Artifact Assemblages Research Articles

Morphological analysis and radiocarbon dating of non-returning boomerangs from Cooper Creek/Kinipapa (Northeast South Australia)

In this article we present the results of a morphological analysis of four mostly complete non-returning boomerangs and one shaped wooden fragment recovered in 2017 and 2018 from Cooper Creek near Innamincka in South Australia’s far northeast. This archaeological collection forms one of only six known/published wooden artefact assemblages in the country. We also detail the results of the direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) measurement of the artefacts which range from circa 275–175 BP (1650–1830 cal AD, median ages reported). Given that the age estimates obtained for the artefacts are from the recent period, we have complemented the morphological analysis by interpreting the assemblage within the context of ethnohistorical records and Traditional Owner knowledge. The assemblage reveals a variety of forms and functions representative of the diverse cultural activities and daily lives of the Aboriginal people who lived near significant waterholes in the Cooper Creek region during this period. The boomerangs also preserve manufacture and use-wear traces, providing insights into the life histories of each implement. In addition to their likely use as projectiles, our results indicate that the boomerangs were probably used for fighting, hunting, digging, fire management and possibly in ceremonies. Predictions for climate change in the region threaten to alter the conditions that allowed the preservation of these artefacts which may negatively affect the potential survival of other wooden objects that remain in the environment.

Neanderthals of Porto Selvaggio in southern Italy: lithic industry of Grotta Torre dell'Alto (Nardò, Lecce)

ABSTRACTPorto Selvaggio in southern Italy is where the Uluzzian culture was first identified and documented, providing key insights into the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic. The area has also yielded evidence for continuous occupations by Neanderthals spanning between Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 and 3. Situated in the Natural Regional Park of Porto Selvaggio, different sites were excavated by Borzatti von Löwenstern in the 1960 and 1970s. As one of the initiatives in the research program of the Museo della Preistoria di Nardò, we have revisited the artifact assemblages from these caves. Based on the lithic analysis of production sequences, we document the development of Levallois and laminar methods before MIS 3 when this form of reduction sequence presumably dominated in the region according to the previous research. The review of the lithic assemblages is combined with the contextualization of chronostratigraphy and paleoenvironmental study in the region to consider the possible role that this region had for Neanderthals during unfavorable climatic conditions.

THE LATE HELLENISTIC WINE PRESS EXCAVATIONS FROM KNOSSOS: THE EARLY IRON AGE, HELLENISTIC AND EARLY ROMAN CONTEXTS

The remains of an exceptionally well-preserved Hellenistic wine press were uncovered during a rescue excavation at Knossos in 1977. The architecture, stratigraphy and faunal remains from this campaign were published inBSA89 (1994) by J. Carington Smith (the excavator) and S. Wall. The artefact assemblages from this excavation, however, have remained unstudied and unpublished until now. The current article presents the artefact assemblages from the wine press excavation and considers them within their urban context at Knossos. The key findings from this excavation relate to the Late Hellenistic wine press and its associated material, which enables us to consider both the ancient winemaking process at Knossos and the economic topography of the city in the decades around the Roman conquest of the island in 67bc. In addition to the Late Hellenistic phase, material of Minoan, Early Iron Age–Early Archaic, earlier Hellenistic and Early Roman dates is also presented and discussed.

Use-polished stone flakes from Liang Bua, Indonesia: Implications for plant processing and fibrecraft in the Late Pleistocene

Edge-glossed flakes, usually recognised as stone tools with macroscopically visible polish from use, have been documented in parts of Southeast Asia from contexts spanning the past 12,000 years and possibly more than 30,000 years. It has been proposed that the edges of these flakes were polished by cutting, splitting or otherwise processing siliceous and fibrous plants for matting, basketry and bindings, and possibly by the reaping of cereals such as rice. Previous studies of use-wear on edge-glossed flakes in Southeast Asia have suggested several tool functions, including the cutting, splitting and scraping of plants with few or no phytoliths (e.g., Pandanaceae) and highly siliceous plants, with high phytolith content, such as Arecaceae palms (e.g., rattan) and Poaceae grasses (e.g., rice, bamboo and cattail reeds). Our study of the use-wear on 16 edge-glossed flakes from layers spanning the past 18,000 years at Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, Indonesia, indicates processing of various plant taxa, including Poaceae grasses, Arecaceae palm and wood. The edge-glossed flakes from Liang Bua have features of micropolish that indicate they were probably linked with fibrecraft. Eleven of the 16 Liang Bua artefacts with edge-gloss are between about 18,580 and 11,750 years old, from artefact assemblages associated with modern humans; they currently represent the earliest evidence of these behaviours on Flores. No edge-glossed flakes have yet been identified in the 190,000–50,000-year-old artefact assemblages associated with Homo floresiensis.

