Archaeological Approaches Research Articles

Archaeological Approaches to Plastics and Plastic Pollution: A Critical Overview

Archaeological Approaches to Plastics and Plastic Pollution: A Critical Overview

Machine learning-based identification of geomorphological units in Quintero Bay (32°S) and its implications for the search for early drowned archaeological sites on the western coast of South America

High-resolution predictive modeling of submerged landscapes has successfully allowed the detection of early archaeological sites that are presently underwater. These models have traditionally relied on geophysical techniques, which can be both time-consuming and expensive, especially for extensive survey areas. In contrast, geomorphological mapping using Machine Learning (ML) techniques has emerged as a rapid and accessible alternative with numerous advantages over conventional methods. In this work, we employ ML algorithms (Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, Partial Least Squares, and Principal Component Analysis) trained on land to analyze the seabed of Quintero Bay to identify relic landforms that characterize the paleolandscape within which the submerged early site GNLQ1 formed. The methodology also included a multicriteria analysis that integrated geological (geomorphological, tectonic, eustatic) and archaeological (attributes of non-submerged records in the region) approaches to delineate potential areas of archaeological interest. The findings of this work can guide and enhance future archaeological research. The results underscore the importance of possessing a comprehensive understanding of the study area and its associated variables to the successful application of ML techniques. This also applies to modeling drowned paleolandscapes. Nevertheless, despite these challenges, ML-based modeling of drowned paleolandscapes can provide an overview of the distribution of geoforms comprising the paleolandscape, which in turn can help identify future geophysical survey areas to focus on in the search for archaeological evidence, thereby improving our understanding of the relationship between early human groups and these landscapes.

The Capability Approach and Archaeological Interpretation of Transformations: On the Role of Philosophy for Archaeology

Abstract Over its history, archaeology has seen a varied set of uses made of philosophy and philosophical concepts. A persistent critique has been that too often philosophical or more generally theoretical debates have made little difference in terms of empirical archaeological work and interpretation. In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary study on the operationalisation of the Capability Approach in archaeology. We trace some of its implications as regards the understanding of identity and social organisation in archaeology and represent a model by way of which the Capability Approach can be operationalised in archaeology with the Cucuteni-Trypillia societies from 5050 to 2950 BCE as our case study. An analytic scheme is developed that relates archaeological categories to those of the United Nation’s Human Development Index.

Fringe discourse networks 1932–2022: a media archaeological approach to (Ex)communication and (De)platforming

ABSTRACT In 1932, the Dutch writer Ernest Michel was banned from publishing with a Catholic publisher for critiquing the Catholic church and Dutch democracy. After his ban, Michel joined Verdinaso, a political organization with strong ties to upcoming National Socialist movements in the Netherlands, where he continued to write, frequently advocating for free speech, and against censorship. In this paper, we will compare the case of Michel with the case of Laurens Buijs, as well as contemporary processes of deplatformization and replatforming. We will discuss the removal of right-wing political actors from mainstream platforms, and analyze their narratives of victimhood and cultural decline, as well as the ‘network of technologies and institutions’, i.e. the ‘discourse networks’ that make far-right and populist political communication possible. We follow a media archaeological approach allowing us to show the continuities in seemingly distant times and seemingly different material and institutional networks, as well as the discontinuities in the development of contemporary media. With this analysis, we aim to contribute to current debates concerning the governance of anti-democratic and right-wing media, and their material and institutional networks.

Call for a responsive approach in Danish field archaeology

This article advocates for the formal adoption of a responsive approach in Danish field archae-ology, utilising a recent case study to exemplify its practical application. In contrast to adhering strictly to predetermined strategies, responsive archaeology underscores the importance of ongoing evaluation and prioritisation during fieldwork to optimise knowledge acquisition and research potential. Despite the informal practice of a responsive approach in many museums within Danish field archaeology, it lacks formal recognition as a legitimate working approach. To accommodate the continual assessment of features, structures, and contexts throughout excavation, guiding methodological choices and preferences, the proposed solution recommends incorporating a prioritisation field into our on-site recordings and then transferring these entries into our archaeological databases and GIS repositories. This would allow archaeologists to self-assess and document the priority assigned to each target during fieldwork, for better post-excavation analysis. This adaptive approach aims to empower excavation teams, enhance transparency, and unlock new potential for future research and excavation strategies.

