scholarly journals LATE CHALCOLITHIC CERAMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN IRAQI KURDISTAN: THE STRATIGRAPHIC SOUNDING AT KANI SHAIE

Iraq ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-48
Author(s):  
Steve Renette ◽  
Khaled Abu Jayyab ◽  
Elizabeth Gibbon ◽  
Michael P. Lewis ◽  
Zana Abdullkarim Qadir ◽  
...  

Kani Shaie is a small archaeological site in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, centrally located in the Bazian Basin, a narrow valley at the western edge of the Zagros Mountains along the major route between Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. Its main mound was inhabited almost continuously from the fifth to the middle of the third millennium, c. 5000–2500 B.C.E. This period of Mesopotamian prehistory, corresponding to the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, witnessed major transformations such as initial urbanism and intensification of interregional interaction networks. The recent resurgence of fieldwork in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is beginning to reveal local trajectories that do not always match the established chronological framework, which is largely based on changes in ceramic technology and styles observed in northern Mesopotamia. Here, we discuss the ceramic sequence retrieved from a step trench at Kani Shaie spanning the entire Late Chalcolithic (c. 4600–3100 B.C.E.). A bottom-up approach to potting traditions at the site allows an initial assessment of the relationship between local communities in the Zagros foothills and large-scale developments in the Mesopotamian world. We argue that the evidence from Kani Shaie reflects a long process in which different communities of practice made active choices of adopting, adapting, or rejecting non-local cultural practices.

Radiocarbon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1041-1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd Weeks ◽  
Charlotte M Cable ◽  
Steven Karacic ◽  
Kristina A Franke ◽  
David M Price ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe archaeological site of Saruq al-Hadid, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, presents a long sequence of persistent temporary human occupation on the northern edge of the Rub’ al-Khali desert. The site is located in active dune fields, and evidence for human activity is stratified within a deep sequence of natural dune deposits that reflect complex taphonomic processes of deposition, erosion and reworking. This study presents the results of a program of radiocarbon (14C) and thermoluminescence dating on deposits from Saruq al-Hadid, allied with studies of material remains, which are amalgamated with the results of earlier absolute dating studies provide a robust chronology for the use of the site from the Bronze Age to the Islamic period. The results of the dating program allow the various expressions of human activity at the site—ranging from subsistence activities such as hunting and herding, to multi-community ritual activities and large scale metallurgical extraction—to be better situated chronologically, and thus in relation to current debates regarding the development of late prehistoric and early historic societies in southeastern Arabia.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akbar Abedi ◽  
Nasir Eskandari ◽  
Hamid Khatib Shahidi ◽  
Ismail Sharahi ◽  
Gholam Shirzadeh

Tapeh Qal‘eh-ye-Sarsakhti is located between the Central Iranian Plateau and the Zagros Mountains, specifically in the entrance threshold to the Central Iranian Plateau from the eastern part of Central Zagros. It is a rich site including several periods: late Neolithic, Middle and Late Chalcolithic, Early and Middle Bronze Age, Parthian and eventually the Seljuk era. According to surveys conducted in the Central Zagros and in the Central Iranian Plateau, Tapeh Qal‘eh-ye-Sarsakhti appears to be one of the southeastern-most extensions of the Kura-Araxes and the eastern sphere of Dalma Culture influence in the Central Iranian Plateau and East Central Zagros. Here, we trace the nature of the arrival of these cultures to the East Central Zagros and Central Iranian Plateau, as well as the role this area played in transferring of these cultures from east to west, north to south and vice versa.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Kittel

AbstractPeriods of intense human impact on the relief and lithology of the area of the Smólsk site were recorded during geoarchaeological research accompanying archaeological field work. The phases of occupation of the area are known in detail from the results of the large-scale archaeological research of the site. The slope deposits with buried soils were recorded at the site area and researched in detail with the use of sedimentological, geochemical and micromorphological analyses. Beside geochronological deterioration, the chronology of the artefacts found in layers played an important role in the strict recognition of the age of deposits. The lower part of the studied slope cover is constituted by deluvium and the upper part by tillage diamicton. The origin and the development of the slope deposits are correlated with the phases of an intense prehistoric human impact as defined by the archaeological research. Four main phases of acceleration of slope processes were documented at the site and date to the Early Neolithic, the Middle Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1047-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulatović ◽  
Marc Vander Linden

AbstractThis paper reports the first radiocarbon (14C) dates obtained for the Eneolithic/Bronze Age site of Bubanj, Serbia. Despite featuring prominently in the existing typo-chronological schemes for southeastern Europe, the history of research and recent large-scale destruction of the site had prevented so far the acquisition of samples from secure archaeological contexts. We fill this documentary gap by presenting 10 new14C dates, covering the late 5th, 4th, and 3rd millennia cal BC. These dates are compared to the existing documentation from the literature, in order to assess the placement of Bubanj within its wider archaeological context.


