Recent Prehistoric Field Research in Central Tunisia: Prehistoric Occupations in the Meknassy Basin

Recent field prospection and test excavations in the Meknassy Basin (Central Tunisia) has revealed many prehistoric sites covering almost all the phases of North African prehistory from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. Excavations at the Aïn El-Guettar Mousterian site has yielded a faunal assemblage dominated by bovids and equids. One human tooth was found in situ. The stratigraphic sequence contains charcoal-rich occupation layers with faunal, human and lithic finds. A level with an industry resembling the Aterian was found beneath a Mousterian layer. The excavations at Aïn Oum Henda 2 (Jebel Maloussi) provided many Middle Palaeolithic lithic artefacts, some of which are pedunculates. From the excavations of the Rammadiya El Oghrab (Jebel Bou Hedma) we recovered some bones of antelope, many fragments of ostrich egg shell (among them a worked disc), an enormous quantity of flint (tools and splinters) and of land snails. In spite of the scarcity of land snails and the absence of bone in the rammadiya of Jebel Bou Hedma 1, the site produced a beautiful flint collection including an arrowhead found on the surface, which led us to place the site in the Neolithic.     

中原史前文化的优势--中国早期文明研究札记之一

解开华夏文明的锁钥仍然在中原史前文化中.中原史前文化的优势表现为较早地奠定了深厚的农业经济基础,并以之支撑起庞大的人口规模;向心状的聚落布局;以及先民对世俗性日常生活的关注.同时,还表现在中原地区的东西南北交汇之位、过渡之位和文化与环境的多样性之位.     

Evidence of Prehistoric Scalping at Vosberg,Central Arizona

Four crania recovered during the 1970 Arizona State University field school season at a prehistoric site in Vosberg, Arizona show parallel clusters of cut marks characteristic of scalping with a stone knife. These victims were identified during a general survey of the Vosberg skeletons for evidence of trauma and pathology. The discovery of these four victims in the same atypical burial context provides clues to the nature of the scalping custom in the American Southwest prior to European contact and brings the total number of prehistoric scalping victims reported from the Southwest to 15 individuals. Perimortem depressed fractures in two of the crania, and the presence of a stone arrow point within the chest of one of the skeletons, indicates that the scalping of these individuals was the result of violence rather than medicinal or ritual treatment.     

Patterns of Cranial Trauma in a Prehistoric Population from Central California

Evidence of cranial trauma was investigated in a skeletal sample from the site CA-Ala-329 located on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, Central California. The sample included 365 crania, including 134 adult males, 104 adult females, 22 adults of indeterminate sex and 105 subadults. Evidence of cranio-facial fracture was found in eight individuals, one of whom is an adolescent. Thus, the frequency in adult crania of traumatic injury is 7/260 (2.7 per cent). Of the seven individuals of known sex displaying such cranial trauma, all are male. The injuries are generally suggestive of some form of interpersonal aggression, with five healed vault fractures, one lesion with an embedded obsidian fragment (a probable projectile point) and two healed facial fractures. Further clear evidence of interpersonal aggression has been previously determined in this sample and has been reported at even higher levels elsewhere in California. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

关中地区史前动物考古学研究的几个问题

关中地区动物考古学研究起步较早,而且成果突出,如半坡遗址和姜寨遗址出土的动物遗存研究报告在我国动物考古学史上有着里程碑性的意义①.目前该地区已积累的动物考古学基础资料比较丰富,专门作过动物骨骼鉴定研究报告的史前遗址就有临潼白家村②、零口村③、姜寨④、康家⑤、西安半坡⑥、扶风案板⑦、宝鸡北首岭⑧、关桃园⑨、福临堡⑩等,这些材料涵括了本地史前文化发展的各个阶段.     

中原史前聚落分布与特征演化

中原地区的史前聚落有2000余处,有丘岗台地型、河谷阶梯型、平原台地型等几种.在不同的区域,聚落类型有所不同,大致可分为五大区域.以防御设施的有无为标准,中原史前聚落可分为初步发展期的聚落即少有防卫设施的聚落,快速发展期的聚落即环壕聚落以及嬗变期的聚落即城垣聚落群.     

