Magnetometer surveys in archaeological research in Papua New Guinea: Keveoki 1, Gulf Province

A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical and excavation results allowed a broader understanding of the spatial distribution of human occupation at Keveoki 1 than would have been possible based on excavation or visual field walking alone. We suggest this technique should be applied more regularly. Archaeological geophysical prospection techniques have not previously been applied as part of archaeological investigations in Papua New Guinea (PNG), despite an extensive history of archaeological research in this area (e.g. Bulmer 1978; Frankel and Vanderwal 1985; White and O'Connell 1982). In part, this deficiency may be explained by the perceived high cost of geophysical survey as well as the difficulties associated with operating and transporting electronic equipment to the often remote, extremely rugged, wet tropical and inaccessible archaeological sites of the region. Nevertheless geophysical techniques have a demonstrated history of making an important contribution to archaeological investigations world-wide (e.g. Witten 2006; Conyers 2004; Gaffney and Gater 2003) and have the potential to answer important archaeological questions in PNG also. In particular, they have the potential to extend site information beyond the limited spatial extent usually obtained through excavation, and thus promise to enable understandings of village sites as spatially extensive landscapes rather than more restricted spatial nodes (Kvamme 2003). This is particularly apt for PNG where thick vegetation and swampy conditions can make site discovery through more conventional field walking very difficult.The archaeological record in many coastal parts of PNG is particularly amenable to geophysical investigations because here can be found extensive sites with dense ceramic deposits as well as numerous sub-surface structural features such as postholes, human burials and earth ovens. Since electromagnetic induction (EMI) and magnetic susceptibility in particular can directly detect pottery (Clark 1990) as well as the remnants of burning (Linford and Canti 2001) and anthropogenically-induced microbial activity (Linford 2004), geophysical prospecting evidently has great potential in such archaeological contexts. Other techniques, such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) (Conyers 2004) and direct current resistivity (Witten (2006) may find less regular application in this area, but could contribute where favourable site conditions exist.

Bulbs and Biographies, Pine Nuts and Palimpsests: Exploring Plant Diversity and Earth Oven Reuse at a Late Period Plateau Site

Earth ovens, hearths, and middens are common archaeological features in western North America that contain the residues of everyday activities. Ethnographic and archaeological research indicates these in-ground food preparation features were frequently reused over many months and years. These quotidian features therefore can be productively thought of as having use-lives or biographies. Here we present a framework for interpreting these archaeological food preparation feature biographies and the palimpsest nature of earth oven features. We illustrate the value of this framework through paleoethnobotanical analysis of archived soil samples from a bulk food processing site on the Columbia-Fraser Plateau in northeastern Washington State. While this site and other food preparation sites throughout the Plateau are largely interpreted as remains of intensive geophyte processing, our finds indicate that a wide range of economic plants were processed at this location, indicative of a dynamic and flexible subsistence system. We suggest that residents and visitors to the Pend Oreille Valley from ca. 2700-500 cal BP frequently returned to and reused earth oven features as they processed multiple plant food taxa including nodding onion (Allium cernuum), camas (Camassia quamash) goosefoot chenopod seeds (cf. Chenopodium atrovirens), and pine nuts (Pinus spp.). We see a biographical approach as a potential solution to the common “palimpsest problem” and suggest this framework may be a fruitful way of investigating multiple food preparation recipes, methods, and events, as well as adding paleoenvironmental datasets to biographical or life-history archaeological rhetoric.