Neanderthal settlement of the Central Balkans during MIS 5: Evidence from Pešturina Cave, Serbia

Recent research in the southern Central Balkans has resulted in the discovery of the first Middle Paleolithic sites in this region. Systematic excavations of Velika and Mala Balanica, and Pešturina (southern Serbia) revealed assemblages of Middle Paleolithic artifacts associated with hominin fossils and animal bones. This paper focuses on Pešturina Layer 4, radiometrically and biostratigraphically dated to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, which yielded traces of temporary hunting camps. The remains of large ungulate prey are associated with predominantly Quina-type artifacts made of quartz. Artifacts from Pešturina Cave have no parallels at Mousterian sites in the Balkans but are rather similar to the Central European Charentian, which demonstrates that this cultural unit was widespread during MIS 5, not only in the southern Pannonian Basin but also in the Central Balkans. The position of the site – on the outskirts of the known spread of the Quina model of techno-economic behavior during MIS 5 – raises several questions related to population movements, residential mobility, and technological variability in the early Middle Paleolithic of Central and Southeast Europe.

Reconstructing prehistoric environments in the Son and Belan valleys, north-central India: Retrospect and Prospect

Pioneering archaeological surveys in the Son and Belan valleys of north–central India in the 1970s revealed that these valleys had been occupied at least intermittently during the Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic. Later work in the early 1980s provided a reliable stratigraphic framework for the prehistoric sites and also resulted in the chance discovery of volcanic ash erupted from Toba volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago. The discovery of the first Quaternary volcanic ash ever found in India prompted a search for the ash across the Indian sub–continent. By the early 1990s it was apparent that the entire sub–continent had been covered in a layer of ash 10–15 cm thick. Later work showed that some of this ash had been reworked by runoff and soil creep soon after deposition and accumulated in topographic depressions and valley bottoms where it remained in a relatively pure state. However, some of the ash has been reworked more than once since first deposited. Use of the ash as an isochronous marker depends upon establishing whether it is still in primary context and if not the degree to which it has been mixed with younger sediment. A key and as yet unresolved issue is whether or not the eruption had a major or minor regional and global environmental (including climatic) impact. High resolution records from speleothems, pollen spectra, varved lake deposits and ice cores will be needed to answer this question. The presence of similar stone artefact assemblages above and beneath the ash tells us nothing useful about the actual environmental impact of the eruption.

Mining on the frontier: Archaeological excavation of the historical component at Canteen Kopje, Northern Cape Province, South Africa

Canteen Kopje was a prominent location within the spread of nineteenth century mining camps at Klipdrift along the Vaal River. This article presents the results of excavation of the historical component of Canteen Kopje that produced an artifact assemblage in which European manufactured ceramics and glass are associated with objects of local manufacture, which attests to the cultural interaction that took place in the context of early mining. These finds of material culture are associated with a faunal assemblage of wild animals primarily the remains of quagga, a species that was soon to go in extinct. Based on historical documentation and pictorial representation it is argued that the earliest Vaal River diamond diggings here represent a stage of extractive economies in southern Africa when the rigid control of space and people that emerged subsequently was not yet fully developed.

The value of English geoconservation sites in understanding historical collections of lower and middle palaeolithic artefacts

Lower and Middle Paleolithic archaeological sites in England risk falling through the cracks between different types of heritage conservation, since they lack recognisable structures; these sites have often benefitted from protection under geoconservation, particularly through selection as Geological Conservation Review sites, and subsequent designation as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). The geoconservation of key sites, particularly in the formative years of British geoconservation, has allowed combined geological and archaeological reinvestigation. This is of particular benefit to understanding Lower and Middle Paleolithic artefact assemblages, which were often collected in the later 19th–earlier 20th century and consequently lacked both detailed spatial or stratigraphic provenance and contextual geological information. As such, the ‘fine grained’ data which could be gleaned from such artefact collections was limited. Here we review the benefit of geoconservation in allowing the contextualisation of historical archaeological collections, focussing on six key English sites where geological and archaeological reinvestigation has led to important archaeological findings. In particular, the emerging evidence of chronological patterning in Lower and Middle Paleolithic artefacts makes the preservation of such deposits valuable to Quaternary science in general.

