Aspects of Archaeological Heritage in the Cultural Landscapes of Western Anatolia

Throughout the course of time, environments built within landscapes have been transformed into conserved archaeological heritage sites through natural, but mostly anthropogenic, forces. Today, cultural heritage is the product of visual and spatial features of architectural material and landscapes created through conservation, but also through social and economical needs and interests. In Western Anatolia, archaeological heritage sites with ecologically rich areas, countryside, coastlines and seascapes are the most essential visual, spatial and structural features of cultural (historical) landscapes. Moreover, western Anatolian landscapes have retained their authentic character regarding intangible cultural diversity, ecology, rural traditional systems and agricultural practices. However, rapid changes and developments due to urbanisation and mass tourism have made their impacts on cultural historical landscapes in recent years. In this paper, an attempt is made to explore the cultural heritage within the evolution of cultural archaeological landscapes in Western Anatolia and to propose a sustainable approach for development and conservation options for cultural heritage and their landscapes.     

When Survey Goes East: Field Survey Methodologies and Analytical Frameworks in a Central Asian Context

This paper investigates the applicability and transferability of conventional frameworks of archaeological survey in the context of marginal alluvial environments, particularly the unique inland deltas of Central Asia. These dynamic and visually obstructed landscapes pose unique challenges not only to survey methodologies but also to theory and interpretation. Here, an exploratory approach to data analysis is used that applies three distinct yet integrated methodologies: visibility analysis, multi-scalar spatial analysis and directional (anisotropic) statistics. This approach thereby moves beyond many of the existing conceptual constraints about how we understand surface distributions in arid alluvial landscapes and ultimately identifies both transferable analytical methods and new fieldwork agendas that are relevant to a wide range of survey projects.     

Historic landscape management: a validation of quantitative soil thin-section analyses

The archaeological interpretation of past land management practices can be greatly enhanced through examination of soil thin sections. Features relating to manuring practice are among those key to interpreting agricultural practices. The sources and the processes leading to the distribution of these manure materials may further improve knowledge of the past landscape utilisation. The use of quantitative analyses to examine soil thin sections opens the possibility of considering these relationships between manured areas in greater detail and to extract more subtle spatial and temporal changes in past management. In this study the validation of this methodology has been tested with quantitative image analysis methods used to examine manure inputs to a well-documented historical landscape of Papa Stour, Shetland, where intensive manuring has been practised until the 1960s. By using both historic and ethnographic evidence to validate the image analysis protocol, differences in spatial and temporal distribution are examined for the practices of manuring with both fuel residues and with turf. The validation of the hypotheses expected from ethnographic and historical data that quantitative soils-based evidence allows the definition of variations in manuring strategies and provides a more secure basis from which to interpret manuring management strategies in archaeological landscapes.     

TOWARDS REALISING THE FULL ARCHAEOENVIRONMENTAL POTENTIAL OF RAISED (OMBROTROPHIC) MIRES IN THE BRITISH ISLES

Summary. Raised mires represent a unique resource for the study of past peoples within their changing landscape context. However, present palaeoecological and archaeological approaches to these landscapes within the British Isles have followed largely separate agendas. Palaeoecological study has generally been focused on themes of climate change, using a range of techniques to derive information relating to changes in surface wetness of raised mires over time. In contrast, archaeological study has been broadly limited to themes of preservation and site recovery. This paper argues that the integration of the methods employed within both disciplines can enable an investigation of context unattainable for the majority of archaeological sites. A case study illustrates the recursive nature of human-environment relations in a raised mire system in Ireland.     

The ethnoarchaeology of firewood management in the Fang villages of Equatorial Guinea, central Africa: Implications for the interpretation of wood fuel remains from archaeological sites

In archaeological literature, the study of trees and wood remains is a topic of relatively marginal interest, especially compared to texts on crops and human–animal relations. However, charcoal is the most frequent botanical remain found in archaeological sites. Charcoal analysis can therefore play a major role in the development of studies in both landscape and palaeoethnobotanical reconstruction. The majority of the archaeological charcoal assemblages reflect the exploitation of wood as an energy source (fuel). The archaeological study of firewood selection has been predominantly developed from “eco-utilitarian” or “subsistence economy” perspectives, but has not yet considered fuel collection and use as one of the most enduring categories of human–environment interactions, nor has archaeology looked into its potential as a source of empirical information on past perceptions of, and interactions with, ancient landscapes. The aim of this paper is to expand previous archaeological work on the interpretation of charcoal macro-remains through the study of firewood collection as a historically constituted, socially mediated and archaeologically observable landscape practice. In order to achieve this, we present an ethnoarchaeological case study from the Fang society of Equatorial Guinea (central Africa) aimed at gaining a better understanding of the complex interactions between cultural, ecological and economic variables in firewood collection strategies.     

