Chronology of the Occupation Pattern Distribution: A Case Study At The Mun River Valley Prehistoric Settlement Site, Northeast Thailand

Chronological framework can be used to identify the distribution of occupation patterns. This study was based on fourteen radiocarbon samples from the eight excavation pits at Ban Non Wat and Nong Hua Raet archaeological sites. The chronology of the cultural layers was developed using AMS radiocarbon dating to supplement existing data, specifically to examine the dating of the end of the Iron Age occupation. The objective of this study was to continue testing the premise that the end of the Iron Age on the Mun river floodplain in Northeast Thailand that is better defined as either a singular more or less contemporaneous de-population event characterized by widespread abandonment of settlements or a gradual transition from dispersing a rural settlement to more concentrated urban style of settlement. The results support the existing chronological framework of the study area and suggest that the end of the Iron Age in the Mun River valley is better defined as a gradual transition from dispersed rural settlements to a more concentrated urban style settlement. Occupation commenced at the center of the mound of Ban Non Wat during the Neolithic period, and gradually spread radially to the margin by the Iron Age. Occupation at the neighboring site of Nong Hua Raet commenced during the Iron Age period, parallel to that at Ban Non Wat.

Opportunities and Features of the Palynological Analysis Application on Various Types of Archaeological Sites

A wide variety of archaeological sites associated with various human activity has led to the emergence of a wide range of problems solved by archaeological palynology. On the example of the palynological materials accumulated in the Laboratory of Nature Sciences of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the opportunities and features of the palynological analysis application are considered both on classical objects for Russian archaeopalynology (cultural layer, buried soils, defensive ramparts, burial mounds, etc.) and on non-traditional ones (latrines, vessels, funerary objects, ceramics, etc.). It is shown that the reconstruction of the natural environment, generally accepted for palynology, is mainly possible for the materials from long timed sites of shepherds in caves and rock shelters and cultural layers of sites, settlements, hillforts. Materials obtained from other objects (ancient and medieval arable lands, storage pits, latrines, the contents of ritual objects, vessels, and the gastrointestinal tract of the buried) give an idea of very local and short-term environmental conditions or events usually associated with economic and/or daily activities of a person, with his food, funerary rites and traditions. In this regard, the possibilities of the palynological method and the purposes will be different for each specific research. Recommendations for the sampling for palynological analysis are given for each specific case.

Hunting of Game Fowl by the Russian Population of the Tarsky Irtysh Region in the 17th-19th Centuries: written and archaeological sources

Bird hunting as a type of economic activity of the Russian population in the 17th—18th centuries is analyzed on the basis of archeozoological collections and complexes from the cultural layers of rural sites. The composition and ratio of different types of commercial birds, methods of passive and active hunting are determined. The results obtained are compared with written sources of the 19 th century and archaeological materials from other regions. As part of the inventory of archaeological sites, in addition to the bow and arrowheads, a set of clay balls of different sizes and weights was identified, which were used as projectiles for slingshot in hunting flocking birds.

Cultural Deposits of the Latest Time in the Context of Archaeological Research: Stratigraphic ‘Ballast’ or Historical Value

The article is written in the scientific polemic genre and it is a continuation of the discussion that began earlier in the professional environment. The author defends the position to give more attention to culture layers of the 20th during conducting an archaeological excavation. The problem is the uncertainty of the cultural deposits’ status of the 20th century. The purpose of the article is to determine the 20th century culture deposits historical value. Research methodology. Common-scientific methods are used. The typological method is also used, in particular, for 20th century culture deposits classification. The scientific novelty lies in the first, in Ukrainian historiography, attempt to argue a historical value of the 20th-century cultural layers. Conclusion. The modern culture deposits' historical value is in that they are at least a historical source and also an epoch monument. In addition to scientific, individual artifacts or complexes on cultural layers of modern times can have artistic, aesthetic, museum, tourist, anthropological, ethnographic, national, political, ideological, economic, social value.

