Surveying a Long-Term Settlement on Potato Hill, Montserrat

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krysta Ryzewski ◽  
John F. Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Historic Period ◽  
Field Season ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Surrounding Landscape

This chapter demonstrates the advantages of a survey-centered approach for examining cultural landscapes on Montserrat. Our case study focuses on the multi-method survey of the Potato Hill landscape employed during the 2013 field season of the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project. Potato Hill’s artifact assemblage is the largest and among the earliest historic-period collections of artifacts to be recovered on Montserrat from the 49 archaeological sites we have surveyed since 2010. The evidence suggests that Potato Hill was a non-elite settlement occupied by multiple communities and households between the late seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Understandings of Potato Hill’s changing use and inhabitants over the course of its long occupational history are situated within our survey results from the surrounding landscape, especially historic-period sugar plantations and military structures. This case study raises several questions concerning methodological approaches, temporal categories, scales of analysis, and material culture classification in Caribbean historical archaeology.

scholarly journals Kreatywność za drutem kolczastym: archeologia i sztuka okopowa z pierwszowojennego obozu jenieckiego w Czersku (woj. pomorskie)

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 105-136
Author(s):  
Dawid Kobiałka
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Special Category

This article discusses the results of archaeological and anthropological research concerning material remains of a prisoner of war camp in Czersk (Pomeranian province, Poland) (Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk). In the first part, I sketch a broader historical context related to building and functioning of the camp in forests around Czersk between 1914–1919. After that, the role and meaning of  archaeological research on such type of archaeological sites are presented. In the third part, I focus on a very special category of the camp heritage which is called trench art. The last part of this paper is a case study where an assemblage of objects classified as trench art that was found at the camp is described and interpreted. This text aims at highlighting the value of such prisoners and camp’s heritage. Such material culture is a material memory of extraordinary prisoners’ creativity behind barbed wire. It makes one aware of how every piece of trash, rubbish was re-cycled during day-to-day life behind barbed wire.

Australian Indigenous Ochres

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Huntley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Distribution Patterns ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Novel Studies ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
Key Terms

Aboriginal Australians use ochre in varied cultural practices. It is found in the earliest to most recent archaeological sites and geographically across the wide-ranging geological and climatic contexts of the continent. Ochre’s importance in Aboriginal societies, coupled with its availability across Australia and its long-term durability, has led to a ubiquitous archaeological presence with considerable potential to study past cultural landscapes and intergroup interactions, including long-distance trade and exchange. Concentrating on scientific sourcing analyses, this article highlights the benefits of archaeopigment research, defining key terms (ochre, provenience, and provenance) and the technicalities of sourcing studies before discussing theoretical frameworks used in interpretations of ochre distribution patterns. The article argues that as we move away from novel studies on ethnographically well-known source locations into applied research, exceptional Australian records are well placed to investigate territoriality, mobility, intergroup and human–landscape interactions, and to explore the catalysts driving cultural diversity.

scholarly journals Marine litter from beach-based sources: Case study of an Eastern Mediterranean coastal town

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle E. Portman ◽  
Ruth E Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Marine Litter ◽  
Management Intervention ◽  
Survey Results

Marine litter has been a serious and growing problem for some decades now. Yet, there is still much speculation among researchers, policy makers and planners about how to tackle marine litter from land-based sources. This paper provides insights into approaches for managing marine litter by reporting and analyzing survey results of litter dispersal and makeup from three areas along an Arab-Israeli coastal town in view of other recent studies conducted around the Mediterranean Sea. Based on our results and analysis, we posit that bathing beach activities should be a high priority for waste managers as a point of intervention and beach-goers must be encouraged to take a more active role in keeping beaches clean. Further, plastic fragments on the beach should be targeted as a first priority for prevention (and cleanup) of marine litter with plastic bottle caps being a high priority to be targeted among plastics. More survey research is needed on non-plastic litter composition for which amounts and geographic dispersal in the region vary greatly from place to place along Mediterranean shores. In general, findings of this study lead us to recommend exploring persuasive beach trash can design coupled with greater enforcement for short term waste management intervention while considering the local socio-economic and institutional context further for long-term efforts.

