Plant Macro-Remains and Traces of Leaves from Virje and Hlebine

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-226
Author(s):  
Renata Šoštarić ◽  
Tihana Vilović

During years of archaeological research of mediaeval settlements and Late Antique and mediaeval smelting workshops in the area of Podravina, archaeobotanical samples were collected from the following sites: Hlebine – Dedanovice (H-Ded), Hlebine – Velike Hlebine (H-VH), Virje – Volarski breg (V-VB), and Virje – Sušine (V-Suš). They include fruits, seeds, and leaf imprints/remains. Despite the relatively large number of samples, only a small number of finds was found. It mostly consisted of non-carbonized plant remains from various species of weed and ruderal plants, that most likely represent recent contamination. Of the few carbonized finds, the most significant are the remains of cereals preserved in a rather poor condition: proso millet (Panicum miliaceum), foxtail millet (Setaria italica), spelt (Triticum spelta) and naked wheat (Triticum aestivum group), and fragmented and damaged remains of large-grain cereals (Cerealia). Due to the small number of archaeobotanical finds originating from the archaeological formations dated into the wide period from the Late Iron Age to the Early Modern Age, nothing can be said in more detail about the diet, agriculture, or other activities of the population of Virje and Hlebine during individual archaeological and historical periods. In general, it can be concluded, taking into account other sites from the area of Podravina (Torčec and Virovitica Kiškorija jug), that different types of cereals, such as wheat/spelt (Triticum), barley (Hordeum vulgare) and proso millet (Panicum miliaceum), formed the basis of the daily diet of the population of Podravina throughout various investigated periods, probably in combination with legumes, and that they were grown in the vicinity of the settlement. Finds of grapevine (Vitis vinifera) suggest that wine also had a significant place in the past of Podravina. At the position of Virje – Sušine, in Trench S-7, SU 314, a smelting furnace hearth wall fragment with a leaf imprint was found. The imprint most probably belongs to black alder (Alnus glutinosa) and dates from the period of Late Antiquity (late 4th/early 5th century). At the position of Hlebine – Velike Hlebine, in Trench S-2, SU 102, a partially fossilized leaf was found in the slag from the period of the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Since the sample was too small, it could not be identified with certainty.

Agricultura ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Andrej Paušič ◽  
Andrej Šušek

The aim of this review study was to analyse large paleo-botanical datasets derived from investigations of 35 archaeological sites and published during a longer time period. The presence of 18 selected crop taxa has been monitored in the region of Styria. Our results indicate that in the Copper Age, the cultivation and usage of proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) and the einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum) was present. From the Bronze Age period, the most commonly grown taxa are barley (Hordeum vulgare), proso millet, emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) and spelt wheat (Triticum spelta). In the Iron Age, some new crops emerged along with the already common foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and common flax (Linum usitatissimum), a species first found in Styria during this exact period. The importance of Roman period for Styria lies in the introduction of new taxa like the Persian walnut (Juglans regia), of which remnants were also found in the studied area. The late Antiquity and Middle Ages are a wide time frame where all important cereal taxa were already known from previous periods and were also grown in the studied area, with the exception of oat (Avena sativa) and durum wheat (Triticum durum), of which remnants were absent from this period.


The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1780-1800
Author(s):  
Alfredo Mayoral ◽  
Salomé Granai ◽  
Anne-Lise Develle ◽  
Jean-Luc Peiry ◽  
Yannick Miras ◽  
...  

We analysed the late-Holocene pedo-sedimentary archives of La Narse de la Sauvetat, a hydromorphic depression in the southern Limagne plain (central France), where chronologically accurate studies are scarce. The multi-proxy geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental analysis of two cores from different areas of the basin was carried out through sedimentological, geochemical, micromorphological and malacological investigations. Integration of these datasets supported by a robust radiocarbon-based chronology allowed discussion of socio-environmental interactions and anthropogenic impacts from Late Neolithic to Early Middle Ages. Until the Middle Bronze Age, there was no clear evidence of anthropogenic impact on soils and hydro-sedimentary dynamics of the catchment, but two peaks of high alluvial activity probably related to the 4.2 and 3.5 kyr. BP climate events were first recorded in Limagne. Significant anthropogenic impacts started in the Late Bronze Age with increased erosion of the surrounding volcanic slopes. However, a major threshold was reached c. 2600 cal BP with a sharp increase in the catchment erosion interpreted as resulting from strong anthropogenic environmental changes related to agricultural activities and drainage. This implies an anthropogenic forcing on soils and hydro-sedimentary systems much earlier than was usually considered in Limagne. These impacts then gradually increased during Late Iron Age and Roman periods, but environmental effects were certainly contained by progress in agricultural management. Late Antiquity environmental changes are consistent with regional trend to drainage deterioration in lowlands, but marked asynchrony in this landscape change suggests that societal factors implying differential land management were certainly predominant here.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-289
Author(s):  
P. W. Bartholomew ◽  
R. J. Williams

SUMMARYNitrogen fertilizer requirements and potential forage yield of maize and two millet types grown under irrigation in Saudi Arabia were assessed. Nitrogen application at 50 kg/ha produced mean yields of up to 15.7 t/ha in maize variety Pioneer H.3147. Splitting the nitrogen application did not significantly affect yield. Nitrogen above 100 kg/ha did not significantly increase DM yield of Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum). Mean total DM yields of 17.6 t/ha of Setaria italica were produced, after 111 days, with 150–200 kg/ha of nitrogen; 150 kg/ha of P2O5 produced a mean DM yield 7.9% higher than 75 kg P2O5/ha.


