A Short History of Archaeological Sieving at Franchthi Cave,Greece

Abstract

Excavations at the Franchthi Cave in SE Greece, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Jacobsen, have revealed a long habitation sequence of considerable interest to students of the early history of the Aegean Basin. The earliest recoverable deposits date to about 25,000 B.P. The most recent radiocarbon dates indicate that the latest deposits belong to the period around 3000 B.C.

The excavations themselves were carried out over the years 1967–1976. During that time, excavation techniques used at the site evolved considerably. Object recovery by various methods of archaeological sieving forms a major component of this evolution. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to discuss the standards of object recovery at Franchthi and the adaptation of sieves designed elsewhere to the situation at Franchthi, as well as to serve as a guide to other excavations planning a program of archaeological sieving.     

Ghana's Vanishing Past: Development, Antiquities, and the Destruction of the Archaeological Record

Ghana's past is being destroyed at a rapid rate. Although the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board has in some instances successfully intervened to stop the illicit trading of antiquities, the destruction of archaeological sites as a consequence of development over the past two decades has been staggering and the pace is accelerating. The potential of the legislation that established the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and empowered it to manage and preserve the country's archaeological past has not been realized. The lack of political action, limited relevant public education, insufficient funding, and the poverty of the majority of the Ghanaian populace have allowed for the widespread destruction of both sites and historic buildings. Conspicuously, both the absence of integrated development planning by the Ghanaian government and the inability of development partners (both foreign and domestic) to recognize the potential value of cultural resources have contributed significantly to the continued loss of the archaeological record. While the antiquities trade is a continuing threat to Ghana's cultural resources, it is, in fact, tourism and economic development that pose the major menace to the country's archaeological past. This article reviews the history of cultural resource management in Ghana, including both traditional attitudes toward preservation and current legislation. Case studies are used to illustrate the problems faced. Actuellement le passé matériel du Ghana disparaît très rapidement. Le Conseil des musées et des monuments du Ghana a réussi à intervenir dans certains cas pour arrêter la traite illicite en antiquités. Toutefois, la croissance rapide du développement urbain au fil des derniers vingt ans a entraîné une énorme destruction de sites archéologiques qui ne fait qu'accroître. Les lois établissant le Conseil des musées et des monuments du Ghana lui ont en même temps accordé les pleins pouvoirs en mesure de la gestion et la préservation du passé archéologique du pays, malheureusement les possibilités de cette législation n'ont jamais été réalisées. Plusieurs éléments contribuent à la destruction très répandue de sites et de bâtiments historiques, dont le manque de prises de mesures politiques, d'éducation publique pertinente, de fonds, et la misère dans laquelle vivent la plus grande partie de la population ghanéenne. Il est évident que l'absence d'une planification intégrée pour le développement de la part du gouvernement ghanéen et l'incapacité des partenaires en développement (nationaux ainsi qu'internationaux) de reconnaître la valeur potentielle de ressources culturelles sont deux éléments supplémentaires clés qui contribuent de façon importante en la perte continue de vestiges archéologiques. La traite en objets antiques présente toujours une menace pour les ressources culturelles du Ghana. En fait le tourisme et le développement économique représentent une menace encore plus importante à la préservation du passé archéologique du pays. Cet article revoit l'histoire de la gestion des ressources culturelles au Ghana, comprenant à la fois les positions traditionnelles envers la préservation ainsi que la legislation actuelle. Des études de cas éclairent les problèmes actuels.     

Time-Averaging Slows Down Rates of Change in the Archaeological Record

Measuring the pace of cultural change, and understanding its determinants is a fundamental goal of anthropological research. The archaeological record is the main source of information about the pace of cultural change, but it is an imperfect one, as taphonomic loss and mixing distort rate measurements. Here, I focus on the impact of time-averaging on rate measurements. Time-averaging arises when archaeological materials associated with activities and events that took place at different points in time are mixed into the same unit, whether because of depositional processes, disturbance factors, or because archaeologists lump together archaeological contexts when creating analytical units. I use analytical models to show how time-averaging can slow down the observed rates of change under two general modes of cultural change: random drift and directional change. I test this prediction using empirical rates of change from the archaeological record of North America. I show that empirical rates of change are indeed inversely correlated with the duration of time-averaging and provide a range estimate for this correlation.     

