53,508 research outputs found

    Mice, scats and burials: unusual concentrations of microfauna found in human burials at the Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk, Central Anatolia

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    Three human burials were found at Çatalhöyük that contained large microfaunal assemblages. Taphonomic analysis demonstrated that many of these elements had passed through the digestive tract of a small carnivore, indicating that the microfauna entered the burials in carnivore scats rather than as carcasses. One of the burials in particular (F. 513) contained an enormous quantity of microfauna which was concentrated over the torso of the body. It is concluded that the scats were deliberately placed in the burials by the human inhabitants of the site as part of ritualistic practice. Furthermore, it is suggested that small carnivores were encouraged to enter Çatalhöyük in order to control house mice, and other small mammal, numbers

    Caddo Ceramic Vessels from the Sam Kaufman Site (41RR16) in the R. K. Harris Collection at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

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    Over the years, R. King Harris and his Dallas Archeological Society colleagues excavated a number of ancestral Caddo burials (Burials 1-19) from cemeteries exposed along the eroding bank of the Red River at the Sam Kaufman site (41RR16) and have published their findings. These burials are from upper and lower cemeteries of McCurtain phase and Historic Caddo age both north and east of the principal mound at the Sam Kaufman site on the Red River. During a 2005 documentation visit to the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution (NMNH), I had the opportunity, along with Bo Nelson, Mark Walters, Robert Cast, and Bobby Gonzalez, to examine vessels from the Sam Kaufman site in the R. King Harris collections. His collections included vessels from Burials 20, 21, 22, and 25 at the Sam Kaufman site, and information and images of these vessels (or for that matter, information about the burial excavations) have not been previously put on record. This article provides the available information on the eight vessels known to have been included as funerary offerings with these four burials; no information could be found for any vessels or other funerary offerings in Burials 23 and 24

    Documentation of Ceramic Vessels and Projectile Points from the C. D. Marsh Site (41HS269) in the Sabine River Basin

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    A total of at least eight Caddo burials were excavated at the C. D. Marsh site on Eight Mile Creek, a southward-flowing tributary to the Sabine River, by Buddy C. Jones in 1959-1960. This includes Burial 1, an historic (dating after ca. A.D. 1685) Nadaco Caddo burial; European trade goods found with this burial include two small silver disks. The other burials (Burials 2-8) are part of an earlier Caddo cemetery that is thought to be associated with the ca. A.D. 1350-17th century Pine Tree Mound community along the Sabine River and its tributaries. Jones suggests that these latter burials are from a ca. A.D. 1200-1500 Caddo cemetery. According to Jones and notes on file at the museum, Burials 2-8 are located ca. 120 m east-southeast from the one Historic Caddo burial at the site. The burials were placed in extended supine position in north-south oriented pits in rows, with the head of the deceased at the southern end of the burial and facing north. Funerary offerings included ceramic vessels and mussel shells. In this article, we describe eight ceramic vessels in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections from Burials 1, 4, and 7, as well as projectile points from habitation contexts at the C. D. Marsh site; the location of Burial 7 relative to Burial 4 is not known. There are also six other ceramic vessels from the ca. A.D. 1200-1500 burials at the site that are unassociated funerary objects in the Gregg County Historical Museum collections. This includes one vessel each from Burials 5 and 8; the provenience of the other vessels at the site is unknown. One of the unassociated funerary object ceramic vessels at the C. D. Marsh site is a Ripley Engraved, var. McKinney carinated bowl. Such vessels would not be expected in a ca. A.D. 1200-1500 Caddo cemetery, and although this type of fine ware is commonly seen on post-A.D. 1600 Titus phase sites in the region, it is rarely found in association with European trade goods. Therefore, it may represent a burial from a third temporal component (ca. A.D. 1600-1685) at the site

