KEVEOKI 1: Exploring the Hiri ceramics trade at a short-lived village site near the Vailala River, Papua New Guinea

Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River- Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on the decorated ceramics from Keveoki 1, where a drainage channel cut in 2004 revealed a short-lived village site with a rich, stratified ceramic assemblage. It represents a rare account of the ceramic assemblage from a short duration village on a relic beach ridge in southern Papua New Guinea, and contributes to ongoing attempts to refine ceramic sequences in the recipient (western) end of the hiri system of longdistance maritime trade. Because of the presence of a single occupational period of a few decades at most, short duration sites such as Keveoki 1 allow for chronological refinement of ceramic conventions in a way that multilevel sites usually cannot, owing to the lack of stratigraphic mixing between chronologically separate ceramic assemblages in the former.

Novajidrány–Sárvár-Erdészház : A Celtic Cemetery at the Foothills of Cserehát, Hungary

At the end of the 4th century BC, and the beginning of the 3rd century BC a Celtic population wave reached the eastern parts of the Carpathian Basin, including Northeastern Hungary. The elements of the funerary rite and the archaeological finds attest to the presence of the newly arrived communities in the cemeteries of the region. The present study serves as a preliminary report on the research results of a Celtic cemetery in the Hernád valley excavated in 2019. The site of Novajidrány–Sárvár-erdészház was in use between the late 4th century BC the earliest and the 3rd century BC and it fits well into the row of Late Iron Age cemeteries in the region. Both cremated and inhumated burials were documented with richly accompanied metal and pottery grave goods. Appearing next to the typically La Tène-styled finds, the graves also contained – mainly in the ceramic assemblages – Scythian-influenced forms which can be explained by the Celtic and Scythian cohabitation in the region during the Late Iron Age.

Approaching the Unification and Diversity of Pottery Assemblages

This paper questions the cycling nature of the unification and diversity of pottery forms through a case study of ceramics of the Western Tripolye culture in the Southern Bug and Dnieper interfluve in modern Ukraine. We identified the cultural cycle representing the transition from more unified ceramic assemblages to more diverse ones, and then back to more unified assemblages. This cultural cycle is disturbed by the increase in the diversity of pottery sets at three of ten subsequent time periods we have analysed. The obtained results are discussed in frames of deterministic explanations and the dynamic behaviour of complex systems.

To the Issue About the Dating of the Bolshemysskaya Culture

The article deals with the problems of the chronology of the Bolshemysskaya culture, which is usually attributed to the Eneolithic era. The sites of this culture have a wide distribution area: the Barnaul-Biysk the Ob region, the Altai Mountains (Middle Katun), the upper reaches of the Alei and Northern Kulunda rivers. However, its chronological boundaries are not clearly defined, which is due to the small number of radiocarbon dates and the lack of reliable data for dating based on relative analogies. Calibration of dates from the burials of the Bolshoi Mys burial ground and Nizhnetytkesken cave-1 showed a significant range between them. An analysis of the ceramic assemblages of the Novoilinka-III settlement from Northern Kulunda revealed signs of interaction between the Cyprinsko-Penkovsky and Bolshemyssky population groups. Contacts can be traced in the ornamentation of ceramics with an object that leaves imprints similar to the ones of bird feathers, and in the addition of bird fluff to the pottery paste. Calibration of radiocarbon dates from Novoilinka-III showed that they all include 34–29 centuries BC. Based on the data obtained, the lower boundary of the Bolshemyskaya culture can be tentatively dated to the second half of the 4th millennium BC.

The prepalatial period at Siteia Petras through the study of undisturbed ceramic assemblages

Θέμα της διατριβής είναι η μελέτη και ανασύνθεση των φάσεων κατοίκησης της Προανακτορικής περιόδου στον Πετρά Σητείας, από την ίδρυση του οικισμού στο τέλος της Νεολιθικής περιόδου, μέχρι την ίδρυση του Πρώτου Ανακτόρου του Πετρά στην Παλαιοανακτορική περίοδο. Η ανασύνθεση της ιστορίας του Πετρά έγινε μετά από μελέτη κεραμικού υλικού, το οποίο ανασκάφηκε στο Λόφο Ι του Πετρά, σε στρώματα κάτω από το μεταγενέστερο ανακτορικό κτίριο. Η μελέτη επέτρεψε την αναγνώριση της στρωματογραφικής ακολουθίας και των πολλαπλών φάσεων κατοίκησης της θέσης, καθώς και την παράλληλη μελέτη των εξελίξεων αυτών, με τις φάσεις χρήσεις του νεκροταφείου του Πετρά στον απέναντι Λόφο ΙΙ. Βασική παράμετρος της μελέτης είναι η εξέλιξη της κεραμικής παραγωγής και κατανάλωσης, καθώς και τα στοιχεία που παρέχει το υλικό σχετικά με της επαφές του Πετρά με άλλες θέσεις, εντός και εκτός Κρήτης. Τέλος, σημαντική πτυχή της διατριβής είναι η ένταξη του Πετρά μέσα στο ευρύτερο ιστορικό πλαίσιο της Προανακτορικής και πρώιμης Παλαιοανακτορικής περιόδου, τόσο σε τοπικό, όσο και σε υπερτοπικό επίπεδο.