Archaeological Intervention Research Articles

Identification of Social Status through Grave Goods Using a Biocultural Approach in Interpreting the Alpine Context of Borca Di Cadore, Belluno, Veneto, Italy (18th–19th Centuries)

The cemetery of the Church of Santi Simone e Giuda in Borca di Cadore (Belluno province, Veneto region, Italy) was excavated between 2021 and 2023 as part of an archaeological intervention. The excavation area yielded a total of 21 graves dating back to the 18th–19th century; this was intriguing due to the presence of grave goods and taphonomic indicators that allowed these burials to be interpreted as clothed burials. This contribution examines 14 of the 21 graves, representing the available sample considering preservation conditions. Fieldwork was carried out through close synergy between archaeological and anthropological methodologies, involving careful excavation to verify funerary rituals through taphonomic data analysis. Anthropological methods were applied to determine the biological profile of the individuals, while aspects related to their health status were investigated through paleopathological analyses. Data obtained from field and laboratory observations were cross-referenced with historical and anthropological-cultural data from bibliographic and archival research. Reconstructing the social status of the deceased within the burial context is crucial for understanding the social and cultural dynamics of past populations, achievable only through a biocultural approach integrating information from archaeology, cultural anthropology, and bioarchaeology. Modern burial contexts offer privileged realities due to abundant historical and anthropological-cultural documentation, allowing for a more precise contextualization of bioarchaeological findings with significant support from documentary sources. Studies applied to these periods closer to the present enable the continuous refinement of an investigative method attentive to the synergy of different aspects of biocultural research, enhancing the importance of this approach in reconstructing the life histories of populations.

Metadata for Discovery. Planning for an Information Network

In advance of building a new high speed rail line aimed at connecting the North and South of England, the UK is undertaking the largest archaeological intervention in its history. While the High Speed 2 (HS2) project has created a wealth of new information, before any of that information can be disseminated to the general public, it must first be properly collected, documented, and linked. To this end, data collection is integral to facilitate effective data dissemination and FAIR - Findable, Accessable, Interoperable and Reusable - data to achieve the greatest public value for an archive. The most exciting search results and maps come from what is often seen as scary technical jargon. This paper will discuss some of the limitations the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) experiences as a digital repository, what is currently being done to maximise the reach of the ADS collections, and what tools have been created to aid both depositors and digital archives alike. Starting at the beginning of the data life cycle, this article will show how large infrastructure projects like HS2 allow the ADS to work with depositors to raise issues about data collection, generation, and description during project development and how collaborative efforts can improve the creation and import of data and metadata into the archive. The ADS has made steps towards keeping our data FAIR but simple, both by streamlining what metadata is essential to foster better discovery and reuse within an archive, and from there, how metadata can be passed to external data catalogues such as ARIADNEplus and The National Archives in the UK.

Archaeological Interventions in Medieval Jewish Cemeteries in Western Europe

This article presents the main Jewish cemeteries of the Medieval period that have been the object of archaeological intervention in several countries of Western Europe (France, Spain, England, Italy, Switzerland). The objective is to synthesise the information from each site in order to highlight the main characteristics and recurring points.

Into the circle. Animal and human deposits in a new Upper Guadalquivir site from the beginning of the 3rd millennium Cal BC (Grañena Baja, Jaén)

In 2014 due to the projected layout of the Madrid – Jaén high-speed railway line, a preventive archaeological intervention was carried out on a hill near the Guadalbullón riverbed within the farmland of Grañena Baja (Jaén). During the work, a multi-sequential Late Prehistory occupation, starting from the mid-5th millennium and reaching the end of the 3rd millennium, was documented. The phase corresponding to the last quarter of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd millennium Cal BC stands out for the presence of circular features containing complete or partial human and domestic animal skeletal remains, in some cases, clearly related. The isotopic values of human collagen are relatively homogeneous (?15N = 9.0 ± 0.6; ?13C = -18.9 ± 0.4) and consistent with a diet based on proteins of animal origin.

