Prehistoric Village Research Articles

Abu Hureyra, Syria, Part 2: Additional evidence supporting the catastrophic destruction of this prehistoric village by a cosmic airburst ~12,800 years ago

At Abu Hureyra, a well-studied archeological site in Syria, the onset boundary of the Younger Dryas climatic episode ~12,800 years ago has previously been proposed to contain evidence supporting a near-surface cosmic airburst impact that generated temperatures >2000°C. Here, we present a wide range of potential impact-related proxies representing the catastrophic effects of this cosmic impact that destroyed the village. These proxies include nanodiamonds (cubic diamonds,n-diamonds,i-carbon, and lonsdaleite-like crystals); silica-rich and iron-rich micro-spherules; and melted chromite, quartz, and zircon grains. Another proxy, meltglass, at a concentration of 1.6 wt% of bulk sediment, appears to have formed from terrestrial sediments and was found to partially coat toolmaking debitage, bones, and clay building plaster, suggesting that village life was adversely affected. Abundant meltglass fragments examined display remarkably detailed imprints of plant structures, including those of reeds. The nanodiamonds are proposed to have formed under anoxic conditions from the incineration of plant materials during high-temperature, impact-related fires, while geochemical evidence indicates that the micro-spherules formed from the melting of terrestrial sediments. Broad archeological and geochemical evidence supports the hypothesis that Abu Hureyra is the oldest known archeological site catastrophically destroyed by cosmic impact, thus revealing the potential dangers of such events.

Inundation and Emergence at Pueblo Grande de Nevada, an Eleventh-Century Ancestral Puebloan Village

ABSTRACTThe development of large reservoirs in the western United States during the twentieth century inundated a diverse array of archaeological sites and other cultural resources. Land managers, cultural resource specialists, and other stakeholders have long been aware of the effects of inundation on archaeological sites, and they have sought to mitigate them by using various means at their disposal. In modern times, drought and climate change in the western United States have reduced the pool sizes of many reservoirs, including one of the largest, Lake Mead, which straddles the Arizona and Nevada border. This research presents the results of a two-year effort to study the direct and indirect effects of lacustrine-based processes at Lake Mead to a large eleventh-century prehistoric village, Pueblo Grande de Nevada. What are the processes that are most likely to damage archaeological sites and, conversely, what are those that may serve to preserve or protect them? The results of pedestrian inventory throughout the village, limited subsurface tests at certain loci, and intensive mapping at one habitation complex are used to evaluate and synthesize these effects.

Goddard: A Prehistoric Village Site on Blue Hill Bay, Maine, Steven L. Cox (dir.), The Maine Archaeological Society, Occasional Publications in Maine Archaeology No. 16, Augusta, 2021, 130 pages + illustrations

Goddard: A Prehistoric Village Site on Blue Hill Bay, Maine, Steven L. Cox (dir.), The Maine Archaeological Society, Occasional Publications in Maine Archaeology No. 16, Augusta, 2021, 130 pages + illustrations

Goddard: A Prehistoric Village Site on Blue Hill Bay, Maine (Steven L. Cox)

Goddard: A Prehistoric Village Site on Blue Hill Bay, Maine (Steven L. Cox)

Etnesjøen – en førromersk landsby på Vestlandet

In the summer months of 2013, the University Museum of Bergen conducted an archeological excavation of a large prehistoric settlement area at Etnesjøen in Etne parish, Western Norway. By use of mechanized top soil stripping numerous buildings, inhumation burials, cooking pits and kilns were uncovered. The site dates from the Late Bronze Age to Early Medieval Period. The focus of the article is the discovery of a Pre-Roman Iron Age village, formed of up to six farms chronologically spanning up to five generations of continuous occupation. At the time of the excavation, this was only the second pre-historic village of its kind found in Norway, indicating a significant and important discovery.

