The woman behind the syndrome: Frey's syndrome — the untold story*

We present an outstanding example of successful prehistoric double trephination dating between 2700 and 2200 BC, most likely to the Corded Ware culture, at the end of the Neolithic Age. The particularity of this case is the presence of a double trephination, one frontal over the sinus sagittal superior and one parietal right. There is evidence that the patient survived months to years after the operations. The purpose of the procedure is not known. The case confirms the astonishing degree of technical skills reached in Saxony-Anhalt over 4500 years ago without anesthetic, antiseptic, or technologic aids.     

从地下考古看华夏文明的起源

主要从地下考古资料阐述了新石器时代东夷文化的有序性和承继性、先进性、影响性和辐射性等三大优势和特点,从而论证了东夷文化才是华夏文明孕育的真正母体、中华文明的主源头.     

Revisiting Settlement Contemporaneity and Exploring Stability and Instability: Case Studies from the Indus Civilization

ABSTRACT

“Map overestimation,” or “the contemporaneity problem,” derives from the assumption that settlements identified during surface surveys were occupied throughout individual periods. Inductive and simulation analysis have been used to ascertain the degree of contemporaneity in surface survey data sets, as variation in settlement location is critical for understanding population density and demography, which inform social, economic and political interpretations. This paper revisits the inductive approach to interrogating survey data developed by W. M. Sumner and the simulation model approach developed by R. E. Dewar to explore the survey data from two regions within South Asia’s Indus civilization. This analysis demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. It also highlights the variability in settlement systems in different areas within the Indus civilization and shows that consideration of stability and instability within settlement systems is an important factor when considering dynamics of resilience and sustainability.     

Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis

The accumulation of recent data from archaeobotany, archaeozoology and Neolithic excavations from across South Asia warrants a new overview of early agriculture in the subcontinent. This paper attempts a synthesis of these data while recommending further systematic work and methodological developments. The evidence for origins and dispersals of important crops and livestock from Southwest Asia into South Asia is reviewed. In addition evidence for indigenous plant and animal domestication in India is presented. Evidence for probable indigenous agricultural developments in Gujarat, the Middle Ganges, Eastern India, and Southern India are reviewed. An attempt is made to highlight regions of important frontiers of interaction between early farmers and hunter-gatherers. The current evidence suggests that the Neolithic trajectories in different parts of South Asia differ from each other. Indigenous centers of plant domestication in India also differ from the often discussed trajectory of Southwest Asia, while suggesting some similarities with agricultural origins in Africa and Eastern North America as well as secondary agricultural developments on the peripheries of Eurasia. An erratum to this article can be found at     

中原文明的起源与形成

总观全国各地新石器时代文化的发展,中原地区以它强大的文化根基,在文明起源和形成过程中始终走在前面.中原地区文明的起源是相当早的,在龙山时代晚期,中原地区已进入文明时代.     

Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal

Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Statistical tests are used to compare proportions of raw materials and artefact types, and to compare central tendencies in metric variables taken on flakes and tools. Lithic-related findings support the inference of at least two distinct technological and economic groups at Sanganakallu–Kupgal, a microlith-focused foraging society on the one hand, and on the other, an agricultural society whose lithic technologies centred upon the production of pressure bladelets and dolerite edge-ground axes. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy.     

Modelling the Neolithic transition in a heterogeneous environment

The Neolithic transition, involving the change of subsistence from foraging to agriculture, can fruitfully be modelled mathematically, as, e.g., in the three-population model of Aoki et al. (1996). Here that model is modified to include some features of population dynamics in a realistic, two-dimensional environment, and including population pressure, competition for resources between farmers and foragers, and the dependence of the population carrying capacities and diffusivities on the environmental conditions. This modified model allows for the survival of foragers in regions where environmental conditions do not favour farming. The model is tentatively applied to the Indian subcontinent, which is a complicated example of this transition involving multiple domestication centres. The results are briefly compared with published archaeological data.     

论远古中南半岛与中国西南的整体性格局

以考古材料为主,结合民族史和历史地理学已有的研究成果,以文明交往论为理论指导,探讨远古时代(从新石器时代到青铜时代)中国西南地区内部及其同中南半岛之间的整体性格局,这很有意义。地缘、文化传播和民族迁徙流动等因素在古代综合促成的这一格局,影响了近代乃至现代该大区域的总体形势。文明交往使中南半岛与中国西南地区之间不同文化和文明之间的相互联系、相互影响不断加强,这在该大区域整体性格局的形成和发展过程中起了决定性作用。     

A Healed Wound Caused by a Flint Arrowhead in a Neolithic Human Innominate from the Trou Rosette (Furfooz,Belgium)

A new case is described here of a wound caused by a flint arrowhead in the neolithic period. The specimen comes from a collective burial excavated last century in the cave Trou Rosette (Belgium). It consists of a fragment of left adult ilium. The fragment of arrowhead is located in a rounded cavity which is open in the medial surface of the bone. The CT scan and the artefact study allow us to reconstruct the scenario of the accident. The arrow pierced the musculus gluteus of the individual prior fixing in the iliac blade. The arrow tip broke at the moment of impact; its tang broke either at the moment of impact or during attempts to extract the arrow.     

The Predynastic of Egypt

The Predynastic of Egypt, spanning an interval from ca. 4000 to 3050 B.C., was an eventful period. After the inception of food production in the Nile Valley at least a millennium before, it was the time when the identity of Egyptian society was forged. Egypt was settled by refugees from the deserts of the eastern Sahara and the southern Levant, fleeing from mid-Holocene droughts, and became a melting pot of indigenous Nilotes and desert herders, part-time cultivators, and hunters. Within a millennium, an increasing dependence on agriculture led to sedentary life and, in some cases, to the development of sizable communities. By 4000 B.C., the settled communities had also developed a distinct division of labor between men and women and ritual and religious beliefs in which women, grain, fertility, and death were salient and interrelated elements. The Predynastic communities were also faced by the most destabilizing factor of agricultural economy, namely, fluctuations of yield. Attempts to dampen the fluctuations through interregional integration led to the emergence of community representatives and eventually chiefs. Legitimation of the status of chiefs through affiliation with the traditional and supernatural power associated with women, fertility, and death and the acquisition of exotic goods stimulated trade and an industry in funerary goods. Enlargement of economic units through alliances, with occasional incidences of fighting, especially after 3600 B.C., led to the rise of a state society governed by supreme rulers. The wedding of the funerary cult of Late Predynastic Egypt with political power and military might was the basis for the most fascinating aspects of Ancient Egypt—religion and kingship.     

Stable isotopic analysis of human and faunal remains from the Incipient Chulmun (Neolithic) shell midden site of Ando Island,Korea

We analyzed stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of human and animal remains from the Ando shell midden, South Korea. The Ando site is a rare Incipient Chulmun (Neolithic) site (ca. 6000–5000 BC), which contains well-preserved human and animal bones in shell mounds. The stable isotope results for humans (average δ¹³C = −13.5 ± 0.5‰ and δ¹⁵N = 15.2 ± 0.5‰) indicate that Ando people in the Incipient Chulmun period strongly depended on marine resources. There were no isotopic differences between humans of different sex and age at this site. We compared our data with other previous published isotopic data from the Chulmun sites and found that the Ando people had similar isotope values to the southern Chulmun people (Tongsamdong and Daepo), but different isotopic ratios than the western Chulmun people (Daejukri and Konamri). These results indicate that marine foods were the main food resources in the southern coastal regions, but not in the western coastal regions in Chulmun Korea.