Prehistoric Archaeology - Science topic

NEW PARADIGM on Sapiens:

New book by K Linduff and K Rubenson "Pazyryk Culture Up in the Altai", Routledge, Abingdon and New York 2022

Joanne P Ballard

You wrote: "could paleoindians or other Pleistocene peoples have gained the confidence of woolly mammoths or mastodons to use them as transportation and other tasks, the way that Asian elephants are used today?"

They could have, on a very limited basis, in some unusual circumstances, but they didn't. For the uses you suggest to be put into practice and become relatively prevalent, a somewhat more advanced civilization or level of development is required and that came later. Still, it's an intriguing thought. What might paleopeople have accomplished with mammoths or mastodons in building pyramids or henges.

This is a very complex question. Today a combination of diverse methods is used. A combination of chemistry, microarchaeobotany and non-pollen palynomorfs as in the case of our ceramic pans from the Neolithic period indicated baking of meat with cereals and wild plants. See:

Sam Lin makes an excellent set of points about learning in traditional societies, particular in regard to hunter-gatherers where accurate scientific knowledge about environments and their common and unusual variations are critical to the success of this economic form of human adaptations. The importance of experiential learning cannot be overstated in the current intellectual debates about how transmission is accomplished. I wish to comment on the use of the term "mythical stories". In my opinion and experience, the continued use of the term "myth" is generally a under appreciation of the empirical scientific knowledge of traditional populations. Elsewhere on RG I have recounted scientifically accurate "stories" about natural events that are couched in metaphors in traditional languages, and may sound quaint or uninformed in translation to fieldworkers who have not learned the language of a particular population (referenced in my 1 March answer here). I have had many such experience in my work with the Pume of Venezuela, where I would ask informants about some of their behaviors, and had to wait up to 1.5 years for them to provide a detailed answer beyond "because" (as I've mentioned on RG before, this is the automatic response to a child's kind of question of ignorance, even by young adult anthropologist or greyhead). I want to recount an interesting Australian example, from the problematic divulgences of Richard Gould in his book 1969 book Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian Desert. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Gould offended some (many?) Ptjantjara, Ngatajara, and other Aboriginal peoples for including photographs of sacred elements in a waterhole, and possibly some of his descriptions of the events surrounding a teaching went at this location. I wish to recount what I feel is the important learning event that was described, and discuss the use of the term "sacred" by traditional populations that includes practical environmental knowledge. I have spoken extensively with Dick Gould about this event, He identified the visit to the Pukura waterhole (pp. 120-128, as an example of the importance of experiential environmental learning and he agrees that what he described in Yiwara as a set of "ritual" activities is really just science as we conceive of it, although it includes a level of cultural importance that can be approximated by some of our anthropological and popular terms implying r"religious" significance, but is not mythological. Gould begins this discussion referencing Norman Tindale's point that alleged "myths" about landscape features and initiations were practical teaching. When they arrived at the waterhole, Gould describes the men clearing off the vegetation grown around it, adding mud from within the waterhole all around its banks, and then coat it with red ochre. As they removed mud from the bottom of the waterhole that , they also retrieved 47 stones and sticks from within the waterhole. These objects were discussed in detail, they had individual stories. These objects were then replaced at the bottom f the waterhole. What was accomplished at Pukura was to stabilize the margins of this waterhole and dredge sediments that had accumulated in it to re-establish its maximum capacity. The 47 objects retrieved were markers of the maximum base of the pool. The activities associated with this event are not "myth', they were mnemonics about what needed to be done to accomplish environmental stewardship of a critical resource. The stories, dances, songs, costumes, etc. associated with not only Australian Aboriginal practices such as this but in many societies are "sacred" in a sense that maintaining a healthy, functioning environment for hunting & gathering is a critically important cultural practice. I believe that many traditional people identify a number of practices as sacred or part of their "religious" life because they understand that (at least now in what we hope is a more tolerant social milieu that does no denigrate practices outside of the more common Abrahamic, Buddhist, Shinto, and other religions of larger populations) these are afforded a certain level of protection, whereas their own views on environmental stewardship have been run roughshod by outsiders for centuries. Only relatively recently have forest managers in Australia recognized that Aboriginal practices of fire management prevent larger, destructive fires. Recent research by Bliege-Bird, Bird, and Codding have demonstrated that smaller fires also create more productive post-fire mosaic environments with more diverse resources (as following recovery, smaller fires create a patchwork of different recovery flora & fauna compared with more monolithic and less diverse succession in the wake of more extensive fires. Traditional peoples are very wise to identify the terms outsiders might respect as the vessel for much of their profound, empirically-based scientific knowledge. Like their kinship systems, Australian Desert peoples have an amazingly diverse set of complex practices that perpetuate the details of environmental variation, distribute that knowledge among a dispersed and interacting set of "different" language population groups, and have developed to make life possible for tens of thousands of years in an extremely challenging kind of environment. Many so-called "initiation rituals" are a forms of making certain that a diversity of environmental knowledge is maintained in a cultural system; another way that humans are able to feed on high value foods and use hunting & gathering as a viable and economic practice even into the 21st century. Learning in traditional societies is infinitely more complex than our modeling expectations about simplistic transmission of information about how to make particular tools or maintain "cultural norms". They actual practices are situationally responsive, constantly updating new information, may cover vast areas depending of the kinds of geography we look at (and that diversity can only be minimally sampled even in long-term ethnographic fieldwork), and have a much greater temporal record of utility than the "schooling" or "apprentice" perspectives that dominate our current modeling approaches to transmission of cultural knowledge. To use a popular culture analogy, the calculus-like complexity of these systems make Mr. Spock's 3-D chess (and many of our modeling assumptions) look like tiddlywinks. Science is astonishing when we confront our own ignorance about how the world works. We must encourage our students to go to the field and explore what is still practiced that can help us better understand the real-life concerns of foragers about managing economic options that are critical to such successful life ways, and will help us more informatively develop models to address what is challenging in archaeological research of past human activities and cultural maintenance of their profound scientific knowledge.

