Concentration Camp Buildings as Artifacts: The Archaeology of Buildings in the Mauthausen-Gusen Complex

This article deals with the interpretation and display of the buildings and other built structures at the Mauthausen concentration camp. After decades of neglect the many standing buildings of the Mauthausen-Gusen complex are now being analyzed as a source of information about the Nazi terror system. This shift is part of a change in what is regarded as important and authentic at such sites and is connected to the educational approach now taking center stage. The archaeological investigation of buildings plays an important role in this process. Through many examples drawn from the killing and cremation area, the kitchen buildings and elsewhere, the article goes on to demonstrate both the explanatory potential of the architecture and how it is being presented in today’s memorial landscape.     

The Evolution of Migration: the Case of Lapita in the Southwest Pacific

Migrations have occurred across the history of the genus Homo and while the movement of pre-modern humans over the globe is typically understood in terms of shifting resource distributions and climate change, that is in ecological terms, the movement of anatomically modern, and specifically Holocene, populations is often explained by human desire to discover new lands, escape despotic leaders, forge trade relationships and other culture-specific intentions. This is a problematic approach to the archaeological and behavioural explanation of human migration. Here an evolutionary and ecological framework is developed to explain various movement behaviours and this framework is applied to the movement of human groups from the inter-visible islands around New Guinea to the widely dispersed archipelagos of the southwest Pacific about 1000 BC. Labelled the Lapita Migration, this movement is explained as a selection-driven range expansion. The development of evolutionary and ecological theory to explain human movement facilitates empirical testing of alternative hypotheses and links different histories of human movement through shared explanatory mechanisms.     

Monitoring the Environmental Risks Around Medinet Habu and Ramesseum Temple at West Luxor,Egypt, Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Today, the preservation of cultural heritage is a pressing issue especially for territories subjected to a long period of human action that could adversely influence environment and heritage properties, thus producing a deterioration of archaeological features and alteration of historical landscape. In this paper, the environmental risks and their effects on preservation issues are investigated for the archaeological area of the Luxor city (south of Egypt) where the most famous Temples in Egypt are located. A comprehensive analysis has been conducted for the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu temples considering their building material and characteristics, environmental (geological and hydrological) setting, and past and ongoing changes around the monument areas. Satellite multitemporal images have been used to detect all the changes mainly linked to the expansion of urban and agriculture areas. Results from the analysis conducted along with in situ investigations have suggested that many of the environmental problems around the archaeological areas are coming as a result of urban and agriculture sprawling. Both of them strongly influence the distribution in the levels of groundwater which along with temperature are considered as the main causes of the deterioration process affecting the Medinet Habu and Ramesseum temple. The degree of weathering damage appears to be much more dependent on exposure characteristics of the investigation areas, especially as related to salt weathering processes. Innovative solutions to support the preservation of these temples are herein presented and discussed.     

Three Methods for Detecting Past Groupings: Cultural Space and Group Identity

Grouping techniques employ similarities within data to create new entities, which lend themselves to the interpretation process. This article presents three different grouping approaches, each originally developed independently, and applied to a common dataset of archaeological finds. The aim is not to search for the right approach or results, in a competing way, but rather to present the methods as complementary. It is also our intention to stress that a tight connection between theory and statistical modelling is indispensable. Indeed, the use of a particular methodology must be supported by an adapted theory; similarly, a theory without a proper methodological realisation will often not have any actual utility. The integration of theory and method is exemplified in the three case methods. The first method uses metal objects as cultural indicators. The study area is divided into a set of identical geographical units, characterized according to the type and proportions of indicators and grouped using hierarchical clustering. The second approach deals with cultures as standardisations between individuals, using ‘Typenspektrum’ as significant data for identifying different cultures. Groups are defined through kernel density estimation and a cluster analysis, followed by internal and external validation techniques. A third method characterizes the funerary ritual and grave-goods, using a similarity algorithm coupled with clustering procedures to compare the graves with one another. The outcome is validated with exploratory methods and compared to patterns from different contexts. The complementarity of the results shows that each approach sheds light on a certain facet of the same whole.     

Experimental Design and Experimental Inference in Stone Artifact Archaeology

Lithic researchers rely heavily on experimentation to infer past behaviors and activities based on stone artifacts. This paper explores the analogical nature of archaeological inference and the relationship between experimental design and inference validity in stone artifact experimentation. We show that actualistic flintknapping lacks vital aspects of scientific experimentation, and thus has inherent inferential issues of analogical adequacy and confidence. It is argued that a greater emphasis on hypothesis construction and variable control is needed in order to establish sound referential linkages upon which constructive analogic inferences about the past can be built.     

Maya Crocodilians: Intersections of Myth and the Natural World at Early Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén,Guatemala

This essay pursues a four-pronged, interdisciplinary approach in considering the possibility that the unusual layout of the lowland Maya site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in the lakes region of central Petén, Guatemala, might have been modeled on the scaly back of a crocodile. Part 1 summarizes the biological characteristics of crocodilians, particularly Crocodylus moreletii, and their habitats in lowland Mesoamerica. Part 2 reviews interpretations of these reptiles in myth and art, and exploitation of the creature in the lakes area. Third, the ceremonial core of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, established in the Middle Preclassic (800–400 BCE) period, is discussed. It exhibits an unusual grid of corridors creating a landscape resembling the bony plates of a crocodilian’s back, and a natural cenote-like fosa is proposed to relate to a mythical “Starry Deer Crocodile.” Part 4 discusses probable social and political characteristics of early community leaders who planned this site’s atypical layout, viewed through selectionist theories of cooperation and costly signaling. Designed to mimic the mythical crocodile of creation, Nixtun-Ch’ich’ illustrates the role of ideological power in the development of complex societies.     

Home Is Where the Hearth Is: Anthracological and Microstratigraphic Analyses of Pleistocene and Holocene Combustion Features,Riwi Cave (Kimberley,Western Australia)

The manipulation of fire is a technological act. The identification of the archaeological signatures of the controlled use of fire has important implications not only for the estimations of the origins and functions of the first fireplaces but also for our understanding of prehistoric technological development and resource use. At Riwi (Kimberley region, Western Australia), excavations over two field seasons have revealed a discontinuous occupation sequence over the past 45 ka, showing numerous, different combustion features interspersed within the deposit. Anthracological and micromorphological investigations at Riwi Cave indicate that the combustion features at the site can be categorised into three types: flat combustion features (type A), dug combustion features (type B) and thick accumulations of mixed combustion residues (type C). These provide evidence for two kinds of combustion practice: (i) fires lit directly on the ground and most likely not re-used and (ii) ground ovens, the latter appearing some 10,000 years after the first evidence for occupation of the site. A comparison of the wood species identified within these combustion features with those from equivalent scattered context levels, enables an exploration of the potential factors influencing wood selection and fire use through time at the site. A detailed understanding of the relationship between wood charcoal remains and archaeological context yields significant information on changes to environmental context and site occupation patterns over time.     

Between Monoculture and Cultural Polarization: Agent-based Models of the Interplay of Social Influence and Cultural Diversity

Social influence is one of the most important processes in human social interaction. Very often in human social interaction, influence is assimilative in that individuals become more similar to others they interact with. Nevertheless, cultural differences continue to remain in many realms of human life, for example, in the form of technological boundaries. Research on social influence points to a range of possible reasons for persistent cultural diversity, but there is much less clarity about the interplay of various factors and conditions for cultural influence with fundamental processes of social interaction at the micro-level. In this article, I show how agent-based computational modeling can be used as an approach for unraveling the complex interplay between simple first principles of interpersonal social interaction and emergent societal outcomes. I give a brief overview illustrating some of the main approaches agent-based modelers have developed in recent decades to understand conditions and processes of the emergence of cultural diversity. Models will be discussed that generate mainly cultural consensus as long-term behavior, but also models that generate clustering of cultural attitudes in geographical or social space, and models that imply cultural polarization with sharp cultural boundaries between emergent factions. It will be discussed how model dynamics depend on further assumptions, for example about random events, or the scaling of cultural attitudes, and what are further developments in the literature, possible future directions and challenges for the application of computational agent-based modeling in archeological research on cultural boundaries.     

A Comprised Archaeological History of Taiwan through the Long-Term Record of Heping Dao,Keelung

We present the results of six years of archaeological work carried out in Heping Dao, Keelung, northern Taiwan. The site has revealed a rich archaeological record spanning a sequence that comprehends most of the history of Taiwan, including the most salient historical landmarks in it. The study of this long-term sequence of habitation in Heping Dao throughout prehistory to current times, allows us to attempt a historical archaeology of the longue duree of the place that in turn enables the establishment of comparisons between periods and raising of specific questions, among them: the general understanding of cultural transformation along the Neolithic and the Iron Age, and in turn the transition Iron Age/Aboriginal historic times in Taiwan, which in our view has to be observed as a history of continuity rather than of interruptions; the recognition of the Chinese presence in Taiwan in the pre-European period; the implantation of the European colony and its effects on the local populations; the differing material remains and impacts caused by the presence of pre-European Chinese and the Qing occupation; and the potential for a comparison between the European and the Japanese colonial projects as seen in the material record.