Marginal Mounds and Maritime Shepherding. A Landscape Archaeological Survey of a Late Medieval Sheep Mound in the Belgian Coastal Plain

ABSTRACT The ‘Scaperie’ site in Knokke-Heist (Belgium), identified through a topographic analysis of a sixteenth-century map and located in a maritime sedimentary environment, serves as the focal point for this research. Employing a landscape archaeological approach, this study integrates multiple data sources including ceramics, historical maps, aerial photographs, LiDAR-data, geophysical surveys, and a coring survey. The dataset revealed the remnants of a anthropogenic sheep mound, evidenced by a localised microtopographic elevation, subsoil anomalies and surface artifacts associated with dairy production. More generally, this paper contributes to the understanding of the dynamic interplay between humans, sheep, and the coastal environment, offering new insights into historic land use and the archaeological characteristics of coastal mounded features. The study introduces a tripartite pattern of spatial organisation of animal husbandry, encompassing parent farms, droveways and satellite dwelling mounds. Encroached by the advancing embankments, this sheep-related taskscape was gradually marginalised both socio-economically and spatially.

A multi-embankment Chalcolithic walled enclosure

Ota, a key part of the Chalcolithic walled enclosure phenomenon in Portuguese Estremadura, represents a unique settlement strategy within the actual territory of Portugal. The architecture and social dynamics of this site remained largely unexplored until 2019. This study marks a significant shift in its study, utilizing a synergistic approach of archaeology and geotechnologies, embodied in the using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle equipped with LiDAR. This innovative combination successfully penetrated the dense vegetation, revealing 21 previously unknown archaeological features. The results from the fieldwork unveiled a novel type of walled enclosure at Ota, characterized by a series of four embankments. This discovery prompts a re-evaluation of the roles and practices of 3rd millennium BC communities in Portuguese Estremadura. Furthermore, the proven efficacy of this methodology paves the way for its application in similar archaeological contexts. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the recent fieldwork, integrating interpretations from LiDAR data, material studies and 14C dating.

A computational approach to selective attention in embodied approaches to cognitive archaeology.

This article proposes a novel computational approach to embodied approaches in cognitive archaeology called computational cognitive archaeology (CCA). We argue that cognitive archaeology, understood as the study of the human mind based on archaeological findings such as artefacts and material remains excavated and interpreted in the present, can benefit from the integration of novel methods in computational neuroscience interested in modelling the way the brain, the body and the environment are coupled and parameterized to allow for adaptive behaviour. We discuss the kind of tasks that CCA may engage in with a narrative example of how one can model the cumulative cultural evolution of the material and cognitive components of technologies, focusing on the case of knapping technology. This article thus provides a novel theoretical framework to formalize research in cognitive archaeology using recent developments in computational neuroscience.

Building Resilience through Territorial Planning: Water Management Infrastructure and Settlement Design in the Coastal Wetlands of Northern Apulia (Salpia vetus-Salapia) from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity

This Gulf of Manfredonia has, for millennia, been the primary water feature of the coastal wetland of Northern Apulia, Italy, although modern reclamation works make writing its long-term history challenging. Our recent paleoenvironmental research has reconstructed the evolution of the southern half of this lagoon since the Neolithic period. Here, we write a history of water management and environmental change in this landscape from the perspective of two key urban sites: pre-Roman Salpia vetus and Roman Salapia. The Roman architectural historian Vitruvius recounts the abandonment of Salpia vetus and the refoundation of Salapia. We employ his narrative as a frame for a more complex environmental history, starting from a historiography of this landscape’s study and a summary of our interdisciplinary research agenda, which unifies environmental, topographical, remote sensing, and archaeological approaches. Resilience in this changeable wetland environment was only possible through an integrated and intentional management of water among rivers, the lagoon, and the Adriatic Sea. While Salpia vetus exploited this wetland and thrived for centuries, the settlement eventually collapsed due to human and environmentally impelled factors. Roman Salapia subsequently emerged with a different approach, new infrastructure, and a new location. This blueprint would sustain urban life in this wetland for six centuries and lay the groundwork for the Medieval town.