The pilot application of geochemical sourcing to an inland Pilbara archaeological landscape in north-western Australia

Past human mobility, often reconstructed using stone artefact assemblages, is an important component of Australian archaeology. Tracing the transport of stone artefacts enables direct measures of the direction and distance of past Aboriginal movement across landscapes. Sourcing transported stone artefacts to their geological point of origin therefore has the potential to significantly improve our understanding of human mobility. Beyond this, the identification of artefact source locations is also critical for stone artefact analyses since raw material factors strongly condition assemblage formation. However, relatively little stone sourcing has been completed in Australia. This is particularly the case for the inland Pilbara, north-western Australia, where almost no sourcing work has been published. This paper presents the results of a limited pilot study which aimed to test the application of petrographic and in situ laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) analytical techniques to the sourcing of transported artefacts from three Pilbara quarried outcrops to two non-quarried open surface sites. The results indicate that geochemical interelement ratios (e.g., La/Nd and U/Th) can discriminate between both quarry sites and artefacts. A clear petrographic and geochemical match between a quarry and one stone artefact discarded at a non-quarried site was found, and different samples collected from the same quarry yielded overlapping geochemical signatures. This suggests that LA-ICPMS has the potential to elucidate artefact transport (as a proxy for the movement of people) between locations, effectively linking these places as part of a behavioural system. While a larger database of artefact and quarry specimens is needed to fully explore both the efficacy of the approach and the archaeological implications, this study suggests that sourcing techniques hold significant promise for reconstructing past human mobility in the Pilbara and for demonstrating landscape-scale connections between sites.

Old ways in new places? Experimenting with plants in the early plantation setting

ABSTRACT Plants and foodways have long been recognized for their importance to the construction of identity and culture in plantation settings. Yet despite this focus on plants and foodways in plantation archaeology, there is a need for more archaeological documentation of the types of plants and fields being cultivated in newly formed plantations in the New World. We combine historical documentation with an assemblage of recovered plant remains from the Lord Ashley site (38DR83a) to examine plant use during the formative years of a plantation economy. A renewed focus on experimental cropping in the New World plantation system at this site, along with one of the most well documented enslaved African populations before the 1690s in South Carolina, point to the influence of cross-cultural entanglements in building New World agricultural systems. The recovery of watermelon, an African cultivar, found alongside an assemblage of artifacts and other archaeobotanical remains associated with the enslaved Africans at the site, also point to the role of first-generation Africans in establishing New World foodway traditions.

Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes Archaeology

Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes Archaeology

Cuisine at the Crossroads

Investigations at sites across northwestern Honduras—inside and outside the Maya area—have revealed diverse food activities and ingredients. Paralleling the evidence from durable artifact assemblages, we see transformation over time in materials and practices, as well as the movement of elements across the landscape. Botanical evidence points toward a dynamic overlap between northern and southern societies, with northwestern Honduras serving as a sort of regional crossroads. In this article, we compare cuisines from several ancient communities in northwestern Honduras, using microbotanical and macrobotanical residues. We briefly address the political and historic context of the region and provide abridged biographies of several culinary taxa. Of particular interest are milpa annual crops such as maize and squash, managed and cultivated palm species, wild and managed herbaceous species, edible fruit species, and root and tuberous crops such aslerén, sweet potato, and manioc.

Assembling sustainability reporting in Singapore

Sustainability reporting has seen increased adoption as more businesses are recognizing wider societal and environmental obligations outside of traditional shareholder commitments. Several jurisdictions such as Malaysia and Hong Kong have passed regulations to encourage or mandate sustainability reporting. Likewise, Singapore has instituted mandatory sustainability reporting for all listed companies since 2016. The development of sustainability reporting in Singapore is explored using material from government agencies, company sustainability reports, conference speeches and newspaper articles. Viewing sustainability reporting as a socio-material assemblage of heterogeneous actors, discursive practices and other policy artefacts, local corporate sustainability initiatives are framed heavily in business logics such as the ‘triple bottom line’, while being anchored to broader national sustainability campaigns and commitments under international agreements. Such an economistic framing may limit the effectiveness of efforts to drive genuine changes in corporate sustainability, as companies may merely engage in a ‘checkbox ticking’ exercise to fulfil regulatory obligations. This paper highlights the multisited nature of policymaking and the tensions that may arise in a top-down approach to implementation.