Застосування методів радіолокаційної інтерферометрії та георадарного знімання для моніторингу земель історико-культурного призначення

Goal. The purpose of the work is to consider the application of geophysical methods for local areas (satellite radar interferometry and ground-penetrating radar surveying) in determining the boundaries of lands of historical and cultural purpose. Method. A combination of methods for identifying or clarifying the boundaries of historical and cultural heritage objects for the establishment of protective zones is proposed. This combination includes two methods of determining or monitoring lands of historical and cultural purpose, namely satellite radar interferometry and ground-based GPR surveying. With the help of satellite radar interferometry, it is possible to determine vertical displacements of the earth’s surface, that is, subsidence of soils in places where there are possible elements of cultural heritage objects (underground passages or underground rooms on the territory of castle complexes, places of mass graves, etc.). After determining the locations of the largest vertical displacements of the soil, these areas are investigated by ground-penetrating radar for the detection of anomalies, which are subsequently deciphered. With the help of a combination of these methods, it is possible to identify additional elements of objects of historical and cultural heritage located underground without archaeological intervention. This allows clarifying the existing boundaries of lands of historical and cultural purpose or discovering new ones, which in turn affects the correction of protection zones. The results. As a result of the research, two examples of the discovery of new lands of historical and cultural purpose using a combination of satellite radar interferometry and georadar surveying in the village of Nitishyn and the village of Bryukhovychi are presented. These lands of historical and cultural purpose include mass graves from the time of the Second World War, the boundaries of which have been clarified using these methods, which serves as the basis for establishing protective zones. Practical value. The obtained results of the application of the methods of radar interferometry and ground-penetrating radar surveying in the study of objects of historical and cultural purpose can be used to clarify the boundaries of the land plots of the corresponding fund. It is more accurate to adjust the security zones according to the received border results.

You May Destroy This Village, But You Cannot Destroy the Power Which Created It

AbstractTo develop a historical archaeology of hope, post-medieval European archaeology should shift the focus beyond dark heritage to sites and events opposed to daily destruction and alienation. This case study of an antinuclear protest camp in 1980s Germany shows that cracks in capitalism formed when people protested for something; as they experimented with alternative lifeways and envisioned an alternative future. Archaeological intervention can help to reveal these fault lines in capitalism as we remember these heritage sites of hope, but intervention also reveals a cautionary tale of how these blurry pictures of an alternative future can so easily be concealed.

The Guinardera quarry (Sant Martí de Tous, Barcelona): A new chert exploitation location during historical times

In 2014, an anthropic accumulation of chert material was discovered in La Guinardera area, at the southwest of the Sant Martí de Tous town (Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula). In 2018 a first archaeological intervention was carried out in two locations: La Guinardera and La Guinardera Nord. After the fieldworks, these two accumulations were interpreted as chert workshops. These workshops are in the St. Genís Formation, included within La Noguera lacustrine system and dated to the Priabonian age (upper Eocene). The St. Martí de Tous area presents shallow lacustrine conditions typical of sabkha environments, in which layers of gypsums and sandy lutites are interspersed with tabular red sandstone levels, yielding different varieties of chert.
 The Guinardera chert is characterized by a fairly homogeneous matrix, presenting a fine texture, with a microcrystalline and spherulitic length-slow chalcedony matrix, and a combination of grey colours, in general of dark hues, with an opaque diaphaneity but translucent at the edges.
 The archaeological assemblage from La Guinardera Nord site allows us to identify a chert workshop for the production of gunflints. The heterogeneity of the assemblage at La Guinardera site precludes assigning it to any single chrono-cultural period or function.
 The technological characterization of La Guinardera Nord site reveals distinctive attributes of a gunflint workshop that can be differentiated from prehistoric workshops. The presence of square and thick preforms, oxide traces on butts and ventral faces, marked bulbs and thick platforms, together with fresh edges on flakes and blades and the near-absence of patinated materials, corroborate it.
 The presence of these two deposits within the above-mentioned formation shows us a repeated landscape exploitation pattern for raw material extraction, since references chert use range from the Middle Palaeolithic (e.g., Abric Romaní) to historical times (e.g., La Guinardera Nord).

