Diversity of cultivars and other plant resources used at habitation sites in the Llanos de Mojos, Beni, Bolivia: evidence from macrobotanical remains, starch grains, and phytoliths

Although sparsely populated today, the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia, sustained large sedentary societies in the Late Holocene (ca. 500 to 1400 AD). In order to gain insight into the subsistence of these people, we undertook macrobotanical and phytolith analyses of sediment samples, and starch grain and phytolith analyses of artifact residues, from four large habitation sites within this region. Macrobotanical remains show the presence of maize (Zea mays), squash (Cucurbita sp.), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), cotton (Gossypium sp.), and palm fruits (Arecaceae). Microbotanical results confirm the widespread use of maize at all sites, along with manioc (Manihot esculenta), squash, and yam (Dioscorea sp.). These integrated results present the first comprehensive archaeobotanical evidence of the diversity of plants cultivated, processed, and consumed, by the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Amazonian lowlands of Bolivia.     

Pre-Columbian jadeitite artifacts from the Golden Rock Site,St. Eustatius,Lesser Antilles,with special reference to jadeitite artifacts from Elliot's,Antigua: implications for potential source regions and long-distance exchange networks in the Greater Caribbean

A detailed electron microscopy analysis of jadeitite celts from the Early Ceramic Age Golden Rock settlement on the small volcanic island of St Eustatius, Lesser Antilles, is presented in an effort to identify the source region(s) of these jadeitite axes and evaluate the extent of trade networks in the Caribbean during pre-Columbian times through which those tools (or source rocks) circulated. Habitation at the site occurred between ca. AD 230–890, and the jadeitite tools most likely date between cal. AD 600 and 825/890. We argue that in provenancing jadeitite emphasis should be placed on the identification of the entire mineral assemblage (including the accessory minerals) and textures, given the complex geological histories and processes that form this quasi-monomineralic rock. Indeed, the mineral assemblages and the characteristics of the individual minerals within the studied jadeitite samples are far from homogenous, suggesting either the source has a high degree of internal variation or there are multiple sources. We have identified three jadeitite groups among the analyzed samples on the basis of mineralogical assemblages: Group 1 consists of samples bearing phlogopite (plus phengite and epidote but without lawsonite or quartz); Group 2 contains lawsonite (plus phengite and quartz but without phlogopite and epidote); and Group 3 is defined by containing hematite. Importantly, we have not identified glaucophane in the analyzed materials. The comparison of these artifact data with those of jadeitites from the four potential known source regions of Caribbean jade, i.e., Guatemala (North and South Motagua Fault mélanges), Cuba (Sierra del Convento mélange) and Dominican Republic (Río San Juan complex) allows us to conclude that both the North and South Motagua Valley mélanges are the most likely sources for artifact groups 2 and 3, and perhaps also for group 1. This identification supports earlier hypotheses on the existence of pan-regional exchange networks, tying the northern Antilles with the Isthmo-Colombian region (Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica) during the Ceramic Age of the Caribbean.     

New discoveries in the Piramide Naranjada in Cahuachi (Peru) using satellite,Ground Probing Radar and magnetic investigations

The detection of buried earthen structures by using remote sensing techniques is still an open issue and a strategic challenge as crucial as it is complex. It is crucial because earthen archaeological remains are widely present thoughtout the world (in South America, Asia, Africa) and it is complex due to the subtle physical contrast between earthen remains and the surrounding subsoil.     

Settlement patterns,social complexity and agricultural strategies during the Chalcolithic period in the Northern Negev,Israel

Previous studies have reported a Chalcolithic site distribution pattern in the Northern Negev as clustered, exhibiting a number of characteristics that imply a chiefdom level of organization. However, a recent spatial analysis suggests that in some areas of the Northern Negev, settlement patterns were essentially random and that there is no evidence for regional chiefdom organization. We examine this controversy by closely inspecting the methods of spatial analyses employed by previous researchers, by introducing an additional multiscalar spatial technique, namely Ripley's K-function, and by using updated and modified data. Our results indicate that settlement distributions were essentially clustered, even in small areas along the wadis. Examining the relation between these spatial-dependent distributions and the landscape surroundings revealed that particular physiographic characteristics of the wadis contribute to increscent in site clusters. Furthermore, a general linear model analysis suggests that the distribution of Chalcolithic sites is determined primarily by environmental factors rather than factors related to political organization.     

