Journal of Archaeological Science最新文献

{"title":"Geometric morphometric analysis sheds new light on silver bullion production systems of the Southern Song period","authors":"Suhui Liu,&nbsp;Tian Liu,&nbsp;Keli Gao,&nbsp;Siran Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106282","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106282","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Song Dynasty marked a pivotal moment in Chinese fiscal history by establishing the first monetized taxation system. By the Southern Song period (1127–1279), silver became deeply integrated into this system, and gradually supplanted iron and copper coins as the standard measure of value for paper money. Archaeological findings frequently uncover tax silver in the form of silver bullions, which played a significant role in the payment and transportation of tributes and taxes from local to central governments. The study of these bullions offers valuable insights into the taxation and economic history of China's first silver-based taxation system. While prior research has extensively examined the inscriptions on silver bullions, their morphological characteristics have received comparatively little attention. This study analyses the orthoimages of 113 Southern Song silver bullions to investigate potential correlations between their shapes and the production systems of the time. By employing a quantitative analysis of silver bullion outlines using two-dimensional geometric morphometric methods (2D-GMM) based on Elliptic Fourier Analysis and multivariate statistical techniques, the research reveals that the shapes of silver bullions vary with their weights and production locales, indicating a de-centralized bullion production system involving numerous prefecture level governments. Notably, a substantial number of silver bullions produced by gold and silver shops exhibit highly consistent shapes, although each shop had its own workshop and some of them were geographically distant from each other. Frequent exchanges between vouchers of monopolized products and silver bullions at these shops likely contributed to a high uniformity of bullion shapes. By integrating quantitative methods, this research provides a novel perspective on the study of Southern Song silver bullions and offers new insights into the silver-based taxation system during this period.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106282"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144205179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ostrich eggshell bead size variation: The impacts of material and technology on bead diameter","authors":"Joseph Jeffrey Werner,&nbsp;Flannery Surette","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106279","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106279","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This research explores the impact of non-stylistic variables such as drilling technology and eggshell thickness on the size of ostrich eggshell beads. Since external bead diameter is thought to reflect culturally informed preferences, differences in external diameter across space and time have been used to identify distinct populations and to infer migration and culture change. Conversely, our analysis of archaeological and experimental data shows that material and technological biases significantly contribute to the size of beads. Specifically, we show that shell thickness contributes to variance in external bead diameter. As such, we argue that assemblage or regional scale differences might not always represent different cultural groups with their own material traditions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106279"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144205178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An AI-assisted workflow for object detection and data collection from archaeological catalogues","authors":"Kevin Klein ,&nbsp;Antoine Muller ,&nbsp;Alyssa Wohde ,&nbsp;Alexander V. Gorelik ,&nbsp;Volker Heyd ,&nbsp;Ralf Lämmel ,&nbsp;Yoan Diekmann ,&nbsp;Maxime Brami","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106244","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106244","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Reconciling the ever-increasing volume of new archaeological data with the abundant corpus of legacy data is fundamental to making robust archaeological interpretations. Yet, combining new and existing results is hampered by inconsistent standards in the recording and illustration of archaeological features and artefacts. Attempts at collating data from images in existing publications first involve scouring the substantial body of existing literature, followed by extracting images that require onerous manual preprocessing steps, like re-scaling, re-orienting, and re-formatting. While the sample sizes of such manual analyses are curtailed by these problems, recent developments in AI and big data methods are poised to accelerate and automate large syntheses of existing data.</div><div>This paper introduces an AI-assisted workflow capable of creating uniform archaeological datasets from heterogeneous published resources. The associated software (<em>AutArch</em>) takes large and unsorted PDF files as input, and uses neural networks to conduct image processing, object detection, and classification. Objects commonly found in archaeological catalogues – like graves, skeletons, ceramics, ornaments, stone tools, and maps – are reliably detected. Accompanying elements of the illustrations, like North arrows and scales, are automatically used for orientation and scaling. Outlines are then extracted with contour detection, allowing whole-outline morphometrics. Detected objects, contours, and other automatically retrieved data can be manually validated and adjusted via <em>AutArch</em>'s graphical user interface.