The Role of Palynology in Archaeoecological Research: Reconstructing Human-Environment Interactions during Neolithic in the Western Mediterranean

This paper provides an overview of the potential of palynology within palaeoenvironmental research to reconstruct past landscapes and assess the relationship between vegetation and the first farming communities. The analysis of pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs in natural records evidenced how the adoption of farming and new sedentary settlement patterns resulted in major landscape transformation on extra-local or regional scales in the Western Mediterranean, affecting sclerophyllous and riparian forests in North Corsica, Mediterranean maquis in South Corsica, and oak forests in NE Iberia. In addition, palynology has been confirmed as a relevant source of data to address the local palaeoenvironmental evolution in lakes, wetlands, and archaeological sites, providing evidence of the presence of flocks (spores of coprophilous fungi), and changes in hydrology (salinity, dryness/wetness, aquatic/palustrine phases) and in geomorphology (soil erosion indicators). Finally, the spatial analysis of pollen and NPP intra-site distribution is presented here as a valuable tool to assess the social use of space in archaeological sites. In that sense, archaeopalynology has provided detailed information about site formation processes, social use of space, and the use of plants and fungi in the site of La Draga (Girona, Spain).

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The Archaeological Record

10.1093/oso/9780199474660.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Manjil Hazarika

Keyword(s):

Archaeological Site ◽

Northeast India ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Site Structure ◽

Reserve Forest ◽

Ethnographic Data ◽

Ways Of Life

This chapter elaborates the data and results of the explorations conducted in the Garbhanga Reserve Forest. The area has been intensively surveyed for the location of potential archaeological sites and the collection of ethnographic data in order to draw direct historical analogies. An ‘area-approach’ study has been conducted in order to formulate a general model for archaeological site structure, locations, geomorphic situations, and site formation processes that can be used for archaeological study in the hilly landscape of Northeast India. Present-day agricultural implements have been analysed and compared with Neolithic implements in order to reconstruct ancient farming culture by way of undertaking systematic study of modern peasant ways of life in the study area. The ideological significance of stone artefacts as ‘thunderstone’ in Northeast India and among the Karbis has also been discussed.

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Quantifying the threat to archaeological sites from the erosion of cultivated soil

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00094114 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 80 (309) ◽

pp. 658-670 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Keith Wilkinson ◽

Andrew Tyler ◽

Donald Davidson ◽

Ian Grieve

Keyword(s):

World Wide ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Know How ◽

The Past ◽

Nuclear Weapons Testing ◽

Resource Managers ◽

Soil Movements

Ploughing is probably the greatest agent of attrition to archaeological sites world-wide. In every country, every year, a bit more is shaved off buried strata and a bit more of the past becomes unreadable. On the other hand, people must eat and crops must be planted. How can the fields be best managed to get the best of both worlds? Perhaps the most pressing need for resource managers is to know how quickly a particular field is eroding: negotiation and protection is then possible. Up to now that has been difficult to measure.The new procedure presented here, which draws on the unexpected benefits of nuclear weapons testing, shows how variation in the concentration of the radioisotope 137Cs can be used to monitor soil movements over the last 40 years. The measurements allow a site's ‘life expectancy’ to be calculated, and there are some promising dividends for tracking site formation processes.

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Excavating Magic

The Archaeology of Magic ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813066110.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 141-172

Author(s):

C. Riley Augé

Keyword(s):

New England ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Site Type ◽

House Site

The process of locating and evaluating the chosen archaeological sites for this work is presented here as a prelude to the analysis of any artifacts with potential for magical interpretation. Issues of archaeological recordation and site formation processes are discussed to explain the paucity of the chosen site type. Five New England sites met the appropriate criteria for consideration: Chadbourne site, John Alden site, Jireh Bull Garrison House, Greene Farm Archaeology Project, and John Howland House site. Each site’s history and any potential magical symbolism and artifacts are discussed. Additionally, two common types of archaeologically recovered intentionally concealed objects (witch bottles and shoes) are discussed to question why examples were not located at the five sites reviewed here.