Peril of the sea for the Mesolithic sites of Western France

The archaeological remains of prehistoric maritime hunter-gatherer societies were mostly swept away or submerged by the rise of the ocean during the Holocene. The slowing down of this marine transgression in the middle of the 7th millennium cal BC allows us to access archaeological sites on a restricted stretch of coastline in southern Brittany. Thrilling anthropological perspectives then emerge concerning the land/sea economic networks of hunter-gatherers and the historical role of these coastal human communities especially during the neolithization. The threats to this coastal heritage are as natural as anthropogenic. This article then evokes several methods of archaeological intervention tested for about twenty years on the three main types of sites currently known: 1/ archaeological level protected by a dune such as Beg-er-Vil (Quiberon, Morbihan), 2/ dwelling in a rock-shelter as Roc’h Santeg Leton (Santec, Finistère), 3/ site at the top of the cliffs (everywhere). Very threatened by ocean rages, their exploration is conditioned by an inadequate legislative framework and by financial and logistical means well below the scientific and heritage stakes.

Use of GIS in Forensic Archaeology to Search Clandestine Graves in Uruguay

In the context of the search of detainee disappeared from the dictatorship occurred in Uruguay, forensic archaeology uses GIS as an auxiliary tool which allows to create, edit, visualize, store, analyse and publish geospatial data and information related to the investigation process. The tools of GIS are described in this article to show the results and information obtained which are going to be useful in the analytic processes leading to the design of new search strategies and archaeological intervention according to the available resources for this context. Two case studies are presented with the purpose to show the use of QGIS as a result of the three main areas of work: preliminary, fieldwork and laboratory. QGIS is presented as one of the most versatile, dynamic and accessible tool to investigate the search of detainee disappeared in Uruguay.

A ocupação Pré-histórica do Cabeço de Caria Talaia (Sabugal, Portugal)

Neste artigo realizou-se uma abordagem à ocupação Pré-histórica do Cabeço de Caria Talaia, no concelho do Sabugal (Portugal). A intervenção arqueológica desenvolvida em 2008 e 2009 determinou a natureza e a cronologia dessa ocupação, de uma fase avançada entre o Bronze Médio e os inícios do Bronze Final. Apesar do mau estado de conservação das estruturas, os trabalhos permitiram assinalar um local de habitação e, entre os materiais recuperados, um significativo conjunto de cerâmicas, mas também elas bastante fragmentadas, cujas formas e motivos decorativos se inserem na tradição das produções de proto-Cogotas e Cogotas I. Com base nestes conceitos, analisam-se e discutem-se detalhes sobre a sua posição geográfica e a sua relação com o território, procurando compreender o seu enquadramento na Beira Interior, no limite mais ocidental da Meseta e, consequentemente, na periferia do complexo mundo de Cogotas I.

New archaeological data on the upper Paleolithic site of cueva de Malalmuerzo (Moclín, Granada, Spain)

The Malalmuerzo cave (Moclín, Granada, Spain) has been known since the 1980s for its archaeological remains and rock art, dated to the Neolithic and the Solutrean periods respectively. However, following thirty years of neglect, our team carried out a brief archaeological intervention after looters destroyed parts of the sediment fill of the cave. The refreshing of disturbed surfaces and the examination of a small undisturbed profile produced many archaeological remains attributed to several Magdalenian levels. The levels partially covered the depiction of a red horse, which probably dates to the Solutrean period.

El poblamiento Andalusí en Aracena (Huelva)

The archaeological intervention undertaken on the hill of the Castle of Aracena, from an interdisciplinary point of view, has generated information that we use to analyze and characterize the Islamic settlement of this place. It is a contribution through the material record to the historical knowledge about the Islamic period in the Southwest peninsular. The archaeological evidence of the stratigraphic sequence, the domestic architecture and the material culture, together with the information of the Arabic texts, indicate the existence of a population nucleus of an urban character from the 10th to the 13th centuries and are used as an argument to analyze the controversial identification of the toponym Qatrasana toponym.

Una inscripción con litterae aureae en Alcalá la Vieja (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid)

En la intervención arqueológica de 2018, apareció una inscripción romana con cavidades para litterrae aureae en el yacimiento de Alcalá la Vieja (Alcalá de Henares). La técnica empleada y el tamaño de las letras permite constatar la importancia que tuvo el enclave en época romana.

