Public archaeology and political dynamics in Portugal. A reply to Bednarik

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The Upper Palaeolithic of Europe

The Anatolian Middle Bronze Age (MBA) is roughly contemporary with the Isin-Larsa Period followed by the Old Babylonian Kingdom in southern Mesopotamia, the Old Assyrian Period in northern Mesopotamia, the Syrian Middle Bronze I-II Period characterised by urban centres such as Ebla, Mari and the kingdom of Yamkhad, and the Middle Kingdom to Second Intermediate Period in Egypt. Many sites with MBA levels continued into the Late Bronze Age (LBA) with little change in cultural assemblages or technologies. The figure of the ruler Anitta provides historical continuity for the MBA and LBA polities in Central Anatolia. Anatolian art of the LBA is best known for its architectural sculpture and rock reliefs. The west Anatolian kingdom of Lydia, the last independent polity of Anatolia with linguistic links to Anatolian Indo- European Bronze Age languages, succeeded the Phrygian kingdom at the beginning of the 6th century.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tar adhesives, Neandertals, and the tyranny of the discontinuous mind

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A criança do Lapedo e as origens do homem moderno na Península Ibérica

Durante as três últimas décadas do século XX, o debate sobre as origens da humanidade actual girou em torno de duas posições fortemente polarizadas (Fig. 1). Um modelo, a Hipótese Multiregional, sustentava que, após a saída de África do Homo erectus, há mais de um milhão de anos, a nossa evolução se deu num quadro de fluxo genético permanente entre as diferentes regiões do Velho Mundo, pelo que todas as populações do género Homo, independentemente do seu maior ou menor grau de isolamento geográfico, teriam sempre constituído uma única espécie. Essa espécie única teria evoluído de forma gradual, representando os neandertalenses um ponto intermédio na passagem do “estádio” erectus ao “estádio” sapiens; na Europa, portanto, teria havido continuidade genética total entre os últimos neandertalenses e os primeiros sapiens, resultando estes últimos da transformação evolutiva dos primeiros

Campaniformes sin campaniforme: el contexto funerario calcolítico de Galeria da Cisterna (complejo cárstico de Almonda, Torres Novas, Portugal)

Even though no characteristic ceramics were found, a small set of V-perforated buttons indicates that the Galeria da Cisterna cave was used for funerary purposes by people of the Beaker culture. Direct dating of human bone corroborates that the bodies of at least four adult individuals were laid down here during the second half of the third millennium cal BC. The buttons belong to well-known types and their textural properties suggest that, as with all the other Portuguese specimens analyzed so far, sperm whale ivory is the raw-material used. A small fragment of a gold spiral completes the site’s Beaker context.A pesar de que no se han recuperado cerámicas del Campaniforme en Galeria da Cisterna, un pequeño conjunto de botones con perforación en “V” indica que la cueva fue utilizada como lugar de inhumación por gentes de esa cultura. La datación directa de restos humanos confirma que al menos cuatro individuos fueron enterrados allí durante la segunda mitad del tercer milenio cal BC. Los botones pertenecen a tipos bien conocidos y las características de la materia prima utilizada indican que, como ocurre con todos los ejemplares de yacimientos portugueses hasta ahora analizados, están fabricados en marfil de cachalote. Un pequeño fragmento de espiral en oro completa este contexto.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The late persistence of the Middle Palaeolithic and Neandertals in Iberia: A review of the evidence for and against the “Ebro Frontier” model

In the Franco-Cantabrian region and Catalonia, the Upper Palaeolithic begins with three assemblage-types found in stratigraphic order through the interval between 45,000 and 37,000 years ago: the Châtelperronian, the Protoaurignacian, and the Early Aurignacian. A stone tool, the Châtelperron point, and a bone tool, the split-based point, are index fossils of the first and the last, respectively, but neither was ever found elsewhere in Iberia. This observation triggered the proposition that, in regions situated to the south of the River Ebro drainage, the Middle Palaeolithic persisted until the time when the Early Aurignacian gave way to the Evolved Aurignacian, which is documented across all of Iberia by assemblages containing its index fossil, the Roc-de-Combe bladelet. Put forth thirty years ago, this Ebro Frontier model found support in the little radiometric evidence then available. Since, it has been shown that most apparently late occurrences of the Middle Palaeolithic were an artefact of dating error, caused by incomplete decontamination of radiocarbon dating samples, while claims have surfaced for the Early Aurignacian to be more widespread than hitherto thought. While the validity of Ebro Frontier's premises has thereby been called into question, continued support for the model is provided by the excavation of new sites, the re-excavation of old ones, the application of luminescence techniques, and the radiocarbon dating of robustly pre-treated samples. Moreover, and highlighting the key role that site formation process and taphonomy continue to play in ongoing controversies, issues of association between the samples and what they are supposed to date cast doubt on the two key claims for the presence of the Early Aurignacian in Andalusia and Portugal. Along with the Iberian System range, the Cantabro-Pyrenean cordillera represents a formidable physical obstacle to travel and communication, potentially enhanced during Last Glacial times because of rapid and major fluctuations in aridity, glacier extent, and plant cover. This barrier effect underpins the divergent culture-historical trajectories that we see unfolding at various times during the Upper Pleistocene. Beyond the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition, a well-known case in point is the interval between 20,000 and 22,000 years ago, during which the Badegoulian and the Initial Magdalenian of France and northern Spain developed in parallel with facies of the Upper Solutrean and the Solutreo-gravettian then persisting across all Iberian regions situated between Valencia and Portugal. Given known associations between technocomplexes and human types, these regions' Late Mousterian can be taken as a proxy for the persistence of Neandertal populations, and therefore constitutes a case study of choice for analyses of the variation in the intensity and frequency of biological and cultural interactions among low-density, small-scale populations of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. Such analyses have implications for models of the spread of genes, populations, and ideas in the course of Human Evolution, which would greatly benefit from due consideration of the issues of historical contingency that the Iberian evidence sheds much light on.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Mortuary Behaviours and the Origins of Ritual Burial