Prehistoric land use and hydrology: a multi-scalar spatial analysis in central Arizona

Human land-use strategies involving the management of rainfall and runoff to promote crop production are found throughout the world. This paper presents a functional assessment using hydrological modeling with modern high-resolution LiDAR datasets and contextual archaeological site data to study prehistoric agriculture. The focus is on rock alignments created by the Hohokam culture in the semi-arid environment of the US Southwest. By incorporating a multi-scalar GIS study for terrain analysis at a regional, community, and site scale, the complex interactions between the prehistoric sites, features and the environment are revealed. The results of these analyses on digital elevation models (DEMs) gave insight to the past functionality of such agricultural features within the cultivated landscapes. The results included:1) The agricultural features were suitably placed for the collection of rainfall and runoff.2) The features were reducing the volume of water flowing through the area to prevent flooding and crop destruction and promoting soil infiltration.This shows the complexity and innovation of prehistoric societies living in marginal environments and how their adaptation to such environments was necessary to sustain their populations.     

Cultural Niche Construction and Remote Sensing of Ancient Anthropogenic Environmental Change in the North Coast of Peru

Archaeological land use results in the modification of natural environments according to cultural templates and strategies. Deeply entrenched environmental legacies can result from such “niche construction,” influencing subsequent cultures and continuing to resonate in modern ecological function. These changes can be better understood through archaeological remote sensing.Here, I describe spectral responses of densely vegetated sugarcane fields in the Chicama Valley (north coast of Peru) to archaeological features and associated anthropogenic soils (anthrosols). Ongoing satellite remote sensing documents approximately 440 previously unrecorded major archaeological monuments and smaller features within a 310 km² sample of the Chicama Valley The majority of these date to the Moche–Chimu periods (ca. AD 300–1400), with others dating to the Cupisnique–Colonial periods. The newly recorded features are significant for accurately reconstructing the socio-ecological history of anthropogenic environmental change in the region.In addition to advancing analyses of archaeological settlement, these results reveal how prehispanic land use legacies result in persistent anthropogenic niches that can affect modern agricultural potentials. The relationships between anthropogenic features and sugarcane development can be directly evaluated through vegetation indices and physically based image transforms. Phenological response is linked to long-term alterations in soil texture, organic-matter content, and moisture capacity. Past land use thus has a significant impact upon contemporary ecological function, resulting in anthropogenic microenvironments. As sugarcane increasingly is an important industrial crop, these results have the potential to be widely applied to archaeological and agronomic problems, including reconstructions of archaeological landscapes, understanding persistent anthropogenic environments, and mitigating heritage loss while potentially improving precision agriculture.     

Immersive Visualization and Curation of Archaeological Heritage Data: Çatalhöyük and the Dig@IT App

Advanced data capture techniques, cost-effective data processing, and visualization technologies provide viable solutions for the documentation of archaeological heritage and material culture. Work at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Çatalhöyük has demonstrated that new digital approaches for capturing, processing, analyzing, and curating stratigraphic data in 3D are now feasible. Real-time visualization engines allow us to simulate the stratigraphy of a site, the three-dimensional surfaces of ancient buildings, as well as the ever-changing morphology of cultural landscapes. Nonetheless, more work needs to be done to address methodological questions such as follows: can three-dimensional models and stratigraphic relationships, based on 3D surfaces and volumes, be used to perform archaeological interpretation? How can a 3D virtual scenario become the interface to cultural data and metadata stored in external online databases? How can we foster a sense of presence and user embodiment in the simulation of ancient cities and archaeological sites? This article aims to provide viable solutions to the methodological challenge of designing a comprehensive digital archaeological workflow from the data acquisition and interpretation in the field to a three-dimensional digital data curation based on interactive visualization, searchable 3D data, and virtual environments. This work describes the results we achieved developing the application Dig@IT, a multi-platform, scalable virtual reality tool able to foster archaeological data analysis, interpretation, and curation in a realistic and highly interactive virtual environment.     

Putting the Spotlight on Small Metal Age Pottery Scatters in Northern Calabria (Italy)

This paper presents the results of an in-depth multidisciplinary restudy of small Metal Age surface scatters recorded in earlier fieldwalking surveys in northern Calabria (Italy). Guided by a stratified sampling approach based on site types and topographic positions, high-resolution surface collections at the selected sites were combined with geophysical surveys, test pits, and soil studies to investigate both archaeological deposits and the site formation processes that have an effect on their detectability. This approach is shown to result in a better definition of archaeological ‘sites’, and to help fill in details of regional exploitation and settlement dynamics at the landscape scale. At this broader scale we are also able to model post-depositional processes and slope dynamics affecting the preservation of the archaeological record. With regard to methodology, our study has enabled the evaluation of diverse archaeological detection methods and the fine-tuning of field strategies for the study of Metal Age remains.     