Microbiomarkers of the local environment and interior of Neolithic and Eneolithic dwellings (settlements of Mergen 6 and 7)

The paper concerns the analysis of the local environment around the multi-layer settlements of Mergen 6 and 7 situated in the immediate vicinity of each other. The settlements existed successively (partly contempora-neously in the early and high Neolithic) in the forest-steppe belt of Western Siberia. Two methods were chosen to obtain the results: spore-and-pollen (palynological) and microbiomorphic analyses of the cultural layers of the settlements of Mergen 6 and Mergen 7. In the settlement of Mergen 6, the following samples were collected for the palynological and microbiomorphic investigation: a vertical column from the center of the ditch of the dwelling no.5; areal soil samples of the dwelling no.5 from underneath the pottery debris of the Neolithic and Eneolithic periods; areal samples from the bottom layer of the dwelling no.21. In the settlement of Mergen 7, two vertical core samples were selected for the pore-and-pollen analysis: in the ditch of the dwelling no.1; and in the inter-dwelling area. Samples from the hearthing of the dwellings and from the inter-dwelling space were collected for the microbiomorphic analysis. The obtained results show that both settlements existed during the forest-steppe conditions, although the original landscapes of the sites chosen by the people for building the settlements were different in the early and high Neolithic. It appears that during the early Neolithic, the settlement of Mergen 6 was associated with an open site with meadow-steppe vegetation; birch forests constituted a small part of the land-scape, whilst there were no pine forests in the close vicinity. During the middle Neolithic, people in the settlement of Mergen 7 preferred to settle in a birch wood, having cleared out a small area to build the dwelling. The results of the microbiomorphic analysis show that, despite the lack of pine forests nearby the settlements, people still used pine tim-ber in housebuilding, apparently, intentionally. The frequent occurrence of remains of the wood detritus at the level of the floor of the dwellings and under pottery supports the initial archaeological observations about timber decking inside the houses. However, pollen and phytolithic studies do not demonstrate a wide use of the wetland waterside vegetation in housebuilding, apparently, because the lake at the time was not overgrown on the banks by reed and cattail. There-fore, despite the close location of the two sites and their similar hunting-fishing specialization of the subsistences, their populations in different chronological periods preferred distinct local conditions.

An Archaeological Study of Early Farming Settlements on Iresi Hills

Recent Investigation of an archaeological site in southwest Nigeria during the Late Stone Age revealed additional information about the cultural development of the area. On Iresi Hills two rock shelters (Ajaye and Cherubim & Seraphim) were investigated in two seasons from 2017 to 2018 during which pottery, ground stone axes and microlithics were excavated. Although there is no clear break in the stratigraphy, the findings show clear demarcation between two cultural layers. The upper layer contains pottery, microlithics and ground stone axes, and ochre while the lower layer is characterized by microlithics only. The site presented a date of about Cal 5653 BP which coincides with a short dry period in the area. Tis paper reports the occupation in Iresi, in southwest Nigeria with a view to fill the gap in the chronology and to interrogate the evidence for Late Stone Age in terms of the culture that existed in between 12000YBP of Iwo Eleru and 2000YBP of Itaakpa and the influence of a change in environment of southwest Nigeria and West Africa in general.

Soil Pollen Indicators of Historical Arable Horizons from the Zvenigorod Biological Station of the Moscow State University

In this work we present the results of spore and pollen analysis of forest soils from the Zvenigorod biological station of Moscow State University (Moscow Region, Russia). A comparative analysis of forest soils formed on the site of historical fields of the XVIII–XIX centuries and beyond showed that a specific complex of pollen and spores remains in the residual arable horizons, characteristic only of soils that have passed through the stages of plowing and fallow. It includes pollen from cultivated cereals and arable weeds (buckwheat, cornflower blue), spores of the mace-shaped plaunus (Lycopodium clavatum), as well as spores of the mosses Riccia glauca and Anthoceros spp. The latter are exclusive indicators of fallows, since they are practically not found in other habitats. The identified pollen indicators can be used in landscape and archaeological research to interpret the data of spore-pollen analysis of cultural layers, buried soils, gully-ravine sediments. They can also be used to define the boundaries of ancient fields under modern vegetation.

Preliminary Report on Archaeological Excavations in Sophtades, Cyprus: Pre-Byzantine Pottery

The article is devoted to the materials found during the excavations of St. George Church located in the southern part of Cyprus, near the village of Softades. In the cultural layers inside of this church, pottery belonging to the Roman period, Iron Age and Late Bronze Age has been discovered. It is discussed in this article.

