Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory最新文献

{"title":"Dialogues Across Time? Conceptualising the Temporal Relationships of Palimpsests in the Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art of El Castillo (Cantabria, Spain).","authors":"Izzy Wisher,Eduardo Palacio-Pérez","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09717-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09717-5","url":null,"abstract":"Cave sites were frequently reused throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, with many sites within south-western Europe having deep chronologies of activity. The repeated engagement with the same caves, or spaces within caves, is evident in superimpositions of cave art depictions within these sites. Whilst these palimpsests in Upper Palaeolithic cave art have been extensively studied with regard to understanding the relative chronology of art within a particular region or site, they have not been understood from an ontological perspective. Upper Palaeolithic artist's engagement with motifs produced by their predecessors, regardless of cultural continuity, may indicate dialogical interactions occurring across time between culturally and temporally distinct groups of hunter-gatherers. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework-inspired by relationality and contemporary rock art production-for understanding these temporal interactions. Focusing on the case study of El Castillo, we argue that these engagements across time may tentatively indicate aspects of long-term continuity in the ontology of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, reflected in cave art palimpsests.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10816-025-09717-5.","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"49"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144296116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction to: Consumption Trends, Trading Patterns and Economic Development in Italy Across Centuries: Data Analysis of Roman Amphorae in a Long‑Term Perspective","authors":"Paulina Komar, Tom Brughmans, Ekaterina Borisova","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09713-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09713-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143927238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From the Masthead to the Map: an Experimental and Digital Approach to Viking Age Seafaring Itineraries","authors":"Greer Jarrett","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09708-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09708-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Viking Age (c. 800–c. 1050 <span>ad</span>) was characterised by a widespread rise in maritime mobility and interaction, as is made clear by an increasing range of evidence. However, this evidence provides limited information about the sailors and the sailing voyages that connected and transformed the Viking world. This paper presents an approach to reconstruct Viking Age maritime itineraries through the combined use of experimental and digital methods. This approach is grounded in a series of experimental voyages conducted by the author along the Norwegian coast onboard square-rigged, clinker boats built in the descendant Åfjord tradition. The experimental voyages are used to reconstruct the preferences and requirements of Viking Age sailors, helping to define practice-based criteria for evaluating which natural harbours and anchorages might have been favoured during this period. These criteria are complemented by digital reconstructions of historical topographies accounting for changes in relative sea-level since 800 <span>ad</span>. From this combined evaluation, a selection of four possible Viking Age havens is presented. The characteristics and locations of these havens are discussed in relation to contemporary power centres and later seafaring routes. The results suggest that Viking Age seafaring networks along the Norwegian coast may have been more decentralised than their medieval counterparts, and may have relied on relatively outlying nodes on small islands and headlands. The approach highlights the potential of critically combining experimental and digital methods and aims to promote maritime perspectives as an alternative to conventionally terrestrial academic approaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143920306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethnoarchaeological Inductive Predictive Model: A Field Test in the Italian Alps","authors":"Enrico Croce, Francesco Carrer, Diego E. Angelucci","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09712-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09712-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Inductive predictive modelling is a controversial tool in archaeology. Visibility, taphonomy and research history can affect the statistical reliability of an archaeological dataset to be used as a training sample for a predictive model. To overcome these biases, an ethnoarchaeological approach has been proposed. This methodology has been developed and tested on a pastoral context in the Eastern Italian Alps. The present research proposes an application to a different, more composite landscape in the Central Italian Alps, testing the reliability of the model in relation to a heterogeneous and diachronic dataset, collected through extensive fieldwork. The results show that the model has an excellent degree of accuracy in predicting past structures with a similar purpose of use as the training sample. In addition, we show that its discriminative power can be greatly improved by the use of contemporary environmental predictors. However, the use of variables non-quantifiable for the past is an issue for the full applicability of this type of model to archaeological datasets. The results also show that this methodology, regardless of predictive results, can give us a good insight into the relationship between humans and their environment. The field application of the methodology has led us to understand that ethnoarchaeology can already be considered a reliable approach to address various methodological concerns of archaeological predictive modelling, but the primary purpose of such models should be seen more as explanatory rather than predictive.