Classes Of Artifacts Research Articles

Short note on the functional relationship of clay spools and clay weights of pyramidal and conical shape with the fire in archaeology

Spool-shaped objects and weights made of clay were unearthed on many sites all over Europe and Mediterranean, being discovered in settlements, graves and sanctuaries or recorded as passim during surveys undertaken in less excavated areas. Not only in the pioneering age of archaeology but also recently, these classes of artefacts arose serious problems of interpretation. The present paper investigates some hypothesis regarding the function of clay spools and clay weights of pyramidal and conical shape, associated by some archaeologists with the craft of making pottery or with cooking and fireplaces. These hypotheses will be discussed in the context of the recent progress made in the field of archaeological textiles, taking into account the complex methodology of research of clay implements which was refined in the last decades based on extensive archaeological research, including archaeological experiments. This contribution aims to clarify some confusions regarding the function of clay spools and clay weights, by confronting the old interpretations, often ungrounded, with the current state of research, proving that the functional parameters of an implement together with the excavation context and with the information brought by iconographic representations are definitory in accurately establishing the function of these puzzling classes of artefacts.

TO EAT, DISCARD, OR VENERATE: FAUNAL REMAINS AS PROXY FOR HUMAN BEHAVIORS IN LOWLAND MAYA PERI-ABANDONMENT DEPOSITS

AbstractInterpreting middens, feasting events, ritual, or terminal deposits in the Maya world requires an evaluation of faunal remains. Maya archaeologists consistently evaluate other artifact classes, but often offer simply number of identified specimens values for skeletal elements recovered from these deposits. To further understand their archaeological significance, we analyzed faunal materials from deposits at the sites of Baking Pot and Xunantunich in the Upper Belize River Valley. We identified the species, bone elements, bone or shell artifacts, taphonomic signatures, and quantitative ratios recovered to test whether a deposit can be identified as a midden, part of a feasting ritual, terminal ritual, or other rituals significant to the Maya. Our analyses allow us to begin building a system for using faunal remains as a proxy for interpreting the significance of these deposits. In this paper, we present our results and hope to open the conversation for future evaluations of faunal remains in similar deposits.

Curriculum design through lesson study

Lesson study is increasingly prevalent as a collaborative activity in which teachers take part to explore their practice. There are many variations in how lesson study manifests itself, even in Japan, where it originated. However, in Japan, fundamental to lesson study is a focus on collaboration in researching teachers’ professional practice. In this article, we draw on experiences of our collaborative research with colleagues in Japan to provide theoretical insights into how we might conceptualize and inform future developments of lesson study as action research that informs curriculum design and implementation. The approach taken develops ideas of the theory of didactical situations, and draws on the construct of boundary objects to understand Japanese lesson study. We identify a class of artefacts, didactical devices, that may provide a useful form of boundary object that supports the collaborative action research of lesson study. Although the particular focus of the work presented here is mathematics, the lessons that we draw should have applicability across the curriculum more widely.

Writing and Power in the Roman World: Literacies and Material Culture by Hella Eckardt

