NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS OF AD 1660–1930 EUROPEAN COPPER-COLOURED BLUE GLASS TRADE BEADS FROM ONTARIO,CANADA

Blue glass trade beads from well-dated late seventeenth- to early twentieth-century sites and collections have been analysed non-destructively by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The beads display enough variations in their elemental contents to allow us to characterize the different chemistries. The implication of these results is that similar chemical analyses of blue beads from undated archaeological sites may be used to help date the sites, since each bead chemistry has a specific earliest period.     

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF COPPER ALLOY TRADE METAL FROM A POST-CONTACT HURON SITE IN ONTARIO,CANADA

Fifty-three copper-based metal fragments, recovered from the Robitaille site in southcentral Ontario, were analysed by neutron activation to establish their chemical make-up and to sort them by their trace elemental chemistries. Three different European copper samples, one brassy copper and 48 brass samples with five different chemistries were found. As few as eight trading actions may account for all of the recovered European metal fragments.     

THE POSSIBLE FRACTIONATION OF LEAD ISOTOPES IN ANCIENT METALLURGICAL PROCESSES

The possibility of lead isotope fractionation in ancient lead production is examined. Kinetic theory relating to isotopic fractionation in non-equilibrium evaporation is considered and the feasibility of the alteration of lead isotope abundance ratios in ore roasting and smelting is assessed. Previous experimental work is shown to have been inconclusive and conclusions are drawn on the need for further research to quantify the possible extent of fractionation in practice.     

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 NOTE ON REAL WAGE RIGIDITY AND STATE UNEMPLOYMENT RATES*

ABSTRACT This paper extends the research of Hyclak and Johnes (1989) in analyzing the relationship between the rigidity in real wages and state unemployment rates. It presents evidence contrary to the empirical findings of Hyclak and Johnes in that measures of real wage rigidity are not robust over time in explaining changes in state unemployment rates. Moreover, an alternative proxy accounting for divergent growth patterns across states does not significantly affect changes in state unemployment rates.     

Anatomy,behavior, and modern human origins

The fossil record suggests that modern human morphology evolved in Africa between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago, when the sole inhabitants of Eurasia were the Neanderthals and other equally nonmodern people. However, the earliest modern or near-modern Africans were behaviorally (archaeologically) indistinguishable from their nonmodern, Eurasian contemporaries, and it was only around 50,000-40,000 years ago that a major behavioral difference developed. Archaeological indications of this difference include the oldest indisputable ornaments (or art broadly understood); the oldest evidence for routine use of bone, ivory, and shell to produce formal (standardized) artifacts; greatly accelerated variation in stone artifact assemblages through time and space; and hunting-gathering innovations that promoted significantly larger populations. As a complex, the novel traits imply fully modern cognitive and communicative abilities, or more succinctly, the fully modern capacity for Culture. The competitive advantage of this capacity is obvious, and preliminary dates suggest that it appeared in Africa about 50,000 years ago and then successively in western Asia, eastern Europe, and western Europe, in keeping with an African origin. Arguably, the development of modern behavior depended on a neural change broadly like those that accompanied yet earlier archaeologically detectable behavioral advances. This explanation is problematic, however, because the putative change was in brain organization, not size, and fossil skulls provide little or no secure evidence for brain structure. Other potential objections to a neural advance in Africa 50,000-40,000 years ago or to the wider Out-of-Africa hypothesis, include archaeological evidence (1) that some Neanderthals were actually capable of fully modern behavior and (2) that some Africans were behaviorally modern more than 90,000 years ago.     

Experimental Boat and Ship Archaeology: Principles and Methods

The need for experiments to study physical aspects of craft of the past is stated, as well as the necessity for them to have clear aims and to follow the established principles of scientific enquiry. These principles are discussed in this joint paper by ten maritime archaeologists and others, together with methods and some points of management critical to their application in this field.     

Patterns of exchange and the social production of pigs in highland new guinea: Their relevance to questions about the origins and evolution of agriculture

In recent years, cultural anthropologists have made notable progress in understanding the bewildering variety of material exchange transactions found among the aboriginal populations of highland New Guinea. One of the major findings of this work is that competitive exchange behavior may bring in its wake alterations in agronomic practices involving an intensification of production. That intensification is primarily a product of social behavior, rather than an adaptation to climate change or population pressure, is a significant conclusion that should influence the thinking of archaeologists as they investigate past episodes of agronomic change, including the origins of agriculture.