</div><div>While we test this workflow on third millennium BCE Central European graves and Final Neolithic/Early Bronze Age arrowheads from Northwest Europe, this method can be applied to the vast number of artefacts and archaeological features for which shape, size, and orientation holds technological, functional, cultural, and/or temporal significance. This AI-assisted workflow has the potential to speed-up, automate, and standardise data collection throughout the discipline, allowing more objective interpretations and freeing sample sizes from budget and time constraints.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 106244"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144195005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"50 years of bronze provenance studies: A perspective from China","authors":"Siran Liu ,&nbsp;Zhenfei Sun ,&nbsp;Ji Zhang ,&nbsp;Junling Lin ,&nbsp;Kunlong Chen ,&nbsp;Jianli Chen ,&nbsp;Jianfeng Cui ,&nbsp;Jianjun Mei","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106272","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106272","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This review summarizes the current state of bronze provenance studies in China, highlighting both recent trends and challenges for scholars working with Chinese artefacts and beyond. The first section addresses the issues surrounding highly radiogenic lead (HRL) from the Shang period, arguably the most widely discussed topic in Chinese bronze provenance research. In addition to providing an overview of the current discourse, this section emphasizes two critical questions: the metal(s) with which HRL is associated, and the meaning of its isochron-like trend line. Clarifying these questions could fundamentally alter our understanding of HRL and the metal circulation systems of the Shang period. The second section focuses on the emerging pattern in the rapidly growing body of publications on lead isotope analysis of Chinese bronzes, particularly the synchronic alteration of lead isotope features across vast regions over two millennia. Additionally, this section reviews specific spatial-temporal units, which have generated significant research in recent years and may reveal distinct metal circulation systems. The following sections shift attention to the provenance of copper and tin, essential components in the production of bronze artefacts but often overlooked in provenance studies. Methodological challenges are discussed, with a particular emphasis on the widely used trace element analysis technique. Furthermore, increasing archaeological evidence from metallurgical workshops related to mining, smelting, and alloying practices of these metals holds potential to shed new light on these issues in the near future. Finally, the review offers a brief discussion on model-informed provenance investigations, reflecting a global trend in the field, which is expected to have a substantial impact on the study of Chinese materials in various ways.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106272"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144166369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ochres as earth pigments in Hellenistic and Roman polychromy: State of the art and future directions on material origins and trade","authors":"Ariadne Marketou ,&nbsp;Alexandra Rodler","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106276","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106276","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ochres are naturally occurring materials that are abundant in various geological environments and geographic regions and that have been used for a range of different purposes throughout history. Their wide use as pigments in ancient art is well-documented and, due to their abundancy, it is often presumed that ochres were extracted from locally available sources. However, ancient literary sources underline a preference for ochres from <em>specific</em> regions and provenance is viewed as a signifier for different properties, uses, and values. Despite the evident importance of ochre provenance for Hellenistic and Roman art, research on the topic remains scarce. This review paper aims to bridge archaeological and literary evidence with science-based methodological approaches that contribute to ochre provenance research. Firstly, an overview of ancient texts discussing terminology and the significance of ochre provenance and trade during the Hellenistic and Roman period is presented. Secondly, archaeological science-based approaches to ochre provenance research are reviewed, sketching out the contribution of interdisciplinary research to ancient ochre research, with a focus on evaluating possible raw material sources. Finally, this paper explores future directions that could contribute to the contextualisation of science-based approaches of ochre-provenance research within the framework of Classical Mediterranean archaeology, a period for which textual and historical evidence complement archaeological finds.