The Return of the Suppressed and (Palaeo)Balkanology: Vojin Matić, Vladimir Dvorniković i Dragoslav Srejović

Numerous researchers into the history and prehistory of the Balkans – Niko Županić, Vladimir Dvorniković, Veselin Čajkanović, Miloje Vasić, Milan Budimir, Miloš Đurić, Vojin Matić, Milutin Garašanin, Dragoslav Srejović – have considered this region as the area in which cultural, linguistic, or material forms never really die out, although they constantly change. In the writings of these authors, an invisible (sometimes historical) thread is established between the past and the present of the Balkans, along which the previously forgotten forms can always come back, and the long suppressed cultural forms can resurface. A distinctive trope is thus constructed, according to which the past of the Balkans is seen as a dark repository of cultural, religious, or psychological contents, emerging again at the times of social crisis – the trope of the return of the supressed. The author here argues that this trope is in its essence psychoanalytical: it belongs to a thought system, a hermeneutics originating in the 1930s, parallel to the (palaeo)balcanological research, among the abovementioned authors. Some authors speak in explicitly psychoanalytical terms, and the text focuses on the three of them: Vojin Matić, Vladimir Dvorniković and Dragoslav Srejović. Vojin Matić was active over a long period from the 1930s to 1990s, and his work establishes a chronological structure of the psychoanalytical influences in the Serbian humanities. His palaeopsychology gave an explicitly psychoanalytical turn to the (palaeo)balkanological thought, in the search for the continuity of the psychological mechanisms towards which a subject can always regress. Karakterologija Jugoslovena by Vladimir Dvorniković marked the (palaeo)balkanological research before the WWII. Conceiving it as an explicitly psychoanalytical study, Dvorniković developed a classical “psychoanalytical vertical” – bottom/down/dark/subconscious, opposed to surface/up/light/conscious, along which the supressed “autochthonous” cultural layers surface. The interest of Dragoslav Srejović for human “behind” the archaeological material naturally led him towards psychoanalysis (or was induced by it). The explicitly psychoanalytical phase of his work is notable (late 1950s and early 1960s), to become a constant tendency of his later theoretical approach. Srejović added to the vertical constructed by Dvorniković the opposition of archaeological/historical time. It is argued here that with all the authors mentioned the psychoanalytical trope of the return of the suppressed is indubitable: the past of the Balkans is described as its dark subconscious, not recognizing time, and therefore able to emerge again into the conscious, the light, the surface.

THE STONE AGE DOLGOE 11 SITE IN THE SAVINSKIY DISTRICT, IVANOVO REGION: FIRST RESULTS OF DATING BY THE OPTICALLY SIMULATED LUMINESCENCE METHOD

В статье рассматриваются результаты междисциплинарного исследования малоизвестного в настоящее время археологического памятника Долгое 11. Приводятся детальное литологическое описание разреза, подробные характеристики строения палеопочв, положения четко различимых двух культурных слоев. Археологические материалы из верхнего и нижнего культурных слоев сильно отличаются друг от друга как по сырью, из которого они изготовлены, так и по типологическим и технологическим характеристикам. Абсолютная хронология полученная методом ОСЛ позволила определить возраст нижнего культурного горизонта -около 13,5-14 тыс. л. н. Расселение древних людей в районе стоянки происходило в условиях потепления аллереда, поэтому этот культурный слой коррелируется с палеолитом. Верхний культурный горизонт сформировался уже в голоцене - в эпоху мезолита (около 9 тыс. л. н.), как показало исследование, рельеф стабилизировался в это время из-за повсеместного развития растительности. The article discusses the results of the interdisciplinary study of the presently little-known Dolgoe 11 archaeological site. The materials of the lithological description of the section, detailed characteristics of the structure of paleosols, the positions of clearly distinguished two cultural layers are given. Archaeological materials from the upper and lower cultural layers are very different from each other, both in the raw materials used for their shaping, and in typological and technological characteristics. The absolute chronology from OSL dating allows determine the age of the lower cultural horizon about 13,5-14 thousand years ago. The settlement of humans in the area of the site occurred under the conditions of Allerod warming, therefore, this cultural layer is correlated with Paleolithic. The upper cultural horizon was formed already in the Holocene -in the Mesolithic era (about 9 thousand years ago). during relief stabilisation due to the widespread development of vegetation.