Local knowledge is required: a rhythmanalytical approach to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland, UK

This is a paper about blurring the boundaries between people, land and water in the past and of appreciating the importance of the wider environment in our accounts of prehistory. Maritime approaches to time/space are shown to offer new ways of looking at how people engage with the world around them. Informed by these approaches, and building on Lefebvre’s concepts of lived space and rhythm, current tensions within archaeology between cartesian and phenomenological approaches to the past will be shown to be unconstructive. These issues are all addressed in relation the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland. Here a rhythmical, maritime approach will be shown to offer us a subtly different view of life during this period.     

Pitted stone cobbles in the Mesolithic site of Font del Ros (Southeastern Pre-Pyrenees,Spain): some experimental remarks around a controversial tool type

The presence of cobbles with activity-related marks in the Mesolithic site of Font del Ros (Berga, Spain), and in particular one group of artefacts – pitted stones – raises problematic issues associated with the characterization of percussion activities. Although these artefacts have generated an extensive bibliography on ethological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and archaeological levels, various questions persist in relation to their possible contextual function. In this paper we present the results of an experimental programme in which three types of activities that could create pitted stones are reproduced: bipolar knapping of vein quartz, hazelnut cracking, and hazelnut grinding. The aim of this experimental programme is to describe marks and use-wear traces related to such activities.     

Coast–inland mobility and diet in the Danish Mesolithic and Neolithic: evidence from stable isotope values of humans and dogs

Here we present the stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen measured in bone collagen extracted from humans, dogs, herbivores and fish from Mesolithic and Neolithic coastal and inland sites in Denmark. Bones of freshwater fish from several Early Mesolithic lake-side sites have δ¹³C values surprisingly similar to those seen in marine fish. We propose a model, based on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N, for the correction for both marine and hard water reservoir effect in radiocarbon dates. A strong reliance on aquatic protein is demonstrated for the Mesolithic inhabitants of the region from the middle of the Early Mesolithic onwards. A significant part of the protein in the diets of the dogs and humans from the Middle and Late Mesolithic was of marine origin, even at inland sites. This observation points to a high degree of (seasonal) coast-inland mobility. The isotopic evidence indicates that during the Neolithic small quantities of aquatic foods were still common sources of dietary protein.     

Hunter–gatherer responses to environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in the southern North Sea basin: Final Palaeolithic–Final Mesolithic land use in northwest Belgium

Situated along the southern fringe of the North Sea basin, northwest Belgium holds great potential for understanding hunter–gatherer responses to environmental change at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Recent intensive fieldwork has yielded valuable data on the palaeoenvironment, chronology, and hunter–gatherer mobility and land use in this region. At the Late Glacial/Early Holocene transition this region was comprised of a landscape of coversand ridges and lakes that flanked the northern part of the Scheldt river basin. This landscape was highly productive for hunter–gatherer populations. As the landscape developed in response to the increasing water table caused by the inundation of the North Sea populations responded by changing their forms of mobility and land use. These changes are indicated by the reduction in the number and density of sites, as well as their geographical settings, from the Late Glacial (Federmesser) and Early Mesolithic to the Middle-Final Mesolithic. Late Glacial/Early Mesolithic sites indicate much higher mobility comprised of rapid displacements of camps and re-occupation of the same coversand ridges over long time-spans. Middle/Late Mesolithic sites indicate a reduction in mobility, increasing focus on prolonged riverside settlement, and a more rigid organization of residential sites.     

Same island, different diet: Cultural evolution of food practice on Öland, Sweden, from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period

The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in north-west Europe has been described as rapid and uniform, entailing a swift shift from the use of marine and other wild resources to domesticated terrestrial resources. Here, we approach the when, what and how of this transition on a regional level, using empirical data from Öland, an island in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish east coast, and also monitor changes that occurred after the shift. Radiocarbon dating and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bones and teeth from 123 human individuals, along with faunal isotope data from 27 species, applying to nine sites on Öland and covering a time span from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period, demonstrate a great diversity in food practices, mainly governed by culture and independent of climatic changes. There was a marked dietary shift during the second half of the third millennium from a mixed marine diet to the use of exclusively terrestrial resources, interpreted as marking the large-scale introduction of farming. Contrary to previous claims, this took place at the end of the Neolithic and not at the onset. Our data also show that culturally induced dietary transitions occurred continuously throughout prehistory. The availability of high-resolution data on various levels, from intra-individual to inter-population, makes stable isotope analysis a powerful tool for studying the evolution of food practices.     

