LANDSCAPE AS A SUBJECT OF HUMAN IMPACT

A continuing critique of the Soviet school of anthropogenic landscape science (see Soviet Geography, October 1974) questions whether man is, in fact, capable of creating “new” landscapes or his intervention in the natural environment simply tends to “modify” existing natural landscapes. The author rejects the view that significant modification of anyone of the components of landscape (including flora and fauna) is sufficient to produce an anthropogenic landscape or that a cutover forest area or a cattle trail, for example, represents a newly created landscape. A genuine modification of landscape requires an alteration of the basic structure of landscape, and this can be achieved only through modification of primary landscape components, such as the geomorphic foundation and climate. These are precisely the components that are less susceptible to human intervention than secondary components like plant and animal communities. Another criterion of basic landscape modification is stability; most anthropogenic landscapes turn out to be unstable when abandoned. Man achieves the most stable results in landscape modification by acting in concert with natural dynamic tendencies in the landscape.     

A DEFENSE OF ANTHROPOGENIC LANDSCAPE SCIENCE

A founder of the Soviet school of anthropogenic landscape science defends the discipline against charges that it ignores the fundamentals of geographic landscape theory and confuses anthropogenic landscapes with types of land use and engineering structures. The development of a separate anthropogenic approach in landscape science is justified on the ground that maninduced landscapes, such as cropland, pasture, vineyards, secondary forest, reservoirs, open pits and spoil banks play an increasing role in the environment and require separate investigation. Anthropogenic landscapes, far from being counterposed to natural landscapes, are treated as a distinctive genetic group of landscapes that owe their origin to human interference, but follow natural laws of development. Anthropogenic landscape science is said to be concerned with the physical-geographic and ecological aspects of human impact on the environment, while the study of types of land use focuses on the technology and economic benefit of such impact. [For previous translations on the issue, see Soviet Geography, October 1974 and December 1975.]     

One for the master and one for the dame: stable isotope investigations of Iron Age animal husbandry in the Danebury Environs

Stevens et al. (Oxford J Archaeol 29: 407–428, 2010) speculated that the extensive faunal intra-population isotopic variability at Danebury hillfort was due to the animals being husbanded within various ecological isozones (i.e. microenvironments with distinct natural or anthropogenic isotopic baselines) within the Danebury Environs, and subsequently brought to the hillfort. We test this hypothesis through isotopic analysis of 357 animals from five sites in the Danebury Environs (Suddern Farm, Nettlebank Copse, Houghton Down, New Buildings, Bury Hill). Our results demonstrate that the hypothesis is incorrect as the Environs animals also exhibited extensive intra-site isotopic variability. The observed patterns require considerable human management of herds and flocks, either through animal droving over long distances, or movement restriction through personal attendance or penning/corralling within a landscape containing a mosaic of isozones. Large-scale importation of animals to the Danebury sites from distant regions that have different isotopic baseline values is possible. However, the practical requirements of this model (i.e. long distance trade networks maintained in terms of frequency, proportion and source of animals over 500 years) make this improbable. Rather, we propose a model that includes distinct ecological isozones within the Danebury Environs landscape, with some animals from each of the sites consuming foodstuff from different isozones for most of their lives. This likely involves control of the landscape on a communal probably kinship basis, with individuals having access to certain parts of the landscape at certain times. The landscape could be seen as being made up of numerous interlocking activity-territories, defined in both space and time, remembered and inherited. Irrespective of which model proves to be the most accurate, these results paint a picture of complex land management during the Iron Age.     

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.     

Diversity in foddering strategy and herd management in late Bronze Age Britain: An isotopic investigation of pigs and other fauna from two midden sites

Abstract

Middens of the southern British late Bronze and Iron Age are vast accumulations of cultural debris that can be explained as refuse dumps linked with large periodic feasting events. A distinctive feature of these sites is that their faunal assemblages invariably comprise a considerably higher proportion of pig remains than contemporaneous settlement sites. This paper presents results from a programme of stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope analysis of fauna from two major midden sites, Llanmaes in South Wales and Potterne in Wiltshire. The research aim is to reconstruct husbandry strategies and foddering regimes, particularly concerning pigs, to better understand how the challenges of raising large herds were met. Analysis produced exceptionally wide-ranging results for pigs and other domesticates at both sites, particularly in terms of δ¹⁵N values, demonstrating that diverse foddering strategies were employed. Diversity in the late Bronze Age pig foddering regimes indicates that the Neolithic husbandry practices (focusing on woodland fodder) had not been abandoned, but that new husbandry methods (consumption of household waste) were also being practised, which subsequently became more widely established in the Iron Age. The heterogeneity of signatures suggests that animals may have been husbanded in a piecemeal fashion at a local, household level. This in turn hints that fauna may have been brought to these sites from households across the surrounding landscape, rather than being husbanded by specialist producers in the vicinity of the middens.     

