Lommel Kristalpark - LK04 Windturbine. Archeologische prospectie d.m.v. boringen en proefsleuven.

Dit rapport werd ingediend bij het agentschap samen met een aantal afzonderlijke digitale bijlagen. Een aantal van deze bijlagen zijn niet inbegrepen in dit pdf document en zijn niet online beschikbaar. Sommige bijlagen (grondplannen, fotos, spoorbeschrijvingen, enz.) kunnen van belang zijn voor een betere lezing en interpretatie van dit rapport. Indien u deze bijlagen wenst te raadplegen kan u daarvoor contact opnemen met: [email protected]

Archeologisch vooronderzoek bij de heraanleg van het kruispunt Celestijnenlaan - Koning Bouwdewijnlaan (Heverlee)

Dit rapport werd ingediend bij het agentschap samen met een aantal afzonderlijke digitale bijlagen. Een aantal van deze bijlagen zijn niet inbegrepen in dit pdf document en zijn niet online beschikbaar. Sommige bijlagen (grondplannen, fotos, spoorbeschrijvingen, enz.) kunnen van belang zijn voor een betere lezing en interpretatie van dit rapport. Indien u deze bijlagen wenst te raadplegen kan u daarvoor contact opnemen met: [email protected]

Evidence for plant technology in Prehistoric New Guinea the Kiowa polisher

peer reviewedLithic industries from Papua New Guinea surprised the first Western archaeologists who excavated on this Northern part of Sahul. With a few exceptions, they are often characterized by a lack of standardization and simple operating sequences which lasted with little change for thousands of years. As in Southeast Asia, the region where the first colonizers of New Guinea came from, prehistorians attempted to explain these particularities by the “Bamboo Hypothesis”: if stone tools are scarce and often result from short or simple manufacturing sequences, it is because they were intermediary implements used to make bamboo tools. These would have been varied, at the center of the economy of an “Age of Bamboo”. Here we present the functional analysis of a very unique polisher from Kiowa. The site is located in the highlands of Eastern New Guinea and was occupied from 12 000 BP. The polisher was found in layer 2, just above layer 3, dating to 5324–5707 cal BP. This exceptional tool presents a large, pointed groove which was interpreted as resulting from the manufacturing of a bamboo spear. We tested this hypothesis by conducting use-wear and residue analyses, using optical microscopes, Hirox, Scanning Electron Microscope, EDX analysis, residue extraction and PXRF. Our results show that it was actually a multi-function tool that was used for four different activities. One of them was the processing of flexible but silica-rich plants, such as the grasses that are used to make skirts nowadays in the region. In the very groove, use-wear points to the working of a semi-hard organic material such as bone or wood. The presence of a wood residue tips the balance in favor of the latter. The morphology of the groove also perfectly matches the shapes of experimental polishers we used to make wooden spears. This discovery echoes the finding of Casuarina wooden tools including burrowing sticks at the site of Kuk, on the same islands, in layers dating to 4600 BP to 2300 BP. In New Guinea, like in Southeast Asia, recent archaeological discoveries made possible thanks to use-wear and residue analyses open the Bamboo Hypothesis and show that a plant technology indeed existed during Prehistory, but that it was diverse and not focused exclusively on bamboo tools

Functioneel onderzoek van Laat-Paleolithische en Vroeg-Mesolithische sites in Vlaanderen.

Lithische artefacten zijn de meest voorkomende resten die worden teruggevonden op steentijdsites en op basis van een gedetailleerde studie van deze artefacten kan gereconstrueerd worden wat er precies op deze plaats in het landschap gebeurde. Veelal gebeurt dit via een typologische classificatie van het materiaal, vaak gecombineerd met een technologische studie en al dan niet met de integratie van studies van het ruw materiaal zelf. Deze methodes exploiteren echter slechts een deel van de beschikbare gegevens en geven geen inzicht in welke artefacten werkelijk gebruikt werden, waarvoor ze gebruikt werden en hoe. Een gebruikssporenonderzoek is één van de enige manieren om inzicht te verkrijgen in de organische component van de prehistorische technologie, die veelal niet bewaard is gebleven. Een dergelijke analyse laat ook toe om te bepalen wat de functie van een site was (bv. basiskamp, jachtkamp, productie-site) en te onderzoeken wat het verband is met de locatie in het landschap of met andere sites in de omgeving (voor eenzelfde tijdsperiode). Tot op heden is de functie van de meeste Paleo/Mesolithische sites nog onbekend en is het vaak moeilijk om in te schatten hoe concentraties moeten geïnterpreteerd worden. De mogelijkheden hiervan worden natuurlijk mee bepaald door de gebruikte opgravingsstrategie. Op dit moment is de regel dat het opgegraven sediment moet gezeefd worden, maar de exacte zeefmethode heeft een grote invloed op de bewaring van de gebruikssporen en de eventueel aangehechte residus. Er was tot op heden nog geen systematische studie gebeurd over de invloed van de gebruikte zeeftechniek op de bewaring van functionele resten