Please let me know, if the two researchers have provided any data.

Hi! If there is land-use continuity (what you need to be sure about.... ususally archaeology is recorded right in the modern villages/settlement spots.. rather due to built-up change and infrastructure then due to the fact that the patterns show 'realistic' archaeological land-use opportunities) you can integrate the NDVI in your friction surface by recalculating the value of the vegetation density:

produce your NDVI map with a remote sensing software (eg multispec, find the guidance for the channel recalculation attached. Download the multicpec software here: https://engineering.purdue.edu/~biehl/MultiSpec/

in your GIS, you can recalculate the values of your raster image to any range you like and finally create no-movement corridors (high values) and potential movement corridors (low values). I am not sure that high vegetation areas would enable movement though...

adding all your raster values to one final raster would result in a friction surface.

in general, you might want to have a look at these books for technical guidance (C/L) and a methodical overview (P):

Conolly/Lake:

Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology)

Parcak:

Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology

Good luck

Michael

Breaking News.

From what I've read of it since first posting this question, Gobleki Tepe appears to have developed a a regular ritual assembly point for hunter-gather communities. (I'm grossly oversimplifying here.) It was not a place of human settlement.

News coming on line in the past few days has now revealed the discovery of an ancient city housing 2,000+ people, close to modern Jerusalem. This city appears to have been roughly as old as Gobekli Tepe. The site apparently includes large buildings, dwelling, ritual, public function and burial places, with alleys between the buildings.

You can read about it here.

And here

The latter, and other news reports does include a photo of what looks like a bronze spearhead that is anachronistic. This may be just journalistic licence - and ignorance, or an artifact found on site during the excavations from a much later time period that overlay the much older city.

Dear all

The luminous points are metals.

It might be of your interest also the work done by the project on The archaeology of mining and quarrying in England by the National Association of Mining History Organization see their research at www.namho.org 

It is not possible to determine when shamanism first occurred or even what its definition is.  A shaman can involve those who are involved in healing arts rather than metaphysical ones so it is possible that they existed even among Neanderthals.  We know that they not only ritually buried their dead but also treated the injuries of their contemporaries.

If the question is however concentrated on the formation of formal religious beliefs we can again observe that hunter-gatherer communities today, as in ancient times have spiritual beliefs usually associated with creation and humanity's place in the universe (environment)  

All religious beliefs are manfestations of the human capacity for abstract thought.  Some evidence, albeit limited and in part conjectural places the development of his way back in hominid evolution.  The lower palaeolithic handaxe incorporating a fossil bivalve shell from West Tofts, Norfolk, England indicates aesthetic or symbolic appreciation in palaeolithic hunters.

Even more intriguing is the Makapansgat pebble which bears the naturally formed image of a human face dating back to the Australopithecines.  This pebble had been transported from its site of origin indicating it may have been picked up and carried after being recognised.   

If abstract thought was present in early hominids then some form of spiritual ideas may have formed.

Indeed  Armstrong..! I think its hard to explain why.  Few weeks a go i have done some experiment with ACAVIDAE , FOSSIL AND LIVING SPECIES OF BATADOMBALENA CAVE PRE-HISTORIC SITE IN SRI LANKA.

Actually, all the bull roarers I've seen, whether Australian aboriginal, Navajo, or whatever, have just one hole, usually at a tapered end, unless they're double wand bullroarers. Usually they're of wood, but stone or bone should also work as long as the weight's about right.

Hi Stefan

Myabe it isn't to late for answer to this question, that's why I send You this. Maybe it will be useful.

D. J. Seymour 2009; Nineteenth-century Apache wickiups: historically documented models for archaeological signatures of the dwellings of mobile people, "Antiquity", 83(319): 157-164.

Best Regards

Maciej Wawrzczak

its's a long way from Texas but you might try goggling "pukaskwa pit"  - stone structures north of and on relic beaches of Lake Superior usually associated with vision quests - sometimes hollows scoped out of cobble beaches. -

The copper must have come from Cyprus as Crete has none. However, the Cretans (Minoans) were travelling far and wide from before the Bronze Age and were even trading bronze artifacts made in Northern Italy (Terramare) before the dawn of the Iron Age.

