Environment and collapse: Eastern Anatolian obsidians at Urkesh (Tell Mozan,Syria) and the third-millennium Mesopotamian urban crisis

The Early to Middle Bronze Age transition in Northern Mesopotamia has received great attention for the apparent concurrence of aridification, deurbanisation, and the end of the Akkadian empire around 2200 BCE. Our understanding of the “crisis” has been almost exclusively shaped by ceramics, demography, and subsistence. Exchange and the associated social networks have been largely neglected. Here we report our sourcing results for 97 obsidian artefacts from Urkesh, a large urban settlement inhabited throughout the crisis. Before the crisis, six obsidian sources located in Eastern Anatolia are represented among the artefacts. Such a diversity of Eastern Anatolian obsidians at one site is hitherto unknown in Mesopotamia. It implies Urkesh was a cosmopolitan city with diverse visitors or visitors with diverse itineraries. During this crisis, however, obsidians came from only two of the closest sources. Two to three centuries passed before varied obsidians reappeared. Even when an obsidian source reappears, the raw material seems to have come from a different collection spot. We discuss the likely exchange mechanisms and related social networks responsible for the arrival of obsidians at Urkesh and how they might have changed in response to climatic perturbations and regional government collapse.     

From flow to quarry: magnetic properties of obsidian and changing the scale of archaeological sourcing

Previous studies have endeavored to use petrophysical traits of obsidian, particularly its magnetic properties, as an alternative to conventional geochemical sourcing, one of the greatest successes in archaeological science. Magnetic approaches, however, have not seen widespread application due to their mixed successes. In a time when geochemical analyses can be conducted non-destructively, in the field, and in a minute or two, magnetic measurements of obsidian must offer novel archaeological insights to be worthwhile, not merely act as a less successful version of geochemistry. To this end, we report the findings of our large-scale study of obsidian magnetism, which includes 734 geological obsidian specimens and 97 artifacts measured for six simple magnetic parameters. Based on our results, we propose, rather than using magnetic properties to source artifacts to a particular obsidian flow (inter-flow sourcing), these properties are best used to differentiate quarrying sites within an individual flow (intra-flow sourcing). Our results also demonstrate that certain magnetic properties are highly affected by ancient knappers' material selection criteria. Furthermore, depending on the spatial scales of variation, which likely vary from flow to flow, we envision several potential applications of this approach, including integration into minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA). Magnetic data appear to shift the scale of obsidian sourcing from flows to quarries and, in turn, enable new insights into raw-material procurement strategies, group mobility, lithic technology, and the organization of space and production.     

Identification of Suspected Horn from the Queen Anne's Revenge (1718), North Carolina,USA

Infrared spectroscopy can be a valuable tool for conservators and archaeologists to help identify archaeological artefacts. We present a case‐study on the identification of an artefact recovered by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR) Underwater Archaeology Branch from an early‐18th‐century shipwreck (31CR314). The wreck is assumed to be the remains of Queen Anne's Revenge, which sank off the North Carolina coast in 1718. A sample of the artefact was analysed by infrared spectroscopy to identify it. Prior to spectroscopic analysis it was speculated that the sample could be animal horn or leather. © 2011 The Authors     

On Behavioral Depression in White-tailed Deer

Behavioral depression is a decline in prey availability because of enhanced alert response, movement away from areas, increased social behavior, and other responses to predators. This form of resource depression is an alternative hypothesis to be contrasted to over-exploitation that potentially explains a decrease in hunting efficiency over time should the zooarchaeologist observe a decline in the relative abundance of remains of high-rank prey. Gregarious ungulates, such as many North American cervids, may exhibit such behavioral responses under predation. The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), one of the most common high-rank prey animals from Holocene archaeological sites in eastern North America, is less gregarious, more r-selected, and exhibits greater home-range fidelity than other cervids. As a result, whitetails are less likely to exhibit behavioral depression than other North American ungulates, which may explain their common occurrence in Holocene archaeological faunas, such as that from the Eagle??s Ridge site in southeast Texas where resource depression appears to have occurred from 4,500 to 1,500?years ago. The behavioral ecology of ungulate species should be considered on a case-by-case basis to develop testable hypotheses about prehistoric human predation.     

Strauss on Maimonides’ Secretive Political Science

Abstract

In this article, the authors review Joseph Cropsey's last collection of essays, Humanity's Intensive Introspection. They argue that Cropsey's essays draw on resources in the Western tradition, both from within liberal thought and from ancient sources, to elevate human life and to fortify modern society, especially against contemporary critiques of liberalism. Philosophy's discovery of the inscrutability of the whole opens it to revelation and also provides a basis for philosophy's active contribution to an open or liberal society.     

Josiah Wedgwood and the seventh dominion scheme

The founder of Revisionist Zionism, Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, believed that Zionism would create a new type of Jew. The youth organization that he headed, Betar Youth, used a variety of means to train its members to realize the vision of the “new Jew,” from physical and paramilitary exercises to learning and using the Hebrew language, from a certain code of behavior to making every effort to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael. Jabotinsky presented three figures as models of the new Jewish character: Herzl, who had brought the nation back into history; Trumpeldor, who personified the pure idea of pioneering and serving the nation; and Shlomo Ben Yosef, who, when sentenced to death by the British Mandate authorities, demonstrated strength and honor while in prison and went to the gallows with the Betar Song on his lips. These three men symbolized in their lives the idea of the “new Jew” – the antithesis to the figure of the ghetto Jew.