Non-destructive identification of prehistoric adhesives by HS-GCxGC-TOFMS: preliminary study

Identification of prehistoric adhesives on stone tools is valuable as it might reveal something about tool use. Currently, prehistoric glues are chemically analysed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometer (GC-MS) which requires extraction and derivatization of the residues1. This is a major drawback as it is destructive for the glue and often, the required amount is not present. Moreover, the adhesives cover a wide range of materials (e.g., resin, animal glue, gum). Therefore, sensitive, universal, and non-destructive identification methods are needed. Headspace solid phase micro-extraction (HS-SPME) in combination with GC-MS and with comprehensive GC-time-of-flight mass spectrometer (HS-SPME-GCxGC-TOFMS) has been proposed2,3. But the sensitivity remains a problem. In this study dynamic headspace (DHS)-GCxGC-TOFMS is tested on several adhesives and compared with HS-SPME-GCxGC-TOFMS. The DHS method is optimized and validated via design of experiment on pine resin and hide glue. 1. D. Cnuts, K. A. Perrault, P. H. Stefanuto, L. M. Dubois, J. F. Focant, and V. Rots, Archaeometry, 2018, 60, 1361. 2. K. A. Perrault, L. M. Dubois, D. Cnuts, V. Rots, J.-F. Focant, and P.-H. Stefanuto, Separation Science Plus, 2018, 1, 726. 3. M. Regert, V. Alexandre, N. Thomas, and A. Lattuati-Derieux, Journal of Chromatography A, 2006, 1101, 245

Gone with the wind? Evaluating the functional potential of a federmessergruppen assemblage from the eroded dune landscape of Lommel Maatheide

peer reviewe

Rethinking use-wear analysis and experimentation as applied to the study of past hominin tool use

In prehistoric human populations, technologies played a fundamental role in the acquisition of different resources and are represented in the main daily living activities, such as with bone, wooden, and stone-tipped spears for hunting, and chipped-stone tools for butchering. Considering that paleoanthropologists and archeologists are focused on the study of different processes involved in the evolution of human behavior, investigating how hominins acted in the past through the study of evidence on archeological artifacts is crucial. Thus, investigat ing tool use is of major importance for a comprehensive understanding of all processes that characterize human choices of raw materials, techniques, and tool types. Many functional assumptions of tool use have been based on tool design and morphology according to archeologists’ interpretations and ethnographic observations. Such assumptions are used as baselines when inferring human behavior and have driven an improvement in the methods and techniques employed in functional studies over the past few decades. Here, while arguing that use-wear analysis is a key discipline to assess past hominin tool use and to interpret the organization and variability of artifact types in the archeological record, we aim to review and discuss the current state-of-the-art methods, protocols, and their limitations. In doing so, our discussion focuses on three main topics: (1) the need for fundamental improvements by adopting established methods and techniques from similar research fields, (2) the need to implement and combine different levels of experimentation, and (3) the crucial need to establish standards and protocols in order to improve data quality, standard ization, repeatability, and reproducibility. By adopting this perspective, we believe that studies will increase the reliability and applicability of use-wear methods on tool function. The need for a holistic approach that combines not only use-wear traces but also tool technology, design, curation, durability, and efficiency is also debated and revised. Such a revision is a crucial step if archeologists want to build major inferences on human decision making behavior and biocultural evolution processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Role of Fire in the Life of an Adhesive

The use of fire is essential for the preparation of hafting adhesives; both are suggested to be a proxy for distinguishing the technological expertise and complex cognition among Palaeolithic populations. While use of fire has been argued to exist from about 1.0 Ma onwards, evidence for adhesives in the Palaeolithic record is rare and fragmented. In spite of the close link between fire places and adhesives, no study has ever focussed on examining the impact of heat on adhesive deposition and preservation. This paper discusses the results of a combustion experiment that was undertaken to understand the impact of heat exposure on hafting adhesives. The results have significant implications for archaeological interpretations. Deposition in or near a fire proves to severely impact the types of residues that preserve on a stone tool. The vertically transferred heat is responsible for the loss of adhesives but also for the incidental production of adhesives and their deposition on stone tools. It can be hypothesised that the rare survival of adhesives on archaeological stone tools might not only be the result of direct contact with the fire but also the result of degradation due to heat from overlying fireplaces. If we are to improve our understanding of the preservation of adhesives, it is important to unstand the taphonomic processes that affect these adhesives, in particular heat alteration.Evohaf