I wonder if any of the numerous lavrys found at Arkalohori in Crete actually belong to the Iron Age.

Vasiliki Kassianidou from the University of Cyprus (academia.edu) may be able to give you more information on your subject.

Thank you. I will try to contact her. 

Yes, cave Muierii from Baia de Fier - county Gorj, Romania.

Biblio: MARIN CÂRCIUMARU, Le Paléolithique en Roumanie, Editions Jérôme Millon, Grenoble, 1999, 260 p., 100 fig., 19 tab.; ISBN 2-84137-082-8.

Thanks Erik and James! I appreciate you taking the time to look into this. This is all very interesting and good food for thought. It certainly explains why it is so hard to find examples in the literature.

The depth of space between the discs makes me think it is not for a shield boss as the metal is reasonably thin; the gap looks too large; so I still think it is more for securing a building structure together 

Krishanan- Garrit has explained about hominins. We have two types of fossil hominins from Narmada valley- you see my latest paper. Neanderthals and Denisovans are not recognized in Indian fossil record. On Sialik hominoids too I have uploaded several papers. Pl see.

Guillomet Malmassari V. (2012) - D'une révolution à l'autre. Pour une épistémologie de la problématique de transition en Préhistoire. Mémoire de la Société Préhistorique Française n°54.

It's in french but it's very interesting !

Best regards,

Lorène Chesnaux

Please also browse the Radiocarbon at: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=RDC

One can distinguish between hearths and fireplaces. A structured, dug-down, stone-lined hearth is less vulnerable taphonomically. However, some circular structures in the archaeological record may not have contained such a hearth. This does not necessarily mean that they did not contain a central fireplace.

There are examples of structures without either central hearth, or fireplace. I have seen photos of aboriginal wurleys, where hearths are not present inside (often a small fireplace, though not a formal hearth can be seen outside though). Similarly, in southern Africa San huts generally appear to have hearth or fireplace in front of them, rather then inside.

Both these examples are from warmer areas, so this may point to a geographic/climatic determinant. This may be too simplistic though.

Work on Neanderthals has shown that "classical huts" are generally absent. 

(see e.g.: Kolen, J. (1999). Hominids without homes: On the nature of Middle Palaeolithic settlement in Europe. In Roebroeks, W. and Gamble, C. (Eds.), The Middle Palaeolithic of Europe (pp. 139-175) Leiden: University of Leiden.)

Wei Chu has shown experimentally, that to survive in Ice Age environments, a simple windbreak is already highly effective in preventing heat loss and would allow Neanderthals to expand their range to cold areas, where without insulation, life would be impossible.

(See: Chu, W. (2009). A functional approach to Paleolithic open-air habitation structures. World Archaeology, 41, 348-362.)

Gianmarco,

there are a variety of hypotheses on the use of such discs based on form and morphology. The easiest ones are those round to ovoid ones with centrally drilled holes which were used as spindle whorls, but there are also others with offset and/or multiple holes which seemingly wouldn't have worked on a weaving loom. Those disks are believed to have been bull roarers or similar implements.

Some of the early colonial Pueblo sites here in the US Southwest that I've been working on have produced an astounding variety of undrilled shaped discs, from roundish to ovoid to rectangular to triangular. The standard interpretation for those sherds is that they were used as gaming pieces, an interpretation which may well be accurate for most of them (e.g. Gaming in the Rio del Norte: Defining the Typology and Usage of Modified -Potsherds at Pot Creek Pueblo (LA 260, TA 1), @ http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=socanth_honproj). See also this short summary of Native American games: http://moa.wfu.edu/files/2012/04/Fun-and-Games-Teachers-Guide.pdf

More recently, however, especially the rounded variety in Greek/Roman contexts (pessoi) has been subject to more detailed forensic analysis, and it has turned out that they may have been the equivalent of toilet paper - see Philippe Charlier et al., Toilet hygiene in the classical era, British Medical Journal, 2012. This is a very interesting article, to say the least. I seem to remember a similar analysis was done on some prehistoric Puebloan ceramic discs, with similar results, but I need to search where I read that.

Hope this helps a bit .

Dear Alexandra, I know nothing similar to your case, but I've seen several examples of physical limits made just under the tumulus walls around some dolmens in France, during excavations. They look like a small dug trough or a line of small stones and they show the original drawing on the ground made by the Neolithic architect planning to build his monument. But in your case, the feature is different.

...just out of interest, I have also just ordered a copy of this book, which looks like it has some interesting chapters on limb development and evolution in humans. I obviously haven't read it yet, but it might also be of interest to you:

Dear Gianmarco,

In the United States, the most common primitive house-type constructed on the ever-westward-moving frontier (of the European settlement), was built of two log "pens" (rooms) interconnected with a open "breezeway" (all under a single roof-plan), which was often later enclosed (as a wide hallway or third-room) as the pioneer settlers became more established or gained enough wealth to upgrade their early dwellings. This style of house was called the "dog-trot" style (because the settlers' dogs were frequently using this intervening open-space as a place to lounge and shelter themselves). However, it was utilized by the human inhabitants as the common place where many/most domestic chores were usually performed.

