The Early Bronze Age settlement of Fidvár,Vráble (Slovakia): reconstructing prehistoric settlement patterns using portable XRF

This paper presents first results of chemical analyses of sediment samples from the Early Bronze Age (EBA) settlement Fidvár near Vráble (Slovakia). Large-scale geomagnetic prospection revealed detailed architectural remains of a fortified settlement. Other structures such as an earthwork of the linear pottery culture and at least two Roman march camps were found too. An Auger programme provided sediment samples of different depths, A) from an EBA house and the outer fortification ditch, B) from a potential metal workshop area as indicated by surface finds, and C) from an area located in the settlement's centre. The samples were analysed by a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer in order to investigate the vertical and horizontal distribution of chemical signatures. The comparison of geophysical data and three-dimensional chemical patterns gives us the opportunity to determine the human impact and to reconstruct activity patterns. The potentials and limits in the application of pXRF in archaeological soil chemical surveys are evaluated by systematic comparisons with high resolution laboratory measurements, including atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The pXRF analyses can be reproduced well and show a good accuracy. Whilst (p)XRF analyses reflect the total composition of archaeological soil samples, the results of the AAS and ICP-OES analyses are fundamentally influenced by the acid digestion or extraction methods used. The pXRF analyses of the Vráble soils showed typical patterns of human occupation. For example, there are strong positive correlations between phosphorous, strontium and calcium. Phosphorous shows an enrichment in pathways and the fortification ditch. It is less strongly enriched within the sediments of house structures. Similar results apply to calcium and strontium distribution. But compared to the respective concentrations in sediment samples from the ditch they show a considerably higher variation in samples associated with house structures; that is, individual samples of sediments from house structures contained high concentrations of both, calcium and strontium. The deposits of an area that according to surface finds was thought to represent a potential metal workshop did not show indicative chemical signatures. Targeted excavations confirmed the absence of such as workshop. Finally it was shown that the refill history of the innermost fortification ditch (sample area D) and the overall cultural occupation sequence at the site correlate strongly with the chemical signatures of the respective ditch profile. The systematic variation of key elements along the profile opens up an entirely new perspective for interpreting the site's history. Overall, the study shows the great potential of pXRF as valuable part of an archaeological survey toolkit.     

The Tune Viking Ship Reconsidered

The Tune Viking ship has been a riddle for more than 150 years, since being found within a burial in the Oslo fjord area in 1867. It was long thought that the ship's freeboard was too low for it to have crossed the North Sea. Advances in documentation methods and a detailed study of the preserved parts of the ship have provided new data, and this article outlines a new proposal for how the ship looked when it was built in the early 10th century AD. The Tune ship is reinterpreted as a seagoing vessel, in no way inferior to the Oseberg or Gokstad Viking ships.     

Network Governance and Policy Integration—the Case of Regional Coastal Zone Planning in Norway

Integrated coastal zone management is characterized as a complex management situation, demanding integration across geographical borders, different policy sectors and levels of government. In Norway, the county municipalities are encouraged to take responsibility for achieving integration through regional coastal zone planning. Inspired by literature on network governance, the authors elaborate on how integration capacity might depend on an open and inclusive planning process and on the importance of conditions influencing the actors' perceived payoffs from participation. The result indicates that central actors benefiting from cooperation are more important in explaining the integration capacity, than the characteristics of the planning process itself. This illustrates the importance of the distribution of power and interdependencies among the actors in such processes.     

Missionaries,Healing and Sorcery in Melanesia: A Scottish Evangelist in Ambrym Island,Vanuatu

Melanesian people have recently become highly occupied with history as an arena for moral scrutiny and causal explanations for contemporary failures. On the island of Ambrym in Vanuatu, this form of ontological worry goes back to the first missionaries on the island, the Murray brothers. This article takes us back to events in the 1880s when the missionaries were active on Ambrym, and searches into their social position. Drawing on the diary of Charles Murray, the main argument unfolds around his involvement in the realm of men's ritual powers, how he himself played his part as a highly knowledgeable magician and how his downfall came about by challenging a manly realm of knowledge and power and his wider inclusion of women and lesser men in his church.     

Two tests of the prehistoric cultural chronology of Varanger,North Norway

The Younger Stone Age of the Varanger fjord area is tested by means of the altitudinal relationship between archaeological sites and shorelines, and by C‐14 dates on cultural material from North Norway and Finland. The test indicates that the sites from different cultural phases cluster differently in relation to different shorelines with the exception of the sites from phase III, which overlap considerably with sites from phases II and IV. Altogether the altitudinal overlapping suggest that there is greater temporal overlapping between different phases than hitherto believed. The C‐14 dates on cultural material suggest that the temporal periods corresponding with these phases cover different time spans and are approximately 1000 C‐14 years older than previously estimated.     