    The Pipe Site, a Late Caddo Site at Lake Palestine in Anderson County, Texas

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    Buddy Calvin Jones excavated a Late Caddo cemetery and midden site he called the Lake Palestine site, in Anderson County, Texas, in March 1968. His notes indicate that a total of 21 Caddo burials were excavated at the site, and the burials were situated primarily around a midden of unknown dimensions. Jones\u27 notes do not specify how many of the burials he excavated at the Pipe site, but one photograph in the records suggests he excavated at least three, one burial of which is the focus of this article

    Rowland Clark and Dan Holdeman Site Human Skeletal Remains

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    The Rowland Clark site was occupied by Caddoan Indian groups from approximately A.D. 1300-1600+. Twenty one of the 39 burials recovered during the Museum of the Red River excavations were assigned to the earliest McCurtain phase occupation (ca. A.D. 1300-1450); 14 burials were ascribed to a later McCurtain occupation between ca. A.D. 1450 and 1600; four burials belonged to the final McCurtain occupation (ca. A.D. 1600+) of the site. Since infants and children were buried under house floors rather than in the cemetery area associated with each time period, their interment does not necessarily follow the assigned time period. Due to poor preservation and small sample sizes all burials were evaluated as a single Caddoan population. The burials from the Dan Holdeman site were found in a mound and three cemetery areas located on a terrace adjacent to the Red River. Skeletons of 26 individuals were recovered. The remains of an additional 15 individuals could not be retrieved due to their poor preservation. The acidity of the soil at the site contributed to considerable disintegration of the bones, leaving all burials in fragmentary condition. Three time periods are represented in the burials from the Dan Holdeman site. Burials 22, 23, and 25 were associated with a Formative Caddoan occupation (that Perino designated the Spiro Focus) dating about A.D. 1000. Interments corresponding with the Middle Caddoan Sanders Focus, dated about A.D. 1200, include Burials 1-20 and 24. One subadult, Burial 21, dates to the latter portion of the McCurtain phase (ca. A.D. 1650). The skeletal material that could not be retrieved represented individuals living during the Formative and Middle Caddoan occupations. Since much of the data on the osteoarcheology of the Clark and Holdeman sites has been presented in Loveland, specifically stature estimates, skeletal anomalies, and caries rates, it is the purpose of this appendix to summarize other aspects of the skeletal biology of the prehistoric inhabitants of the two sites. However, the poor condition of the skeletons recovered from the sites precludes accurately assessing the biological condition and adaptive efficiency of the people who lived at the site. However, the analyses presented here, and in Loveland, present data that provides a fairly complete picture of Caddoan adaptive efficiency on the Red River in Northeast Texas

    Documentation of Additional Vessels from the Johns Site (41CP12), Camp County, Texas

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    The Johns site (41CP12) is a Titus phase cemetery in the Prairie Creek valley in the Big Cypress Creek stream basin of the Northeast Texas Pineywoods. The Caddo artifacts from the site are from the Robert L. Turner, Jr. and Tommy John collections. Both men are current residents of Camp County, Texas. total of 35 Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1400-1680), Titus phase, burials were excavated between May 1966 and December 1984 at the Johns site. The first 19 burials were excavated by Tommy Johns and Robert L. Turner, Jr., and Johns continued to excavate burials at the site until 1984. No single map of the plan of the Johns site cemetery exists in the available notes, but enough information is provided to reconstruct the arrangement and extent of the burial interments. The burials occur in a number of east-west rows, with the head of the deceased oriented almost always to face to the west. The deceased were placed in long, narrow, and relatively deep burial pits in an extended supine position, with funerary offerings generally placed along both the sides of the body and at the feet. Funerary offerings consisted of ceramic vessels (3-16 vessels per burial), ceramic pipes, arrow points (usually in quivers), celts, smoothing stones, as well as scrapers and other chipped stone tools. All of the burials have ceramic vessel funerary offerings, but only a small proportion had either ceramic pipes (25.7% of the burials), arrow points (62.9% of the burials), celts (17.1% of the burials), or other stone tools (17.1% of the burials) placed in the burial pit. In the summer of 2009, the Robert L. Turner, Jr. vessel and pipe collection and the Tommy Johns collection of vessels, pipes, celts, and arrow points were fully documented from the Johns site. A detailed description of each ceramic vessel or ceramic pipe was made for documentation purposes, accompanied by drawings appended to vessel documentation forms (on file, Archeological & Environmental Consultants, LLC files in Austin, Texas), where needed, of ceramic vessel decorative motifs or pipe morphology to supplement the artifact descriptions. Analysis notes and photographs were also obtained on the arrow points, celts, and other stone artifacts from a number of burials in the Johns collection. A total of 277 ceramic vessels were documented in the Turner and Johns collections from the Johns site. Subsequent to the completion of the published report, Tommy Johns located six additional vessels from the Johns site cemetery in his collection, and these vessels were documented in January 2010. This article provides information on the six previously undocumented vessels from the Johns site, increasing the total number of vessels to 283.1 With the larger sample of 283 vessels, the vessels from the Johns site are dominated by engraved fine wares (68.1%). Utility wares comprise 25.5% of the ceramic vessel mortuary offerings, and plain wares another 6.4%