There are many books published that deal with history and architecture of the American "dog-trot" [one of the best entitled Texas Log Buildings: a folk architecture, by Professor Terry G. Jordan) ... if you have an intense interest, I may be able to find a PDF of this or one-or-two other good ones I can provide for you from my digital library.

The book is available online, here:

From the original publisher (The University of Texas Press), here:

and, also, very reasonably priced used copies can usually be found on Amazon.

Regards,

Bob

hi A.green,maybe in the beginning times it was only simple pattern that imitated from the nature but later with developing human's lifestyle,it became very complex.specially in the middle east region,pottery and its motif used for transfer human idea,religion and so on. in scientific excavation of prehistoric sites ,specially,we found similar samples from wares and potsherd that have in their bottoms potter's signature in abstract-concept's shape several times...

Andras,

Yes, until the 19th/20th century in most of the world, reading and writing was used by the elite of society (politicians, clergy, royalty, merchant princes) as a means of controlling the masses. As I have noted before on RG, colonial Mexico is a prime example where baron ranchers and other powerful people would go to "university" in order to learn enormous and complex words in which to use in front of their workers as a means to show the "peons" how much more intelligent and worthy of leading the "commoners" they were.

I believe that this has been propagated by some university systems even now, when you get questions like "What is macrogamete?" or "Define staphylorrhaphy" or "What is flagitiousness?" on college GRE exams. As if the everyday person, even with a minor degree, knows these obscure words, much less needs to use them in everyday conversation.

But getting back to the question - as previously noted, writing arises when a society reaches a certain technological/social complexity. Some will use the Inca as argument against this, but the Inca are almost unique, for they used knots on cordage/string to convey words. Thus, like cuneiform, their "writing" used a system of relationships between the same basic element to convey letters/words. The need to count, to keep track of numbers/inventory, is seen by many to have been the basis for the rise of the written language in several cultures. Some of the first "writing" that we find are marks on clay tablets, some with stamps/seals to show author.

Dear Ana,

This is what is called in Portuguese "um punção losânguico" in French "allene lozanguique" typical of the Early Bronze Age. See, for example, "Senna-Martinez, J.C. 1994. "Subsídios para o estudo do Bronze Pleno na Estremadura Atlântica: (1) A alabarda de tipo «Atlântico» do Habitat das Baútas (Amadora)", in: Zephyrus, XLVI-XLVII, pp.149-170.

Best wishes,

J. C. Senna-Martinez

If you are interested in firing conditions you should have a read of Maniatis and Tite 1981. Technological examination of Neolithic-Bronze Age pottery from central and southeast Europe and from the Near East. J. of Archaeological Science 8, 59-76. If you are interested in painting technology, I would suggest looking up the work doen by Eleni Aloupi and Maniatis, also by Vassilis Kilikoglou. If you are interested in mechanical properties of ancient pottery look up the work of Anno Hein and also that of Noémi Müller who works mainly on mechanics of cooking pottery through mineralogy, chemical composition and microstructure.

You might consider googling the Society of Bead Researchers.  The have both an annual journal and quarterly newsletter where one can pose research questions. About half of the Society are archaeologists.

Brian, 

Thanks for alerting me to this citation.  One of my colleagues is a co-author.  It looks like there is still much disagreement and controversy on the duration and exact age and character of the dispersal for Clovis.

My investment to the answer of Miki Ben-Dor’s question have been present in my articles entitled “Infections, immunity and anthropogenesis” (2007), “Bioecology of pleistocenic spurt in anthropogenesis” (2010), “Where and When Human Viral Epidemics First Emerged” (2012),. “Dating of first emergence of human epidemics” (2012), “THE HIV AGE AND LOCATION OF ORIGIN” (2013).

While Colson and others have valid points, Brassard's suggestion also has merit. As I just noted in another of Alan's questions, native peoples who still live or feel connected to the land might relate to the "rock art". And, not necessarily natives to that specific area. We know that prehistoric pottery designs were replicated throughout the eastern U.S. Were these by independent invention or dissemination, as in this means that?

As mentioned, I noted that pottery designs from a late prehistoric site in south Louisiana were shown to a local Chitimacha Indian basket maker. Come to find out, the pottery motifs matched traditional basket weaving designs that had been passed down from generation to generation. Each design had a name and meaning/lore, some of which have been lost in tribal memory.

Well said, Alicia: Each pictograph or petroglyph must be evaluated for possible dating on its own merits. I chose micro-stratigraphy because most people can do it with very simple equipment. Bryan.

Dear Cătălin,

From what I could find on a quick search on the Internet, I understand that L. pygmaeus is a species currently found only near the Danube in the area of Giurgiu (http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/156068/0).