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143920305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Past Kinship and Exchange Relations on Papua New Guinea’s South Coast (650–300 cal BP) Through Scanning Electron Microscopy Automated Mineralogy Analyses of Pottery Sherds","authors":"Robert Skelly, Barbara Etschmann, Joël Brugger, Chris Urwin, Fiona Petchey, Teppsy Beni","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09710-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09710-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ethnographic accounts of Melanesian exchange systems, such as the Kula and Hiri, have significantly influenced the development of anthropology. These accounts primarily focus on male agency framed by heroic seafaring ventures, while the agency of women and their cultural practices—key to the interconnectedness of Melanesian societies—has often been overlooked. On Papua New Guinea’s south coast details of women’s cultural practices are available in ethnography, and the remains of the pottery they made survive well in archaeological contexts. This paper reports the results of Scanning Electron Microscopy based Automated Mineralogy (SEM-AM) analyses of selected pottery sherds from two regions on the Papua New Guinea’s south coast located 80 km apart. The sherds are very similar in form and decoration, so we employed precise mineral characterisations to assign the pottery sherds to mineralogical groups and test whether they originated in the same manufacturing location and were traded along the coast. The mineralogical analyses uncovered nuances of past social entanglements, revealing that seafaring alliances and networks were maintained through kinship. We argue that in this instance, pottery-making traditions spread along the coast through the movement of women and intermarriage.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143832270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Late Mid-Pleistocene hominin fire control inferred from sooty speleothem analysis","authors":"Ségolène Vandevelde, Edwige Pons-Branchu, Damien Deldicque, Abdou Niane, Cyrielle Mathias, Dany Savard, Yves Perrette, Bruno Desachy, Ludovic Slimak, Kevin Bouchard","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09709-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09709-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The origin of fire control is considered a major turning point in human evolution and remains a highly debated albeit central subject in archaeology. Studying paleo-fires is challenging because of taphonomic phenomena that alter combustion structures and hinder the identification of the oldest hearths. Moreover, hearths do not record all fire events and do not provide a chronological record of fire. In contrast, speleothems, carbonated cave deposits, can preserve evidence of ancient fires, including soot traces, and these features can be dated directly using radiometric methods. Orgnac 3, an important archaeological sequence in Western Europe, provides a case study on the origins of habitual fire use in this region during the transition between the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. This paper presents the first documented record of over 20 fire events at this ancient site. The habitual use of fire by Mid-Pleistocene hominins at the site is well documented within sooty speleothems, as opposed to relying on scattered and rare traces. The soot deposit sequence at Orgnac 3 is the strongest and best-documented evidence of repeated fire use at the site to date. The robust fire-use chronology is established using stratigraphic U-Th dating of the speleothem. The soot record at Orgnac 3, testifying to fire events during both dry and wet periods, supports the hypothesis that Mid-Pleistocene hominins could control fire around 270,000 years ago in the Rhone Valley, with the possible ability to light it, or at least maintain it over a long term.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143819234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Role of Palaeolithic Cave-Art: Estimating Social Investment in Symbolic Expressions Through the Making Cost","authors":"Diego Garate","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09707-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09707-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The symbolic expression, due to its social and cultural potential, should make a decisive contribution to the reconstruction of Palaeolithic social systems. Paradoxically, the limitations of the traditional study methods do not facilitate the exploitation of this possibility. In this article, we have presented an initial proposal to approach the study of visual rock art from a different perspective, focused in the calculation of the resources invested in the creation of rock art. This allows us to relate it directly to the societies that produced it and the implications it may have had on them. Furthermore, the use of cutting-edge technologies in this approach enables an exhaustive reconstruction of such processes and, ultimately, an objective, quantifiable, and global replicable system to calculate the exact minimum costs and social investment in Palaeolithic art. Consequently, the degree of complexity of the actions related to artistic production and the number of resources invested in it have palaeo-ethnographic implications for the organisation systems of Palaeolithic people. That is, ultimately, we can infer these societies in terms of structural questions such as hierarchy, inequality, division of labour, or knowledge transmission.