Radiometric dates and micromorphological evidence for synchronous domestic activity and sheep penning in a Neolithic cave: Cueva de El Toro (Málaga,Antequera, Spain)

We present radiocarbon dates and preliminary micromorphological information from the Neolithic cave site of Cueva del Toro (Antequera, Málaga, Spain). This site has yielded a rich early and late Neolithic archaeological record. The late Neolithic assemblage reflects specialized handcraft activity including in situ ceramic manufacture, textile production, and food processing along with sheep and goat penning, suggesting that the cave occupants and their domestic animals shared the same living space. Until now, dating of the stratigraphic sequence was incomplete, and the function of the combustion activities carried out at the cave remained unclear. New absolute dates from the main late Neolithic domestic activity area, corresponding to the most intense Neolithic occupation of the cave, allow us to place the entire sequence between 5320 and 5170 BP (or 4250–3950 to 2σ Cal BC). Micromorphological results show that many combustion features from this site represent recurrently burnt episodes on sheep/goat stabling deposits all along the sequence, corroborating human-goat/sheep cohabitation. This practice had not been previously documented in southern Spain for such early dates. Our results exemplify the importance of characterizing archaeological deposits at a microstratigraphic scale of observation.     

Opencast mines in South Brandenburg (Germany)—archives of Late Quaternary landscape development and human-induced land use changes

This study outlines the opportunities for geoarchaeological research in active opencast lignite mines in southern Brandenburg (Germany). Studies on extensive outcrops that address both archaeology and soil geomorphology, combined with a geographical information system (GIS) approach, provide unique insights into human-induced environmental changes in Lower Lusatia and generally improve our understanding of landscape dynamics. We present the most recent results from three case studies and review important findings from the last several years. Studies conducted in opencast mines of Cottbus-Nord and Jänschwalde focus on (i) Late Quaternary geomorphodynamics and soil development and (ii) past land use and the legacy of agriculture and woodland use. Our results are similar to those in other regions in Central Europe, but we also observe regional differences caused by the local setting, e.g. intensification of soil erosion coinciding with the expansion of farming of cultivated lands in the Slavic Middle Ages. Our research reveals the largest archaeologically investigated area of historical charcoal production in the Northern European Lowland (NEL). We are clearly only beginning to understand the massive dimensions of charcoal production in the region.     

Social stratigraphy in Late Iron Age Switzerland: stable carbon,nitrogen and sulphur isotope analysis of human remains from Münsingen

The Iron Age cemetery of Münsingen in Switzerland with 220 abundantly equipped burials marked a milestone for Iron Age research. The horizontal spread throughout the time of its occupancy laid the foundation for the chronology system of the Late Iron Age. Today, skulls of 77 individuals and some postcranial bones are still preserved. The aim of the study was to obtain information about diet, mobility and social stratification of the individuals. Stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur were analysed for 63 individuals. For all of them, C₃ plants were found to be the staple food. There are significant differences between males and females in δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values. This points to a gender restriction in the access to animal protein with males probably having more access to meat and dairy products. Differences in δ¹⁵N values were also observed for different age classes. δ³⁴S values indicate a terrestrial-based diet with no significant intake of marine or freshwater fish. Seven adults with enriched δ³⁴S values might have immigrated to Münsingen, four of which were found in the oldest part of the cemetery. Furthermore, possible changes of the vegetation are indicated by the more positive stable carbon ratios in the later phases. The results lead to the suggestion that especially males buried with weapons might have played a special role in the Iron Age society.     

Why are cultural policy decisions communicated in cool cash?

In this article, we analyze the role of the economic rationale in modern cultural policy decision communication and ask why it remains such an important factor, even though research has argued against it. Based on Luhmann’s system theory, we show how the economic rationale manifests itself in the cultural political communication as parasitic and complementary couplings, and how different communication forms are in play: the indirect, direct, and the both-and form. The point is to construct communicative positions in cultural policy. The positions involve the economic rationale in their own particular way and each of them offers themselves as a communicative platform which the culture politician can optionally step into and out of. The arts system stands out from other systems by not distinguishing itself in one single distinction and coding. In exactly this issue lies the communicative complexity which the communicating cultural politician faces and must handle. As our analysis shows, this complexity is handled by communicating within the economic rationale and coding, with the result that complexity is reduced.     

Bonesetting: the algebra of genocide

ABSTRACT

Genocide rulings should not care about numbers. Legally, proving the intent to destroy a people in whole or in part is what counts. Yet numbers are vital actants in the often decades-long lead-up to trials. Aggregate numbers give weight to the specificity of individual testimony, statistical estimates can transform missing people into cold, hard facts, and algorithms can reveal ‘excess death’, even when forensic anthropologists cannot find all the bones. And because of this power, numbers are highly contested in both truth commission findings and trials like that of Generals Ríos Montt and Rodríguez Sánchez. In this article I analyse the disentangling work of statisticians and anthropologists in exhuming and counting bodies, and how particular numbers (200,000; 1,771; ninety-three per cent) are made, then re-entangled in efforts to count. The modern ideal of a universal subject of rationality and abstraction that positions women and natives as those who cannot count contributed to their historic exclusion and dehumanization. Counting, as in adding things up, is part of the historic achievement of the trial to make Maya-Ixil women and men count, in the sense of to matter.     

