Precious Arks of the 18th century Russian State Seals: the evolution of the iconography and manufacturing technology

The article presents the results of the trace-wear analysis and elemental composition of the arks of the pendant seals of 1700—1801 from the charters of Russian Emperors Peter the Greate, Catherine I, Peter II, Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth Petrovna, Catherine the Greate and Paul I. The objects were studied in terms of their iconography, technological features, and metal composition. Comparison with historical documents shows that in the manufacture of all the arks the masters followed the iconography, regulated by decrees, and in general the artifacts reflect heraldic innovations of different periods. The peculiarities of the technological methods of the master jewelers of different periods, used in the production of these status items, have been identified. The evolution of the technology of making Russian seal arks has been revealed. The earliest ark (1700) was identified as belonging to the European technological tradition. The other arks belong to a different technological tradition, inclined to a more decorative depiction and the use of small complex embossings. Two of the arks show signs of later surface plating with electroplated gilding.

A TORQUE OF EARLY ROMAN TIME FROM KALINOVO (KALININGRAD REGION, RUSSIA): THE COMPOSITION OF ENAMEL AND DATA ON CHRONOLOGY AND ORIGIN

В статье рассмотрен химический состав и техника нанесения красной эмали гривны, производной от типа Хавор, происходящей из могильника Калиново самбийско-натангийской культуры (Калининградская обл.). Гривна датирована второй половиной I - второй третью II в. н. э. Установлено, что эмаль была изготовлена по «кельтскому» рецепту с высоким содержанием меди и свинца. Однако если состав в данном случае является скорее хронологическим, чем культурноопределяющим признаком, то его сочетание с техникой нанесения эмали (в прорезные углубления-насечки) заставляет искать прототипы данного украшения среди образцов кельтского эмальерного ремесла. Данные о хронологии и технологической традиции, в которой изготовлена гривна, полученные на основании стилистического анализа и состава эмали, хорошо согласуются с результатами комплекса исследований, посвященных данной находке. The article considers the chemical composition and technique of applying the red enamel on the torque derived from the Havor type, originating from the cemetery of Kalinovo of Sambian-Natangian culture (Kaliningrad region). The torque dates back to the second half of I - second third of II c. AD. The enamel was produced using «Celtic» recipe with high copper and lead content. The composition of the enamel in this case is rather chronological than a culturally determining indication. However, its combination with the technique of enamelling (in the slotted recessing notches) gives grounds to search for the prototypes of this decoration among the samples of the Celtic enamel craft. The data on the chronology and technological tradition in which the torque was made, obtained on the basis of stylistic analysis and data on the enamel composition, well agree with the results of a comprehensive studies of this find.

Technical Ceramics from the Pottery Workshop at Sarai-Al-Jedid – Tsarevskoye Settlement

Technical ceramics – special devices for firing glazed ware – is a necessary component of highly technological pottery production. Analysis of the wares in the context of all the materials of the complex let the authors establish the specialization of the workshop and solve the issues of the craft reconstruction, identifying the origins of the technological tradition and organization of the workshop. All these possibilities of technical ceramics are of particular importance in the study of the rapidly emerged pottery of the Golden Horde, which reached a high level of development in a short period of time (not full the 14th century). The article is the first to present a set of devices for firing glazed ware from a pottery workshop III in the south-eastern suburb of the second capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai-al-Jedid, known as Tsarevskoye settlement as well. In addition to the furnace supply, the technical ceramics include the “kalyps”– matrix forms and clay stamps for applying relief decoration on the surface of vessels.

Crafting Idiosyncrasies. Early Social Complexity, Ivory and Identity-Making in Copper Age Iberia

As a raw material, ivory has been used to manufacture a wide range of objects, normally associated with sumptuous material culture. In this article we explore the role played by ivory and ivory artefacts among early complex societies, and particularly its importance in the definition of identities among emergent elites. To this end, we make a thorough examination of the evidence from Copper Age Iberia, focusing on the mega-site of Valencina, in southern Spain. This site has provided what to date is the largest assemblage of prehistoric ivory in western Europe, with an estimated total of 8.8 kg, including finely crafted artefacts of unrivalled beauty and sophistication. Our study looks carefully at the technological, morphological and contextual dimensions of Copper Age ivory. As a result, we contend that the broad morphological variability together with the technological uniformity of this assemblage suggest that, while belonging to a common technological tradition, objects were deliberately crafted as unique and unrepeatable so that they could be used to create and maintain socio-cultural idiosyncrasies and ideological legitimation.

TRAVELLING WITH THE POTTER'S WHEEL IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE AEGEAN

By adopting the chaîne opératoire approach as a dynamic theoretical and methodological framework for studying ancient technologies, this paper investigates the modalities behind the appearance of the potter's wheel in the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age II (c. 2550–2200 bc). Based on the comparative examination of ceramic assemblages from different Aegean sites, an extended technological study has been carried out in order to track the earliest wheel-made pottery and reconstruct the craft behaviours perpetrated by the use of the potter's wheel across the Aegean. The paper presents the results of this multi-site study and aims to (a) trace out the wheel-based technological traditions, (b) explore the contexts of the learning and transmission of the new tool, (c) shed light on the connectivity among Aegean and western Anatolian communities that enabled the transfer of the new craft knowledge, and, finally, (d) bring into view the mechanisms behind its emergence and appropriation. By considering technologies as representing an entire social system of knowing, perceiving and acting on the material world, it will be argued that the spread of the potter's wheel in the Aegean does not reflect a moment of linear diffusion of a technological innovation, adopted thanks to certain techno-functional advantages. Instead, it discloses the resilience of social identities and values embedded through the practical engagement of individuals in the production of their material culture. The potter's wheel, in fact, emerges as a socially and culturally mediated practice, specific to small groups of potters trained within a technological tradition of Anatolian origin, performing their craft in the Aegean socio-cultural milieus. Furthermore, its transfer reveals a multidirectional and dynamic crossing of material cultures that designated a navigable world where traditions, objects and people travelled, mixed and merged in unpredictable ways.