Reviewed by: Writing and Power in the Roman World: Literacies and Material Culture by Hella Eckardt Joseph A. Howley Hella Eckardt. Writing and Power in the Roman World: Literacies and Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi, 268. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-108-41805-8. The survival of so much written literature defines Roman studies, but much of the infrastructure of ancient reading and writing eludes us in the material record, where organic matter like papyrus, wooden tablets, and reed pens only survive in unique conditions. It is fortuitous, then, that so many Roman inkwells—the sine qua non of writing with ink—were made of ceramic and metal. Until now, there has been no easy reference work, let alone an introduction, to the Roman inkwell. This volume is a welcome remedy to this situation, introducing its reader to these objects, summarizing capably the state of the art of their [End Page 226] excavation and study, and raising a number of questions about their significance for our understanding of literate activity in the Roman world. As often with books, the title may set its reader up for disappointment. Readers hoping for a comprehensive (and long overdue) update to W. V. Harris's Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989) will find instead a work far more precise in focus, methodical in approach, and cautious in the scale of the claims it is prepared to make, but also essential for the next generation of thinking on this subject. The book derives from a survey of all known published (and, where the author could learn of them, unpublished) inkwells and things that might be inkwells from the Roman world. 490 specimens are described in an online catalog (https://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1039969) of well over 100 pages, cited frequently in the chapters on typology. There is much to learn from all this about Roman writing practices. My chief complaint is how much of that learning is left as an exercise for the reader. The book is tidily organized in three sections. The chapters of the first, taken singly or together, are admirable summaries of the state of the study of ancient literacy; on the practical logistics of ancient Roman writing on soft media; and on the social situation of Roman writing. The second section treats inkwells as objects, exploring their making, typologies, formal distinctions both aesthetic and functional, their functionality (in a chapter barely long or conclusive enough to earn the name), and their geographic distribution. The third section works through different social dimensions of Roman literacy—for example, the relationship between gender and literacy. Specialists will find that the first and third sections do little to move the needle on these topics, but that they are unparalleled in their mastery of the bibliography; upon reading them I swiftly added several items to the syllabus of an upcoming graduate seminar. In the middle section, non-archaeologist readers may struggle to keep up with the typologies; the third section, which attempts to cross-reference the known inkwells against the particular social categories that have interested historians of literacy, reaches few clear conclusions but offers a valuable number of illustrative tables. Inkwells are often found and depicted alongside other writing tools, namely styli and wax tablets. Though Eckardt is careful to note when they are found together, there is little discussion of this confluence's significance. It would be easy to suppose these media are substantively different in affordances and uses both; the evidence assembled here suggests a far more complicated picture. For example, relative concentrations of inkwells and tablets 1) within an urban context and 2) between urban and rural contexts invite, if not conclusions, then at least some specific hypotheses about when and how these media did and did not overlap; but the approach taken is simply to present the evidence and to leave such analysis to the reader. Notwithstanding numerous recent qualifications and complications, a "top-down" understanding of Roman literacy still prevails in the wider field, in which we use "literacy" as a shorthand term for Roman elites' own ideology of paideia. In addition to being an unprecedented resource on this important class of artifacts, Eckardt's...

All these Fantastic Cultures? Research History and Regionalization in the Late Palaeolithic Tanged Point Cultures of Eastern Europe

The Late Glacial, that is the period from the first pronounced warming after the Last Glacial Maximum to the beginning of the Holocene (c. 16,000–11,700 calbp), is traditionally viewed as a time when northern Europe was being recolonized and Late Palaeolithic cultures diversified. These cultures are characterized by particular artefact types, or the co-occurrence or specific relative frequencies of these. In north-eastern Europe, numerous cultures have been proposed on the basis of supposedly different tanged points. This practice of naming new cultural units based on these perceived differences has been repeatedly critiqued, but robust alternatives have rarely been offered. Here, we review the taxonomic landscape of Late Palaeolithic large tanged point cultures in eastern Europe as currently envisaged, which leads us to be cautious about the epistemological validity of many of the constituent groups. This, in turn, motivates us to investigate the key artefact class, the large tanged point, using geometric morphometric methods. Using these methods, we show that distinct groups are difficult to recognize, with major implications for our understanding of patterns and processes of culture change in this period in north-eastern Europe and perhaps elsewhere.