大洪山南麓史前聚落调查-以石家河为中心

大洪山南麓发现的史前遗存不仅数量多、保存好,而且价值高、影响大,是国内外学界广泛关注的探讨中华文明进程的重要热点区域之一.2008年,通过大洪山南麓以石家河为中心的区域进行的系统调查显示,在约150平方公里的区域内集中分布73处史前遗址,我们选择文化堆积单纯的遗址作为基本参数分析聚落规模级差,进一步丰富了我们对于该区域聚落形成发展及变化的认识,并借此加深对大洪山南麓以石家河为中心的史前聚落的数量、规模、年代、文化内涵、分布及其关系等方面的认识,提供分析以石家河古城为核心的聚落形成与发展过程的基础性资料,进而推动该区域文明进程的研究.     

史前城址与中原地区中国古代文明中心地位的形成

２０世纪７０年代以来,中国境内史前时代城址陆续被发现,部分并经发掘。综合２０多年的发现,已知这批史前时代城址分别分布在黄河、长江两大流域,总数据不完全统计,达５０座左右。 由早期城址的大批发现及国外考古学理论的陆续被介绍而引发的关于早期城址的功能及其在中国古代文明发展中的地位的讨论十分热烈。本文也拟就这一问题,谈一点一得之见,并着重讨论在各地早期城址大批涌现的历史背景下中原地区中国古代文明中心地位的形成问题,以就教于识者。　　　　　　　　一 黄河流域发现的史前时代城址,仅就其分布地域而言,可以分作…     

Establishing the Prehistoric Cultural Sequence for the Lopburi Region, Central Thailand

This study comprises the first archaeologically-defined chronological and cultural sequence for central Thailand. Based on collaborative research between the Thai–Italian Lopburi Regional Archaeological Project and the Thai–American Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project, the results of excavations at seven pre- and protohistoric sites that witnessed three millennia of local cultural development, from the early second millennium BC onward, are synthesized herein. This study fills a significant gap in Thailand’s prehistory, also identifying important cultural interactions ranging into southern China and Vietnam that led to the formation during the second millennium BC of a ‘Southeast Asian Interaction Sphere’. This interaction sphere, at the close of the second millennium BC, facilitated the transmission of the knowledge of copper-base metallurgy from southern China into Thailand, where it reached the communities of the Lopburi Region who took advantage of their ore-rich environment. At the end of the first millennium BC, strong South Asian contacts emerge in Southeast Asia. Among this study’s salient contributions is the characterization of these critical prehistoric antecedents, which culminated in a process of localization of exogenous elements, usually termed ‘Indianization’. The impact of this dynamic process was initially felt in central Thailand in the late first millennium BC, leading over time to the rise there, by the mid first millennium AD, of one of Southeast Asia’s first ‘state-like’ entities.     

Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.     

2006-2013年良渚古城考古的主要收获

2006年以来对良渚古城遗址的考古调查、勘探与发掘,初步明确了古城内外的遗址布局、水系环境以及城墙的分布情况:古城的修建均有统一的规划,城墙充分利用自然地势整体、同时夯筑而成;城内分布有宫殿区、建筑基址和王、贵族墓地;城外的居住基址具有外廓城的性质;大型营建工程普遍运用草包泥堆筑工艺;西北部山系存在一个工程浩大的水利系统,既能削减山体的季节性洪峰,又可利用为运输通道.目前,考古部门已建立了遗址信息系统,并逐步完善了对古城内外布局和水利系统的认识.     

Prehistoric Foodways

Gilbert, Robert I., Jr., and James H. Mielke, eds. The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets. Orlando, Florida: Academic Press, 1985. xiv + 436 pp. including chapter bibliographies and index. $65.00 cloth.     