Site maintenance practices and settlement social organization in Iron Age Karnataka, India: Inferring settlement places and landscape from surface distributions of ceramic assemblage attributes

This paper investigates the spatial organization of social relations in settlement contexts through a quantitative and distributional analysis of surface ceramic attributes from Iron Age Period (1200–300 BC) archaeological sites in Southern India. The results discern variation in depositional contexts across each site, from which I infer a variety of basic settlement activity structures (e.g., site maintenance, trash disposal, residence, animal husbandry, metallurgy, ritual). I use these results, together with further analyses of artifact and feature distributions, to infer a basic suite of places, place-making practices and some of the social relations and organizational structures that produced these historically unique Iron Age settlement landscapes.     

Quantifying the effects of erosion on the archaeology of intertidal environments: A new approach and its implications for their management

Abstract

While the high archaeological and palaeoecological value of intertidal deposits has become well known, approaches to their management remain extremely restricted. Despite the often high levels of erosion experienced by some sites there has been very little development in methods aimed at understanding or quantifying the threats. This paper presents an approach aimed at monitoring erosion within the Humber estuary, UK, where previous finds including Bronze Age boat remains and trackways have made it an area of international importance. Two sites have been investigated and the results from these demonstrate both the high rate of sediment removal and also the highly variable nature of intertidal erosion. It is argued that global figures relating to rates of erosion are wholly inappropriate when attempting to manage archaeological deposits that have survived in intertidal environments. Rather, management of such archaeologically rich but threatened landscapes is only possible through regular quantitative monitoring. Such an approach offers coastal protection authorities a valuable opportunity to assess the long-term progress of erosion and coastal change. This methodology could be employed alongside management agreements within those particular coastal cells or process units that have been identified in a Shoreline Management Plan.     

Three-dimensional visibility analysis of architectural spaces: iconography and visibility of the wall paintings of Xeste 3 (Late Bronze Age Akrotiri)

In recent years various methods of visibility analysis have been applied to investigate human engagement, experience and socialisation within historic and prehistoric ’natural’ and built environments. On many occasions these approaches appear to be either extremely limited or wholly inadequate for the interpretation of complex built structures and building interiors because they do not fully model the three-dimensional geometry of such spaces. This paper briefly reviews computational approaches to visual analysis that have been previously applied in archaeological research, and then goes on to introduce a new analytical technique that uses fully 3D reconstructions of past environments. This method integrates common functionalities of 3D modelling software and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), essentially permitting viewshed analysis to be performed upon objects of any form and shape modelled in 3D. We argue that the proposed methodology can generate new data and encourage fresh lines of enquiry in the study of extant and partially preserved historic and prehistoric built structures in a variety of contexts, ranging from building interiors and townscapes to landscapes. The potential of the method is illustrated by applying the suggested analysis to explore visual perception issues associated with the urban remains of Late Bronze Age Akrotiri (Thera, Greece).     

Landscape and Environment: Insights from the Prehispanic Central Andes

Attention to human–environment relationships in the central Andes has a long history. Although the area is not a neat microcosm of the globe, wholly representative of worldwide trends in the archaeology of human–environment interactions, it has been the site of both seminal investigations in archaeology and a substantial body of recent work that investigates themes of broad archaeological relevance. Specifically, central Andean environments have been variously conceived as structuring, modified, and sacred. These approaches to some extent reflect broad trends in archaeology, while also suggesting directions in which the archaeology of human–environment interactions is moving and highlighting archaeology’s relevance to discussions of contemporary human–environment interactions. This article characterizes concepts that are key for describing central Andean environments and considers the ways in which the particular ecology of the central Andes has informed archaeological research in the region. The example of the central Andes highlights the importance of understanding environments as dynamic, considering both geomorphic and anthropogenic contributors to that dynamism, and examining both ecological (“environment”) and ideological (“landscape”) implications of archaeological landscapes.     

Rock art as an archaeological and social indicator: The neolithisation of the Iberian Peninsula

Rock art has been regarded as a second class archaeological data source. In this paper we use Levantine rock art as a case study, to show how this situation can be reversed. This rock art, found along the Mediterranean region of the Iberian Peninsula, has been considered to be typically Mesolithic due to its distinctive hunting scenes. A review of certain archaeological indicators provides new arguments about its chronology, its socio-cultural attribution, and its significance. We first deal with the chronological issue, presenting the evidence that led to the recent consideration of the Levantine style as Early Neolithic, in synchrony with two other rock art styles (Schematic and Macroschematic). We will further propose that rock art itself is a central and independent source of information to explore the historical context of the Neolithisation of Mediterranean Iberia. Its wide geographical distribution allows us to study different and complementary territories as a single entity. This contrasts with the limitations posed by the study of settlements, whose differences, at a regional scale, are usually interpreted in terms of cultural variability. If we consider rock art as a key aspect in the constitution of social landscapes, it must not be treated just as an ideological by-product of the Neolithisation, but as a key factor in understanding this historical process.     