Lisa Pieraccini and Laurel Taylor: Consumption, Ritual, Art, and Society. Interpretive Approaches and Recent Discoveries of Food and Drink in Etruria. New approaches in Archaeology 2

Lisa Pieraccini and Laurel Taylor: <i>Consumption, Ritual, Art, and Society. Interpretive Approaches and Recent Discoveries of Food and Drink in Etruria. New approaches in Archaeology 2</i>

PERSPECTIVES ON VIDEO GAME RESEARCH THROUGH THE CONCEPT OF MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

This article delves into various approaches to the cultural and philosophical study of video games. It primarily examines the potential of employing methodological foundations of media archaeology to enhance the understanding of the history of video game technical media. Additionally, it offers a brief review of existing publications on the proposed topic.To justify the applicability of the media-archaeological approach, the article provides a concise analysis of key research directions in game studies, highlighting their advantages and main shortcomings. The paper includes a succinct history of video game research, elucidates the philosophical concepts underpinning early works on the essence of video games, and explores the principal directions within game studies. Special attention is given to several approaches: Espen Aarseth’s narratological perspective, which interprets the cyberspace of games as a text that can be decoded and read; Gonzalo Frasca’s ludological approach, where the primary characteristic of a game is its interactivity; and Ian Bogost’s multi-level theory of video game study, which integrates the use of media anthropology.Subsequently, the article outlines the core principles of media anthropology as an interdisciplinary field that not only investigates the past of media and attempts to forecast the future of technologies by identifying patterns in their development but also addresses the relationship between humans and technologies. The primary representatives of this field, such as Friedrich Kittler, Jussi Parikka, and Erkki Huhtamo, are also mentioned.In the final section of the article, the necessity of employing media anthropology for understanding video games is discussed, particularly emphasizing the hegemony of technical media over the content of video games. Furthermore, examples of the application of the archaeological approach in game studies are provided, illustrating the potential of this direction.This comprehensive exploration aims to advance the discourse on video game studies by integrating insights from media archaeology and media anthropology, thereby fostering a deeper and more nuanced understanding of video games as cultural and technological artifacts.

A SPATIAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE JIRAT AND MUSLIM NOBLES CEMETERY IN LOMBOK

This study aims to analyze the spatial configuration of nine Muslim noble cemeteries in Lombok, which are divided into separate areas called jirats and cemeteries, where individuals and communities are buried. Spatial archaeology approaches are employed to collect, process, analyze, and interpret data. The study revealed that the Lombok cemetery consisted of headstones, jirat, a pavilion, a fence, a gate, and trees, all of which formed a cohesive cultural area and followed Islamic customs. In Lombok, the jirat is a boundary that separates personal and communal areas designated for the deceased. These areas are determined based on lineage and the level of nobility. Most Muslim noble cemeteries in Lombok exhibit the influence of pre-Islamic and Hindu customs. The northern, north-eastern, and eastern sections of the cemetery hold the highest level of sanctity, reserved for the interment of the most distinguished individuals. The highlands were selected as the primary site for the burial of Muslim nobles in Lombok due to their association with sanctity and the elevation of the deceased's status.