It may be possible that the species had a larger geographic range in the past, but, just in case it didn't, I suggest you also look for information on ornaments made from other Lythoglyphus species, as close comparison material.

For example, L. naticoides was used in prehistoric times for making ornaments. Here's a paper that can get you started:

Apparently, a L. naticoides necklacewas also found in Romania:

There is a lot of information about that in french, you can try this scholar.google.com search

and check what kind of things are of your interest. 

Another detail of the same taxon.

Best available book is Robert York and Gigi York 2011  Slings and Slingstones: The Forgotten Weapons of Oceania and the Americas. Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio.

see also my review in American Antiquity  2013,  78(1):199-200.

and my Atlatl Bibliography on Academia.edu, and there is quite a lot of modern slingers on youtube

Methodology is not normally a term applied to writing a book (as opposed, say, to doing field or laboratory research), or at least not that sort of a book. 

In a sense the book 'Human Universals' is a "review" of the literature.  They are written all the time in many fields (n psychology, sociology, and of course anthropology). But there is no standard methodology for writing a book about cultural or biological universals. Brown did search the term 'universals' to go through various published journal indexes that listed references for further investigation.  

 In particular, aside from the anthropological evidence for cultural and biological universals, Brown paid attention to the evidence in psychology and evolutionary psychology.  

He also drew on his own field experiences in Brunei, Bali, Mexico, and of course the US--hence he relied on the comparative method.  That in turn was much supplemented by a long interest in world ethnography.  He had prepared for field work in Latin America.  He studied with Africanists (Leo Kuper, M.G. Smith, Victor Turner) to learn British Social Anthro, and thereby read a lot of African ethnography.  All this adds up to the comparative method.

 There is a section of my book where Brown discusses how he assessed the universality of problematic cases for universals and he dealt with the quantitative issue of absolute vs near universals. Much of this is not dignified with the term methodology but is standard method across many fields as part of what constitutes objective or scientific writing.

Brown followed in the footsteps of Murdock and others who had focused on the study of universals, but produced a more nuanced account of universals that had been neglected by the majority of anthropologists who tended to focus on cultural differences.  

Of course Brown does not deny tremendous cultural variation and differences throughout the world.   But the neglect of cultural and biological universals often led anthropologists to 'exoticize' humans in various regions of the world, reducing the ability to empathize with the so-called 'other.'   Anthropologists must emphasize both the similarities and differences of people and societies they investigate to produce a more comprehensive understanding of humanity.  

Abrazos Debora, 

I'm glad that Tom Headland weighed in, he has great longitudinal data for the Agta. I'm sure you are familiar with the second edition of Nancy Howell's "Demography of the Dobe !Kung" (2000, Aldine de Gruyter, New York) and Kim Hill and M. A. Hurtado's "Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People", 1996, Aldine de Gruyter, New York. You probably also have looked at Renee Pennington's Hunter-gatherer demography chapter that compares soem published data in Panter-Brick, C., R. H. Layton, and P. Rowley-Conway (eds), Hunter-Gatherers: An  Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp.170-204, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge You should look at Karen and my Pume paper (2007 Karen L. Kramer and Russell D. Greaves. Changing patterns of infant mortality and fertility among Pumé foragers and horticulturalists. American Anthropologist 109 (4):713-726; or the Spanish version:  2010 Karen L. Kramer and Russell D. Greaves. Cambios en los patrones de mortalidad infantil y fertilidad entre cazadores-recolectores y horticultores Pumé: implicaciones para el crecimiento poblacional y desarrollo sostenible. Antropológica 54 (113):5-41.) Paula Ivey studied Efe ("Pygmy") women and allocare in the mid 1990s, she may have some demographic data, you can say that I suggested you contact her (piveyhen@hsph.harvard.edu). If that email does not work I can get you in contact with her another way. Although the Semai data in Alan Fix's study were agricultural at the time of his work, they were a former hunter-gatherers group: A. G. Fix, 1977. The Demography of the Semai Senoi. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Anthropological Paper N0. 62, Ann Arbor. Did you have a chance to ask  Karen about references when you saw her at CHAGS? 

There is a human ulna shaped into a point from "The Cutts", a river bed site in Northern Ireland, directly dated to the Mesolithic. The details are in my paper with Peter Woodman on Irish dates in Mesolithic Miscellany 22(1) for 2012. This lists the original publication which has a photo. The article listed as in prep by Peter Woodman has not yet been published. 

I have attached the MM volume; see page 27.

