Fourteenth Century AD Research Articles

The archaeology of Māori settlement and pā on Pōnui Island, Inner Hauraki Gulf, AD 1400–1800

This paper describes previously unreported archaeological work on Pōnui Island, New Zealand. Coastal sites date from the end of the fourteenth century AD, and one, S11/20, has evidence for surface structures, cooking, and tool manufacture and use. The harvesting of marine resources and horticulture were involved from the beginning. Earthwork defenses were built at 23 sites between AD 1500 and 1800. At least six of these fortified sites (pā) were later refortified and some were residential. In this study two sites were excavated at Motunau Bay: one was S11/20, an Archaic site previously excavated in the 1950s, and the other was S11/21, a fortified site. Radiocarbon dates are reported from five further undefended coastal sites and from the earthwork defences of 19 pā, which reveal chronological and spatial trends in their construction. On Pōnui the archaeological signature of the fifteenth century was what New Zealand archaeologists typically call early or Archaic, but in the sixteenth century it became Classic. The transition in the settlement evidence appears abrupt; however, the tempo of change more likely varied in material culture and the economy, and possible changes in land tenure and social organisation are suggested.

A Black Death mass grave at Thornton Abbey: the discovery and examination of a fourteenth-century rural catastrophe

Abstract

On the resolution of regional archaeomagnetism: untangling directional geomagnetic oscillations and data uncertainties using the French archaeomagnetic database for dates between AD 1000 and 1500 as a guide

Abstract A complexity is emphasized in the distribution of French archaeomagnetic directions during the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries AD. Data uncertainties, and the smoothing introduced when estimating an average secular variation curve, prevent scrutiny of the very nature of this complexity. It might correspond to a directional yaw, the nature of which would be compatible with the recent geomagnetic field evolution as traced by the gufm1 model. In order to emphasize this indeterminacy, a reference secular variation curve was constructed for dates between AD 1000 and 1500, including the yaw in question, and synthetic databases that mimic the accuracy and density characteristics of the true French archaeomagnetic database were considered for some of these. The synthetic curves hence obtained show that the dating accuracy of archaeomagnetic data is the crucial parameter for constructing a detailed secular variation path. The significant impact of the experimental data accuracy is also illustrated. Even more crucial is the fact that the precision of the data dating required to describe the directional variability over the century timescale largely exceeds the precision of the archaeological dates available for the structures generally studied. This highlights the intrinsic limitation of archaeomagnetism for regional reconstruction of century-scale geomagnetic field variations.

Relational Identities and Other-Than-Human Agency in Archaeology

Relational Identities and Other-Than-Human Agency in Archaeology

The Cahokian Crucible: Burning Ritual and the Emergence of Cahokian Power in the Mississippian Midwest

Much of what is known about the Indigenous city of Cahokia, located in and influential on the North American midcontinent during the eleventh through fourteenth centuries AD, derives from decades of salvage, research, and CRM excavations in the surrounding American Bottom region. We use this robust dataset to explore patterns of building conflagration that suggest these practices of burning were part of pre-Mississippian traditions that were bundled into new Cahokian landscapes during the early consolidation of the city. These bundled practices entangled sources of power that were at once political and religious, thus transforming the practices and meanings associated with terminating building use via fire.

Mesoamerican Antecedents of Sikyatki-Style Geometric Patterns on Textiles Depicted in Murals from the American Southwest

This paper uses plane pattern symmetries to describe the structural arrangement of motifs in Sikyatki-style patterns on textiles depicted in fourteenth and fifteenth century AD kiva murals from Awat'ovi and Kawaika'a in Arizona and Pottery Mound in New Mexico. The analysis reveals that these textiles have pattern structures in common with designs on textiles, ceramic artifacts, and architectural decorations in the Postclassic Mixteca-Puebla style. These shared patterns and pattern structures were introduced into the American Southwest woven on fabric structures of textiles brought north from Mesoamerica via trade and migration routes along the Mexican West Coast and through the Sierra Madre.

The ancient history of dementia.

