Ante Mortem Cranial Trepanation in the Late Bronze Age in Western Siberia

We report a case study of cranial trepanation in a male subject 30 to 40 years of age from the Nefteprovod II burial ground in the Anzhevsk archeological site. This burial dates back to the Late Bronze Age, in particular the Karasuk culture located in the Minusinsk Basin on the Yenisei River and on the upper reaches of the Ob River. The left parietal bone had an opening with evident signs of bone healing, as well as signs of inflammatory reaction from both bone plates of the calvarium. The strongest signs of inflammation were located around the trepanation opening at the exocranium, suggesting that it occurred after, rather than before, the operation. Although trepanation was the main cause for the development of the changes noted in the preceding texts, there are no reasons to believe that the subject died from complications arising from infection after trepanation. The patient survived and later died for reasons that may never be determined. Medical necessity was the most likely justification for trepanation. Immersion in altered states of consciousness may also have been a necessary part of the trepanation process as a mode of sedation, along with other shamanic practices, such as consumption of psychotropic substances or ecstatic dance. These data, together with reports of other ante mortem burials, raised questions about the application of anaesthesia and possible techniques of cranial trepanation. These issues and possible postoperative complications are discussed in the following text. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Analysis Of Mitochondrial Dna From The Pakhomovskaya Population Of The Late Bronze Age,Western Siberia

This article presents the results of an analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from bone samples from Stary Sad – a burial ground representing the eastern variant of the Late Bronze Age Pakhomovskaya culture in the Baraba forest-steppe, Western Siberia. Comparison with mitochondrial DNA data from earlier populations of the region and also with archaeological facts, points to the origins of the Pakhomovskaya people. Certain components of their gene pool were evidently derived from the local pre-Andronovo populations, others from the actual Andronovo (Fedorovka) population and also from later immigrants. In this article an integrative reconstruction based on biological and cultural facts is proposed.     

Dental Affinities of The Irmen People,Western Siberia

Dental features of the Late Bronze Age Irmen population of Western Siberia (14th–10th centuries BC) were studied on the basis of cranio-dental remains from 23 cemeteries in the Kuznetsk Basin, Baraba forest-steppe, the forest-steppe zone of the Altai, Tomsk and Novosibirsk areas of the Ob basin. The results suggest that the Irmen people originated in the Novosibirsk and Baraba areas from a mixture of Andronovo (Fedorovka) and autochthonous groups. Dental data are inconsistent with the idea that the Karasuk tribes might have taken part in this process. The Karasuk people clearly descended from the Okunevo people, as evidenced by the elevated frequencies of the Carabelli cusp and deflecting wrinkle. None of these traits is present in the Irmen people, who display dental gracility evidently introduced by Andronovo (Fedorovka) tribes.     

Amarna and Uluburun: Reconsidering Patterns of Exchange in the Late Bronze Age

This paper sets out to combine the textual evidence from the Amarna letters with the archaeological evidence from the Uluburun shipwreck. The latter was most probably a Levantine vessel carrying an extraordinary quantity of commodities and prestige objects from Egypt and the Near East to a major palatial centre in the Aegean. Most of the scholarship has therefore taken the view that it represents an exchange of the same type as those described in the Amarna letters, and that the Aegean world should be inserted in the same system of diplomacy and gift exchange as the Near Eastern polities. What this scholarship has failed to acknowledge, however, is the fact that the Amarna letters do not contain a single mention of the Aegean. This paper, therefore, addresses this significant discrepancy between the textual and the archaeological evidence and argues that the texts and the shipwreck may be part of two different phenomena.     

Late Bronze Age Copper Smelting Slags from Luserna (Trentino,Italy): Interpretation of the Metallurgical Process

In the Late Bronze Age, the extractive metallurgy of copper in north‐eastern Italy achieved a peak of technological efficiency and mass production, as evidenced by the substantial number of metallurgical sites and the large volume of slags resulting from smelting activities. In order to define the technological features of the Late Bronze Age metallurgical process, more than 20 slags from the smelting site of Luserna (Trentino, Italy) were fully analysed by means of optical microscopy, X‐ray powder diffraction, X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. Three different slag types were identified based on mineralogical and chemico‐physical parameters, each being interpreted as the product of distinct metallurgical steps. A Cu‐smelting model is proposed accordingly.     

Early Imports in the Late Bronze Age of South‐Western Iberia: The Bronze Ornaments of the Hypogea at Monte da Ramada 1 (Southern Portugal)

The composition and manufacture of Late Bronze Age metallic artefacts from funerary and domestic contexts of southern inland Portugal was studied. The prevailing trend comprises binary bronzes (10.3 ± 2.1 wt% Sn) showing deformed equiaxial grains, annealing twins and slip bands. The alloy composition is somewhat independent of artefact type, while the manufacture seems to rely on artefact function and the skilfulness of the metallurgist. The technological characteristics were linked with archaeological and chronological features, disclosing some artefacts of uncommon composition, such as low‐tin bronze bracelets (4.3–7.1 wt% Sn) associated with ornaments of exotic materials (glass and Egyptian faience beads, and also ostrich egg shell beads). The assemblage testifies to an archaic trade with the Mediterranean region before the establishment of the first Phoenician colonies on the southern Iberian coast.     

