Durant dècades, la investigació arqueològica duta a terme en algunes de les principals serralades europees ha experimentat un desenvolupament important. Aquest fet ha comportat que finalment es disposi d’un corpus de dades robust per a zones que abans es consideraven marginals i que mostra l’ocupació humana en aquestes àrees de muntanya des del neolític fins als nostres dies. L’obtenció d’informació en aquests espais requereix, però, una metodologia específica, centrada en l’estudi del paisatge. En aquest sentit, en el present article es mostra la metodologia que utilitza el Grup d’Investigació en Arqueologia del Paisatge de l’Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (GIAP-ICAC) a l’hora d’investigar l’ocupació humana en zones de muntanya del Pirineu oriental situades entre els 1.800 i els 2.800 m s. n. m., més concretament a les capçaleres del Ter i del Segre (el Ripollès, la Cerdanya, Andorra). S’hi discuteixen les estratègies de prospecció i de mostreig, així com els enfocaments paleoambientals que s’hi utilitzen. L’aplicació d’aquesta metodologia interdisciplinària ha permès documentar paisatges humanitzats des d’antic, difícils d’imaginar fa només algunes dècades.

Algunos ejemplos de urnas en alabastro de calcita provienen del territorio entre Cádiz y Sevilla en la Hispania Baetica, un área históricamente situada en el centro de intensas redes culturales y comerciales. Poco se sabe de sus contextos de procedencia, pero su producción y uso encuentran paralelos directos en otros ejemplos hallados en otras partes del Imperio romano. Este artículo presenta y discute estas urnas desde una perspectiva comparativa y diacrónica. Los ejemplos hispanos, que incluyen algunos recipientes ‘reciclados’, revelan aspectos importantes sobre su producción, así como sobre las dinámicas de reciclaje de la cultura material en el período imperial temprano. La evidencia muestra que la selección y exhibición de estas urnas en la Baetica oscilan entre la tradición y la innovación, atribuyéndose, por un lado, a la persistencia de costumbres ancestrales y, por otro, a la apertura de esta zona a las modas y tendencias artísticas de Italia y el Mediterráneo.

Seasonal altitudinal mobility has been a key practice among pastoral societies in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula to cope with the unpredictable Mediterranean climate. The existence of a massive and regulated mobile herding system in this area dates back to the 12th century. Nevertheless, early herd connections between the lowlands and the Pyrenees during the Roman period have been documented. The available information regarding the potential adoption of sheep's mobile pastoralism by Iberian societies prior to the Romans' arrival is limited. This study aims to provide fundamental new insights into livestock altitudinal mobility during this period through a biogeochemical approach. Sequential analysis of carbon and oxygen isotope values is combined with strontium isotope ratios from sheep second and third lower molars from four Catalan sites (Mas Castellar de Pontós, Tossal de Baltarga, Sant Esteve d'Olius, Turó de la Rovira). The results reveal evidence of migrations across different altitudinal and geological areas, unveiling the great adaptability of mobile livestock strategies by Iberian populations. The first evidence of descending herds' mobility from the Pyrenees to the lowlands prior to the Roman conquest is also attested. Finally, the effectiveness of multi-isotope analysis (δ18O, δ13C, 87Sr/86Sr) in detecting seasonal livestock movements is demonstrated. Thus, this study provides a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the complexity of sheep livestock management of the north-eastern Iberian societies during the Middle/Late Iron Age. Moreover, the research points to a more integrated and connected Ibero-Pyrenean world with contemporary lowland communities than so far suggested. However, animal mobility was not widely practised and was possibly determined by the environmental conditions, economic needs, and political decisions of each settlement.

Despite the important role of livestock farming amongst Iron Age communities living in mountain regions, there is little information about livestock management, and particularly stabling practises, breeding systems, and grazing/foddering patterns. The study of the ground floor of Building G in Tossal de Baltarga has provided valuable insights into these important issues and has given us a better understanding of the social and economic patterns involved in all these livestock activities. It revealed the existence of a stable from the Late Iron Age, thanks to unique in situ finds of the stabled animals, including four sheep, a goat, and a horse, in addition to a range of organic remains preserved by fire and penning deposits. It is the first documented to date in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Through an integrated bio-geoarchaeological approach, combining a range of analytic procedures, including osteology, dental microwear, stable isotopes, phytoliths, dung spherulite analyses, and thin-section micromorphology, for the first time, this study has provided new, high-resolution evidence of livestock management strategies. Specifically, the research shed light on animal penning and feeding practises, revealing variable herbivorous regimes between species, the practise of seasonal movements, and the possible use of fodder as the main dietary regime of the animals stabled there. At the same time, the Baltarga case-study illustrates an indoor production unit that could reveal possible private control of some domestic animals in the Pyrenean Late Iron Age.

El estudio de la explotación, usos o significados de las rocas decorativas, en los primeros siglos de la Edad Media, está alcanzando cotas de tema protagonista en la escena historiográfica de los últimos años. Con el fin de plantear una reflexión en profundidad sobre la cuestión, se presenta una recopilación de la historia de la investigación al respecto. Se analiza el aporte al conocimiento sobre el fenómeno del material lapídeo decorativo desde la literatura histórico-artística del romanticismo hasta los postulados actuales.