On the So-Called Anthropogenic Landscapes

A Leningrad physical geographer, who is an advocate of the natural landscape school in Soviet geography, offers a critique of the school of anthropogenic landscape science favored by F. N. Mil'kov of Voronezh University and others. Landscapes, in the critic's view, are natural formations produced by physical cause-and-effect relationships among their natural components, and no basis is found for the development of a theory of anthropogenic landscapes that reflect the impact of human activity and minimize the role of natural elements. The author questions whether man is in fact capable of creating landscape in the literal sense and whether this can be accomplished by merely modifying a single natural landscape component. Further investigation is urged to establish the real role of engineering structures and agricultural activities in the landscape and their place within the system of natural linkages within the landscape. This line of investigation should then lead to study of the structure of landscapes that have been modified by man and to an understanding of a sequence of landscape succession, including man-induced and reconstructed variants.     

Iron Age Landscapes of the Benue River Valley,Cameroon

The Iron Age settlements of northern Cameroon were dispersed across the landscape, taking advantage of different eco-climatic zones to exploit a variety of natural resources. Situated at the interface of the upper and lower terraces of the Benue River, mound sites in the area around Garoua have occupation histories spanning multiple centuries. The site of Langui-Tchéboua displays evidence for rapid accumulation of sediments approximately 700 years ago, which may have been a deliberate construction strategy that would have allowed the site’s inhabitants to exploit resources in both floodplain and dryland contexts. The combined use of multiple dating methods and micromorphology provide novel insights into both the mechanisms of anthropogenic landscape change and possible motivations governing those choices.     

Archaeobotanical inference of Bronze Age land use and land cover in the eastern Mediterranean

Charcoal and charred seeds at five Bronze Age archaeological sites discern ancient land use in the eastern Mediterranean. Seed frequencies of orchard crops, annual cereals and pulses, and wild or weedy plants are used to characterize plant utilization at different archaeological sites on the island of Cyprus, in the Rift Valley of Jordan, and in the Jabbul Plain and along the upper Euphrates River valley in Syria. Seed to charcoal ratios provide proxies to determine the relative usage of dung versus wood for fuel across the ancient Mediterranean landscape. Greater charcoal and lower charred seed values are interpreted to represent a wooded environment, while higher amounts of charred seeds and minimal wood charcoal suggest a much great use of dung as a fuel source. Interestingly, Politiko-Troullia (Cyprus, Cypriot archaeological sites are, by convention, named for the nearest modern village (Politiko), followed by an italicized toponym (Troullia) referring to the plot of land that incorporates the site) has the lowest seed to charcoal ratio, suggesting its residents primarily burned wood and that the landscape surrounding Troullia remained relatively wooded during the Bronze Age. In contrast, villagers at Tell el-Hayyat (Jordan) utilized a mixture of wood and dung, in contrast to Tell Abu en-Ni’aj (Jordan), and especially Umm el-Marra and Tell es-Sweyhat (Syria), where inhabitants relied solely on dung fuel. Comparative analysis and interpretation of seed and charcoal evidence thus illustrates the variety of fuel use strategies necessitated by the dynamic and diverse Bronze Age landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean.     

The role of time-lapse bathymetric surveys in assessing morphological change at shipwreck sites

Data from time-lapse single-beam and multi-beam bathymetric surveys are used to assess the rate and scale of morphological change at shipwreck sites caused by anthropogenic forcing. The technique is illustrated by characterizing changes in wreck site morphology over two sites located on the east coast of Ireland – the Drogheda Boat site on the River Boyne and the Arklow Bank site in the Irish Sea. Results indicate that repeated bathymetric surveys accurately and rapidly capture morphological change, with time-lapse accretion–erosion models indicating possible erosion rates of up to 0.04 m per day and accretion rates of 0.36 m per day at dynamic riverine and marine sites in response to external triggers. These data are valuable in understanding site formation processes at fully submerged archaeological sites and in the derivation of high-resolution site formation models.     

L'expansion occidentale dans le Levant: Les Vénitiens á acre dans la seconde moitié du treiziéme siécle

This case-study is the first attempt to examine a commercial outpost in the Crusader Levant within the context of the commercial and colonial expansion of its mother-city and in direct relation to its particular features. The Venetian quarter in Acre in the second half of the thirteenth century provided the physical setting for the exercise of authority by the state and a solid base for the expansion of its dominion. The Venetian administration there implemented the strict regulation of commerce and shipping enacted in Venice in this period, including several rules stemming from the particular needs of Acre. Various families of settlers from Venice, nobles as well as popolani, can be traced for several generations; the grant of Venetian status to natives of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, Latins oriental Christians, and Jews, enlarged the size of the Venetian population in Acre. The fate of the refugees who escaped from the city in 1291 is the last topic to be examined.     