SDO Data Artifacts and Anticorrelation of Oscillations in the Sunspot Magnetic Field and Umbral Area

The paper considers a special class of artifacts that appears in the useful signal when the source moves along a discrete matrix of the receiver. A parasitic component forms in the signal due to the displacement of the extreme value of the distributed field of the physical quantity from pixel to pixel (p2p effect). It is shown that a stepwise discretization of Δt < T (p2p) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the formation of the p2p-artifact. For small field gradients (in particular, with good spatial resolution), the parasitic signal in the time series of the studied variable is either weakened or does not form at all. This assumption has been qualitatively verified by comparative analysis of sunspot data obtained with SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI. In addition, the Y-p2p effect, which is associated with sunspot displacement along the meridian and influences the process of long-period sunspot oscillations, is considered in detail based on SDO/HMI data. It was found that there is an inverse relationship between changes in the umbral area of a spot and variations of its magnetic field strength. This property of long-period sunspot oscillations as a single magnetic structure indicates the magnetic flux in the sunspot umbra is preserved, and it plays an extremely important role for our understanding of the physical nature of these oscillations.

Identification of Microrecording Artifacts with Wavelet Analysis and Convolutional Neural Network: An Image Recognition Approach

Abstract Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an internationally accepted form of treatment option for selected patients with Parkinson’s disease and dystonia. Intraoperative extracellular microelectrode recordings (MER) are considered as the standard electrophysiological method for the precise positioning of the DBS electrode into the target brain structure. Pre-processing of MERs is a key phase in clinical analysis, with intraoperative microelectrode recordings being prone to several artifact groups (up to 25 %). The aim of this methodological article is to provide a convolutional neural network (CNN) processing pipeline for the detection of artifacts in an MER. We applied continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to generate an over-complete time–frequency representation. We demonstrated that when attempting to find artifacts in an MER, the new CNN + CWT provides a high level of accuracy (ACC = 88.1 %), identifies individual classes of artifacts (ACC = 75.3 %) and also offers artifact time onset detail, which can lead to a reduction in false positives/negatives. In summary, the presented methodology is capable of identifying and removing various artifacts in a comprehensive database of MER and represents a substantial improvement over the existing methodology. We believe that this approach will assist in the proposal of interesting clinical hypotheses and will have neurologically relevant effects.

Quantifying artefacts over time: Interval estimation of a Poisson distribution using the Jeffreys prior

This paper presents a new method for estimating the amount of an artefact class in use at a given moment in the past from a random assemblage of archaeological finds. The method is based on the use of simulation, since an analytical solution is computationally impractical. Estimating the number of artefacts in use at any time t is shown to follow a Poisson distribution, which allows for credible intervals to be established using the Jeffreys prior. This estimator works from minimal assumptions about the dating and duration of finds, as well as the intensity of collection, and is applied to coinage from four Roman‐period sites excavated by the Roman Peasant Project (2009–14). The result provides an estimation of the abundance of material according to an interval of certainty.

Review: From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles and From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, edited by Warren Woodfin

“From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles,” Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, Flushing, New York (September 13, 2018–January 17, 2019) [http://gtmuseum.org/?page_id=128]. Warren Woodfin, ed., From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects . New York: Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, CUNY, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-9832641-8-7. 93 pages, 92 color and 2 black-and-white illustrations, $40.00. “From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles” celebrates the recent donation of 85 late antique Egyptian textile fragments to the Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College, CUNY.1 Curated by Warren Woodfin (Associate Professor, Art Department, Queens College), Elizabeth Hoy, and Brita Helgesen (Co-Directors of the Godwin-Ternbach), the exhibition and accompanying catalog integrate these newly acquired objects with ancient, late antique, and modern works from the Godwin-Ternbach permanent collection as well as with loans from the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Opera Archives, and several private collectors. In addition, large-scale paintings and fiber works by two contemporary New York artists are interspersed throughout the show. The result is an exciting, dynamic presentation that effectively positions late antique Egyptian textiles in their original social and functional contexts while animating these ancient objects through a rich consideration of their afterlives in the modern and contemporary eras.2 All the late antique textiles on display were woven from linen and wool—not the more luxurious material of silk—and thus they attest to the kinds of everyday fiber objects that dressed the bodies and homes of average people. These commonplace things represent a class of artifact found in institutional collections throughout Europe and North America. Despite their ordinary character, they show an impressive array of vibrantly colored, engaging motifs, from pagan mythological figures (Fig. 1) to patterns of plants and animals (Fig. 2) to busts of women, who might represent personifications of wealth and good fortune or portraits of actual people whose identities have been lost to the passage of time (Fig. 3). A small number of textiles show Christian iconography, including crosses and holy figures (Fig. 4). Together they offer compelling evidence for the visual and material environment of daily life in late antique Egypt. FIG. 1. Black roundel with a riding nereid, Egypt, …