Havana Tradition Platform Pipe Production and Disposition: Implications for Interpreting Regional Variation in Midwestern Hopewell Ceremonialism

This study documents the contexts of platform pipe creation, distribution, and disposition at Illinois Havana Hopewell Tradition (50 BC to AD 200–250) sites to identify regional variation in Hopewell ceremonialism and exchange. We observe that the large deposits of stone pipes buried during communal rituals in the Scioto Valley and the continued influence of the Hopewell Sphere of Interaction have skewed archaeological interpretation. Aside from the several large deposits, pipes are limited in the Scioto Tradition and seldom found in habitation areas. In Illinois, pipe fabrication debris commonly occurs in habitation areas along with numerous examples of pipe repair and maintenance. Local pipestones—often from northern Illinois Sterling deposits—predominate, and exotic imported pipestones are unusual. Pipes are rare inclusions with individual burials as indicators of status, spiritual prowess, achievement, or group membership. The high value placed on pipes as communal sacra in Ohio and their value in Illinois as items of personal influence parallels their common occurrence in Illinois and their unique context in Ohio Hopewell. This study of the contexts of pipe manufacture and deposition reinforces current discussions of such artifact assemblages as important in documenting local variations in political, social, and religious mortuary ceremonialism across the “Hopewellian sphere.”

Track and Trace, and Other Collaborative Art/Archaeology Bubbles in the Phygital Pandemic

AbstractThis paper describes our creative responses to a surface assemblage (a scatter) of lithic artefacts encountered on either side of a worn track across a field early on in the pandemic. Our art/archaeology response takes place within a phygital nexus in which artefacts or assemblages can be instantiated either physically or digitally, or both. In the nexus we create, connect and explore an ontological multiplicity of – more or less – physical and digital skeuomorphs and other more standard forms of records for sharing (i.e. Latour’s immutable mobiles, such as photographs), but rendered with radically different properties and affordances, at different scales, with different apparatus. These include interactive Reflectance Transformation Images, graphical surface models, machine intelligence style transfer, and 3D prints, all of which were produced in a variety of isolated analytical “bubble” settings and transmitted to and from (both digitally and physically) a home office in an isolated Hampshire village and a home studio in a London suburb. Our approach is to describe, diffractively, the ontological shifts and itineraries associated with some of these objects and assess how this assemblage came to matter as an art/archaeology installation. Ultimately, some of these deterritorialised, (re)colourised, affective, biodegradable, and diffractively born metamorphic instars, now inscribed with new meanings, are returned to the original findspot of the lithics to be (re)discovered.

Luminescence dating of Youfangbei early late Pleistocene site, Nihewan Basin, North China

AbstractSites dated to the early late Pleistocene are still limited in North China, which has hindered the detailed analysis of the development of Paleolithic industries in the late Pleistocene in this area. The Youfangbei (YFB) site is a newly excavated small-flake-tool Paleolithic site near the Youfang (YF) microblade site in the Nihewan Basin, North China. Because the small-flake-tool industry still existed in the late part of the late Pleistocene and might be related to the emergence of microlithic industries, the relationship between the two sites needs to be determined through a chronological study. Two profiles were excavated, and most of the artifact assemblages were unearthed in the lower profile (T1) from a depth of 0.9 m from the bottom. In this study, the feldspar post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence method was applied to determine the age of the YFB site. Results showed that the upper profile was deposited from 86–0.5 ka, and the cultural layer in T1 yielded age of 124–82 ka, corresponding to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, with an irregular but generally mild climate. The age of the YFB site is too old to be directly related to that of the YF site, but it partly bridges a chronological gap of human occupation in the Nihewan Basin.

Florence-A chert end scrapers from the Lasley Vore (34TU65), Deer Creek (34KA3) and Longest (34JF1) sites and the eighteenth-century southern Plains hide trade

The importance of stone end scrapers in southern Plains artifact assemblages increased from AD 1200 to the mid-1700s. With Native involvement in the French hide trade, beginning in the early eighteenth century, end scrapers of Florence-A chert underwent a series of changes designed to lessen the costs of hide production (Vehik et al. [2010]. The Plains Hide Trade: French Impact on Wichita Technology and Society. In Across a Great Divide, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Mark D. Mitchell, pp. 149–173. University of Arizona Press, Tucson). Using data from the earlier study plus more recent analyses of other sites, we reinvestigate earlier ideas and introduce additional thoughts about how end scraper technology changed with Native involvement in the European world economy. Results reaffirm many of the earlier conclusions regarding technological changes in Florence-A chert end scrapers. We also explore unanticipated impacts of site formation processes, complexities of end scraper maintenance, and the ramifications of changing roles in the bison hide trade.