Howiesons Poort

The Howiesons Poort is a technological tradition within the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa. This technological tradition shows different characteristics, technical and symbolic (the engraving of ostrich eggshell containers, the appearance of engraved ochre, formal bone tool technology, compound adhesives for hafting and a great variability in hunting techniques), which only developed in an extensive manner much later in other parts of the world. Therefore, the African Middle Stone Age through the material of the Howiesons Poort holds some of the oldest symbolic and complex technologies documented in prehistory. For some researchers, the Howiesons Poort still represents an unusual and ephemeral technological development within the Middle Stone Age, probably related to environmental stress, and as such there are numerous hypotheses for it as an environmental adaptation, whereas for others, on the contrary, it implies that complex cognition, deduced from the elaborated technology and symbolic expressions, was fully developed in the Middle Stone Age.

Innovation, life history and social networks in human evolution

There is a famous puzzle about the first 3 million years of archaeologically visible human technological history. The pace of change, of innovation and its uptake, is extraordinarily slow. In particular, the famous handaxes of the Acheulian technological tradition first appeared about 1.7 Ma, and persisted with little change until about 800 ka, perhaps even longer. In this paper, I will offer an explanation of that stasis based in the life history and network characteristics that we infer (on phylogenetic grounds) to have characterized earlier human species. The core ideas are that (i) especially in earlier periods of hominin evolution, we are likely to find archaeological traces only of widespread and persisting technologies and practices; (ii) the record is not a record of the rate of innovation, but the rate of innovations establishing in a landscape; (iii) innovations are extremely vulnerable to stochastic loss while confined to the communities in which they are made and established; (iv) the export of innovation from the local group is sharply constrained if there is a general pattern of hostility and suspicion between groups, or even if there is just little contact between adults of adjoining groups. That pattern is typical of great apes and likely, therefore, to have characterized at least early hominin social lives. Innovations are unlikely to spread by adult-to-adult interactions across community boundaries. (v) Chimpanzees and bonobos are characterized by male philopatry and subadult female dispersal; that is, therefore, the most likely early hominin pattern. If so, the only innovations at all likely to expand beyond the point of origin are those acquired by subadult females, and ones that can be expressed by those females, at high enough frequency and salience for them to spread, in the bands that the females join. These are very serious filters on the spread of innovation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

Eastern African Stone Age

The Stone Age record is longer and better documented in eastern Africa. Archaeological and fossil evidence derives particularly from sites within the Rift Valley of the region, often with secure radiometric age estimates. Despite a relatively late start and disproportionate focus on earlier periods and open-air sites within the rift, scientific research into the region’s Stone Age record continues to play a central role in our understanding of human evolution. Putative stone tools and cutmarked bones from two Late Pliocene (3.6–2.58 million years ago or Ma) contexts are exclusive to eastern Africa, as is conclusive evidence for these by 2.5 Ma. The earliest indisputable technological traces appear in the form of simple flakes and core tools as well as surface-modified bones. It is not clear what triggered this invention, or whether there was a more rudimentary precursor to it. Neither is it certain which hominin lineage started this technology, or if it hunted or only scavenged carcasses. Well-provenienced archaeological occurrences predating 2.0 Ma are limited to sites in Ethiopia and Kenya, becoming more common across eastern Africa and beyond only later. By 1.75 Ma, lithic technologies that included heavy-duty and large cutting tools appeared in Ethiopian and Kenyan localities. Several details about this technological tradition are still inadequately understood, although its appearance in eastern Africa roughly coincides with that of Homo erectus/ergaster. By far the longest-lived Stone Age tradition, hominins with such technologies successfully inhabited high-altitude environments as early as 1.5 Ma, and expanded within and beyond Africaeven earlier. Hunting and use of fire probably started in the earlier part of this technological tradition. Small-sized and highly diverse tool forms gradually and variably started to replace heavy-duty and large cutting tools beginning c. 300 thousand years ago (ka). Conventional wisdom associates this technological and behavioral shift with the rise of Homo sapiens, although the oldest undisputed representatives of our species continued to use large cutting tools in eastern Africa after 200 ka. In addition to small retouched tools, often on products from prepared cores, significant innovations such as hafting and ranged weaponry emerged during the length of this technological tradition. Increasingly complex sociocultural behaviors, including mortuary practices, mark the later part of this period in eastern Africa. The consolidation of such skills and behaviors, besides ecological/demographic dynamics, may have enabled the ultimately decisive Out-of-Africa dispersal of our species, from eastern Africa, 50–80 ka. Even smaller and more diverse stone tool forms and other sociocultural innovations evolved in many areas of eastern Africa by 50 ka. Miniaturization and diversification allowed for the adoption of more complex technologies, including intentional blunting and microlithization. Some of these were used as parts of sophisticated composite implements, such as the bow and arrow. Complex behaviors involving personal ornamentation, symbolism, and rituals that resembled the lifeways of ethnographically known hunter-gatherer populations were similarly adopted. These dynamics eventually led to the development of new technological and socioeconomic systems marked by the inception of agriculture and attendant lifeways.