A PROVENANCE STUDY OF FRENCH LIMESTONE BASED ON VARIABLE SELECTION FROM COMPOSITIONAL PROFILES

The present study shows how multivariate analysis and variable selection techniques can be used in archaeological provenances studies to improve classification performances. Neutron activation analysis (NAA), in combination with stepwise linear discrimination analysis (SLDA) (capable of simultaneously performing variable selection and classification), was applied to differentiate among limestone samples from different quarries across the north of France based on their compositional fingerprint. A hierarchical classification approach was followed, aimed at progressively assigning limestone samples to more specific sources of origin, from the broadest classification units (French regions) to the narrowest ones (individual quarries). The application of the stepwise variable selection procedure to extract the most discriminating compositional variables prior to each classification development allowed us to obtain a perfect separation between the limestone categories considered at every classification stage (all samples were correctly classified and predicted in all cases). The high‐quality results obtained were even more remarkable considering the relatively small number of significant variables selected in each case using the SLDA method. An illustrative example was provided in order to demonstrate that the classification strategy proposed can actually allocate an unknown sculpture to a particular quarry of origin.     

Command Celebrities: The Rise and Fall of Hanzelka and Zikmund

In the 1950s and 1960s, the travellers, explorers, authors, and filmmakers Ji?í Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund became celebrities both in Czechoslovakia and abroad. The Communist cultural authorities actively supported the transformation of the two men into cultural icons, which could be exploited as a model for the suppression of ‘old’, ‘decadent’, and indeed ‘popular’ culture, and as a tool for recruiting members of the intellectual, cultural, and social elites into its service. Hanzelka and Zikmund’s multimedia travelogues, as well as their dashing public personae, blended in a unique way the ‘high’ and ‘low’, the accessible and unreachable, the familiar and the exotic, in the officially promoted culture of the time. But in the later 1960s, as Hanzelka and Zikmund’s political loyalties towards some form of reform socialism became more blatant, the two men fell into disfavour, and they found themselves banished from the public sphere following the events of 1968 until the regime fell in 1989. This article investigates how the curious ‘command celebrity’ of ‘H&Z’ straddled socialist ideology and capitalist consumerism, political affirmation and cultural critique.     

UNIQUE PRE‐ROMANESQUE MURALS IN KOSTOĽANY POD TRÍBEČOM,SLOVAKIA: THE PAINTING TECHNIQUE AND CAUSES OF DAMAGE

Pre‐Romanesque murals at Kosto?any pod Tríbe?om, Slovakia, have been investigated by portable X‐ray fluorescence and by microanalytical methods to identify painting materials (pigments and binders), and to explain the degradation of colours. Today, missing green and blue shades have been reconstructed according to residual concentrations of Cu, which correspond to copper chlorides—products of salt corrosion of the copper carbonates azurite and/or malachite, accelerated by micro‐organisms. As confirmed by powder X‐ray microdiffraction, original minium (Pb₃O₄) has been transformed to brown–black plattnerite (PbO₂). In increased humidity, even insoluble pigments are washing down from the walls and the intensity of colours further diminishes.     

OXYGEN AND CARBON ISOTOPE ANALYSIS OF HUMAN DENTAL ENAMEL FROM THE CARIBBEAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR INVESTIGATING INDIVIDUAL ORIGINS

This study explores the potential of carbon and oxygen isotope data from human enamel carbonate (n = 50) to contribute to mobility studies in the Caribbean. Most oxygen and carbon isotope results display limited variation, with substantial overlap between islands. However, a few individuals from El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba possess relatively low δ¹⁸O and high δ¹³C. Two of these individuals were previously identified as possible non‐Antillean immigrants on the basis of strontium isotopes, and bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence. The carbon and oxygen isotope results provide additional evidence supporting the proposed non‐local origins of these individuals and contribute to explorations of their potential natal origins.     