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106276"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144166367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Seafaring megaliths: A geoarchaeological approach to the Matarrubilla giant stone basin at Valencina (Spain)","authors":"Luis M. Cáceres Puro ,&nbsp;Teodosio Donaire Romero ,&nbsp;José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez ,&nbsp;Marta Díaz-Guardamino ,&nbsp;Francisco Martínez-Sevilla ,&nbsp;Alicia Medialdea ,&nbsp;Miren del Val ,&nbsp;Jonàs Alcaina-Mateos ,&nbsp;Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal ,&nbsp;Fernando Muñiz Guinea ,&nbsp;Juan Manuel Vargas Jiménez ,&nbsp;Miguel Ángel Rogerio-Candelera ,&nbsp;Leonardo García Sanjuán","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106263","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106263","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A broad multidisciplinary approach is deployed to study an exceptional megalithic feature: the stone basin that presides over the chamber of the Matarrubilla tholos, part of the Valencina Copper Age mega-site (Sevilla, Spain). The study, including geoarchaeological characterisation and sourcing of the stone, traceological analysis of its surfaces based on photogrammetry and morphometrics, digital image analysis as well as OSL dating, leads to a number of substantial findings of great relevance to understand the significance of this stone basin, the only of its kind documented to this date in the Iberian Peninsula, with parallels only in Ireland and Malta. Among the most relevant conclusions, it is worth noting the fact that the gypsiferous cataclasite block the basin was made of was brought from the other side of the marine bay that five thousand years ago extended across the south-east of Valencina, this is the first evidence of waterborne transport of a megalithic stone in the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, the basin appears to have been put where it stands today sometime in the first half of the 4th millennium BC, long before any tholoi were built at Valencina, which suggest a prior history of still poorly documented monumentality at this mega-site.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106263"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144146949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A generative model for exploring differences in mortality associated with stressor exposure risk in bioarchaeological contexts","authors":"Bronwyn Wyatt ,&nbsp;Amy Anderson ,&nbsp;Stacey Ward ,&nbsp;Laura A.B. Wilson","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106275","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106275","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Generative models are an underutilized tool in bioarchaeology that make it possible to directly interrogate how age-at-death is influenced by varied risk of exposure to stressors, while accounting for factors which are ordinarily invisible to bioarchaeologists. Further, the visibility of suspected differences within populations at the sorts of sample sizes common to bioarchaeology can also be examined, helping to inform interpretation of findings.</div><div>In the present study, cohorts of 50, 100, 500, and 1000 individuals aged 0 years were generated. Each individual was assigned a frailty value, and to either high or low risk groups. These cohorts were run through simulation models in which exposure to stressors varied according to risk group and the severity of stressors if exposed. The difference in mean age-at-death between high and low risk group for each run was tested for significance using Welch's <em>t</em>-test. The model results are used to identify potential minimum sample sizes for bioarcheological research at which true differences in age-at-death due to difference in stressor exposure are likely to be visible.</div><div>Small cohorts (50 individuals) had low likelihood of detecting true risk group differences in age-at-death except when the difference in exposure to stressors or the severity of the stressor was great enough to produce a mean difference in lifespan of &gt;20 years. The probability of observing a true difference in age-at-death between risk groups increased when the difference in stressor exposure and/or the stressor severity increased for all cohorts. Therefore, group-level differences in lifespan may not be identifiable in small archaeological samples except where stress or inequality is high. The low reliability of results from small samples reiterates the needs to carefully examine equifinality in bioarcheological research, as demonstrated through the application of this model to a case study which examined the Late Woodland phase of the Dickson Mounds. This application assessed the three potential hypotheses put forth by Goodman and Armelagos (1988) to establish how likely they may be when sample size is not a limiting factor on visibility of potential difference within populations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106275"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144138978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using intestinal parasites to identify the utilization of archaeological structures: A 12th-13th century sewer systems from an Islamic funduq (Murcia, Spain)","authors":"Ramón López-Gijón ,&nbsp;Alicia Hernández-Robles ,&nbsp;Salvatore Duras ,&nbsp;Mireia Celma ,&nbsp;Ana Curto ,&nbsp;José Ángel González-Ballesteros ,&nbsp;Benjamin Dufour ,&nbsp;Matthieu Le Bailly ,&nbsp;Jorge A. Eiroa","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106266","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106266","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The discovery of specific parasites in archaeological contexts provides unique insights into the hygiene, sanitation, and socioeconomic dynamics of ancient populations, as well as their patterns of mobility. Paleoparasitological evidence offers a window into the spread of infections across different