Identifying Narrative Descriptions in Agent-Based Models Representing Past Human-Environment Interactions

There is a growing use of bottom-up simulation models to reconstruct past human-environment interactions. Such detailed representations pose difficult questions not only in their design (the generality-realism trade-off) but also about the inferences that are made from them. The historical sciences are faced with seeking to make robust inferences from limited, potentially biased and/or incomplete samples from uncontrolled systems, and as a result have sometimes employed narrative explanation. By contrast, simulation models can be used experimentally and can generate large amounts of data. Here, using an agent-based model of hunter-gatherer foraging in a previously unexplored ecosystem, we consider how narratives might be identified from the trajectories produced by simulations. We show how machine learning methods can isolate qualitatively similar types of model behaviour based on summaries of model outcomes and time series. We stand to learn from this approach because it enables us to answer two questions: (i) under what conditions (representations and/or parameterisations) do we observe in the model what is recorded in the archaeological and/or palaeoenvironmental record? and (ii) does the model yield unobserved dynamics? If so, are they plausible? Using models to develop narratives is a logical extension of the bottom-up approach inherent in agent-based modelling and has the potential, alongside conventional methods of model evaluation, to aid in learning from the rich dynamics of such simulations.     

Maintaining Traditions: a Study of Southern Ontario Late Woodland Ceramics Through a Communities-of-Practice Approach

A communities-of-practices approach has been employed in this paper to investigate potting traditions of Late Woodland potters. The author has integrated Wenger’s (1998, Organization 7(2):225–246, 2000) constellation of practice and boundary objects with Smith’s (1997, 2005a) attribute combination system to study decorative practices of Middle Iroquoian potting communities in southern Ontario. The results of the study indicate similar distribution trends relating to the practice of decorative motifs. The author argues potters maintained potting traditions through time and space. This study demonstrates how the integration of more recent conceptual frameworks provides further opportunities to investigate the relation between pottery production and broader practices and beliefs.     

Assessing the Stability and Sustainability of Rock Art Sites: Insight from Southwestern Arizona

In light of global trends in human population growth and urbanization, burgeoning cultural heritage tourism industries, and climate change, cultural heritage places in nearly every corner of the world are significantly threatened, and will remain so into the foreseeable future. Rock art sites are some of the most imperiled, with their exposed contexts posing unique challenges to conservation. Consequently, effective management of publically accessible rock art sites necessitates a sustainable approach that weighs visitation in regard to cultural significance and site stability. This essay integrates rock art stability and sustainability assessment methodologies at the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site in southwestern Arizona. The study specifically applies the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI) to evaluate the natural and anthropogenic weathering forces impacting the site, and the Heritage Asset Sensitivity Gauge (HASG) to assess site sustainability under existing management practices in relation to current and forecasted rates of visitation. A spatial analysis of aggregated RASI data shows that visitor foot traffic has had some of the most profound impacts to the petroglyphs. Unrestricted access to the site area is also highly correlated with the presence and location of vandalism and graffiti, and visitor-related trampling has adversely affected the site’s surface artifact assemblage. Application of the HASG projects that, while existing management practices are fairly sustainable, they become less so under forecasted increases in visitation. Further, the HASG appraises the site’s cultural significance as outweighing its market appeal, indicating management efforts should prioritize conservation over tourism-related development.     

Sequential Incisions on a Cave Bear Bone from the Middle Paleolithic of Pešturina Cave,Serbia

We present the detailed analysis of a cervical vertebra from a cave bear, found at Pe?turina cave, Serbia, in a Mousterian archaeological level dated by radiocarbon at 43.5–44.6 kyr cal BP, and by ESR to between 93.5 and 102.5 kyr BP. Identified as a portion of the cranial articular facet, the fragment displays ten subparallel grooves. The microscopic study of these grooves and other surface modification present on the bone fragment, conducted with multifocus optical and confocal microscopes and complemented by a taphonomic analysis of the associated faunal assemblage, supports the hypothesis that the incisions were made by humans. Results are used to critically examine ambiguities implicit in the analysis and interpretation of early engravings, a category of material culture that has been playing a key role in the identification of early instances of symbolically mediated behavior.     

