Direct evidence for agricultural intensification during the first two millennia AD in northeast Burkina Faso Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Amy K. Styring, Alexa Höhn, Veerle Linseele, Katharina Neumann Abstract Archaeobotanical evidence from archaeological sites in northeast Burkina Faso dating to the first and second millennia AD has provided a useful insight into crop cultivation and the development of the West African savanna landscape. Nitrogen isotopic analysis of charred pearl millet grains from the same sites now provides the first opportunity to investigate how increased crop production and permanence of cultivated fields related to the intensity of household waste/manure application. Nitrogen isotope values of pearl millet grains increased during the first two millennia AD, indicating an intensification of manuring that would have enabled soil to stay fertile for longer, reducing the agricultural footprint of shifting cultivation. This may have been advantageous as population and settlement density increased, thereby increasing competition over land. The intensity of manure application in the second millennium AD at sites close to the Mare d’Oursi suggests that manure was likely sourced from outside the farming settlements, from livestock herded by nomadic pastoralists who would have been drawn to the mare for water. This is rare evidence for specialisation of sedentary farmers and pastoralists, demonstrating how the novel combination of fruit/seed, charcoal, faunal and isotopic evidence used in this study can enrich our knowledge of past lifeways in West Africa.

A unique recipe for glass beads at Iron Age Sardis Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Alicia Van Ham-Meert, Sarah Dillis, Annelore Blomme, Nicholas Cahill, Philippe Claeys, Jan Elsen, Katherine Eremin, Axel Gerdes, Christian Steuwe, Maarten Roeffaers, Andrew Shortland, Patrick Degryse Abstract In large parts of the Mediterranean recipes for the earliest man-made glass changed from melting mixtures of crushed quartz pebbles and halophytic plant ashes in the Late Bronze Age to the use of quartz sands and mineral soda during the Early Iron Age. Not much is known about this transition and the experimental materials which would inevitably have been connected to such technological change. In this paper we present a unique snapshot of developments in glass technology in Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age, when glass is still a relatively rare commodity. The present work focusses on black glass beads decorated with yellow trails from eighth to seventh century BCE Sardis, glass beads that are very rare for this period, and on this site. A full elemental analysis of the beads was made, and Sr, Pb and B isotope ratios were determined. This study reveals the use of a combination of a previously unknown source of silica and of mineral soda, giving rise to elevated (granite-like) Sr isotope signatures, as well as high alumina and B concentrations. The yellow trails of glass on the beads consist of lead-tin yellow type II, lead stannate, showing the earliest occurrence of this type of opacifier/colourant so far, predating any other findings by at least four centuries. The production of these glass beads may be local to Sardis and experimental in nature. It is therefore suggested that Sardis may have played its role in the technological development of the glass craft during the Iron Age.

On quantifying and visualizing the potter's personal style Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Ortal Harush, Naama Glauber, Amit Zoran, Leore Grosman Abstract Ceramic-sherds analysis has been concerned with categorizing to types according to vessel shape and size for the description of a given material culture. Yet, the characterization of ceramic variations and their meaning receives little attention in the archaeological study. In the present research, we wished to monitor small-scale variations, searching for the unique signature of the individual potter during production. We thus examined new parameters for distinguishing between trainee potters and monitoring their distinct styles as part of an integrated experimental archaeological study. For the purposes of this research, ceramic students were instructed to produce the same part of a storage jar repeatedly for several days following a strict protocol—with a single prototype and using the same technique in the same workspace. All the produced items were 3-D scanned to extract accurate geometric parameters for classification. Cluster analysis was used to analyze the digital data, in addition to a novel data visualization technique that was developed for detecting ceramic variations. These methods enabled us to distinguish the potters by their individual styles, probably already established in the early stages of learning. Our results show that the novel visualization approach, together with the quantitative method, allows us to efficiently identify the location, on the vessels, of the potters' stylistic fingerprint.

