Western Irish Sea Nephrops Grounds (FU15) 2018 UWTV Survey Report and catch options for 2019

This report provides the main results and findings of the 16th annual underwater television survey on the ‘Irish sea west Nephrops grounds’ ICES assessment area, Functional Unit 15. The survey was multi-disciplinary in nature collecting UWTV and other ecosystem data. The 2018 design consisted of a randomised isometric grid of 100 stations at 4.5 nautical mile intervals out over the full known extent the stock. The resulting krigged burrow abundance estimate was 4.9 billion burrows. This was a similar result of that obtained in 2011, and 9% lower than the abundance in 2017. In contrast to 2017 the spatial distribution of burrows appears more homogenous across the survey area, with high densities in the SW of the ground in shallower water, and higher densities in the NW of the ground in deep water. Overall densities are high and abundance remains stable, well above MSY Btrigger. Reducing the number of stations compared to 2011 has not affected the accuracy of the survey estimate to date. The CV (or relative standard error) of 3% is in line with previous estimates and well below the upper limit of 20% recommended by SGNEPS 2012. Total catches and landings options at various different fishing mortalities were calculated and fishing at Fmsy in 2018 implies a total catch option at Fmsy (=Fmax) of 11,107 tonnes which results in landings of no more than 8,959 tonnes. The sea-pen species observed in 2018 was predominantly Virgularia mirabilis, with one potential observation of Pennatula phosphorea (which requires verification). Sea-pens were observed at 20% of stations with high densities observed in the south-west of the ground. Trawl marks were noted at 26% of the UWTV stations

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

Urban and Transport Scaling: Northern Mesopotamia in the Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age

Scaling methods have been applied to study modern urban areas and how they create accelerated, feedback growth in some systems while efficient use in others. For ancient cities, results have shown that cities act as social reactors that lead to positive feedback growth in socioeconomic measures. In this paper, we assess the relationship between settlement area expressed through mound area from Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites and mean hollow way widths, which are remains of roadways, from the Khabur Triangle in northern Mesopotamia. The intent is to demonstrate the type of scaling and relationship present between sites and hollow ways, where both feature types are relatively well preserved. For modern roadway systems, efficiency in growth relative to population growth suggests roads should show sublinear scaling in relation to site size. In fact, similar to modern systems, such sublinear scaling results are demonstrated for the Khabur Triangle using available data, suggesting ancient efficiency in intensive transport growth relative to population levels. Comparable results are also achieved in other ancient Near East regions. Furthermore, results suggest that there could be a general pattern relevant for some small sites (0–2 ha) and those that have fewer hollow ways, where β, a measure of scaling, is on average low (≈ < 0.2). On the other hand, a second type of result for sites with many hollow ways (11 or more) and that are often larger suggests that β is greater (0.23–0.72), but still sublinear. This result could reflect the scale in which larger settlements acted as greater social attractors or had more intensive economic activity relative to smaller sites. The provided models also allow estimations of past roadway widths in regions where hollow ways are missing