Instant TV. The Forgotten History of Video Tape Recording (and the Coverage of the Eichmann Trial)

This article adopts a media archaeological approach to the Eichmann trial (1961) to explore the technology and media constellations that enabled its global television coverage. Drawing on extensive archival research, it offers insights into the technological setup and institutional cooperation crucial for the broadcast. In this context, video tape recording played a pivotal role, facilitating instantaneous reporting from around the world. Informed by actor-network theory, the article highlights the interplay of different (non)human actors who were interested and enrolled in a short-lived actor-network that soon became obsolete with the advent of communication satellites. Through recounting the story of the trial coverage, it not only recalls the forgotten use of a technology but also sheds light on emerging television formats and infrastructures that persisted far beyond the brief prominence of Instant TV.

Policing, Power, and Protests: Landscapes of Surveillance in Private and Public Spaces in Lower Manhattan

In decades since 11 September 2001 (9/11), surveillance and policing within the United States have increased manifold and, with them, protests against the systemic racism and classism embedded in these practices. These practices go back beyond the 21st century—these modes of policing, power, and protests against them are not new. Due to urban spaces’ concentration of political, economic, and social power and the sheer density of people, they can quickly take on material and symbolic importance that can last for centuries. As public protests increase, so do countermeasures from those wielding power in the forms of both formal and informal policing and surveillance. These policing measures also leave material traces in the landscape, working to create a palimpsest of trauma across urban terrains. The lineage of a surveillance landscape as seen in policing, power, and protest in Lower Manhattan, will be explored through a documentary archaeological approach to examine the residual trauma left in public spaces.

Reflections on the commensal model and future directions in Polynesian interaction studies

ABSTRACTOne of the central themes of indigenous Polynesian historical narratives involves voyaging, navigation and patterns of inter‐island cultural connection. One of the ways archaeologists have long looked at these questions through the lens of material culture studies—distributions of artefact and assemblage traits in time and space. Here we examine patterns of historical interaction inferred from the application of the commensal model with those derived from more traditional archaeological approaches. We suggest that the most reliable and nuanced models of past cultural interaction in Eastern Polynesia will result from a creative synthesis of molecular zooarchaeology and traditional archaeological and zooarchaeological methods.

The architecture and archaeology of War Office records

ABSTRACT This article explores ways of understanding archival material through collection-based research. Using War Office records held in the UK’s National Archives, particularly those relating to Army officers in the period 1790-1820, it provides a methodological framework through worked examples that draws upon documentary analysis and archival material culture, as well as offering a new approach of archival experimental archaeology to reconstruct processes and practices that led to the creation of records. This research shows that the history of documents is critical — though often under appreciated — to historical knowledge. Our approach stresses the importance of examining historically the creation, form, and storage of archival material. Additionally, it demonstrates the value of archivists and historians reconnecting for good practice and research insights and agendas.

Maniera and the education of a painter: iterations of Mannerist art theory in academic classicist doctrine and its critique

ABSTRACT This article seeks to discuss narratives underlying the debate on artistic training and (self)education of artists in two distinguished moments: the sixteenth-century Italian Mannerism and nineteenth-century artistic movements which opposed academic instruction. Mannerist treatises were the first to encompass aesthetic and pedagogical concerns in the context of newly established art academies – providing a fundamental, albeit essentially unrecognised, conceptual background for the subsequent discussions on art education. The goal of this article, therefore, is to examine how the rich discursive production of Mannerist authors provided the frame of reference and delineated the limits of this debate until the late nineteenth century – by setting forth the perennial question of the polarity between imitation and individuality. For the conceptual treatment of empirical sources, we adopted an archaeological approach, which enabled us to identify how the derivations and appropriations of Mannerist concepts provided the theoretical base for both the firm establishment of Academic dogmas and, in parallel, their critique. By this methodological choice, we hope to make apparent how these narratives continually revolve around the same ideas in a binary logic of delivering critique and suggestions of reform and change, contributing thus to the deeper understanding of the debate on art education.

