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Publication date: July 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 95 Author(s): Hannah Lau, Sarah Whitcher KansaNew digital publication technologies facilitate the publication of primary data and increase the ease with which archaeologists are able to share, combine, and synthesize large datasets. The research prospects that these technologies make possible are exciting, but they raise the issue of how comparable the original datasets really are. In this study we demonstrate an issue associated with many archaeological datasets: interanalyst variation. We conduct two independent analyses of one zooarchaeological assemblage and compare data. We consider the implications of the challenge interanalyst variation poses within projects and across projects. We then make recommendations for zooarchaeologists specifically, and for archaeologists more broadly, who are interested in publishing primary datasets in order to improve future understanding of these data and facilitate their reuse. These recommendations include specific guidance of what information needs to be published along with primary datasets to facilitate their responsible reuse in other projects, recommendations for incorporating interanalyst variation studies into research programs, and suggestions about what to do should analysts discover systematic biases in their analyses stemming from interanalyst variation.

Publication date: July 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 95 Author(s): Grant SnitkerArchaeological and paleoecological studies demonstrate that human-caused fires have long-term influences on terrestrial and atmospheric systems, including the transformation of “wild” landscapes into managed, agricultural landscapes. Sedimentary charcoal accumulations alone provide only limited information about the influence of human-caused fires on long-term fire regimes. Computational modeling offers a new approach to anthropogenic fire that links social and biophysical processes in a “virtual laboratory” where long-term scenarios can be simulated and compared with empirical charcoal data. This paper presents CharRec, a computational model of landscape fire, charcoal dispersion, and deposition that simulates charcoal records formed by multiple natural and anthropogenic fire regimes. CharRec is applied to a case study in the Canal de Navarrés region in eastern Spain to reveal the role of human-driven fire regimes during the early and middle Holocene. A statistical comparison of simulated charcoal records and empirical charcoal data from the Canal de Navarrés indicates that anthropogenic burning, following the Neolithic transition to agro-pastoral subsistence, was a primary driver of fire activity during the middle Holocene.

Publication date: July 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 95 Author(s): Vana Orfanou, Annabelle Collinet, Ziad El Morr, David BourgaritThe ISLAMETAL project (2013–2017) was jointly conducted by the Département des Arts de l’Islam (DAI), Musée du Louvre, and the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) and kindly supported by the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute (RCHI). The project deals with the detailed technological investigation of copper-based metal wares (10th to late 15th centuries CE) from the Iranian world at the Louvre Islamic Art collection, comprising mostly household and domestic objects such as candlesticks, lamps, ewers, plates, and bowls. Amongst the collection characteristic qualities of production and decoration can be discerned. High status objects were decorated with sophisticated patterns including exquisite chasing, engraving, champlevé, and especially copper, silver and gold inlays. Results of the technological investigation of some 169 objects (particle induced X-ray emission, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, digital microscopy, X-radiography) showed a range of distinct alloy types employed and a correlation between artefact typology, fabrication technique, status and alloys. Decoration techniques showed a clear change spanning the 10th and 15th centuries with the notable introduction of precious metal inlays during the 12th century and new inlaying techniques before the mid-13th century. Lost-wax casting was the preferred manufacturing method even for mass produced objects where sand casting would seem a more suitable choice. Specific production centres in the region of Khorasan, such as that of Herat and Ghazna, were possible to be technologically identified. Detailed investigation of this comprehensive corpus provided for the first time key technical references for further comparison, particularly with neighbouring Near Eastern workshops.

Publication date: June 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 94 Author(s): Emily V. Johnson, Adrian Timpson, Mark G. Thomas, Alan K. OutramImportant nutritional resources can be acquired by breaking bone shafts to access marrow, whereas heavy comminution and boiling of cancellous bone is required to extract bone grease. Since labour and fuel costs of these processes differ considerably, the relative intensities of these activities provide a possible proxy for nutritional stress or elevated fat requirements in the context of an overall subsistence strategy. We investigated faunal material from eleven early Neolithic sites in central Europe for bone fracture and fragmentation patterns to ascertain the intensity of bone marrow and grease exploitation. These data indicate that bone grease processing was practised rarely if at all during the early Neolithic, likely made unnecessary by ample access to crop carbohydrates. Bone marrow was exploited at all sites, but with varying intensity that exhibited a significant negative correlation with the proportion of milk-producing domestic ruminants. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that fats obtained from dairy products reduced requirements for intensive marrow exploitation.

Publication date: Available online 25 April 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science Author(s): Mercedes Okumura, Astolfo G.M. AraujoGeometric Morphometrics (GM) is a method originally applied in Evolutionary Biology studies, using the analysis of change in size and shape in order to better understand ontogenetic sequences, phylogenetic relations, among other issues. The application of GM in archaeological materials has seen a sharp increase in the last decade, mostly associated with theoretical approaches from Evolutionary Archaeology. This is not an isolated case, since most methods used by Evolutionary Archaeologists have been borrowed from Biology, provoking discussion with regard to the future development of Evolutionary Archaeology and its methods (Lycett, 2015). This article aims to discuss some concepts that have been directly borrowed from the application of GM in Biological Sciences and that have not been subject to much thought when used in Archaeology. Such concepts include homology and landmark types, the concept of modularity, as well as the idea of allometry. As much as archaeologists using GM can learn from past discussions held by biologists regarding the above mentioned concepts, it is high time for archaeologists to further discuss ideas concerning the use of these concepts in archaeological studies.

