Geographical Variation of Subsistence Strategies in Early Mediaeval Populations of Southwestern Germany

The investigation is based on bone element data of early Mediaeval human skeletal samples from eight differing environmental conditions in lowland and mountain range localities of southern Germany. Reconstruction of plausible subsistence strategies revealed close correlations with the respective ecological potentials of the localities as indicated by proxy data on geomorphology, climate, and soil quality. In general, lowland situations showed mixed dietary patterns with a prevalence of agricultural farming, whereas in mountainous areas the emphasis was on dairy farming production and horticulture. This points to subsistence activities during the early Middle Ages that are closely adjusted to differing environmental conditions. An obvious deviation from this pattern in one locality (Kirchheim unter Teck) is explained in terms of successful socio-cultural buffering of limited but effective exploitation of the natural setting.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ‘BEST RELATIVE FIT FACTOR’ WHEN EVALUATING ELEMENTAL CONCENTRATION DATA OF POTTERY DEMONSTRATED WITH MYCENAEAN SHERDS FROM SINDA,CYPRUS

Neutron activation analysis of pottery was established at Bonn in 1983 and has since become one of the primary archaeometry‐based analytical techniques at the facility. A brief history of the laboratory and a discussion of the best relative fit procedure for pottery is provided. When comparing concentration data for pottery, a best relative fit should always be considered. This mathematical procedure generally results in ‘sharper’ concentration patterns and improves the separability of chemically not very different compositional groups. This is demonstrated for a set of 30 Late Cypriot (Myc. IIIC1) pottery samples from Sinda, Cyprus, which allow formation of a good reference pattern for this site. Applying factors in the range of 0.82–1.43, a number of samples from Egypt and Palestine can be assigned with high probability to a Cypriot origin.     

FIFTY YEARS OF LUMINESCENCE DATING*

Luminescence techniques for dating both heated materials (e.g., pottery and burnt stone) and sediments have gone through three phases in the past 50 years. The first 22 years, from 1957 to 1979, were devoted to thermoluminescence (TL) techniques applied to heated material. In the next six years, from 1979 to 1985, it was found that TL dating could be applied to sediments. However, the TL signals of both quartz and feldspar grains observed for modern sediments were small, but were not zero, thus making them useful only for older sediments. A new luminescence signal that was totally zeroed by exposure to sunlight for a relatively short period of time, a few hours or less, was found; this led to the development of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating techniques in 1985. Further developments have continued to the present day. Within the past 22 years, 1999 was also a year with major developments. A reliable procedure for single aliquots of quartz that have a rapidly bleached (‘fast’) OSL component was formalized and an instrument that allowed rapid measurement of equivalent doses for single grains was constructed. These developments have led to OSL becoming a major dating tool in Quaternary geology, at least for the past 100 000 years, and in archaeology, particularly as related to the dispersal of modern humans.