Postclassic expansion of Mesoamerican biocultural characteristics into Sonora,Mexico

Recent excavations at the Postclassic period (circa a.d. 1000–1521) mortuary mound of El Cementerio (SON P:10:8), located along the Río Yaqui in central Sonora, Mexico, have documented 105 mortuary features (111 individuals) many of which display elongated intentional cranial modification and several cases of tooth filing. These constitute biocultural traits common across much of Mesoamerica throughout its Prehispanic cultural sequence, which expanded along West Mexico and into northwest Mexico beginning in the late Classic period. The examples from El Cementerio represent the northernmost concentrated expression of these traits and could represent the spread of Mesoamerican/West Mexican identity associated with macro-regional trade and the expansion of the Aztatlán archaeological tradition during the Postclassic period in the region.     

Detecting Late Holocene cultural landscape modifications using LiDAR imagery in the Boreal Forest,Susitna Valley,Southcentral Alaska

The subarctic boreal forest, or taiga, is the largest biome in the world but has received minimal archaeological research because of its remoteness and difficult working conditions. In Southcentral Alaska the most common archaeological sites are surface manifestations of proto-historic semi-subterranean caches once used for food storage and living structures. However, in dense summer vegetation, these small-scale features are difficult to locate without high intensity pedestrian survey. To test the usefulness of LiDAR data for archaeological prospection in the taiga, we compare LiDAR imagery to the known distribution of small-scale semi-subterranean cultural features. The use of LiDAR, when complemented with Sky-View Factor, has proven valuable in identifying relatively small semi-subterranean features though it does not replace on-the-ground investigation. Nevertheless, the application of LiDAR to locate low density and small-scale cultural features is widely applicable across the subarctic in densely vegetated contexts and may assist in significantly expanding our current knowledge of land-use patterns and site distributions in logistically challenging places.     

Debunking the cliché of Italian military cowardice: the Italian military internees and Guareschi

This article has two goals. The first is to challenge the cliché (outside Italy) of the cowardly and clownish Italian soldier by recalling the voluntary journey to concentration camps (Lagers) of 650,000 soldiers and officers, the so-called Italian Military Internees (IMI), who said ‘No!’ to the German ‘invitation’ to swear an oath of loyalty to the Reich upon the declaration of the armistice on 8 September 1943. Despite a reign of terror in the Lagers in which they were interned, most continued to resist until they died or were repatriated at the end of the war. The second goal is to examine the idiosyncratic evocation of officers’ experience as IMI by Giovannino Guareschi in his Diario clandestino (1949). He played a major role in the IMIs’ ‘unarmed resistance’ in the four Lagers in which he was interned and the work consists mostly of material written in situ for his companions in misfortune.     

Exploring place marketing by American microbreweries: neolocal expressions of ethnicity and race

The American craft brewing scene has exhibited continued growth over the past several decades fueled by the desire of many patrons to opt for unique, local brews in the place of homogenous national and international brands. Previous research reports that American microbreweries often express neolocalism in the marketing of their products: using local place names, people, events, landscape features, and icons on their labeling and in their names to establish roots with the local environment and culture. By way of qualitatively surveying 1564 microbrewery websites, this paper looks through a neolocal lens to examine microbrewery usage of ethnicity and race in their marketing efforts. Microbreweries are found to express ethnicity and race in their marketing schemes to a limited extent within which ethnicity, more so than race, is demonstrated. Specific examples include references to ethnic ties to the Scots-Irish in Appalachia, specific Native American tribes throughout the country, and Latino, specifically Mexican/Mexican-American, cultural heritage in the American southwest. In addition, findings reflect the demographics of the industry, which is dominated by whites of European descent.     

The Changing Face of Neolithic and Bronze Age Ireland: A Big Data Approach to the Settlement and Burial Records

This paper synthesizes and discusses the spatial and temporal patterns of archaeological sites in Ireland, spanning the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age transition (4300–1900 cal BC), in order to explore the timing and implications of the main changes that occurred in the archaeological record of that period. Large amounts of new data are sourced from unpublished developer-led excavations and combined with national archives, published excavations and online databases. Bayesian radiocarbon models and context- and sample-sensitive summed radiocarbon probabilities are used to examine the dataset. The study captures the scale and timing of the initial expansion of Early Neolithic settlement and the ensuing attenuation of all such activity—an apparent boom-and-bust cycle. The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods are characterised by a resurgence and diversification of activity. Contextualisation and spatial analysis of radiocarbon data reveals finer-scale patterning than is usually possible with summed-probability approaches: the boom-and-bust models of prehistoric populations may, in fact, be a misinterpretation of more subtle demographic changes occurring at the same time as cultural change and attendant differences in the archaeological record.     

Silver production at al‐Radrad: archaeometallurgical analysis of ore,slag and technical ceramics from early medieval Yemen

The zinc‐lead‐silver deposit of al‐Jabali, about 65 km north‐east of Sana'a in Yemen, has been identified as the location of the late antique/Islamic period silver mine al‐Radrad. Exploitation of the mine is known from the account of al‐Hamdani, an Arab geographer of the tenth century AD. The al‐Jabali area has been the focus of geological and archaeometallurgical surveys, and extensive metallurgical remains have been discovered. Samples of ore, slag and technical ceramics were collected for archaeometallurgical analysis. The technology of silver production is discussed in relation to the historical record, and elemental and lead isotope characterisation of ore and slag provides a basis for future provenance studies.     

An Investigation Into the Relationship Between Funerary Treatment and Bacterial Bioerosion in European Archaeological Human Bone

A central problem in funerary archaeology is interpreting how the corpse was manipulated in the immediate post mortem period. The extent of bacterial bioerosion to the internal bone microstructure has been proposed as a means to infer the early post mortem history of a corpse, as it has been suggested that this form of bone diagenesis is produced by an organism's putrefactive gut bacteria. Under this model, different forms of funerary treatment would be expected to leave characteristic signatures of bioerosion in archaeological bone. Here, we tested the extent to which bacterial bioerosion of ancient human bones reflected funerary treatment, through histological analysis of 301 archaeological human bone thin sections from 25 European archaeological sites. We found that bioerosion was significantly influenced by whether a bone originated from a neonatal individual or an anoxic context. When these remains were excluded, bioerosion was controlled by archaeological phase in a manner consistent with known early post mortem treatment and forensic models of bodily decomposition. These findings suggest that microscopic analyses of bone have useful applications in reconstructions of funerary processes and provide some insight into factors that may control the persistence of organic biomolecules and fossilization.