Publication date: May 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 93 Author(s): Andreas Angourakis, Verònica Martínez Ferreras, Alexis Torrano, Josep M. Gurt EsparragueraSeveral analytic techniques can provide data for characterizing archaeological ceramics. These data sources are not alternative but rather complementary to each other. They report on different aspects of ceramics concerning the origin of raw materials and the technological processes involved. However, when studies integrate more than one data source, they often do it through textual description and argument, not through a combined statistical analysis.We aim to help to overcome this situation by presenting four protocols for exploring data on archaeological ceramics. These protocols cover four different paths when interrogating ceramic samples. Protocol 1 aims to assist the definition of chemical reference groups using geochemical compositions, for instance, given by X-ray fluorescence analysis (WD-XRF). Protocol 2 focuses on fabric groups using petrographic examinations, such as in thin-section optical microscopy. Protocol 3 offers a hybrid assessment of provenance, using the integral sum of the two data sources. Last, Protocol 4 consists of the same approach as Protocol 3 but using geochemical data and a selection of petrographic variables that are considered indicative of the origin of raw materials and independent of human factors. We demonstrate their performance by applying them to a well-studied Roman wine amphorae dataset from Catalonia, NE Spain, and contextualising the results. Through a comparison of the results produced by these protocols, we restate the conclusion of Baxter et al. (2008) that a ‘mixed mode’ approach is preferable to analysing data from different sources separately. Moreover, we argue that treating geochemical data as compositional and petrographic semi-quantitative observations as ordinal variables, when calculating dissimilarity, offers a more complete image of ceramic materials.The protocols are the synthetic product of several multivariate statistical methods developed for similar purposes in other disciplines, such as geology and ecology. To allow future users to replicate our analysis and apply the protocols, we published online two R packages containing all necessary procedures, from data cleaning to plotting. We also offer in the appendices a tutorial and the example scripts.

Publication date: May 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 93

Publication date: June 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 94 Author(s): Alberto De Bonis, Ilenia Arienzo, Massimo D’Antonio, Luigi Franciosi, Chiara Germinario, Celestino Grifa, Vincenza Guarino, Alessio Langella, Vincenzo MorraThe potentiality of isotope analysis has largely been explored in archaeological sciences to date objects, attribute their provenance and depict ancient human dietary habits. However, the potential of this technique for provenance studies of ancient ceramics has barely been explored, due to the fact that the ceramic process often involves the selection of different raw materials and, consequently, different sources of radiogenic isotopes.In this paper, 87Sr/86Sr and 143Nd/144Nd isotope ratios were measured on raw materials (clays and volcanic temper) that were exploited in antiquity for producing pottery in the Campania region of Italy and, for the first time, on experimental ceramic materials that replicate archaeological pottery. To validate the method, Sr and Nd isotope ratios were also measured on selected archaeological pottery from Cuma.The results of this pioneering approach clearly show that the synthetic mixtures used for the ceramic replicas plot exactly on the theoretical mixing curve between the clay and volcanic temper end-members. On the other hand, technological processes employed during pottery manufacturing such as firing and levigation induce no significant variations in Sr and Nd isotope ratios.Isotope characterisation represents an effective fingerprint of pottery that strictly depends on the geochemical affinity of the raw materials, thus providing a better discrimination among different ceramic productions.

Publication date: June 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 94 Author(s): Ivan Jerković, Željana Bašić, Ivana Kružić, Šimun AnđelinovićThe study aimed to test the applicability of the Probabilistic Sex Diagnosis (DSP) method in the bioarchaeological context by validation with known sex data obtained by aDNA analysis on the medieval samples from the Eastern Adriatic coast. We tested the method on 57 skeletons of known sex using 30 different combinations of measurements. The possibility of sex estimation ranged from 35.90 to 86.11% depending on the combinations used while sexing accuracy ranged from 92.86 to 100%. Females were classified correctly in all cases, and only one male was misclassified in all combinations that could be tested. Accuracy rates higher than 95% were obtained for every combination where the number of available measurements was larger than 15. Therefore, we encourage further validation of the method on different ancient populations and implementation of the method for creating reference sex data and development of metric and non-metric population-specific sex estimation standards.

Publication date: May 2018Source:Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 93 Author(s): Rudolph Alagich, Armelle Gardeisen, Natàlia Alonso, Núria Rovira, Amy BogaardIntegrated stable isotope investigation of plant and animal ecology can shed new light on the practicalities and politics of land management. Ecological analysis of archaeobotanical weed flora offers a complementary approach to arable growing conditions. Here we introduce the first combined study of stable isotope compositions (carbon and nitrogen) of plant and faunal remains and functional weed ecology from mediterranean France in order to investigate agricultural strategies under urbanisation and their social implications. Animal bones and charred crops and weeds are investigated from two archaeologically distinct residential areas from 5th century BCE Lattara, zones 1 and 27, during a period characterised by significant urban expansion in the region. Plant carbon and nitrogen isotope composition and functional weed ecology suggest some differences in growing conditions between crops found in the two zones, zone 27 being associated with more intensively cultivated crops than zone 1, where extensive cultivation, which can achieve much greater surplus, was dominant. These findings coincide with archaeological evidence of a ‘richer’ variety of material culture and foodstuffs in zone 1. Carbon and nitrogen isotopic values of animal bone collagen suggest that the main domesticates from both zones consumed a similar diet; however, rabbits exhibit a difference, with those from zone 1 having significantly higher δ15N, implying that the two zones sourced this species differently.