Prehistoric population history: from the Late Glacial to the Late Neolithic in Central and Northern Europe

Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates are used to make inferences about the history of population fluctuations from the Mesolithic to the late Neolithic for three countries in central and northern Europe: Germany, Poland and Denmark. Two different methods of summing the dates produce very similar overall patterns. The validity of the aggregate patterns is supported by a number of regional studies based on other lines of evidence. The dramatic rise in population associated with the arrival of farming in these areas that is visible in the date distributions is not surprising. Much more unexpected are the fluctuations during the course of the Neolithic, and especially the indications of a drop in population at the end of the LBK early Neolithic that lasted for nearly a millennium. Possible reasons for the pattern are discussed.     

我国史前玉鸟饰管窥

我国新石器时代晚期出现的玉鸟饰是对东方沿海和东南地区鸟崇拜传统的承袭和发展.这些玉鸟型饰有单体鸟型饰和组合型饰,亦即直接用玉制成鸟形饰或鸟与其他动物的组合型玉器,或将鸟纹和以鸟为部分构成单元的组合纹饰刻画其上.它们主要分布于良渚文化、龙山文化、石家河文化、红山文化以及凌家滩玉器中,既体现了各种文化不同的表现手法和特征,又表达了社会化人格化功能差异性与文化内涵的一致性.     

Prehistoric Investigations in Cantabrian Spain

Abstract

The rich Paleolithic record from Cantabrian Spain has long been interpreted in light of the phylogenetic, chronological scheme developed largely in the Périgord region of SW France, despite important differences in industries, environments, and faunas. This paper outlines the development of prehistoric research in Cantabria from its beginnings a century ago to the present, from the early work of establishing a regional chronology to the on-going attempts to understand and explain the changing regional adaptations of Pleistocene and early Post-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Cantabria is usually treated only in passing in syntheses of the prehistory of Western Europe, and its extensive literature is far less widely known than that of SW France. We hope in part to remedy the situation by providing a concise regional overview and an extensive bibliography of classic and modern references.

Preliminary conclusions from archaeological investigations and allied paleoenvironmental research by members of the La Riera Paleoecological Project are also discussed. The La Riera Project is an example of a modern, problem-oriented regional approach to the study of prehistoric human adaptation. It was designed to generate and test hypotheses about Late and Post-Pleistocene ecosystems in Cantabrian Spain. These hypotheses examine the relationships among habitat selection, site location, and climatic change, test for periodicity in prehistoric occupation, and examine patterns of covariance in artifact and faunal debris categories with the objective of isolating changes in adaptation recoverable from the 12,000 year record at the La Riera cave, and at other sites of comparable antiquity in the Cantabrian zone. Preliminary results define patterns of site-functional variation at La Riera related to prehistoric activity sets. These patterns appear to cut across the culture/stratigraphic units upon which much Upper Paleolithic research in western Europe is based.     

Afghanistan observed

Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. xvii + 378 pp. No price given.

Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. xi + 190 pp. US$25.00 (paper).

David B. Edwards, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. xviii + 306 pp. No price given.

J.L. Lee, The ‘Ancient Supremacy’: Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731–1901. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996. i + 695 pp. No price given.     

史前考古学中的术语问题

术语是学术研究中的一套具有自身特征的符号系统,术语的规范化是学术研究得以发展的重要前提。在我国的史前考古学界,这个问题不太受人重视,其结果便是近年来出现了一些不规范的术语,研究工作也出现了一些混乱的现象。本文呼吁学界重视史前考古学术语的规范化管理问题,认为这是学术研究规范化的一项基础工作。     

史前青铜冶铸业与中原早期国家形成的关系

黄河中下游、长江中下游和西辽河流域的史前文明化进程有着各自不同的演进道路,中原地区也不例外。由于史前中原社会缺乏制作高档奢侈品的原料和技术,贵族阶层的成长因此受到很大程度的限制。青铜冶铸技术的出现正适应了这一需求,对中原社会文明化进程产生了重要影响,是中原社会真正进入早期国家的关键性的推动力量。实际上,中原地区新石器时代文化的发展已经为青铜冶铸技术的传入和本土化奠定了基础。二里头文化青铜冶铸技术的出现和发展既是东西方文化交流的结果,更是中原社会文明化进程的内在需求。