Fire Use

Fire is one of the oldest technologies of humankind; indeed, the earliest signs of fire appeared almost two million years ago. Traces of early fire use include charcoal, baked sediments, and burnt bone, but the archaeological evidence is ambiguous due to exposure to the elements for hundreds of thousands of years. Thus the origin of fire use is debatable. The first fire users may have been occasional or opportunistic users, harvesting flames and heat-affected food from wildfires. The art of maintaining the fire developed, and eventually humans learned to make fire at will. Fire technology (pyrotechnology) then became a habitual part of life. Fire provided warmth and light, which allowed people to continue activities after dark and facilitated moving into colder climates. Cooking food over or in the fire improved digestibility; over time, humans developed a culinary technology based on fire that included the use of cooking pits or earth ovens and preservation techniques such as smoking the food. Fire could even help in the procurement of food—for example, in clearing vegetation for easier hunting, to increase the fertility of the land, and to promote the growth of certain plants or to trap animals. Many materials could be transformed through fire, such as the color of ochre for use in pigments or the knapping properties of rocks for production of stone tools. Pyrotechnology ultimately became integral to other technologies, such as the production of pottery and iron tools. Fire use also has a social component. Initially, fires for cooking and light provided a natural meeting point for people to conduct different activities, thus facilitating communication and the formation of strong social relationships. The social organization of a campsite can sometimes be interpreted from the artifact types found around a fire or in how different fires were placed. For example, access to household fires was likely restricted to certain family members, whereas communal fires allowed access for all group members. There would have been conventions governing the activities that were allowed by a household fire or a communal fire and the placement of different fire types. Furthermore, the social uses of fire included ritual and ceremonial uses, such as cleansing rituals or cremation. The fire use of a prehistoric group can, consequently, reveal information on aspects such as subsistence, social organization, and technology.

SLAVIC «COOK ROOMS» FROM THE SETTLEMENT ROVANTSI — HNIDAVSKA HIRKA IN VOLYN

In 2009 during the excavations at the multi-layered settlement of Rovantsi — Hnidavska Hirka near Lutsk in the excavation area 10 the dwellings and household buildings of the Slavic period have been discovered. To the horizon of the tenth century three houses and the building with three earth ovens were attributed. The stratigraphy of the filling of this building (object 3) indicates that the earth ovens were not operating at the same time. Three successive horizons are observed in this structure. The first site was a grain pit which was discovered at the bottom of the building. This pit was covered by two rammed floors, sagged into it. The analysis of ceramics made it possible to connect one house (object 18) with the first horizon of object 3 and the other house (object 16) with the third horizon of object 3. In the ovens of these houses there were fragments of pots, glued to the fragments of pots from the corresponding horizons of object 3. This building is interpreted as the room for cooking. The horizon of the 12th — the first half of the 13th century includes the structure with two clay ovens, pit-cellar, small rectangular building and the ditch that surrounded these objects. This ditch was obviously the part of fence, and the gap in it was the pass. The complex of this ditch also includes two ground fires, located in the pass in one line with the ditch. It has been suggested that the building with large clay oven which was discovered in 2010 in a nearby excavation 12 (object 12 / Ex. 12), is the same cook room. Obviously, it reflects certain stage in development of such buildings, namely the stop of the use of fast-destroying earth ovens and the transition to the construction of large clay ovens. This is evidenced by the following facts: this building is different in shape from all other houses of the 10th century; it is located at the site of the previous building with earth oven; the oven in it had too large sizes relative to other ovens from the houses of the 10th century. The results of the excavations at Hnidavka Hirka help to reject the version that such structures were the manufactories and to consider them not «mini-factories-bakeries» but only the kitchens with one oven in each individual farm.

Archaeomagnetic directions and intensities from New Zealand: evidence for a fifteenth century AD archaeomagnetic “spike” in the SW Pacific?

