Marine shell dates and surface lithic assemblages on the west coast of South Africa

Archaeological surface finds are difficult to date. There are several useful methods, but each requires special circumstances and has one drawback or another. On the west coast of South Africa marine shell are abundant on surface sites but they are rarely dated because they are perceived to be in disturbed context and in questionable association with artefacts. This paper attempts to rectify this misconception and shows that, although far from perfect, a large suite of surface dates can shed as much light as excavated data. On the Vredenburg Peninsula they help refute the hypothesis that two economically and culturally distinct populations shared this pre-colonial landscape since 2000 BP.     

Geochemical methods for inferring seasonal occupation of an estuarine shellmound: a case study from San Francisco Bay

Seasonal patterns of Native American residence and use of shell mounds of the San Francisco Bay area, California are of great interest. This work investigates seasonal occupation by means of a new method for interpretation of geochemical data from Mytilus trossulus specimens recovered from one of these structures, the Ellis Landing Shell Mound (CA-CCO-295). The approach, which is suitable for relatively small shell fragments from a variety of archaeological contexts, is used to infer the environmental conditions (temperature and salinity of ambient water) at harvest time, compared with average conditions for the period, and thus estimate the season during which the shells were harvested. This information, in turn, is employed to evaluate current models about the growth and construction of prehistoric shell mounds in San Francisco Bay. The method was applied to seven different lenses in the shell mound ranging in age from ∼240 cal yr BP to ∼3510 cal yr BP. We found that, although seasonal occupation varied over time, it generally was confined to summer through late fall, with little indication of winter gathering. Our findings suggest that California shell mounds, such as Ellis Landing, were constructed in a very different manner than some other mounded places used by contemporaneous hunter-gatherers elsewhere in North America.     

泉州蝇埔村“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳来源初考

为考证泉州“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳的来源,本文利用了动物学、动物地理学知识对“蚵壳厝”所用的牡蛎壳进行了种类鉴定和分布的分析。结果显示：“蚵壳厝”的牡蛎壳由大量近江牡蛎（CraSS0Strear1Vu一]ar1S）和少量的长牡蛎（C．g1gaS）组成,这两种牡蛎都属巨牡蛎属（CraSS0strea）。动物地理学特点显示,它们都是分布在太平洋一印度洋交汇海域,东非沿海的印度洋西部并没有这些种类的分布。结合前人对海上丝绸之路的研究结果,我们认为泉州“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳应该是来自于东南亚或南海北部沿海。     

Übersicht der Tätigkeit internationaler Geographenkongresse auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Kartographie

Abstract

This paper surveys the career of Benedetto Bordon as a miniaturist, designer of woodcuts, and cartographer. Although from Padua, Bordon worked primarily in Venice where he illuminated religious and classical texts and official ducal documents destined for Venetian noblemen. The writer argues that Bordon designed woodcut illustrations for books printed by Aldus Manutius and others, in addition to the woodcut maps in his 1528 book on islands in the MediteiTanean, Atlantic, and Caribbean. Bordon's lost world map of 1508 is discussed in relation to the map‐making activities of Francesco Rosselli, the Florentine miniaturist and engraver who was in Venice in 1504 and 1508, and in relation to a circle of Venetian scholars and patricians interested in Ptolemy's Cosmographia and in the mapping of the New World.     

Radiocarbon age determinations of fossil Margaritifera auricularia (Spengler) from the River Thames in West London

In the early 1900s shells of a large freshwater mussel, Margaritifera auricularia (Spengler), were discovered in calcreted gravel dredged from the channel of the Thames at several sites between Mortlake and Battersea in west London. These specimens were said to have been associated with Neolithic polished stone axes, supposedly as food remains. M. auricularia is now extinct in Britain, but it has been reported living in several large rivers in southern Europe although apparently not in recent years. Three radiocarbon dates of 4140±50, 4340±45 and 4860±40 bp have been obtained from Thames specimens, supporting a Neolithic age for these shells. The theory that the shells represent debris from imported human food is discounted and it is considered more likely that M. auricularia was actually living in the Thames in Neolithic times. Its extinction in Britain should be seen as part of a general recession during the Post-glacial, as revealed by fossil occurrences to the north and east of its present-day range.     

Hornell,Hasslöf and Boatbuilding Sequences

Hornell's publications on ‘native watercraft’ form a unique ‘library’ dealing with boatbuilding and boat use. His quest for the origins of water transport, on the other hand, was unsuccessful. In a clarification of the issues involved, Hasslöf criticized Hornell's use of the term ‘carvel’ and proposed ‘shell‐first’ and ‘skeleton‐first’ as best able to characterize boatbuilding traditions. Those terms subsequently gave way to ‘plank‐first’ and ‘frame‐first’. Certain north‐west European vessels, each built in both those sequences, were identified by Hasslöf as a link between ‘plank‐first’ and ‘frame‐first’. Such a transition would have been facilitated by the use of ‘framing‐first’, a building sequence used in north‐west Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean from the early 1st millennia AD.     

The Food Remains from Casselden Place, Melbourne, Australia

This paper discusses the faunal, shell, and botanical remains from Casselden Place with the aim of investigating consumption and dietary patterns at the site during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of the major food sources are discussed in detail with reference to historical records regarding the price of various supplies and their availability at the time.     

西江中游文化区的生业经济及其发展阶段

西江中游地区是岭南历史文化区内一个相对独立的考古学文化区,新石器时代大致经历了三种生业经济形态,早期是一种广谱的渔猎采集经济,中期是一种利用贝类为主的渔猎采集经济,晚期是较发达的稻作农业经济。演进过程在整个文化区内具有一致性。贝类利用自新石器时代早期开始呈现出一种显著强化的趋势,但一直未在食物结构中占据主要地位。     

试析“冥”字本义

本文通过列举分析甲骨文字形、文义等方面,试图说明“冥”字在甲骨卜辞中不能解释为分娩的“娩”,更结合前人的研究成果提出了对于“冥”字本义的新观点。     

Intertidal Foraging on Atolls: Prehistoric Forager Decision-Making at Ebon Atoll,Marshall Islands

Prehistoric molluscan assemblages provide insights into long-term patterns of human landscape use, environmental change, and human impacts to marine resources. The investigation of forager decision-making regarding the selection of certain mollusc taxa and/or the exploitation of particular habitats is fundamental to understanding human-environment interactions in the past, and is relevant for understanding trajectories of human impacts to the intertidal zone in coastal settings. We document variability in the collection of molluscs at two archaeological sites on Ebon Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands: one on a windward, intermittently occupied islet, and the other on a permanently inhabited leeward islet. All molluscan taxa were assigned to a range of habitats within a hierarchical classification scheme for intertidal marine environments. The relative abundance of taxa from each habitat was used as a proxy for forager decision-making. We report a generalized, non-selective, foraging strategy focused on gastropod taxa from the high intertidal and supratidal. These results indicate that rather than focusing intensively on select taxa, intertidal foragers targeted particular marine habitats, taking advantage of the predictable behaviors of the molluscs that inhabit them.