Testing the ‘Laacher See hypothesis’: a health hazard perspective

It has recently been suggested that the Laacher See volcanic eruption, which occurred around 13,000 years ago, initiated significant demographic fluctuations along the northern periphery of Late Glacial human settlement and that these led to a number of material culture transformations. The origins of the Southern Scandinavian Bromme culture and the northeastern European Perstunian culture as well as the temporary abandonment of Central European regions have been linked to this eruption. However, it remains unclear precisely which aspects of the eruption stimulated Late Glacial foragers to abandon their traditional ways of life. Paradoxically, the culture–historical impact of the eruption appears greater further away from the eruptive centre. Here, we investigate one potential middle-range link between the Laacher See eruption and Late Glacial fauna and foragers: tephra as a health hazard. We use laser-diffraction particle-size analysis to quantitatively investigate tephra from one site with a secure Late Glacial archaeological deposit. In addition, we use values previously reported in the literature and a predictive model to calculate the hazard potential along a transect of two of the three major Laacher See tephra fans. Our results show that the Laacher See tephra may have posed a potential health hazard and that its hazard potential may have increased with distance from the vent. To our knowledge this is the only study that attempts to quantify the changing grain-size composition of tephra fall-out longitudinally in this way, at least with regard to a prehistoric eruption. We close by discussing, more speculatively, other possible health-pertinent effects of the Laacher See eruption and suggest ways in which future work can further evaluate the impact of this eruption on Late Glacial populations.     

‘Everything is made of atoms’: the reprogramming of space and time in post-war London

From the middle of the Second World War until the early 1950s, architects, planners and designers in Britain made an unprecedented investment in reforming the built environment as a means to ensure a stable and secure post-war society. This essay considers the importance of movement, trajectory and repetition within this reconstruction vision and how the organisation of these things provided a basis for imagining a new form of consensual urban community. The essay begins by exploring how the County of London Plan (Abercrombie and Forshaw, 1943) and the Greater London Plan (Abercrombie, 1945) articulated a set of spatio-temporal logics, based on the prescribed trajectory of the individual embedded within a programme of quotidian repetitions. These logics suggested that urban space could be built to foreclose the possibility of historical conflict. The essay then explores the material design of two post-war exhibitions, Britain Can Make It (1946) and the Festival of Britain's South Bank Exhibition (1951), which offered visitors an experiential taster of what these new urban choreographies would feel like. To end, the essay explores the recurrent figure of the atom within post-war public pedagogy. Within this briefly ubiquitous mechanistic image lay an unacknowledged assurance about how hierarchical structures of movement and repetition sustained the material world, just as these things were being invoked to secure London's position across a range of scales from the local urban neighbourhood to the post-war Commonwealth.     

Non-destructive fabric analysis of prehistoric pottery using high-resolution X-ray microtomography: a pilot study on the late Mesolithic to Neolithic site Hamburg-Boberg

The characterisation of prehistoric pottery fragments presents a quite complex task. In provenance studies, petrographic and chemical analyses of the ceramic materials are employed to investigate potential production areas in respect to the geolocial background. Moreover, also the production technology of the firing process, as well as the forming techniques used by the prehistoric potters are of great interest. Their investigation is most often accompanied by a destructive preparation of the samples. In this paper, we want to present high-resolution X-ray microtomography (μ-CT), a non-destructive and non-invasive method, as a supplementary research tool in the study of prehistoric pottery.     

Molluscan calendars: The use of growth-line analysis to establish seasonality of shellfish collection at the Mesolithic site of Morton,Fife

The technique of growth-line analysis is used to examine seasonal growth patterns in modern specimens of the edible cockle, Cerastoderma edule L. The modern control work provides a basis for the interpretation of seasonal collection in archaeological cockles, and is applied to shells from the Mesolithic site of Morton, Fife. The seasonal use of the site is shown to be clearly related to site function.     

The uses and abuses of ‘secular religion’: Jules Monnerot's path from communism to fascism