INHABITING NEW LANDSCAPES: SETTLEMENT AND MOBILITY IN BRITAIN AFTER THE LAST GLACIAL MAXIMUM

Summary.   This paper explores the debate over the reoccupation of northern Europe after the last glacial maximum. Previous contributions to this debate have focused more on the timing of this event, rather than the technological and mobility strategies that enabled people to move into new landscapes. It is argued that a more detailed examination of the archaeological evidence from specific sites can provide a more nuanced understanding of these issues and can highlight the variety of technical economies employed in the late glacial. These concerns are explored through a case study from the Vale of Pickering in northern England.     

Champaner‐Pavagadh Archaeological Park: A Design Approach

Champaner‐Pavagadh, like many other heritage sites in India, is both an historic and ethnographic landscape. It possesses a unique status as a medieval city—Champaner—frozen in time, more or less protected by its sudden abandonment 450 years ago. At the same time, it is a living sacred site—Pavagadh Hill—visited annually by millions, with a resident population. Efforts are underway to declare the hill and the remains of the medieval city at its foot an archaeological park, which will ensure protection and conservation of cultural and natural resources. The challenge in designing the site as an archaeological park lies in articulating the pastoral image conjured up by the term in a manner that does not belie complex issues of land ownership, varied use, and ecological integrity of the site. Working landscapes—farms, flower fields, orchards, and nurseries—can be employed as a landscape‐design typology to ensure sustainability and to preserve and frame sightlines to monuments. Garden archaeology is necessary to uncover the symbiotic relationship between buildings and gardens of medieval Champaner.     

High-Resolution Wetland Prospection,using GPS and GIS: Landscape Studies at Sutton Common (South Yorkshire), and Meare Village East (Somerset)

This paper describes a new archaeological prospection technique for wetlands. High-resolution micro-topographical data generated in GPS surveys were processed to form continuous topographic digital surfaces. Through the generalization and exaggeration of these surfaces within ESRI ARC/INFO GIS software, buried archaeological features in wetland landscapes were identified. A subsequent programme of ground truthing has demonstrated that patterns of differential desiccation of wetland sediments have resulted in micro-topographical variation, reflecting archaeological features. The study was undertaken on two Iron Age sites: Sutton Common in the Humber wetlands and Meare Village East in the Somerset Levels.     

ANTHROPOGENIC IMPACT ON THE LANDSCAPE OF SOUTHERN BADENIA (GERMANY) DURING THE HOLOCENE—DOCUMENTED BY COLLUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL SEDIMENTS*

In the study area (the Upper Rhine Lowlands and the southern Black Forest), colluvial and alluvial sediments could be dated with the aid of ¹⁴C analysis, archaeological finds, pollen analysis and stratigraphic assessments. On the basis of these dated deposits, six different maps have been produced showing the distribution of the colluvial and alluvial sediments for the corresponding archaeological cultural periods. For each of these periods, the intensity of human impact on the environment has been estimated in relation to climatic conditions and different economic activities; for example, woodland clearance and mining activities.     

Mapping Submerged Landscapes Using Multibeam Bathymetric Data: a case study from the north coast of Ireland

This paper outlines work currently being undertaken to reconstruct submerged archaeological landscapes off the north coast of Ireland. This research uses the recently‐completed Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS), which has provided full‐coverage high‐resolution multibeam bathymetric data for the sea‐bed off the north coast. This data has been examined for evidence of past sea‐level change and been used to produce palaeo‐geographic reconstructions of the past landscape, which in turn have facilitated the identification of ten areas of high archaeological potential. The results presented here will form the basis of a future programme of archaeological survey and prospection. © 2010 The Authors     

Bromine in teeth and bone as an indicator of marine diet

Nitrogen isotope ratios in tissues are often used to aid in the reconstruction of the marine component of diets in past populations. Elevated δ¹⁵N values normally found with high trophic level marine resource consumption can, however, also be mimicked by physiological conditions (breastfeeding, pathological states affecting nitrogen balance), climate (aridity), and anthropogenic environments (manuring). This paper presents a pilot study testing whether bromine concentrations can provide a tool for teasing apart possible causes of variation in nitrogen isotope ratios. Blind analyses of bromine in archaeological samples correctly identified individuals derived from coastal vs. inland regions and high vs. low marine consumption time periods. Thus, bromine can provide an important supplement to other isotopic analyses of diet.