Nami's Middle Bronze Age Suburb: The Coastal Settlement at Site 104–106

This study presents a late 19th to early 18th cent. BCE, MBIIA settlement in the immediate vicinity of Tel Nami on the Carmel Coast of Israel. Site 104–106 has been all but destroyed by modern agricultural activity as well as quarrying, but a large number of ceramics and small finds were salvaged during a 1985–6 survey of Tel Nami?'s hinterland as well as subsequent geoarchaeological research of the area. Little of the site remains, and the current study functionally amounts to a salvage project for an MBIIA coastal site, which was mentioned in an earlier survey. Geomorphology reveals how the sandstone kurkar ridges in this area of the coast governed the dynamic relationship between Tel Nami and its hinterland. Comparable ceramic chronology for Site 104–106 presented derives from Aphek-Antipatris, Megiddo, Kabri, Tel Ifshar, Tel Nami itself, and other MBIIA coastal sites of the Southern Levant. The ceramics include well-produced local wares as well as imports from coastal Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus confirmed by petrographic analyses. Finds suggest a small agro-industrial site in the immediate periphery of the coastal Tel Nami.     

Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill? A Low-Cost and Time-Efficient Molehill Survey of the Lost Medieval Harbor Site of Monnikerede,Belgium

Grasslands pose a particular problem for archaeological survey involving artifact assessment, as no material is plowed up to the surface. Although finds in molehills are often the only source of information available on sites with such low visibility, an archaeology of molehills has thus far been largely disregarded. Yet, by applying a low-cost and time-efficient methodology, both the potential and the pitfalls of molehill archaeology come to the forefront. At the medieval harbor site of Monnikerede, it was possible to assess material culture and to locate certain structural elements. However, when artifact densities were compared with the underlying geophysical anomalies, a more complex relationship appeared at the level of individual features.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

A Late Neolithic Case of Pott's Disease from Hungary

The aim of this study was to present classic bone lesions caused by tuberculosis, as seen in a Late Neolithic–Early Copper Age osteoarchaeological sample deriving from the site of Alsónyék‐Bátaszék (the western part of Hungary from the 5th millennium bc ). In one particular case of an adult male skeleton, vertebral bodies' destruction, collapse, ankylosis and marked angulation in the lower thoracic and the upper lumbal region of the vertebral column were observed. The collapse resulted in a severe gibbus formation. The paleopathological analysis was carried out using morphological observation supported by radiological analyses. The results from this study increase our knowledge of the early occurrence of skeletal tuberculosis in past populations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dating the Ramat Saharonim Late Neolithic desert cult site

The Ramat Saharonim site, located in the central Negev desert, Israel, consists of four shrines in a shallow valley and 30 tumuli, aligned on two cuesta cliffs on the valley's sides. Previous assessments based on site surveys suggested a general chronological span from Late Neolithic period (ca. 5000–5500 BC) through the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC). Excavations in one shrine and three tumuli revealed a well-constructed double wall at the shrine and seven primary adult burials in the three tumuli. Quartz from sediment samples post-dating the construction of the burials and shrine was dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) using the single aliquot regenerative dose (SAR) protocol, and charcoal and leather samples were dated by ¹⁴C. The OSL results for a burial in one tumulus are 7500 ± 700 to 6000 ± 600 years. In a second tumulus, OSL ages of 2000 ± 200–1800 ± 170 years and a ¹⁴C age on leather of 390–200 BC (2340–2150 cal BP) imply that this burial is Nabatean and that the site was used also in the Hellenistic period. Two ¹⁴C ages on charcoal from the shrine give an age between 5280 and 4710 BC (7230–6660 cal BP). OSL single aliquot ages for sediment from the shrine are highly scattered and far too old (60,000 to 12,000 years). The unlikely old ages are due to insufficient resetting of the OSL signal of some of the quartz grains when sand was blown onto the site. Indeed, single grain measurements for six samples of sediment postdating the shrine show a very large range of grain ages, but with a distinct young population in all samples. Ages calculated from these young populations average 5400 ± 800, in better consistence with the ¹⁴C dates and confirming our supposition that only some of the transported grains were reset at the time of deposition. The combined OSL and ¹⁴C dating shows that the shrines and tumuli are contemporaneous and attributes the complex to the Late Neolithic. This has clear ramifications for our understanding of the period and the rise of desert pastoral societies.     

Hydrochemical characterization of a coal mine plume detected by an airborne geophysical survey

A trial airborne electromagnetic (AEM) geophysical survey was carried out across a 13 × 9 km area of the northern Nottinghamshire (UK) coalfield. One of the objectives was to examine the influence of coal mines (collieries) and associated spoil heaps situated above the Triassic Sherwood Sandstone aquifer. The conductivity models obtained from the AEM survey revealed extensive zones of enhanced subsurface conductivity in the vicinity of all the collieries in the survey area. The present study provides information regarding subsequent investigations (ground geophysics and borehole) to confirm the AEM results and to investigate the geochemical nature of the conductive zone identified in the vicinity of one of the collieries.Following ground geophysical confirmation of the airborne results, three boreholes were drilled into one of the conductive zones to the east of a working colliery. Geophysical logs and analysis of pore fluid geochemistry demonstrate that there is a very strong correlation between the borehole induction logs (formation conductivity), total dissolved solids (TDS) and chloride in the pore waters. The three cored boreholes have confirmed that there is a groundwater plume with high concentrations of TDS, compared with background, moving east from the Thoresby Colliery on a hydraulic gradient of 0.023. Porewater geochemistry obtained from core has been compared with that of local aquifer waters and with samples obtained from the colliery. The results indicate that the plume chemistry could result from the mixing of a typical Sherwood Sandstone composition with colliery spoil leachate. The AEM conductivity models have been successfully correlated with ground geophysical models, borehole induction logs, TDS and chloride in the pore waters. By implication, the geophysical results obtained over a larger area indicate the wider extent of such impacts in relation to both former and current mining activities.     

Harnessing the waves: Monuments and ceremonial complexes in Orkney and beyond

Utilising recent observations by Phillips (2003) on the location of chambered cairns in Orkney in relation to the sea this paper attempts to explain why megalithic monuments cluster in particular locations. In the past, the distribution of cairns has been related to the levels of survival in marginal locations. However, monument locations, from across Scotland, demonstrate that clustering was a feature of monumental distribution in the past. From a maritime perspective it becomes easier to understand these groupings in Orkney as the product of interactions between widely dispersed island communities. Utilising a long-term perspective it is possible to use the relative patterning of monuments of different ages to suggest the changing audiences to whom these monuments were addressed. For example, the clustering of Earlier Neolithic monuments in Orkney, in places that form important linking locales, suggests a role for these monuments involving establishing and maintaining links between island groups within the Orkney archipelago. The location of later Neolithic monumental complexes, on the other hand, suggests the importance of inter-regional maritime contact at precisely the time when such contacts are strikingly evident in the archaeological record. It is argued that a closer integration of our approaches to land and sea is needed if we are to understand the nature of long distance contacts in the past.