    14C dating of the lime burial of Cova de Na Dent (Mallorca, Spain): optimization of the sample preparation and limitations of the method

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    Lime burials are a characteristic phenomenon of the protohistoric funerary tradition on the Balearic Islands. At Cova de Na Dent, six samples, representing the entire stratigraphy of the lime burial, were taken for analysis. The radiocarbon dates suggested that the lowest levels of the burial were Late Bronze Age. This is in contradiction with the general belief that the lime burials are a late Iron Age phenomenon. Therefore, a new analysis strategy is put forward, focusing on the so-called 1st fraction, the first CO2 released during the acid lime reaction, which is supposed to be free of fossil carbon. The analysis demonstrates the impossibility to eliminate the fossil carbon fraction completely. This is probably due to the different geological formation of the local limestone deposits (ancient reef barriers) compared to the previous lime burials of Mallorca all coming from mountain areas. C-14 analysis from a cremation layer without lime at the onset of the lime burial reveals an Iron Age origin of the Cova de Na Dent lime burial

    The three burials of Melquiades DGP

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    In this talk I review three fatal flaws of the DGP braneworld model, which has been put forward as a possible model for late time acceleration without a cosmological constant: Ghosts, Cosmological Crashes, and Instability of the 5D vacuum. The talk is based on work in collaboration with Charmousis, Kaloper, Myers and Padilla.Comment: Write up of a talk given at the 8th Asia-Pacific International Conference on Gravitation and Astrophysics. 10 pages PTPTex style, 3 figure

    Armament and Society in the Mirror of the Avar Archaelogy The Transdanubia-Phenomenon Revisited

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    One of the most significant problems of the A var archaeology is the question of Germanic (mainly Gepidic) continuity in Transdanubia. In my paper I would like to make some comments on the so-called Transdanubia-phenomenon of the Early A var Carpathian Basin based on the analysis of weapon-combinations found in six cemeteries of Eastern Transdanubia. I intend to answer the following questions: I. How far the weapon-combinations of the East-Transdanubian cemeteries of the early Avar Period (568-650) are identical or similar to the general picture of Avar armament drawn by contemporary cemeteries? 2. Are the weapon-combinations or armament of these cemeteries similar to that of the earlier Gepidic and Langobardic sites from the early 6th centuries or to the contemporary Germanic (Alemannic, Frank or Bavarian) cemeteries of the present-day Germany? As a result, the early A var cemeteries of Transdanubia are characterized by the relatively high number of close-combat weapons compared to other sites of the Avar Khaganate. However, comparing to Merovingian sites the burials containing only close-combat weapons are very low and in most of the cases the weapon-combinations characteristic to this culture is missing
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