Recently added articles from Antiquity:
Editorial.(Editorial)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Arriving at the Society for American Archaeology conference at Vancouver, I had the now familiar feeling that there was no way I could get to half the lectures and--what with such a large number of delegates to talk to--I might even get to none at all. In a later search of the abstracts ...
Parietal art discovered at Arene Candide Cave (Liguria, Italy).
Jun 01, 2008; ... The Palaeolithic parietal art of Italy has been somewhat neglected in recent decades, with little new work done since that of Paolo Graziosi (e.g. 1973). Instead new discoveries of Palaeolithic art on blocks or portable objects have been the focus of attention in this country. Any new find ...
Prehistoric string theory. How twisted fibres helped to shape the world.
Jun 01, 2008; ... The author reviews the role of string in early human communities, using prehistoric and ethnographic evidence. Fibres, rolled into string, offer a technical means of holding things together; but the process of manufacturing string itself inspired special roles and structures--which in turn ...
Correlation of annual precipitation with human Y-chromosome diversity and the emergence of Neolithic agricultural and pastoral economies in the Fertile Crescent.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The emergence of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, while a complex and patchy event, was facilitated by the presence of a Mediterranean climate characterised by wet winters and dry summers. Such habitats were conducive to natural stands of cereals and legumes ...
Isotopic signatures and hereditary traits: snapshot of a Neolithic community in Germany.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The site of Talheim (c. 4900-4800 BC), a late Linearbandkeramik (LBK) community in the Neckar valley of Germany, yields a truly unique picture of Neolithic life because, unlike most cemeteries, Talheim very probably represents a group of people who lived al the same ...
The use of caves for funerary and ritual practices in Neolithic Ireland.(Research)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction Understanding the use of caves in the Neolithic period in Ireland has to begin with a careful evaluation of the material available and its context. Many of the discoveries have taken place informally of were made many years ago, and the records are frequently ...
Terminal Pleistocene to mid-Holocene occupation and an early cremation burial at Ille Cave, Palawan, Philippines.(Research)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction New excavations at Ille Cave, Palawan, Philippines have produced the first well-stratified and dated terminal Pleistocene to mid-Holocene archaeological sequence from the Philippine archipelago. This sequence includes evidence of changing subsistence and settlement ...
Symbolic language in Torres Strait, NE Australia: images from rock art, portable objects and human scars.
Jun 01, 2008; ... The Torres Strait is often in the research literature--unsurprisingly since it is not only a key area for early settlement but one where ancient and modern practice resonate. Rock art is a prominent archaeological source for the region--but not the only one. In this study the author shows ...
Meat-acquisition patterns in the Neolithic Yangzi river valley, China.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The geography of eastern China is dominated by two rivers flowing eastward from origins in the high elevations of the Tibet and Qinghai plateaus: the Yellow river in the north and the Yangzi in the south. These rivers, along with their tributaries, were conduits for ...
Basalt bifacial tool production in the southern Levant: a glance at the quarry and workshop site of Giv'at Kipod, Israel.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction Many archaeological and ethnographical studies have demonstrated the importance of bifacial tools for agricultural societies (e.g. Campbell-Smith 1965; Claris & Quartermaine 1989; Cooney 1998; Darvill 1989; le Roux 1998; Petrequin et al. 1998), emphasising not just ...
Multivallate sites and socio-economic change: Thailand and Britain in their Iron Ages.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction Recent archaeological research in the Mun river valley, north-east Thailand (Figure 1) seems to indicate a move from small sedentary settlements with low social ranking during the Bronze Age (c. 1500-500 BC) to settlements with a growing hierarchical structure ...
Equids and an acrobat: closure rituals at Tell Brak.
Jun 01, 2008; ... In the third millennium BC the city of Nagar (modern Tell Brak) dominated the Khabur plains of north-eastern Syria, lying today between south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Much information about this ancient city has been revealed in recent excavations (Oates et al. 2001) and in the ...
Geometric templates used in the Akrotiri (Thera) wall-paintings.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The Cycladic islands in the central Aegean were home to a distinctive culture throughout the entire third millennium BC, the hallmark of which are the Early Cycladic figurines, masterpieces carved in white marble (Doumas 2002). During the second millennium BC, the ...
Gesture politics and the art of ambiguity: the Iron Age statue from Hirschlanden.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The life-size sandstone statue known as the Hirschlanden figure was found on the first day of a rescue excavation on an Iron Age burial mound in Baden-Wurttemberg in 1962 (Figure 1; Zurn 1964). Although it was found face down beside the perimeter kerb, the excavator ...
Early sculptural traditions in West Africa: new evidence from the Chad Basin of north-eastern Nigeria.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction In contrast to the European Upper Palaeolithic, the beginnings of figurative art in Africa appear relatively late. Outside Egypt and the art mobilier of the Sahara (Willett & Roubet 1998), most of the evidence for early sculptural traditions originates from West ...
Deported nation: the fate of the Bohai people of Mongolia.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The Bohai state played an important role in the history of the early medieval peoples of north-eastern China, the Korean peninsula and Russian Primorye. But in AD 926, it was invaded by the neighbouring Kitans, who established the puppet state of Dongdan ('Eastern ...
Diet and status in Birka: stable isotopes and grave goods compared.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction The use of stable isotopes as an indicator of diet now has a proven track record. An example of this is a study of the Iron Age to post-Roman (i.e. first-fourth century AD) cemetery in Poundbury Camp, Dorchester, England, where it was possible to conclude that ...
Artefacts, skulls and written sources: the social ranking of a Celtic family buried at Munsingen-Rain.
Jun 01, 2008; ... The last few centuries BC saw the beginnings of written accounts concerning the regions north of the Alps. The temptation to relate archaeological evidence to that transmitted in historical documents is therefore great, and the dangers of doing so are well-known. The challenge is to ...
Visualisation of LiDAR terrain models for archaeological feature detection.
Jun 01, 2008; ... Introduction and objectives The potential for mapping archaeological features from aerial photography collected at low sun illumination angles was demonstrated in the 1920s by O.G.S. Crawford (Crawford & Keiller 1928) and the approach has been a mainstay of archaeological ...
The warriors' new headgear.
Jun 01, 2008; ... In a recent article, published in the pages of this journal, S. Celestino Perez and C. Lopez-Ruiz (2006) suggested that representations of horned helmets on warrior stelae from the Iberian Peninsula may have been inspired by a 'warrior-bull' motif known from Near Eastern (Levantine) stelae ...