Bronze production in Southwestern Iberian Peninsula: the Late Bronze Age metallurgical workshop from Entre Águas 5 (Portugal)

Archaeological works at Entre Águas 5 (Portugal) uncovered a seasonal LBA settlement with significant metallurgical remains (crucibles, moulds, prills and a tuyere) related to bronze production. Radiocarbon dating ascribes an occupation period (10th–9th century BC) previous to Phoenician establishment in Southwestern Iberia. In spite of the proliferation of metal artefacts during LBA, the production of bronze alloys is still poorly understood. An integrated analytical approach (EDXRF, optical microscopy, SEM–EDS, micro-EDXRF and Vickers microhardness) was used to characterise this metallurgy. Crucibles show immature slags with copious copper nodules, displaying variable tin content (c. 0–26 wt.%), low iron amount (<0.05 wt.%) and different cooling rates. Certain evidences point to direct reduction of oxide copper ores with cassiterite. Scorched moulds with residues of copper and tin indicate local casting of artefacts. Finished artefacts also recovered at the site have an analogous composition (bronze with ∼10 wt.% Sn and low amounts of Pb, As and Fe) typical of coeval metallurgy in SW Iberia. Some artefacts reveal a relationship between typology and composition or manufacture: a higher tin content for a golden coloured ring or absence of the final hammering for a bracelet. An uncommon gilded nail (gold foil c. 140 μm thick; 11.6 wt.% Ag; ∼1 wt.% Cu) attests the existence of evolved prestige typologies. This LBA settlement discloses a domestic metallurgy whose main features are typical in Iberian Peninsula. Finally, it should be emphasized that a collection as comprehensive and representative of a single workshop has rarely been studied, enabling a deeper understanding of the various operations involving the bronze production and manufacture of artefacts.     

Scarabs of Sheshi at Tell El-ajjul,Contra Kempinski

The find spots of eight scarabs of the Hyksos Pharaoh Sheshi from Tell el-Ajjul in southwest Palestine, excavated by Petrie, are re-examined in detail and found not to agree with the levels attributed to them by Aaron Kempinski in 1983. He argued that these scarabs related to the founding of City II, but some of them actually came from the earlier City III. This may have implications for the correct relationship between two transitions, that from Middle Bronze Age II to Late Bronze Age I in Palestine and that from Dynasty fifteen to eighteen in Egypt. An appendix considers scarabs of Pharaoh Apophis at Ajjul.     

Improvements in Archaeomagnetic Dating in Western Europe from the Late Bronze to the Late Iron Ages: An Alternative to the Problem of the Hallstattian Radiocarbon Plateau

We present a new curve of the directional secular variation of the geomagnetic field in Western Europe between 1500 bce and 200 ce . Its computation relies on a Bayesian framework. The fast secular variation during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages makes archaeomagnetic dating efficient with a respective precision of 150–200 and 60–100 years during these periods. The Bayesian method also provides posterior date distributions that refine the dating of reference data, especially during the period of the Hallstattian radiocarbon plateau. Archaeomagnetism becomes a valuable alternative to radiocarbon and will help to improve the archaeological chronologies.     

Ceramics of the Ulakhan-Segelennyakh Culture,Early Bronze Age,Yakutia

The principal diagnostic feature of the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) Ulakhan-Segelennyakh culture of southern, southwestern, and western Yakutia, which was first described by the present author, is pottery decorated with punched nodes in combination with dentate impressions and stamp imprints. This type of pottery differs from Ust-Mil pottery and resembles both ancestral Ymyiakhtakh ceramics and ceramics made by immigrants. The Ulakhan-Segelennyakh culture did not spread across all Yakutia, but occupied vast taiga regions in the basins of the Aldan, Olekma, Vilyui, and Middle Lena. Most immigrants were descendants of the Glazkovo people, and entered Yakutia along the upper reaches of these rivers.     

Ojakly: A Late Bronze Age mobile pastoralist site in the Murghab Region,Turkmenistan

Abstract

Excavations at Ojakly (site 1744) in the Murghab alluvial fan in Turkmenistan mark the first systematic collection of archaeological materials related to Bronze Age mobile pastoralists in the region, and the earliest evidence to date of their occupation patterns, subsistence practices, and ceramic production activities. Because the appearance of mobile pastoral groups in the Murghab during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1950–1500 b.c.) is traditionally associated with significant changes in regional sociopolitical structures, these data are important for establishing local strategies of and the relationship between sedentary agricultural and mobile pastoral populations. Here, we present ceramic, faunal, archaeobotanical, and lithic data that force us to reconsider the traditional sedentary-mobile dichotomy. Specifically, we find that while the subsistence economies are distinct at urban and non-urban sites, the ceramic production and trade interactions are significantly intertwined and more complex than previously acknowledged for this time period. Additionally, the presence of a ceramic kiln at Ojakly (Turkmen for “place with kiln”) containing unfired ceramics of a type typically associated with sedentary farmers in the Bronze Age Murghab suggests the transfer of technical knowledge between groups who nevertheless maintained distinct material cultural identities. Ojakly provides important new data about coexisting economies in the Late Bronze Age Murghab that can productively unsettle traditional notions of dominance, control, and polarization in sedentary-mobile interactions.     

