Search results for "50"
showing 10 items of 28518 documents
Climate, environment and human behaviour in the Middle Palaeolithic of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Valencia, Spain): The evidence from charred plant and m…
2019
Abstract The Abrigo de la Quebrada rock shelter was occupied by Neanderthal groups during the early Upper Pleistocene, yielding evidence for their subsistence practices and local resource exploitation. This paper focuses on the plant macroremains and the micromammals, which provide information about occupation patterns, the surrounding landscape, the use of resources, and the environment. Mountain pine forests and permanent grass formations containing humid zones and open spaces that would have harboured an eurythermal microfauna were the dominant landscape type. Cold-climate pines provided most of the firewood. The data are consistent with a recurrent, seasonal occupation pattern, in which…
A combined dietary approach using isotope and dental buccal-microwear analysis of human remains from the Neolithic, Roman and Medieval periods from t…
2016
Stable isotope and dental-microwear analysis are methods commonly used to reconstruct dietary habits in modern and ancient human populations. However, it is rare that they are both used together in the same study, and here both methods are combined to obtain information on human dietary habits from the site of Tossal de les Basses (Alicante, Spain) through time. Middle Neolithic, Late Roman and Medieval (Islamic) individuals have been analyzed for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of bone collagen, as well as for buccal-dental microwear. Overall, δ13C and δ15N isotopic values show that for all periods the diet was mainly based on C3 terrestrial resources. However, the isotopic signa…
Late Weichselian and Holocene record of the paleoenvironmental changes in a small river valley in Central Poland
2016
Abstract: The developmental history, from the Oldest Dryas to the Late Holocene, of a paleolake and mire located in a river valley in Central Poland was studied using high-resolution records of pollen, macrofossils, Cladocera, sedimentology, and geochemistry from a 14 C dated sediment core. We inferred temperature and water level dynamics using cladocerans and palynological and geochemical methods were employed to investigate natural fluvial activity, particularly for these elements that are difficult to find through sedimentological methods. Our research demonstrates how climate fluctuation in the Late Glacial and Holocene periods influenced the development of a paleolake and mire in a sma…
Oppida, Agglomerations, and Suburbia: the Bibracte Environs and New Perspectives on Late Iron Age Urbanism in Central-eastern France
2013
This paper explores the nature and chronology of La Tène and early Roman unenclosed agglomerations in central-eastern France. It has been prompted by the discovery of a c. 115 ha La Tène D2b/Augustan (c. 50 BC to AD 15) site close to Bibracte in the Morvan, located around the source of the River Yonne. This complex provides a new perspective on the chronology and role of Late La Tène and early Roman unenclosed settlements, adding further complexity to the story of the development of Late La Tène oppida. It indicates that these ‘agglomerations’ followed remarkably varied chronological trajectories, raising important issues concerning the nature of landscape and social change at the end of th…
Geoarchaeology as a tool to understand ancient navigation in the northern Persian Gulf and the harbour history of Siraf
2020
International audience; Historical texts and archaeological studies attest to the maritime and trade importance of the Persian Gulf since the Sassanid Empires. Nonetheless, there is a paucity of data regarding ancient navigation and the reasons for a shift in m aritim e trade from the western (e.g. Shatt-al-Arab) to eastern (Siraf) Persian Gulf by the Abbasid dynasty. For som e scholars, Siraf was occupied between 360 and 977 CE, after which tim e an earthquake en-trained the dem ise of the city. However, it is unclear when Siraf was founded and how natural navigation conditions changed for ocean-going vessels in harbours of the NW Persian Gulf. To address this knowledge gap, we here presen…
Arqueoentomología y arqueobotánica de los espacios de almacenamiento a largo plazo: el granero de Risco Pintado, Temisas (Gran Canaria)
2019
This contribution aims at understanding the storage techniques used in the past by means of studying the entomological and plant remains present in the pre-hispanic granary of Risco Pintado, dated between the IX and XV centuries cal AD.This type of granary groups together a large number of silos excavated in the volcanic tuff, situated on steep escarpments, difficult to access and easy to defend.The exceptional environmental conditions of these infrastructures have allowed the desiccated remains of the stored plant products and the pests associated with such storage to be preserved within the silos.The domestic species documented include cereals (barley and wheat), legumes (broad beans and …
Pleistocene paleoenvironmental reconstructions and mammalian evolution in South-East Asia: focus on fossil faunas from Thailand.
2006
16 pages; International audience; Mammalian faunal studies have provided various clues for a better reconstruction of hominid Quaternary paleoenvironments. Inthis work, two methods were used: (1) the cenogram method, based on a graphical representation of the mammalian communitystructure, and (2) the species richness of murine rodents to estimate climatic parameters. These methods were applied to Middle andLate Pleistocene mammalian faunas of South-East Asia, from South China to Indonesia. Special emphasis was laid on a fauna fromnorth-east Thailand dated back to approximately 170,000 years (i.e. a glacial period). This Thai fauna seems characteristic of aslightly open forested environment …
Diet and mobility during the Christian conquest of Iberia: The multi-isotopic investigation of a 12th-13th century military order in Évora, Portugal
2020
Abstract The Kingdom of Portugal was established with the help of military-monastic orders, which provided important defence against Muslim armies during the 12th–13th century Christian conquest. While historical sources document the main events of this period, this research seeks to elucidate individual lifestyles and movement, aspects typically absent from written records. A multi-isotopic approach was used on skeletal material from eight Christian and two Muslim burials from Evora, Portugal (11th–13th centuries). Anthropological and archaeological evidence suggests the Christian adults belonged to the Evora Militia, which we seek to confirm through the reconstructed diet and mobility of …
Tracking archaeological and historical mines using mineral prospectivity mapping.
2014
13 pages; International audience; The present study proposes a technological transfer from modern mining prospection to the field of archaeology, providing a methodology to facilitate the discovery of ancient mining sites. This method takes advantage of the thousands of geochemical analyses of streambed sediments, performed by national geological surveys to inventory mineral substances. In order to delineate geochemical anomalies, the datasets are treated following two different approaches: Exploratory Data Analysis and a fractal-based method often recognised as more powerful. Mineral prospectivity maps are then obtained by combining the results with a geographical information system. The s…
Chert Nucleus and Cortex Characterization for Archaeological Provenance Study Tested in the Prebaetic System Region (Valencian Community, Spain)
2019
The characterization of chert artifacts and the identification of their raw material is a pivotal issue in archaeology for the comprehension of economic and territorial patterns related to prehisto...