Book description: Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology provides an invaluable overview of geoarchaeology and how it can be used effectively in the study of archaeological sites and contexts. Taking a pragmatic and functional approach, this book presents: a fundamental, broad-based perspective of the essentials of modern geoarchaeology in order to demonstrate the breadth of the approaches and the depth of the problems that it can tackle. The rapid advances made in the area in recent years, but also gives the reader a firm grasp of conventional approaches. Covers traditional topics with the emphasis on landscapes, as well as anthropogenic site formation processes and their investigation. Provides guidelines for the presentation of field and laboratory methods and the reporting of geoarchaeological results. Essential reading for archaeology undergraduate and graduate students, practicing archaeologists and geoscientists who need to understand and apply geoarchaeological methodologies.

Practical and theoretical geoarchaeology

1 Archaeology, archaeological science and microarchaeology 2 Information embedded in the microscopic record 3 Completeness of the archaeological record 4 Common mineral components of the archaeological record 5 Biological materials: bones and teeth 6 Biological materials: phytoliths, diatoms, eggshells, otoliths and mollusk shells 7 Reconstructing pyrotechnological processes 8 Biological molecules and macromolecules: protected niches 9 Ethnoarchaeology of the microscopic record: learning from the present 10 Absolute dating: assessing the quality of a date 11 Reading the microscopic record on-site 12 Infrared spectroscopy in archaeology

Microarchaeology: Beyond the Visible Archaeological Record

The intensification of fieldwork in northern Mesopotamia, the upper region of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, has revealed two cycles of expansion and reduction in social complexity between 4400 and 2000 BC. These cycles include developments in social inequality, political centralization, craft production and economic specialization, agropastoral land use, and urbanization. Contrary to earlier assessments, many of these developments proceeded independently from the polities in southern Mesopotamia, although not in isolation. This review considers recent data from excavations and surveys in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey with particular attention to how they are used to construct models of early urban polities.

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Cycles of Civilization in Northern Mesopotamia, 4400–2000 BC

Geoarchaeology in an urban context: the uses of space in a Phoenician monumental building at Tel Dor (Israel)

We consider the daily practices of food preparation and consumption at the Neolithic Anatolian site of Catalhoyuk. We present the major food activities suggested from the archaeological evidence, including the timing and range of possible ingredients eaten by the residents of this thousand-year settlement. Plant, animal, and mineral resources, as well as the food production and preparation practices, are viewed in the context of the seasonal cycle. The food-related activities practiced at Catalhoyuk within each of the seasons are placed into five primary groups: production and procurement, processing, cooking, presentation, and eating. The daily household acts associated with these categories are discussed in detail. Using flora, fauna, micromorphological, lithic, ceramic, clay and architectural evidence, we present a picture of a community that was relatively healthy. The residents had a diet that relied heavily on plant foodstuffs, with wild plants remaining an important and valuable part of the daily and seasonal food practices throughout. The people of Catalhoyuk ate a range of animal products, including meat obtained from domesticated sheep/goats, wild cattle, small and large game, and to a more limited extent, eggs and waterfowl. Their social life can be seen through these foodways.

Food, meals, and daily activities : Food Habitus at neolithic çatalhöyük

The aim of this paper is to show how micromorphology is able to furnish information with the degree of precision necessary for analysing site formation processes and traces of activities in a variety of settings. Use of large resin‐impregnated thin sections allows contextual analysis of taphonomy and depositional relationships between sediments and artefact and bioarchaeological remains. We illustrate this by reference to results from a three‐year NERC project which examined depositional sequences in core domestic and ritual contexts in three early urban sites in the Near East in different sociocultural and environmental contexts. We discuss how micromorphology is able to trace different pre‐depositional, depositional and post‐depositional histories of components, before considering its contribution to detecting spatial and temporal variation in uses of space; enabling identification of single depositional episodes within secondary contexts. Together these capacities are providing richly networke...

D. F. Cutler

Papers

Microstratigraphic traces of site formation processes and human activities

Microstratigraphic Analysis Of Depositional Sequences In Areas Fs And Ss