Payson D. SHEETS, The Ceren Site: A Prehistoric Village Buried by Volcanic Ash in Central America, Case Studies in Archaeology Series, Jeffrey Quilter, Series Editor, Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992; 150 pages

Payson D. SHEETS, The Ceren Site: A Prehistoric Village Buried by Volcanic Ash in Central America, Case Studies in Archaeology Series, Jeffrey Quilter, Series Editor, Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992; 150 pages

Making Sense of Contingency Tables in Archaeology: the Aid of Correspondence Analysis to Intra-Site Activity Areas Research

The use of contingency tables is widespread in archaeology. Cross tabulations are used in many different studies as a useful tool to syntheti cally report data, and are also useful when analyst wishes to seek for latent data structures. The latter case is when Correspondence Analysis (CA) comes into play. By graphically displaying the dependence between rows and columns, CA enables the analyst to explore the data in search of a meaningful inner structure. The article aims to show the utility of CA in archaeology in general and, in particular, for the identification of areas de voted to different activities within settlements. The application of CA to the data from a prehistoric village in north-eastern Sicily (P. Milazzese at Panarea, Aeolian Islands-Italy), taken as a case study, allows to show how CA succeeds in pinpointing different activity areas and in providing grounds to open new avenues of inquiry into other aspects of the archaeological doc umentation.

Characterization and Provenance of Archaeological Obsidian from Pirozza-Spalmatore, a Site of Neolithic Colonization on the Island of Ustica (Sicily)

Abstract This article presents the first archaeometric research carried out so far on a group of obsidian artifacts collected in the promontory of Pirozza-Spalmatore, the site of a Neolithic settlement on the small island of Ustica (Sicily, Italy). The obsidian assemblage, consisting of 28 artifacts, was subjected to optical, typological and geochemical analyses, the latter carried out by means of a portable pXRF, in order to determine their provenance. The results indicate that 89% of the fragments come from geologic obsidian outcrops on the island of Lipari, and 11% from the island of Pantelleria. It is thus ascertained that, during the Neolithic, Ustica used two different sources of obsidian, located 150–250 km away from the site. These obsidian sources were typical of some western Sicily prehistoric villages, while eastern Sicilian villages seem to have imported obsidian exclusively from Lipari. The analyses indicate that all the obsidian artifacts attributed to Lipari come from the geological deposit of Gabellotto, while those attributed to Pantelleria come from the two distinct deposits of Lago di Venere and Balata dei Turchi.

Human resilience and resettlement among the Islands of Four Mountains, Aleutians, Alaska

AbstractCombined archaeological, ecological, and geologic research on Chuginadak and Carlisle Islands in the Islands of Four Mountains (IFM) probed questions about the sustainability of human settlements over the past 4000 years in the face of geologic, ecological, and social hazards. We use a human ecodynamics approach to frame the investigation and present original archaeological evidence from this poorly known region of the remote Aleutian Islands. Several village sites occupied during the last four millennia are clustered in locations that were not damaged by earthquake-induced tsunamis; however, new geologic evidence indicates that at least one volcanic eruption forced humans to abandon one or more prehistoric village sites. Combined archaeological, ecological, and geologic analyses demonstrate resilient Unangax̂ occupations of the IFM through long-term climate change as well as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions with occasional community vulnerability to volcanic eruptions.

TL and OSL cross-dating for Valcorrente site in Belpasso (Catania, Italy)

The prehistoric village of Valcorrente (Catania) has been inhabited for a long period, from Late-Final Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. For archaeologists, the site represents an important source of information about this Sicilian prehistoric period, not deeply studied. In order to reconstruct the chronology of the site, pottery samples are collected in different stratigraphic units during archaeological excavations. Most of collected potteries belonged to domestic or coarse types and they cannot be dated on typological and stylistic basis. Thus, cross-dating by ThermoLuminescence (TL) and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) is employed. The results obtained by OSL and TL have been crossed and statistical analysis in the data elaboration allows us to date the different stratigraphic units involved in the sampling collection and to obtain an accurate chronology reconstruction of the site that is representative of the most important Sicilian prehistoric period.

Detecting prehistoric landscape features using thermal, multispectral, and historical imagery analysis at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Illinois

Locating the subtle and uneven deposition of human activities across the landscape continues to challenge archaeologists. Existing tools (e.g. excavation, shovel testing, pedestrian survey, and terrestrial geophysics) have proven effective at locating many types of archaeological features but remain time-consuming and difficult to undertake on densely vegetated or topographically complex terrain. As a result of these limitations, key aspects of past communities remain largely outside of archaeological detection and interpretation. This flattening of past lifeways not only affects broader understandings of these communities, but can also negatively impact the preservation of archaeological sites. This paper presents the detection of archaeological features through an analysis of drone-acquired thermal, multispectral, and visible light imagery, alongside historical aerial photography, in the area surrounding Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), a late prehistoric village located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, IL. Our investigations discovered a probable housing area and a ritual enclosure, increasing the area of the site from 3.4 ha to 20 ha. The proposed housing and ritual areas of this village also help contextualize finds from the ongoing archaeological excavations at Middle Grant Creek. More broadly, results demonstrate the valuable contributions that these relatively new archaeological survey methods have in shaping our understandings of the archaeological landscape and highlight the importance of integrating them into the archaeological toolkit.

