Search results for "Earth"
showing 10 items of 12204 documents
New Insights into the Provenance of the Obsidian Fragments of the Island of Ustica (Palermo, Sicily)
2016
In this study we applied a multidisciplinary approach, coupling geophysical and geochemical measurements, to unveil the provenance of 170 obsidian flakes, collected on the volcanic island of Ustica (Sicily). On this island there are some prehistoric settlements dated from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Despite not having geological outcrops of obsidian rocks, the countryside of Ustica is rich in fragments of this volcanic glass, imported from other source areas. The study of obsidian findings was carried out first through visual observations and density measurements. At least two different obsidian families have been distinguished, probably imported from Lipari and Pantelleria isla…
Connecting Gien Castle to its Landscape: Faunal, Environmental and Buildings Analyses (Loiret, France)
2021
International audience; Gien castle is a listed monument of French architectural heritage. Today it houses the National Museum of Hunting and its collection. Organised visits to the site have traditionally lacked any clear mention of the castle’s historical background. Recently, however, archaeological excavations and building analysis in 2011–2015 produced a wealth of new knowledge about the castle’s medieval origins and history, and about its relationship to its landscape. During the ninth and tenth centuries and then in the fifteenth century the castle occupied a strategically exceptional position reflecting the connection with its environment, notably the strong connection between the c…
Morphometry of Middle Bronze Age palstaves. Part II - spatial distribution of shapes in two typological groups, implications for production and expor…
2013
10 pages; International audience; For archaeologists, metallic artifacts are key materials to assess Middle Bronze Age production areas and cultural exchanges. Here, a set of 629 bronze palstaves excavated in northern France, belonging to Breton and Norman typological groups, was treated by (open) outline-based morphometrics with orthogonal polynomial regression. Using robust statistics developed for outlier detection, these Norman and Breton palstave outlines can be divided into two groups: those for which the shape fluctuates close to the standard shape, called "congruent" axes, and those which are far enough from this standard to be considered as "non-congruent", although they possess mo…
Sello alimentario romano relacionado con Juno Sospita procedente del SE Hispano
2017
Roman alimentary stamps have an iconography that sometimes is difficult to interpret. In this paper, some valuations on the images displayed on both sides of one of these objects, namely an example belonging to a private collection in Murcia, are offered. In its original publication a relation to agrarian cults through motifs that would refer to the goddess Ceres was proposed. However, it is a composition having its closest parallels in a series of Roman Republican coins issued in 64 bc by Lucio Roscio Fabato. These denarii are mainly linked to Juno Sospita and secondarily also to the Egyptian cults of Mediterranean expansion. Therefore we evaluate the possibility that such religious intera…
REFINING ESTIMATES FOR THE SEASON OF SHELLFISH COLLECTION ON THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST: APPLYING HIGH-RESOLUTION STABLE OXYGEN ISOTOPE ANALYSIS AND…
2012
Stable oxygen isotopes from estuarine bivalve carbonate from Saxidomus gigantea were analysed combined with high-resolution sclerochronology from modern and archaeological shells from British Columbia, Canada, to determine the seasonality of shellfish collection from the archaeological site of Namu. The combination of high-resolution sclerochronology and a micro-milled sampling strategy for δ18O analysis permits a precise estimate of archaeological seasonality, because seasonal freshwater influxes and changes in temperature have dual effects on the δ18O value of the shell. Sclerochronological analysis identifies the timing and duration of growth that is temporally aligned to stable oxygen i…
Ceramic productions and human interactions during the Early Bronze Age in northern Iberia
2021
The Early Bronze Age ceramic collection found into the caves of La Llana and El Toral III in Asturias (Spain) presents common decoration such as that found in the centre of Cantabrian Spain from the same period, which resembles others found in the Ebro Valley and Atlantic Europe. Therefore, the main objective of this study it is to identify the raw material origin and understand the pottery production process during the Early Bronze Age in the Cantabrian region. A methodological approach based on the chemical and mineralogical analysis of vessels and experimentally fired clay samples collected all over the centre of this region was developed. Furthermore, the post-depositional processes aff…
Human occupation and environmental change in the western Maghreb during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the Late Glacial. New evidence from the Ib…
2019
With the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), hunter-gatherers of the so-called Iberomaurusian techno-complex appeared in what is now the Mediterranean Maghreb. During a period of about seven thousand years, these groups left sandy occupation layers in a limited number of archaeological sites, while at the beginning of Greenland Interstadial (GI) 1, the sudden shift towards the deposition of shell-rich sediments and the increase in number of sites document clear changes in subsistence strategies as well as occupation density. It is highly likely that these shifts in human behaviour are related to paleoenvironmental changes in the area, which, so far, are poorly documented in geological …
Intra-skeletal variability in trace elemental content of Precolumbian Chupicuaro human bones: the record of post-mortem alteration and a tool for pal…
2011
14 pages; International audience; This study applies an intra-skeletal sampling strategy to examine post-mortem alteration of archaeological human bone from west Mexico, and to reconstruct ancient diet. Human bone from the Chupicuaro culture (Mexico, Preclassic period) constitutes an ideal material with which to examine subsistence strategies because the specific hydrothermal environment in which the population lived would have provided certain food components (hydrothermal waters and carbonates) with distinct signature in Ca, Mg, F, Li, Sr, Mn, V and U values. Four to ten samples were taken from the long bones of six skeletons. Bone trace element content (Ca, P, F, Mn, Mg, Na, Li, V, Zn, R…
Paleogenetic and morphometric analysis of a Mesolithic individual from Grotta d'Oriente: An oldest genetic legacy for the first modern humans in Sici…
2020
Abstract Grotta d’Oriente, a coastal cave located on the island of Favignana (Sicily, Italy) is a key site for the study of the early human colonization of Sicily. Inside the cave, during different field excavations, three burials attributable to the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic were found. The Mesolithic Oriente B individual, directly dated at 9,377 ± 25 uncal BP, was previously assigned to HV1 haplogroup using a traditional approach. However, it is well known that PCR based methods are prone to erroneous haplotype or haplogroup determination. In order to redefine the mitochondrial lineage of this Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and explore its phylogenetic position, we target-enriche…
Steroids aid in human decomposition fluid identification in soils of temporary mass graves from World War II
2020
Abstract Steroids are widely used for the detection of faecal matter and also – in recent years – for characterising human decomposition in the terrestrial environment. Until now it was not clear whether all commonly used faecal (i.e. 5β-stanols, 5β-stanones and bile acids) and tissue derived steroids (i.e. cholesterol, 5α-cholestanol and 5α-cholestanone) could reveal the presence of human decomposition products in temporary graves. In this study, soil was sampled from three putative mass graves where concentration camp prisoners were temporarily buried for 10 months at the end of World War II (1944 – 45). We hypothesised that soil from the putative temporary mass graves exhibits elevated c…