The Neognostic Myth in Cyberspace

The subject of the study is the functioning of the neognostic myth in cyberspace. Such aspects of the topic as the relationship between religion and the Internet from a non-instrumental point of view on technology are considered in detail. Digital and network technologies are seen as a modern repository of religious beliefs, and not as tools for proselytizing or proclaiming the good news. With the help of an archaeological approach to technical media, the author proposes to determine the deep times of the digital disclosure of technological mysticism, depending on a specific technical materiality characterized by wireless networks and mobile devices. Currently, there are trends in world culture towards the construction of a syncretic myth, which contains elements of the dying Christian paradigm and trends introduced into it from the outside or emerging again. The categorical apparatus developed in the discourse of postmodern aesthetics makes it possible to apply such methods as phenomenological, discursive, hermeneutic and archetypal analysis to the analysis of visual culture. In the study of visual neognostic myth, the concepts of archetypal models, plots, cliches, the theory of the evolution of symbols, general cultural positions of psychoanalysis and the concept of myth are used. The main conclusions of the study are as follows. Gnostic epistemology underlies the imagination of cyberspace. There is a constant in the history of the West that Eric Davis calls "techno-gnosis." In this regard, cybergnosis would be only the latest incarnation of a profound phenomenon. In the world of cyberculture, technognosis manifests itself in hacker ethics, cyberpunk literature, science fiction films and video games. With the help of an archaeological approach to technical media, the deep moments of the digital are determined, showing that there is a technological mysticism in video games that depends on a specific materiality. The new metamodern perception of the world recognizes not only the possibility of perceiving various logical and irrational paradigms of the world order and gaining knowledge about it, but also gives a positive connotation to pluralism itself, when diversity becomes more desirable than truth, which is characteristic of cyberspace. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the research is the basis for the formation of a clear conceptual understanding of the phenomenon of the neognostic myth in its visual form (as opposed to verbal) as a dynamic cultural model generated by digital art strategies and implemented today in media culture.

Prehistory to History: A New Archaeological Approach to Knowledge Transmission and the Inception of Literacy in Central Europe

This paper reviews archaeological research on the transmission of writing knowledge between literate and pre-literate societies. It proposes the use of productive approaches, such as cultural epidemiology and cultural attraction theory (CAT). The case study focuses on East-Central Europe and discusses the role of writing in the construction of social group identity and the transition from local communities with a prehistoric mindset to a historically acting society during the first millennium AD. The study collects relevant archaeological records of Early Mediaeval writing and explains them using reflective archaeology. It is shown that interactions between literate and pre-literate societies are highly complex social processes that function not only at the cultural and cognitive levels of individuals but also among larger groups of people. By combining cultural attraction theory with empirical archaeological data, this study formulates a conclusive explanation for the introduction of writing among Europe’s Slavic-speaking population.

Growth and decline of a sustainable city: A multitemporal perspective on blue-black-green infrastructures at the pre-Columbian Lowland Maya city of Tikal

The New Urban Agenda’s call for long-term visions in urban planning fails to recognise that ‘long-term’ implies different longevities depending on context of assessment. Compared to other social sciences, archaeological approaches add rigour to envisioning urban sustainability over several centuries and millennia. The archaeology of the pre-Columbian Lowland Maya urban tradition is an interesting case because data have been used to support conflicting arguments about Maya urban sustainability. We suggest that these contradictions can be partly explained by: (1) sustainability being ambiguously defined, (2) subsets of the urban system being expected to indicate the behaviour of other subsets or of the entire system, and (3) processes being evaluated using different timescales. Drawing on 1500 years of urban history at Tikal, this paper examines how archaeological perspectives add depth of reflection and unfold critical assumptions of the meaning of ‘long-term’ and ‘sustainability’ concealed in self-explanatory notions. We outline the development and longevity of urban settlement at Tikal and analyse the blue-black-green (water, soil, vegetation) infrastructures that sustained urban metabolism and sponsored basic urban functions. Our analyses contribute new insights on the challenges associated with future sustainability transitions over varying temporal scales. The diversity of past and present urban systems and infrastructural initiatives cannot be fitted within a single narrative of urban sustainability, however, and much research is required to examine how blue-black-green infrastructures can support transformative change of aggregated human population zones struggling with potable water scarcity, soil degradation, and habitat and biodiversity loss.