Showing papers by "Stephen Shennan published in 2019"

The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the European Bronze Age: The State of Debate

Abstract: Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently, the effects of recycling, both temporal and spatial, on the composition of the circulating metal stock have received much attention. Also, discussions of the value and perception of bronze, both as individual objects and as hoarded material, continue to be the focus of scholarly debate. Here, we bring together the sometimes-diverging views of several research groups on these topics in an attempt to find common ground and set out the major directions of the debate, for the benefit of future research. The paper discusses how to determine and interpret the geological provenance of new metal entering the system; the circulation of extant metal across time and space, and how this is seen in changing compositional signatures; and some economic aspects of metal production. These include the role of metal-producing communities within larger economic settings, quantifying the amount of metal present at any one time within a society, and aspects of hoarding, a distinctive European phenomenon that is less prevalent in the Middle Eastern and Asian Bronze Age societies.

Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene: synthesis, comparison and regional trends in population, land cover and climate.

Abstract: This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during...

Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece: A comparative study

Abstract: This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Greek landscape through time. We demonstrate that SPDs offer a useful approach to outline differences between regions and a useful complement to archaeological site surveys, evaluated here especially for the onset of the Neolithic and for the Final Neolithic (FN)/Early Bronze Age (EBA) transition. Pollen analysis highlight differences in vegetation between the two sub-regions, but also several parallel changes. The comparison of land cover dynamics between two sub-regions of Greece further demonstrates the significance of the bioclimatic conditions of core locations and that apparent oppositions between regions may in fact be two sides of the same coin in terms of socio-ecological trajectories. We also assess the balance between anthropogenic and climate-related impacts on vegetation and suggest that climatic variability was as an important factor for vegetation regrowth. Finally, our evidence suggests that the impact of humans on land cover is amplified from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) onwards as more extensive herding and agricultural practices are introduced.

Holocene Land Cover and Population Dynamics in Southern France

Abstract: This paper describes long-term changes in human population and vegetation cover in southern France, using summed radiocarbon probability distributions and site count data as population proxies and ...

Holocene landscape dynamics and long-term population trends in the Levant:

Abstract: This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region’s landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar approach in order to assess how Holocene landscape dynamics change at different geographical scales. We based our analysis on 14 fossil pollen sequences and applied a hierarchical agglomerative clustering and community classification in order to define groups of vegetation types (e.g. grassland, wetland, woodland, etc.). Human impact on the landscape has been assessed by the analysis of pollen indicator groups. Archaeological settlement data and Summed Probability Distribution (SPD) of radiocarbon dates have been used to reconstruct long-term demographic trends. In this study, for the first time, the evolution of the human population is estimated statistically and compared with environmental proxies for assessing the interplay of biotic and abiotic factors in shaping the Holocene landscapes in the Levant.

Prehistoric palaeodemographics and regional land cover change in eastern Iberia

Abstract: Much attention has been placed on the drivers of vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula. While climate plays a key role in determining the species pools within different regions and exerts a st...

Tyrrhenian central Italy: Holocene population and landscape ecology

Abstract: This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil pollen data) with proxy data for population levels (including settlements and radiocarbon dates) over the...

Pollen-inferred regional vegetation patterns and demographic change in Southern Anatolia through the Holocene:

Abstract: Southern Anatolia is a highly significant area within the Mediterranean, particularly in terms of understanding how agriculture moved into Europe from neighbouring regions. This study uses pollen, palaeoclimate and archaeological evidence to investigate the relationships between demography and vegetation change, and to explore how the development of agriculture varied spatially. Data from 21 fossil pollen records have been transformed into forested, parkland and open vegetation types using cluster analysis. Patterns of change have been explored using non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) and through analysis of indicator groups, such as an Anthropogenic Pollen Index, and Simpson’s Diversity. Settlement data, which indicate population densities, and summed radiocarbon dates for archaeological sites have been used as a proxy for demographic change. The pollen and archaeological records confirm that farming can be detected earlier in Anatolia in comparison with many other parts of the Mediterranean. Dynamics of change in grazing indicators and the OJCV (Olea, Juglans, Castanea and Vitis) index for cultivated trees appear to match cycles of population expansion and decline. Vegetation and land use change is also influenced by other factors, such as climate change. Investigating the early impacts of anthropogenic activities (e.g. woodcutting, animal herding, the use of fire and agriculture) is key to understanding how societies have modified the environment since the mid–late Holocene, despite the capacity of ecological systems to absorb recurrent disturbances. The results of this study suggest that shifting human population dynamics played an important role in shaping land cover in central and southern Anatolia.

The changing face of the Mediterranean – Land cover, demography and environmental change: Introduction and overview:

Abstract: This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives...

Reconciling material cultures in archaeology with genetic data requires robust cultural evolutionary taxonomies

Abstract: The analysis of ancient genomes is having a major impact on archaeological interpretations. Yet, the methodological divide between these disciplines is substantial. Fundamentally, there is an urgent need to reconcile archaeological and genetic taxonomies. However, traditional archaeological taxonomies are problematic because they are epistemologically weak and often laden with undue assumptions about past ethnicity and demography—they are a hindrance rather than a help in such a reconciliation. Eisenmann and colleagues have recently tackled this issue, offering a palette of potential solutions that circumvents traditional archaeological culture labels. We welcome renewed attention to nomenclature but take issue with such recent work that favours systems of taxonomic assignment for genomic groups that either do not include archaeological information at all or retain traditional cultural taxonomic categories. While superficially pragmatic, these administrative solutions do not address the substantive issues that the topic raises. We here present the argument that the only analytically viable solution to aligning genetic and cultural nomenclature is to conceptualise material culture as underwritten by a system of information transmission across generations that has similar structural properties to the genetic system of information transmission. This alignment facilitates the use of similar analytical protocols and hence allows for a true parallel analysis. Once culture change is also understood as an evolutionary process, a wealth of analytical methods for reconciling archaeological and genetic clusters becomes available.

