scholarly journals Prehistoric communities of the River Dee

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 1-196
Author(s):  
Caroline Wickham-Jones ◽  
Richard Bates ◽  
Alison Cameron ◽  
Ann Clarke ◽  
Diane Collinson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Site Formation ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Distribution Maps ◽  
North East ◽  
Lithic Assemblages ◽  
Late Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Physical Background ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Calibration Program

This volume presents the results of archaeological fieldwork undertaken along the River Dee, Aberdeenshire, north-east Scotland, by the Mesolithic Deeside voluntary community archaeology group between 2017 and 2019. A total of 42 fields were investigated, from which over 11,000 lithics were recovered, representing at least 15 archaeological sites and a span of human activity covering some 10,000 years from around 12,000 BC to c 2000 BC. Finds from the Late Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age were present. Work comprised fieldwalking, test pitting, specialist analysis, and small-scale excavation. The investigation described here is significant not just for the light it throws on the early prehistoric populations along the River Dee but also for the methodology by which investigation was undertaken, as this provides a potential model for work in other areas. Both aspects are covered in the report. The River Dee flows between postglacial gravel and sand terraces, the structure of which has played an important role for the early settlers of the area, and this is covered in some detail in order to provide the physical background framework for the sites. There are also sections on more specialised geophysical and geoscience techniques where these were undertaken, together with a summary of research on the palaeoenvironmental conditions throughout the millennia of prehistory. The artefactual evidence comprises lithic assemblages which were all catalogued as fieldwork progressed; the contents of each site are presented, together with more detailed analysis of the finds from test pitted sites. Finally, given the rich archaeological record from the area, the results of the present project are set into the wider context of the evidence for prehistoric settlement along the river, and there is consideration of future directions for further fieldwork. While all authors have contributed to the whole volume, individual sections that present specialist work by specific teams have been attributed. The distribution maps and GIS are the work of Irvine Ross. Dates given are calibrated BC dates. The Nethermills Farm NM4 dates are calibrated using the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit calibration program OxCal 4 (Bronk Ramsey 2009) and their date ranges are calibrated using the IntCal13 atmospheric calibration curve (Reimer et al 2013). Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) was used to profile sediment accumulations on some of the sites and obtain information relating to site formation, but it was not used for dating in any of the projects.

The Bronze Age Round Barrows of Wessex

1941 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 73-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. V. Grinsell
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Northern Limit ◽  
Distribution Maps ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Important Extension ◽  
The One ◽  
The Bronze Age

The area covered by this survey, which epitomizes the writer's work on Wessex barrows since 1929, is limited on the west by a line drawn from Weston-super-Mare to Bridport, on the east by a line drawn from Dorking to Arundel, on the north roughly by the northern limit of the chalk downs south of the Thames, and on the south by the sea. It encloses the great majority of bell, disc, and saucer barrows, all of which appear to be expressions of Piggott's Wessex Bronze Age culture. It should be noted however that elements of this culture are found outside the area dealt with, notably at various places to the north-east. Nearly all of these are so close to the Icknield Way as to make it certain that this was the means of communication linking the one with the other. Another, though less important, extension of the Wessex Bronze Age culture is represented by a few sites, some of them doubtful, within a short distance of the course of the Upper Thames, and it is probable that the river was the means of communication used.Here it is well to point out the respects in which the boundaries of Bronze Age Wessex, as determined by my own distribution-maps of barrows, differ from those adopted in the O.S. Map of Neolithic Wessex, and by Mr Stuart Piggott in his recent paper, ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex.’

Grave-goods, contexts and interpretation: towards regional narratives of Early Bronze Age Scotland

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil C.A. Wilkin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Spatial Patterning ◽  
Contextual Approach ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
East Central ◽  
North East ◽  
The Rich

This paper proposes that a contextual approach is required to make the most of the rich and diverse evidence for Early Bronze Age funerary practices in Scotland. It reviews the spatial patterning of the principal funerary traditions and identifies significant regional differences in their popularity by region. The chronological relationship between Beaker and Food Vessel burials is then reviewed in the light of new radiocarbon dates. Both distributional and chronological factors then contribute to a refined, regional and contextual approach to Beaker typology. The paper concludes by bringing these various strands together within the geographical and historical context of North-East and East-Central Scotland, in order to provide two regional ‘narratives’ of social organisation and identity.

A Later Bronze Age Well Complex at Swalecliffe, Kent

2003 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 47-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Masefield ◽  
Nicholas Branch ◽  
Peter Couldrey ◽  
Damian Goodburn ◽  
Ian Tyers
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Environmental Reconstruction ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Exceptional Preservation ◽  
North East ◽  
Domestic Activities ◽  
Water Collection ◽  
Continuous Use

This paper examines the significance of seventeen later Bronze Age wells found during construction at Swalecliffe, in north-east Kent. The unusual depth of the features made for exceptional preservation of wooden structural elements, including steps and revetments, demonstrating rare evidence for woodworking and woodmanship. Extensive biological remains facilitated environmental reconstruction, and a lengthy dendrochronological sequence corroborates the internationally important Flag Fen chronology. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates demonstrate around 500 years of seemingly continuous use and replacement of wells. Votive deposits and apparatus used for water collection provide glimpses of small-scale ritual and domestic activities. The highly unusual concentration of wells is compared to contemporary sites regionally and elsewhere.

