Fabio Silva

• PhD
• Research Associate at University College London

Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins...

The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This...

We have compiled an extensive database of archaeological evidence for rice across Asia, including 400 sites from mainland East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This dataset is used to compare several models for the geographical origins of rice cultivation and infer the most likely region(s) for its origins and subsequent outward diffusion. The...

We use archaeological data and spatial methods to reconstruct the dispersal of farming into areas of sub-Saharan Africa now occupied by Bantu language speakers, and introduce a new large-scale radiocarbon database and a new suite of spatial modelling techniques. We also introduce a method of estimating phylogeographic relationships from archaeologi...

The orientations of European prehistoric structures have been studied independently by landscape archaeologists and archaeoastronomers. Despite their similar interests, the two fields have failed to converge primarily because of their differing epistemologies. This paper argues that archaeology has much to gain by integrating the two fields to prov...

The record of past human adaptations provides crucial lessons for guiding responses to crises in the future1–3. To date, there have been no systematic global comparisons of humans’ ability to absorb and recover from disturbances through time4,5. Here we synthesized resilience across a broad sample of prehistoric population time–frequency data, span...

Inferring episodes of expansion, admixture, diffusion, and/or migration in prehistory is undergoing a resurgence in macro-scale archaeological interpretation. In parallel to this renewed popularity, access to computational tools among archaeologists has seen the use of aggregated radiocarbon datasets for the study of dispersals also increasing. Thi...

About this issue Demography impacts a wide range of aspects of human culture past and present; from our capacity to transmit genes and knowledge across generations, to the reach of our social networks and long-term impacts on the environment. Recent cross-disciplinary advances in the reconstruction and interpretation of prehistoric population histo...

Demographic change lies at the core of debates on genetic inheritance and resilience to climate change of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Here we analyze the radiocarbon record of Iberia to reconstruct long-term changes in population levels and test different models of demographic growth during the Last Glacial-Interglacial transition. Our best fitti...

Neolithic Connections: Britain, The Channel Islands and FranceThe Prehistoric Society Europa Conference 201914-16th June, 2019, Pomme d'Or Hotel in St Helier, Jerseyhttp://www.prehistoricsociety.org/events/event/europa_conference_2019/ Dark and Light: The role of sunlight and shadow in cultureSeventeenth Annual Sophia Centre Conference13th July, 20...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

We model the prehistoric dispersals of two rice varieties, japonica and proto-indica, across Asia using empirical evidence drawn from an archaeobotanical dataset of 400 sites from mainland East, Southeast and South Asia. The approach is based on regression modelling wherein goodness of fit is obtained from log–log quantile regressions of the archae...

During the excavation of Rego da Murta Dolmen I, a structure belonging to a megalithic cluster in central Portugal, a number of small sub-quadrangular quartzite stones were found embedded within a layer below that of the deepest orthostat. In this paper, we report on these findings and highlight three key features of these small stones, namely thei...

Skyscapes Beyond the Horizon

Large radiocarbon datasets have been analysed statistically to identify, on the one hand, the dynamics and tempo of dispersal processes and, on the other, demographic change. This is particularly true for the spread of farming practices in Neolithic Europe. Here we combine the two approaches and apply them to a new, extensive dataset of 14,535 radi...

Using computer simulations, this paper explores and quantifies the accuracy and precision of two approaches to the statistical inference of the most likely targets of a set of structural orientations. It discusses the curvigram method (also known as kernel density estimation or summed probability distribution) in wide currency in archaeoastronomy,...

The term skyscape was first used within the remit of cultural astronomy in 2006 but it was not until 2015 that it reached a wider academic audience. Since then, it has been met positively by archaeoastronomers and archaeologists alike, which bodes well for its future. However, there is still some confusion about its meaning, with some archaeoastron...

The study of demography has been of long interest to prehistorians, who have been concerned with whether there were any demographic transitions associated with climatic events, the introduction of new technologies and subsistence strategies or, more generally, with cultural change. However, no element of the archaeological record is directly associ...

