Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of “Neolithization” is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview

The origins of wheat in China and potential pathways for its introduction: A review

Today in China, hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum – common wheat or bread wheat) is one of the major staple food crops. The other key cereal staples – rice, foxtail millet and broomcorn millet – are widely accepted as Chinese domesticates, but the origins of wheat cultivation in China are the subject of debate. There has long been a belief among Chinese scholars that China was an independent centre of wheat domestication, but recent scholarship suggests that cultivated wheat was introduced to China from its original site of domestication in the Near East. The precise path of entry is unknown. It is argued here that it is most likely to have been introduced at some time around the late 6th to early 5th millennium BP. Two hypotheses are presented. One hypothesis, supported primarily by the paleobotanical evidence, postulates that T. aestivum came in from the west, through northern Xinjiang, probably from Afghanistan or the Central Asian oases rather than the Eurasian steppes. The second, supported by the available archaeological evidence, proposes that the route of entry might have been from the north-west, from Eurasia, through southern Siberia and Mongolia.© 2014, Elsevier Ltd

A carved ivory cylinder from Akchakhan-kala, Uzbekistan: problems of dating and provenance

Excavations at Akchakhan-kala in Uzbekistan, a region known in antiquity as Chorasmia, recovered a large, elaborately carved and heavily burned cylinder of some very solid material. Its poor condition made identification of the raw material difficult. Here we used neutron tomography to examine the internal structure in a non-destructive way, and X-ray Diffraction to determine the main chemical composition of the material which confirmed it as ivory. This was followed by preparation for stable isotope and radiocarbon analysis. The stable isotope analysis suggests a tropical or subtropical grassland source for the ivory, which is unlikely to be from Uzbekistan. The dating shows the ivory to be much earlier than the context in which it was found. Whatever its origin, the ivory travelled far to reach Chorasmia, perhaps in its raw state, and perhaps also for some time in its carved form. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd

Addressing the Desert Kites Phenomenon and Its Global Range Through a Multi-proxy Approach

International audienceThis paper argues that the wide geographical distribution of desert kites, which are huge archaeological structures of stone visible from satellite images, must be more broadly acknowledged as a momentous factor in the study of their variability and function. This is important so that researchers can more accurately understand and interpret their impact on biodiversity, landscapes and subsistence patterns. The first results and perspectives of the Globalkites research project are discussed and presented. Often considered as hunting traps, the kites could have also been used for animal husbandry. In a broader archaeological context, where kites seem to have been operating from the Neolithic to recent historical times, we propose an interdisciplinary approach at the crossroads of anthropology (archaeology and ethnology), geomatics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), geostatistics, mathematics and computerized data processing and geoarchaeological and bioarchaeological sciences (isotope studies, paleoclimatology, archaeozoology…). The principal aims of the project are to clearly articulate the variability of the structures and their relationship with the function and chronology of the kites. It is also crucial to discuss the wide distribution of these structures across the Middle East and Central Asia as a global phenomenon and the ideas that explain the dispersal and movements of people and/or traditions must be addressed