Landscape, material culture and society in South East Bulgaria

The PhD study focuses on long-term settlement histories in the late prehistory of South East Bulgaria, based upon three contrasting microregions. Two of them have been destroyed by intensive coal mining, which has necessitated the application of GIS as a rescue tool to reconstruct the landscape. The third, undestroyed microregion was included in the study to enable the comparison of settlement patterns in three neighbouring valleys. The main research aims are the social and economic aspects of the human/landscape interrelation, as well as the patterns of change and continuity from the initial occupation at the beginning of the Neolithic until the end of the Late Bronze Age. Along with the GIS technique, which proved to be a relevant analytical tool, a set of modern interpretative modes in archaeology was applied to achieve the research targets. The general and specific approaches in the study are prompted by the state of the primary data, which but rarely allows precise contextual analysis.As a result of the introduction of the concepts of landscape archaeology and social practices in the studies of Bulgarian late prehistory, it was possible to establish crucial links between the identity of people, places and objects. The identification of a suite of social practices has integrated the Bulgarian evidence in a broader context of human development and has contributed to the radical re-interpretation of most of the current explanations of the evidence at the study area. The reconstruction of past landscapes in the three microregions, together with the newly reconciled concepts of landscape and environment, have facilitated the reconstruction of past settlement patterns, resource potential and inter-site transport networks. Through the evaluation and re-interpretation of site evidence for all settlements and burials, it was possible to make a comparative interpretation of diachronic changes in settlement, society, material culture and landscapes

Ancestral Heaths

Barrows, i.e. burial mounds, are amongst the most important of Europe’s prehistoric monuments. Across the continent, barrows still figure as prominent elements in the landscape. Many of these mounds have been excavated, revealing much about what was buried inside these intriguing monuments. Surprisingly, little is known about the landscape in which the barrows were situated and what role they played in their environment. Palynological data, carrying important clues on the barrow environment, are available for hundreds of excavated mounds in the Netherlands. However, while local vegetation reconstructions from these barrows exist, a reconstruction of the broader landscape around the barrows has yet to be made. This makes it difficult to understand their role in the prehistoric cultural landscape. In this book a detailed vegetation history of the landscape around burial mounds is presented. Newly obtained and extant data derived from palynological analyses taken from barrow sites are (re-)analysed. Methods in barrow palynology are discussed and further developed when necessary. Newly developed techniques are applied in order to get a better impression of the role barrows played in their environment. It is argued in this book that barrows were built on existing heaths, which had been and continued to be maintained for many generations by so-called heath communities. These heaths, therefore, can be considered as ‘ancestral heaths’. The barrow landscape was part of the economic zone of farming communities, while the heath areas were used as grazing grounds. The ancestral heaths were very stable elements in the landscape and were kept in existence for thousands of years. In fact, it is argued that these ancestral heaths were the most important factor in structuring the barrow landscape

Viewed from above: extracting the built environment from the ancient Purépecha site of Angamuco through development of a new methodology

2019 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis utilizes commonly used GIS tools to develop a methodology capable of extracting the built environment from the complex topology of the ancient Purépecha site of Angamuco located in Michoacán, Mexico. Unlike lowland areas and coastal regions Angamuco sits upon a volcanic malpaís consisting of rolling hills, small valleys, complex ridgelines, and a multitude of microtopographic features creating a complex physical landscape. This topographically complex landscape creates unique challenges in extracting subtle archaeological features and requires a new methodology to separate the built environment. This new methodology utilizing common GIS tools in a flexible workflow consisting of topographic manipulation, value identification, and analysis preparation. The results of the methodology provides a data set of 87,407 possible archaeological features. These features are all greater than 5m² in area and consist of a wide range of circular to rectilinear, linear, and numerous miscellaneous shaped features throughout the site. The capability of this dataset in further analysis is shown through the application of a density analysis and classification based on the Thinness Ratio to conduct OBIA at the individual feature level. Although, the dataset does require manual clean-up the application of the data to answer certain questions about the urban attributes of the site of Angamuco is valid. Further analysis of this output dataset through GIS can provide detailed answers to questions about urban design for the Purépecha prior to and during the early Empire phase

Aviation Archaeology: History, Theory, Practice and Direction

Aviation archaeology as a field of study has struggled with competing academic, professional, and public definitions and priorities since its establishment. In some ways, this sub-discipline of historical or underwater archaeology mirrors the development of nautical archaeology. Like nautical archaeologists who overcame the barrier of the oceans and pioneered methodology to suit, the proponents of aviation archaeology have also used the discipline to overcome a barrier of historical perception and tradition. The practice of aviation archaeology, however, has been characterized by opposing viewpoints and stakeholders often exhibit a non-collaborative attitude towards other groups and sometimes their own colleagues. These stakeholder groups are each focused on their own priorities, be they theory, methodology, conservation, exhibition, or re-use, and each group is arguably attempting to shape the future of aviation archaeology through their projects or publications. This dissertation is a critical evaluation of the current state of aviation archaeology, including its history, stakeholders, literature, and defining projects. This leads to the identification of a series of best practices in aviation archaeology and a theory of interpretation and display of recovered aircraft