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143775961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Open-Source Machine Learning–Based Methodological Approach for Processing High-Resolution UAS LiDAR Data in Archaeological Contexts: A Case Study from Epirus, Greece","authors":"Nicodemo Abate, Dimitris Roubis, Anthi Aggeli, Maria Sileo, Antonio Minervino Amodio, Valentino Vitale, Alessia Frisetti, Maria Danese, Pierluigi Arzu, Francesca Sogliani, Rosa Lasaponara, Nicola Masini","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09706-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09706-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study shows and discusses an innovative approach devised for archaeological feature detection using unmanned aerial system (UAS) LiDAR and an open-source probabilistic machine learning framework. The methodology employs a Random Forest classification algorithm within CloudCompare’s 3DMASC plugin to analyse dense LiDAR point clouds. The main steps include classifier training, hyperparameter adjustment and point cloud segmentation to produce digital terrain models (DTM), digital feature models (DFM) and digital surface models (DSM). Experimenting different parameters led to the determination of the best set to be employed for the training model. Subsequent data enhancement with the Relief Visualisation Toolbox (RVT) refines the visibility of archaeological features, particularly within complex and heavily vegetated terrain. The use case selected to validate this approach is the site of Kastrí-Pandosia in Epirus (Greece), which is particularly suitable for LiDAR analysis by UAS. This approach significantly improves archaeological detection and interpretation, revealing previously inaccessible or obscured microtopographic and structural features. The results highlight the site’s defensive walls, terracing and potential anthropogenic routes, underlining the methodology’s effectiveness in detecting archaeological landscapes at multiple levels. This study emphasises the utility of accessible and open-source solutions for the identification of archaeological features, promoting cost-effective methods to improve the documentation of sites in remote or difficult locations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143757999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Site-Seeing in Mallorca? Exploring the Visual Influence of Architecture and Location in Talayotic Iron Age Sites in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain)","authors":"Alejandra Galmés-Alba, Mark Gillings","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09704-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09704-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p>During the Iron Age, or Talayotic period, the landscape of Mallorca was transformed by the construction of cyclopean, tower-shaped structures that served as communal gathering spaces. The scale and location of these monumental structures have led to their interpretation as places designed to see and be seen, with a range of GIS-based viewshed studies caried out in order to characterise and delineate the visual landscape of which they were an integral part. However, despite this focus on all things visible, there has been little investigation into whether this visual prominence was primarily due to the choice of location or the architectural form itself. This paper aims to explore how the combination of location and architecture contributed to the visual prominence of Talayotic structures within the landscape. By integrating Visual Neighbourhood Configurations (VNC) and viewshed analysis, the study examines the significance of site selection and whether the architecture leveraged the inherent visual properties of these locations to enhance their prominence. As the visual presence of these architecture has been central to the explanation of the Talayotic phenomenon, understanding how this was generated is key to understand the role these sites played in the Mallorcan Iron Age landscape.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143712923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bronze Age Frontiers and Pottery Circulation: Political and Economic Relations at the Northern Fringes of El Argar, Southeast Iberia, ca. 2200–1550 BCE","authors":"Adrià Moreno Gil, Carla Garrido García, Bárbara Bonora Soriano, David Gómez-Gras, Roberto Risch","doi":"10.1007/s10816-025-09702-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-025-09702-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores the nature and dynamics of economic and political borders emerging in Later Prehistory between highly centralised and exploitative societies and their much more dispersed and small-scale neighbours. While increasing evidence indicates that Early Bronze Age entities such as El Argar, Únětice or Minoan Crete reached highly complex economic and political forms around 1850–1750 BCE, the processes by which their relations and borders with adjacent, less hierarchical groups were established and maintained still remain poorly understood. To identify such economic and political borders and asymmetric interactions in archaeology, a specific methodological approach was developed which combined extensive field survey, pottery petrography, and spatial modelling of pottery production and circulation areas. Our research focuses on the middle and upper Segura River valley, a largely unexplored borderland between distinct geographic and cultural zones of the Iberian Peninsula. While El Argar expanded over the semi-arid Southeast, adjacent regions—La Mancha and the Spanish Levant—were home to smaller-scale socio-economic entities, known as La Mancha or Las Motillas and the Valencian Bronze Age cultures. At the junction of these three groups, we surveyed 61 settlements across 4800 km² and analyzed 1643 pottery sherds, conducting the largest petrographic study of Iberian Bronze Age ceramics. Spatial modeling of the results traced pottery production and circulation, offering insights into economic exchanges, social boundaries and the articulation of borderland spaces. By mapping distinct pottery-making practices, we reveal interactions between El Argar’s core regions and its neighbours, demonstrating the potential of ceramic analysis for understanding Bronze Age border dynamics. Comparable studies in other regions are expected to lead to a better understanding of the role of borders in shaping prehistoric societies and inter-group relations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47725,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143635773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}