Quebrada Tacahuay,Southern Peru: A Late Pleistocene Site Preserved by a Debris Flow

Abstract

Here we describe the properties of a debris flow apparently generated by a warm phase El Niño event that buried an intermittently occupied Late Pleistocene forager site located in the southern coastal desert of Peru. Although the event deposited roughly one meter of sediment over the initial occupation, our analyses of debris flow dynamics and data from large scale archaeological investigations indicate that the earliest anthropogenic deposits at the site of Quebrada Tacahuay were preserved intact as a result of the burial episode; there is no evidence that the debris flow scoured or disturbed the cultural deposits. The event that buried the oldest archaeological contexts at Quebrada Tacahuay differs from other flood events that are characterized by turbulent, fast-moving floodwaters. Our data on debris flow dynamics and our results from excavation have implications for identifying, investigating, and interpreting other deeply buried archaeological sites both in the central Andes and in other geographic regions.     

Visible Archaeological Remains in Towns and Parks

This paper relates a specific and professional understanding of the nature of archaeological sites to management needs and approaches. It focuses on how the nature of the resource itself relates to a system of valuation, conservation and preservation. The perspective taken is that of the contribution of landscape planning to the development of tourism and heritage management. One of the central aims is to explain the visual values of archaeological remains in the landscape, relating them to the different measures of preservation available for archaeological sites. Examples are included from Latvia and other European countries.     

The hunted hunter: the capture of a lion (Panthera leo fossilis) at the Gran Dolina site,Sierra de Atapuerca,Spain

Many Pleistocene caves and rock shelters contain evidence of carnivore and human activities. For this reason, it is common to recover at these sites faunal remains left by both biological agents. In order to explain the role that carnivores play at the archaeological sites it is necessary to analyse several elements, such as the taxonomical and skeletal representation, the age profiles, the ratio of NISP to MNI, the anthropogenic processing marks on the carcasses (location and purpose of cutmarks and burning and bone breakage patterns), carnivore damage (digested bones, location and frequencies of toothmarks and bone breakage), length of the long bones, frequencies of coprolites and vertical distribution of the faunal remains, inter alia. From this, the documentation of carnivores in a faunal assemblage with a clear anthropogenic component can be understood from three main phenomena: (1) the carnivores as accumulators and the use of the site as a den; (2) carnivores as scavengers of hominid refuse and; (3) carnivores as hominids’ prey. Of these three phenomena, the last one is the least documented at the Middle Pleistocene sites. From this perspective, here we present the case of the anthropogenic use of a lion (Panthera leo fossilis) from level TD10-1 of Gran Dolina (MIS 9, Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). The lion bone remains show signs of direct interaction between this big cat and human groups that occupied Gran Dolina in these chronologies. From this perspective, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge of the role developed by large carnivores in the anthropogenic contexts and to provide data on human use of these predators at the European Middle Pleistocene sites.     

Cartographical evidence of efforts to develop Acre during the last decades of Ottoman rule: did the Ottomans neglect the city?

Using dozens of Ottoman maps from the Central Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, the article challenges the prevailing standpoint regarding the historical-geographic process that took place on both sides of the Bay of Acre/haifa during the last decades of the Ottoman period, and led to Haifa’s emergence as one of the most important port towns in the eastern Mediterranean, and concomitantly to Acre’s demise and negligence. To date, the few researchers who have dealt with this process, especially from the viewpoint of Haifa’s local history, have viewed the Ottoman regime as a passive force that did not act to preserve the status or economic strength of Acre, the regional headquarters, the province’s capital city and the region’s most important town for many years. We argue that the central Ottoman government in Istanbul did not perceive the process of Acre’s demise and Haifa’s rise as a deterministic process. Official Ottoman maps drawn at the request of the imperial centre as early as the 1880s show that plans existed to develop Acre and its region. These plans, even if only partially implemented, would have clearly contributed to preserving Acre’s status over Haifa. The Ottomans attempted to preserve the geo-strategic status of Acre and its importance and made plans to upgrade various infrastructures in the town’s vicinity, which might have changed processes related to physical conditions and powerful technological advances. This approach, which is based on the belief in the human ability to confront and deal with deterministic geographic and physical conditions, seems to have been the foundation of Ottoman planning in the case of Acre. The Ottomans’ capacity to implement these plans was very limited, however, and they eventually had to acknowledge this reality. Thus, Acre was reduced to its formal status as the capital of an Ottoman administrative district until the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine. In a way, its fate was not very different from that of other traditional centres of Ottoman rule along the eastern Mediterranean coast, whose importance diminished at that time, while new centres that were more cosmopolitan and connected to developments overseas came to power.     

