Search results for "PAT"
showing 10 items of 41723 documents
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…
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…
Identifying fossil rabbit warrens: Insights from a taphonomical analysis of a modern warren
2016
14 pages; International audience; The European rabbit is a small burrowing mammal that is particularly abundant in Western Europe since the Pleistocene and introduced around the world over the last few centuries. Rabbit bones are regularly recovered from archaeological and palaeontological sites; however, demonstrating their contemporaneity with associated material is often difficult. Additionally, determining the origin of rabbit remains in fossil sites is equally problematic due to the lack of reference collections for natural accumulations. In order to address these issues, we excavated a modern rabbit warren in southwestern France using modern archaeological field methods and techniques…
Characterization of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age and recent warming in northern Lapland
2017
The major climate events of the Common Era (CE) have global imprints but significant variations in their timing and magnitude have been suggested. For reliable assessments of the past climate patterns and their applications for evaluations of the ongoing changes, spatially comprehensive network of high-fidelity paleorecords are necessary. In this study, we reconstruct summer air temperatures of the past 2000 years from northern Lapland (Utsjoki, Finland). We use fossil Chironomidae (Diptera) assemblages from sediments of a remote subarctic lake (Loažžejavri) and the transfer function approach for quantitative temperature reconstruction. The results indicate that the Chironomidae fauna were …
Comment on the letter of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) dated April 21, 2020 regarding “Fossils from conflict zones and reproducibility…
2020
Motivation for this comment Recently, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has sent around a letter, dated 21st April, 2020 to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). The signatories of this letter request significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology. With our present, multi-authored comment, we aim to argue why these suggestions will not lead to improvement of both practice and ethics of palaeontological research but, conversely, hamper its further development. Although we disagree with most contents of the SVP letter, we appreciate this initiative to discuss scien…
Five centuries of Central European temperature extremes reconstructed from tree-ring density and documentary evidence
2010
Future climate change will likely influence the frequency and intensity of weather extremes. As such events are by definition rare, long records are required to understand their characteristics, drivers, and consequences on ecology and society. Herein we provide a unique perspective on regional-scale temperature extremes over the past millennium, using three tree-ring maximum latewood density (MXD) chronologies from higher elevations in the European Alps. We verify the tree-ring-based extremes using documentary evidences from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Central Europe that allowed the identification of 44 summer extremes over the 1550-2003 period. These events include cold temperat…
Estimating “land use heritage” to model changes in archaeological settlement patterns
2016
International audience; In this paper, we present a method to calculate a “land use heritage map” based on the concept of “memory of landscape”. Such a map can be seen as one variable among others influencing site location preference, and can be used as input for predictive models. The computed values equate to an index of long-term land use intensity. We will first discuss the method used for creating the land use heritage map, for which kernel density estimates are used.We will then present the use of these land use heritage maps for site location analysis in two study areas in SE France. Earlier analyses showed that the influence of the natural environment on settlement location choice i…
Bone diagenesis in arid environments; An intra-skeletal approach
2014
Bone trace element content and isotopic composition are closely related to human nutrition. The investigation of archaeological bone geochemistry can help us to better understand the relationship between past populations and their environment alongside cultural practices as inferred from dietary reconstruction. However, dietary in- formation may be altered post-mortem by diagenetic processes in soil. In this study, bone mineralogy (Ca/P, sec- ondary minerals, organic matter content and bone apatite crystallinity), histology, element content (Mg, Na, F, Sr, Ba, Mn, Fe, La, Ce and U) and stable isotope composition (δ13Candδ18O carbonate) were investigated at the intra- individual scale in ord…
Variations morphologiques des Toxaster (Echinoida : Spatangoida) en regard des fluctuations spatiales (Arc de Castellane, SE France) et temporelles (…
2006
Resume L'impact du milieu sedimentaire sur l'installation, la croissance et la morphologie de spatangues primitifs du Cretace inferieur, est analyse chez le genre Toxaster dans le Valanginien et l'Hauterivien de l'Arc de Castellane au Nord de la plate-forme provencale. Les analyses concernent la dimension spatiale a partir de l'etude comparative de six populations isochrones de Toxaster granosus kiliani de la biozone a Verrucosum distribuees le long d'un gradient proximo-distal, puis la dimension temporelle a partir de l'etude d'une coupe de reference (Carajuan) couvrant l'intervalle stratigraphique Valanginien superieur–Hauterivien superieur et concernant principalement les especes T. gran…
Tectonic evolution of the northern Austral-Magallanes basin in the Southern Patagonian Andes from provenance analysis
2019
We studied the northern tip of the Austral-Magallanes basin in the Southern Patagonian Andes, between the Buenos Aires Lake and the Mayer River at 46°35′ SL and 48°35′ SL, respectively. Proposed objectives were: i) to differentiate Mesozoic-Cenozoic tectonostratigraphic units and, ii) to characterize the different deformational events that took place in the area linked to a variable regional geodynamic context. Sandstones provenance analysis was performed on the Aptian - Albian compressive retroarc deposits and Cenozoic foreland deposits. Studied samples were classified using tectonic discrimination diagrams which show: i) for Cretaceous rocks a dominant sediment source from a recycled orog…