research: Problems and prospects for estimating site occupation span

Accumulations research examines the dynamic relationship among artifact discard, duration of occupation, and population size. The history of accumulations research is reviewed, emphasizing studies that use accumulation rates to measure site occupation span. Ethnoarchaeological and experimental research demonstrates that cooking pots are an ideal artifact type for accumulations research. Data from the Duckfoot site in southwestern Colorado are used to develop an annual accumulation rate of cooking pot sherds for households. This rate is used, along with population estimates and estimates of the total cooking pot sherd accumulation, to determine the occupation span of five sites located in the nearby Dolores River valley.     

The Definition of Spatial Units in Middle Palaeolithic Sites: The Hearth-Related Assemblages

This paper deals with hearth-related accumulations in Middle Palaeolithic sites. Spatial behaviour is a key to understanding the cultural capabilities of ancient hominids. Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological research has shown that hearth-related assemblages are a basic feature in the spatial behaviour of modern and prehistoric hunter–gatherers. In this paper, we propose a methodology for analysing archaeological accumulations and study a series of hearth-related assemblages from the Abric Romanı&#x0301; Middle Palaeolithic site (Capellades, Spain). We also analyse the degree of contemporaneity between the different activity episodes documented at each archaeological accumulation. Our results suggest that the characteristics of domestic areas in this site are not substantially different from those observed in ethnoarchaeological contexts and Upper Palaeolithic sites.     

Constructing Community Through Refuse Disposal

Unlike archaeologists working in Europe, Southwest Asia, and North America, Africanists have been slow to explore links between culturally structured, everyday practices, and refuse disposal, remaining inclined to view all “midden” accumulations as undifferentiated deposits. However, African ethnographic cases and archaeological researches elsewhere demonstrate that such accumulations can be highly selective and culturally structured compositions. This paper reviews examples that have shown cultural structure in the disposition of spent items. It then explores African ethnographic and archaeological cases, one from Niger and three from East Africa, in which handling of culinary artifacts and products may reveal links between household and community through habitual acts of refuse placement.     

The use of stable isotope ratio analysis to distinguish multiple prey kill events from mass kill events

Archaeologists working with prey animal bonebeds are interested in determining whether the animals were obtained through a single, mass kill event or instead accumulated over time from multiple hunting events. This is often difficult to determine. The author investigated the use of stable isotope ratio analysis to distinguish accumulations of individuals derived from multiple populations from mass kills of individuals from a single population. Carbon, oxygen and strontium stable isotope ratios were measured in tooth enamel from modern pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) with known mortality circumstances. These ratios were then analyzed using basic statistical methods as well as a scaled distance technique that permits integrated analysis of multiple isotopes and multiple samples, and a bootstrap subsampling approach was used to quantify differences among populations. It appears that, in some circumstances, stable isotope analysis can contribute to distinguishing bonebeds originating as accumulations of individuals derived from multiple populations from mass kills of individuals from a single population. Three-element isotope ratio distance measures provide the best isotopic indicator of pronghorn bonebed population origins, especially when bootstrap subsampling is used to compare to sites of known pronghorn population composition.     

Human digestive effects on a micromammalian skeleton

This study describes the results of an experiment involving the consumption of a skinned, eviscerated, and segmented insectivore by an adult human male. Bone remains from recovered faecal contents are examined for skeletal element representation, breakage and digestive damage. Detailed examination of each category suggests severe skeletal attrition which is comparable to, and at times in excess of, the damage exhibited in microvertebrate skeletal accumulations originating from the scats of small mammalian carnivores.     

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.     

The recovery and interpretation of microvertebrate bone assemblages from archaeological contexts

The analysis of microvertebrate remains recovered from buried contexts is frequently problematic for archaeologists. Diminutive size is a major obstacle to recovering, identifying, and interpreting microfaunal bone materials successfully. Their taphonomic history is often obscure, thus the significance of microvertebrate accumulations for settlement, subsistence, and ecological interpretation is difficult to evaluate. Recognizable and reliable archaeological signatures are sought for assessing the effect of taphonomic history on microvertebrate assemblages. Relevant signatures of bone damage, skeletal survivorship, taxonomic composition, and context are examined in assemblages produced and modified through accidental non-predator-related death, predator accumulation, and postmortem alteration.     

Microarchaeology of a collective burial: cova des Pas (Minorca)

FTIR and phytolith analyses have been used to understand the exceptional preservation of the organic remains at the burial cave of Cova des Pas (Minorca), and to obtain high-resolution data of the plant remains present in the sediments. The presence of sodium nitrate and gypsum suggests a relatively dry environment that has enabled the preservation of the organic material, and contributed to the natural mummification. The dry conditions also favored phytolith preservation. Grass inflorescence phytoliths are abundant all over the site suggesting that phytolith accumulations might have an anthropogenic origin and are related to the burial ritual.     

Farm mounds of the harstad area

The farm mounds of coastal North Norway are settlement accumulations produced by long period settlement on the same location. The majority seems to have come during medieval and later periods, but there are a few of early iron age origin.

There has been no total excavation of a farm mound, only minor trenches. This paper summarizes the efforts done on exploring the context and characteristics of farm mounds, based on surveys in one central part of North Norway, the Harstad area.

