Search results for "RFA"
showing 10 items of 11106 documents
Mineral soil composition interfacing archaeology and chemistry
2016
Abstract In the last decade, different soil types have been analysed to evaluate the effect of human activities from an archaeological point of view. In particular, in the last few years, tremendous advances have been made in sample preparation and analytical methods used in archaeological soil analyses. However, there is still a need to set standardized protocols to achieve different archaeological goals. Therefore, in this study, the analytical methods available to study archaeological soils have been reviewed together with a critical discussion on the challenging archaeological questions, which could be answered by determining their mineral composition. Data on trace elements and rare ea…
Bird consumption in the final stage of Cova Negra (Xátiva, Valencia)
2016
This paper publishes the results of the study of bird remains from Cova Negra level IIIb, a level with Middle Palaeolithic industry that corresponds to the upper part of the sequence, where 247 bird remains from 18 species have been found. Doves and corvidae, particularly choughs (Pyrrhocorax sp.), are the species most frequently found. A substantial part of the remains analyzed displays human manipulation and consumption evidence, a clear indication of bird hunting and consumption by Neardental populations. The manipulation process and consumption of birds, in the context of Neanderthals' predatory activity during the final period of occupation of the site, is described in this paper. Furt…
Dental wear at macro- and microscopic scale in rabbits fed diets of different abrasiveness: A pilot investigation
2020
To differentiate the effects of internal and external abrasives on tooth wear, we performed a controlled feeding experiment in rabbits fed diets of varying phytolith content as an internal abrasive and with addition of sand as an external abrasive. 13 rabbits were each fed one of the following four pelleted diets with different abrasive characteristics (no phytoliths: lucerne L; phytoliths: grass G; more phytoliths: grass and rice hulls GR; phytoliths plus external abrasives: grass, rice hulls and sand GRS) for two weeks. At the end the feeding period, three tooth wear proxies were applied to quantify wear on the cheek teeth at macroscopic and microscopic wear scales: CT scans were obtained…
Landscape instability at the end of MIS 3 in western Central Europe : evidence from a multi proxy study on a Loess-Palaeosol-Sequence from the easter…
2019
Abstract The Lower Rhine Embayment hosts important Loess-Palaeosol-Sequences (LPS) within the western European loess belt yielding valuable information on landscape evolution and palaeoclimatic dynamics. The study focusses on the palaeoenvironmental development based on a LPS from the eastern shoulder of the Lower Rhine Embayment (Dusseldorf-Grafenberg). The palaeoenvironmental development within the study area is presented and discussed based on high-resolution grain size analyses, selected environmental magnetic parameters, and geochemical analyses complemented by luminescence age estimates. Differences in grain size distribution (ΔGSD) as well as the U-ratio clearly reflect main stratigr…
A 2500 year record of natural and anthropogenic soil erosion in South Greenland
2012
International audience; The environmental impact of the Norse landnám in Greenland has been studied extensively. But to date, no study has quantified the soil erosion that Norse agricultural practices are believed to have caused. To resolve this problem, a high resolution sedimentary record from Lake Igaliku in South Greenland is used to quantitatively reconstruct 2500 years of soil erosion driven by climate and historical land use. An accurate chronology allows for the estimation of detritic fluxes and their uncertainties. Land clearance and the introduction of grazing livestock by the Norse around 1010 AD caused an acceleration of soil erosion up to 8 mm/century in 1180 AD which is two-fo…
Land use change, soil erosion and alluvial dynamic in the lower Doubs Valley over the 1st millenium AD (Neublans, Jura, France)
2003
International audience; Geochemical and particle size analyses, surface scanning magnetic susceptibility, microscopic charcoal counting and pollen analysis, have been carried out on two cores from the lower Doubs valley in order to reconstruct the land use history. The interpretation of anthropogenic pollen indicators and micro-charcoal deposits is discussed in relation to the lithological variation of sedimentary accumulation and evolution of the settlement. The environmental changes which occurred during the 1st and the 6th century AD reflect the impact of human activities on the landscape in the immediate surroundings of the site. Multiproxy indicators indicate that soil erosion as a con…
A 2000-year record of lake ontogeny and climate variability from the north-eastern European Russian Arctic
2016
A lake sediment record from the north-eastern European Russian Arctic was examined using palaeolimnological methods, including subfossil chironomid and diatom analysis. The objective of this study is to disentangle environmental history of the lake and climate variability during the past 2000 years. The sediment profile was divided into two main sections following changes in the lithology, separating the limno-telmatic phase between ~2000 and 1200 cal. yr BP and the lacustrine phase between ~1200 cal. yr BP and the present. Owing to the large proportion of semi-terrestrial chironomids and poor modern analogues, a reliable chironomid-based temperature reconstruction for the limno-telmatic p…
Meteorological validation of chironomids as a paleotemperature proxy using varved lake sediments
2016
In order to improve the reliability of climate models in their projections for the future, spatially and temporally detailed paleoclimate proxy data are needed. In this study, we examined annually laminated sediments from Lake Nurmijärvi (Finland) for their fossil Chironomidae assemblages over a time period with available meteorological observational data (since 1830s). In doing so, we correlated chironomid-based inferences of summer air temperatures against instrumentally measured values using two different reconstruction approaches, namely, calibration-in-space (CiS, multilake training set) and calibration-in-time (CiT, calibration of time series data against meteorological data). The re…
Interpreting the Schöningen 13II-4 butchery sequence using the Harris Matrix
2021
Abstract The Schoningen 13II-4 site is well known for the discovery of multiple wooden spears in association with a large assemblage of Middle Pleistocene fauna. Such extraordinary organic preservation also extends to a wide array of bone surface modifications that can be used to reconstruct Middle Pleistocene hominin butchery practices. On bones with few hominin-induced marks, the butchery sequence can be determined quite easily. However, the sequence becomes increasingly more difficult to decipher in bones that include a high number and diversity of biotic and abiotic modifications. To aid in this process, we developed a simple approach for determining the order of bone surface modificati…
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…