The sociopolitical organisation of Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) is still an active field of scholarly debate. In the second half of the 2nd mil. BCE, the prevailing interpretations favour either a unified or a decentralised administration model on the island. Enkomi is listed as one of the most important Late Cypriot (LC) sites in both models. The rise of this urban...
The case study addresses the question of the early medieval revival of copper production in Europe. The focus of the research area is the Carpathian Basin, located on the eastern periphery of the zone influenced by European early medieval processes. The research of where and when early medieval metal production started in the region in our case also provides answers to the...
Pre-Roman glass craftsmanship reached its summit with the development of complex polychrome glass beads, being the Phoenician glass pendants the most exquisite and elaborate example. The uniqueness and complexity of such findings could reveal key information for the understanding of the production and trade of glass pieces at that age. However, these findings have practically...
The Late Bronze Age is characterized by the increasing homogenization of material culture and the prevalence of urn burials. The cemetery of Inzersdorf, located in the Lower Traisen Valley, Austria, is used to investigate whether changes in burial practices during the Late Bronze Age were locally driven or influenced by external factors. This study interprets strontium isotope...
Late Antiquity Dalmatia was a time and place of political unrest in the Roman Empire that influenced the lives of those in that region. The Late Antique burial site of Hvar – Radošević, spanning the 3rd to 5th centuries CE, is located on the Croatian Dalmatian island of Hvar. Given the time frame and location on a busy marine trade route, the study of this burial site offers us a...
This paper presents a study of treatment by soldering for a unique bronze oil lamp combined with Eros and dog figurines. In this object, there are two types of soldering; the first is ancient, used to join the three pieces together, and the other is used in conservation treatments to stop the degradation of the object. Soft solders have been a modern method of repair, with its...
This paper presents results from the first collaborative anthracological (archaeological wood charcoal analysis) study in northern Australia’s southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region. The analysis focused on charcoal from a Late Holocene combustion feature and surrounding dispersed charcoal on a buried floor surface. The results suggest that the combustion feature likely functioned...
Balma Guilanyà shelter (north-eastern Iberian Peninsula, Spain) contains a stratigraphic sequence spanning the Late Upper Palaeolithic to early Holocene. During excavations from 1992 to 2008, seventeen human teeth, and several cranial and postcranial bones were unearthed from the layer E (Late Glacial). In this contribution, we report new unpublished dental remains, which add to...
Cattle and, to a lesser extent, sheep/goat and pigs, were crucial components of Norway’s socio-cultural and economic dynamics in the Middle Ages. Zooarchaeological analyses of faunal samples from different urban sites reveal that changes in cattle husbandry practices occurred in Norway over the medieval period, and especially in its early phases. This is clearly demonstrated in...
This paper compares various ‘earthen’ construction materials and building techniques from three Middle Bronze Age tell (multi-layered settlement) sites in Hungary: Százhalombatta-Földvár, Kakucs-Turján (Vatya material culture) and Borsodivánka-Marhajárás-Nagyhalom (Otomani-Füzesabony Cultural Circle (OFCC)). It employs microscopic analyses – archaeological soil micromorphology...
Waste management is paramount to town planning and ancient civilizations across the world have spent resources and mobilized labor for waste disposal and reuse. The study of waste management practices offers a unique window into the daily lives, social organization, and environmental interactions of ancient societies. In the Indus Valley Civilization, known for its urban planning...
The Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal), with evidence of human occupancy dating back ∼ 400,000 years, is one of very few Middle Pleistocene cave sites to provide a fossil hominin cranium in association with Acheulean bifaces and the by-products of fire usage. Zooarchaeological, taphonomic and tooth-wear analyses suggest that the accumulation of the faunal remains and their...
Littoral resources have been consumed by humans since at least the Middle Palaeolithic. Examples of the use of molluscs have been documented along the shores of Europe during that period but it was not until many millennia later that European hunter-fisher-gatherer societies exploited those resources intensively—see the case of Nerja cave during the Younger Dryas. This economic...
Accessory vessels, including platters, dishes, beakers, flagons, jars, and amphorae, are a common feature of Romano-British burials, raising questions as to their provenance; for example, were such vessels recycled from the domestic sphere or made specially for funerary purposes? Furthermore, uncertainty surrounds their purpose: did they contain foods for the deceased, possibly...
The origin and process of the domestication of wild animals have long fascinated scientists. However, there are no reliable methods to distinguish between tamed and wild animals. Here, we present a new method to identify tamed and wild juvenile brown bears (Ursus arctos) using retrospective isotope analysis of the femur. We used femurs from the nine bear cubs and the tibia from...
A group of a well-known polychrome glazed ceramic, widespread in the western Mediterranean in the eleventh and first half of the twelfth centuries, has been analysed for the first time using Optical Microscopy (OM) and a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) with Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), in order to shed some light on the materials, production...
The variability in Neanderthal behaviour is one of the key debates in Middle Palaeolithic archaeology. Here we present the analysis of the lithic industry from a unit at one of Europe’s main Palaeolithic sites: El Castillo Cave. Unit XXf1.1, dated to the beginning of MIS 4, is an example of human occupation during a period of population decrease. In this assemblage, the...
Late Middle Palaeolithic Neandertals in France are known to have engaged in the collection and grinding of black minerals rich in manganese dioxide (MnO2), generally presumed for symbolic use as powdered pigments. However, lab-based experiments conducted by Heyes and colleagues (Sci Rep 6: 22159, 2016) have shown that the addition of powdered MnO2 to wood turnings both reduces...
Plant stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope values can be used to directly investigate crop husbandry practices such as manuring; a key variable in understanding the scale and intensity of past farming practices. We present new results from a four-year experiment examining the impact of manuring on the δ13C and δ15N values of a heritage cultivar of the broad or faba...
The Iron Age was a period of change, with many innovations in the glass-making technology. The chemical composition of the set of objects considered in the present study demonstrates the diversity of the raw materials used and the depth of knowledge about the manipulation of glass appearance in the eighth-sixth centuries BCE. The study was carried out using fibre optics...
This study represents the first extensive residue analysis of prehistoric pottery from northern Belgium. It examines pottery use and culinary practices across the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, from the late 6th to the early 4th millennium cal BC. Residue analyses were performed on more than 200 samples from nine archaeological sites, representing different cultural groups from...
In human osteoarchaeology, individual age-at-death is traditionally assigned by scoring characteristic expressions of specific traits and applying formulas or algorithms. However, it is well known that the resulting age estimates in target samples suffer from bias due to the effect of age-mimicry, both at the individual and at the population level. A general statistical...
Tell Kamid el-Loz (Lebanon) was an important Bronze Age urban center that dominated one of the central crossroads of the Ancient Near East, connecting Egypt and the Levant with northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Syria, as well as the interior with the Mediterranean coast. However, by the early Iron Age, the site had shrunk to a small rural settlement. Later, in the Iron Age III...
Reconstructions of palimpsest formation and dynamics in Early Pleistocene African archaeological deposits have undergone significant advances thanks to taphonomic research. However, the spatial imprint of different agents implicated in most of these accumulations still needs to be addressed. We hypothesize that different site formation dynamics may yield diverse spatial...
Reindeer are part of the faunal suite that dominated central Europe during the last glacial cycle. Their importance to Late Gravettian hunters as prey and a source of raw materials (hide, bone, antler) is well attested, however the context of Late Gravettian reindeer predation is lesser understood. This paper presents an investigation of human and reindeer predator-prey...