Hillforts in the Landscape

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Landscape in common usage refers to the physical landforms of hills, valleys, rivers, and lakes, together with vegetational cover that may have changed significantly over the centuries depending upon environmental factors as well as the impact of human settlement. It may also refer to the man-made landscape of buildings and settlements, roads and boundaries made by human occupation over the centuries. Although field archaeologists tend to focus their attention upon ‘sites’, it has long been recognized that individual settlements cannot have functioned in isolation from their environment, nor from their neighbours in the landscape. Equally important, although at the limits of archaeological inference, is how later prehistoric people viewed their own environment, which can hardly have been a matter of ignorance or indifference. The fact that a Neolithic long barrow extends down the spine of the hillfort at Hambledon Hill, or that a causewayed enclosure lies concentrically within the circuit at the Trundle in Sussex, may not have determined the hillfort's location, but it is hardly likely that Iron Age builders were unaware of their antiquity and significance. Landscape archaeology is often wrongly regarded as a recent contribution to field archaeology. Following the long-term excavations at Danebury of the 1970s and 1980s, the Danebury Environs Project still stands as one of the most significant advances in hillfort studies, together with landscape surveys around Maiden Castle, Dorset, and Cadbury Castle among others. A pioneer in this field was Christopher Hawkes, encouraged from the 1920s by O. G. S. Crawford. In the St Catharine's Hill report, Hawkes had stated explicitly that his purpose was to show ‘the place occupied by the hill settlement in the life of the contemporary countryside’ (Hawkes et al. 1930: 6), and in his Hampshire hillfort excavations of the 1930s he demonstrated this principle, notably at Quarley Hill (Hawkes 1939), where his excavation was designed to elucidate the relationship between hillfort and those linear features that physically linked it to its surrounding landscape. The Danebury excavation was the ultimate sequel to Hawkes’ Hampshire hillfort campaign, and with its Environs Programme, extended the study of the hillfort in its landscape context on a scale never previously practicable. This entailed a study of documentary sources and air photographs as well as field survey with selective excavation.

scholarly journals METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INTEGRATE A GIS-BASED ANALYSIS INTO THE DESIGN OF CULTURAL ITINERARIES IN THE FRAMEWORK OF AN INTEGRATED PLAN FOR TERRITORY

2020 ◽  
Vol XLIV-M-1-2020 ◽  
pp. 271-278
Author(s):  
R. Merino del Río ◽  
M. Linares Gómez del Pulgar ◽  
A. Tejedor Cabrera
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Landscape Architecture ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Buffer Zones ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
Landscape Formation

Abstract. The historical concept of heritage, which mostly comprised physical architectural and archaeological evidences, has been extended to the surrounding landscape in the last decades. This tendency has been corroborated by a series of International Charters and the European Landscape Convention of 2000. Landscape, understood as the perceptible part of territory that supports the contingencies throughout history, is subject to protection, management and planning. However, some inherent aspects of territory have been disregarded because of the frantic enlargement of cities throughout the twentieth century at the expense of the rural areas. Territorial heritage, which is fundamental to cultural landscape formation, is currently considered a strategic resource able to guarantee self-sustaining development of peri-urban and rural zones. In many cases, urban investments and planning associated to the enlargement of the metropolitan areas have overlooked this fruitful territorial heritage, making cultural landscapes illegible. This is the case of the cultural landscapes in the buffer zones of the archaeological sites, which are part of a diffuse territorial heritage that requires to be assessed by means of some innovative approaches. Cultural itineraries are presented as a landscape architecture strategy for valorising territorial heritage. Well-targeted design of these itineraries can also contribute to restore the dynamics of cultural landscape formation and to regenerate peri-urban and rural areas by promoting its self-sustaining development. To that end, the conceptualisation and hypotheses posed by some authors of the Società dei Territorialisti/e are used as references. A work methodology to design cultural itineraries is suggested in line with the presumptions of an integrated plan for territory aimed to valorise the territorial heritage. This paper explores in which way a GIS-based analysis can be integrated into the design of a landscape architecture like the cultural itinerary.

scholarly journals Hydroclimate Variability Influenced Social Interaction in the Prehistoric American Southwest

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Gauthier
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hydroclimate Variability ◽  
Droughts And Floods ◽  
Agrarian Societies

When droughts and floods struck ancient agrarian societies, complex networks of exchange and interaction channeled resources into affected settlements and migrant flows away from them. Did these networks evolve in part to connect populations living in differing climate regimes? Here, I examine this relationship with a long-term archaeological case study in the pre-Hispanic North American Southwest, analyzing 4.3 million artifacts from a 250-year period at nearly 500 archaeological sites. I use these artifacts to estimate how the flow of social information changed over time, and to measure how the intensity of social interaction between sites varied as a function of distance and several regional drought patterns. Social interaction decayed with distance, but ties between sites in differing oceanic and continental climate regimes were often stronger than expected by distance alone. Accounting for these different regional drivers of local climate variability will be crucial for understanding the social impacts of droughts and floods in the past and present.