Understanding residues of oil production: chemical analyses of floors in traditional mills

Oil production is an important aspect of ancient Mediterranean economy; therefore, archaeological studies on oil-producing installations using archaeometry and in particular the chemical analysis of absorbed residues is valuable in identifying the substances actually produced and to understand the spatial distribution of the activities carried out at oil mills.Modern contexts may provide a good reference for interpreting the archaeological chemical traces.This study examines the chemical traces in three abandoned oil mills in the Mediterranean: Polveraia (Tuscany, Italy), Martina Franca (Puglia, Italy) and Binibassi (Mallorca, Balearic Islands). To identify the residues released by the production of oil and absorbed by the floors, samples were taken from the floors of these installations and analysed using spot tests aimed at identifying the presence of fatty acids and phosphates. Some of the samples were analysed also with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. The results of the analyses were plotted in the Geographic Information System (GIS) platform and interpolated with Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) to determine the spatial distribution of the residues. Overall, the results show a large presence of fats in the analysed floors in all of the installations.     

REDEFINING NEANDERTHALS AND ART: AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE MULTIPLE SPECIES MODEL FOR THE ORIGIN OF BEHAVIOURAL MODERNITY

Since the late 1990s, a number of specialists have proposed a ‘multiple species model’ to explain the origins of behavioural modernity. This model establishes that most of the traits defining modern behaviour, including ornaments and art, are not exclusive to modern humans, but arose among anatomically ‘non‐modern’ populations, like the late Neanderthals of Europe. This paper proposes that the emergence of this multiple species model is related to conceptual changes in the definitions of ‘Neanderthals’ and ‘art’. In the first place, Neanderthals, once characterized as apish creatures lacking intelligence, are now considered by many as complex cognitive people capable of modern behaviour, including the ability to create symbolic and artistic representations. In the second place, personal ornaments, once trivialized as ‘trinkets’, are recognized today as artistic representations and as symbolically valued as other prehistoric artworks. These redefinitions of Neanderthals and personal ornaments reflect not only the multiple species model but also some of the recent debates concerning the origins of symbolic behaviour.     

MAN-MADE LANDSCAPES FROM THE THIRD–SECOND MILLENNIA BC: THE EXAMPLE OF CASTELO VELHO (FREIXO DE NUMÃO, NORTH-EAST PORTUGAL)

Summary.   The analysis of charred plant material from Castelo Velho (north-eastern Portugal) yields information about the environmental background of a long-term architectural project. Work focuses on the physical characteristics of this sui generis site and on the interrelationships between human communities and their vegetal environment. Important vegetation changes are recorded despite the fact that site 'occupation' is considered to be sporadic and therefore causing only minor anthropogenic impact. Evergreen oaks (Quercus, evergreen) dominate during the first two stratigraphic layers but are replaced by the tree-strawberry (Arbutus unedo) during a third layer. This change may result from a premeditated woodland management, ensuring that the site remained visible in the distance. Special attention is given to the plant assemblage and broken pottery found in a sealed structure (layer 3) and thought to have served a 'ritual' purpose. Seeds of Triticum aestivum/compactum are largely predominant.     

3. THE EXPRESSION OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

The theory and philosophy of history (just like philosophy in general) has established a dogmatic dilemma regarding the issue of language and experience: either you have an immediate experience separated from language, or you have language without any experiential basis. In other words, either you have an immediate experience that is and must remain mute and ineffable, or you have language and linguistic conceptualization that precedes experience, provides the condition of possibility of it, and thus, in a certain sense, produces it. Either you join forces with the few and opt for such mute experiences, or you go with the flow of narrative philosophy of history and the impossibility of immediacy. Either way, you end up postulating a mutual hostility between the nonlinguistic and language, and, more important, you remain unable to account for new insights and change. Contrary to this and in relation to history, I am going to talk about something nonlinguistic—historical experience—and about how such historical experience could productively interact with language in giving birth to novel historical representations. I am going to suggest that, under a theory of expression, a more friendly relationship can be established between experience and language: a relationship in which they are not hostile to but rather desperately need each other. To explain the occurrence of new insights and historiographical change, I will talk about a process of expression as sense‐formation and meaning‐constitution in history, and condense the theory into a struck‐through “of ,” as the expression of historical experience.