regions and time periods. This investigation leveraged paleoparasitology to explore the utilization of archaeological structures, specifically the water drainage system of a 12th-13th century <em>funduq</em> in the ancient Islamic city of Murcia, Spain. Through a systematic analysis, parasitic findings were compared with archaeological evidence, revealing a strong correlation between the presence of roundworm and whipworm eggs in wastewater channels and their functional role. In contrast, the absence of parasitic eggs in the clean water system further confirmed the distinct purposes of the pipes. This approach confirms paleoparasitology as a powerful tool for interpreting the use of ancient infrastructure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106266"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144138444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A method for constructing demographic profiles of Ovis orientalis/O. aries using Logarithm Size Index scaling","authors":"Melinda A. Zeder","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106224","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106224","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a new method for constructing demographic profiles of archaeological sheep skeletal assemblages drawing on a method developed for <em>Sus scrofa</em> (Zeder and Lemoine, 2020a) and, most recently, for goats (Zeder, 2024a). This method normalizes metric data using the Logarithm Size Index (LSI) scaling technique. LSI values of post-crania metric data of modern wild sheep from Iran and Iraq are shown to reflect strong sexual dimorphism in body size which is evident in animals over one year of age. After adjustments to account for the impacts of region and age on body size, along with differentials in the scaling of different elements, the mid-point of the range of LSI values is shown to be a reliable and accurate way of distinguishing between the elements of females and males that can then be used to construct sex-specific age profiles. This method is applied to metric data from thirteen archaeological sheep skeletal assemblages from the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Iraq spanning the period from the Middle Paleolithic to the Ceramic Neolithic. The resulting sex-specific demographic profiles indicate that during pre-ceramic periods hunters practiced varied prey strategies that targeted different segments of wild sheep populations. A clear signal of herding is detectable in Ceramic Neolithic assemblages despite limitations in the recovery of unfused elements. The paper concludes by offering recommendations, and caveats, to the use of this method for building sex-specific demographic profiles of ancient sheep assemblages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 106224"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144134286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comparative study of luminescence dating of pottery and sediments from the Holocene Zhuqiusi site in Central China","authors":"Chun-Xin Wang ,&nbsp;Lingling Shi ,&nbsp;Yanpeng Cao ,&nbsp;Lixia Fang","doi":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106270","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jas.2025.106270","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has emerged as a robust protocol for establishing a chronological framework for archaeological sites, particularly due to the ubiquity of pottery and stratigraphic deposits, which offer useable dating materials. Despite its effectiveness, this method encounters challenges in dating young archaeological sites in the Holocene period, such as stratigraphic disturbances, insufficient bleach, and residual doses from infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) of potassium-rich feldspar (K-feldspar), which compromise the accuracy of the dating results. To address the challenges of optical dating in young archaeological sites and to demonstrate its accuracy, this study applies diverse luminescence dating techniques at the Holocene archaeological site of Zhuqiusi in the Central Plains of China, with a specific focus on accurately dating pottery and sediment samples. For fine-grain (FG) quartz samples from pottery, single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) OSL dating and multiple-aliquot additive-dose (MAAD) thermoluminescence (TL) dating methods were used. For coarse-grain quartz and K-feldspar from sediments, the SAR-based OSL method was used for quartz and the multiple-elevated-temperature post-infrared IRSL (MET-pIRIR) method was used for K-feldspar; in both cases, multi-grain (MG) or single-grain (SG) measurement protocols were adopted to investigate the effect of bleaching on dating. The results showed that the quartz OSL and TL ages of pottery samples were consistent, while sediment quartz and K-feldspar showed varying degrees of insufficient bleaching, leading to significant age differences. For such samples, single-grain dating methods must be used to obtain accurate luminescence ages. Ultimately, the Zhuqiusi site was dated to two occupation stages: the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (2.14–2.82 ka) and the late Longshan period (3.90–4.27 ka), consistent with radiocarbon ages within the error range. The comparative study of luminescence dating in pottery and sediment provides a valuable guide to selecting dating methods for Holocene archaeological sites.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Science","volume":"180 ","pages":"Article 106270"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144125354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}