Raw Stone Research Articles

Adornos corporais em Carajás: a produção de contas líticas em uma perspectiva regional

Resumo O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variante amazônica da tradição Tupiguarani era um local especializado na produção de adornos corporais em uma matéria prima lítica, a caulinita silicificada. Principalmente, contas discoides estariam sendo produzidas, o que está evidente na predominância de suas pré-formas e restos brutos de debitagem. Para o presente artigo, foi feita a análise tecnológica de uma amostra do material, centrada no estudo da cadeia operatória das contas, com o objetivo de acessar as escolhas feitas por aqueles que frequentaram o sítio: quais as técnicas utilizadas e como se encadeavam em sucessivas operações no trabalho do material. Ao mesmo tempo, procuramos entender o sítio, tanto dentro do padrão observado para as ocupações Tupiguarani no sudeste amazônico, quanto no contexto mais amplo da região amazônica durante a Nossa Era, na qual a referência à circulação de adornos corporais é uma constante.

Crossing the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in the New Guinea Highlands: Evidence from the lithic assemblage of Kiowa rockshelter

This paper emphasises sub-regional variation in the timing and nature of subsistence changes in the New Guinea Highlands at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. An analysis of the Kiowa lithic assemblage was used to examine the interplay between tool technology, mobility levels, and subsistence strategies by investigating changes in the procurement, manufacture, and use of different raw stone materials in an overall lithic technology. Throughout Kiowa’s occupation local stone was used extensively, and over time people increased their knowledge of the local lithic landscape, using more diverse local raw materials. Since the terminal Pleistocene, people carried reliable polished axes for a variety of activities and made expedient use of locally abundant river pebbles, while smaller nodules were located and carried as mobile toolkits to facilitate longer distance hunting and collecting excursions. In the mid Holocene exotic raw materials were also traded from more distant zones. The abandonment of Kiowa in the late Holocene shows that hunting became less economically important as cultivation developed in the area. Technological changes, in combination with changes in faunal remains are suggestive of increasing activity at Kiowa through the Holocene as the site became specialised for bat hunting, perhaps driven by restricted land use and reduced mobility, reciprocally affected by increasing populations and the intensification of plant food production in the Highlands generally. Despite this, evidence for changes to horticulture around Kiowa itself, in the Chimbu area, is limited to the mid-late Holocene, indicating that the early development of agriculture in the Wahgi may have been relatively localised, and did not necessarily displace existing subsistence strategies elsewhere in the Highlands.

РЕЗУЛЬТАТИ МІНЕРАЛОГО-ПЕТРОГРАФІЧНОГО ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ КОЛЕКЦІЇ СКІФСЬКОЇ КАМ’ЯНОЇ ПЛАСТИКИ З ДНІПРОПЕТРОВСЬКОГО НАЦІОНАЛЬНОГО ІСТОРИЧНОГО МУЗЕЮ ІМЕНІ Д. І. ЯВОРНИЦЬКОГО

The types of rock that were used by the Scythian population of Transdnepria for stone sculpture production were determined. Conclusions were drawn about the raw stone materials used and the probable locations of their mining. An important issue for archeology and quaternary geology is to determine the origin of raw materials ancient stone sculptures. To solve similar tasks allows mineralogical and petrographic analysis of raw material artifacts. This article focuses on the mineralogical and petrographic research works Scythian stone sculpture of funds Dnipropetrovs’k National History Museum. Installed name rocks used Scythian people of the Middle Dnieper for making stone sculptures, as well as identify possible design space stone materials. It is concluded that the Scythian people of the Middle Dnieper for making stone sculptures, most likely used the local rocks outcrop near the places of production and further location data artifacts. The raw material for works of stone sculpture served Archean granites and Neogene limestone - rocks that form the largest deposits of construction stone in the territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region.Key words: raw stone materials, Transdnepria, Scythian culture, plastic figures, archaeological petrography, ancient mining.

Fuzzy-based quality classification model for natural building stone blocks

Natural building stones (NBS) have been used since ancient times as decoration and as construction material. The first form of NBS products is a raw stone block. International trading of NBS blocks is very important, because almost half of all commercial activity in the NBS industry involves trading of quarried raw NBS blocks. Currently, however, there is no internationally accepted quality classification system for NBS block trading in the market. The commonly applied classification depends on stone dimensions, colour, textures, and poor-quality properties such as fissures–fractures and fossils. The definitions and limitations of this classification are not exactly clear, because every NBS block has different properties. Therefore, in this study, a fuzzy model was developed to classify the qualities of NBS blocks according to their physical and colour properties. The study shows that fuzzy set theory could effectively overcome current classification uncertainties.

Effect of Storage on Quality of Stone Apple Ready-to-Serve Beverage

The present study is an effort to explore the possibility of effective utilization of the raw stone apple (Aegle marmelos correa), an indigenous fruit rich in nutritional as well as medicinal qualities. As the keeping quality of the whole fruit is very less, improvement in the post harvest processing and other relevant aspects need to be studied. Value added nutraceutical ready-to-serve (RTS) have been prepared. The process parameters have been standardized with respect to biochemical, microbial and sensory acceptance. Storage experiments for RTS with treatments (control, preservative and ginger) were conducted for 8 months and quality analysis was carried out to assess the storability. The ready to serve beverage with 13% pulp, 14Brix and 0.3% acidity was considered standard based on organoleptic evaluation. The RTS blended with ginger juice fetched higher sensory acceptability. Five hundred numbers of bottles of RTS of 200 ml. capacity each could be prepared from 25 kg of stone apple. During storage of the beverage all the biochemical qualities changed with storage period irrespective ofthe treatments. The total sugar, pH and ascorbic acid ofthe RTS got reduced with storage period where as an increasing trend was observed in acidity and TSS. However, the changes were maximum in control samples. The results suggest the use of ginger juice as a source of natural preservative. After four months of storage, there was an indication of presence of total mould count and total bacterial count in the stored samples, but the population was well within the safe limits till the end of a storage period of eight months.

Raw stone material supply for Upper Pleistocene settlements in Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain): flint characterization using petrographic and geochemical techniques

Microscopy, mass spectrometry and X-ray diffraction methods were used to analyse 415 samples of natural and archaeological flint from Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) in order to define the different types from Neogene and Cretaceous formations in the study area, infer their genetic context and ascertain the supply sources used by hunter-gatherers who exploited this area in the Upper Pleistocene. A statistical classification model was also designed using linear discriminatory analysis and support vector machines which permitted the differentiation of the flint on an age basis.

The World's Longest-Lived Corporate Group: Lithic Analysis Reveals Prehistoric Social Organization near Lillooet, British Columbia

The ability to identify distinct types of cherts and chalcedonies at the large prehistoric housepit site of Keatley Creek on the British Columbia plateau has made it possible to infer important aspects of socioeconomic organization from ca. 2400 to 1100 B.P. Each large housepit tested at the site appears to have a distinctive and characteristic composition of chert and chalcedony debitage which remains coherent over time (for at least 1,000 years). Three inferences concerning socioeconomic organization are derived from these observations: (1) residents of each large housepit probably foraged in distinctly different ranges during nonwinter months where they procured their raw stone materials; (2) residents of each large pithouse formed “residential corporate groups” that differed in their access to stone resources; and (3) the “residential corporate groups” that occupied large pithouses retained economic rights, corporate identity, and ownership of specific pithouse premises for unusually long time periods spanning more than a millennium. Differences between lithic assemblages of housepits were confirmed by three separate and independent analyses employing successively more sophisticated techniques.