From starting his intellectual career as a surrealist, communist and co-founder of the Collège de Sociologie in 1937, Jules Monnerot (1911–95) ended it as a candidate for the Front National in 1989. In this article I offer an explanation for the unexpected trajectory of this thinker whose work is little known in the English-speaking world. Without overlooking the idea that the infamous College encouraged such tendencies, I argue that the notion of ‘secular religion’, as Monnerot developed it in his Sociology of Communism (1949), goes some way to explain his gradual radicalization from Cold Warrior to fascist, a path that otherwise seems unlikely for a French intellectual after World War II. In order to emphasize the unusualness of Monnerot's case, I contrast it with that of his erstwhile collaborator, Georges Bataille. I show that accusations of fascism often levelled against Bataille should be more accurately directed at Monnerot, indeed that the fascism inherent within the College of Sociology was brought out not by Bataille but by Monnerot. Monnerot's case is unsettling first because his definition of ‘secular religion’ contributed to his pro-fascist stance; and second, because it forces us to rethink what is meant by ‘philosophy after Auschwitz.’ This term usually brings to mind scholars such as T.W. Adorno, Emil Fackenheim or Emmanuel Levinas. Monnerot provides a rare example of a thinker whose fascism only developed after the Holocaust, a shocking response that demands the attention of all those interested in the relationship between religion and politics.     

‘The car indispensable’: the hidden influence of the car in inter-war suburban London

Histories of suburban London underplay the importance of the car to inter-war mobilities; an emphasis on public transport has occluded our understanding of the role of motoring in the transformation of suburban life. This is in marked contrast to work on American suburbia that affords the car a prime role in suburban formation. This article uses information from dealer's sales records, motoring magazines and commentary on suburbia to examine the extent to which motoring was adopted by London's wider suburban middle classes in the inter-war years. It concludes that by the end of the 1930s, suburban motoring had highly heterogeneous levels of adoption, but, where it was popular, it changed mobility in a dramatic manner that prefigured wider developments of the late 1950s.     

The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

In the 1970s and 1980s, regional analysis was an influential part of archaeological research, providing a discrete set of geographical tools inspired by a processual epistemological and interpretive perspective. With the advent of new technologies, new methods, and new paradigms, archaeological research on regional space has undergone significant changes. This article reviews the state of regional archaeology, beginning with a consideration of its history and a discussion of the fundamental issues facing regional investigations before focusing on developments over the last several years. On one hand, the diversification of archaeological theory has created new paradigms for thinking about human relationships with one another and with the physical environment across regional space; in this regard, historical ecology, landscape archaeology, and evolutionary theory have been particularly influential in recent years. This has led to a corresponding diversification of the traditional methods of regional analysis. Most notably, the advent of powerful digital technologies has introduced new tools, especially those from the geographic information sciences, that build on the quantitative methods of past approaches. The investigation of regional data is no longer based on a discrete toolkit of simple mathematical and graphical procedures for representing spatial relationships. Instead, regional archaeology has matured into a diversity of multiscalar spatial and geostatistical techniques that inform many areas of archaeological inquiry.     

The fruits of migration: Understanding the ‘longue dureé’ and the socio-economic relations of the Early Transcaucasian Culture

The appearance of the Early Transcaucasian Culture (ETC) across large portions of the Near East in the 3rd millennium BC is commonly cited as one of the best archaeologically documented and broadly studied cases of a prehistoric migration. This study uses the ETC to develop a model of what happens when migrants move into regions that are already inhabited by emerging or complex societies. In particular, this study focuses on how immigrant populations can integrate themselves into indigenous communities in a physical, socio-political and economic sense, and how a migrant group’s identity can be constructed and maintained alongside these indigenous communities.     

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.     

Historical perspective: The British contribution to the understanding of neurocysticercosis

Neurocysticercosis, or brain infestation with the larval stage of Taenia solium, is the most common risk factor for epilepsy in many endemic regions of the world. Hardly any cases are seen in Western developed countries, including Britain. However, a sizeable number (n = 450) was seen among British soldiers returning from deputation to India, then a British colony, first reported by Col. MacArthur at the Queen Alexandria Military Hospital in 1931. Here, we review the influence of the perceptive observations of British Army medics on the understanding of the parasitic disorder. The majority of these people presented with epilepsy. Among the contributions of the army medics were establishing the diagnosis, initially by histological examination of subcutaneous and muscular infestation, and later by radiography, clarifying the prognosis and the role of medical and surgical treatments and uncovering the close relationship between the larval (cysticercosis) and adult (intestinal tapeworm) stages of T. solium.     