Archaeological Perspectives on the Ranquel Chiefdoms in the North of the Dry Pampas,in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In this article, I present some results of the archaeological study about the cultural manifestation of the Ranquels. This Indian group occupied the north part of the province of La Pampa, Argentina, from the late eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. Through a perspective that links the theoretical and methodological purposes of historical archaeology of the landscape, I analyze the settlements' distributions, the access to natural resources, the methods of circulation, and the strategies of interethnic conflict with the national army and the colonists on the border area. Taking into consideration the archaeological record and its contrast with written sources, I have defined some indicators about the process of culture change. My special interest concerns changes in nineteenth-century Ranquel material culture produced before the dissolution of the ethnic groups because of the military actions of the “desert conquest.”     

An ethnoarchaeological inductive model for predicting archaeological site location: A case-study of pastoral settlement patterns in the Val di Fiemme and Val di Sole (Trentino,Italian Alps)

In this paper I propose a novel integration of inductive predictive modelling and ethnoarchaeology. The case study concerns seasonal upland pastoral settlement patterns in the eastern Italian Alps. A sample of modern pastoral sites has been selected, and their relationships with environmental variables have been analyzed in order to create a model to predict the location of archaeological upland pastoral sites. The model has been tested with modern and archaeological control samples. It has proved to be useful for predicting the location of specific site categories. Ethnoarchaeological fieldwork has been carried out in the same alpine sample area, which has enhanced the interpretative potential of the proposed model, suggesting that the spatial of the analyzed sites could well be related to their dairying function. The creation of ethnoarchaeological locational models with a predictive potential may be very important not only in helping to tackle some theoretical and methodological problems in predictive modelling, but also in enhancing the importance of ethnoarchaeology in landscape archaeology projects.     

Changes in regional settlement patterns and the development of complex societies in southeastern Shandong,China

Around the globe, archaeological settlement pattern survey has brought a new spatial, diachronic, and theoretical vantage to the study of early civilizations. This paper provides a new perspective on the rise and reorganization of complex societies in northern China through the synthesis of 11 years of systematic regional survey in southeastern Shandong Province. Based on our surface findings, we suspect that the agricultural colonization of this coastal region occurred primarily during the later half of the Neolithic and was rapidly followed by the development of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy with two primary centers during the Early Longshan period. We also document the reorganization of this regional system during the Bronze Age, and the eventual political integration of this study area under polities centered to the west (and outside the region surveyed). We argue that southeastern Shandong was not merely a backwater or periphery throughout its history, particularly in regard to the Early–Middle Longshan periods when there were centers of great size. Through our long-term and broad-scale perspective, we provide new evidence of how complex societies arose and changed over millennia in northern China.     

Intra-Wetland Land Use in the Kankakee Marsh Region of Northwestern Indiana

Abstract

The physical structure and configuration of the landscape play profound roles in how a culture settles and utilizes a region. The following case study in the former Kankakee marsh region of northwestern Indiana exemplifies how subtle topographic variation can have a significant impact on intra-wetland landscape utilization. In the Kankakee marsh landscape, so-called dune islands provided areas of preferential settlement that were reused throughout the prehistory and early history of the region. In particular, these islands were important locales for resource extraction during the Late Archaic period and resource processing and storage during the Middle and Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian periods.     

Stable isotope reconstructions of shellfish harvesting seasonality in an estuarine environment: implications for Late Holocene San Francisco Bay settlement patterns

Seasonality estimates based on stable isotope analyses of shellfish remains has been an important thrust of settlement pattern reconstruction, allowing researchers to place people on the landscape at points in space at different times of the year. In exposed coastal settings seasonality reconstructions are typically dependent on annual changes in water temperature. This paper has two goals. First, we continue development of a method for determining shellfish harvest seasonality in estuarine environments where annual salinity changes, not temperature, drive isotopic variation. Second, we contribute to settlement pattern studies by showing how small and large sites can be linked into a single system by examining different site types and shellfish species. Our case study focuses on the Late Prehistoric period of the San Francisco Peninsula, includes a large shellmound (CA-SMA-6) and an ephemeral camp (CA-SFR-171), and examines clam (Macoma spp.) and mussel (Mytilus spp.) harvesting. In this case, data support a fission-fusion settlement pattern, with periods of dispersal during late winter through early summer and aggregation in late summer through early winter.     

