Showing papers in "Antiquity in 1977"

The African aqualithic

Abstract: During the early post-Pleistocene there flourished right across the middle belt of the African continent a highly distinctive way of life intimately associated with the great rivers, lakes and marshes. This belt–or arc, to be more precise, corresponding roughly with the drought zone of the early 1970s–comprises the southern Sahara and the Sahel from the Atlantic to the Nile and there bends up-river to the East African rift valleys and the equator. Traceable as early as the eighth millennium BC, the zenith of this ‘aquatic civilization’ was achieved in the seventh millennium, being a time when higher rainfall made rivers longer and more permanent and caused lakes to swell and burst their basins (Butzer et al., 1972; Zinderen Bakker, 1972). Around 7000 BC, for instance, fish populations as well as hippos and crocodiles reached the central Saharan highlands, while, to their south, Lake Chad expanded enormously till it overflowed via the Benue and Lower Niger into the Atlantic. In East Africa at the same time the small lakes in the Kenya rift valley rose to combine or to create riverain links over the normal watersheds, while to their north Lake Rudolf reached a height sufficient to help feed the White Nile system.

Excavations at Matupi cave

Abstract: The Matupi cave is one of the 40 caves within the Mount Hoyo limestone massif, a touristic site in Ituri, Zaire. The author recognized its archaeological possibilities in February 1973 during a prospection tour in the northern part of the country. This expedition had been organized by the Institut des Musees nationaux du ZaYre in collaboration with the Musee royal de l'Afrique centrale at Tervuren, Belgium. Upon the visit to the cave a I sq m trial trench was excavated. More extended excavations (10 sq m) took place during January-March 1974. The excavations were carried out in spits of 5 cm on a I m grid system. Matupi is a large cave with an ideal living room at its entrance (c. 7 m high, c. 8 m deep and c. 5 m wide).

Seafaring merchants of Ur

Abstract: Less than ten years have passed since the first discovery in Saudi Arabia of prehistoric pottery superficially identical with that known from the earliest farming settlements in Sumer 6-700 km to the north. Some 40 sites have now been identified in the Eastern Province. More recently comparable pottery has been found at sites in nearby Qatar and Bahrain. These discoveries have provoked much speculation about the nature of the contact between Sumer and Arabia at this early period (on calibrated radiocarbon determinations by the late sixth millennium BC), and indeed on the origins of the people who created the important and distinctive prehistoric culture characterized by this pottery and known to archaeologists as ‘Ubaid.

The early development of towns in Egypt

Abstract: It may seem surprising that, after three-quarters of a century of excavation in Egypt, anyone should still feel it necessary to write an article claiming that ancient Egypt has, after all, left behind stratified town sites of the sort that have been the main source of work for the archaeoIogist in other countries ; and that, furthermore, the life which they represent can be rationally comprehended.

Sandscaping and C14: the Udal, N. Uist

Abstract: A research campaign into the scarcely known history and prehistoric origins of Scottish West Highland and Island settlement, has located an area of ‘fossil’ landscape at Coileagan an Udail (the Udal), N. Uist. The completion of a first stage of 14 years excavation (155 weeks) has provided detailed evidence of continuous occupation from the Iron Age to the eighteenth century AD. Sampling has shown positive indications of a similar picture back through much of prehistory at least as far as the Beaker period and is the basis for the proposed second stage of excavations. This remarkably long (by European standards) sequence of deposition has had its coherence confirmed by a first series of radiocarbon dates. The calibration of these dates and their relationship to crucial artifacts is considered. This article is by Iain Crawford, who has just completed two years as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at The Queen's University of Belfast, and Dr Roy Switsur, Head of the Radiocarbon Dating Research Laboratory University of Cambridge.

The archaeology of Samnite settlement in Molise

Abstract: The province (or regione) of Molise is roughly the size of Lincolnshire or Devon, and stretches from the Apennine mountains to the Adriatic coast (FIG. I). In the Roman period Molise was occupied by the Samnite peoples and by related tribes such as the Frentani (Salmon, 1967, 25, map I). The historical tradition describes the Samnites as a rustic and warlike people, whom the Romans subdued only after the long series of savage wars in the last three centuries BC. Despite this historical evidence, however, the lack of previous archaeological research in Molise until the recent past meant that the archaeological record for this period in the province prior to 1974 was essentially confined to two major town sites of the Roman period (Boiano and Sepino), and two Samnite and Roman religious sanctuaries. For the same reason practically nothing was known about earlier prehistoric settlement. In the rest of Italy the evidence for early man built up by survey and excavation usually goes back at least as far as the Middle Palaeolithic, up to some 100,000 years ago. For Molise, however, there were in 1974 only chance finds of prehistoric flint and stone artifacts in local and national museum collections, most with little or no exact information about provenance. Molise was therefore virtually a blank area on the archaeological map of Italy.

