Cover it! The Protection of a Merovingian Burial Ground in Borgharen (Municipality of Maastricht), the Netherlands

A Merovingian burial ground in Borgharen was threatened by development. Plans however could be changed so the site could be preserved. The initial research however showed the bone material was at risk of severe degradation in the near future. In order to determine whether in situ preservation was feasible three campaigns were carried out. This led to the conclusion that the burial conditions were excellent and there was little risk that severe degradation will reduce archaeological information of the site over the coming decades. The remaining threat concerned illegal excavators with metal detectors and spades. To protect the site it was covered with a series of different materials to prevent the site from being looted.     

Comments on Bertil Hallert,photogrammetry and culture history. Discussion continued from NAR vol. 4, page 28

In archaeology experiment can be used both as a topic and as a research tool. In the former case, through identification of past experimental activities, we can obtain one of the indices of the social and cultural level. In the latter, experiment may help us in verifications of our hypotheses or in searching for facts that are so far unknown. This may take place in all spheres of archaeological procedure, thus not only in physical modelling of ancient technologies of production and in simulation of various economic and social processes—i.e. in the sense in which the contemporary concept of ‘experimental archaeology’ is usually delimited.     

Rethinking the Great Divide: Long‐Term Structural History and the Temporality of Event

The archaeology of time, in its current form, is problematic. Some recent studies have considered either the ‘event’ or the ‘structure’ as pivotal to experiencing temporality, yet this is at odds with those more detailed and theoretically‐explicit accounts of time, developed within related disciplines, which consider both as intrinsic and inseparable parts of this experience. Other archaeological studies regard event and structure as nested within a hierarchical scheme of interpretation. But these examples of time perspectivism, which are largely inspired by Braudel and the Annales School, lack any overall conception of temporality and divorce time from the social context within which it acquires meaning. Rather, the complexity of time, including the crucial relationship between memory and anticipation, is only grasped by a genealogical approach whereby interpretation is problem‐orientated. This is to focus on particular questions about the origin, reproduction and transformation of individual institutions, practices and material culture.     

Why foragers choose acorns before salmon: Storage,mobility, and risk in aboriginal California

Despite the enormous potential of anadromous fish, foragers do not mass extract and store salmonids until very late in the archaeological record of California. Acorns, by contrast, were intensively used quite early in the record. Salmon are traditionally viewed as a low cost, high ranking resource, and acorns as a high cost, low ranking resource. The question thus arises: why were salmon not used and stored en masse much earlier? We offer a solution using a simple foraging model that distinguishes resources on their storage as well as overall cost, making it possible to calculate the risk of resource caching, which appears to have delayed intensive salmon procurement in California.     

Policy Subsystems and Regimes: Organized Interests and Climate Change Policy

This research is an examination of the role of organized interests in international climate change policy formation. Systematic survey results are used to demonstrate that organized interests actually engage in the same activities in both the international and domestic arenas. This research demonstrates that the climate change negotiations can be characterized as both a policy subsystem and an international regime. It is further argued that these two concepts are in fact highly analogous, thereby facilitating new cross-discipline research opportunities. The research is based on a web survey of organized interests accredited by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and on interviews and field research at the 8th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in New Delhi, India.     

Structured light scanning for high-resolution documentation of in situ archaeological finds

Archaeologists strive to document the process of excavation and discovery as completely as possible. Over the past several decades archaeologists have incorporated a growing number of computerized techniques for documenting archaeological finds. Scanning is one such technique. There are a number of technologies that now allow archaeologists to scan structures, excavation surfaces and in situ artifacts to create high-resolution, 3D data sets. We report here on a trial application of one of these, a structured-light scanner, to create 3D representations of excavated surfaces and associated artifacts at two Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France. In each instance, surfaces of approximately 2.5 m² were scanned in approximately 1 day. The resulting data sets are very good representations of the originals in terms of colors and spatial details, and as such provided an important piece of archaeological documentation. To use this equipment successfully in the field, however, required solving a number of logistical issues, and the amount of time required to learn to use this equipment was significant. Once these issues are addressed, this technology is appropriate for documenting extraordinary, unique finds where time and costs are offset by the importance of good documentation.