New insights into the consumption of maize and other food plants in the pre-Columbian Caribbean from starch grains trapped in human dental calculus

In a first region wide study, starch grains from human dental calculus from the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean (dating to ca. 350 B.C.–A.D. 1600) are used to identify important plant foods in the diet and to assess potential dietary differences related to age or sex. Results give important insights into pre-Columbian maize (Zea mays) consumption throughout the region, confirming recent studies that indicate that maize was more commonly consumed in the insular Caribbean than originally thought. No age or sex based differences in maize consumption were found. Furthermore, based on the results of new experiments regarding grinding and pressure damage to starch grains, it is clear that maize in the Caribbean was ground, baked and consumed as bread as was the case in large parts of the mainland. Based on our results we tentatively suggest maize consumption in the Caribbean was at least in some cases associated with feasting and ceremonial activities. The variety in other plant foods identified (mostly tuberous root crops) shows that the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region consumed a broad spectrum, but locally variable diet in which a variety of root crops functioned as staple crops, including marunguey (Zamia sp.) and sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). We found no indications for the traditionally assumed heavy reliance on manioc (Manihot esculenta) cultivation in the region.     

Scuttled in the Morning: the discoveries and surveys of HMS Warrior and HMS Sparrowhawk,the Battle of Jutland's last missing shipwrecks

Due to the circumstances of the loss of HMS Warrior and HMS Sparrowhawk in 1916, in which subsequent to disablement both had drifted and been towed unknown distances from the Jutland battlefield, they were not located in the 2015 Jutland survey. In August 2016 both ships were located and HMS Warrior was revealed to be a pristine warship wreck, the only example in this condition of the 25 ships sunk in the battle. HMS Sparrowhawk had a similar pattern of disturbance as seven of the other Battle of Jutland destroyer wrecks. The survey of these wrecks draws to a conclusion a long period of discovery at Jutland and raises questions as to how these important cultural artefacts should be treated in the future.     

Houses,Objects, and the Politics of Inheritance in Josep Maria de Sagarra's Vida privada

Josep Maria de Sagarra's novel Vida privada (1932) portrays an upper-class Catalan family, the Lloberolas, as unable to adapt to the new economic and political situation taking place in the city of Barcelona at the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and at the beginning of the Second Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through a close reading of this family's houses, furniture, and personal belongings, I argue that material elements in this novel are central to the narrator's ethical critique and moral judgment of Barcelona's elite. The Lloberolas treat humans as objects and objects as humans, and I contend that, in an ironic emulation, the narrator also objectifies the Lloberolas and equates them with their objects. This comparison elucidates the family's superficiality and corrupted morals. Objects are also essential in destabilizing public and private boundaries because they often transcend the private domain and expose—to the readers and to the other inhabitants of Barcelona—the protagonists’ personality. Moreover, in Vida privada, houses, furniture, and surnames are understood as an inheritance that transfers very specific ideals of social status from parents to children. By presenting this material heritage with the exemplifying case of the Lloberola family, Sagarra offers a sharp critique of the Catalan upper classes and their superficial values. Their necessity to cling to an inherited world centered on material possessions finally results in their loss of power and evidences their economic and moral decline.     

Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265

This article investigates the use of feasts and gifts of food in the household of Eleanor de Montfort between February and August 1265. In his influential The dangers of ritual, Philippe Buc argued, through a study of early medieval chronicles, that rituals in medieval Europe were regularly targets for disruption and aggressive manipulation either in practice or in the texts reporting the rituals. This article tests Buc’s thesis against administrative records from thirteenth-century England. The evidence from Eleanor’s household accounts is illuminated through a study of contemporary literary sources and didactic texts. It concludes that the administrative records indicate that rituals in practice were less habitually the subject of manipulation and conflict than the literary evidence indicates.     

Exploring latitudinal patterns of lithic technology variation in continental coastal Patagonia,Argentina

This work explores the compositional variation of stone tool assemblages on the coast of continental Patagonia, Argentina, on a latitudinal scale. By means of statistical procedures, we evaluate the role of the environment and geography in changes in relative diversity of different tool classes. Results suggest that both environment and geography account for a statistically significant part of the variation. The observed pattern suggests a latitudinal gradient in diversity that might be explained as the result of the historical process of human peopling of Patagonia as well as of selective mechanisms related to energy acquisition.     