Thermoluminescence and the archaeologist

Abstract: During the decade before last the majority of archaeologists stepped aboard the good ship Radiocarbon on a voyage of discovery, some hesitatingly, some with enthusiasm. Once under way the engine room staff were usually too busy to be questioned, for it was a new device having complex technical problems that had to be solved as the ship went along. For the most part the voyagers were content to accept the daily information bulletins; but there were some that questioned whether the peripheral islands could have been reached by the route the navigators claimed and there were some that said the islands seemed to be much further away than they could possibly be. Eventually the engine room staff got its problems sorted out and there was time to talk to the passengers; after lengthy discussions it came to be agreed (by nearly all) that the motion of the ship was more affected by ocean currents than had been assumed, and a way of correcting for this was worked out.

The origin and diffusion of the cross-bar wheel?

Abstract: Les decouvertes de roues a jantes pleines permettent de distinguer differents types techniques (essieu mobile ou non) utilises au Proche-Orient et en Europe. Il semblerait que l'essieu fixe ait ete utilise des le IIIMillenaire av. J.-C. en Mesopotamie| des bas-reliefs a Ur temoigneraient meme de l'utilisation d'un pneu rudimentaire. Analyse des roues a rais diametraux au Moyen-Orient (neo-hittite, Xs. av. J.-C.) et en Europe (Italie du nord, XVIII-XIs. av. J.-C.) et nature de cette evolution technique.

The Scottish kayaks reconsidered

Abstract: In my article in 1954 I suggested that the role of the Finns in the folklore of the northern Scottish Islands might have assisted in the attribution to these visitors of the designation “Finn-men” which is found in the earliest accounts. The aim of the article was to dispose of suggestions by earlier students of the problem (e.g. MacRitchie, 1912a, 130-1) that they might be visitors from Northern Europe, and to identify them clearly as Eskimos arriving directly from Greenland. The problem that the kayak becomes waterlogged after being immersed in water for 48 hours presents difficulties to this solution which could only be overcome if one postulated Olympic standards on the part of the travellers. At the time of this study I presumed that the Scottish specimens and traditions were unique, and therefore sought an explanation which was particular to that country.

Chalcolithic Figurine from Lemba, Cyprus

Abstract: Figurine de pierre decouverte en 1976 a l'O. de l'ile dans un niveau de la culture d'Erimi, milieu du III millenaire, ou furent mis au jour des murs de maisons. Bien que la morphologie de la statuette soit identique a celle des nombreux pendentifs deja decouverts sur l'ile, la finalite de cette "Dame" de Lemba serait plutot cultuelle. Grands traits du contexte technologique (metaux) chypriote au Chalcolithique.

Noos precedes phren in Greek Lyric Poetry

Abstract: Homer, Hesiod, and the lyric poets locate intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities in several psychic organs, among which are noos and phren. Although attention has been given to their meanings, the two have sometimes been treated as if synonymous K The exact relationship between them has yet to be clarified. Noos and phren rarely appear together, but where they do the passages illuminate the relation between them. Treating all the texts from the lyric poets that mention them together, this paper will consider how a person in the Archaic Age viewed these two psychic organs.

Critick in Antiquity: Sir John Clerk of Penicuik

Abstract: Some 300 years ago, in 1676, the year of Sir John Clerk‘s birth, Roger North, the biographer, visited Hadrian’s Wall. He was disappointed with what he saw: ‘it appeared only as a range or bank of stones all overgrown with grass, not unlike the bank of the Devil’s Ditch at Newmarket, only without any hollow, and nothing near so big’ (Birley, 1961, 9). In 1754, the year before Clerk died, William Stukeley had an audience of the Princess Dowager of Wales at Kew House.

The origins of the Hungarian sword style

Abstract: Dr Szabó, who is on the staff of the Hungarian Museum of Fine Arts, is by training a classical archaeologist and art historian. In recent years he has been concerned with a re-evaluation of eastern Celtic art and is one of the editors of the great new Corpus of Celtic Material in Hungary being prepared under the auspices of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The text of Dr Szabó's paper was first delivered to the Vth International Celtic Congress held in Penzance in April 1975.