Although we now know that the site of the 1856 discovery of the eponymous remains – the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, in the Neander valley – was in all likelihood a place of burial (Schmitz 2006 ), the fact that Neanderthals buried their dead was not scientifi cally established until 1908, at the Bouffi a Boneval, one of the caves in the La Chapelle-aux-Saints complex of Palaeolithic localities ( Figures 3.1and 3.2 ). A near-complete skeleton, the ‘old man’, was found here, lying inside a 0.30 m deep, approximately 1.50 × 1.00 m depression of the marly bedrock whose morphology (roughly rectangular, with straight walls and a fl at bottom) indicated that it had been deliberately dug for the disposal of the corpse (Boule  1913 ).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Seeing the Leaves and Not Missing the Forest: A Portuguese Perspective of the Solutrean

In a 1964 synthesis, Roche concluded that the Upper Palaeolithic of Portugal remained largely unknown, the presence of the Solutrean being the only fact that could be unambiguously ascertained. Subsequent work has radically changed this situation and, where the Solutrean is concerned, has established that its culture-stratigraphy sequence accords well with the traditional subdivision systematised for France by Smith, which was based on the successive appearance of different index fossils. Where lithic point typology suggests a break, this is confirmed independently by accompanying changes in the basic technology of blade production. In some cases, the existence of a given unit of the subdivision can only be inferred from the identification of the corresponding index fossils in palimpsest contexts. The identification of such contexts as being mixed post-depositionally, and not as documenting a true coexistence of point types, which would falsify the overall sequence, is made easy by the fact that, in Portugal, most Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) sites are open air and feature few (if not single) occupation levels. This fact has advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the fairly complete reduction sequences enable the reconstruction of total lithic production systems, and the enveloping geology well illustrates the impact of the period’s environmental instability. On the other hand, issues of change through time have to be addressed largely through stratigraphic correlation and radiocarbon dating, and are often complicated by the representativity problems raised by special-purpose, logistical sites. These issues are of broader archaeological interest, as are the implications of the Solutrean’s chronostratigraphic sequence for the palaeoanthropological interpretation of patterns of technological change. Where the LGM of south-western Europe is concerned, such implications are, namely, that the distribution and abundance of sites is conditioned by taphonomy more than by demography, and that considerations of social geography are of greater explanatory power to understand the emergence and development of the Solutrean than more traditional origins questions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Early Food Production in Southwestern Europe

The Central Asia encompasses the territories of the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan as well as northern Afghanistan and northwestern China. The settlements of the Dzheitun Culture lie mostly on sand dunes and were continuously inhabited over a longer period of time. The Neolithic Dzheitun Culture was replaced in the early 5th millennium BCE by the Namazga Culture, which is already Eneolithic. Monuments of the Late Bronze Age lay within the catchment area of the Inka Darya to the south of the Syr Darya Delta, which was still inhabited until the mid-1st millennium BCE, as attested by Sakan kurgans of the 7th to 5th century BCE in Tagisken South and in Uygarak. On the fringes of the Taklamakan Desert emerged oasis communities, whose economy was based upon agriculture and stock raising. As stations along the Silk Road, they could participate in a widely branched foreign trade, which enhanced their prosperity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

New Evidence from Galeria da Cisterna (Almonda) and Gruta do Caldeirão on the Phasing of Central Portugal’s Early Neolithic

Funerary usage of Galeria da Cisterna (Almonda) and Gruta do Caldeirão began at the onset of the Neolithic and continued until Early Medieval times. At Cisterna, the thin Holocene deposit was unstratified; at Caldeirão, the stratigraphic sequence underwent post-depositional disturbance. Using radiocarbon dating, typological considerations, spatial distribution patterns, and physical anthropological data, these palimpsests can be disentangled to a significant extent. At both sites, the earliest depositions fall in the c. 5250–5500 cal BC interval and are associated with large numbers of beads. Wares extensively decorated with shell and comb impressions are likely to belong in this phase. Another style of decoration – shell impressions forming bands below the rim and garlands between prehension knobs – probably dates to a slightly later time. Burial continued at both sites through the c. 5000–5250 cal BC time range, but which decorative styles were then in fashion remains difficult to ascertain; it is likely that the irregular arrangements of shell impressions seen in some Cisterna vessels are among them. At Caldeirão, non-Cardial impressed and incised wares date to c. 4500–5000 cal BC, while undecorated wares are associated with human bone samples demonstrating two different periods of burial during the c. 3500–4000 cal BC interval. Most if not all of the nine Cardial individuals directly dated at the two sites died coevally with the more recent of the Mesolithic interments found in the shell-midden sites of the Tagus estuary.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio