Inhabiting Remote Tropical Seashores at 1500–1100 b.c.: Water,Practicalities, and Rituals in the Mariana Islands

When people first inhabited the Remote Oceanic region of the world at 1500 b.c., they generated archaeological sites attesting to their practical coastal adaptations in tandem with their ceremonial traditions, wherein water figured vitally in daily living and ritual performance. Of eight known first-settlement sites in the Mariana Islands, Ritidian in Guam uniquely incorporates one residential habitation plus two caves related to water collection, pictographs, consumption of unusual foods, and use of exceptionally decorative objects. The inter-connected findings clarify what was “special” about the special-use caves, in total articulating a fuller sense of cultural life and landscape than otherwise could be possible.     

A Post-Roman Sequence at Carlisle Cathedral

Excavations in 1988 revealed a stratigraphic sequence extending from the later Roman period to the twelfth century. Of particular interest and importance is a collection of Viking-Age metalwork which, with other material, sheds light on settlement in Carlisle before the arrival of the Normans in 1092.     

Holocene climatic change and past Irish societal response

The extent to which North Atlantic Holocene climatic perturbations influenced past human societies is an area of considerable uncertainty and fierce debate. Ireland is ideally placed to help resolve this issue, being occupied for over 9000 yr and located on the eastern Atlantic seaboard, a region dominated by westerly airflow. Irish bog and lake tree populations provide unambiguous evidence of major shifts in surface moisture through the Holocene similar to cycles recorded in the marine realm of the North Atlantic, indicating significant changes in the latitude and intensity of zonal atmospheric circulation across the region. To test for human response to these cycles we summed the probabilities of 465 radiocarbon ages obtained from Irish archaeological contexts and observe enhanced archaeological visibility during periods of sustained wet conditions. These results suggest either increasing density of human populations in key, often defensive locations, and/or the development of subsistence strategies to overcome changing conditions, the latter recently proposed as a significant factor in avoiding societal collapse. Regardless, we demonstrate environmental change is a significantly more important factor in influencing human activity in the landscape than has hitherto been acknowledged.     

青花瓷器产地判别研究

本项研究以江西省景德镇、云南省玉溪、建水、福建省平和的青花瓷器为主,结合香港清代碗窑以及德国、日本、泰国的现代青花瓷器,用能量色散X射线荧光（EDXRF）分析方法,在无损的情况下对其元素含量进行分析,得到了Ti、Mn、Fe、Co、Ni、Cu、Zn、Ga、Pb、Rb、Sr、Y、Zr13个元素的含量结果。用主成分分析方法对数据进行处理,利用第1主成分、第2主成分、第3主成分在三维座标系中绘制散点图,所得类群关系与已知情况完全相符。研究结果表明本文的研究方法可用于青花瓷器的产地判别。     

INTIMATE (Integration of Ice-core,Marine and Terrestrial Records) 20 Years on: Retrospect and Prospect

The INTIMATE (Integration of ice-core, marine and terrestrial records) project, the successor to the North Atlantic Seaboard Programme of International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP-253) ‘Termination of the Pleistocene’, began in 1995 with the aim of integrating proxy climate records from around the North Atlantic during the Last Termination (18–8?ka BP). The INTIMATE remit has since expanded geographically to include the entire Atlantic basin and Australasia, while an extended temporal framework now covers the early Holocene and the Last Glacial cycle. This short paper outlines the principal achievements of the INTIMATE research community, which include the development of an event stratigraphy for the North Atlantic region; the establishment of protocols for ice–land–ocean correlation; important contributions to geochronology, most notably to tephrochronology, and to palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions; and the designation of the Greenland ice-core record as the global stratotype for the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. Future directions of the INTIMATE programme are also briefly considered.     

Lapita subsistence strategies and food consumption patterns in the community of Teouma (Efate,Vanuatu)

The subsistence strategies of the Lapita populations (3100–2800 BP), the first colonisers of the pristine environments of the islands of Eastern Melanesia and Western Polynesia, have been a matter of ongoing debate for decades. Opinions have ranged between the two extremes of Lapita colonisers being either characterised as highly mobile foragers to fully horticultural communities. To further address the question, this paper presents stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic data obtained from analyses of human and animal collagen samples from the site of Teouma (Efate, Vanuatu) dated to between c. 3000–2500 BP. The isotopic signatures obtained from 28 samples (23 human and 5 animal), interpreted in combination with isotopic information from several coastal and insular environments, suggest a diet primarily made up of terrestrially derived animal protein with lesser contributions from vegetable produce and inshore marine species. Comparisons linking the isotopic data gleaned from the Teouma individuals and Lapita subsistence patterns reconstructed through archaeozoological and archaeobotanical remains support the hypothesis of a mixed economy, that included terrestrial foraging, inshore marine exploitation and a low level of food production for at least some of the earliest Lapita colonists in Vanuatu.     

Ancient DNA typing shows that a Bronze Age mummy is a composite of different skeletons

Excavations at Cladh Hallan, a Bronze Age-Iron Age settlement on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, revealed the skeletons of two adults, a sub-adult and a child buried beneath the foundations of three roundhouses. Osteological and isotopic evidence has shown that the male adult skeleton is a composite made up of parts of at least three different individuals. To test the hypothesis that the female skeleton was also a composite we examined ancient DNA from four of its components: the skull, mandible, right humerus and right femur. Seven polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) were attempted, these covering positions 15,996–16,420, 16–132 and 232–368 of the mitochondrial DNA hypervariable I and II regions. Three PCRs were successful for each sample and a total of 55 sequences were obtained from the cloned products. After exclusion of possible contaminating sequences, the remaining 34 were compared. It was concluded that the mandible, humerus and femur come from different individuals. Insufficient data were obtained to draw conclusions regarding the origin of the skull. The presence of two composite skeletons at Cladh Hallan indicates that the merging of identities may have been a deliberate act, perhaps designed to amalgamate different ancestries into a single lineage.