Participatory Mapping of Mid-Holocene Anthropogenic Landscapes in Guyana with Kite Aerial Photography

The nature and degree of human modifications of humid tropical forests in Amazonia have been widely debated over the past two decades. Many regions provide significant evidence of late Holocene anthropogenic influence by settled populations, but the antiquity of human interventions is still poorly understood due to a lack of earlier archaeological sites across the broad region, particularly pertaining to the mid-Holocene. Here we report on Amerindian occupations spanning the period from ca. 6000-3000 BP along the middle Berbice River, Guyana, including early evidence in Amazonia of cultural practices widely considered indicative of settled villages, notably terra preta or “black earth” soils, mound construction, and ceramic technology. These more settled occupations of the mid-Holocene initiated a trajectory of landscape domestication extending into historical times, including larger-scale late Holocene social formations. Collaborative research with local indigenous communities, including archaeological excavations, landscape mapping using kite based aerial photography, and three-dimensional photogrammetry, was designed to promote the decolonization of archaeological knowledge production and encourage indigenous ownership of Amerindian history and cultural heritage in Guyana.

Barrows of the Eneolithic-Early Iron Age in the Kalinovka in the Dnieper Nadporozhye

The main aim of this article is description and publication of the materials of two barrows which was explored by the expedition of the Dmytro Yavornytsky National Historical Museum of Dnipro by L. P. Krylova in 1973. They located near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast. Methods: comparative-historical, typological, chronological, descriptive. Main results. The barrows near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast belonged to a large burial ground, which was partly destroyed. Only the mound with a sign of triangulation remained was saved at the time of excavation. The mound 1 was build in two construction receptions. The primary mound, fixed on the V-shaped ditch, is filled for the main grave 7 of post-mariupol culture. It is connected with the device of a near-tomb pavement made of wood with separate inclusions of stones and a peculiar covering of the sub-square site with a layer of clay. Both ritual actions are known in a member of post-mariupol burials of the territorial variant of the Steppe Dnipro and the Dnipro Nadporizhzhya. The main markers of the burial rite of the post-mariupol burials are the shape of the burial pit, elongated position of the deceased on the back, orientation to East, the presence of ocher carmine color. The group of pit burials (№№ 3,5,6,9) forms the second cultural-chronological horizon. One of them may be associated with a ring filler, which brought the mound to a modern size. The most recent are burials of zrubna culture (№№ 2,8), in one of which ceramic fragments were found. Cultural identity of grave 1 has not been established. Barrow 2 was 4 m high and 30 m in diameter, was erected for four simultaneous Scythian burials. The embankment was surrounded by a ditch with two bridges at the East and Nord edges, 1,5 m in length and bones of animals from the reed. Outside the pit, vertically standing stones of the cromlech are traced. All the graves are made in the same type of catacomb, which are distributed in the Northern Black Sea in the IV–III centuries BC. The main grave 3 was collective – two adults (a man and a woman) and a child. The surviving in situ parts of the male skeleton testify to the position of the burials elongated on the back, the head to the East. The burial was repeatedly robbed. At the entrance to the chamber, from the inside, a part of the wall of a bronze boiler was found. For the chronological definitions, well-dated categories of inventory (arrowheads and ect.) are involved, allowing to date grave 3 to the second half of the IV and beginning of the III BC. The life-long social status of a man of grave 3 in the hierarchy of the caldron-holders is related to the head of the genus of the lower aristocratic stratum of the Scythian society. The three graves contained various age burials of children, accompanied by ornaments. Their status is ambiguous since may reflect both generic or tribal affinity with those buried in grave 3, and a dependent position relative to the child in grave 3 as a possible heir to a sufficiently high social rank of the father. Concise conclusions. The obtained materials allow to determine the time of occurrence of a burial mound near the Kalinovka village by the Eneolithic in the presence of post-mariupol burials, which mark the appearance of a mound rite in the Steppe and Pre-Dnipro Ukraine. Its further functioning is connected with the Bronze Age, represented by pit and log complexes. The later cultural and chronological layer is formed by the Scythian burials, which reflect the processes of social stratification of the society. Practical meaning. The published materials can be used in generalizing research of the problems of archeology of the Early Iron Age of Ukraine. Scientific novelty. The cultural and chronological features of mound construction and burial complexes near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast had been determine. Type of article: analytical.