Archaeofauna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 155-165
Author(s):  
EUFRASIA ROSELLÓ-IZQUIERDO ◽  
EDUARDO GONZÁLEZ-GÓMEZ DE AGÜERO ◽  
CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ-RODRÍGUEZ ◽  
LAURA LLORENTE-RODRÍGUEZ ◽  
ARTURO MORALES-MUÑIZ

The origin and development of the Iberian Medieval fisheries is a poorly documented phenomenon both from the standpoint of historical (documentary) and material (archaeological) evidence. Such dearth of knowledge can be explained in terms of proximal (i.e., a deficient retrieval of fish remains) and ultimate causes. Among the latter, the Muslim invasion, that lasted ca. 800 years of the “medieval millennium” in the Iberian Peninsula, needs to be taken into account as it probably delayed the development of fishing fleets within the Christian kingdoms for a substantial period of time. Be it as it may, the lack of knowledge does not allow one to explore a range of critical issues of Spanish and Portuguese history, such as the role played by the ever-expanding fishing fleets of Portugal and Castilla in the process of maritime discovery and colonization that these two kingdoms fostered by the end of the Middle Ages. In this paper, the results from a comparative analysis of selected fish assemblages from primary (i.e. coastal) deposits of the northern Iberian shores are presented. The aim is to check whether changes can be documented both at the level of (1) the range of species occurring in sites from the late Iron Age (Castreña culture, IV-I BC) to the Late Middle Ages (XV AD), and (2) the skeletal spectra of certain species that could reveal a differential processing of taxa meant for local consumption and those that appear in inland sites.


Ramus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Middleton

There is increasing interest in what might be thought ‘special’ about late antique poetry. Two volumes of recent years have focused on Latin poetry of this time, Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity edited by Scott McGill and Joseph Pucci (2016) as well as The Poetics of Late Latin Literature edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (2017), while it has become increasingly acceptable to remark on late antiquity as a cultural period in its own right, rather than a point of transition between high antiquity and the middle ages. Greek poetry of late antiquity has yet to receive the level of attention offered to Latin literature of this time, and so it is to help answer the question of what may be thought special about late antique Greek poetry that I here discuss the poetics of later Greek ecphrasis.


AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam H. Becker

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer. This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish–Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge—in lay person's terms, education—in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at a great distance from the centers of classical learning, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch. The recently reexamined East Syrian sources may help push the conversation about rabbinic academic institutionalization forward. However, the significance of this issue is not simply attributable to its bearing on the social and institutional history of rabbinic institutions. Such inquiry may also reflect on how we understand the Babylonian Talmud and on the difficult redaction history of its constituent parts. Furthermore, I hope that the discussion offered herein will contribute to the ongoing analysis of the late antique creation and formalization of cultures of learning, which were transmitted, in turn, into the Eastern (i.e., Islamic and “Oriental” Christian and Jewish) and Western Middle Ages within their corresponding communities.


Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Bankov

The article focuses on peculiarities of spatial organization of book miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts (IV – VII centuries). The author analyses the problem of conveying illusion of depth in illustration in context of gradual transmission from roll to codex, which took place in antique book culture between the II and the V centuries. By analyzing survived fragments of illuminated rolls author displays characteristic features of their spatial organization and observes influence which had tradition of roll illustration on the development of codex. Nevertheless, precisely the miniatures of the codices that have come down to our time are in focus of the author’s attention. The stages of development of the text page, the peculiarities of interaction of text and images in codices are compared with the principles of space organization in miniatures. The article makes an attempt, relying on the monuments that have survived to our time, to consider the development of spatial constructions in the period of late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a continuous process of evolution of the language of book painting. The author assumes that the development of spatial constructions in miniature painting does not imply sharp breaks or regression. Each new stage of the evolution arises from the previous one and makes it possible to expand the arsenal of artistic means which are necessary for solving artistic problems of the time. In accordance with this approach, the article concentrates not only on compositions in which a spatial illusion is created, but also miniatures that are in character more plane. As a result, the author reveals the main types of spatial constructions, considering all surviving monuments of miniature painting of that time. For each type of space organization, the author identifies the basic principles and artistic techniques that allow the artist to convey a sense of depth on the plane of page. The author pays special attention to the comparison of illusionistic tendencies in the late antique book miniature and “reverse perspective”, features of which are present in the monuments of the era. The author casts doubt on the need for a sharp contrast between these two approaches to space organization in the monuments of book miniatures of the era. He analyzes the reasons for the appearance of such features of space organization in miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts, which are so important for the formation of artistic language of medieval book illumination.


2013 ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Darko Radmanovic ◽  
Desanka Kostic ◽  
Jelena Lujic ◽  
Svetlana Blazic

After decades-long vertebrate fauna research, out of 42 archaeological sites in Vojvodina (Serbia) from different periods ranging from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, remains of birds were registered at 17 sites (4 from the Neolithic, 1 from the Early Iron Age, 7 from the Late Iron Age, 5 from the Roman Period, 1 from the Migration Period, and 4 from the Middle Ages). A total of 14 species and 4 genera were registered for this vertebrate class. The richest ornithofauna is from the Neolithic, where 9 species and 3 genera were registered. The Migration and Medieval periods are next with 4 registered species and one genus each. There were 3 species registered from the Roman Period, and 2 species from the Late Iron Age. The poorest ornitofauna was registered from the Early Iron Age, only one species.


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