Showing papers in "Journal of Archaeological Science in 2021"

TL;DR: Best practice advice is offered and it is hoped that this will help, and encourage, all researchers looking to apply ORA in their studies, as it is optimistic that these pitfalls can be avoided, and the quality of published research consequently raised.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model describing the relationship between the carbon and nitrogen isotopic and elemental compositions that accounts for the isotopic composition of the endogenous collagen and exogenous contaminants as well as taxon-specific information about the collagen's amino acid composition.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a mixing model which simulates the contribution of up to three end members to the isotopic composition of the studied samples, demonstrating that for most samples, the more likely combination is that they are alloys of silver from Aegean-Anatolian ores, Pb-poor copper, and Pbrich copper from local copper mines in the Arabah valley (Timna and Faynan).

TL;DR: In this paper, morphometric analyses were performed on a large data set of 2223 archaeological grape pips from 11 sites located in various areas of Greece and dated to the Late Neolithic, Bronze Age and Archaic period (6th millennium BC - 7th century BC).

TL;DR: This paper used deep learning to classify digital images of decorated pottery sherds into an existing typological framework, and demonstrated that this method can objectively match a specific sherd image to its most similar counterparts through a search of thousands of digital photos.

TL;DR: The results provide the first empirical evidence to suggest that ecological processes, and unintended selection due to competition between growing plants within anthropogenic environments, may have played a more significant part in the emergence of agriculture than previously supposed.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used deep learning to detect shell ring deposits and identify their geographic range in LiDAR data from South Carolina, concluding that a greater number of shell rings exist and that their distribution expanded further north than currently documented.

TL;DR: In this article, the earliest millet phytoliths emerged in the Lower Tanshishan cultural layer of the Baitoushan site, which was initially occupied at 5.5 ka BP.

TL;DR: A systematic investigation into pot lipid residues from multiple sites demonstrates the potential of the method for examining ancient Indus foodways and the need for the development of further research in ancient organic residues in South Asia.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the Levantine origin of Levantine complex projectiles based on the four-layered Emiran/Initial UP (IUP) stratigraphic sequence of Boker Tachtit, the best documented time span usually defined as Middle Paleolithic-UP transition in the Levant.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present new data from 16 sites located in the North-West Mediterranean that provide new insights into the exploitation of these substances for their adhesive and hydrophobic properties throughout the Neolithic (6000-2500 cal BCE).

TL;DR: In this article, an 8-year long experimental investigation of several hundreds of open fires and laboratory experiments and the analysis of their chemistry, mineralogy, morphology, and physical parameters is presented.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors employed collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and wild bovids in Iron Age assemblages at the cave site of Panga ya Saidi in southeast Kenya.

TL;DR: In this article, microbotanical remains (starch grains and phytoliths) entrapped in the dental calculus of 81 individuals dating from 9100 to 5500-cal BC were recovered from five sites in the Danube Gorges.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used two independent methods to obtain ages for Pecos River style paintings at Eagle Cave in Langtry, Texas, using a weighted average of 3280±-70 years BP calibrated to 1740-1420cal BC (3690-3370cal BP) at 2 sigma (95.4%) probability.

TL;DR: The implementation of this deep learning algorithm can provide high-resolution demographic reconstructions of a study area from non-collection, non-invasive, and non-destructive data collection methods that only record frequencies of artifact types on the contemporary ground surface.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the results of over 120 paired radiocarbon dates and stable isotope (δ13C and δ15N) measurements on human bone collagen from individuals across 33 archaeological sites in Poland and western Ukraine.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination.

TL;DR: The results reveal that intra and inter layer variability is too high to be able to detect a pattern of deamidation at Denisova Cave, suggesting caution should be applied when attempting to link deamidated with relative decay or chronological age.

TL;DR: In this article, a total of 21 graves were analysed using a multi-proxy approach, combining grave typology, osteo-archaeology, strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr), and radiocarbon dating.

TL;DR: The preservation of DNA in a range of different bone elements from over 200 archaeological Atlantic cod specimens from 38 sites in northern Europe, dating up to 8000 years before present, highlights the potential of archaeological fish bone as a source for ancient DNA and suggests a possible role of bone remodeling in the preservation of endogenous DNA.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors concluded that none of these isotopic systems are likely to be very useful for provenance, mostly because of limited ranges of isotope ratios and/or extensive overlap between the isotopic ratios of most geological sources.

TL;DR: This paper showed that the theoretical ideal C/N ratio of human collagen is at the midpoint of that interval (3.243) and that most measured ratios lie very close to that value, indicating that deviations from that value due either to alteration of collagen or admixture of contaminant organic molecules are likely to shift the δ values away from their initial values.

TL;DR: It is shown that an end-to-end approach reconstructs with high accuracy expert demographic reconstructions based on settlement patterns and ceramics, but with more precise time-resolution and characterization of uncertainty than has heretofore been possible.

TL;DR: A cost-effective alternative approach based on geometric morphometric (GMM) analysis of the bony labyrinth, a structure carried within the petrosal bone, which provides a cheap, non-destructive alternative to aDNA for the taxonomic identification of past equine assemblages.

TL;DR: In this article, macroscopic and microscopic analyses of teeth from the Castellon Alto individuals belonging to El Argar culture (Southeastern Iberia), dated from Bronze Age, were carried out to identify non-alimentary uses of teeth and the tasks associated with the use of teeth as tools.

TL;DR: In this paper, a random forest-based machine learning approach was used to improve the accuracy of mtDNA analysis. But the results were limited to the Palaeolithic and Holocene faunal remains.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provided solid analytical evidence that glass used in the tenth-century mosaics of the Great Umayyad Mosque of Cordoba (Spain) came from Byzantium.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a workflow to conduct a full characterization of medium to coarse-grained igneous rocks, using portable, non-invasive, and reproducible approaches.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the study of lipid residue analyses from 108 pottery sherds coupled with faunal kill-off patterns from the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods to gain new insights into natural product exploitation and animal management.