Exchange patterns,boundary formation,and sociopolitical change in Late Bronze Age Southern Caucasia: preliminary results from a pottery provenance study in northwestern Armenia

In the South Caucasus—roughly the territory of today's Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—the transition from the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) to the Late Bronze Age (LBA) is equated with fundamental shifts in settlement patterns, subsistence economy, and political strategies. During the mid-2nd millennium BC, nomadic pastoral societies that had dominated the region began to settle down and construct stone fortresses along the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus; these fortifications largely replaced the expansive and often opulently adorned kurgan burials as the most prominent expression of political dominance on the landscape. After a decade of intensive archaeological study at various fortifications, very little remains known about the political and economic relationships among fortresses on a regional scale that might improve our understanding of the roots of these sociopolitical transformations. In this paper, we highlight the results of a recent neutron activation analysis (NAA) of ceramics from elite and non-elite contexts at a selection of LBA fortresses on the Tsaghkahovit Plain in northwestern Armenia, and offer some preliminary interpretations about political and economic organization and boundary formation. Most strikingly, the NAA data suggest that the fortresses on the Tsaghkahovit Plain appear to have isolated themselves economically from surrounding valleys, perhaps in an attempt to forge boundaries and legitimating ideologies attendant to new political formations that were quite distinct from their nomadic predecessors in the MBA.     

Introduction to the project and excavation of Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape,South Africa): a view on the Middle Stone Age

This introduction presents the background to the present research project at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, initiated in 1998. It is followed by a series of original papers that were presented in November 2010 at the join 13th PAA Congress (Panafrican Association of Prehistory and Associated Disciplines) and 20th conference of SAfA (Society of Africanist Archaeologists) at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (Senegal). These papers were presented in a “Symposium on the MSA sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter: a view on the cultural evolution of southern African modern humans” organized by Pierre-Jean Texier, Guillaume Porraz, John Parkington and Jean-Philippe Rigaud. This series of papers is a first attempt at a multidisciplinary reconstruction of the way Middle Stone Age people inhabited the site of Diepkloof and the way they interacted with their environment. The resultant narrative outlines artifactual change through the sequence and discusses the factors that might underlie it.     

Smelting and recycling evidences from the Late Bronze Age habitat site of Baiões (Viseu,Portugal)

Many aspects of bronze production during Late Bronze Age in Western Europe are so far unknown. In the present study selected artefact fragments and metallurgical debris, which include a slag fragment, from the emblematic Late Bronze Age habitat site of Castro da Senhora da Guia de Baiões (Viseu, Portugal) have been studied by optical microscopy, micro-EDXRF, SEM–EDS and XRD. Evidences were found for bronze production involving smelting and recycling. Compositional analysis showed that the artefacts are made of a bronze with 13 ± 3 wt.% Sn (average and one standard deviation) and a low impurity pattern, namely <0.1 wt.% Pb, being comparable with the composition of other bronzes from the same region (the Central Portuguese Beiras). This alloy is generally different from elsewhere Atlantic and Mediterranean bronzes, which show frequently slightly lower Sn contents and higher impurity patterns, namely Pb which is often present as an alloying element. The present study gives further support to early proposals suggesting the exploration of the Western Iberian tin resources during Late Bronze Age, and besides that, it indicates that metalworking and smelting could have been a commonplace activity requiring no specific facilities, being bronze produced at a domestic scale in this Western extreme of Europe.     

Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Cis-Baikal, Siberia: An overview for the new century

The paper examines Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in the Baikal region of Siberia based on diverse data (radiocarbon, mortuary, geochemical, genetic, human osteological, and zooarchaeological) accumulated over the last 10–15 years. The new model emphasizes the cyclical nature of the long-term changes and recognizes similarities between the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age cultures. The overall impression seems to be that change in the region was rapid rather than gradual. A number of interesting correlations between various cultural and environmental variables have been identified. During the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, the spatial distributions of mortuary sites, open landscape, and good fisheries are all correlated and both intervals are coeval with periods of environmental stability. For the Early Neolithic two additional sets of correlated variables have been identified: (1) the uneven distribution of fish resources, uneven distribution of the human population, and cultural heterogeneity; and (2) poorer overall community health, more extensive male travel and heavier workloads, and higher reliance on fishing. For the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the sets of correlated variables are somewhat different: (1) more even distribution of terrestrial game resources (herbivores), more even distribution of the human population, and cultural homogeneity; and (2) better overall community health, less travel and lighter workloads, more equitable distribution of labor between males and females, and higher reliance on game hunting. Viewed together, these patterns emphasize the much more dynamic pattern of hunter-gatherer cultural variability, temporally and spatially, compared to what was known before.