Anthropocentricity and the Archaeological Record: Towards a Sociology of Things

Recent years witnessed an assurgent criticism of anthropocentrism in the social sciences, arguing for more balanced approaches to the study of humans and non-humans as equally responsible for the constitution of society. These claims lean heavily on philosophical grounds, noting that the focus on the human subject is guided by modernist binary oppositions and produces an inappropriate image of society. However, the problems anthropocentricity poses for archaeology are unique, and these received little attention. It is argued that efforts to discover the human subject forces archaeologists to continuously compensate for its absence. A shift of focus from the nexus of humans and things to the nexus of things and other things is proposed, arguing that the relationships among the various components and features of the archaeological record embody social relations in themselves.     

Envisioning Artifacts: a Classic Maya View of the Archaeological Record

This paper explores a Classic Maya (ca. AD 250–900) “material vision”—that is, a locally determined and culturally specific way of understanding the material world, its salient qualities, and associated meanings—based on evidence found in hieroglyphic texts from across the Maya world. Understanding Classic Maya ways of seeing the material world is an important undertaking as part of exploring alignments and misalignments between ancient indigenous and modern archaeological understandings of what today we view as “artifacts.” This topic is explored in the article through two related inquiries: first, I look at “artifacts” (i.e., materials that qualify as such, in an archaeological material vision) recorded in the hieroglyphic record, yielding thematic understandings of objects related to form and function, wholeness versus brokenness, and the relational potential of objects. Second, I use ten hieroglyphic property qualifiers that indicate Maya material perceptions and categories to gain explicit insight into some organizing principles within a Maya way of visualizing the material world. Throughout the article, I ask: can we envision archaeological objects using Maya conceptions, and how does this way of seeing align or misalign with archaeological material engagements?     

Identifying Threshing Floors in the Archaeological Record: A Test Case at Iron Age Tel Megiddo,Israel

Abstract

The identification of activity areas in archaeological sites is an important part of archaeological research contributing to the reconstruction of past ways of life. The threshing floor is an activity area that relates to subsistence practices in agricultural societies, yet identifying threshing floors in the archaeological record is difficult. We present a geoarchaeological study conducted at an Iron Age layered feature unearthed in 1998 at Tel Megiddo, Israel, in which we tested a previous assumption that it represents the remains of a threshing floor. Using micromorphology, mineralogy, elemental analysis, phytoliths, and dung spherulites, we show that the materials comprising the bulk of the layers in the Megiddo feature include large amounts of wood ash and the inorganic remains of livestock dung. Based on these results, coupled with ethnographic data on threshing floors and observations on the macroscopic traits of the feature under consideration, we conclude that the layered feature at Megiddo does not represent a threshing floor but a single-household trash heap. We suggest that the interpretation of similar features at other archaeological sites as threshing floors be reevaluated.     

Snapshots of History and the Nature of the Archaeological Image

By its very definition, archaeology is situated at the intersection of the material and the temporal worlds. Photography is similarly positioned, and yet it can be manipulated to produce constructed contexts according a photographer’s agenda. In order to explore how the abilities and limitations of archaeology and photography are entwined I examine the representational power of the photograph and the phenomenon of Japanese tourist photography. I then discuss the construction of archaeological photographs, both in practice and in the prescribed theory contained archaeological methods textbooks, as well as how photographs are used to represent the embodied, physical performance of archaeology.     