Food Income and the Evolution of Forager Mobility

Abstract: Forager mobility tends to be high, although ethnographic studies indicate ecological factors such as resource abundance and reliability, population density and effective temperature influence the cost-to-benefit assessment of movement decisions. We investigate the evolution of mobility using an agent-based and spatially explicit cultural evolutionary model that considers the feedback between foragers and their environment. We introduce Outcomes Clustering, an approach to categorizing simulated system states arising from complex stochastic processes shaped by multiple interacting parameters. We find that decreased mobility evolves under conditions of high resource replenishment and low resource depletion, with a concomitant trend of increased population density and, counter-intuitively, decreased food incomes. Conversely, increased mobility co-occurs with lower population densities and higher food incomes. We replicate the well-known relationships between mobility, population density, and resource quality, while predicting reduced food income, and consequently the reduction in health status observed in early sedentary populations without the need to invoke factors such as reduced diet quality or increased pathogen loads.

Where Are We Heading? The Evolution of Humans and Things. IAN HODDER. 2018. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. xvi + 179 pp. $27.50 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-300-20409-4.

Abstract: from each time period, appear as chapter highlights. These fictional first-person vignettes put native voices to mute archaeological data. Blending experiential sketches with empirical information, the narratives demonstrate archaeology’s job: illuminating past cultures. Chapters include features on doing archaeology: geoarchaeology, flotation, basketry analysis, lithic microwear studies, curation/collections management, and straightforward talk on cultural resource management fieldwork. “How-to” spots on native industrial crafts showcase flintworking, making pottery, dugout canoes, and wigwams. These ancillary contributions fuse harmoniously, sending unified messages on archaeology. All serve to broaden the reach of First Pennsylvanians and enhance its appeal. The overarching messages of First Pennsylvanians are that (a) Pennsylvania’s prehistory unfolded within a broader human occupation of the Americas and (b) Pennsylvania’s story fits uniquely into the human drama that took place over at least 13,000 years across a diverse American landscape. Readers learn that Pennsylvania’s human story began with early postPleistocene foraging nomads who sometimes hunted species of large game that are now extinct. They discover that the legacy of these early hunter-foragers extended to first contact of their descendants with Euro-Americans by AD 1600–1625. Readers see the far-reaching effects of vastly different cultures in contact across Pennsylvania. They learn that cultural influences of the first Pennsylvanians today are visible amid America’s vast cultural diversity. Each chapter sets Pennsylvania’s intriguing Native American history within a regional context, encouraging readers to learn comprehensively and to investigate the archaeology of neighboring districts. First Pennsylvanians teaches readers how archaeologists determine the context of artifact finds via gridprovenience associations and stratigraphy and, in turn, how that context forms the basis of all interpretations in archaeology. However, the reported context of four stone artifacts shown on page 45, depicted as “excavated from the lower levels of Meadowcroft Rockshelter,” is simply inaccurate. Instead, all were surface-collected from the Krajacic site (36WH351)—a plow-disturbed, multicomponent upland site 408.8m asl and 9.3 km southeast of Meadowcroft, situated at 259.9m asl (Boldurian 1985,Variability in Flintworking Technology at the Krajacic Site, 56, 92, 114, 322). The same applies for the blade core shown on page 51. In a prior publication (Carr and Adovasio 2002, Ice Age Peoples of Pennsylvania, 10–12), author Carr borrowed the information correctly, and it is unfortunate that these key details in this new book are incorrect. Because the authors allege that these five artifacts in question are among the oldest in the Americas and have in situ credentials, having incorrectly reported their site location and proveniences is an egregious error. Feature contributor Andrea Johnson Carr cautions that “in the world of archaeology, context can make or break the importance of any individual find” (p. 33). Reporting context accurately is no different. Misattributing artifacts from one site to another is just inexcusable. Moreover, in five of nine cases, images of Krajacic’s surface-derived artifacts are falsely attributed to Meadowcroft’s (pre-Clovis?) lower Stratum IIa excavations. By misrepresenting Meadowcroft’s earliest artifact inventory, First Pennsylvanians distorts the lithic artifact data, thereby altering broader site interpretations. For some researchers, these transgressions may renew rather than relieve doubts about the still-controversial Meadowcroft Rockshelter. However, unaware readers of First Pennsylvanians, including those who visit this National Historic Landmark, will revel in its equivocal story of Pennsylvania’s earliest peoples. The overall value of First Pennsylvanians far outweighs its deficiencies. Anyone interested in Pennsylvania’s rich prehistory and how archaeologists investigate it will be amply rewarded by this book. I will use it in my archaeology classroom. With the few reservations noted, I highly recommend it for a wide audience.

New radiocarbon dates show Early Neolithic date of flintmining and stone quarrying in Britain

Abstract: New radiocarbon (14C) dates suggest a simultaneous appearance of two technologically and geographically distinct axe production practices in Neolithic Britain; igneous open-air quarries in Great Langdale, Cumbria, and from flint mines in southern England at ~4000–3700 cal BC. In light of the recent evidence that farming was introduced at this time by large-scale immigration from northwest Europe, and that expansion within Britain was extremely rapid, we argue that this synchronicity supports this speed of colonization and reflects a knowledge of complex extraction processes and associated exchange networks already possessed by the immigrant groups; long-range connections developed as colonization rapidly expanded. Although we can model the start of these new extraction activities, it remains difficult to estimate how long significant production activity lasted at these key sites given the nature of the record from which samples could be obtained.