The spatial structure of Galician megalithic landscapes (NW iberia): A case study from the Monte Penide region Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Miguel Carrero-Pazos, Andrew Bevan, Mark W. Lake Abstract It is well known that Neolithic megalithic landscapes are the result of complex locational logics governing where communities chose to site their funerary monuments. These logics in turn respond to broader environmental and cultural affordances, and the relationship between these has been a major topic in the megalithic archaeological literature for the last few decades. Thanks to new approaches in spatial statistical modelling, there is now considerable opportunity to revisit traditional megalithic locational concepts from a more systematic point of view, not least in Galician studies (NW Iberian Peninsula). In the paper that follows, we apply such a modelling approach to a large set of megalithic monuments located in the south of Galicia (Monte Penide and surroundings) with a view to exploring locational choices, spatial hierarchy and territoriality in these funerary landscapes. The results indicate that the distribution of megalithic mounds in this region reflects a preference for locations with particular environmental properties, while at a more local scale the spacing of these mounds seems to reflect some kind of social partitioning of the landscape. Via spatial cluster analysis and a further novel method for testing site hierarchy, we conclude that the mound sizes within nine different mound clusters exhibits a non-random hierarchical structure, with a larger mound per group and smaller ones around that, and with what appears to be a preference for the large monument to be at or near the meeting point of several watersheds and upland ridge-routes.

Investigating the expected archaeomagnetic dating precision in Europe: A temporal and spatial analysis based on the SCHA.DIF.3K geomagnetic field model Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Lluís Casas, Evdokia Tema Abstract Archaeomagnetic dating is a chronometric dating technique, based on the ability of baked clay archaeological structures and artifacts to acquire a thermal remanent magnetization (TRM) when heated at high temperatures and cooled in the presence of the Earth's magnetic field. The precision of archaeomagnetic dating depends on several factors, among others the availability of a detailed reference secular variation (SV) curve for a given territory. In this study, we investigate the precision that archaeomagnetic dating can reach in Europe. We used the SCHA.DIF.3K European geomagnetic field model to calculate the dating uncertainties for the last 3000 years, taking into consideration only the uncertainties depending on the change rate of the geomagnetic field in the past and the reference SV curve's uncertainty envelope. Such uncertainties were calculated both in time and space, they are usually asymmetrically distributed around the considered year and it have been represented as dynamic maps of uncertainties. The obtained results show that archaeomagnetic dating based solely on directional data (declination and inclination) can be very precise for the last four centuries, with total uncertainties being almost always lower than 100 years all around Europe. Inherent dating uncertainties are also low for the last millennium, with values ranging from 50 to 300 years. These results underline the great potential of archaeomagnetism on dating baked clays belonging to the last 1000 years. For older periods, the uncertainty maps show that the dating precision may importantly vary from place to place, but with local non-symmetric uncertainty ranges generally below 400 years. The obtained maps also show that adding the intensity to the computation of the inherent uncertainties does not always reduce the uncertainty. The temporal and spatial analysis presented here does not give the total dating imprecision of archaeomagnetic dating (that definitely depends on numerous, often uncontrollable, factors), but aims at offering a useful tool to archaeomagnetic and archaeological research to check the feasibility of archaeomagnetic dating for determining the age of an archaeological structure below a desired precision.

Prehistoric Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: Residential population implications of limited agricultural and mammal productivity Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Larry V. Benson, Deanna N. Grimstead Abstract The agricultural productivity of Chaco Canyon was insufficient to sustain a population of 2300 residents. Summer flooding restricted farming of the valley floor to <100 acres and if maize was produced within the entire side-valley fan area, only 1150 people could be fed. Even to feed an elite and caretaker population of 300, 26% of the total side-valley area would have to be farmed. A Canyon resident population of 2300 required 83,950 kg protein/yr, equivalent to 349,792 kg of rabbit and/or deer meat. An annual harvest of this scale would rapidly exhaust small and large mammal populations within and surrounding the Canyon. This implies that only a few hundred people resided in the Canyon or that meat and maize was transported to the Canyon from outlying areas.

Experimenting with domestication: Understanding macro- and micro-phenotypes and developmental plasticity in teosinte in its ancestral pleistocene and early holocene environments Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Dolores R. Piperno, Irene Holst, J. Enrique Moreno, Klaus Winter Abstract Living representatives of the wild progenitors of domesticated species constitute a significant basis for morphological and genetic study of once ancestral plants and their early domesticated forms. However, plants, in part through phenotypic (developmental) plasticity, are well-known to directly respond to environmental changes creating phenotypic variability and new morphologies. Therefore, how the wild progenitors of domesticated species and their proto-crops may have responded to Late Pleistocene (LP) and early Holocene (EH) climatic conditions are important, yet little-studied issues. We grew the wild ancestor of maize, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis (Iltis&Doebley), and maize in the lower atmospheric CO2 and temperature characteristic of their ancestral LP and EH environments and studied key macro- and micro-traits important in the domestication process. Teosinte responded with some remarkable phenotypic changes including in key morphological traits in plant architecture, inflorescence sexuality, seed dormancy, and grain nakedness previously thought to be a result of domestication. An artificial selection experiment carried out on plastic maize-like traits in teosinte demonstrated their stability across generations that would have enabled early cultivators to cement the traits in all environments, as in modern maize. Our results arguably provide more faithful replicas of what the first teosinte collectors and cultivators exploited, and point to an alternative pathway to maize domestication not heretofore demonstrated in a crop plant. They demonstrate how experimental research informs current questions in domestication research and evolutionary biology more generally, while raising others that had not previously drawn attention.