Chris Meiklejohn

I have an ethoarchaeological perspective about this question. First, there may be no direct relationship between some aspects of artifact size and hunting target. Obviously, gear for taking some larger game, cetaceans, or pinnipeds may have size differences that do relate to target size, but gear can be technologically designed so that size is a potentially misleading clue. This is even more relevant because archaeological examples force us to stretch inferences from incomplete views of any technological item (but you are quite fortunate to have organic components!). The wooden shafts may not be the best size indicator about target function, even if there is a general pattern of size matching food target. I would urge you to think about technology (and ESPECIALLY Arctic technology) as a complex of interacting parts. Rather than expecting size to have a straightforward correlation with food targets, use all kinds of evidence to see if these shaft frags can give you other technological information (is there clear evidence they are parts of composite tools? - are there adhesive residues, evidence of fibers, what kinds of potential use damage can you identify - is there a reason to suspect they are all variants of equivalent gear or gear components?, ah the endless questions about archaeological artifacts!). In work I have done with savanna hunter-gatherers in Venezuela, all foreshafts are approximately the same thickness. Foreshafts for arrow that are used for smaller game (armadillos, lizards, birds, and fish) are significantly longer than those used for larger, but uncommon, game such as deer, tamandua anteaters, capybaras, or the giant anteater. Additionally, the arrow mainshafts also are statistically shorter for these larger game arrows. Most South American arrows are quite long (~2m), and many suggestions have been made in attempts to explain this. With the folks I work with in Venezuela, the shorter arrow also employs radial fletching more often than longer arrows. Radial fletching is "better" for flight stabilization, but it is more work than the more common tangential fletching. The shorter arrow with more engineered stabilization might be better in flight performance in these savannas than longer arrows. However, all traditional projectile technology is used at as close quarters as is possible, the absolute outside for most subsistence projectiles is 30 m and this is a major long shot gamble. That distance applies to what little quantified observations are in the literature about habitual use by subsistence folks for bows & arrows, atlatls, blowguns, etc. However, the statistical differences do suggest that traditional folks can certainly appreciate even slight performance improvements, which in the uniquely human ways we overtly or inadvertently copy or design tools could end up with at least some  more "efficient" (but only n terms o potentially very unique local conditions and practice) designs characterizing a portion of traditional gear. The less forgiving extremes of Arctic environments is obviously one place where  such specific efficiencies are expected to arise, but whether we have the evidence and intellectual tools to unravel that is part of the obgong fun of archaeological material culture studies. From visits to museum collections looking at past artifacts from the foragers I work with in venezuela, I also have recorded that in the past, these folks often placed a "stop" at the proximal portion (nearest the archer) of the lanceolate point on the larger game arrows that prevents deep penetration. While this is a nonintuitive design, it appears to be related to preferring to lose a poorly shot animal rather than losing the (even more scarce than it currently is) metal used to make this style point. Sorry, long story, but you have an exciting opportunity to use these organic technological elements to make important inferences about tool use. Also keep in mind, that not all sticks (not even pointy sticks from Middle Paleolithic sites that are automatically assumed to be spears, but remember most digging sticks look like this and even the most abbreviated kinds of architecture often employ pointy sticks...) are necessarily hunting weapons. You should consult the fabulous photographic record of Eskimo technology in: Nelson, Edward William, 1899 (1983). The Eskimo About Bering Strait. In The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896-97, pp. 3-518. Government Printing Office (Smithsonian Institution Press), Washington, D.C. that has a terrific coverage of a wide range of technology and illustrates multiple examples of most implements. You also should look at the engravings and text in the not quite equally fabulous: Murdoch, John, 1892 (1988). Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition. In The Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1887-88, pp. 3-441. Government Printing Office (Smithsonian Institution Press), Washington, D.C, that has a very comprehensive view of technology and good textual attention to variation. 

Other than Michaela Huffman's recent dissertation and the older sources you mention, I am not aware that anybody else has worked in this area.

I'm sure you know that Anna C. Roosevelt has done Amazonian

archeology, but I do not see anything about paleopathology in her

writings. Perhaps contacting her would be the best way to find this

information.

Dear all,

Just an addition to my previous answer: we have now submitted our manuscript. We discovered that in the past there was a flaw in the search function of the European Pollen Database, and I had, thus, overlooked many sites. The total amount of records from western Eurasia as far as I know of is around 235.

Dear Zdenek: I now know of eight records from the Czech Republic, of which one also dates to the Iron Age.

Dear Otto: I found over 30 sites from the Netherlands and Belgium, does this correspond with the amount of records in your inventarisation? There are indeed some records from prehistoric times.

best wishes,

Pim

Will do!

Hello, I think it depends on region and epoch. Are you going to study the particular site, region, time period? Which one exactly? Or you just need to create a student paper/presentation - the short review of rock art as a whole? 

This seems an interesting analytical method, although I'd have some questions about its application to archaeological assemblages that are incomplete in terms of their reduction sequence. The experimental assemblages Brown uses obviously represent a complete reduction sequence. However, how would differences in material transport and reduction intensity effect interpretations in terms of the distribution of material sizes? My other concern is that not all raw material types fracture equally. Here in South Africa, quartz exploitation in the Oldowan has challenged analytical methods b/c of the high rate of fragmentation inherent in this material. So hypothetically, while size distributions of materials may represent a complete reduction sequence (in reality they don't), small flaking debris is always over-represented, simply b/c of the material properties of quartz. So wouldn't interpretations be skewed to some degree simply based on the fact that quartz is a more waste-producing material in stone-knapping. Brown's archaeological assemblages seem to be mostly composed of chert and obsidian, which are obvious better quality materials. If the completeness of reduction sequences cannot be assumed, or fracture rates of materials might skew completeness, how does this affect interpretations? 