Más allá de la Puna: Artefactos “Saladillo” del Valle Calchaquí (Cachi, Salta, Argentina) como evidencia de ocupaciones humanas del Holoceno Medio

Se presenta el análisis de atributos cualitativos y cuantitativos de un conjunto de artefactos Saladillo recuperado en el sector Norte del valle Calchaquí, el cual se encuentra disponible en el Museo Arqueológico de Cachi, provincia de Salta (Argentina) (2500 msnm). El análisis indica similitudes notorias entre el conjunto analizado y aquellos procedentes de la puna de Jujuy y Salta (&gt;3000 msnm). Esto conduce a pensar en la presencia de ocupaciones humanas correspondientes al segmento de finales del Holoceno medio en el sector norte del valle Calchaquí, sobre la base de los fechados absolutos obtenidos en la puna para esta clase de artefacto. A su vez, partiendo de esta idea, pueden sugerirse procesos culturales que habrían posibilitado la distribución de estos artefactos tanto en puna como en valles, considerando desplazamientos de grupos humanos así como transmisión de información. Estas ideas constituyen un punto de partida para guiar la investigación sobre poblaciones humanas anteriores a los ca. 3000 AP en sectores altitudinales más allá de la puna. Se destaca la relevancia de pensar temáticas de investigación en materia de “cazadores recolectores” que integren el amplio espacio del Noroeste Argentino.

Reconnaissance of Prehistoric Sites in the Red Sea Coastal Region of the Sudan, NE Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper reports results of a recent Stone Age-focused archaeological survey in the Red Sea coastal region of the Republic of Sudan, northeast Africa. Bifaces (handaxes) are the most conspicuous artifact class encountered during the survey and are characteristic of the Acheulean technocomplex. Other recorded artifact types include points, scrapers, and prepared core products referable to the Nubian and recurrent Levallois methods. Most of the artifact-bearing localities lie landward—outside of the coastal margin—thus, the evidence does not signify direct coastal adaptation per se. Our preliminary findings suggest that multiple Pleistocene-age hominin settlements tied to a terrestrial niche existed in the region. The western margin of the Red Sea occupies a pivotal location, linking the Horn of Africa and the Levant, two vital regions in human evolutionary research. Thus, the Stone Age data from the Sudan region has direct relevance for assessing hominin dispersal routes out of Africa.

Pebbles in Archaeological Contexts: A Case Study from a West Texas Cave

ABSTRACTThe recovery of hundreds of unmodified polished pebbles from excavations at Spirit Eye Cave in West Texas provides an opportunity to analyze an underreported class of lithic artifact. When unmodified pebbles are recovered from large shelter sites in the Texas region, they are sometimes associated with a portable form of pebble art. Because of the small size and recovery of avian faunal elements from the cave, this analysis pursued the possibility of the pebbles representing gastroliths associated with the procurement of avian species. Diagnostic attributes of gastroliths from experimental studies in paleontology provide the criteria for assessment. The results indicate that local formation processes, rather than the procurement of avian species by prehistoric inhabitants, better explain the data set. The study also found more polished chert pebbles than any other lithic material and this is argued to represent human agency; a discussion of the implications for these results provides a range of interpretive possibilities.