Introduction to Webs of Memory,Frames of Power: Collective Remembering in the Archaeological Record

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have increasingly viewed collective memory as critical to the establishment and legitimation of power relations. For societies in the past and present, collective memory can be drawn on to clarify group identity, justify or subvert hierarchies, invent traditions, and define behaviors. The contributors to this special issue focus on the process of remembering, how it produced multiple archaeologically visible understandings of the past, and how these viewpoints impacted power-laden social negotiations. To better elucidate this process, this introduction situates the concept of collective remembering within recent materialist frameworks that emphasize the integration of human and nonhuman actors into webs of interaction. We suggest that by viewing collective memory from the standpoint of interactions, multiple viewpoints can be recognized. We argue in turn that accounting for the diverse actors invested in memory production provides archaeologists a means to delineate how the past becomes a site of contested values that social groups are constantly reworking to define membership, justify social hierarchy, and validate resistance.     

Congenital Syphilis in the Archaeological Record: Diagnostic Insensitivity of Osseous Lesions

The paucity of convincing evidence for congenital bone lesions of syphilis in the archaeological record led to study of the human remains from the Buffalo site in West Virginia, dated at 550—650 years BP. The diagnosis of syphilis (venereal) in adults was based on previously validated population criteria for the recognition of syphilis and its distinction from among the other treponemal diseases. Among the 151 juveniles (23.3 per cent of the total series), only one had macroscopic evidence of periosteal disease. The low frequency of recognizable osseous stigmata characteristic of congenital syphilis, combined with the conspicuous absence of pathognomonic dental lesions, make such periosteal lesions insufficiently sensitive criteria for the identification of syphilis in the archaeological record. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Plant Diversity in the Archaeological Record: A Means Toward Defining Hunter–Gatherer Mobility Strategies

The diversity and ubiquity measures of archaeological macrobotanical remains can be utilized to help define mobility strategies of hunter–gatherers. Differences in the diversity and ubiquity of plant remains are predicted to occur between different types of sites utilized by hunter–gatherers. Such sites include base camps of residentially and logistically mobile groups, as well as special-purpose sites usually associated with logistically mobile groups. The focus upon the importance of strategies of mobility and plant use instead of the typological determination of plant taxa allows for the use of specimen types in such analyses when scientific identifications are difficult to make. Data from the archaeological site of San Jacinto 1, located in northern Colombia, are utilized to examine this relationship.     

姚马村村史碑记

姚马村西去威远镇三公里。青山环抱,绿水绕廓;谷地川阔滩平,宜耕宜牧;且通衢四达,利商利贾。自有先民耕牧于此,迄有千余年历史。村中姚、马、陈三姓,皆为持德守正之族,习称“姚马三庄”。村中土族系吐谷浑后裔,遗风犹存。村中汉族多系唐沙陀李氏之后,子孙已出多门。土汉两族世代田亩联袂,     

Elder Abuse: Evaluating the Potentials and Problems of Diagnosis in the Archaeological Record

The elderly are the most neglected demographic in archaeology. In today's youth‐obsessed society, the elderly are consistently denigrated, particularly those perceived to be physically or mentally frail. A related and growing concern in contemporary populations is the physical abuse of the elderly, believed to be an escalating phenomenon. This study is the first to examine the risk factors, social context and patterns of trauma associated with elder abuse in the present, with the aim of providing diagnostic criteria to apply to past societies. The utility of skeletal evidence in the identification of violent trauma has been detailed in cases of child and intimate partner abuse, both modern and archaeological. Investigating the skeletal evidence for elder abuse is potentially more complex because of the confounding physiological effects of the ageing process, lack of clinical research and contemporary ageist attitudes towards older people. Within the clinical and bioarchaeological literature, there has been a tendency to dismiss injuries in older individuals as the product of accident or opportunistic violence. A proportion of elder members of past societies is likely to have been victims of abuse and family violence. While there are no pathognomonic skeletal features of elder abuse, multiple injuries to the bones of the following are indicative: cranium, maxilla‐facial region, dentition, cervical vertebrae, clavicles, ribs and spiral fractures to the humeri. Attention is also drawn to decubiti as indirect skeletal indicators of immobility and possibly neglect. Archaeological context is important to consider, including non‐normative burials or those indicating social marginalisation. Bioarchaeological evidence has the potential to provide a long‐term perspective on the care and treatment of past elders. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