Not direct injuries, but some studies on neolithic arrows from central Portugal here

Sadly only in portuguese.

Will try to translate it into a more common language, and updated with most recent findings.

Dear Veerle,

I have not yet contacted Bruker, but that's my next step if the RG community is also unable to help me with this problem :). Thanks for your suggestion.

The issue, as I detailed above, is not that they instruments are yielding different results in terms of elemental counts (same elements are being detected), this is to be expected. But that I was told that you can either expand the channels or compress them to make data collected on two different instruments comparable. But this is just not working out. I have tried making the old data comparable to the new by expanding its spectrum channel from 1024 to 2048 and have tried the reverse and neither work.

Again, thanks for  your suggestion!

Dear Jos,

the choice for the calibration is based on environmental considerations. If you believe that your shells lived in a marine environment you can use Marine 13. But beach barrier could be a more complex environment so if the shells lived in a lagoon you can take into consideration the possibility of a different calibration.

Best regards,

Luigi Vigliotti

Dear Cristi,

I think you already know the lioness clay figurine from Goljamo Delcevo tell settlement (Bulgaria), belonging to KGK VI cultural complex, published by  Fol, A., J. Lichardus (eds.). 1988. Macht, Herrschaft und Gold: das Graberfeld von Varna (Bulgarien) und die Anfänge einer neuen europäischen Zivilisation. Saarbrücken, Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums.

This figurine was republished by  H. Manhart 1998, Vorgeschichtliche Fauna Bulgariens. Die vorgeschichtliche Tierwelt von Koprivec und Durankulak und anderen prähistorischen Fundplätzen in Bulgarien aufgrund von Knochenfunden aus archäologischen Ausgrabungen. Documenta Naturae 116: 3-353 (also with additional data about lion bones in Neolithic and Eneolithic periods from SE Europe) and  N.R. Thomas 2004, The Early Mycenaean Lion up to Date. In: Anne P. Chapin (ed.), Xάρις. Essays in Honor of Sara A. Immerwahr, Hesperia Supplement 33: 161-206 (see attach).

Best wishes,

Catalin

Dear Edouard

Some work has been done on the pinniped ankle by David Polly (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-6997-0_9). The taxonomic focus is broader than just pinnipeds though and tarsals are not exactly long-bones, but it might still be of use to you.

Best wishes,

Anneke

No problem.

Best,

Julie

Your welcome, Eik.

You may also find it helpful to check the works of Prof. Trevor Bryce, one of my lecturers when I was doing my degree.

Trevor seems to be now held as one of the leading experts on the Hittites, at least among English speaking scholars.

I'd suggest concentrating on his later works, because I know his views have changed over time.  On some key points they are very different from where they were when I was a student 30+ years ago, particularly with regard to Troy and the identity of the  Ahhiyawans.

I still see Trevor occasionally at the University of Queensland, but I'm not in a position to put you in touch with him.  His most recent work is a book on the history of Ancient Syria.

Dear Marko,

I think you'll find some interesting papers on those two web sites : 

In english : www.butser.org.uk where you can download many papers of Peter Reynolds who conducted a lot of experiments

mostly in french : www.francois-sigaut.com where you also can download the papers of this great agronomist who, in some kind of way, "rediscovered" the use of underground storage. (papers 1979b, 1980b, 1981b, 1988). 

Here are also some papers in italian ,spanish and catalan. You can find in Miret i Mestre's work reference about putting fire in storage pits to get rid of bugs or any other micro-organisms

I also guess you'll find o lot into Boban Tripkovic's bibliography

Hope these will be useful

Yours

Anne

I just cooked, washed and dry up 2 species of local starfish. Mystery solved: all those strange archaeological bones came from our common starfish (Stichaster striatus). The skeleton includes many articulated parts with different shapes, an incredible architecture indeed !

Hi Rusty, thanks for the good suggestions. The problem in tropical environments and sites is that bamboo grows everywhere and a presence of bamboo phytoliths in sediments isn't too conclusive perhaps. Bamboo phytoliths as residues on stone tools have been identified, e.g. by Huw Barton and Richard Fullagar, etc, if I remember correctly. But this suggests only the use of bamboo without getting much information about the bamboo object itself. While the use of bamboo in the past is commonly accepted, we still don't know for what activities and purposes. A PhD thesis on the ethnography and use-wear of bamboo working in the Philippines has been recently presented at MNHN in Paris by Hermine Xhauflair. She addresses this problem and presents a comprehensive and detailed reference collection of use-wear traces from working bamboo and other plant materials in her thesis. This could be a step in the right direction.

Dear Katharina,

Another paleolithic grave is Shanidar IV in the Shanidar Cave (present day Iraq) - the famous Neanderthal flower burial. According to flower pollen it is estimated that the deceased was buried during late spring or early summer.