Information Processing Artifacts

What is a computer? What distinguishes computers from other artificial or natural systems with alleged computational capacities? What does use of a physical system for computation entail, and what distinguishes such use from otherwise identical transformation of that same system when it is not so used? This paper addresses such questions through a theory of information processing artifacts (IPAs), the class of technical artifacts with physical capacities that enable agents to use them as means to their computational ends. Function ascription, use plan requirements, malfunction, and efficacy of IPAs are all addressed in this theory, with emphasis on artifacts that can be used—reliably or otherwise—for digital computation. By explicitly distinguishing physically grounded computational capacities from user-ascribed computational functions, and by recognizing the distinct roles of each for the implementation of computations in artifacts, this theory clearly distinguishes the use of physical systems for computation from the transformations of physical system states that enable such use. As such, it provides a rigorous basis for distinguishing “computers” from other artificial and natural systems—a distinction whose nature and legitimacy faces ever-evolving challenges from multiple disciplines. This theory, and the associated “instrumental” view of computation in artifacts, naturally accommodates the openminded but scrupulous consideration of radically unconventional physical systems as potential substrates for future computers.

Successful optimization of reconstruction parameters in structured illumination microscopy – A practical guide

Abstract The impact of the different reconstruction parameters in super-resolution structured illumination microscopy (SIM) on image artifacts is carefully analyzed. These parameters comprise the Wiener filter parameter, an apodization function, zero-frequency suppression and modifications of the optical transfer function. A detailed investigation of the reconstructed image spectrum is concluded to be suitable for identifying artifacts. For this purpose, two samples, an artificial test slide and a more realistic biological system, were used to characterize the artifact classes and their correlation with the image spectra as well as the reconstruction parameters. In addition, a guideline for efficient parameter optimization is suggested and the implementation of the parameters in selected up-to-date processing packages (proprietary and open-source) is depicted.

Recent Analyses of Fibre Perishables from Promontory Caves, UT

Recent analyses of the Promontory Caves assemblages by Ives and colleagues (Billinger and Ives 2015; Hallson 2017; Ives 2014; Ives et al. 2014; Reilly 2015) have renewed interest in Julian Steward’s (1937) hypothesis that the thirteenth century inhabitants of the Promontory Caves have ties to Northern Dene language-speakers, thus shedding new light on Dene migration and Apachean origins. These studies have largely focused on the similarities between Northern Dene and Promontory moccasins, but other artifact classes—namely fibre perishables—have yet to be examined. This paper synthesizes conclusions drawn from the author’s prior research into matting and cordage recovered from the Promontory Caves in comparison to a neighboring Fremont cordage assemblage from the site of Lakeside Cave, with some suggestive differences emerging from material, structure, and knot types. These preliminary results suggest avenues for future comparative analyses of the Promontory perishable artifacts.

Polished Stone Axes in Caput Adriae from the Neolithic to the Copper Age

This paper reports the results of a long-term project on the stone axes from Caput Adriae. Available data show that jade axes originating in the western Alps reached the Neolithic groups of Friuli Venezia Giulia and coastal Istria as early as the second half of the 6th millennium BC, during the Danilo/Vlaska culture. The exchange of this and other classes of lithic artefacts testifies that in this period this area was fully integrated into long-distance exchange systems that used mainly coastal routes. These systems would have continued in the 5th millennium BC, as indicated by a few oversized jade axe blades and other materials. Far from the coast, jade axes entered central Slovenia, probably reaching sites of the Sava Group of the Lengyel culture in the first half of the 5th millennium BC. In roughly the same period, shaft-hole axes made of Bohemian metabasites (BM) spread over central and southeastern Europe, crossed the Alps and reached Italy. According to different Neolithic traditions, during the 5th millennium BC Europe appears to be divided into a jade-using western area and a central-eastern BM-using one. During the 4th millennium BC, the exchange networks of Caput Adriae are increasingly influenced by the eastern Alpine and Balkan world, where the raw material sources of the main groups of shaft-hole axes are located. The association of the rocks used for axe production and copper ore suggests that the changes in raw material exploitation strategies during the Copper Age were probably related to the development of the first metallurgy.