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Soil Genesis and Site-Formation Processes

Soils in Archaeological Research ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195149654.003.0013 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Vance T. Holliday

Keyword(s):

Soil Formation ◽

Archaeological Site ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Archaeological Record ◽

Natural Processes ◽

Natural Formation ◽

Pedogenic Processes

Pedogenic processes that produce or alter the soils associated with a landscape (buried or unburied) also modify the archaeological sites and other traces of human activity associated with that landscape and buried landscapes. The wide range of processes that form soils can profoundly affect the archaeological record. Pedogenesis, therefore, is an important component of the processes of archaeological site formation. Archaeological “site-formation processes” are those processes that modify artifacts and archaeological sites from the moment they were formed until they are uncovered by archaeologists (Stein, 2001b, pp. 37–38). Understanding formation processes is crucial in archaeology because archaeologists use the patterns of artifacts in the ground to infer behaviors. Formation processes identify patterns that are created by ancient behaviors and separate those patterns from the ones created by later cultural and natural processes (Stein, 2001b, p. 37). In his influential volume Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record, Schiffer (1987, p. 7) notes that archaeologists try to infer past behavior based on the archaeological record, but the record “must be handled with great care by the investigator seeking to infer past behaviors, for the evidence that survives has been changed in many ways by a variety of processes.” These processes introduce variability and ambiguity into the archaeological record. Schiffer (1987, p. 7) further distinguishes between cultural processes, in which the agency of transformation is human behavior, and noncultural processes, which stem from processes of the natural environment. Natural formation processes are many and varied and include plants, animals, wind, water, ice, and gravity, among others. Soil formation is also identified as an important process of site formation. Schiffer (1987) provides a comprehensive discussion of natural site-formation processes, which are summarized by Stein (2001b). Nash and Petraglia (1987) and Goldberg et al. (1993) also provide a number of case histories of natural formation processes identified at archaeological sites. Because soil formation represents the alteration of rock and sediment (chapter 1), pedogenic processes are important natural processes in the formation of archaeological sites. Other weathering processes that are significant in site formation can be grouped as “diagenetic alterations.”

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Soils and Landscape Evolution

Soils in Archaeological Research ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195149654.003.0012 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Vance T. Holliday

Keyword(s):

Landscape Evolution ◽

Archaeological Site ◽

Environmental Indicators ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Four Dimensions ◽

External Component ◽

A Site

Soils and archaeological sites are intimately related to the landscape. Investigating soils across past and present landscapes provides a means of reconstructing and understanding the regional environmental and geomorphic context of archaeological site settings and specific site locations, regional site formation processes, and aspects of the resources available to people in a region. Archaeological sites tend to occupy small segments of the landscape, but human activity may affect a much larger area, and in any case, people wander far and wide from sites, interacting with the environment—including the landscape. Thus, no matter whether a site is just a lithic scatter or bone bed or if it is a tell, understanding the regional landscape is an important part of understanding a site and human behavior, and soils are an important means of understanding a landscape. Soils are also important in reconstructing the evolution of landscapes and, consequently, the evolution of archaeological sites. That is, landscape evolution is an important external component of site-formation processes. Landscapes form the physical framework or underpinning for people and their activities and their resulting sites. As landscapes evolve, so do human activities and so do sites. Soils are key to recognizing and interpreting the evolutionary processes that shape the landscape and associated archaeological sites. Furthermore, the concept of landscape evolution also 1) is a logical continuation of the discussion of soil stratigraphy (chapters 5, 6) because it places soil stratigraphy in three or even four dimensions; 2) is a complement to the discussion of soils as environmental indicators (chapter 8), because landscape evolution can be linked to environmental change and because the evolution of the landscape itself, regardless of changes in other factors, represents a change in the environment from a human perspective; and 3) provides yet another means for predicting site locations. The discussion in this section, therefore, represents an integration of some of the principals outlined previously. Some of the studies presented in other chapters, such as the work on the Loess Plateau of China (chapters 6 and 8), and at Harappa and along the Ravi River (chapter 4), are good examples of landscape reconstructions for very large regions and are not repeated here.

