The Archaeology of South Asian Cities

Urbanism in the Indian subcontinent occurred in three distinct time periods in which cultural cohesion over large regions is archaeologically demonstrated through the architecture and artifacts of social, ritual, and economic activity. In the Indus (2500–1900 B.C.) and Early Historic (3rd century B.C. to 4th century A.D.) periods, cities were not necessarily tied to political territories or guided by strong political leaders, but by the Medieval period (after the 9th century A.D.), urban zones were the base for political growth, warfare, and aggrandizement. The comparison of these three eras is undertaken within a framework for defining cities that balances quantitative criteria such as population size and areal extent with two types of qualitative criteria: internal specialization on the basis of materials found within archaeological sites, and external specialization on the basis of data recovered through regional analysis. Cities from the three eras also are evaluated from the perspective of the ordinary inhabitant through the examination of the social, religious, and economic factors that prompted and rewarded urban residence. While the Indus and Early Historic cities were attractive because of the networks of opportunity found there, Medieval cities additionally benefitted from a “push” factor as ordinary inhabitants allied themselves to urban areas in times of political stress and uncertainty.

La Espiral Cave (Cuba): Guano and signs of Plant Substances Used as Paint Ingredients

At La Espiral cave, located in Bahia Honda municipality (Artemisa province, Cuba), there are several pictographs, including two of particular importance due to the design used: one of concentric circles and another of a spiral. We analyzed the pigments and binders used in one of these pictographs. The chemical ingredients of the paint are considered in this article, as well as the use of bat guano as a major pigment compound. The apparent presence of ellagic acid, ellagitannin, or anthocyanins would strengthen the hypothesis that artists used vegetable protein as a paint binder or solvent.     

Using toponymy to reconstruct past land use: a case study of ‘brüsáda’ (burn) in southern Switzerland

Toponyms are frequently the outcome of a creative process, a subjective interpretation by the local inhabitants at the time of naming. They often survive changes in the local landscape, thus becoming historical documents of landscape dynamics or changes in land use. In this contribution we provide a systematic synchronic analysis of the toponym brüsáda (burn) in Canton Ticino. In total, 182 instances of place names containing brüsáda were recorded, of which 102 cases (56.0%) were localised. Based on oral information provided by the local people or on archival documents, it was possible to group the selected toponyms into different meaning classes such as burnt building, exposed sites, pasture-land and others without any indication (classified here as generic). On the basis of etymological, topographic, documentary, bibliographic, and historic evidence, as well as proxy-archives (such as charcoal in lake sediments), we hypothesise that most of the toponyms associated with pasture-land – and probably also a large portion of the generic toponyms – are directly or indirectly related to the habit of using fire to clear brushwood to improve pasture-land or to eliminate trees. In the study area, the practice of pasture-fires appears to have been a very well controlled and targeted activity in medieval times. In contrast, pasture-fires became very frequent and uncontrolled in the second half of the nineteenth century up until the Second World War. Our study confirms the usefulness and suitability of toponymy, in combination with other disciplines, for ecohistorical reconstructions of past environmental and land-use changes.     

Diet,Geography and Drinking Water in Polynesia: Microfossil Research from Archaeological Human Dental Calculus,Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Microfossil analysis of human dental calculus provides consumption‐specific and archaeologically relevant data for evaluating diet and subsistence in past populations. Calculus was extracted from 114 teeth representing 104 unique individuals from a late 16^th to early 18^th century skeletal series on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to address questions of human–environment interactions and possible dietary preference. Scanning electron microscopy was used in lieu of optical microscopy for its superior depth of field and resolution of surface detail. The calculus microfossil recovery produced 16,377 total biogenic silica microfossils: 4733 phytoliths and 11,644 diatoms. The majority of phytoliths correspond with the Arecaceae or palm family (n = 4,456) and the minority corresponds to the Poaceae or grass family (n = 277). Because of the relatively large sample size, we were able to test hypotheses related to age cohort, sex, dental element and geographic region. Results indicate no significant difference in phytolith or diatom recovery based on age cohort or sex. The high frequency and proportion of Arecaceae phytoliths found in calculus extracted from the anterior dentition suggests consumption of soft or cooked foods containing palm phytoliths and the high frequency of diatoms recovered from the southern part of the island argue for different sources of drinking water. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The “Coptic” textiles of the “Museo Egizio” in Torino (Italy): a focus on dyes through a multi-technique approach

The Coptic textile collection of the Museo Egizio in Torino (Italy) has been the object of a broad project aimed at investigating the production techniques, at documenting the conservation state and at reconsidering the attributed age. The collection was also analysed by non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques with the aim of detecting the dyes that have been employed to obtain the colours, in order to complete the set of technological information available for each textile. The data collected in the present work have been compared with published results from other Coptic textile collections, with the aim of highlighting a possible link between the age of the textile and the dyes that were employed. Moreover, the combined use of spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques allowed us to compare the results for the non-invasive and the micro-invasive approaches and to go deeper into the dyeing technology by detecting unexpected combinations of dyes. In particular, the use of a double dyeing with madder and Indian lac dye was revealed in some Roman-Byzantine and Byzantine textiles from the collection.     

The Source Provenance of Bronze Age and Roman pottery from Cyprus

Archaeological interpretations of ancient economies have been strengthened by chemical analyses of ceramics, which provide the clearest evidence for economic activity, and comprise both the objects of exchange and its means. Pottery is often manufactured from local materials, but its compositional diversity typically prevents significant patterns of resource utilization from being identified. Centrally located and positioned on traditional shipping routes, Cyprus maintained ties with and supplied a variety of distinctive ceramic products to the major commercial centres in the eastern Mediterranean throughout Antiquity. We analysed two Cypriot .ne wares and a variety of utilitarian pottery, as well as samples of extant Cypriot clays to determine source provenance. These chemical analyses provide an objective indication of the origins of ancient (Bronze Age and Roman) ceramics manufactured on Cyprus. The distribution of the probable clay sources and the links between pottery style and the material environment also afford a perspective on the spatial organization of large‐scale pottery production on the island. Compositional analysis provides the means to assemble geographies of pottery production and to unravel the interregional system of exchange that operated in Antiquity, but the ability to accomplish these tasks is predicated on systematic analyses of ceramic products and raw materials that are found far beyond the bounds of individual archaeological sites.