Sources of erroneous sequences and artifact chimeric reads in next generation sequencing of genomic DNA from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples.

Tissues used in pathology laboratories are typically stored in the form of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples. One important consideration in repurposing FFPE material for next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis is the sequencing artifacts that can arise from the significant damage to nucleic acids due to treatment with formalin, storage at room temperature and extraction. One such class of artifacts consists of chimeric reads that appear to be derived from non-contiguous portions of the genome. Here, we show that a major proportion of such chimeric reads align to both the ‘Watson’ and ‘Crick’ strands of the reference genome. We refer to these as strand-split artifact reads (SSARs). This study provides a conceptual framework for the mechanistic basis of the genesis of SSARs and other chimeric artifacts along with supporting experimental evidence, which have led to approaches to reduce the levels of such artifacts. We demonstrate that one of these approaches, involving S1 nuclease-mediated removal of single-stranded fragments and overhangs, also reduces sequence bias, base error rates, and false positive detection of copy number and single nucleotide variants. Finally, we describe an analytical approach for quantifying SSARs from NGS data.

The Documentary Films of José Gómez Sicre and the Pan American Union Visual Arts Department

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Visual Arts Department of the Pan American Union, headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C., produced nearly fifty 16mm documentary short films on topics ranging from contemporary art to heritage sites and OAS member countries. This article focuses on a cluster of three titles about Peru directed by curator and critic José Gómez Sicre between approximately 1964 and 1968. Produced with funding from an international affiliate of Esso Standard Oil, the films were shot on location and demonstrate careful attention to the contexts of art production within an emerging cultural policy framework that cast art and heritage as engines of regional cultural development. The films further assert that the antiquities and modern art markets might be synchronized to become a generational taste formation, insofar as they identify classes of affordable artifacts that were finding their way to collectors relatively recently, and which had also inspired the work of postwar Peruvian artists. As an ensemble, the films reveal unexplored interactions between contemporary art movements, the development of heritage districts and site museums, and emergent cultural policies that continue to impact hemispheric American locations.

Network analysis of intrasite material networks and ritual practice at Pueblo Bonito

The Chaco World, centered on the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, in the Southwestern U.S.A., was organized largely around ritual activities, including the use and deposition of a wide range of rare and unusual objects. The great houses of Chaco Canyon were foundational in the development of these ritual activities. Biographical or assemblage-oriented approaches are well suited to studying ritual behavior and have been successfully applied to understanding religious ritual at Chacoan great houses, especially the site of Pueblo Bonito. While formal network analyses (and traditional statistical analyses) are typically used to evaluate relationships between archaeological sites, we argue that network analysis also has great utility in expanding existing biographical approaches to Chacoan ritual. Applying network methods to a network of general artifact classes (like turquoise or pipes) from different room contexts within Pueblo Bonito helps to understand the co-associations of objects grouped together through common use or deposition, likely in the course of ritual activities. These co-associations help expand our knowledge of ritual behavior within Pueblo Bonito, indicating distinctions between architectural spaces based on specialized ritual practices. This analysis also has important implications for Chacoan social organization, supporting existing arguments for a Chacoan house society model.

Rediscovering Phoenicians in their Homeland from the Perspective of Iron Age Coroplastic Art

The collective imagery of the Phoenicians is well known both within and outside of the academic world in large part because of the representations of daily life in their coroplastic art. Yet, there still is no comprehensive study of this genre of their material culture. In this brief communication, a new research project is presented that concerns a regional survey of Iron Age clay figurines from Phoenician sites in the eastern Mediterranean. The sites included in this research range beyond the borders traditionally ascribed to the Phoenicians, and cover the entire Syrian, Lebanese, and Israeli coasts. This research aims to illustrate the regional distribution of these figurines, including their production centers, as well as their types, uses, chronologies, and the meanings of this class of artefacts.