Does size matter: the role and significance of cereal grains in the Indus civilization

Cereal grains play a pivotal role in the rise and character of the Indus civilization. Archaeologists have traditionally focused their attention on the large-grained crops of wheat and barley while often minimizing the importance of the smaller-grained millets. Both environmental and cultural variables influence crop selection in the past as well as today. This paper explores the role and significance of cereal grain size during the evolution of the Indus civilization.     

New data and new issues for the study of origin of rice agriculture in China

China was one of the major centers for the origin of agriculture in the world. The origins of agriculture in China, especially the origin of rice agriculture, made a significant contribution not only to the occurrence of Chinese civilization but also to the development of world history. Recently, the study on the origin of rice agriculture has attracted the attention of the academic community due to the dramatic development of archaeobotanical research in China. In recent years, the flotation technique has widely implemented in archaeological excavations in China. As the result, a tremendous amount of plant remains have been recovered from archaeological sites, including those much related to the study of early rice agriculture. The new data provide direct archaeological evidence for, and raise some new issues about, the origin of rice agriculture in China. For example, the rice remains from the Shangshan site, dated to ca. 10,000 cal. B.P., suggest the beginning of rice cultivation regardless of whether that rice was domesticated or not. The quantitative analysis of plant remains recovered by floatation from the Jiahu site, dated to ca. 8,000 cal. B.P., revealed that the subsistence of the Jiahu people mainly relied on fishing/hunting/gathering, while the products of rice cultivation and animal husbandry were only a supplement to their diet. The ongoing excavation, with floatation and water-sieving, at the Tianluoshan site, dated to 6,000 to 7,000 cal. B.P., suggests that rice farming, though important, was only part of a broader subsistence pattern of the Hemudu Culture, and rice domestication culminated after 6,500 B.P and the beginning of rice domestication remain unclear.     

Reconsidering Yeha,c. 800–400 BC

Yeha, in Tigray, is the most impressive site with evidence for South Arabian influence dating to the first millennium BC in the northern Horn of Africa (Eritrea and northern Ethiopia). The evidence from this site was used to identify a ‘Pre-Aksumite’ or ‘Ethiopian-Sabean’ Period (mid-first millennium BC) when an early Afro-Arabian state apparently arose in the region. A ‘Pre-Aksumite Culture’, characterised by South Arabian elements, was also suggested as a distinctive archaeological culture in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, recent fieldwork in these countries suggests that a Pre-Aksumite culture actually did not exist and South Arabian features were restricted to a few sites, which were scattered in a mosaic of different archaeological cultures in the first millennium BC. This hypothesis is tested through a comparison between the ceramics from Yeha and those from Matara and other sites of the first millennium BC in Tigray and Eritrea.     

New Light on the Development of Chalcolithic Metal Technology in the Southern Levant

Several decades after the discovery of the spectacular Nahal Mishmar Hoard (a collection of cast metal goods, some quite ornate, found in a cave high in the cliffs of the Judean Desert) many important questions about Chalcolithic metallurgy in the southern Levant remain unanswered. What is the origin of the materials used? Where were the final goods produced and what were the dynamics of production? In fact, new questions have also arisen as recent discoveries force us to reconsider previous interpretations of Chalcolithic metallurgy and the societies within which it evolved. Such will be the focus of this paper.     

New exposure of loess deposits in Boyanychi (Ukraine) — Results of thermoluminescence analyses

The loess site at Boynychi (the Volyn Upland) is of essential importance for the stratigraphy of Middle and Upper Pleistocene in Central Europe. The profile was recently dated by Fedorowicz and Prylypko in 2007 (parallel dating), and by Kusiak in 2009. The Upper Vistulian loesses are much thicker in the exposure from 2009 than in the earlier examined one (2007). The list of results obtained in the Gdańsk, Kiev and Lublin laboratories, respectively, can be divided in two. The first group contains the results obtained for the Horohiv and Korshiv pedocomplexes and for the loess from the penultimate glacial, which separates these pedocomplexes. The results from all laboratories are very similar and rather well describe the real age of dated deposits. The second group contains the widely differing results of dating of the Vistulian loesses. The TL ages obtained by Fedorowicz and Prylypko are considerably older than those obtained by Kusiak in the new exposure. The latter ones excellently correspond to the geologic-stratigraphic interpretation of the profile. Two incompatible series of TL dating results indicate that local variability of loess accumulation conditions in different stages of their formation may have resulted in incomplete luminescence zeroing of mineral material before deposition.