Economic structures in Western Norway in the early iron age

In this issue of Norwegian Archaeological Review the book Økonomiske strukturer på Vestlandet i eldre jernalder (Economic structures in Western Norway in the Early Iron Age) by Knut Odner (1973 a) has been chosen as subject for discussion. The book is the second part of a major work on the settlement in a rock shelter called Ullshelleren in a Norwegian mountain valley; the first part of the publication (Odner 1969) has previously been reviewed and discussed in NAR (Myhre 1972, Bakka 1973, Odner 1973 b).

As an introduction to the discussion we reprint with a few editorial alterations the second part of Odner's article, Ecological settings for economic and social models (1972, pp. 637–649), previously published in Models in Archaeology edited by David L. Clarke. We are grateful to Mr. David L. Clarke and the publisher, Methuen &; Co. Ltd., for the permission to reproduce parts of this article.

Comments by Berta Stjernquist, Carl‐Axel Moberg, Gutorm Gjessing, Charlotte Blindheim, Heid Gj?stein Resi, Magnús Stefánsson and Axel Sommerfelt are followed by a reply from Knut Odner.     

Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.     

Ancient bacterial DNA (aDNA) in dental calculus from archaeological human remains

The purpose of this study was to identify reactive bacterial aDNA in archaeological human dental calculus. Dental calculus was collected from a middle/late Neolithic human skull from Hulbjerg passage grave, Langeland, Denmark and prepared for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) or gold-labeled antibody TEM. TEM showed calcified, as well as non-calcified bacteria. Immunogold labeling occurred over the cytoplasmic portions of the sectioned bacteria. The result demonstrated that it is possible to identify aDNA sequences from bacteria in archaeological material of considerable age by this technique.     

Layering,Administrative Change and National Paths to Europeanization: The Case of the Water Framework Directive

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) can be seen as a reform effort that intervenes in the member states' domestic administrative system by obliging “whole of government” measures across sectoral lines of authority and levels of government. This puts pressure on the sectoral authorities to coordinate their activities. In this article we ask the following questions: How do the state executives respond to the WFD? How can we understand their behaviour and action choices in the implementation of EU law? And third: What can our findings tell us about changes to the European administrative system? This article reveals that despite resistance and strong cognitive priors among the state executives, the WFD logic of ecosystem-based management is gaining a foothold as an administrative principle. Thus, in order to explain changes in the administrative system, we need to take the regional level into account. Our findings suggest that attention needs to be paid to the role of complex, multi-level structures, which includes the regional, river basin district level in the development of a European administrative order.     

The Early Mesolithic Haverbeck site,Northwest Germany: evidence for Preboreal settlement in the Western and Central European Plain

Archaeological sites dating from the Preboreal are of special interest since they mark the turning point in the transition between the cultures of the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. In spite of their relevance only few sites in the Western and Central European Plain have become known, thus providing an inhomogeneous basis for further hypotheses. In particular, sites in the widespread aeolian landscapes have been neglected for a long time due to their uncertain genesis, dating problems and obviously insufficient preservation. Our investigations of the Haverbeck site, situated in sandy aeolian substrate, seek to enhance knowledge about the Preboreal Mesolithic. The well-preserved archaeological spatial, technological and functional patterns and the geoarchaeological site formation were studied. Sedimentological and palaeopedological analyses, supported by ¹⁴C and OSL dating results, revealed that artefacts were deposited during the Preboreal on sands which had accumulated during the Younger Dryas and were reactivated in subsequent periods (Atlantic, Subboreal, Subatlantic). In spite of these processes, the artefacts remained unimpaired in their relative horizontal positions, enabling spatial analyses, which show a zonal differentiation and a prevalence of retooling and replacing activities. These results offer an insight into spatial and functional differentiations of the local Early Mesolithic subsistence, evidently including particular places for gathering and processing raw material. A comparison between the microlithic spectrum left behind and the number of points produced as concluded from the microburins indicates a greater typological differentiation than previously assumed for the Early Mesolithic. The remarkable variability of scraper forms obviously intentionally abandoned in a high number and replaced by new tools emphasizes the strong influence of functional elements on the typological assemblage composition. It is suggested that Early Mesolithic assemblages could display rather functional requirements or tasks performed than significant chronological or regional influences.