Culture on the Moon: Bodies in Time and Space

This paper investigates whether the term ‘culture’ can be applied to the six Apollo lunar landing sites, and how the remains at these sites can be understood as the actions of bodies at a particular moment in space and time.     

Between the Vinča and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Linearbandkeramik</Emphasis> Worlds: The Diversity of Practices and Identities in the 54th–53rd Centuries cal BC in Southwest Hungary and Beyond

Perhaps nowhere in European prehistory does the idea of clearly-defined cultural boundaries remain more current than in the initial Neolithic, where the southeast–northwest trend of the spread of farming crosses what is perceived as a sharp divide between the Balkans and central Europe. This corresponds to a distinction between the Vin?a culture package, named for a classic site in Serbia, with its characteristic pottery assemblage and absence of longhouses, and the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), with equally diagnostic but different pottery, and its apparently culturally-diagnostic longhouses, extending in a more northerly belt through central Europe westward to the Dutch coast. In this paper we question the concept of such a clear division through a presentation of new data from the site of Szederkény-Kukorica-d?l?. A large settlement in southeast Transdanubia, Hungary, excavated in advance of road construction, Szederkény is notable for its combination of pottery styles, variously including Vin?a A, Ra?i?te and LBK, and longhouses of a kind otherwise familiar from the LBK world. Formal modelling of its date establishes that the site probably began in the later 54th century cal BC, lasting until the first decades of the 52nd century cal BC. Occupation, featuring longhouses, pits and graves, probably began at the same time in the eastern and western parts of the settlement, starting a decade or two later in the central part; the western part was probably the last to be abandoned. Vin?a pottery is predominantly associated with the eastern and central parts of the site, and Ra?i?te pottery with the west. Formal modelling of the early history of longhouses in the LBK world suggests their emergence in the Formative LBK of Transdanubia c. 5500 cal BC followed by rapid dispersal in the middle of the 54th century cal BC, associated with the ‘earliest’ (älteste) LBK. The adoption of longhouses at Szederkény thus appears to come a few generations after the start of this ‘diaspora’. Rather than explaining the mixture of things, practices and perhaps people at Szederkény with reference to problematic notions such as hybridity, we propose instead a more fluid and varied vocabulary, encompassing combination and amalgamation, relationships and performance in the flow of social life, and networks; this makes greater allowance for diversity and interleaving in a context of rapid change.     

Early Neolithic funerary diversity and mitochondrial variability of two Iberian sites

An analysis of the burial characteristics of the individuals recovered from two Early Neolithic sites in Navarre (Los Cascajos and Paternanbidea), in the Spanish Basque Country, revealed a complex funerary ritual. The individuals recovered from the Paternanbidea site were distributed in three double graves and a multiple one, while the individuals from Los Cascajos were buried in individual pit-shaped tombs; furthermore, the tombs had a variety of cultural and funerary features. The aim of this study is to evaluate the burial ritual by means of mitochondrial DNA data and the funerary characteristics of 36 individuals recovered from these two sites. The results show that the diversity of these Early Neolithic burial practices from the northern Iberian Peninsula cannot be explained by means of maternal kinship relationships.     

Food for thought: using game cameras to better understand the movement of bones by scavenging in archaeological faunal assemblages

This paper questions our understanding of the movement of bones by animal scavengers in the archaeological record. Since assumptions regarding the effects of animal scavenging shape final interpretations of skeletal element frequencies in archaeological faunal assemblages, they are important for our understanding and reconstruction of ancient human behaviour. The results of a 4-year actualistic kangaroo scavenging study from Australia are used to question our understanding of the movement of the bone by contrasting visual data captured by motion-activated digital game cameras with traditional taphonomic studies using skeletal element frequencies. Game cameras are commonly used by ecologists to capture the behaviour of living species but have not yet been used in experimental archaeology where visually documenting animal scavenging behaviour can be used to understand the movement of carcasses and individual bones. Results suggest that traditional zooarchaeological analyses may not be accurate indicators of hunted versus scavenged prey in archaeological faunal assemblages. Moreover, they most certainly fail to document the entire suite of animals scavenging a carcass. These implications are discussed with particular reference to the ability to definitively ascertain the role of humans in the megafaunal extinction debate in Australia.