Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-09-06DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0012
Quentin Drillat
{"title":"Reconciling Contradictory Archaeological Survey Data: A Case Study from Central Crete, Greece","authors":"Quentin Drillat","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Rescue archaeology in urban contexts often opens small windows on ancient settlements that need to be combined to better perceive the history of these settlements. This article suggests that the same combinatory approach should be employed with survey data. Indeed, archaeological surveys can split single ancient settlements into multiple archaeological sites due to visibility changes. It implies that the perception we have of legacy datasets must change: errors in location data might occur in older, and especially pre-GPS, survey datasets, but the fact that more recent projects have not been able to find sites on the exact same spots might also be related to changes in visibility windows. Using a case study from central Crete, Greece, where two survey projects were conducted in the same area, this article suggests that the variability in location data of sites recorded during survey projects can provide new insights into settlement patterns and dynamics. Notably, evidence of grouped settlements is found, including for periods such as Late Minoan II and Late Minoan III C, previously known for a strong decrease in large settlements’ occupation.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142175831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-08-14DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0010
Martí Mas Cornellà, Mónica Solís Delgado, Rafael Maura Mijares, Enrique Parra Greco, Pedro Pablo Pérez García, Beatriz Gavilán Ceballos, Ruth Taylor, Guadalupe Torra Colell, Javier Pérez González, José Antonio Barrera Vera, Daniel García Rivero
{"title":"Dehesilla Cave Rock Paintings (Cádiz, Spain): Analysis and Contextualisation within the Prehistoric Art of the Southern Iberian Peninsula","authors":"Martí Mas Cornellà, Mónica Solís Delgado, Rafael Maura Mijares, Enrique Parra Greco, Pedro Pablo Pérez García, Beatriz Gavilán Ceballos, Ruth Taylor, Guadalupe Torra Colell, Javier Pérez González, José Antonio Barrera Vera, Daniel García Rivero","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0010","url":null,"abstract":"A systematic survey of Dehesilla Cave was carried out during 2017 in order to search for traces of rock art. Several panels with paintings were identified in the chamber next to the entrance (consisting of strokes, dots, stains, and remnants of shapes in red and black), which had remained unnoticed up until now and may provide relevant information towards the understanding of the prehistoric use of the cave and its seemingly symbolic topography. However, we cannot assume <jats:italic>a priori</jats:italic> a relationship between these paintings and the well-known Neolithic sequence of the site. To assess these paintings, we have analysed photomicrographs which have allowed us to determine their detailed characteristics, stroke morphology, and remnant features (for instance, hue, shape, density of paint, pigment grain size, micro-stroke traces left by the tools used). Taphonomic issues have also been considered and several physical and chemical techniques of analysis have been applied in order to identify the pigments and possible binders.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142175832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-07-16DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0008
Nuria Romero Vidal
{"title":"Crafted Landscapes: The Uggurwala Tree (Ochroma pyramidale) as a Potential Cultural Keystone Species for Gunadule Communities","authors":"Nuria Romero Vidal","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Wooden material culture has traditionally been overshadowed in ethnographic and archaeological collections. However, its study has great potential to further our understanding of human–plant interactions. Carvings and crafts store information related to the trees and woodlands of provenance as well as about the people who shaped them. This article discusses the possibilities and difficulties of reconstructing the path from the museum’s objects to the trees by applying a multidisciplinary approach. One specific tree, the <jats:italic>uggurwala</jats:italic> tree (<jats:italic>Ochroma pyramidale</jats:italic>), is repeatedly selected by Gunadule people for particular carvings. The use of <jats:italic>Ochroma</jats:italic> has been observed in objects deposited in ethnographic collections and it was probably a Cultural Keystone Species for Gunadule communities and a potential one for the Isthmo-Colombian area. By exploring this concept and applying it to the study of these types of objects, new reflections on the role of wood material culture in past and present societies are raised.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141721314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-06-27DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0006
Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo
{"title":"Editorial: Microhistory and Archaeology","authors":"Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0006","url":null,"abstract":"This is an introduction to the Special Issue on Microhistory and Archaeology.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-06-22DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0005
Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo
{"title":"Two Sides of the Same Coin: Microhistory, Micropolitics, and Infrapolitics in Medieval Archaeology","authors":"Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0005","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, it is argued that a microhistorical perspective applied to historical archaeologies provides intelligibility to certain mechanisms of exercise of power and forms of resistance in the local sphere. Adopting a microhistorical approach, two primary mechanisms of social order consensus creation and contestation are explored through the creation and negotiation of symbolic capital. Micropolitics are understood as a set of poorly formalised but meaningful practices that define, model, and negotiate forms of social domination by integrating different communicative languages. Infrapolitics shape the forms of resistance and agency of subaltern groups and, by definition, are not easy to track and identify. Through the study of small empirical illustrations from the medieval period in the Basque Country, the aim is to argue that there is a correlation between the intensity and complexity of the political practices that develop in local societies and the forms of contestation of rights and cohesion mechanisms. To carry out this analysis, material, textual, mnemonic, and oral records are used.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"143 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-06-20DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0002
Manuel Enrique Cueto, María Laura Ciampagna, Aylen Capparelli