Desert Migrations: people, environment and culture in the Libyan Sahara

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 115-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mattingly ◽  
Marta Lahr ◽  
Simon Armitage ◽  
Huw Barton ◽  
John Dore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Historic Period ◽  
Collaborative Project ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Art Research ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic

AbstractThe Desert Migrations Project is a new interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional collaborative project between the Society for Libyan Studies and the Department of Antiquities. The geographical focus of the study is the Fazzan region of southwest Libya and in thematic terms we aim to address the theme of migration in the broadest sense, encompassing the movement of people, ideas/knowledge and material culture into and out of Fazzan, along with evidence of shifting climatic and ecological boundaries over time. The report describes the principal sub-strands of the project's first season in January 2007, with some account of research questions, methods employed and some preliminary results. Three main sub-projects are reported on. The first concerns the improved understanding of long-term climatic and environmental changes derived from a detailed palaeoenvironmental study of palaeolake sediments. This geo-science work runs alongside and feeds directly into both archaeological sub-projects, the first relating to prehistoric activity and mobility around and between a series of palaeolakes during wetter climatic cycles; the second to the excavation of burials in the Wadi al-Ajal, exploring the changing relationship between material culture, identity and ethnicity across time, from prehistory to the early Islamic period (the span of the main cemetery zones). In addition, some rock art research and a survey of historic period sites was undertaken in the Wadi ash-Shati and Ubari sand sea.

Monuments and Memory: Architecture and Visual Culture in Ancient Anatolian History

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ömür Harmanşah
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Memory Architecture ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Visual Material

This article on long-term cultural landscapes of Anatolia focuses on various episodes of fragmentation and connectivity with adjacent regions, through the study of monumental architecture and visual/material culture from prehistory to the end of the Achaemenid period. It attempts to trace a line of thought around monumentality and social memory, in order to see our paradigms from Anatolian history in a critical long-term perspective. The article argues that architecture and monuments are the most visible and powerful remnants of past civilizations, especially through funerary monuments, and that Anatolia, with its vast array of monuments from multitudinous peoples leaving their mark over centuries, provides a unique opportunity to study, and marvel at, the “landscape of the dead.”

scholarly journals Hydroclimate variability influenced social interaction in the prehistoric American Southwest

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Gauthier
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hydroclimate Variability ◽  
Droughts And Floods ◽  
Agrarian Societies

When droughts and floods struck ancient agrarian societies, complex networks of exchange and interaction channeled resources into affected settlements and migrant flows away from them. Did these networks evolve in part to connect populations living in differing climate regimes? Here, I examine this relationship with a long-term archaeological case study in the pre-Hispanic North American Southwest, analyzing 7.5 million artifacts from a 250-year period at nearly 500 archaeological sites. I use these artifacts to estimate how the flow of social information changed over time, and to measure how the intensity of social interaction between sites varied as a function of distance and several regional drought patterns. Social interaction decayed with distance, but ties between sites in differing oceanic and continental climate regimes were often stronger than expected. Accounting for these different regional drivers of local climate variability will be crucial for understanding the social impacts of droughts and floods in the past and present.

Preparation And elemental analysis of ancient fibers

1987 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 410-411
Author(s):  
Allen Angel ◽  
Kathryn A. Jakes
Keyword(s):  
Cross Sections ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Energy Dispersive ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
Backscattered Electron ◽  
Electron Imaging

Fabrics recovered from archaeological sites often are so badly degraded that fiber identification based on physical morphology is difficult. Although diagenetic changes may be viewed as destructive to factors necessary for the discernment of fiber information, changes occurring during any stage of a fiber's lifetime leave a record within the fiber's chemical and physical structure. These alterations may offer valuable clues to understanding the conditions of the fiber's growth, fiber preparation and fabric processing technology and conditions of burial or long term storage (1).Energy dispersive spectrometry has been reported to be suitable for determination of mordant treatment on historic fibers (2,3) and has been used to characterize metal wrapping of combination yarns (4,5). In this study, a technique is developed which provides fractured cross sections of fibers for x-ray analysis and elemental mapping. In addition, backscattered electron imaging (BSI) and energy dispersive x-ray microanalysis (EDS) are utilized to correlate elements to their distribution in fibers.

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