在《清史》编纂座谈会上的讲话

季羡林 :今天我以一个两重外行的身份参加这个座谈会 ,对清史过去翻过一点 ,不太清楚 ,系统没有搞过 ,对清史所的工作 ,最近这两天正补课 ,所以也不大清楚。我想既然来的话 ,外行的话也有外行的意义。我想 :第一 ,这项工作非常有意义 ,如果我们今天不完成这工作 ,我们对不起祖宗 ,对不起后世子孙。我们中国几千年以来 ,她的历史完全具备 ,在世界上第一份 ,到了我们大家这儿中断 ,那不可能的。可是已经九十年了 ,辛亥革命到今年整整九十年 ,都没有完成。所以我们必须完成 ,义不容辞 ,没别的话说。第二 ,中国历史有两个特点 ,一个就是我们全 ,…     

Overview of the Disability Movement: History, Legislative Record, and Political Implications

This article presents a brief history and legislative record of the disability movement, along with their political implications. Beginning with the mid-nineteenth century efforts of Samuel Gridley Howe, the history of disability policy is reviewed. The impact of the field of eugenics is assessed. Notable achievements of the disability movement over the last two decades are presented, culminating in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The basic paradigm of disability policy is presented. The political and policy implications facing the disability movement are discussed.     

Toy Story: Homophily,Transmission and the Use of Simple Simulation Models for Assessing Variability in the Archaeological Record

The interpretation of spatial and temporal patterns in the archaeological record remains a long-standing issue in the discipline. Amongst many methods and interpretations, modelling of ‘biased transmission’ has proved a successful strategy to tackle this problem. Here, we investigate a type of biased transmission, homophily, that is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. In contrast to other social sciences, homophily remains underused in archaeology. In order to fill this gap, we develop six distinct variants of a well-established modelling framework borrowed from social science, Axelrod’s Cultural Dissemination Model. These so-called toy models are abstract models used for theory-building and aim at exploring the interplay between homophily and various factors (e.g. addition of spatial features such as mountains and coastlines, diffusion of innovations and population spread). The relevance and implications of each ‘toy model’ for archaeological reasoning are then discussed.     

The Holocene History of the Southern Lake Chad Basin: Archaeological, Linguistic and Genetic Evidence

Archaeological evidence indicates a complex history of settlement of the southern Lake Chad Basin from the mid-Holocene onward, in parallel with the gradual desiccation of the Sahara and reduction of lake and river systems in the region. These archaeological data can be compared with a growing body of data from historical linguistics and genetics, and the southern Lake Chad Basin is one of few areas in Africa where such comparisons can be undertaken. This paper will serve as a preliminary consideration of some of the issues generated by an initial comparison of archaeological, genetic and linguistic evidence for the peopling of the Lake Chad Basin. It focuses on the contexts of initial encounters between ancestral Nilo-Saharan and Chadic populations south of Lake Megachad and subsequent population expansions and diversifications around the Mandara Mountains.     

存史资鉴 认真编纂汶川特大地震抗震救灾志

同志们： 今天召开《汶川特大地震抗震救灾志》编纂委员会成立大会暨第一次全体会议,标志着《汶川特大地震抗震救灾志》编纂工作正式启动。从今天起,编委会全体成员就要以高度的责任感、使命感、紧迫感投入到这项工作之中,共同努力完成好这项重要的工作任务。下面,我讲几点意见：     

Excavating Communities: Lewis R. Binford and the Interpretation of the Archaeological Record in Illinois

Lewis Binford’s contributions to field archaeology have been largely ignored in favor of his many contributions to theoretical issues dominating the discipline of archaeology at the end of the twentieth century. We examine Binford’s excavation methods in southern Illinois in the early 1960s and demonstrate how his considered approach served to systematize large-scale site excavation procedures. He adopted the time-honored tool of the salvage archaeologist—heavy equipment—and unapologetically employed it in a fundamentally new way, proving it to be a tool that served the greater goals of archaeological research. We trace the development of field methods and theoretical approaches in two case studies of Illinois archaeology and demonstrate how Binford’s contributions have been incorporated or rejected by subsequent CRM researchers.