Dental Affinities of The Irmen People,Western Siberia

Dental features of the Late Bronze Age Irmen population of Western Siberia (14th–10th centuries BC) were studied on the basis of cranio-dental remains from 23 cemeteries in the Kuznetsk Basin, Baraba forest-steppe, the forest-steppe zone of the Altai, Tomsk and Novosibirsk areas of the Ob basin. The results suggest that the Irmen people originated in the Novosibirsk and Baraba areas from a mixture of Andronovo (Fedorovka) and autochthonous groups. Dental data are inconsistent with the idea that the Karasuk tribes might have taken part in this process. The Karasuk people clearly descended from the Okunevo people, as evidenced by the elevated frequencies of the Carabelli cusp and deflecting wrinkle. None of these traits is present in the Irmen people, who display dental gracility evidently introduced by Andronovo (Fedorovka) tribes.     

河南境内出土早期玉器初步研究

综合利用PIXE、XRD和Raman三种无损分析方法,准确判明了河南出土新石器时代至东周90余件玉器的质地,这些玉器的玉材种类非常丰富,并具有时代和地域特色。新石器时代至夏代,河南透闪石型玉器很少而绿松石占绝大多数,商代开始透闪石激增并占据主体地位。根据绿松石的类质同像、伴生矿物或围岩成分及透闪石所舍微量元素,探讨了玉...     

Roman Comedy in Humanities Courses

The article reviews the situation of the critical edition of the “entremeses” and other comic short plays of Calderon, highlighting numerous textual and interpretative problems in the current editions, and proposing solutions for establishing the correct text of many passages. It also provides a number of explanations that clarify other references.     

Middle Bronze Age metallurgy in the Levant: evidence from the weapons of Byblos

This paper constitutes a synthesis of a technological investigation on copper base alloy weapons from Byblos. Most of the weapons are typical of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant. Methods such as metallographic examination and chemical analyses by EDS were used to identify the different stages of the chaîne opératoire used in the making of these weapons. The results reveal precise information regarding the production of several types of weapons such as the type and performance of the moulds used for casting and the deformation process. Furthermore, these results highlight the contribution of economic and cultural factors in the choice of components in a copper base alloy recipe. Finally, the use of silver–copper brazes for joining copper base alloy objects is recorded for the first time for the period and region concerned.     

Diversity in foddering strategy and herd management in late Bronze Age Britain: An isotopic investigation of pigs and other fauna from two midden sites

Abstract

Middens of the southern British late Bronze and Iron Age are vast accumulations of cultural debris that can be explained as refuse dumps linked with large periodic feasting events. A distinctive feature of these sites is that their faunal assemblages invariably comprise a considerably higher proportion of pig remains than contemporaneous settlement sites. This paper presents results from a programme of stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope analysis of fauna from two major midden sites, Llanmaes in South Wales and Potterne in Wiltshire. The research aim is to reconstruct husbandry strategies and foddering regimes, particularly concerning pigs, to better understand how the challenges of raising large herds were met. Analysis produced exceptionally wide-ranging results for pigs and other domesticates at both sites, particularly in terms of δ¹⁵N values, demonstrating that diverse foddering strategies were employed. Diversity in the late Bronze Age pig foddering regimes indicates that the Neolithic husbandry practices (focusing on woodland fodder) had not been abandoned, but that new husbandry methods (consumption of household waste) were also being practised, which subsequently became more widely established in the Iron Age. The heterogeneity of signatures suggests that animals may have been husbanded in a piecemeal fashion at a local, household level. This in turn hints that fauna may have been brought to these sites from households across the surrounding landscape, rather than being husbanded by specialist producers in the vicinity of the middens.     

THE SHEPHELAH IN THE IRON AGE: A NEW LOOK ON THE SETTLEMENT OF JUDAH

Abstract

The Shephelah was densely settled in the Late Bronze Age, but most of the settlements were gradually abandoned during the transition to the Iron I period. Only a few Iron I settlements existed in the eastern part of the region (excluding the Philistine sites at the northwestern edge of the Shephelah), forming a small Canaanite enclave. During the Iron II period the region was gradually resettled, and it became part of Judah. This process lasted until the 8th century BCE, when the region reached an unparalleled demographic peak. Sennacherib's campaign brought wide-scale destruction, and the region recovered only partially before being devastated by Nebuchadnezzar. After reconstructing the region's settlement history, the article reassesses its political and demographic history in comparison to the neighbouring regions of the Judean highlands and the southern coastal plain, it is concluded that the Shephelah had a lesser role in the history of Judah than some recent studies suggest.     

The production of speiss (iron arsenide) during the Early Bronze Age in Iran

In this paper, analyses of some unusual slag samples from the prehistoric site of Tepe Hissar in northeastern Iran are presented. These slags are the remains of a five-thousand-year-old pyrotechnological process that produced speiss, a quasi-metallic material usually formed as an accidental by-product of copper or lead smelting. We argue that the “speiss slags” from Tepe Hissar suggest the intentional production of iron–arsenic alloy (“speiss”) in prehistory. Why the Tepe Hissar metalworkers produced speiss is a question that requires further investigation, but our preliminary assessment suggests that it was to provide arsenic as an alloying component for arsenical copper, the preferred copper alloy during much of the Early Bronze Age in Iran, and widely used across the ancient world. This recognition significantly advances our understanding of the early stages of metallurgy in the Old World.     

Towards the identification of dyestuffs in Early Iron Age Scandinavian peat bog textiles

A large systematic dye investigation of prehistoric Danish and Norwegian bog textiles was carried out using high performance liquid chromatography with photo diode array detection. After the selection of the most suitable protocol for dye extraction and HPLC analysis for this specific group of archaeological samples, the second part included the characterisation of the dyes detected in the whole series of the Early Iron Age textiles and the interpretation of the dyeing technology. Natural organic dyes were found from the three main categories of natural dyes, hence throwing new light on the use of biological dye sources in Early Iron Age Scandinavia. The results clearly indicate that most Scandinavian peat bog textiles originally were dyed and that already during the 1st millennium BC, the populations in Scandinavia were familiar with the dyeing technology.     

Birds and burials at Ajvide (Gotland,Sweden) and Zvejnieki (Latvia) about 8000–3900 BP

Animal bones in human burials may reveal aspects of the relationship between animals and humans. This article describes the roles of birds in mortuary practices and in the ideology of Stone Age northern Europe. Bird bones from two large burial sites, Middle Neolithic Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Mesolithic and Neolithic Zvejnieki (Latvia) are investigated with osteological methods. Beads and pendants were fashioned from the wing bones of waterbirds, and used in the decoration of the body or the burial dress. The jay was found in three Neolithic burials at Zvejnieki, and it may have been a totem animal for the Middle Neolithic people at Zvejnieki, and its wings or feathers were presumably attached to dresses and costumes for the dead. Bird remains in burials at Ajvide, Zvejnieki and some other Stone Age cemeteries may indicate similar features in the way of perceiving birds, especially the possible symbolic roles of waterbirds and wings. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the cosmology of historical hunter–gatherer (and herding) groups in modern Russia.