Landscape archaeology—The value of context to archaeological interpretation: A case study from Waitore, New Zealand

AbstractLandscape archaeology is a relatively young subdiscipline that has grown in a multitude of directions, particularly in recent decades. It is strongly multidisciplinary and has borrowed tools from an array of fields, including the archaeological sciences, geology, geography, palaeoecology and geochronology; many landscape archaeologists have backgrounds beyond traditional archaeology sensu stricto. Landscape archaeology has become an important facet of most archaeological excavations and has shifted the focus of archaeological interpretation well beyond existing paradigms. In this paper, we report on a landscape reinterpretation of a single archaeological site in New Zealand. Waitore comprises an assemblage of artefacts, including wooden pieces (e.g., broken canoe fragments), oven stones, stone sinkers and fish bones but is not associated with an occupation site. The assemblage was originally studied in the 1970s—at a time when there was little understanding of tectonic processes in the region—and attributed to permanent ritual interment or temporary burial based largely on ethnographic analogies with contemporary Māori practices. By bringing together the physical and cultural components of landscape archaeology, we reinterpret these artefacts as being the scattered remnants of a reworked occupation site, possibly associated with a tsunami inundation dating to around the 15th century. We conclude that re‐examination of past archaeological work is as relevant now as undertaking new research. We also insist upon the importance of multidisciplinary dialogue, particularly between the social and physical sciences, in helping to move beyond current paradigms.

Upper Palaeolithic layers and Campanian Ignimbrite/Y-5 tephra in Toplitsa cave, Northern Bulgaria

This paper reports the preliminary results of two test pit excavations in Toplitsa cave in Northern Bulgaria and discusses the potential for future investigations of the Pleistocene layers associated with Marine Isotope Stage 3 and the transitional Middle to Upper Palaeolithic period. We describe the lithostratigraphic layers, archaeological finds and features attributable to the Upper Palaeolithic. The preliminary chrono-cultural interpretation of the early Upper Palaeolithic geoarchaeological deposit at Toplitsa cave is based on the identification of Campanian Ignimbrite/Y-5 (CI) tephra, radiocarbon dates and the technological assessment of a small lithic artefact assemblage in comparison with the regional Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) technologies.Toplitsa cave, located in the Eastern Balkans (Northern Bulgaria), was excavated in 2011 with the main goal of investigating deposits encompassing the transition from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic. Two test pits (TP) were excavated: TP I, incorporating four lithostratigraphic layers, was located in the cave interior and TP II, encompassing six lithostratigraphic layers, was established closer to the cave entrance. Both TPs were generally poor in archaeological remains which impacted the chrono-cultural attribution of the Pleistocene layers. Moreover, in some spots Holocene faunal remains likely intruded into older layers. In consequence, the preliminary chronological investigation has been focused on applying both tephrochronology and radiocarbon dating of the early Upper Palaeolithic deposits. We present a preliminary assessment of the stratigraphy and report on the identification of large amounts of glass shards belonging to the CI eruption (ca. 39,000 years old (ka BP)) in TP II Layers 2 and 3, below which there is a well preserved hearth. This fire-pit carved in Layer 5 (TP II) and underlying the Y-5 tephra is the most significant find. Two Ursus spelaeus teeth from the underlying Layer 5 have been radiocarbon dated to 49,770–45,750 calibrated years before present (cal BP; 95.4% probability) and to 48,210–45,050 cal BP (95.4% probability). The lithics found in Layer 5 are technologically consistent with the Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) or possibly with other transitional Middle to Upper Palaeolithic assemblages. Layer 5 from TP II in Toplitsa overlaps chronologically with other regional records. These include the final Middle Palaeolithic with leaf points from Musselievo (estimated to ca. 50–45 ka cal BP), the transitional Middle to Upper Palaeolithic assemblage from Temnata Cave Layer VI (trench II, which is covered by CI tephra and has been dated to older than 39 ka BP), the earliest laminar Upper Palaeolithic (i.e. IUP) from Temnata Cave Layer 4 (trench I, dating from 47.6 to 40.5 ka cal BP), the IUP from Bacho Kiro Cave Layers J and I (dating to 46.0–43.3 ka cal BP) and Kozarnika cave Layer 6/7 (dated to ca. 49.1–44.0 ka cal BP).

Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry

Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago1–5, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago6, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria1,2. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania7 and Siberia8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.