Evaluation of Preferential Flow Processes in Reclamation Soil Covers

To predict the effectiveness of land reclamation, it is important to understand how water and solutes are transported within reconstructed landscapes. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of preferential flow on salt leaching in reclamation soil covers. The study site was a reconstructed landscape where saline-sodic minespoil from oil sands mining was capped with layers of glacial and peat mix soil. Preferential flow was investigated using laboratory column experiments and in situ adsorptive dye and conservative tracer experiments. Results from column experiments and dye tracer experiments indicate that preferential flow is an important and prevalent mechanism of solute transport. Column experiments, which used time-domain reflectometry to monitor the transport of a chloride tracer through an undisturbed core of peat mix soil, determined immobile water fractions (èim/è) ranging from 80-99% and diffusive mass transfer rates (á) between 0.15 - 2.0 h-1. Breakthrough curves showed the early arrival of chloride and extended tailing. Dye tracer experiments, in which Brilliant Blue dye was applied in solution to the soil surface, were carried out at 6 hillslopes plots. Approximately 24 hours after dye application, a vertical soil face was excavated to reveal stained flow patterns. Preferential flow as macropore flow, fingering, and / or funneling was observed at each plot. Results from the conservative tracer field study indicated soil solutes were flushed by a combination of vertical and lateral flow processes. A large pulse of bromide and chloride was applied across the lower slope of the 0.35-m cover. Soil sampling at approximately 1 and 2 years later determined vertical leaching, lateral translocation downslope, and upwards movement of soil solutes. Matrix flow during the spring melt, combined with matrix flow and / or preferential flow during summer and fall periods, was responsible for the vertical leaching of solutes. Subsurface flow generated in response to the spring melt or due to differences in soil hydraulic conductivity was responsible for the lateral transport of solutes. As a result of advective or diffusive processes, solutes were transported upwards into the overlying soil. These results suggested that despite the existence of preferential flow, there were other mechanisms of solute transport which served to leach and flush salts from the soil

Effekter av träd och termiter på preferensiellt vattenflöde i agroforestry parklands : bildanalys av markprofiler efter experiment med regnsimulering och infärgning

Water scarcity is a critical problem in semi-arid tropics of Burkina Faso. Agroforestry parklands, a land use where scattered trees are maintained with annual crops, is commonly practiced by farmers in which termite nests are integral components of the system. This study intended to assess the effects of proximity to trees and termite nests in agroforestry parklands on preferential flow in soils using image analysis of soil profiles after rain simulations and dye-tracer experiments. The measurements were conducted in six transects: three corresponding to small openings (20-30 m) and three to large (77-127m) openings. Within each transect in three positions: next to tree, a tree with a termite nest and center. Each vertical soil profile has size of 500 mm width by 500 mm depth. The images were classified in Erdas Imagine 9.3 and preferential flow parameters (absolute slope sum, uniform front depth, total stained area and others) were defined from the dye infiltration pattern to assess the degree of preferential flow in different positions. The results indicated that the degree of preferential flow significantly decreased from trees with as well as without termite nest to the openings. Preferential flow in tree with termite nests was significantly higher than in the openings. Preferential flow under trees without a termite nest did not significantly differ from trees with termite nests and openings with exception of absolute slope. The water inflitrability was not significant with treatment effect and distance to the nearest tree and termite nest, not related to degree of preferential flow. The opening size effect was significant with absolute slope and close to significance with uniform front depth. Maintaining trees and termites nest in the agroforestry parklands can help in improving preferential flow and may enhance groundwater recharge

Rock Art Management and Landscape Change: Mixed Field Assessment Techniques for Cultural Stone Decay