Exploring the potential linkages between oil‐field brine reinjection,crystalline basement permeability,and triggered seismicity for the Dagger Draw Oil field,southeastern New Mexico,USA, using hydrologic modeling

We used hydrologic models to explore the potential linkages between oil‐field brine reinjection and increases in earthquake frequency (up to M_d 3.26) in southeastern New Mexico and to assess different injection management scenarios aimed at reducing the risk of triggered seismicity. Our analysis focuses on saline water reinjection into the basal Ellenburger Group beneath the Dagger Draw Oil field, Permian Basin. Increased seismic frequency (>M_d 2) began in 2001, 5 years after peak injection, at an average depth of 11 km within the basement 15 km to the west of the reinjection wells. We considered several scenarios including assigning an effective or bulk permeability value to the crystalline basement, including a conductive fault zone surrounded by tighter crystalline basement rocks, and allowing permeability to decay with depth. We initially adopted a 7 m (0.07 MPa) head increase as the threshold for triggered seismicity. Only two scenarios produced excess heads of 7m five years after peak injection. In the first, a hydraulic diffusivity of 0.1 m² s^?1 was assigned to the crystalline basement. In the second, a hydraulic diffusivity of 0.3 m² s^?1 was assigned to a conductive fault zone. If we had considered a wider range of threshold excess heads to be between 1 and 60 m, then the range of acceptable hydraulic diffusivities would have increased (between 0.1–0.01 m² s^?1 and 1–0.1 m² s^?1 for the bulk and fault zone scenarios, respectively). A permeability–depth decay model would have also satisfied the 5‐year time lag criterion. We also tested several injection management scenarios including redistributing injection volumes between various wells and lowering the total volume of injected fluids. Scenarios that reduced computed excess heads by over 50% within the crystalline basement resulted from reducing the total volume of reinjected fluids by a factor of 2 or more.     

Long‐term chemical evolution and modification of continental basement brines – a field study from the Schwarzwald,SW Germany

Highly saline, deep‐seated basement brines are of major importance for ore‐forming processes, but their genesis is controversial. Based on studies of fluid inclusions from hydrothermal veins of various ages, we reconstruct the temporal evolution of continental basement fluids from the Variscan Schwarzwald (Germany). During the Carboniferous (vein type i), quartz–tourmaline veins precipitated from low‐salinity (<4.5wt% NaCl + CaCl₂), high‐temperature (≤390°C) H₂O‐NaCl‐(CO₂‐CH₄) fluids with Cl/Br mass ratios = 50–146. In the Permian (vein type ii), cooling of H₂O‐NaCl‐(KCl‐CaCl₂) metamorphic fluids (T ≤ 310°C, 2–4.5wt% NaCl + CaCl₂, Cl/Br mass ratios = 90) leads to the precipitation of quartz‐Sb‐Au veins. Around the Triassic–Jurassic boundary (vein type iii), quartz–haematite veins formed from two distinct fluids: a low‐salinity fluid (similar to (ii)) and a high‐salinity fluid (T = 100–320°C, >20wt% NaCl + CaCl₂, Cl/Br mass ratios = 60–110). Both fluids types were present during vein formation but did not mix with each other (because of hydrogeological reasons). Jurassic–Cretaceous veins (vein type iv) record fluid mixing between an older bittern brine (Cl/Br mass ratios ~80) and a younger halite dissolution brine (Cl/Br mass ratios >1000) of similar salinity, resulting in a mixed H₂O‐NaCl‐CaCl₂ brine (50–140°C, 23–26wt% NaCl + CaCl₂, Cl/Br mass ratios = 80–520). During post‐Cretaceous times (vein type v), the opening of the Upper Rhine Graben and the concomitant juxtaposition of various aquifers, which enabled mixing of high‐ and low‐salinity fluids and resulted in vein formation (multicomponent fluid H₂O‐NaCl‐CaCl₂‐(SO₄‐HCO₃), 70–190°C, 5–25wt% NaCl‐CaCl₂ and Cl/Br mass ratios = 2–140). The first occurrence of highly saline brines is recorded in veins that formed shortly after deposition of halite in the Muschelkalk Ocean above the basement, suggesting an external source of the brine's salinity. Hence, today's brines in the European basement probably developed from inherited evaporitic bittern brines. These were afterwards extensively modified by fluid–rock interaction on their migration paths through the crystalline basement and later by mixing with younger meteoric fluids and halite dissolution brines.     

Analysis and interpretation of flint toolmarks found on bones from West Tump long barrow,Gloucestershire

West Tump is a Neolithic chambered tomb originally excavated in 1880. The mound was found to contain a mixed skeletal assemblage, the majority of which was disarticulated. Between 2000 and 2001 material from the site including human bone was re‐examined with a portion of this project focused on taphonomic evidence observed on the human skeletal material. Amongst the factors selected for investigation were deliberate toolmarks. Three specimens were identified as exhibiting toolmarks. Analysis demonstrated that the observed features were cutmarks, consistent with the use of flint tools. However those on two of the specimens were found to be both post‐mortem and recent. The cutmarks observed on the remaining specimen, a right clavicle, were identified as having been inflicted during the peri‐mortem period and consistent with decapitation. British Neolithic mortuary practice has been the subject of ongoing debate since the earliest excavations of relevant sites, but until very recently few assemblages from such contexts have been re‐examined and much of the data in use has derived from sources of considerable age and questionable reliability. The selective removal of specific skeletal elements (particularly skulls) has repeatedly been described in the literature regarding the collective funerary monuments of this period. It has often been assumed that such practices took place after the soft tissues had decayed. One of the examples discussed, suggests this may not always have been the case and the potential significance of this finding is discussed in addition to a possible interpretation of the cutmarks seen on the remaining specimens. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.