Monuments on a migrating Nile

River courses migrate, but many Egyptologists plot the present-day River Nile on maps of the valley in archaeological times. This may have misled interpretations of ancient monuments and settlements. We show a river migrating rapidly on historical timescales in the Luxor region, sweeping > 5 km across the valley at rates on the order of 2–3 km per 1000 years. Satellite elevation data (SRTM), processed by a novel method, and Landsat imagery are used to trace ancient river levees and extend trends present in 200 years of archive maps thousands of years into the past. This supplements observations by Ptolemy (121–141 AD) and places local geo-archaeological studies in a wider spatial and temporal context. Satellite data are demonstrated to be a relatively quick and easy constraint upon ancient river courses, and a basis for investigations along the Egyptian Nile, even in logistically inaccessible regions.     

Local recipes or distant commodities? Lead isotope and chemical compositional analysis of glaze paints from the Salinas pueblos,New Mexico

For nearly four hundred years, Pueblo potters in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico produced technologically innovative glaze-decorated bowls and exchanged them widely among different villages. While potential sources of lead ores used to make glaze paints are found throughout the Rio Grande Valley region, researchers have only recently begun to identify which ore sources potters exploited and to understand the social and economic factors underlying patterns of ore resource use. In this paper we use stable lead isotope and electron microprobe analysis of glaze paints on Rio Grande Glaze Ware made at two Salinas pueblos to identify ore sources and glaze recipes used by their potters. Despite some isotopic overlap of ore sources, the lead isotope data point to regular exploitation of ores from the Socorro area of the southern Rio Grande. Salinas potters apparently used other sources as well, and likely mixed ores from different sources. We also identify four local glaze recipes that appear to incorporate multiple ore sources, suggesting that Salinas potters obtained raw ores rather than finished glaze paints.     

Explaining prehistoric variation in the abundance of large prey: A zooarchaeological analysis of deer and rabbit hunting along the Pecho Coast of Central California

Three main hypotheses are commonly employed to explain diachronic variation in the relative abundance of remains of large terrestrial herbivores: (1) large prey populations decline as a function of anthropogenic overexploitation; (2) large prey tends to increase as a result of increasing social payoffs; and (3) proportions of large terrestrial prey are dependent on stochastic fluctuations in climate. This paper tests predictions derived from these three hypotheses through a zooarchaeological analysis of eleven temporal components from three sites on central California’s Pecho Coast. Specifically, we examine the trade-offs between hunting rabbits (Sylvilagus spp.) and deer (Odocoileus hemionus) using models derived from human behavioral ecology. The results show that foragers exploited a robust population of deer throughout most of the Holocene, only doing otherwise during periods associated with climatic trends unfavorable to larger herbivores. The most recent component (Late Prehistoric/Contact era) shows modest evidence of localized resource depression and perhaps greater social benefits from hunting larger prey; we suggest that these final changes resulted from the introduction of bow and arrow technology. Overall, results suggest that along central California’s Pecho Coast, density independent factors described as climatically-mediated prey choice best predict changes in the relative abundance of large terrestrial herbivores through the Holocene.     

A functional analysis of grinding stones from an early holocene site at Donghulin,North China

The processes that led to the transition from small mobile groups of hunter-gatherers in the Late Pleistocene to sedentary communities of the Early Holocene in north China are poorly understood. The Donghulin site in Beijing was occupied at the onset of the Holocene, and excavations have revealed a rich archaeological record for investigating the changing subsistence strategies during this transitional period. A functional study of two grinding stones (a slab and a handstone) near a burial dated to 9220–8750 cal BC at Donghulin investigated the range of plants exploited during this early occupation period. Starch residues indicate that the grinding stones were used for processing plants, and confirm processing of acorns, which is consistent with the incidence of oak in the pollen record. The usewear, with only rare patches of developed polish, suggests that plant parts of low silica content were processed, although usewear on the handstone suggests processing of two or more plant taxa. The results suggest that the use of grinding stones to process plant foodstuffs, particularly acorns, may have played a major role in the subsistence strategy during the transitional period to sedentism and agriculture in some parts of north China.     

Trepanations from Oman: A case of diffusion?

Trepanations have been described from various locations around the world leading to a suggestion that this is a cultural practice that has widely diffused from one or two centres ( 1 ). In the UAE the earliest trepanations date to the Neolithic, significantly earlier than trepanations in surrounding areas. The discovery of at least two crania in Oman, dating apparently to the early third millennium and resembling in technique and placement trepanations from north India may be evidence of the diffusion of a therapeutic practice from the Gulf to the subcontinent. However, the lack of any trepanation among the numerous contemporary skeletons from Bahrain suggests that any diffusion has distinct limits and that, as anthropological work from the South Pacific ( 2 ) indicates, practices like trepanation are often heavily embedded in broader, culturally located explanatory models.