<p>The arrival of the great Maori waka and the settlement of New Zealand some seven or eight hundred years ago are described in oral history, but details of exactly when and how colonisation occurred are undocumented. Radiocarbon dating of early archaeological sites is particularly problematic, due to the inbuilt age of datable materials, and non-linearity and ambiguity in the calibration of measurements to calendar dates. Hangi stones, used as heat retainers in traditional Maori earth ovens, hold thermoremanent records of Earth’s magnetic field at the time of their last cooling. Matching the directions of these magnetizations to established reference curves provides alternative, archaeomagnetic, estimates of age. Our results cover the past 700 years, with a cluster of dates between 1500 and 1600 AD, from both North and South Islands, but none earlier than 1300 AD, thus supporting a model of rapid coordinated migration around that time. Archaeointensity data have been obtained from sixteen distinct archaeological features, including twelve hangi from eight sites, and from them the first archaeointensity record for New Zealand has been constructed. To this has been added other archaeointensity and palaeointensity data from the SW Pacific region and virtual axial dipole moments (VADMs) have been plotted. This plot outlines steady VADM values of about 8 x10<sup>22</sup> Am<sup>2</sup> from 1000-1300 AD, and 9.5 x10<sup>22</sup> Am<sup>2</sup> from 1500 AD to the present, with an intervening sharp peak in the early 15<sup>th</sup> century when the VADM reached about 13 x10<sup>22</sup> Am<sup>2</sup>. This peak bears many similarities to archaeomagnetic “jerks” and “spikes” in northern hemisphere records from the first millennia BC and AD. However, it is the first such feature to be found in the southern hemisphere at this date, suggesting, in accordance with recent modelling, that it may be a feature of the non-dipole field, associated with rapid growth and decay of an intense flux patch on the core-mantle boundary.</p>

Hunter-Gatherer Earth Ovens in the Archaeological Record: Fundamental Concepts

Remains of earth ovens with rock heating elements of various sizes and configurations are common at hunter-gatherer sites around the world. They span the last 30,000 years in the Old World and some 10,000 years in the New World. Although various foods were baked in these ovens, plants predominate. Earth ovens are ethnographically well documented as family-size and bulk cooking facilities, but related technology and its archaeological signatures remain poorly understood and understudied. These ubiquitous features are often mischaracterized as generic cooking facilities termed hearths. It is proposed that, in fact, most rock “hearths” are heating elements of earth ovens. Reliable identification and interpretation of earth ovens requires documentation of heating elements, pit structure, rock linings, and various remnants thereof. Fundamental technological concepts for investigating their archaeological signatures include thermodynamics, construction designs, and life cycles in systemic context, as informed by ethnographic, archaeological, and experimental data. Earth oven technology explains well the primary purpose of labor-intensive thermal storage for long-term cooking and conserving fuel. Information from the extensive archaeological record of earth ovens on the Edwards Plateau of south-central North America illustrates these points.

Subpolar settlement in South Polynesia

Archaeological research in the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, has disclosed earth ovens, middens and flaked stone tools dating to the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries AD. This is the first site of prehistoric settlement in the outlying islands of the Subantarctic. Polynesians and their dogs survived on seals and seabirds for at least one summer. The new data complete a survey of colonisation in the outlying archipelagos of South Polynesia and show that it occurred contemporaneously, rapidly and in all directions from mainland New Zealand.

Earth-Oven Plant Processing in Archaic Period Economies: An Example from a Semi-Arid Savannah in South-Central North America

Models of Archaic period economy in the Lower Pecos River region of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, are based primarily on coprolite, faunal, and macroplant analysis of materials recovered from rockshelters. The models maintain that during the Middle Archaic period residential mobility is reduced and tethered to rockshelters in canyons near water, and diet dominated by the plant resources lechuguilla (Agave lechuguilla), sotol (Dasylirion texanum), and prickly pear (Opuntia spp.). I use archaeobotanical analysis and actualistic studies to determine the contents of earth-oven features, the number of plant food calories produced by ovens, and the quantity of refuse they generate. Considered within the framework of a diet-breadth model, the data demonstrate that return rates and caloric yields for lechuguilla and sotol processed in earth ovens are typical of a broad spectrum, low-return economy. Intensive use of these low-ranked resources indicates periods of subsistence stress beginning in the Early Archaic period and continuing through the Late Archaic. Use of low-ranked, high-cost resources in canyon zones indicates that food and fuel resources were quickly depleted forcing high residential mobility. Depletion of local resources, not the distribution of water sources governed residential mobility.