Cerro Macareno (La Rinconada, Sevilla): new data on its occupation sequence and its constructive features

The archaeological intervention carried out in 2017 in Cerro Macareno has provided an enormous amount of information that corroborates and qualifies the data provided by the emergency excavations carried out in this site in the mid-seventies. The methodology applied has always been based on non-destructive techniques or low impact on the remains. Among the tasks developed, the cleaning of slopes and the study of the resulting stratigraphic sections in different points of the site stand out, which have allowed a comparative analysis of the different sequences obtained. Then, they have been compared with the plants and sections of the old excavations published, once they had been digitalised and georeferenced, especially the stratigraphic sounding carried out by M. Pellicer and his team in 1976. As a result, we have a systematization of the existing documentation and an update of the knowledge about the levels of occupation conserved and their chronology. Likewise, it has been possible to collect new data on architectural forms, materials and construction techniques, as well as on the building-repair-reconstruction guidelines of the buildings

‘Peaceful change’ in International Relations: a conceptual archaeology

AbstractAs the so-called liberal international order has come under duress, the problem of ‘peaceful change’ has reappeared on the agenda of International Relations (IR), mainly in a realist guise drawing upon E.H. Carr and Robert Gilpin's renditions of the problem. Making a conceptual archaeological intervention, this paper recovers long-neglected multidisciplinary debates on ‘peaceful change’ taking place in the tumultuous interwar period. It concurs that peaceful change is an IR problem par excellence, central to academic debates in the burgeoning interwar discipline, but also a more complex conceptual figure than posterity portrays it. The paper explores the debates between negative and positive conceptions of peaceful change, between political, legal-institutional and communitarian mechanisms of peaceful change, and different policies of peaceful change, particularly its troubled relationship to appeasement. The paper concludes that the interwar debate on peaceful change, while highly embedded in its context, does offer IR an alternative and more aspirational perspective on the problem of power and order transitions.

Trabajos previos y paralelos integrados en el proyecto de restauración de la capilla de los Tocino (s. XV) en la iglesia de San Juan de los Caballeros de Jerez de la Frontera

Consecuencia de una profunda reforma decimonónica inacabada, la capilla de los Tocino había perdido su uso y relación espacial original con el ábside de la iglesia de San Juan de los Caballeros de Jerez de la Frontera al que se adosa. La degradación que sufrió la capilla desde ese momento fue enorme. La interpretación de sus lesiones estaba muy condicionada por el devenir del mismo, siendo necesaria una serie de trabajos previos y paralelos a la intervención para reconocer esta complejidad y determinar los valores patrimoniales sobre los que fundamentar el proyecto. Se planteó así una estrategia de acciones de investigación cuyo alcance debía ser proporcional a los recursos económicos disponibles y los enfoques analíticos que pretendíamos integrar. Entre ellas se programó una intervención arqueológica que incorporaba el análisis del subsuelo y estudio paramental. Se expondrá el resultado de un trabajo integrado que se prolongó hasta finalizar su consolidación material, espacial y funcional.

Alcazaba of Baza (Granada) Spain, Rediscovered

The Andalusian medieval citadels are walled enclosures that, strategically placed on hills, still continue showing their defensive function inside the city and the surrounding territory. There are still good examples in the south of Spain, especially concentrated in the last territories of Al-Andalus. To the north of the old Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the city of Baza, with a brilliant Iberian and Roman past, also preserves some remains of its medieval past in its urban fabric. However, the Alcazaba of Baza, which was its main medieval architectural landmark, has suffered during the last century a lamentable process of abandonment and destruction that has almost made it disappear. Today its limits are unrecognizable and there are hardly visible parts of its walls or its towers. Anyone that visits it for the first time only recognizes a central empty space in the urban fabric. It has been mistreated by sporadic inappropriate uses, most of the time in disuse and converted into residual space of the city, a focus of marginality where it is not convenient to go. Despite its poor state of preservation, the fact of being an old military structure makes it a Historical Place of Interest (Bien de Interés Cultural–BIC-), the highest level of protection granted by the Law of Spanish Historical Heritage (1985). Since then, with greater or lesser fortune, the urban planning of Baza has recognized its values, although it has allowed lamentable interventions inside. With some more success, the current General Plan for Urban Development (2009) established, as a public free space, a scope of the Special Plan for the Interior Reform of the Alcazaba (PERICH-02) through which the protection, conservation and revaluation of the delimited space, as well as establishing determinations of use, qualification of the land and intervention criteria in its historical and archaeological heritage. The Special Plan of the Alcazaba of Baza is the result of an international contest carried out in 2007 and develops the winning proposal that dealt briefly with the values of the Alcazaba. Consequently, the regional administration competent in the protection of the historical heritage demanded that, for a correct drafting, an exhaustive study of the emergent and hidden remains of the medieval military structure should be carried out previously. From here it comes the commission that a research group of the University of Granada developed at the end of 2016 and which is the subject of this article: Combining digital technology through drones and field work, it has achieved surprising results that has been shown in several maps: an updated topographic of great precision and, what is even more interesting, a typological map at different levels that allows to establish accurate hypotheses for the future archaeological intervention and that conditions all the initial approach of the Special Plan that resulted from the contest of 2007.

