The Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW): An Integrated Archaeological Investigation of the Potter’s Wheel in the Bronze Age Aegean

This backstory article discusses the work of the Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW), an integrated archaeological research project using the potter’s wheel as a prism through which to investigate the transmission of craft knowledge in the Bronze Age Aegean. The TPW methodology integrates theoretical perspectives on social interactions, technological processes and innovation, with experimental, 3D digital and analytical methods for visualising and interpreting ceramics. Two central goals have emerged: to provide high-quality resources and standardised guidelines for researchers to learn how to technologically assess assemblages in their own research, and to broadly define the nature of the uptake and use of the pottery wheel in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age.

Late Medieval complexes of the forest-steppe and sub-taiga Trans-Urals (based on materials from the settlement of Stary Pogost)

The paper concerns the results of the archaeological investigation of the Late Medieval sites in the forest-steppe and sub-taiga regions of Trans-Urals (Western Siberia). With the example of the fortress of Stary Pogost, and using the materials on all studied Late Medieval sites of the region (the hillforts of Yelyak-Alyp, Maloye Bakalskoye, Chingi-Tura, Isker, Kuchum-gora, Ivanovskoye, Dolgovskoye 1, the sanctuary of Tsingalinskoye), the main aspects of the material culture of the population of the 14th–16th centuries have been reconstructed. The building structures are represented by above-ground or slightly sunken permanent buildings with pise-walled hearths. In the cultural level, ashy spots, cumulations of fish-scale, and bones of fish and animals were recorded. The sea-sonal occupancy of most of the settlements, thin cultural layer, small quantity or complete absence of ceramics complicate distinguishing of the Late-Medieval complexes from the full array of Medieval monuments of the forest-steppe and sub-taiga Trans-Urals. A statistical analysis of the ceramics collections from all Late Medieval sites of the Trans-Urals was carried out. Four main types of the ware were identified. By correlation with contemporaneous collections of the Middle Irtysh, local specifics of the ceramics of the studied region were determined. The small amount of the stoneware was noted. The decline of the ceramics manufacture reflected in the composition of the clay dough, surface finish, and shape of the vessels, and it was manifested by poor ornamentation or complete absence of décor. One type of the ware – large cauldron-shaped vessels with thick vertical or slightly inside-bent walls, flattened bottom, and poor ornamentation – was recorded only in the territory of the forest-steppe and sub-taiga Trans-Urals, as well as in the Ishym River area. This indicates its earlier chronological position (13th–14th cc. A.D.) and association with the population of the emerging Siberian Tatars. A widespread became the ware made from organic materials – wood and bark, as well as imported ware, including metallic items.

Viking Age Swords from Telemark, Norway: An Integrated Technical and Archaeological Investigation

Viking Age Swords from Telemark, Norway. An Integrated Technical and Archaeological Investigation provides a metallographic analysis of 21 Viking Age swords found in the county Telemark in southeastern Norway. The book is the result of a collaboration between archaeologist Irmelin Martens and chemist Eva Elisabeth Astrup. 220 swords have been found in Telemark, and they are a mix of domestic Norwegian and imported European types. The difficulties in determining which ones were made in Norway are complicated by and closely connected to the specific skills Norwegian blacksmiths had mastered with respect to both blade construction and inlay decoration. The metallographic investigations revealed five construction types for sword blades, of which four, requiring different technical levels of smithing, may well have been mastered by Norwegian blacksmiths at that time. Combined with x-ray radiographic studies, the metallographic investigations indicate that new techniques were indeed introduced and disseminated among weaponsmiths during the Viking Age. The findings are also probably representative for the combined total of more than 3000 swords found in all areas of the country. The majority are domestic types, and their great number obviously reflects the organization of sword production and influenced blacksmiths’ social standing.

Babylon

Babylon, located on the river Euphrates some 56 miles south of modern Baghdad, is first documented in the second half of the 3rd millennium bce, although very little is known about it from that time. The city rose to prominence in the early 2nd millennium bce after Sumu-la-el (1880–1845 bce), a predecessor of Hammurabi, made it the capital of the newly founded Amorite dynasty of Babylon (the so-called “First Dynasty of Babylon”). From then on Babylon remained the most important city of southern Mesopotamia, achieving the status of imperial capital following the final defeat of Assyria by the Babylonian king Nabopolassar (626–605 bce) and his Median allies in 612 bce. The reign of Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 bce), is regarded as Babylon’s heyday. This was a time of enormous prosperity, intense building activity, and urban population growth. It was also the time of the Babylonian exile, when deported Judeans were settled in Babylonia following Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem in 586 bce. However, the Neo-Babylonian empire was short-lived: with its conquest by Cyrus II in 539 bce, Babylon was no longer an imperial capital, although it remained a major city within the Achaemenid empire. After Alexander the Great conquered the region in 331 bce, Babylon remained important in spite of the new foundation of Seleuceia-on-the-Tigris in around 300 bce. Scholars attached to the great temple of Marduk were instrumental in preserving and handing down Mesopotamian learning right down until the demise of the cuneiform writing tradition in the 1st century ce (or possibly even later). Babylon’s legacy is such that popular accounts have tended to prioritize the well-known classical and Biblical stories at the expense of the contemporary archaeological and cuneiform textual evidence that bear direct testimony to the city and its history. Although the ruins of Babylon had attracted the interest of travelers for several centuries, it was not until the 19th century that archaeological investigation began, and this only took on a more systematic, scientific format with the German excavations that began at the turn of the 20th century. Those campaigns, and the publication of their results, revolutionized our knowledge of the city and made it possible for scholars to integrate information about the city’s topography drawn from the cuneiform tablets. The last fifty years or so have seen further excavation campaigns, more limited in scope, and in some cases associated with ambitious reconstruction projects aimed at making the remains more accessible to the public and showcasing Iraq’s cultural heritage. The archaeological evidence as a whole is skewed toward the city’s later history: the excavators were hardly able to access the 2nd-millennium-bce occupation levels on account of the high ground water. The excavated remains primarily reflect the city layout of Nebuchadnezzar II’s time, although a good many of its monuments survived well into the Seleucid or even the Parthian era.

