Residual doses in recent alluvial sediments from the ardenne (S Belgium)

peer reviewedWe report on our first investigations into the potential of optical dating for determining the rate of river flood sedimentation in the Ardenne region (S Belgium). Two samples collected from a recent alluvial deposit were used to investigate the extent of resetting in different particle size fractions of quartz (4-11 mu m, 63-90 mu m, 90-125 mu m, 125-180 mu m, 180-212 mu m and 212-250 mu m) as well as in polymineral fine (4-11 mu m) grains. Both samples show satisfactory OSL and IRSL characteristics. The IRSL signals from the polymineral fine grains yield an equivalent dose (D-e) of 3-4 Gy, while a D-e of 0.3-0.6 Gy was measured using large aliquots of quartz. Small aliquot analyses of 63-90 mu m and 212-250 mu m quartz grains confirm that the coarser fraction contains more grains with lower D-e's. Furthermore, for a modern sample (< 3 years old), similar to 60% of the aliquots yields a D-e consistent with zero, indicating that these contain only well-bleached grains. These findings suggest that it might be possible to extract the true burial dose from dose distributions measured using small aliquots of coarse-grained (e.g. 212-250 mu m) quartz

Akkerstraat-Ploegstraat te Overpelt (gem. Overpelt). Archeologische vooronderzoek door middel van 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]

Markt te Geel (gem. Geel). Archeologische opgraving.

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]

Luikersteenweg te Offelken (gem. Tongeren) Definitief archeologisch onderzoek: een opgraving

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]

De visserskaai te Oostende (prov. West-Vlaanderen): archeologie van een in de 17de eeuw zwaar geteisterde stad

The Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish Community (IAP) has, in close collaboration with the town of Ostend, carried out archaeological excavations during the construction works of the car park below the Visserskaai at Ostend from September 1998 till February 1999. This archaeological work mainly produced information on the eastern ramparts of Ostend and their evolution from the 16th century onwards together with information on the material culture of the inhabitants of Ostend during this same period. The town of Ostend had no defences until late in the 16th century as initial construction work for the defences only started in 1572 when the town came into northern hands. In the beginning of the 17th century Ostend managed to withstand successfully, with its newly built ramparts, for three years an overwhelming Spanish army siege. This was only possible thanks to the fact that the Spaniards never managed to seal of Ostend completely from the sea. As a result, victuals and soldiers arrived continuously at Ostend during the siege. It was only after the arrival of Spinola in the besieging camp, at the end of 1603, that Ostend was gradually forced to surrender. At the bottom of the excavated car park trench, some 4 m below the actual street level, wooden structures of the earthen ramparts were preserved (figs. 4-5). The presence of these con- firms historical data about the use of wood to strengthen the earthen ramparts. The excavations however documented mainly features from 2 bastions, the Peckels bastion and the Spanish bastion (fig. 2-3). Human burials and a gunpowder-magazine (figs. 7, 8, 10, 12) were uncovered in the Peckels bastion and human burials and an open-air rainwater reservoir were detected in the Spanish bastion. The human burials are studied elsewhere in this volume together with other post-medieval burials from Ostend recently discovered outside regular cemeteries. Archaeological material found in connection with the gunpowder-magazine in the Peckelf bastion dates from the 2nd half of the 16th /1st half of the 17th century (figs. 6,9,13-15) and suggests that the construction of this gunpowder-magazine? has to be situated somewhere in the middle of the 17th century, in other words in the period when the town defences of Ostend were adapted to new standards after the above- mentioned siege. A typical object related to the siege is a funnel-shaped gunpowder-flask in a copper-alloy (fig. 6). The inner wall of the gunpowder-magazine was erected on a framework of horizontal wooden beams, which were themselves resting on vertically placed and sharpened beams, mainly in oak (fig. 8). A dendrochronological analysis of the vertically placed beams produced a terminus post quem, which is far too early to be of any help in the discussion on the gunpowder-magazine. The technical differences between the inner and outer wall of the gunpowder-magazine suggest at least 2 phases for this building. The above-mentioned ceramics consist of redwares, Rhenish stone- wares a.o. Raeren, maiolicas, Weser slipwares, olive jars from Seville and some whitewares with green or yellow glaze. The archaeological material from the open- air rainwater reservoir in the Spanish bastion dates from the 2nd half of the 17th/1st half of the 19th century but mainly from the 18th century (figs. 16-32). The collection of ceramics from this context is largely dominated by tablewares. Among these stonewares are nearly missing and replaced by faience, china and industrial white- wares (pearl and cream wares). Maiolica has been nearly completely replaced by faience. Maiolicas remain in fact only important as wall-tiles. The collection contains some olive jars from Seville, a bowl from Dèsvres and a few products from Beauvais. The collection of china mainly consists of cups and small dishes in blue and white china. The china has been brought to Ostend in great quantities in the 18th century, first by the Ostend Company and later by mariners from Ostend in Foreign Service, mainly as ship's ballast. Besides ceramics this context also produced several finds in leather, glass, stone and metal. The leather finds mainly consist of shoes. The glass collection is largely dominated by cylindrical and globular bottles of which one was still intact including its cork (fig. 26: 1). Metal is represented by 22 cast iron cannon balls (fig. 28) and by a standard measure for bottles from an unidentified town inspector of measures and weights of Ostend with GS initials (fig. 27: 8). Small quantities of animal remains were found dispersed over many contexts within the site's stratigraphy. Only three of them are meaningful: a deposit found under the floor of the gunpowder-magazine (table 1: context A), an assemblage excavated in leveling layers within the Peckels bastion (table 1: context B), and material found in the water reservoir in the Spanish bastion (table 1: context C). All connections consisted of larger material; sieved samples did not yield meaningful numbers of smaller animal remains. Context A dates from the second half of the 16th to the first half of the 17th century and consists of consumption refuse: marine molluscs, marine fish bones, bird bone and the remains of cattle, sheep and pig. Context B is contemporaneous to context A and also represents consumption refuse with a similar composition. Remarkable are only a series of vertebrae of a large specimen of ling, a fish that must have been caught in northern waters, and a number of skeletal elements of a gurnard species. Context C has a younger date (second half of the 17th century to the first half of the 19th century) and has a mixed origin in terms of the taphonomy of the animal remains. Not only consumption refuse is present but also parts of the skeletons of at least four dogs and a horse. It is possible that all three contexts represent secondary refuse; in any case their provenance remains unknown. The material certainly has limited value for the interpretation of former consumption patterns. A feature of special interest is the presence of a few cowrie shells. Several aspects of the material culture reflect the maritime character of the town: the presence of several imports such as olive jars from Seville and specific objects as a token in lead (fig. 13: 16) probably used by skippers for the payment of fees and/or tolls. The presence of an important percentage of china and of some cowrie shells is probably related to the activities of the Ostend Company in the l8th century. The pottery discovered from both contexts (2nd half 16th century/ 1 st half 17th century and 2nd half 17th century/ 1st half 19th century) follows the general trends described for post-medieval Flanders

Application of medical X-ray computed tomography in the study of cold-water carbonate mounds

