Characterization of the Obsidian Used in the Chipped Stone Industry in Kendale Hecala

Kendale Hecala is located on the Ambar River in the Upper Tigris Basin, province of Diyarbakır in Southeast Anatolia. Various raw materials, including obsidian, radiolarite, chert, jasper, chalcedony, and quartzite, were used in the lithic industry. Obsidian artefacts constitute an average of 64% of the chipped stone assemblage. Technological analysis reveals that obsidian was brought to the settlement as nodules and chipped into various tools at the settlement. Understanding the operational sequence of the lithic industry, chaîne opératoire, including the distribution of raw material from source to site, is important to demonstrate the socio-cultural organization of the settlement in Southeastern Anatolia during the Ubaid period. In order to identify source varieties, the obsidian artefacts uncovered from Ubaid layers of Kendale Hecala were analyzed by macro-observations, and the characterization of archaeological samples was performed using a handheld XRF. Multivariate analysis of the data indicates the use of obsidian from different resources at the settlement, including Nemrut Dağ, Bingöl B, and Group 3d.

Dorset Harpoon Endblade Hafting and Early Metal Use in the North American Arctic

Composite tool hafting research has touched upon almost every era and region of human history. One aspect that has seen little attention is how those traces of hafting strategies might reflect the raw material of the endblade that an organic handle would have held. This aspect is particularly important for clarifying the scope and scale of novel raw material use in contexts that have concurrent use of different lithic, bone, and metal materials. This article analyzes harpoon heads from the Canadian Arctic in Dorset cultural contexts and identifies three different hafting techniques employed across time. For roughly one millennium, Dorset groups used a single harpoon endblade hafting technique. After AD 500, new hafting techniques were developed, corresponding with the emergence of metal use. Some of these methods are not compatible with common chipped stone materials and signal an increase in metal endblade production. However, surviving metal objects are underrepresented in museum collections because of various taphonomic processes. By recognizing the materials of the harpoon endblade and the specific constraints of some hafting techniques, it is possible to identify what these endblade materials may have been and expand the known extent and intensity of early metal use by observing the hafts alone.

The Mesolithic Research of a Decade: Early Holocene Settlements in Transdanubia

Despite the promising research trends of the last decades, it is striking that traces of Mesolithic settlements have only rarely come to light in the Carpathian Basin so far. The area of Transdanubia is not an exception. With the cooperation of three institutes, a research program was launched in 2003 with the aim of discovering new find places of the period, as well as re-evaluating finds that had been taken to museums earlier and classified as Mesolithic. The field surveys revealed Early Holocene sites in the South-East Transdanubian region in the valley of the Kapos and Koppány Rivers, mainly in the outskirts of Kaposhomok and Regöly. The sites mainly came to light on the island-like reliefs elevating only a few meters from the present-day floodplain. The dating of the surface finds, especially chipped stone artefacts, was primarily based on the geometric microliths, which contain asymmetric triangles, segments, and trapezes. We could even reveal Mesolithic finds within stratigraphic position at the site of Regöly 2, where the remains of a domestic structure also came to light.