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Pictures and people. Seals, figurines and Peloponnesian imagery

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 185-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Weiberg
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Initial Description ◽  
Seal Impressions ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Coastal Settlement

The point of departure for this paper is the publication of two Early Helladic sealing fragments from the coastal settlement of Asine on the north-east Peloponnese in Greece. After an initial description and discussion they are set in the context of sealing custom established on the Greek mainland around 2500 BCE. In the first part of the paper focus is on the apparent qualitative differences between the available seals and the contemporary seal impressions, as well as between different sealing assemblages on northeastern Peloponnese. This geographical emphasis is carried into the second part of the paper which is a review and contextualisation of the representational art of the Aegean Early Bronze Age in general, and northeastern Peloponnese in particular. Seal motifs and figurines are the main media for Early Helladic representational art preserved until today, yet in many ways very dissimilar. These opposites are explored in order to begin to build a better understanding of Peloponnesian representational art, the choices of motifs, and their roles in the lives of the Early Helladic people.

The Works of Gwerful Mechain, ed. and trans. Katie Gramich. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2018, pp. 157.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 449-449
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Christine De Pizan ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Poetry ◽  
North East ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Actual Contribution

Two desiderata in Medieval Studies continue to be rather troublesome because they have not been tackled effectively by many scholars. First, most of us are not familiar with medieval Welsh language and literature; second, we are still rather uncertain about the actual contribution by women to medieval poetry, for instance. But our Welsh colleagues have already determined for quite some time that the late medieval Gwerful Mechain was a powerful voice and offered many intriguing perspectives as a woman, addressing also sexuality in a rather shockingly open manner. She was the daughter of Hywel Fychan from Mechain in Powys in north-east Wales. She lived from ca. 1460 to ca. 1502 and was a contemporary of the major Welsh poets Dafydd Llwyd and Llywelyn ap Gutyn. She might have been Dafydd’s lover and she certainly exchanged poems with Llywelyn. Not untypically for her age, which the present editor and translator Katie Gramich observes with strange surprise, Gwerful combined strongly religious with equally strongly erotic—some would say, pornographic—poetry. Gramich refers, for instance, to the Ambraser Liederbuch, where we can encounter a similar situation, but it seems unlikely that she has any idea what this songbook was, in reality (there are no further explanations, comments, or references to the relevant scholarship). She also mentions Christine de Pizan, who was allegedly “forced to take up the pen” (10), which appears to be a wrong assessment altogether. There is no indication whatsoever that Gramich might be familiar with the rich research on late medieval continental and English women writers, but this does not diminish the value of her translation.

Groundwater Quality Assessment Using Geospatial Techniques and WQI in North East of Adama Town, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shankar Karuppannan ◽  
Nafyad Serre Kawo
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Quality ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
World Health ◽  
Geospatial Techniques ◽  
Distribution Maps ◽  
North East ◽  
Drinking And Irrigation ◽  
Groundwater Samples ◽  
Arc Gis ◽  
Health Organization

Assessment of groundwater quality is vital for the sustainable use of the resources for domestic and agricultural purposes. In this study spatial variation of physicochemical parameters were analyzed for Northeast Adama Town. Water Quality Index (WQI) and irrigation indices were used to determine the suitability of groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes, respectively. Further, the physical-chemical results were compared with the Ethiopian standards and the World Health Organization (WHO) standards for drinking and public health. Using GIS interpolation methods in Arc GIS 10.3.1, spatial distribution maps of pH, TDS, EC, Cl−, HCO32−, SO42−, Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+ and K+, RSC, SAR, Na% were prepared. Results indicated that except ASTU well 2, all samples are below the desirable limits of WHO. The WQI results indicated that 85% of samples and 15% of samples were in good and poor categories, respectively. Irrigation indices show that the most groundwater samples have excellent water classes, indicating that they are suitable for irrigation purposes.

Cooperation dynamics of polycentric climate governance

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (13) ◽  
pp. 2503-2517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vítor V. Vasconcelos ◽  
Francisco C. Santos ◽  
Jorge M. Pacheco
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Global Coordination ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Climate Change Governance

Global coordination for the preservation of a common good, such as climate, is one of the most prominent challenges of modern societies. In this manuscript, we use the framework of evolutionary game theory to investigate whether a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale agreements provides a viable solution to solve global dilemmas as climate change governance. We review a stochastic model which incorporates a threshold game of collective action and the idea of risky goods, capturing essential features unveiled in recent experiments. We show how reducing uncertainty both in terms of the perception of disaster and in terms of goals induce a transition to cooperation. Taking into account wealth inequality, we explore the impact of the homophily, potentially present in the network of influence of the rich and the poor, in the different contributions of the players. Finally, we discuss the impact of polycentric sanctioning institutions, showing how such a scenario also proves to be more efficient than a single global institution.

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