Archaeology of middle Pleistocene lacustrine and spring paleoenvironments in the Kapthurin Formation,Kenya

A number of key events occur in Africa during the middle Pleistocene including the disappearance of the Acheulian, the appearance of the Middle Stone Age, and the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. However, little is known about either the fossil or behavioral record for this critical time period. Excavation was undertaken at two middle Pleistocene archaeological sites, GnJh 42 and GnJh 50. These sites are located in close proximity to a large fresh water spring, a focal point on the landscape that supported a diverse plant and animal community. The lithic assemblages are dominated by flakes and cores, and lack all formal tools. However, the oldest evidence for systematic blade production can be found at these sites, indicating that important technological innovations were appearing at this time. Tendency to focus on the presence or absence of formal tools, means that assemblages of this age, lacking diagnostic artifacts, are typically subsumed within the Acheulian technocomplex. This practice disguises actual patterns of innovation and technological evolution. It is critical not to overlook this, as small-scale technological innovation allowed for more behavioral flexibility in response to rapid environmental change in a arid, mosaic environment.     

Archaeology and in situ Preservation in Canton Thurgau,Switzerland

Canton Thurgau (approximately 1000 km²) is situated in the north-east of Switzerland. Its diverse landscape is notable for its hills, the Thur Valley, and Lake Constance. The Archaeology Department of Canton Thurgau is responsible for its archaeology. The archaeological map is quite complete and has over one thousand sites, ranging from the Palaeolithic to post-medieval periods. Particularly remarkable are the prehistoric lakeside dwellings (among them, four UNESCO World Heritage Sites) and the Roman sites, some of which have extraordinarily good conditions for preservation. The vicus Tasgetium (Eschenz) has produced one of the largest collections of Roman wooden objects and features found anywhere in the world. The Archaeology Department of Canton Thurgau conducts field surveys, excavations and scientific research. Its collections and archive are also of great importance. A major goal is to preserve the numerous sites of the canton in situ. In sensitive shore areas, where erosion (wave action, shipping etc.) threatens the exposed prehistoric cultural layers of the pile dwellings, measures are being taken to cover the areas and keep destruction at bay. These interventions are accompanied by monitoring. But numerous Roman and medieval ruins have also been restored according to the latest standards and thus prevented from gradual destruction. Thanks to zoning plans and a close working relationship with the local authorities, timely intervention can take place when sites are threatened. The results of the archaeological research are conveyed to the public and professional circles through the Museum for Archaeology and by way of popular and subject-specific publications.     

Akko 1 shipwreck: the effect of cannon fire on the wooden hull

The Akko 1 shipwreck was discovered inside the harbour of the old walled city of Akko (Acre, St. Jean d'Acre, Akka), Israel. The ship's hull was built mainly of oak, with closely-set framing timbers that created a solid side. The shipwreck was apparently a result of the naval bombardment of the town in 1840.     

New radiometric dates for precolumbian (2000–700 b.p.) earthworks in western Amazonia,Brazil

Abstract

In this paper we present new data on the precolumbian geometric ditched enclosures identified in Acre State, western Amazonia, Brazil. Remote sensing and ground survey have revealed 281 earthworks, located mainly on the edges of high plateaus overlooking the river valleys drained by the southeastern tributaries of the Upper Purus River. Excavations have shown that the few existing cultural materials are concentrated on the slopes and in the bottoms of the ditches, as well as on small mounds that were likely remains of houses, whereas the central, flat enclosed areas lack major archaeological features. New radiocarbon dates place the initial stage of earthwork construction as early as ca. 2000 b.p. We suggest that the building of these geometric earthworks may have been a regionally shared phenomenon, especially among the Arawak and the Tacana peoples, who used them for special gatherings, religious activities, and, in some cases, as village sites.     

In a nutshell: the identification and archaeological application of experimentally defined correlates of Macrozamia seed processing

This paper describes the methods and results of ethnographically-based replicative seed processing experiments conducted on Australian Macrozamia moorei seeds. Archaeological evidence indicates that these seeds were consumed by Australian hunter–gatherers in both the Pleistocene and Holocene. The experiments identified three features indicative of human processing and tested the effect of different processing variables (striking position, indentor type, thermal modification and presence of outer flesh) on the frequency of these diagnostic criteria. The results demonstrate that it is possible to use the physical modifications on individual seed specimens to identify the anthropogenic fracture of seeds and specific methods used to process them. These criteria were used in the analysis of M. moorei seeds from mid-Holocene-aged archaeological sites in central Queensland, Australia. The results indicate that seeds with and without sarcotesta were processed using a wooden indentor via side striking techniques.