As tourism continues to grow as one of the world’s most ubiquitous markets, the development and promotion of non-invasive techniques for cultural stone decay analysis and landscape change are vital to establishing conditional base-lines to best aid cultural heritage management (CRM) efficacy. Using rock art as a medium, this dissertation presents three independent case studies employing the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI) and repeat photography to explore the merits of mixed rapid field assessment techniques in relation to CRM and heritage tourism. While rock art is only one example of irreplaceable world heritage resources, examining how they decay and what methods can effectively quantify their change provides valuable data leading to a better understanding of human/environment interaction within the context of tourism and cultural resource management. The first case study examines the applicability of combining the two methods on rock art in the Arkansan Ozark region, showing considerable promise. The second addresses the temporal flexibility of the mixed methods on rapidly changing, and highly impacted, rock art sites on Grenada, West Indies, demonstrating the method pairing’s tremendous monitoring and emergency response potential. The third case study explores adapting RASI to analyze other forms of cultural stone by employing the mixed methods on selected hewn monuments in Petra, Jordan, aptly identifying a critical disparity between appearance and stability. Ultimately, each case study exemplifies different aspects of cultural stone decay and modern challenges: from initial preliminary evaluations to assessing the impact of uninformed conservation efforts, and examining the influences of mass tourism and human interaction at heritage sites. Mixed field techniques effectively highlighted both the need for and benefits of employing such methods for rock art management, cultural stone stability, and global heritage management

Functional diversity enhances detection of ecosystem stability and resolution of predator-prey interactions within a multitrophic community

Habitat fragmentation and loss are principal factors that contribute to the decline of biodiversity which in turn has a negative impact on ecosystem function. There has been growing interest in understanding diversity’s role in the mechanisms behind ecosystem resilience with much attention focusing on how functional diversity, or the range of species’ ecological roles in a community, impacts ecosystem function. Under the functional insurance hypothesis, stability in ecosystems is maintained by species that perform similar functions but have asynchronous responses to disturbance. There are three proposed stability mechanisms that operate through species’ asynchronous responses: cross-scale resilience, response diversity, and density compensation. My objective in this study was to examine change in functional diversity resulting from habitat fragmentation and detect ecological stability mechanisms in a multitrophic community consisting of longhorned beetles and their beetle predators. I also considered predator-prey interactions between beetles and their insectivore avian predators at the community level. To meet my objectives, I developed new functional traits to further capture beetle species’ functional roles and new methodology for examining change in functional diversity across trophic levels. I also expanded methodology to better detect one ecological stability mechanism, cross-scale resilience. Here, cross-scale resilience was operating if species with similar function also had different landscape response trends. I also determined a new way to assess predator-prey interactions in a multitrophic community with the use of avian visual perception of beetle prey visual contrasts. This approach allowed me to directly examine changes in avian predator and beetle prey abundance. I found that prey functional diversity was more negatively impacted than predator functional diversity by habitat fragmentation. I detected two ecological stability mechanisms, cross-scale resilience and response diversity, which may have provided the beetle community greater resilience to habitat fragmentation. With respect to the interactions between avian predators and beetle prey, variations in visual contrasts of beetles moderated the degree to which abundance of birds in some functional groups impacted beetle abundance. Also a “functional link” may also be important for providing a greater resolution between the relationships between predator and prey abundance. I suggest that future studies investigate how vision-mediated predator-prey interactions may simultaneously impact the functional diversity of these trophic levels. In addition, assessing three-dimensional surfaces of functional diversity could reveal best landscapes for promoting functional diversity of ecosystem service providers in local landscapes

Fragmented Landscapes: An Archaeology of Transformations in The Pra River Basin, Southern Ghana

This doctoral archaeological research examines the Pra River Basin in southern Ghana through lenses of landscape, temporality, and transformation. Drawing on the Annales school and the writings of Tim Ingold, this study moves away from binary constructions of natural and cultural landscape features toward a more integrated view of the landscape\u27s long human history. The primary temporal focus of this research is the past three millennia but evidence recovered of even more ancient eras is also examined. The artifacts and features documented while surveying this landscape allow us to glimpse pre-Atlantic (pre-1450 CE) settlement patterns, subsistence, and technology, as well as more recent and ongoing transformations of the landscape. Artifacts including ceramics, quartz flakes, stone beads, ground stone tools, and iron slag were found on hilltop sites throughout the surveyed areas. Most of these sites represent a pre-Atlantic pattern of settlement that continues, to a lesser extent, into the early Atlantic era (1450-1700 CE). Long grinding slicks, possibly related to Nyame Akuma production, are present on numerous rock outcrops in the region. Test excavation at an iron smelting site near Adiembra (AD31) yielded a temporally extensive range of dates. The bulk of the slag was deposited in the early second century CE, but deeper ceramic bearing contexts stretched back through the first millennium BCE. A single early seventh millennium BCE date associated with stone flakes underlay the site, representing the oldest date recovered from an archaeological context in the region. The archaeological evidence this study presents suggests the entire landscape has undergone continual alteration for numerous millennia, but much of the landscape\u27s current form represents Atlantic influences and more recent historical dynamics and transformations of the colonial and post-colonial periods. I examine this fragmented landscape using satellite remote sensing, archaeological pedestrian survey, diagnostic artifact analyses, and limited test excavations to identify and assess features and transformative processes