ANOMALOUS CARBON-13 VALUES FOR FIBRE TEMPER IN CERAMICS*

Ceramic vessels from Later Stone Age sites in the Seacow river valley, South Africa, were heavily tempered with C4 grasses. However, most δ¹³C values of the temper fall between the known δ¹³C ranges for C4 and C3 grasses. Among possible C3 additives that could skew the signal, ground bone, animal dung, alpine grass, Karoo scrub ash, and humic acid contamination are eliminated. The sherd surfaces yield fatty chars with C3-like values. Although these are not enough to account for all the skewing, they represent only the final cooking event. They were preceded by many such events in which fat was absorbed into the C4 grass then charred to soot by later periods in the fire. Thus organic carbon with the isotope composition of the fat built up while the vessel remained in use.     

Oxygen and strontium isotope evidence for mobility in Roman Winchester

Artefacts and burial rites in the late Roman cemetery at Lankhills School, Winchester, southern England, were used by Clarke (1979) to distinguish between local Romano-British individuals and migrants thought to be from the Danube region, a suggestion tested through isotope analysis by Evans et al. (2006a,b). This paper reports strontium (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) and oxygen (δ¹⁸O) isotope data for tooth enamel sampled from a further 40 individuals from more recent excavations on the same site. Results suggest that up to a quarter of the sampled Lankhills individuals were incomers, with several individuals possibly originating from the Hungarian Basin and the Southern Mediterranean. However, there was no clear link between isotopic signature and archaeological origin attribution, suggesting that in many cases burial practice was dictated by factors other than ‘ethnicity’, such as kinship, marriage or cultural and political preferences.     

RADIOCARBON DATES FOR BEESWAX FIGURES IN THE PREHISTORIC ROCK ART OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages have been taken for a test suite of small samples of material removed from some of the ‘beeswax’art figures found in rock shelters in northern Australia. The results indicate that we can reliably date this unique form of rock art with no noticeable damage. We had not expected to find figures of any great antiquity, and so we were surprised to find that the ages obtained spanned the time period from the recent past to about 4000 BP.     

A MAGNETIC SURVEY OVER LA MAJA,AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE IN NORTHERN SPAIN

A Roman archaeological site in northern Spain (La Maja, province of La Rioja) includes pottery workshops, part of an important ceramic industry that developed from about the first century BC to the first century AD. A geophysical study was planned to determine the extent of the industrial complex in the vicinity of an excavated kiln. Magnetic observations were done on a grid of 30 × 36m, with a sampling interval of 1m. Two dipolar-shaped anomalies were found: one in the north-east and the other in the south-west of the area. Low-pass and band-pass filters were used in the Fourier domain to enhance the characteristics of the magnetic data and to remove noise and undesirable shallow features. Three-dimensional polygonal prisms were used to model the magnetic anomalies based on palaeomagnetic measurements performed over an uncovered kiln that helped to constrain the induced and remanent parameters of the magnetizing fields.     

A PILOT STUDY IN NON-CONTACT LASER PHOTOTHERMAL ARCHAEOMETRY OF ANCIENT STATUARY PEDESTAL STONES FROM CYPRUS

Several samples of geological stones from statuary pedestals found in various archaeological sites in Cyprus have been characterized using non-contact laser infrared photothermal radiometry. Thermal diffusivities and effective optical absorption coefficients were calculated using a one-dimensional thermal-wave model. The mean values and standard deviations were tabulated and comparisons were made with lithographic and petrographic studies of the samples. Good correlations were found, thus demonstrating that laser photothermal archaeometry is a promising methodology for the accurate, potentially non-destructive and convenient characterization of the origins of ancient stones in Cyprus and other geological and archaeological sites.