Human remains from the Moravian Gravettian: morphology and taphonomy of additional elements from Dolní Vĕstonice II and Pavlov I

Zooarchaeological analysis of the earlier Mid Upper Paleolithic (MUP) (Pavlovian) assemblages from Dolní Vĕstonice II and Pavlov I, southern Moravia, have yielded 11 additional remains from Dolní Vĕstonice II (five of which may be associated) and 20 remains from Pavlov I (16 of which come from a pair of hands, Pavlov 31). These remains are those of early modern humans, albeit with a few generally archaic features. At least two of them represent very tall individuals, among the tallest known for the Upper Paleolithic. These remains also raise the question, previously posed, as to the nature of differential treatment of the dead among MUP humans, given the presence of ritual burials, isolated bones and (with Pavlov 31) selected associated anatomy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distribution and origin of organic matter in the Baltic Sea sediments dated with <Superscript>210</Superscript>Pb and <Superscript>137</Superscript>Cs

Organic carbon deposited in marine sediments is an important part of the global carbon cycle. The knowledge concerning the role of shelf seas (including the Baltic Sea) in the carbon cycle has increased substantially, however organic carbon accumulation rates in the Baltic sediments still require clarification.     

The application of the tree-ring chronologies in assessing ecological requirements of Metasequoia glyptostroboides growing in southern Poland

Metasequoia glyptostroboides is considered to be a species highly resistant to harmful environmental factors. For this reason it has been introduced to the cities. The climate of Krakow differs from that in its natural range in China. The research was focused on 40-year-old trees, planted in Kraków on fertile alluvial soils with a low level of ground water, in the vicinity of the steelworks. During the period of the highest level of air pollution in the 1970s and 1980s, the radial increment of investigated trees showed an increasing trend. At the end of the 1980s, when the emissions were reduced, a decreasing trend in radial growth was recorded. Throughout the entire period of their life the investi-gated trees have shown high homogeneity of short-term growth reactions. The sensitivity chronology of the trees was characterized by a high representativeness and a strong high-frequency signal. This may indicate that the investigated trees have shown a large sensitivity to climatic factors. The positive effect on the radial growth of Metasequoia had a cold September in the previous year, and also a cold January, April and May in the year of ring formation. Positive impact on the growth of trees had also the high precipitation occurring in April and August, as well as high air humidity in the spring of the year of ring formation. In the period 1974–2011 fifteen signature years were found. The analysis of the climatic conditions in these years confirms the results of the statistical analyses.     

Affective spaces,sensuous engagements: in quest of a synaesthetic approach to ‘dark memorials’

Although relatively recent, the concepts of ‘dark tourism’, ‘difficult heritage tourism’ and ‘Holocaust tourism’ have already been approached from historical, cultural, sociological, anthropological and managerial perspectives. The article offers a philosophical inquiry of ‘dark attractions’, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s work on aesthetics, with an aim of divorcing the term ‘dark tourism’ from its typically negative valance. It makes use of a synaesthetic understanding of experience and relies on an enlarged idea of perception conceptualised as a dynamic continuity between bodily/affective and intellectual cognitive faculties that are activated in the vibrant interaction with the architectural landscape of the ‘dark site’. The emphasis on immediate perception necessarily implies formulation of a concept of ‘affective aesthetics’ which refers to bodily process, a vital movement that triggers the subject’s passionate becoming-other, where ‘becoming’ stands for an intensive flow of affective (micro)perceptions. Such an approach sheds a different light on ‘Holocaust tourism’ and the ‘pleasures’ associated therewith, especially because it provides an explanation to a situation (common at many Holocaust memorials) when visitors are pleased, or positively affected, with representation/image/expression of sadness/atrocity. The synaesthetic operations of ‘dark attractions’ will be briefly illustrated with an example of the Holocaust memory site in Be??ec, Poland.     

ANIMAL HISTORY

This review reflects on animal history as a subfield of the discipline of history and presents its main arguments and future tasks. Its main goal is to identify the new research prospects and potentials proposed by the book edited by Susan Nance, The Historical Animal. These include such topics as the problem of “the animal's point of view,” animal agency (animals understood as “historical” agents and actors), the problem of identifying traces of animal actions in “anthropocentric” archives and searching for new historical sources (including animals’ testimonies). It also explores methodological difficulties, especially with the idea of the historicization of animals and the possible merger of the humanities and social sciences with the natural and life sciences. The review considers how studying animals forces scholars to rethink to its foundations history as a discipline. It claims that the most progressive proposals are coming from scholars (many of whom are historians) who advocate radical interdisciplinarity. The authors are not only interested in merging history with specific sciences (such as animal psychology, ecology, ethology, evolutionary biology, and zoology), but also question basic assumptions of the discipline: the epistemic authority claimed by historians for building knowledge of the past as well as the human epistemic authority for creating such knowledge. In this context several questions emerge: can we achieve “interspecies competence” (Erica Fudge's term) for creating a multispecies knowledge of the past? Can research on animals’ perception of change help us to develop nonhistorical approaches to the past? Can we imagine accounts of the past based on multispecies co‐authorship?     

A Mid Upper Palaeolithic Child Burial from Borsuka Cave (Southern Poland)

During the excavation in the Borsuka Cave site (southern Poland), extraordinary materials were obtained for the study of the Mid Upper Palaeolithic (MUP) settlement in the region. In layer VI, six deciduous teeth of a modern Homo sapiens infant were discovered together with 112 pendants made from the teeth of European elk and steppe wisent or aurochs. The teeth appear to belong to a 12‐ to 18‐month‐old child. The sex of the child cannot be determined. Diagnostic features of the teeth and the fact that they all represent the same developmental phase suggest that they belong to a single individual. In this paper, we put forward a number of alternative explanations for why only a child's teeth and numerous pendants were deposited in the late Pleistocene sediments of Borsuka Cave, for example, natural factors (carnivore activity), human habitation, existence of a pendant workshop in the vicinity of the cave and intentional burial. Although no traces of a burial pit were encountered, intentional burial, the oldest known from Poland, is indicated by the presence of human remains together with numerous ornaments and absence of ‘domestic’ finds, such as lithic cores, debitage and tools. An unusual presence of a larger number of pierced teeth of large herbivores in a child burial is noticeable among assorted mortuary practices recorded in MUP Central Europe. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preservation of bird bones: erosion versus digestion by owls

Surface damage to bird bones from pellets of three species of owls (S. aluco, A. otus and B. bubo) was compared with that of bird bones exposed to weathering and soil corrosion (Záskogo Cave in the Western Balkan Mountains, Bulgaria and Ciemna Cave, southern Poland). Scanning electron microscopy and light microscope examinations indicate that the effects of weathering of bird bones (extensive pitting and flaking away on whole bones, holes with sharp edges, depressions with rough bottoms and sharp edges of breakage) are distinguishable from those of digestion (rounding of hole edges on articular ends and sometimes on shafts, rounding of breakage). However, soil corrosion may produce similar rounding to that of digestion, which may hamper taphonomic interpretations of fossil assemblages. Two stages of weathering in bird bone are distinguished. Generally, the kind of damage done to bird bones is similar to that done to mammalian remains. Taphonomic studies of fossil bird remains should take into account a combination of features, including surface damage, fragmentation and possible chemical alterations of bone tissues. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.