Explaining Toad Bones in Southern Appalachian Archaeological Deposits

Toad bones, sometimes occurring in great numbers in pit features and other contexts in Native American village and mound sites in the Appalachian Summit, have been interpreted as evidence that toads were consumed, used for their purportedly hallucinogenic toad venom, placed as ritual deposits, or naturally entrapped/intrusive. A paucity or lack of bones of the head in some contexts is suggestive of decapitation and consumption of toads. Alternatively, bones of the head may be less preservable, recoverable, or identifiable. This study examines toad remains on Appalachian Summit late precontact and contact period sites, reviews previous experimentation, and presents a new experimental study undertaken to identify agencies of accumulation. We propose that toads were regularly consumed and possibly as part of ritualized events associated with village and mound construction. The temporal and geographic restriction of this practice to the Pisgah and Qualla phases of the Appalachian Summit suggests subsistence ethnicity as alluded to in historical accounts.

Current Research: Preliminary Survey of the Eastern Half of the Boxed Spring Site (41UR30)

The Boxed Springs site (41UR30) is an Early Caddo site located in East Texas near the Sabine River. This site covers roughly 15.6 acres and contained at least four mounds, middens, and an extended cemetery. The site's location has been known since the late 1950s, with a series of unconnected avocational and professional archaeological investigations as well as unfortunate looting. As one of the few Early Caddo sites in Texas that contain multiple mounds, the Boxed Springs site is poised to provide great insight into Early Caddo mound construction technologies, settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, and trade and exchange.

Mound building and summit architecture at the Carson site, a Mississippian mound center in the southeastern United States

Significant scholarly attention has been paid to monument construction, craft production, and leadership strategies in the Mississippian world (A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1540) of the Southeastern and Midcontinental United States. As new sites are discovered and new data brought into consideration, greater consideration can be made linking the building of large earthen mounds to social and political relationships. This article presents an archaeological and ethnohistoric consideration of mound building and mound summit use at Mound D at the Carson site, located in northwest Mississippi. Data from earthen mound excavation, mound summit architecture, material culture, and optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon (accelerator mass spectrometry) dating are used to discuss the formation of the monumental landscape beginning in the early 13th century. Several postulates are offered for the interpretation of mound construction and mound summit use.

Dissecting and Interpreting a Three-Dimensional Ground-Penetrating Radar Dataset: An Example from Northern Australia

A robust 3-D GPR dataset provides interpreters with a variety of methods for extracting important information at buried archaeological sites. An iterative approach that uses reflection profile analysis, amplitude slice-mapping, and often both in conjunction is often necessary as neither method by itself is sufficient. In northern Australia, two constructed mounds contain a number of cultural and geological horizons and features, which can be imaged with GPR. The reflection profiles display the modified ground surface prior to mound construction and some initial construction layers. On the pre-mound surface, amplitude maps of reflective layers that were built-up on the ground surface indicate that they were constructed in an intentional manner. Those surfaces were later covered by sand to produce mounds used for human burial. Human internments in the mound can only be seen in reflection profiles, but once discovered, the profiles can be re-sliced to produce high definition amplitude images of these remains. No one method of analysis can provide an overall interpretation of these complex internal mound features. When the methods are varied, depending on the results of one method, a detailed and varied analysis of certain aspects of the mounds’ internal features are visible, leading to the generation of a number of hypotheses about how this area of northern Australia was used in the past. The 3-D data from GPR shows that this area was an important location on the landscape in the past, and was modified by the construction of a monumental mound, which was then used for human burials, and more recently, the construction of what was likely a ritual enclosure.

The environmental impact of a pre-Columbian city based on geochemical insights from lake sediment cores recovered near Cahokia

Cahokia is the largest documented urban settlement in the pre-Columbian United States. Archaeological evidence suggests that the city, located near what is now East St. Louis, Illinois, began to rapidly expand starting around AD 1050. At its height, Cahokia extended across 1000 ha and included large plazas, timber palisade walls, and hundreds of monumental earthen mounds. Following several centuries of occupation, the city experienced a period of gradual abandonment from about AD 1200 to 1400. Here, we present geochemical data from a 1500-year-old sediment core from nearby Horseshoe Lake that records watershed impacts associated with the growth and decline of Cahokia. Sedimentary analysis shows a distinctive 24-cm-thick, gray, fine-grained layer formed between AD 1150 and 1220 and characterized by low carbonate δ13C, elevated sorbed metal concentrations, and higher organic matter δ15N. The deposition of this layer is contemporaneous with archaeological evidence of increased agricultural activity, earthen mound construction, and higher populations surrounding the lake. We hypothesize that these human impacts increased soil erosion, producing new sediment sources from deeper soil horizons, and shifted dissolved transport to the lake, producing lower carbonate δ13C values, higher concentrations of lead, copper, potassium, and aluminum, and increased δ15N, likely due to contributions of enriched nitrogen from sewage.