Territoriality,social boundaries and ancestor veneration in the central Andes of Peru

This article examines the relationship between social boundaries, territoriality and ancestor veneration during the Late Intermediate Period (1000–1450 AD) in the Rapayán Valley of the Central Andes of Peru. Constructing upon recent theoretical work on social boundaries and territoriality combined with the analyses of early historical sources, I argue that the distribution of various types of above-ground mortuary structures across the landscape was a powerful mechanism of social control through space that not only served to assess territorial rights, but also to confine or exclude people from a bounded space by the delimitation of social boundaries. I sustain that above-ground mortuary structures reflected a growing concern for territorial behaviors during the LIP that allowed household members, kinship groups and/or political units, according to varying contexts, to draw social boundaries between insiders and outsiders by reifying identity and social solidarity through ancestors worship. Within the broader Andean context, I suggest that the widespread distribution of mortuary monuments across the landscape provided the political landscape with an ideology of fragmentation which encouraged the distinction between insiders and outsiders and thus promoted group identity through social exclusion from a geographical point of view at many different levels.     

The construction of hunting sceneries: Interactions between humans,animals and landscape in the Antofalla valley,Catamarca, Argentina

Through the history of human occupation in the south-central Andes, the interactions between south-American camelids and human populations were essential in the social reproduction, being hunting one of the appropriation modes of greater long term. In this sense, the way in which encounters between hunters and their preys were materialized becomes a relevant subject in order to understand these interactions. That is why in this paper I pretend to show the way in which the landscape were constructed where the encounters between hunters and their preys were given. For this, I shall focus in the information obtained from the intensive and systematic survey developed in the Antofalla valley, located in the Antofagasta de la Sierra Department, Catamarca Province, Argentina. This information has allowed me to identify a series of structures build with the aim of propitiate the encounter of herds by means of anticipating the movements of the animals, searching to obtain near and fixed targets in order to materialize the attack.     

河南许昌灵井许昌人遗址考古发现与探索

本文简要介绍了河南许昌灵井许昌人遗址2005～2008年田野考古的一系列新发现,并着重对与之有关的现代人类起源、石工具面貌、末次冰期时人类对环境的选择与适应和今后研究工作的着力点等,进行了简要概述和讨论.     

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland,County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.     

Site formation processes in caves: The Holocene sediments of the Haua Fteah,Cyrenaica, Libya

Caves have yielded some of the most globally important archaeological sequences, but often their interpretation has suffered from assumptions about cave sedimentary processes. Caves contain distinctive sedimentary environments: this has major implications for the understanding of contained archaeological materials. This paper describes and analyses the Holocene sediments in the Haua Fteah, a sequence regarded as essentially continuous by the original excavator. 50 years after it was first excavated, the Haua's Epipalaeolithic to post-Classical chronological range and rich finds make it still the key Holocene archaeological site in North Africa. The reassessment shows, however, that the sequence is strongly discontinuous and this has major implications for the reinterpretation of the site, as the highly-resolved archaeological record is thus likely to reflect a series of brief occupations, rather than continuous human activity. As with many caves, the sedimentary record in the Haua Fteah is an extremely sensitive indicator of environments and processes in the wider landscape. Secure understanding of sedimentary process, from analysis of the highly individual records found in caves, is essential for full understanding of their contained archaeology.     

Biosocial archaeology of the Early Neolithic: Synthetic analyses of a human skeletal population from the LBK cemetery of Vedrovice,Czech Republic

Bioarchaeology is a powerful tool in the examination of prehistoric collections of human skeletal remains. Application of a few bioarchaeological techniques (ancient DNA, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, and dental micro-wear) to the human osteological remains from the Early Neolithic LBK settlement of Vedrovice (Moravia), has allowed us to reconstruct not only broad cultural patterns but also the life histories of the individuals with insights into diet, migrations, ancestry, personal identity, social position and life experience. Vedrovice acted as a gateway settlement for a farming community with close ties to western Hungary and northeast Bohemia. The individuals showed clear differences in status and migration histories, giving glimpses of more complex social practices and patterns than could have been determined through the traditional culture-historical studies.