Using toponymy to reconstruct past land use: a case study of ‘brüsáda’ (burn) in southern Switzerland

Toponyms are frequently the outcome of a creative process, a subjective interpretation by the local inhabitants at the time of naming. They often survive changes in the local landscape, thus becoming historical documents of landscape dynamics or changes in land use. In this contribution we provide a systematic synchronic analysis of the toponym brüsáda (burn) in Canton Ticino. In total, 182 instances of place names containing brüsáda were recorded, of which 102 cases (56.0%) were localised. Based on oral information provided by the local people or on archival documents, it was possible to group the selected toponyms into different meaning classes such as burnt building, exposed sites, pasture-land and others without any indication (classified here as generic). On the basis of etymological, topographic, documentary, bibliographic, and historic evidence, as well as proxy-archives (such as charcoal in lake sediments), we hypothesise that most of the toponyms associated with pasture-land – and probably also a large portion of the generic toponyms – are directly or indirectly related to the habit of using fire to clear brushwood to improve pasture-land or to eliminate trees. In the study area, the practice of pasture-fires appears to have been a very well controlled and targeted activity in medieval times. In contrast, pasture-fires became very frequent and uncontrolled in the second half of the nineteenth century up until the Second World War. Our study confirms the usefulness and suitability of toponymy, in combination with other disciplines, for ecohistorical reconstructions of past environmental and land-use changes.     

The recognition of multiple spatial patterns: a case study from the French upper paleolithic

A pattern recognition approach to spatial analysis is applied to artifact distributions from the Magdalenian site of Pincevent, Section 36. Patterning is investigated using a κ-means cluster analysis that permits iterative mapping of artifact distributions at several scales of spatial complexity. Multiple scales of patterning are recognized in the Pincevent distributions. These patterns are assessed in terms of those discovered by the excavators through intensive visual inspection of the materials. Basic concordance is seen between these two approaches. Finally, the analysis detects more detailed patterning. A relationship between artifact abundance and location seems to hold constant throughout the site.     

Interpreting pachyderm single carcass sites in the African Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene record: A multidisciplinary approach to the site of Nadung’a 4 (Kenya)

Nadung’a 4 is one of the single carcass pachyderm sites recorded in East Africa during the Lower and Early Middle Pleistocene. The site has yielded an abundant lithic assemblage in close association with the partial carcass of an elephant. Conjoined pedological, geoarchaeological, spatial, technological, and taphonomical analyses have been carried out to address the relationship between hominids and elephant. The resulting data are consistent with a non-fortuitous association between both categories of remains. The lithic artefacts do not match a classical Acheulean tool-kit, as would be expected for the time period ascribed to the site, and the functional patterns inferred from their analysis make this site radically different from other purported butchery sites. The implications of these original features are discussed.     

Latitudinal variation in a photoperiod response gene in European barley: insight into the dynamics of agricultural spread from ‘historic’ specimens

Between ca. 6000 BC and ca. 500 BC, barley cultivation spread across the continent of Europe from the extreme south to the extreme north. Carbon-dating would suggest that this spread, and indeed the spread of crop cultivation generally, varied in its pace, with ‘delays’ at certain points along its route. Such delays in the spread of agriculture have been explained as resulting from the slow assimilation of agricultural practices by existing indigenous human populations or as the time taken for the crops to adapt to novel climatic conditions, such as altered temperature regimes and day-lengths. A mutant form of the photoperiod response gene, Ppd-H1, causes barley to be non-responsive to long days, while the wild-type responsive form allows plants to flower in response to long days. We sequenced this gene in 65 ‘historic’ barley accessions, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in order to explore the potential role of environmental adaptation in the spread of agriculture. We chose to use ‘historic’ material, to complement the richer patterns in extant genetic lines, by spreading the data range in both time and space. Our ‘historic’ barley data shows a latitudinal divide in the Ppd-H1 gene similar to that found in extant lines, but with clearer geographical resolution, and extending northwards into the Arctic Circle. We discuss the implications of our results in relation to the dynamics of agricultural spread across Europe.     

The transport amphorae of Gela: a multidisciplinary study on provenance and technological aspects

Mineralogical, petrographic and chemical analyses were performed on thirty-eight samples of transport amphorae found at Gela, an important Greek colony on the southern coast of Sicily. Based on macroscopic observation, the amphorae, which are datable between the second half of the 6th and the end of the 5th century B.C., were supposed to be local because of similarities to the common wares from the same site. Therefore, in order to verify the provenance of the samples, they were compared to a reference group of locally made ceramics (kiln spacers, kiln wasters, common wares, ancient mud bricks, modern bricks) and twelve samples of local clayey sediments. The results of the analyses have allowed the assignment of all the amphorae to Gela, with the exclusion of five samples, maybe produced in neighbouring sites, and to determine for the first time the archaeometric characteristics of the Geloan medium-coarse ceramics. The aim of our research has also been to investigate some technological aspects of this production, as the location of the clay sources, the methods of clay preparation, and, in particular, the causes of the typical whitening effect on the surface of the vessels.