GROWTH OF A VILLAGE: USING FLUORIDE ANALYSIS AND ARTIFACT FREQUENCIES TO EXAMINE EARLY FORT ANCIENT/MISSISSIPPIAN HOUSEHOLD AND SITE FORMATION

Examining the formation histories of single-component prehistoric villages is difficult using only radiocarbon dating. This study investigates such a case with the added considerations of two relative dating techniques, artifact accumulation and fluoride dating, at the Guard site (12D29), an early (ca. AD 1000–1300) Fort Ancient/Mississippian village located in southeast Indiana. The goal was to assess the depositional history of the individual house basins and, if possible, to determine a relative sequence of construction within the village. The observed relationship between relative artifact frequencies and fluoride levels was statistically examined with the expected result being that fluoride concentrations and artifact frequencies are significantly correlated. Houses built initially contained lower relative artifact frequencies, whereas houses built more recently contained higher relative artifact frequencies. This pattern is further explored with artifact and fluoride distinctions in vertical stratigraphy, which show that some structures were slowly filled with midden trash, whereas others were more likely rapidly filled during the latter part of the village occupation, perhaps at the time of site abandonment. Overall, the results are very promising and consistent with the SunWatch site, the only other Fort Ancient culture site with a defined construction sequence, establishing a general pattern of village development in the study region.

Micro-morphological, physical and thermogravimetric analyses of waterlogged archaeological wood from the prehistoric village of Gran Carro (Lake Bolsena-Italy)

Abstract Oak disks from pile dwellings of the prehistoric site of Gran Carro (lake Bolsena, Italy) were analysed in order to estimate wood degradation. Micro-morphological observations showed that the microbial decay could be mainly attributed to erosion bacteria. The most important physical properties, i.e. Maximum Water Content (MWC), Residual basal Density (RDb), and the calculation of the Lost Wood Substance (LWS) highlighted that heartwood (HW) was moderately preserved, with MWC values slightly higher or comparable to that of recent oak, whereas sapwood (SW) was very degraded. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was tested as an alternative method for the chemical characterisation of archaeological wood. The TGA profiles were critically discussed taking into account the results of the physical and micro-morphological analyses. Potentialities and drawbacks of TGA were underlined.

The domesticated horses from the submerged prehistoric village of Urdoviza (Kiten) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast -- among the oldest known

The domesticated horses from the submerged prehistoric village of Urdoviza (Kiten) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast -- among the oldest known

AMS Radiocarbon Dates on Peat Section Related with Tephra and Archaeological Sites in Carlisle Island, the Islands of Four Mountains, Alaska

ABSTRACTWe obtained radiocarbon (14C) dates with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of vascular plant samples and a charcoal sample collected from peat deposits near the prehistoric village site informally designated CR-03 on Carlisle Island in the Islands of Four Mountains group, Alaska, to determine the eruption age of the CR-02 tephra. A fine vitric ash erupted from Okmok caldera, Umnak Island (ca. 2 ka BP) was also discovered in the bog. The ages of the CR-02 tephra and Okmok II ash are estimated to be 1050 and 2000 cal BP, respectively. Because both tephras are distinctive and widespread, these are important chronostratigraphic markers for archaeological sites in this island group. The 14C dates obtained from this bog are 800 years younger than the dates of the charcoal fragments from cultural layers in the Unit 3 of prehistoric village site CR-02 (AMK-0003).