European traditions in the structure of fortification of the lower defense line of the moldovan period of the Belgorod Fortress: Barbakan

The article is devoted to the results of archaeological investigation of barbican – one of the strategic points of fortification in the Belgorod-Dnestrovskyi fortress. In spite of being of Eastern origin, barbican became one of the types of defensive structures in Europe. The typological and chronological periodization of the building of Belgorod’s barbican includes the following stages. It was constructed in the XV century on the territory of the Moldavian Principality all together with the Low Wall, as part of the early period of the history of the fortress. Similar to the other European barbican buildings of the same time in Torun, Krakow, Lvov, it represents the structure of the tower type. The tower is connected with the main room of barbican through the gallery; the entrance was discovered in the course of excavation. The square of the earliest structure of barbican is about 250 m2. The reconstruction of barbican took place in the Ottoman period of the fortress, as part of the bastion system connected with the further development of artillery. The main elements of the first phase of building, such as of the tower and the planning in the trapezoid shape can be seen on gravures of the beginning of the XIX century.

Engaging and Designing Place

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites are commonly thought about as ‘natural’ locations onto which people variously undertook activities. This chapter argues and shows that sites are architectural constructs, built through a combination of design (preplanning), bricolage (improvisation), and engagement. Sites are artefacts whose cultural modes of construction are amenable to archaeological investigation. By employing a chaîne opératoire approach to the study of sites as landscape-scale artefacts, how and when they were built can be worked out, offering new insights into the cultural history of peoples and places.

Suspending the “Time Domain” : Technological Tempor(e)alities of Media Infrastructures

Any media event is a time function of signals. In favor of a diagrammatic definition of technological media, media archaeological investigation is not only concerned with their structural “hardwired” level but with their operative unfolding-in-time as well. Such an understanding of techno-temporalities does not focus on phenomenal effects of media on humans but primarily refers to the microregimes within technological devices. In that sense, “hardwired temporality” refers to the infrastructuring of time by technologies and to temporal structures which are revealed from within techno-logical knowledge itself. From that arises an epistemology of technical processuality beyond the conventional notion of “time.”

An Archaeological Investigation of Laloi East Molluscs Site at Kpone, Ghana

This article is a report of an archaeological investigation of the Laloi East Molluscs Site at Kpone, Greater Accra Region, Ghana. Although radiometric dates for this shell midden are currently unavailable, we believe that Laloi East dates to the Later Stone Age. If so, this site would be one of only two LSA sites in Ghana found and excavated along the coast rather than in the forested interior. This article examines shellfish exploitation and other major subsistence strategies of the population that settled the site in the past. The principal cultural materials recovered from the excavations comprised large quantities of molluscs’ remains belonging to a variety of species, other faunal remains, pottery, palm kernel nuts, charcoal, stone slabs, and lithic tools. The combined evidence indicates that molluscs’ exploitation was the principal subsistence strategy of the settlers, undertaken alongside hunting, trapping, herding and the gathering of edible botanical resources such as palm fruits.

Who was Peter Karlsson of Helsingborg? An Attempt to Identify a Medieval Seal Stamp Find

Finds of seal stamps in graves from the Middle Ages are very rare, especially if they are undamaged. The owner of the well-preserved stamp in grave 207 in the Church of St. Clement in Helsingborg was a nobleman, called Peter Karlsson. His coat of arms, which is quartered, restricted the searching for his relationships geographically. A ’terminus ante quem' was set by the archaeological investigation. The individual age was determined by means of an osteological and odontological investigation. It has not, on the whole, been possible to connect the actual name with any known armorial seal with the quartered shield. The unclear family relationships of this time and the only accidentally preserved documents from the Middle Ages do not offer the research worker of genealogy and heraldry sufficiently reliable sources. Even if there is no clear evidence, however, many facts nevertheless support the presumption that the seal owner in grave 207 was identical with Mayor Peter Karlsson of Helsingborg and also that he was a member of the Thott family.