{"title":"Microwear and Plant Residue Analysis in a Multiproxy Approach from Stone Tools of the Middle Holocene of Patagonia (Argentina)","authors":"Manuel Enrique Cueto, María Laura Ciampagna, Aylen Capparelli","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0002","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to evaluate the functionality of a sample of lithic tools from a multiproxy perspective. The artifacts come from a mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers’ occupation of the La Mesada site in Patagonia. The perspective involves the examination of use-wear traces, hafting wear, and organic micro-residues. The experimental program that supports this perspective is presented. Use-wear traces and organic residues were recognized in the distal portion of the archaeological artifacts. Meanwhile, some tools, in the proximal and middle portion, present alterations attributable to hafting in combination with animal and vegetable residues. The production sequence of a particular artifact design is discussed, with distinctive aspects regarding regional trends. Practices related to plant management were identified that allow the evaluation of mobility circuits and interchange mechanisms of these societies.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141530224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-05-31DOI: 10.1515/opar-2024-0003
Francesca Fulminante, Luca Alessandri
{"title":"Salt Production in Central Italy and Social Network Analysis Centrality Measures: An Exploratory Approach","authors":"Francesca Fulminante, Luca Alessandri","doi":"10.1515/opar-2024-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2024-0003","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, we study salt-production settlement in central Italy with an exploratory application of centrality indexes, common in social network analysis: betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and degree centrality. These methods are not new, but they have never been applied to this type of site and the results are innovative and illuminating. In fact, the closeness and degree centrality do not yield particularly interesting results. However, the betweenness centrality, which indicates the most commonly used routes in a given region, provide powerful insights. By indicating shifting most common routes through time, from the terrestrial and sea route along the coast in the Bronze and Iron Age, to the use of the Tiber River and Tiber valley as route, in the Orientalizing and Archaic Period, they allow us to advance hypotheses about the shift between two different productions. The briquetage salt production technique was used in the Bronze and Iron Age on the costal sites, which was also the most common route used in the region. While the proper marine production at the mouth of the Tiber, both on the Etruscan and Latin side, might develop during the Orientalizing and Archaic Age, together with an intensified use of the Via Salaria, running from the coast to the mountains of Latium, along the Tiber River. It would be interesting to confirm these hypotheses with further analyses and also targeted excavations.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141195387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-04-30DOI: 10.1515/opar-2022-0359
Andrea Torma, Katalin Náfrádi, Sándor Gulyás, Pál Sümegi
{"title":"Plant Use and Cereal Cultivation Inferred from Integrated Archaeobotanical Analysis of an Ottoman Age Moat Sequence (Szigetvár, Hungary)","authors":"Andrea Torma, Katalin Náfrádi, Sándor Gulyás, Pál Sümegi","doi":"10.1515/opar-2022-0359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2022-0359","url":null,"abstract":"Suleiman the Magnificent died during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566, close to the battlefield in Turbék Vineyard Hill site, Hungary. On the place of his death, a memorial place was established with a tomb, a mosque, a monastery, and a deep moat system north of the building complex. After its destruction, the memorial place was covered with demolished material and soil. This significant site was re-identified and excavated during the archaeological, historical, and geoarchaeological research work that started in 2015. As a result of the correlative evaluation of previously published sedimentological and chronological data, the filling of the moat accumulated during the seventeenth century. Our goal was the natural and anthropogenic vegetation reconstruction of the adjacent region of the memorial place and the plant utilization of the community living there. During the analyses, more than 30,000 plant remains were identified belonging to 77 taxa. The results gave indications for ploughed lands, vegetable and fruit cultivation, vineyards, pasture lands, forest patches, and trampled areas related to active human activity. The lithostratigraphic and geochronological results of the moat sequence coincide well with our carpological and anthracological data.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140837215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing the Role of Wooden Vessels, Basketry, and Pottery at the Early Neolithic Site of La Draga (Banyoles, Spain)","authors":"Ingrid Bertin, Susagna Romero-Brugués, Evdoxia Tzerpou, Núria Morera, Isabelle Théry-Parisot, Raquel Piqué","doi":"10.1515/opar-2022-0360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2022-0360","url":null,"abstract":"Organic containers are rarely preserved in archaeological contexts. As a result, the work involved in their production and their functions remains invisible unlike other containers commonly better represented, such as pottery. The early Neolithic site of La Draga (5300–4900 cal BC), located on the shore of the Lake Banyoles (Spain), has provided several containers made of wood and plant fibres besides a significant amount of ceramic remains. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the vessels at La Draga to assess the importance of organic containers in a context where pottery technology is well known and employed for several functions. The importance of the different types of containers in the context of this farming society is assessed through the analysis of the number of remains, their sizes and shapes, and their spatial distribution. The exceptional preservation of the organic vessels allows comparisons to generate hypotheses about their function. Wooden containers are associated with consumption, while baskets may have been used to transport or store foodstuff, and ceramic vessels also for cooking. The spatial distribution of basketry remains tends to show an area that could be linked to the storage of cereals.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"97 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open ArchaeologyPub Date : 2024-03-23DOI: 10.1515/opar-2022-0361
Sarah Lo Russo, David Brönnimann, Christine Pümpin, Kristin Ismail-Meyer, Philippe Rentzel, Rita Gautschy, Johannes Wimmer, Yannick Devos, Karin Nys
{"title":"Recording, Sharing and Linking Micromorphological Data: A Two-Pillar Database System","authors":"Sarah Lo Russo, David Brönnimann, Christine Pümpin, Kristin Ismail-Meyer, Philippe Rentzel, Rita Gautschy, Johannes Wimmer, Yannick Devos, Karin Nys","doi":"10.1515/opar-2022-0361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2022-0361","url":null,"abstract":"In archaeological soil and sediment micromorphology, research is grounded in observations made with petrographic microscopes. These observations are recorded using standardised terms and microphotographs. The two-pillar database system allows a user-friendly recording of these observations with I-GEOARCHrec and the possibility to link these data to field pictures and microphotographs publicly available in I-GEOARCHive.","PeriodicalId":19532,"journal":{"name":"Open Archaeology","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140201343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}