This paper presents dementia, as studied in the ancient Greek and Byzantine bibliography, aiming at clarifying whether there was an early differentiation between dementia and senile dementia. Numerous references of the terms morosis, delirium (παραλήρημα) or "leros" (λήρος), and anoia were found in the writings of authors from the seventh century BC up to the fourteenth century AD. The references were studied and those referring to everyday use of the words were eliminated from the corpus, which is, thus, formed solely by the terms with medical connotations. The ancient history of dementia may be separated in two periods: before and after Posidonius, who differentiated two medical ontologies relating to dementia: dementia appearing due to old age called λήρος and dementia appearing due to other reasons called morosis. During the first period, we mainly have authors referring to dementia due to old age or due to cold black bile, defined as a deterioration of memory and reasoning. In all cases, the etiology and the clinical manifestations are presented while we make an attempt to correlate the ancient descriptions to modern medical entities. The study of the ancient texts proves that dementia was distinguished from senile dementia early in history. This differentiation was manifested even with a shift in the use of specific terminology. Finally, the attempt to correlate modern medical entities with dementia-related issues results in interesting hypotheses.

Complex history of dog (Canis familiaris) origins and translocations in the Pacific revealed by ancient mitogenomes

Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs were introduced to the islands of Oceania via Island Southeast Asia around 3,300 years ago, and reached the eastern islands of Polynesia by the fourteenth century AD. This dispersal is intimately tied to human expansion, but the involvement of dogs in Pacific migrations is not well understood. Our analyses of seven new complete ancient mitogenomes and five partial mtDNA sequences from archaeological dog specimens from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific suggests at least three dog dispersal events into the region, in addition to the introduction of dingoes to Australia. We see an early introduction of dogs to Island Southeast Asia, which does not appear to extend into the islands of Oceania. A shared haplogroup identified between Iron Age Taiwanese dogs, terminal-Lapita and post-Lapita dogs suggests that at least one dog lineage was introduced to Near Oceania by or as the result of interactions with Austronesian language speakers associated with the Lapita Cultural Complex. We did not find any evidence that these dogs were successfully transported beyond New Guinea. Finally, we identify a widespread dog clade found across the Pacific, including the islands of Polynesia, which likely suggests a post-Lapita dog introduction from southern Island Southeast Asia.

Canyon Creek revisited: New investigations of a late prehispanic turquoise mine, Arizona, USA

Turquoise has been used in the American Southwest since “time immemorial,” and remains an important material for contemporary indigenous groups of the region. Detailed studies of ancient turquoise mines are few, however, and inferences of turquoise procurement and provenance have been limited. Our intensive investigation of one mine, the Canyon Creek locale in Arizona, integrates archaeology and geochemistry to enhance understanding of the mine and its output. A detailed description of the mine's morphology and geologic setting lays foundations for interpreting an isotopic analysis of specimens from the mine's four localities. The analysis reveals extremely radiogenic Pb isotope ratios, which distinguish Canyon Creek turquoise from that of other known sources in the American Southwest. Its distinctive isotopic signature makes Canyon Creek turquoise readily identifiable in archaeological assemblages. The presence of turquoise from Canyon Creek at late prehispanic settlements in east-central Arizona helps clarify the mine's chronology of use and regional distribution. Our observations suggest the mine was larger than previously supposed, and that it provided an important source of turquoise for inhabitants of the region during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD.

Tracing Ingombe Ilede's trade connections

McIntosh and Fagan (above) write that “For 45 years, Ingombe Ilede has been viewed as a key nexus linking the Copperbelt and Great Zimbabwe”. Some regional specialists have not believed this since the publication of Swan's (2007) important review of the sizes and shapes of prehistoric copper ingots found in modern Zimbabwe. Swan noted that both of the ingot moulds found at Great Zimbabwe (which have a clear stylistic connection to the Copperbelt) are of the earlier HIH style (ninth to fourteenth centuries AD; de Maret 1995; Nikis & Livingstone Smith in press). But neither the later HXR-style copper ingots (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries)—some of which were excavated at Ingombe Ilede—nor the moulds to make them have been found on a Zimbabwe tradition site. The distribution of HXR ingots within the modern nation of Zimbabwe is almost exclusively in the north, within the former territory of the Mutapa state (Swan 2007: fig. 2). The clear implication is that the HXR ingot style—and thus the elite burials at Ingombe Ilede—post-date the breakup of the state ruled from Great Zimbabwe, which gave birth to the Mutapa (northern) and Torwa (southern) states. The new radiocarbon dates by McIntosh and Fagan provide welcome confirmation of this inference.