Two millennia of mollusc foraging on Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands: Sustained marine resource use on a Pacific atoll

ABSTRACTSmall, remote islands, such as low coral atolls, with nutrient‐poor, biogenic soils for food crops and vulnerability to extreme weather, have long been considered marginal environments for human habitation. Yet, four decades of archaeological research in the atoll archipelago of the Marshall Islands, eastern Micronesia have demonstrated sustained human occupation there for over two millennia. Here, we present a fine‐grained analysis of mollusc remains from four recently excavated archaeological sites (4476 total MNI / 14843 total NISP) combined with mapping and analysis of extant benthic habitats, on Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands. We examine spatial and temporal variability in mollusc foraging practices from prehistoric village sites and ephemeral camp sites across the windward–leeward exposure gradient. Our analysis demonstrates that foragers targeted a rich assemblage of taxa from different habitats, reflecting a foraging strategy that was adapted to local environmental conditions. Human foraging over 2000 years documented no observable human impacts to molluscs or nearshore intertidal marine ecosystems, challenging previous notions of atolls as marginal, exceptionally difficult settings for human habitation.

GURGA CHIYA AND TEPE MARANI: NEW EXCAVATIONS IN THE SHAHRIZOR PLAIN, IRAQI KURDISTAN

Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani are small, adjacent mounds located close to the town of Halabja in the southern part of the Shahrizor Plain, one of the most fertile regions of Iraqi Kurdistan. Survey and excavation at these previously unexplored sites is beginning to produce evidence for human settlement spanning the sixth to the fourth millennia,c. 5600–3300 cal.b.c. In Mesopotamian chronology this corresponds to the Late Neolithic through to Chalcolithic periods; the Halaf, Ubaid, and Uruk phases of conventional culture history. In Iraqi Kurdistan, documentation of these periods—which witnessed many important transformations in prehistoric village life—is currently very thin. Here we offer a preliminary report on the emerging results from the Shahrizor Plain, with a particular focus on the description of material culture (ceramic and lithic assemblages), in order to establish a benchmark for further research. We also provide a detailed report on botanical remains and accompanying radiocarbon dates, which allow us to place this new evidence in a wider comparative framework. A further, brief account is given of Late Bronze Age material culture from the upper layers at Gurga Chiya. We conclude with observations on the significance of the Shahrizor Plain for wider research into the later prehistory of the Middle East, and the importance of preserving and investigating its archaeological record.

Identifying Female in the Halaf: Prehistoric Agency and Modern Interpretations

This article considers ways that representations of anthropomorphic imagery in the form of figurines from prehistoric village communities have been interpreted and provides a new framework for analyzing figurines. It has been long suggested that prehistoric figurines should be interpreted as representations of female gendered qualities related to ritual, fertility, and motherhood combined into a concept called “mother goddess.” The impetus for the adoption of this interpretation and evidential association with prehistoric figurine assemblages and bound to binary gender is briefly critiqued. The methodology for studying figurine assemblages presented here utilizes typological, archaeological, and comparative analysis and is cognizant of inherent ambiguities in the object biographies of the full assemblage. This study applies this methodology to a corpus of figurines excavated from sixth millennium settlements associated with the Halaf material culture. This approach is then operationalized with case studies of figurines excavated from Domuztepe (Turkey) and Chagar Bazar (Syria) as examples of engagement with those who conceived, made, used, and discarded them. The Halaf figurine corpus is shown as nuanced, displaying sexual difference and humanness on a spectrum from overt to ambiguous. Considered as a whole, the Halaf corpus is shown to have had mundane and mutable use lives related to embodied identities entangled with culture and community, unconnected to gender binaries, ritual, fertility, or motherhood.

ASTRONOMY AND LANDSCAPE AT THE PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT VILLAGGIO DEI FARAGLIONI, USTICA, SICILY

The placement of the Middle Bronze Age settlement Villaggio dei Faraglioni on the Ustica island, one of the best preserved prehistoric village of the Mediterranean area, is analyzed from a cognitive point of view, taking into account archaeoastronomy and landscape archaeology aspects. It turns out that the place might have been selected because of its privileged position with respect to the landscape, better than conforming to utilitarian/defensive considerations, as instead occurs for contemporary, for instance Mycenaean, sites. From the village it was indeed possible to follow the rising and setting of the sun in the months close to the winter solstice on the two elevated peaks existing on the opposite side of the island, in a symmetric way. As a consequence, the inhabitants could determine the day of the winter solstice with an approximation of a few days, using this partial calendar for agricultural and navigational purposes. A possible astronomical orientation of the urban layout is also analyzed

To whom does Serbian archaeology belong? The case of Belovode and Plocnik

To whom does Serbian archaeology belong? The case of Belovode and Plocnik