Mercury in archaeological human bone: biogenic or diagenetic? Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Steven D. Emslie, Audrey Alderman, Ashley McKenzie, Rebecka Brasso, Alison R. Taylor, María Molina Moreno, Oscar Cambra-Moo, Armando González Martín, Ana Maria Silva, António Valera, Leonardo García Sanjuán, Eduardo Vijande Vila Abstract We investigated mercury (Hg) in human bone from archaeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula where the cultural use of cinnabar (HgS) as a pigment, offering or preservative in burial practices has been documented from the 4th to 2nd millennia cal B.C. (Late Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age). Previous analyses have shown high levels of total mercury (THg) in human bone at numerous Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in this region, but the question remains if this mercury entered the bones via diagenetic processes in the soil, especially where cinnabar powder and paint was found associated with the burials, or if it entered the bone via biogenic pathways from exposure to mercury from using cinnabar in life. We analyzed the humerus, femur, and tibia from a total of 30 individual burials from four Neolithic to Bronze Age sites in Iberia and found low to high values of THg in these bones, with the humerus showing significantly more THg concentrations than other skeletal elements when the THg was greater than 1 ppm. This pattern of Hg deposition in skeletal material from different sites and ages strongly suggests a biogenic origin for the mercury. In addition, absence of detectable Hg in bones with high to low values of THg using SEM EDS analysis further discounts diagenetic intrusion of Hg or cinnabar particles into the bone from the soil. It is likely that greater stress and bone remodeling rates from use of heavy tools and other activities in life are responsible for higher THg in the humerus than other skeletal elements, but additional research is needed to verify this.

Gombore II (Melka Kunture, Ethiopia): A new approach to formation processes and spatial patterns of an Early Pleistocene Acheulean site Publication date: August 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 108 Author(s): Eduardo Mendez-Quintas, Joaquín Panera, Flavio Altamura, Luca Di Bianco, Rita T. Melis, Flavia Piarulli, Giancarlo Ruta, Margherita Mussi Abstract To assess the integrity of Pleistocene archaeological sites is crucial in the analysis of human behaviour. Most of the Early Palaeolithic sites are in active fluvial environments where it is necessary to understand the degree of sedimentary disturbance. The analysis of the formation processes through geoarchaeological and geostatistical techniques offers new tools to evaluate if the archaeological assemblage is in autochthonous or allochthonous position. Gombore II, ≈850 Ka, within the archaeological and paleontological complex of Melka Kunture (Ethiopia), extends over estimated 1000 m2 and yielded a large number of Acheulean artefacts, fossil mammal bones and two fossil hominin remains. The geomorphological setting and deposition patterns of high-energy sedimentation in a fluvial channelized environment are similar to those of many other Early Palaeolithic African sites. This is traditionally described as producing a disturbed record, with the fortuitous association of faunal remains and lithic industry driven by fluvial processes. To assess this hypothesis, we analyse here the formation processes and the spatial patterning of the remains. We apply geoarchaeological (orientation and fabric) and spatial tests (density, grouping, k-means) to the mapped archaeological surfaces and to a present-day fluvial surface. We observe substantial differences in geoarchaeological features and spatial patterning between the archaeological record (lithic materials and faunal remains) and the natural clasts of both the archaeological deposit and the bed of the present-day river. This suggests different depositional processes or temporal events. We conclude that the remains produced by the hominins did not haphazardly accumulate after extensive erosion and re-sedimentation. They rather preserve a reasonable degree of taphonomic and spatial integrity and are possibly representative of different activities.

Editorial Board Publication date: July 2019 Source: Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 107 Author(s):