This paper presents two algorithms for the large-scale automatic detection and instance segmentation of potential archaeological mounds on historical maps. Historical maps present a unique source of information for the reconstruction of ancient landscapes. The last 100 years have seen unprecedented landscape modifications with the introduction and large-scale implementation of mechanised agriculture, channel-based irrigation schemes, and urban expansion to name but a few. Historical maps offer a window onto disappearing landscapes where many historical and archaeological elements that no longer exist today are depicted. The algorithms focus on the detection and shape extraction of mound features with high probability of being archaeological settlements, mounds being one of the most commonly documented archaeological features to be found in the Survey of India historical map series, although not necessarily recognised as such at the time of surveying. Mound features with high archaeological potential are most commonly depicted through hachures or contour-equivalent form-lines, therefore, an algorithm has been designed to detect each of those features. Our proposed approach addresses two of the most common issues in archaeological automated survey, the low-density of archaeological features to be detected, and the small amount of training data available. It has been applied to all types of maps available of the historic 1″ to 1-mile series, thus increasing the complexity of the detection. Moreover, the inclusion of synthetic data, along with a Curriculum Learning strategy, has allowed the algorithm to better understand what the mound features look like. Likewise, a series of filters based on topographic setting, form, and size have been applied to improve the accuracy of the models. The resulting algorithms have a recall value of 52.61% and a precision of 82.31% for the hachure mounds, and a recall value of 70.80% and a precision of 70.29% for the form-line mounds, which allowed the detection of nearly 6000 mound features over an area of 470,500 km2, the largest such approach to have ever been applied. If we restrict our focus to the maps most similar to those used in the algorithm training, we reach recall values greater than 60% and precision values greater than 90%. This approach has shown the potential to implement an adaptive algorithm that allows, after a small amount of retraining with data detected from a new map, a better general mound feature detection in the same map.

The Big Exchange project investigates large-scale exchange systems in Eurasia and Africa (8000–1 BC). We concentrate on raw materials of known origin (‘sourced finds’). Network analysis of tools and artificial intelligence methods are used to analyse the combined data sets. We invite broad collaboration on bimodal exchange networks.

The Maghreb is a key region for understanding the dynamics of cattle dispersal and admixture with local aurochs following their earliest domestication in the Fertile Crescent more than 10,000 years ago. Here, we present data on autosomal genomes and mitogenomes obtained for four archaeological specimens of Iron Age (∼2,800 cal BP-2,000 cal BP) domestic cattle from the Eastern Maghreb, i.e. Althiburos (El Kef, Tunisia). D-loop sequences were obtained for an additional eight cattle specimens from this site. Maternal lineages were assigned to the elusive R and ubiquitous African-T1 haplogroups found in two and ten Althiburos specimens, respectively. Our results can be explained by post-domestication hybridization of Althiburos cattle with local aurochs. However, we cannot rule out an independent domestication in North Africa considering the shared ancestry of Althiburos cattle with the pre-domestic Moroccan aurochs and present-day African taurine cattle.

Presentamos el estudio de producciones cerámicas de ámbito tardoantiguo (IV-VI d. C.) procedentes de las excavaciones realizadas en el edificio palacial de Carranque (Toledo) durante las campañas de 1988 a 2003. La ausencia de metodología estratigráfica y contexto de este material condiciona y lastra su estudio, si bien el análisis íntegro del conjunto se ha demostrado esencial para la identificación de las producciones cerámicas presentes en el yacimiento durante ese periodo (TSHT, TSHTM, TSA D, lucernas africanas y ánforas) y para trazar, a partir del cotejo con las cerámicas halladas en contextos cerrados con metodología estratigráfica (campañas 2009 y 2010), las dinámicas y patrones de producción, consumo y comercio en las que se hallaba inserto el yacimiento a lo largo de la Tardoantigüedad (IV-VI d. C.).

ABSTRACT This contribution presents interdisciplinary research on charcoal hearth remains carried out at Poggio di Montieri, Central Italy, a hill heavily exploited in the Middle Ages for the extraction of silver-bearing ore, and then managed until the nineteenth century with a multiple land use system based on pasture. Linking together pedological and archaeological surveys with anthracological, dendro-anthracological and chemical analyses, as well as with information from historical texts and maps, this research outlines the environmental dynamics that occurred in this area in the last few centuries. Although ore processing undoubtedly required large quantities of charcoal as fuel, no evidence of charcoal hearth remains from the Middle Ages have been found, while at least two charcoal production phases, starting from the seventeenth century, were individuated. Despite an increase in charcoal production at the end of the last phase, in the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries, no over-exploitation of the forest resources at Poggio di Montieri was documented. The lack of such an expected over-exploitation could be due to the use of wood from pruning and shredding, which allowed the sustainable management of the forest resource and was the legacy of the multiple land use systems of previous centuries.