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

ABSTRACTWarfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.

Multiproxy approach to the study of Medieval food habits in Tuscany (central Italy)

A multiproxy approach based on archaeobotanical, organic residue and isotopic analyses was carried out on materials from 12 Medieval archaeological sites in Tuscany (central Italy), in order to provide a diachronic overview of local diet in rural and urban sites from the mid-eighth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Archaeobotanical analyses were applied to 130,578 seeds/fruits, residue analyses involved 87 samples from cooking and storing vessels, whereas analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes included 63 human bone samples and 26 animal specimens. The results indicate that from the mid-eighth century AD, crop production was of high quality similar, to that of the Roman Age. The main cultivations were naked wheats, barley and horse bean, a diversity that attests the technological skills reached by Tuscan peasants during the whole Middle Ages. Different cereals and pulse abundantly supplemented the diet. This strategy not only ensured peasants’ subsistence in the mid-eighth century AD, minimizing the risks of environmental adversities, but it also increased crop production – from the mid-ninth century AD on, for the revived markets and trade. Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries AD, C4 plants had a dominant role in the peasants’ diet, when the wheat production was strictly collected first by the landlords and then by the cities for their own needs. Crop production was integrated by swine farming; animal meat consumption is well documented in rural and urban populations from the ninth century AD. Wine and olive oil, considered important elements of diet in Medieval Tuscany, have a very scarce presence, but they are recorded for later periods, mainly in urban areas and in higher social classes, such as the religious and aristocratic ones. In fact, only between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD was the great expansion of olive groves and vineyards recorded, when cities and urban populations claim to have access to these luxury foods.

A history of conservation of built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania

ABSTRACTThe interaction between the Swahili Coast of the present-day Tanzanian coast and other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stonebuilt towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and the majority of them is in a ruinous state. These material remains, which according to the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. The current article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these built heritage sites. This observation contradicts the European conventional wisdom maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by European colonialists.

Evidence of contact between New and Old World: paleoparasitological and food remains study in the Tagus river population of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo, Portugal)

The period of European maritime expansion that started in the fifteenth century had a great impact on trading, on human migrations and consequently in the dispersion of infectious diseases. Portugal was at the core of this expansion; however, studies about parasitic infections, especially helminths, are lacking. This study aims to help reduce this gap presenting the results of microscopic analysis of soil sediments collected from the Sao Jorge churchyard of Sarilhos Grandes (Montijo). Consecrated in the fourteenth century AD, it remained as a burial ground until the nineteenth century. Soil samples collected from the pelvic girdle of five adult individuals and samples taken as control were analysed under the microscope after current conventional methodological procedures were undertaken. Eggs from Ascaris lumbricoides were identified. Also eggs of trichostrongyle type species were identified in two individuals and may represent the first report in archaeological European samples. Food remains include potato and rice starches, muscle fibres, bivalves, pollen grains and fungi spores. The stratigraphy interpretation together with potato findings put the oldest skeletons to a chronology around the sixteenth century AD. These results are consistent with historical sources that documented the prominence of Tagus river nearby villages in maritime expansion.

Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of New Zealand's First Dogs.

Dogs accompanied people in their migrations across the Pacific Ocean and ultimately reached New Zealand, which is the southern-most point of their oceanic distribution, around the beginning of the fourteenth century AD. Previous ancient DNA analyses of mitochondrial control region sequences indicated the New Zealand dog population included two lineages. We sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes of fourteen dogs from the colonisation era archaeological site of Wairau Bar and found five closely-related haplotypes. The limited number of mitochondrial lineages present at Wairau Bar suggests that the founding population may have comprised only a few dogs; or that the arriving dogs were closely related. For populations such as that at Wairau Bar, which stemmed from relatively recent migration events, control region sequences have insufficient power to address questions about population structure and founding events. Sequencing mitogenomes provided the opportunity to observe sufficient diversity to discriminate between individuals that would otherwise be assigned the same haplotype and to clarify their relationships with each other. Our results also support the proposition that at least one dispersal of dogs into the Pacific was via a south-western route through Indonesia.