Parental Grief and Mourning in the Ancient Andes

Parental grief is an intense emotion shaped and mediated by cultural attitudes toward death, the strength of parent-child attachment, the age of the deceased child, and the role of children in society. Despite some assertions that high infant mortality or economic hardship may lessen parental grief, cross-cultural studies show that child death often causes emotional distress to parents, in particular mothers. Funerary treatments of children, especially infants, are often simplified, contradicting more immediate and immaterial expressions of parental grief that cannot be studied archaeologically. In this study, I examine the funerary treatment of children in ancient Andean Tiwanaku society (A.D. 500–1100). I assess the use of ritual practices and objects associated with children’s burials as indicative of children’s social identities and parental mourning. The nature of grave assemblages in regard to different ages of the children suggests that parental attitudes toward their children changed over the course of childhood. The choice of offerings seems to reflect parental attachment to and recognition of the child’s life. Modifications of ceramic vessels point to the intimate mourning gestures of grieving mothers who sought to provide their deceased children with the necessary offerings to assume their place among the community of venerated ancestors. This study draws on ethnographic, psychological, and ethnohistoric sources of parent-child bonds in the Andes and beyond to investigate children’s burials not merely as reflective of childhood and children’s role in society but as the material record of parental attachment and emotion in the past.     

Integration of Complementary Archaeological Prospection Data from a Late Iron Age Settlement at Vesterager—Denmark

The complementary use of various archaeological prospection data sets offers a series of new possibilities for the investigation of prehistoric settlements. In addition to the separate interpretations of the single methods, the implementation of image fusion provides an additional tool to obtain an even higher degree of data integration during the interpretation process. To investigate some possibilities and risks of image fusion, a procedure frequently used in the medical field but rarely applied in archaeology, various algorithms inside a dedicated MATLAB toolbox TAIFU (Toolbox for Archaeological Image FUsion) were tested on the geophysical prospection data from an Iron Age settlement near Vesterager in West Jutland, Denmark. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology had conducted large-scale, high-resolution ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry surveys at the site in 2014, based on its discovery by the Ringkøbing Museum through aerial photos and the results of a follow-up excavation in 2009. The aim was to determine if, and to what extent, geophysical prospection together with a novel integrative interpretational approach was able to add more detailed information to an already known prehistoric settlement. Results yielded a variety of deeper insights into the separate farms (dated to around AD 400), including the discovery of several new structures and more information about the construction of the longhouses, as well as a first suggestion on how to implement image fusion into the process of analysis and archaeological interpretation of geophysical data sets.     

“This is Proof”? Forensic Evidence and Ambiguous Material Culture at Treblinka Extermination Camp

In recent years, a forensic archaeological project at Treblinka extermination camp has uncovered significant evidence relating to the mass murder that took place there. A number of questions emerged regarding the provenance and origins of objects discovered as part of this work, and why they had remained undiscovered for over 70 years. These discoveries led to an opportunity to confirm and challenge the history of the extermination camp, and demands (from the public) to view the objects. This paper will outline how archaeologists and artists came together to reflect on these issues, whilst simultaneously providing access to the new findings.     

When Bereaved of Everything: Objects from the Concentration Camp of Ravensbrück as Expressions of Resistance,Memory, and Identity

When survivors from the Ravensbrück concentration camp arrived in Sweden in spring 1945, some of the objects they brought with them from the camp were collected and preserved. These are modest in appearance, but were – as oral testimonies show – invaluable in camp. The concentration camp context of obliteration stretches the limits of interpretation of material culture to its extreme. In this article the objects are discussed as expressions of resistance, memory, and identity. These immaterial values were among the most vital coping strategies used by the prisoners against the dehumanization laid upon them by the camp administration. The material culture was central in enabling, upholding, and realizing these.     

The Small Things of Life and Death: An Exploration of Value and Meaning in the Material Culture of Nazi Camps

The theft of mundane items of material culture from the ground of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2015 by English schoolboys raises a number of questions about the value of similar items at this and other Nazi camps. This paper explores questions of value, interpretation, and the categorization of objects from such camps, before examining the case study of Lager Wick, a forced labor camp in Jersey. Here, the value of such objects was perceived locally according to criteria very different to those which are commonly applied by archaeologists and people who work in the sphere of heritage and Holocaust education.