Toothpick use among Epigravettian Humans from Grotta Paglicci (Italy)

This paper deals with two teeth (an upper right M1 and an upper right dM2) from the Epigravettian found in the site of Paglicci (Southern Italy) showing interproximal grooves that are situated below the crown, on the root walls just apical to the cementum–enamel junction. These grooves have been examined on a digital microscope which displays 3D images of the analysed surfaces. The images obtained made it possible to interpret these interproximal grooves as tooth picking activities that can be interpreted as an attempt to alleviate sore gums. The comparison with experimental images from available literature made it possible to form hypotheses concerning the nature of the probes that might have been used by the humans. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Khalsa: The Town with a ‘Golden Fountain’: The Rise and Fall of an Arab Town North of the Huleh Valley

This article deals with the history of a frontier Arab town—Khalsa—which was the centre of the Huleh Valley and the connection between Galilee, Southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights during the British Mandate in Palestine (1918–48). This article aims to explore the changes and transformations that occurred in the town and the Huleh Valley in general, and tries to show that, during that period, this remote and peripheral area underwent many social and economic changes. It also demonstrates that these changes not only occurred in the central areas in Palestine but also reached the northern parts. In addition, this article tells the ‘story’ of how this Arab town, which has not been addressed in earlier studies, grew rapidly, and why it collapsed quickly in the 1948 war. It examines what the role of its leader, Kamil Hussein, was and how his relationship with the Bedouin tribes and the Jewish settlements and leaders in the valley affected the results of the war. The story of Khalsa is, to some extent, a case study on the macro-level of what was happening in the Holy Land in the three decades of British rule.     

Fish as diet resource in North Spain during the Upper Paleolithic

During the last glacial maximum, the west European modern humans adapted to adverse conditions and their populations subsisted exploiting the natural resources available. Fish were always present as a source of animal protein, although their importance in the human diet and their contribution to the expansion of humans has not been fully explored. Based on the compilation of zooarchaeological evidences from north Spanish sites we have discovered a constant pattern of exploitation of freshwater fish (Salmonids) with high incidence in the human diet during the Upper Paleolithic. Shifts in the exploitation of marine resources can be explained by climate-related geographical changes. The characteristics of salmonids that make them target species for supporting human survival in adverse climate periods are identified and discussed.     

The Upper Paleolithic period in the Levant

The classic Upper Paleolithic sequence in the Levant was based on a series of stratified assemblages with culture-specific type fossils. Research in the last two decades has revealed numerous assemblages that cannot be accommodated within the classic sequence. The recently discovered assemblages are now regarded as representing two large entities that differ in both technology and typology. The locally developed Ahmarian is dominated by blades and bladelets, while the Levantine Aurignacian (probably an intrusive from the north) is dominated by flakes and by endscrapers or burins. The nature and contents of the sites suggest that Levantine Upper Paleolithic people were organized as small bands of mobile foragers, whose important resources were ungulate meat and plant foods. This subsistence economy and the associated settlement patterns lasted till about 13,000 B.P. and was succeeded by the Natufian culture with an entirely new socioeconomic organization.     

The transatlantic Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the nineteenth century

Since the 16th century, African Muslims figured prominently among the slave population of the Americas. While the number of Muslims pulled into the trade has always been a matter of speculation, lists of Africans rescued from slave ships provide us with some clues about the size and direction of the Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the 19th century. Based on an analysis of tens of thousands of names recorded in these lists, this essay argues that the majority of Muslim captives leaving Africa departed from Upper Guinea and suggests that Cuba was the center of the forced Muslim diaspora in the Americas. It traces the transatlantic links that connected particular regions of embarkation in Africa to their counterparts in Latin America and considers the implications of those connections for religious and cultural change within 19th-century slave populations. The essay challenges in important ways the colonial/postcolonial divide in Latin American history and uses Islam to pose important questions about the dynamics of social change across slave societies.     

内蒙古赤峰市上机房营子遗址发掘简报

上机房营子遗址位于内蒙古赤峰市松山区初头朗乡上机房营子村北约0.5公里处的山坡上,东南距初头朗乡6公里,距赤峰市约50公里(图一)。遗址位于阴河北岸的山坡上,海拔787米。2005年夏,为配合内蒙古赤峰市三座店水利枢纽工程建设,由内蒙古文物考古研究和吉林大学边疆考古研究中心联合对上机房营子遗址进行了抢救性发掘,并对石城址利用 GPS 全球定位系统进行了测绘和局     

From Frontier to Border Along the Iroquois Southern Door

The Upper Susquehanna drainage in New York assumed increasingly greater prominence as a borderland during the eighteenth century. Contrary to the idea that geopolitical boundaries were Colonial impositions, the creation of this borderland ensued from long-term strategies on the part of Native American as well as Euro-American powers. Reacting to Colonial encroachments from south and east, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) populated the valley with multi-ethnic towns consisting of both refugee tribes from the Atlantic seaboard and Iroquois representatives. These actions created a distinctive zone of creolized communities, and reflected the Haudenosaunee ability to play off English notions of demarcating the landscape.     

An Experimental Technological Study of Upper Paleolithic Kostenki-type Figurines

Principal stages in the manufacture of zoomorphic, polyiconic, and anthropomorphic Upper Paleolithic figurines are reconstructed. General factors determining their characteristics include universal conventions of representation and the limited set of technological operations available, whereas local factors include specific ways of processing materials and combining artistic techniques, the manner of individual masters, technological faults and accidents, as well as taphonomic processes.     

Review of the Cambrian acrotretid brachiopod Neotreta

The Cambrian acrotretid brachiopod Neotreta Sobolev 1976 is reviewed and re-illustrated, based on new material of the type species, N. tumida Sobolev 1976, from the lower Upper Cambrian of Siberia; Neotreta orbiculata Koneva 1990, originally described from the Middle Cambrian of Kazakhstan, has been obtained from roughly coeval beds in Shropshire, England; Neotreta pusilla Koneva 1986 was unavailable for study. Two new species, N. davidi and N. karagailensis, are described from Queensland, Australia, and Kirgizia, Central Asia respectively.