Cribra orbitalia en restos óseos de una cripta religiosa en el sur de la Península Ibérica: La Ermita de San Telmo de Jerez de la Frontera (España)

La Ermita de San Telmo, en Jerez de la Frontera (España), fue construida entre los siglos XVI y XVII por una cofradía religiosa de carácter gremial, concretamente, de los pescadores y barqueros del entorno del río Guadalete y la Bahía de Cádiz. Tras la intervención arqueológica realizada en el año 2015 durante las labores de restauración y rehabilitación de la Ermita, se pudo localizar el acceso a una cripta con un total de 21 nichos que contenían toda una serie de reducciones esqueléticas, en su mayor parte de individuos subadultos. La cripta fue abierta a mediados del siglo XX y los nichos alterados en su mayoría, por lo que nos encontramos con los mismos en un estado de conservación moderado. Concluida la excavación arqueológica de la misma, se ha realizado el estudio de los restos óseos, incluyendo la identificación anatómica, poniendo especial atención en el estudio del perfil demográfico básico y estudio paleopatológico de los restos, habiéndose observado en fragmentos de cráneo cribra orbitalia, datos que serán cruzados con los archivos existentes y que nos permitirán conocer con mayor exactitud la población infantil de los siglos XVI y XVII en la ciudad de Jerez de la Frontera.

Estudio arqueométrico de un conjunto de materiales cerámicos de la antigua fábrica de loza de Sargadelos (Lugo)

A recent preventive archaeological intervention in a landfill site of the old earthenware factory of Sargadelos has allowed the recovery of an important set of ceramic materials composed of glazed and unglazed earthenware, decorated and non-decorated, mainly from the second half of the 19th century. The goals of the research consisted in studying the microstructural characteristics of the ceramic body and the decorations, in determining the crystalline phases and establishing the possible firing temperature of the different materials, in determining their chemical composition, as well as in identifying the chemical species responsible for the coloring of decorations. The research was undertaken by conventional techniques such as binocular magnifying glass, petrographic observation by thin-section, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, field emission scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis and visible spectrophotometry, on a selection of 40 ceramic fragments. Hand-made, stamping, and airbrushing decorations were identified. The results indicated that earthenware was made from a homogeneous mixture of kaolin, quartz and feldspar; and fired approximately between 1000-1100°C. Lead-alkaline-earth type glazes in which SnO2 was sometimes detected as opacifier were identified. The chromophores of the decorations were Co2+-ions for blue, Mn3+-ions for pink, Cr3+-ions for green and the conjunction of Ni2+/Co2+/Cu2+-ions for black.

¿Depósito votivo o destrucción de necrópolis?: el silo protohistórico de El Pontarró (La Secuita, Tarragona)

Se presenta el estudio de los materiales recuperados en el silo de El Pontarró, en La Secuita (Tarragona), amortizado a finales del siglo V o inicios del IV a.C. Entre ellos destacan un conjunto de elementos de ornamentación de bronce y unas 6.000 cuentas de collar de vidrio, junto a vasijas cerámicas, fusayolas, molinos, restos de fauna terrestre y malacológica (en su mayoría de Cypraea) y otros arqueobotánicos. Algunos de estos objetos son muy poco frecuentes y, en su mayoría, se vinculan con el mundo funerario o ritual. Ello sugiere que el silo se colmató en un acto ritual, tal vez tras la destrucción de una necrópolis. El carácter fortuito del hallazgo y el estado de arrasamiento del terreno donde, además, es difícil continuar la intervención arqueológica impiden obtener más información sobre el contexto y condiciones del depósito. No obstante este es el mayor conjunto de cuentas de vidrio, descubierto hasta la fecha, lo que le convierte en un unicum en la Protohistoria de la Península Ibérica.