Keeping an eye on your pots: the provenance of Neolithic ceramics from the Cave of the Cyclops,Youra, Greece

Combined petrographic and chemical analysis of MN and LN ceramics from the Cave of the Cyclops on the island of Youra, Greece, has revealed a compositionally diverse assemblage with a range of different local and off-island sources. Ceramics deposited in Neolithic times on this barren, rocky outpost of the Sporades chain may have originated from a surprising number of possible origins, including from the Plain of Thessaly, Euboea and the volcanic northeast Aegean islands. This picture challenges traditional assumptions about Neolithic pottery production and indicates that significant movement of ceramics was already taking place within the northern Aegean as early as the beginning of the sixth millennium BC. The discovery of a persistent local pottery tradition, that is also found on the neighbouring island of Kyra-Panagia, indicates significant continuity in ceramic technology over some 1500 years.     

Seamen on Land? A Preliminary Analysis of Medieval Ship Graffiti on Cyprus

This article reports on the results of a research project entitled ‘KARAVOI. The Ship Graffiti on the Medieval Monuments of Cyprus: Mapping, Documentation and Digitisation’, during which 233 ship graffiti were recorded in 44 different monuments on the island, dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Innovative recording techniques have been used to mitigate the effects of the subjective or partial recording of graffiti lines on tracing paper. Apart from the study of ship graffiti as iconographic sources, particular emphasis has been given to their geographical and social context through a comprehensive analysis of the graffiti types and their spatial distribution in the monuments as well as the monuments location on the island.     

Historical mortars dating from OSL signals of fine grain fraction enriched in quartz

In the last years the mortar dating through Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) techniques has become a viable support for chronological estimations (date of construction or restoration episodes) of historical buildings. However, the dating of mortar has still open issues mainly regarding the assessment of the bleaching degree of quartz, the analysis of the OSL processes for this type of samples and the need to do appropriate tests for the most correct evaluation of the equivalent dose. This paper discusses the results obtained by OSL dating (blue diode stimulation) on the polymineral fine grain phase, enriched in quartz, extracted from lime mortar samples collected from different sites. Thermal transfer effects, through the behaviour of Equivalent Dose (ED) and recovery tests, degree and time of bleaching were studied. For each mortar sample the adjacent brick was collected; in some cases, sampling of the bricks bracketing a mortar layer was a possibility, thus obtaining a direct comparison with the standard thermoluminescence (TL) dating on the bricks. The results obtained show, for this set of samples, the possibility of dating the mortars through the use of the fine grain fraction provided of a suitable chemical-physical preparation procedure and the verification of the bleaching conditions.     

Book reviews

New works in geography

Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism. Gregory A. Barton. Pp. xiii + 192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0 521 81417 0 (hbk).

Claiming Rural Identities: Dynamics, Contexts, Policies. Tialda Haartsen, Peter Groote &; Paulus P.P. Huigen (eds). Pp. viii + 166. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000. Price €17.02, ISBN 90 232 3567 3 (pbk).

Geographies of Health. Anthony C. Gatrell. Pp. xv + 294. Oxford: Blackwell. 2002. Price £16.99 (pbk), ISBN 0 631 21985 4 (pbk).

The Peopling of Britain: The Shaping of the Human Landscape. Paul Slack and Ryk Ward (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. Price £50.00 (hbk), ISBN 0 19 829759 9 (hbk).

Focus on Scotland

William Speirs Bruce: Polar Explorer and Scottish Nationalist. Peter Speak. Pp. 144. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland Publishing, 2003. Price £9.99 (pbk), ISBN 1 901663 71 X (pbk).