Landscape archaeology opened up new avenues for archaeologists to understand how the environment that societies inhabit determines their interactions with their surroundings, creating part of an interwoven relationship with the world. The land itself regulates subsistence and economic possibilities and its contours and rivers determine routes and t...

The editors introduce the JSA Forum for 2.2.

For the first time we integrate quantitative data on lithic sickles and archaeobotanical evidence for domestication and the evolution of plant economies from sites dated to the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene (ca. 12000–5000 cal. BCE) from throughout the Fertile Crescent region of Southwest Asia. We find a strong correlation in some regions...

We are delighted to welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology (JSA), a publication concerned with the role and importance of the sky in the interpretation of the material record. Currently, elements of this study can be found separately in the disciplines of archaeoastronomy, archaeology, cultural astronomy, anthropo...

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Ag...

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Ag...

This paper addresses the issue of congruence between archaeological narrative and folktale, and tentatively explores its implications for our understanding of the deep past, as well as of present-day folklore. Similarities between a folktale that explains the name of Serra da Estrela, a mountain range in central Portugal, and the material record of...

We introduce a methodology for reconstructing geographical effects on dispersal and diffusion patterns, using georeferenced archaeological radiocarbon databases. Fast Marching methods for modelling front propagation enable geographical scenarios to be explored regarding barriers, corridors, and favoured and unfavoured habitat types. The use of gene...

This article introduces a method of exploratory analysis of the geographical factors influencing large-scale innovation diffusion, and illustrates its application to the case of early pottery dispersal in the Old World. Regression tech-niques are used to identify broad-scale spatiotemporal trends in the innovation's first occurrence, and regression...

This article introduces a method of exploratory analysis of the geographical factors influencing large-scale innovation diffusion, and illustrates its application to the case of early pottery dispersal in the Old World. Regression techniques are used to identify broad-scale spatiotemporal trends in the innovation's first occurrence, and regression...

The Mondego platform of central Portugal is bordered by the Central Massif to the southeast, the Marginal Massif to the west and northwest, and the Douro basin to the north (see Fig. 1). The area covers most of the drainage basins of the upper Mondego, the Vouga and part of the Douro rivers. The Cen-tral Massif, especially Star Mountain Range, offe...

The exploration of the Mediterranean seascape goes back to the foragers of the early Holocene period around the ninth millennium BCE. Two case studies in the Azores islands show possible integration of elements of landscape, seascape and skyscape in the way two different types of artificial structures were aligned. The major axes of the Maroiço str...

We introduce a modeling framework that can be applied to cases of multiple converging fronts during episodes of population expansion and innovation diffusion, referring to two prehistoric case studies known archaeologically (the spread of pottery-making in Europe, and the spread of farming in southern Africa). We model front propagation using Fast...

Two case studies in the Azores islands show possible integration of elements of landscape, seascape and skyscape in the way two different types of artificial structures were aligned. The major axes of the Maroiço structures from Pico Island may have been aligned on the summit of Pico Mountain and, reciprocally, on the setting sun at summer solstice...

We present a cosmological model with a solution that self-accelerates at late-times without signs of ghost instabilities on small scales. The model is a natural extension of the Brans-Dicke (BD) theory including a non-linear derivative interaction, which appears in a theory with the Galilean shift symmetry. The existence of the self-accelerating un...

We study the spectrum of gravitational perturbations around a vacuum de Sitter brane in a 5D asymmetric braneworld model, with induced curvature on the brane. This generalises the stealth acceleration model proposed by Charmousis, Gregory and Padilla (CGP) which realises the Cardassian cosmology in which power law cosmic acceleration can be driven...

We solve for the behaviour of cosmological perturbations in the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) braneworld model using a new numerical method. Unlike some other approaches in the literature, our method uses no approximations other than linear theory and is valid on large scales. We examine the behaviour of late-universe density perturbations for both...

We study quasistatic perturbations in a cosmological background in the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati braneworld model. We identify the Vainshtein radius at which the nonlinear interactions of the brane bending mode become important in a cosmological background. The Vainshtein radius in the early universe is much smaller than the one in the Minkowski back...