See: Solecki, R. S. 1975, Shanidar IV, A Neanderthal Flower Burial in Northern Iraq. Science 190:880 - 881

It should be noted that some have suggested that some rodents dug their way through the grave and thus left pollen they picked up from the surface, however, as I understand it, this is the less likely course of events.

There is the radon-B database which is growing and also covering this area.

Alright, as no one else has answered yet I'll have a crack!

When you say a fragment of red ochre bead do you mean a bead made of an iron oxide mineral (such as hematite) or a bead made out of other materials (such as clay or shell) that has been coloured using an iron oxide pigment?

Ochre has been used as to colour objects associated with personal adornment for a long, long time. In 2007 there was the widely reported discovery of 82,000 year old shell beads with ochre traces from the Grotte des Pigeons in Morocco (link to the paper in PNAS below).

A good general place to start looking for information on the use of iron oxides (both as objects and pigments) is George Rapp's book Archaeomineralogy (2009). A couple of relevant pages are available to preview on Google Books (linked below).

One of the points that Rapp raises is that there is, amongst archaeologists, often a lot of confusion over exactly what we mean when we say 'ochre' (with it frequently being applied to anything a bit reddish). Following on from this I was wondering if you'd managed to have the bead analysed or if it's designation as red ochre was solely based on the colour. If the latter then it might be worth (if the budget is available or there is a friendly scientist nearby) having it analysed to check if it is indeed red ochre, another iron oxide pigment (such as umber) or a different colourant entirely. 

As to the main point of your question: I'm not a prehistorian, so am afraid I can't provide any examples or parallels for your region or period.  Hopefully someone with real knowledge will be along shortly to answer :)

There are some elements which are typical for plant/wood ash - P (mainly), Mg, so if there are in glass you can suggested to ash use. More, there are some relations between Sr, Rb content and ash using.

Hi,

  I have discovered your question today. You might be interested by this database. It is for all the world. I do not know if it is complete, but many sites are recorded yet. This database is in English and Japanese. Please follow this link :

Best

Jean-Luc

Tres técnicas diferentes en zonas montañosas de Colombia

En esta dirección, una tradicional excavación de sitio que rescató o excavó materiales de cazadores recolectores del 8.000 A.P. a 3.000 m.s.n.m.

Aquí la técnica (survey) surgida en Perú en la década de 1950, creo, y luego retomada en México en las décadas de 1960 y 1970, para la media montaña, o zona tropical húmeda de 2.500 m.s,n.m., para detectar lotes de cerámica del 1.000 a.C. hasta el 300 a.C.

Y esta es la técnica de arqueología del paisaje implementada en media montaña (1.500 m.s.n.m.) a partir de la arqueología del paisaje del Grupo de Investigación surgido en Santiago de Compostela (Felipe Criado Boado y otros)

I excavated the remains of several dogs from the entrance passage of the chambered cairn at Point of Cott on Westray in Orkney {Barber, 1997}, with some radiocarbon dates associated.

 Dear N. Nezafati,

I think you should look at some articles which related to gold production in Anatolia and Aegean during Bronze Ages for some progress your study.

1. W. J. Young, 1972, ' The Fabulous Gold of the Pactolus Valley', Bulletin: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. LXX, 1972, no. 359, 5-13.

2. JESUS, de P. S., 1980, The Development of Prehistoric Mining and Metallurgy in Anatolia, BAR International Series 74 ( i ),Oxford. see pages 71 and 85, 86, 88.  

 3. George M. A. Hanfmann, 'Archeological Explorations of Sardis', Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Nov., 1973),pp. 13-26. see page 20. 

4. K. Branigan, 1974, Aegean Metalwork in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, Oxford. See p. 90.

best wishes,

There are several items due to the different specialties of the people who have responded:

- No tools, at least not have been modified by the man to suit any use.

- They aren't fossils. They have neither the external appearance, internal structure or texture to assign to any known taxon.

- Very probably be pebbles of fluvial origin: shape, texture and rounded surface, including small marks and holes, are perfectly compatible with typical fluvial erosion on hard rocks.

- Most likely its nature is of quartzite, sandstone or in some case quartz. Thin laminations are compatible with sedimentary laminations or tectonic foliations.

Add: the hardness of the material is not compatible with any known taphonomic process occurred in the last two million years (the age of man sensu lato). On the contrary, has all the appearance of being due to metamorphic processes (recrystallization of quartz) that occur in the interior of the earth and need an orogenic event, exhumation and subsequent erosion to retrieve samples to surface. The age of the rocks must be Pre-Cenozoic (at least more than 66 million years before present and the origin of man).

Sure that in the place you find this the stones must be a lot of other similar stones but with other shapes, bigger and smaller.

Show the stones to a geologist or a paleontologist as others recomended before.

See also this recent paper about the persistence of ancient protein molecules (uploaded to RG this week), including examples from dinosaur fossils:

may be ask Olivier Lemercier