HortScience ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 495d-495
Author(s):  
J. Farias-Larios ◽  
A. Michel-Rosales

In Western Mexico, melon production depends on high-input systems to maximize yield and product quality. Tillage, plasticulture, fumigation with methyl bromide, and fertigation, are the principal management practices in these systems. However, at present several problems has been found: pests as sweetpotato whitefly (Bemisia tabaci Gennadius), aphids (Myzus and Aphis), leafminer (Liryomiza sativae); diseases as Fusarium, Verticilium, and Pseudoperenospora, and weeds demand high pesticide utilization and labor. There is a growing demand for alternative cultural practices, with an emphasis on reducing off-farm input labor and chemicals. Our research is based on use of organic mulches, such as: rice straw, mature maize leaves, banana leaves, sugarcane bagasse, coconut leaves, and living mulches with annual legume cover crop in melons with crop rotation, such as: Canavalia, Stilozobium, Crotalaria, and Clitoria species. Also, inoculations with mycorrhizal arbuscular fungi for honeydew and cantaloupe melon seedlings production are been assayed in greenhouse conditions for a transplant system. The use of life barriers with sorghum, marigold, and other aromatic native plants in conjunction with a colored yellow systems traps for monitoring pests is being studied as well. While that the pest control is based in commercial formulations of Beauveria bassiana for biological control. The first results of this research show that the Glomus intraradices, G. fasciculatum, G. etunicatum, and G. mosseae reached 38.5%, 33.5%, 27.0%, and 31.0% of root infection levels, respectively. Honeydew melons production with rice and corn straw mulches shows an beneficial effect with 113.30 and 111.20 kg/plot of 10 m2 compared with bare soil with 100.20 kg. The proposed system likely also lowers production cost and is applicable to small- and large-scale melon production.


Author(s):  
Christoph Schwörer ◽  
Erika Gobet ◽  
Jacqueline F. N. van Leeuwen ◽  
Sarah Bögli ◽  
Rachel Imboden ◽  
...  

AbstractObserving natural vegetation dynamics over the entire Holocene is difficult in Central Europe, due to pervasive and increasing human disturbance since the Neolithic. One strategy to minimize this limitation is to select a study site in an area that is marginal for agricultural activity. Here, we present a new sediment record from Lake Svityaz in northwestern Ukraine. We have reconstructed regional and local vegetation and fire dynamics since the Late Glacial using pollen, spores, macrofossils and charcoal. Boreal forest composed of Pinus sylvestris and Betula with continental Larix decidua and Pinus cembra established in the region around 13,450 cal bp, replacing an open, steppic landscape. The first temperate tree to expand was Ulmus at 11,800 cal bp, followed by Quercus, Fraxinus excelsior, Tilia and Corylus ca. 1,000 years later. Fire activity was highest during the Early Holocene, when summer solar insolation reached its maximum. Carpinus betulus and Fagus sylvatica established at ca. 6,000 cal bp, coinciding with the first indicators of agricultural activity in the region and a transient climatic shift to cooler and moister conditions. Human impact on the vegetation remained initially very low, only increasing during the Bronze Age, at ca. 3,400 cal bp. Large-scale forest openings and the establishment of the present-day cultural landscape occurred only during the past 500 years. The persistence of highly diverse mixed forest under absent or low anthropogenic disturbance until the Early Middle Ages corroborates the role of human impact in the impoverishment of temperate forests elsewhere in Central Europe. The preservation or reestablishment of such diverse forests may mitigate future climate change impacts, specifically by lowering fire risk under warmer and drier conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2287
Author(s):  
Anna Maria Mercuri ◽  
Paola Torri ◽  
Assunta Florenzano ◽  
Eleonora Clò ◽  
Marta Mariotti Lippi ◽  
...  

The recovery of inaperturate pollen from functionally female flowers in archaeological layers opens the question of a possible pollen-based discrimination between wild and domesticated Vitis vinifera in prehistoric times. Pollen analysis applied to archaeology has not routinely considered the existence of pollen dimorphism in Vitis, a well-known trait in the field of agrarian studies. Therefore, the inaperturate shape of grapevine pollen is ignored by studies on the archaeobotanical history of viticulture. In this paper we investigate pollen morphology of the domesticated and wild subspecies of V. vinifera, and report the first evidence of inaperturate Vitis pollen from an archaeological site. We studied exemplar cases of plants with hermaphroditic flowers, belonging to the subspecies vinifera with fully developed male and female organs, cases of dioecious plants with male or female flowers, belonging to the wild subspecies sylvestris and cases of V. vinifera subsp. vinifera with morphologically hermaphroditic but functionally female flowers. The pollen produced by hermaphroditic and male flowers is usually trizonocolporate; the pollen produced by female flowers is inaperturate. This paper reports on the inaperturate pollen of Vitis found in an archeological site of the Po Plain, Northern Italy. The site dated to the Bronze Age, which is known to have been a critical age for the use of this plant with a transition from wild to domesticated Vitis in central Mediterranean. Can the inaperturate Vitis pollen be a marker of wild Vitis vinifera in prehistoric times? Palynology suggests a possible new investigation strategy on the ancient history of the wild and cultivated grapevine. The pollen dimorphism also implies a different production and dispersal of pollen of the wild and the domesticated subspecies. Grapevine plants are palynologically different from the other Mediterranean “cultural trees”. In fact, Olea, Juglans and Castanea, which are included in the OJC index, have the same pollen morphology and the same pollen dispersal, in wild and domesticated plants. In contrast, the signal of Vitis pollen in past records may be different depending on the hermaphroditic or dioecious subspecies.


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