Religion, Values, and Capitalism in Asia

The question of the relationship between religion and other phenomenon that come within its conceptual and semantic field, such as values, the one hand, and modern economic development, the other, occupied the minds of scholars since the last century. While this was first dealt with theoretically and sociologically by lhn Khaldun in the fourteenth century AD, it was taken up again in systematic fashion by European classical social theorists in the nineteenth century.

D’une forge imposante à une écurie de la Renaissance au château de Caen

Cet article permet de suivre l’évolution d’un grand édifice, mis au jour au château de Caen en 2005. Construit d'abord pour servir de forge au début de la guerre de Cent Ans, le bâtiment a suivi les péripéties politiques de la Normandie, jusqu’à être converti en écurie de la Renaissance par un des gouverneurs du château au tout début du xvie siècle.

Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom

Monumental construction is commonly associated with the rise of complex societies and frequently supported the ceremonies and ideologies that were instrumental in the creation of the new social order. Recent fieldwork at Heketa in eastern Tongatapu recorded stone-built platforms for houses and seats, and a three-tiered tomb and trilithon. Tongan tradition and archaeology combine to show that these were the setting for new ceremonies instituted by the emergent Tu’i Tonga lineage in the fourteenth century AD as they laid the foundations of the early Tongan chiefdom. Key to their success were activities that emphasised the sacred origins of the living Tu’i Tonga, including the drinking of kava and the presentation of first fruits to the chiefs.

Forensic STR loci reveal common genetic ancestry of the Thai-Malay Muslims and Thai Buddhists in the deep Southern region of Thailand.

Among the people living in the five deep Southern Thai provinces, Thai-Malay Muslims (MUS) constitute the majority, while the remaining are Thai Buddhists (BUD). Cultural, linguistic and religious differences between these two populations have been previously reported. However, their biological relationship has never been investigated. In this study, we aimed to reveal the genetic structure and genetic affinity between MUS and BUD by analyzing 15 autosomal short tandem repeats. Both distance and model-based clustering methods showed significant genetic homogeneity between these two populations, suggesting a common biological ancestry. After Islamization in this region during the fourteenth century AD, gradual albeit nonstatistically significant genetic changes occurred within these two populations. Cultural barriers possibly influenced these genetic changes. MUS have closer admixture to Malaysian-Malay Muslims than BUD countrywide. Admixture proportions also support certain degree of genetic dissimilarity between the two studied populations, as shown by the unequal genetic contribution from Malaysian-Malay Muslims. Cultural transformation and recent minor genetic admixture are the likely processes that shaped the genetic structure of both MUS and BUD.

Hunting on the margins of medieval West African states: a preliminary study of the zooarchaeological record at Diouboye, Senegal

Leather, animal skins and ivory were important components of the economies of medieval West African societies. Despite the prominent role of hunters in diverse oral histories throughout the region, little is known about the actual production of animal products, in particular those derived from wild animals. This paper presents a preliminary examination of the zooarchaeological record of Diouboye, an eleventh- to fourteenth-century AD settlement located along the Falémé River in eastern Senegal. Analyses of a representative sample of the large and diverse faunal assemblage at Diouboye indicate that, in addition to keeping domestic livestock and dogs, the site's occupants hunted large numbers of animals found in riverine ecosystems. In comparison with contemporary West African sites located in similar environmental zones, the economy at Diouboye is particularly focused on medium-sized bovids, animals yielding thick skins and ivory, and carnivores. We argue that this hunting strategy may indicate an emphasis at the site on secondary products, an interpretation strengthened by the excavation of pit features and stone tools that may have been used in the soaking and scraping skins and furs.