Aristotle on Archilochus

Abstract: Amongst the literary essays attributed to Aristotle is listed a three-book work on anopirjpaTa concerning Choerilus, Euripides and Archilochus This discussion will be on the subject of the Archilochus-component. It will attempt to see if we may possibly infer some characteristics and contents of this component from the references to Archilochus which occur in Aristotle's writings. First of all, although Aristotle and his school were interested and involved in the growing preoccupation with biography 2, it is prima facie unlikely that the biographical element was predominant in his essay3. His method in the Poetic (the Rhetoric is a relevant but not so important parameter) would suggest that his concern in the lost work was probably with literary problems about the poems rather than a concentration upon the life of the poet as intrinsically interesting. His life and history might impinge somewhat upon some aspects of the discussion, but my suggestion here is that they would be likely to do so only as background to literary problems. The word anoprj^a like anopLa in the Physica 4, suggests an enquiry into some interpretative or technical obscurity rather than an essay in i 6?og. From references to Archilochus as a known figure of the past that we find in Aristophanes and Cratinus 5, it is reasonable to infer that curiosity about him began to be felt in Athens about the middle of the 5th cen-

The social aims of Chinese archaeology

Abstract: From its early stages, on 16 March 1967, the Department of State Affairs and the Central Army decreed the protection of cultural objects and books, and during the summer, 1971, a large exhibition in Peking featured an immense range of archaeological materials, all uncovered in the past few years (Kung, 1972). Archaeology may be studied as one of the best-documented humanities in contemporary China.

The Auld Wives' Lifts

Abstract: This is an account of the severed heads on the Auld Wives' Lifts, Craigmaddie Muir, Scotland, by the Professor of Archaeology, University of Glasgow. The Auld Wives' Lifts is an object of interest and debate for geology, antiquarianism, folklore, vernacular art and, perhaps, Celtic iconography, and we are glad to give it publicity.

Ma'rib dam

Abstract: Olaus Olavius of a drawing made in 1778 by Saemundur Magndsson H61m (Hoffmann, 1964, Fig. 54). Whether through misunderstanding, or more possibly for reasons of clarity, it was here shown in a strictly vertical position. Similarly, in 1854, Worsaae published a drawing of an early Faeroese loom in the same way: this is still preserved in the National Museum, Copenhagen (Hoffmann, 1964, 141-2), and it is clear that the loom was intended to be inclined. Illustrations which perpetuated this error began to appear in English language publications in the later nineteenth century (Keller, 1866, 329-35, Figs. 16-19) and have continued to this day (British Museum’s Guide to the antiquities of the Early Iron Age, 1905, 135, reproduced in Glastonbury Lake Village 11, Bulleid and Gray, 1917, Fig. 175, and more recently in Harding, 1974, Fig. 2IA). At an early date confusion seems to have arisen by comparison with a different type of loom depicted upon Egyptian wall-paintings, the strictly vertical two-beam loom. The vertical reconstruction of the warpweighted loom has suggested a permanent structure, firmly founded in the ground. But, if the comparison of the prehistoric and later Scandinavian loom is valid, it seems unlikely that the

A Dilmunite seal cutter’s misfortune

Abstract: A recent discovery of considerable interest is the fragmentary blank of a black steatite seal, found lying on the surface of rough ground 200-300 m south-east of the well complex at Diraz on the north coast of the island of Bahrain, in an area* littered with ridged Barbar potsherds (During Caspers, 1976, 8-17). With an actual size of 2.2 x I -7cm and a thickness at the widest point of the collar of 0.4 cm, this seal falls within the category of small stamp seals known to have come from both Bahrain and from Failaka island belonging to the third and early second millennia BC. Of seals in this category, only a very few represent the early type, with an Indian influenced ‘button’ boss at the back, scored by one or two grooves and transversely pierced at right angles to the scoring. This particular type of seal was often characterized by the portrayal of an Indus bull with a lowered head (During Caspers, 1976, 23 ff). Although the greater majority of the Dilmun or ‘Persian Gulf’ seals from Bahrain and Failaka were manufactured of a greyish kind of steatite, a small number was cut from black steatite, and amongst this latter group are specimens of the early ‘button’ bossed type (Glob, 1968, P1. p. 103; Bibby, 1970, P1. 7 ~ ) . Comparable to the bead making process, the contours of the blank had been roughly shaped, and the face left uncarved. The boss had been marked with one incised groove across, but there is an absence of further characteristic features, such as the four dot-in-circle patterns engraved on either side of the central groove which distinguish the later stamp seals from the early ‘button’ boss type. The cutter’s next step towards completion of the seal seemed to be the drilling of the suspension hole, and the discarded blank in question shows clearly that the seal cutter had miscalculated the direction of the drill holes. These had been commenced separately on either side, but instead of joining in a straight line within the boss, both attempts were deflected and

How upright was the warp-weighted loom?

Abstract: Drawing conventions adopted by early Scandinavian antiquaries may have misled archaeologists into expecting primitive looms to stand upright and earthfast. However, types in use in post-medieval times were merely inclined against a vertical wall as temporary -- and probably demountable -- structures which would leave no trace other than their associated loomweights. -- AATA