Search results for " environment"

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Survey with Commercial-Grade Instruments: A Case Study from the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey, Iraq

2018

Low-altitude photography in archaeology is now common practice at the scale of excavations; however, landscape-scale applications are a relatively new endeavor with promising analytical potential. From 2014–2016, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mounted camera was used to document sites recorded as part of the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey (EḪAS), an archaeological reconnaissance project in western Dohuk Province, Iraqi Kurdistan. The EḪAS team documented over 70 archaeological sites with the UAV, from single-phase artifact scatters, to archaeological remains with standing architecture, to tells that cover more than 30 hectares. Representative examples from this survey are pres…

Understanding woodworking in Paleolithic times by means of use-wear analysis

2020

Abstract Throughout prehistory, wood working was a frequent activity. The indices of this activity comes from rare found wooden remains, and the analysis of use-wear on them. In most recent periods, there are stone polished tools and metal tools, that increase the capability of wood transformation. This is not the case for older times, from which only knapped tools are available. The woodworking chaine operatoire includes activities of selection and acquisition of raw material, but also the transformation and the finish of objects and structures. Use-wear analysis in many sites illustrates this. However, a systematic compilation of published traceological analysis has not been made recently…

Changing Plant-based Subsistence Practices among Early and Middle Holocene Communities in Eastern Maghreb

2020

The eastern Maghreb is a key area for understanding environmental and cultural dynamics during the early and middle Holocene. Capsian populations from around 10000–7500 cal BP were among the last foragers in the region. Capsian sites are known as escargotières (land shell middens), and locally called rammadiyat (meaning ashy mound). As taphonomic conditions in Capsian open-air sites generally favour the preservation of resistant materials such as shells and bones rather than fragile plant remains, this study integrates macro-botanical and microfossil evidence from phytoliths, calcitic wood ash pseudomorphs and dung spherulites, since each is influenced by different formation and post-deposi…

Roman Rhine settlement dynamics evidenced by coin distribution in a fluvial environment (Oedenburg, Upper Rhine, France).

2008

International audience; On the basis of archaeological and alluvial records, this paper presents the first spatial analysis of artefacts in relation to the evolution of the Rhine River, at the Gallo-Roman site of Oedenburg, during the first four centuries AD. The dataset consisted of several thousand Roman artefacts found by pedestrian prospecting over the last twenty years, over half of which were coins. This dataset was used together with high-resolution topography and geomagnetic mapping, to reconstruct settlement evolution, both on the terrace and in the floodplain. A comprehensive monetary chart has been compiled for the Oedenburg site, which highlights four major phases of settlement.…

Entorno 3D para el análisis y la recreación virtual de las actuaciones arqueológicas en Cueva de la Cocina (Dos Aguas, Valencia, España)

2017

Con este trabajo pretendemos presentar nuestro procedimiento de digitalización de información de campo (gestión de datos) y su imbricación en la reconstrucción estratigráfica virtual (virtualización) de la Cueva de la Cocina (Dos Aguas, Valencia, España). La herramienta principal para la implementación del Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG) ha sido OpenJUMP, mientras que para la recreación tridimensional (3D) del entorno virtual de la cueva se han utilizado MeshLab, ParaView, CloudCompare y R. De acuerdo con los datos recuperados durante las excavaciones de los últimos años en la cueva -2015 y 2016-, se presenta el estado actual de la virtualización de la estratigrafía en los sectores …

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the impact of the crusades on the local and regional environment of medieval (13th–16th century) northern Latvia, ea…

2015

This paper evaluates the impact of the crusades on the landscape and environment of northern Latvia between the 13th–16th centuries (medieval Livonia). The crusades replaced tribal societies in the eastern Baltic with a religious state (Ordenstaat) run by the military orders and their allies, accompanied by significant social, cultural and economic developments. These changes have previously received little consideration in palaeoenvironmental studies of past land use in the eastern Baltic region, but are fundamental to understanding the development and expansion of a European Christian identity. Sediment cores from Lake Trikāta, located adjacent to a medieval castle and settlement, were s…

Broadleaf deciduous forest counterbalanced the direct effect of climate on Holocene fire regime in hemiboreal/boreal region (NE Europe)

2017

Abstract Disturbances by fire are essential for the functioning of boreal/hemiboreal forests, but knowledge of long-term fire regime dynamics is limited. We analysed macrocharcoal morphologies and pollen of a sediment record from Lake Lielais Svētiņu (eastern Latvia), and in conjunction with fire traits analysis present the first record of Holocene variability in fire regime, fuel sources and fire types in boreal forests of the Baltic region. We found a phase of moderate to high fire activity during the cool and moist early (mean fire return interval; mFRI of ∼280 years; 11,700–7500 cal yr BP) and the late (mFRI of ∼190 years; 4500–0 cal yr BP) Holocene and low fire activity (mFRI of ∼630 y…

Multi-archive summer temperature reconstruction for the European Alps, AD 1053–1996

2012

We present a multi-archive, multi-proxy summer temperature reconstruction for the European Alps covering the period AD 1053e1996 using tree-ring and lake sediment data. The new reconstruction is based on nine different calibration approaches and errors were estimated conservatively. Summer temperatures of the last millennium are characterised by two warm (AD 1053e1171 and 1823e1996) and two cold phases (AD 1172e1379 and 1573e1822). Highest pre-industrial summer temperatures of the 12th century were 0.3 � C warmer than the 20th century mean but 0.35 � C colder than proxy derived

New tree-ring evidence for the Late Glacial period from the northern pre-Alps in eastern Switzerland

2018

Abstract The rate and magnitude of temperature variability at the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum into the early Holocene represents a natural analog to current and predicted climate change. A limited number of high-resolution proxy archives, however, challenges our understanding of environmental conditions during this period. Here, we present combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon evidence from 253 newly discovered subfossil pine stumps from Zurich, Switzerland. The individual trees reveal ages of 41–506 years and were growing between the Allerod and Preboreal (∼13′900–11′300 cal BP). Together with previously collected pines from this region, this world's best preserved Late…

2020

To place recent hydroclimate changes, including drought occurrences, in a long-term historical context, tree-ring records serve as an important natural archive. Here, we evaluate 46 millennium-long ...