Questions like economical reconstruction and causes of accumulation are discussed.     

Taphonomy and experimentation

Many experiments have been conducted in the field of taphonomy in order to understand the effects of some agents and the associated pattern and process of bone modifications. A review of these experiments and the patterns of bone modifications is presented here. Numerous experiments focus on peculiar points of bone accumulation, mainly to gain knowledge about human habits and practices, but the action of some taphonomic agents has also been explored, among them, diagenetic processes. The striking feature of all these works are that they are localized, performed on non–statistical samples and without repeatability. Very few experiments combine different agents to fit more closely to the complexity of most fossil bone accumulations.     

The construction of Israeli Citizenship Law: Intertwining political philosophies

Because of the significance attached to it, the Knesset passed the 1950 Law of Return in an unprecedentedly short time, but it took two more years to pass the Citizenship Law. The official protocols regarding the legislation of Israel’s Citizenship Law illuminate the main concerns of the drafters. The goal of the emerging national citizenship regime was not just to promote Jewish immigration but to establish a modern state that prohibited dual citizenship, accepted naturalizations, prevented statelessness, and granted equal citizenship to women. These policies are accumulations of countless opinions, values, interests, and ideas, each with different conceptions of citizenship and nationhood.     

河南淅川金营遗址新石器时代遗存发掘简报

河南省文物考古研究院于2013年3月—6月对淅川金营遗址进行了考古发掘,遗址地层堆积简单,文化内涵较为丰富,新石器时代遗存属于四个时期,分别为仰韶文化晚期、屈家岭文化早期、石家河文化早中期和王湾三期文化晚期。     

邳州梁王城遗址2006～2007年考古发掘收获

邳州梁王城遗址是一处文化堆积及文化内涵丰富的遗址,2006～2007年的发掘取得了重大收获,发现了史前制陶作坊,为研究大汶口文化提供了新材料;发现了带有殉马、殉牛坑的西周墓地,填补了苏北商周考古空白;大型夯土台基的发现揭示了梁王城平面布局的核心。     

Scottish landform examples 44: the Dirc Mhòr meltwater gorge

The Dirc Mhòr gorge in the central Grampian Highlands is 1.1 km long, ～250 m wide and up to 110 m deep, and is incised in granite bedrock. It is the largest of several bedrock gorges that are incised into spurs, cols or plateau margins in the area, and its present catchment area is negligible. The floor of the gorge is covered by coarse rockfall debris, and the sides of the gorge are mantled by talus accumulations; surface water flow is absent. The gorge is inferred to have evolved over several glacial-interglacial cycles, with subglacial meltwater erosion deepening the gorge under successive ice sheets, and paraglacial rockwall collapse widening the gorge during intervening interglacial periods. Subglacial erosion may also have contributed to gorge enlargement as it widened.     

The Roman Well at Piddington,Northamptonshire, England: an Investigation of the Coleopterous Fauna

Abstract

This report presents the entomological evidence obtained from 4th century fills of a Roman well at Piddington, Northamptonshire. Analysis of the Coleoptera remains was restricted to one sample from the lower fill. A large fauna suggested an open, dry environment with areas of vegetation and accumulations of occupation debris nearby. The deposit was formed through a variety of mechanisms including accidental incorporation, natural deposition and possibly the deliberate dumping of refuse.     

Who brought in the rabbits? Taphonomical analysis of Mousterian and Solutrean leporid accumulations from Gruta do Caldeirão (Tomar,Portugal)

In the Iberian Peninsula, leporids, and specifically rabbits, play a key role in the understanding of hunter-gatherer economies. They appear to have been especially important in the Tardiglacial, when large numbers of small prey animals and of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in particular, are a ubiquitous feature of faunal assemblages from archaeological sites. Since a large number of non-human predators can also contribute to the formation of such assemblages, the ability to discriminate between bones accumulated by humans and by other kinds of predators is a key prerequisite to their interpretation. On the basis of systematic actualistic studies carried out on modern leporid remains produced by mammalian terrestrial carnivores, nocturnal and diurnal raptors, and humans, we identified diagnostic taphonomic indicators of the different predators. In this paper, the patterns observed on the modern material are applied to the taphonomical analysis of two archaeological samples of rabbit and hare remains from Mousterian and Solutrean layers of Gruta do Caldeirão, a cave site located in Central Portugal. Our results suggest that Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) were mainly responsible for the Mousterian accumulations, whilst the Solutrean ones were most likely the result of human activity. These data support the notion that, in Iberia, significant reliance on rabbits does not become a feature of subsistence strategies until later Upper Palaeolithic times.     

Rock Hyraxes (Procavia capensis) from Middle Stone Age Levels at Blombos Cave,South Africa

The ～100 ka Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, southern Cape, South Africa, contain numerous rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) remains. It is often ambiguous to interpret rock hyrax remains from archaeological deposits deriving from cave and shelter sites in southern Africa as the agent or agents of accumulation may be difficult to establish. In this paper, the different taphonomic signatures separating anthropogenic from natural accumulations at Blombos Cave are considered. The analysis indicates that although a few specimens show evidence for raptor and carnivore accumulation, there is also substantial evidence that suggests humans preyed on these small mammals during different times of the year.