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SHAPING CERAMIC RESEARCH AT THE MAYA SITE OF CUELLO, BELIZE

Ancient Mesoamerica ◽

10.1017/s0956536103132087 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 61-66 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Laura J. Kosakowsky

Keyword(s):

Modal Analysis ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Ceramic Vessel ◽

Preclassic Period ◽

Maya Site ◽

Analytical System

Traditional analyses of ceramics from Maya Lowland archaeological sites have focused on descriptive typologies to define site and regional chronologies. However, T. Patrick Culbert's groundbreaking work on the ceramics of Tikal (1993) utilized vessel shapes, as well, involving an analytical system of two levels: shape classes and shapes. His systematized modal analysis and concentration on vessel-shape classes, in conjunction with a focus on the importance of deposit types and site-formation processes, revolutionized what ceramics can tell us about prehistoric Maya behavior. The same approach was applied to the research on the Cuello ceramics presented here to gain a better understanding of the behavior associated with ceramic-vessel usage during the Preclassic period at this northern Belize site.

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The Potential of Micromammals for the Stratigraphy and the Timing of Human Occupations at La Roche-à-Pierrot (Saint-Césaire, France)

Quaternary ◽

10.3390/quat4040033 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 33

Author(s):

Loïc Lebreton ◽

Eugène Morin ◽

Brad Gravina ◽

Alexandre Michel ◽

François Bachellerie ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Western Europe ◽

Archaeological Site ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Human Occupation ◽

Stratigraphic Sequence ◽

Archaeological Material ◽

Highly Sensitive ◽

Taphonomic Analysis

As micromammals are highly sensitive to changes in their habitat, variations in species representation are often used to reconstruct local environmental conditions. However, taphonomic aspects of micromammals are often overlooked, despite the fact that they can provide important information for our understanding of archaeological sites. La Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire, is a major archaeological site for our understanding of the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Western Europe. Clearly documenting site formation processes, the post-depositional reworking of deposits and the sequence of human occupations is fundamental for providing a secure archaeostratigraphic context of the site. The exceptionally large accumulation of micromammals from recently excavated stratigraphic units at the site makes it possible to track variations in the density of micromammals across the stratigraphic sequence. The taphonomic analysis of micromammals demonstrates these variations are not related to a change in the main accumulation agent or post-depositional phenomena. A negative correlation between small mammal remains and archaeological material suggests that peaks in micromammal densities can potentially be correlated with periods when the site was abandoned or when human occupation was less intense, and therefore provide new data for interpreting the Saint-Césaire stratigraphic sequence.

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Site Formation Processes and Hunter-Gatherers Use of Space in a Tropical Environment: A Geo-Ethnoarchaeological Approach from South India

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0164185 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (10) ◽

pp. e0164185 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

David E. Friesem ◽

Noa Lavi ◽

Marco Madella ◽

P. Ajithprasad ◽

Charles French

Keyword(s):

South India ◽

Tropical Environment ◽

Site Formation ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Use Of Space

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Parasitology as an Interpretive Tool in Archaeology

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/280729 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 231-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 102

Author(s):

Karl J. Reinhard

Keyword(s):

Living Conditions ◽

Site Formation ◽

Archaeological Sites ◽

Historical Period ◽

Site Formation Processes ◽

Formation Processes ◽

Archaeological Theory ◽

Past Behavior ◽

Oriented Research ◽

Interpretive Frameworks

Parasitological studies of archaeological sites can be used to interpret past behavior and living conditions. During the 1980s problem-oriented research into prehistoric- and historical-period parasitism developed and resulted in the field of archaeoparasitology. Archaeoparasitology attempts to integrate parasite data into archaeological theory and interpretation. Within the last decade, four major archaeoparasitological laboratories emerged. They developed interpretive frameworks that apply parasitological data to a remarkable variety of prehistoric behaviors. Parasite remains can be used to reconstruct aspects of diet, health, and other behaviors such as transhumance and trade. Finally, analysis of the distribution of parasite remains can be used to interpret aspects of site-formation processes.

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