During the R/V Marion Dufresne 169 ‘MiCROSYSTEMS’ cruise (July 2008) to the El Arraiche mud volcano field in the Gulf of Cadiz cold-water coral mounds were targeted. Four on-mound gravity cores, with a total length of 17.5 m, were obtained for sedimentological and palaeoceanographic analyses in order to unveil the history of the uppermost meters of these cold-water coral build-ups. In parallel, four on-mound cores were taken on approximately the same location for microbiological and biogeochemical analyses. By comparing and correlating both results, more information can be revealed about the processes acting in the dead coral rubble fields which cover these mounds.Computed X-ray tomography (CT) was used for the identification and quantification of the corals inside the gravity cores. Furthermore, this technique is also useful for the investigation of sedimentological features, i.e. bioturbation, porosity, laminations... In this study, cores were scanned using a medical CT scanner on a relative high resolution which allows the three-dimensional visualization of the corals and sedimentological features. Slices were taken every 3 mm with an overlap of 1 mm.Based on these data it was possible to delineate different “CT” facies within the cores. On one hand there are intervals with a high amount of corals and on the other hand zones with a very low amount of corals or even no corals at all. In the first case two different facies can be distinguished: one facies with clearly recognizable, well preserved corals, and the second facies with crushed coral fragments. In both facies the corals are embedded in a homogenous matrix. Different facies could also be defined in the intervals containing little or no corals. For example, a homogenous facies with bioturbations and/or cracks. Also an important observation is the resence of pyrite which appears in all cores at a certain depth. Sometimes the pyrite could be observed in bioturbations or inside the corals.Besides that also the percentage of corals in these gravity cores were quantified using the “Morpho+” software, which was developed at the UGCT (Centre for X-ray Tomography, Ghent University, Belgium). Based on these results, a clear difference can be noticed between the four mounds. On Conger cliff, corals were only observed in the upper 34 cm while in the other locations corals can be found throughout the entire core with significant variations in the amount of corals.Finally, it was possible to identify different species of cold-water corals, namely Lophelia pertusa, Madrepora oculata, Desmophyllum cristagalli and Dendrophyllia. In conjunction with dating and palaeoenvironmental analyses of the corals and the sediment matrix, this can yield valuable information about the build-up of these cold-water coral mounds in the El Arraiche mud volcano field and the palaeoenvironmental characteristics at the time the corals were living

<i>De novo</i> design of a four-fold symmetric TIM-barrel protein with atomic-level accuracy

Despite efforts for over 25 years, de novo protein design has not succeeded in achieving the TIM-barrel fold. Here we describe the computational design of 4-fold symmetrical (β/α)(8)-barrels guided by geometrical and chemical principles. Experimental characterization of 33 designs revealed the importance of sidechain-backbone hydrogen bonding for defining the strand register between repeat units. The X-ray crystal structure of a designed thermostable 184-residue protein is nearly identical with the designed TIM-barrel model. PSI-BLAST searches do not identify sequence similarities to known TIM-barrel proteins, and sensitive profile-profile searches indicate that the design sequence is distant from other naturally occurring TIM-barrel superfamilies, suggesting that Nature has only sampled a subset of the sequence space available to the TIM-barrel fold. The ability to de novo design TIM-barrels opens new possibilities for custom-made enzymes

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

Although variations in building activity are a useful indicator of societal well-being and demographic development, historical datasets for larger regions and longer periods are still rare. Here, we present 54,045 annually precise dendrochronological felling dates from historical construction timber from across most of Europe between 1250 and 1699 CE to infer variations in building activity. We use geostatistical techniques to compare spatiotemporal dynamics in past European building activity against independent demographic, economic, social and climatic data. We show that the felling dates capture major geographical patterns of demographic trends, especially in regions with dense data coverage. A particularly strong negative association is found between grain prices and the number of felling dates. In addition, a significant positive association is found between the number of felling dates and mining activity. These strong associations, with well-known macro-economic indicators from pre-industrial Europe, corroborate the use of felling dates as an independent source for exploring large-scale fluctuations of societal well-being and demographic development. Three prominent examples are the building boom in the Hanseatic League region of northeastern Germany during the 13th century, the onset of the Late Medieval Crisis in much of Europec. 1300, and the cessation of building activity in large parts of central Europe during armed conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648 CE). Despite new insights gained from our European-wide felling date inventory, further studies are needed to investigate changes in construction activity of high versus low status buildings, and of urban versus rural buildings, and to compare those results with a variety of historical documentary sources and natural proxy archives.</jats:p