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J Archaeol Sci 30 (10)
Title
The title of the publication or report
Title:
J Archaeol Sci 30 (10)
Series
The series the publication or report is included in
Series:
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume
Volume number and part
Volume:
30 (10)
Publication Type
The type of publication - report, monograph, journal article or chapter from a book
Publication Type:
Journal
Editor
The editor of the publication or report
Editor:
Karl W Butzer
John P Grattan
Julian Henderson
Richard G Klein
Publisher
The publisher of the publication or report
Publisher:
Academic Press
Year of Publication
The year the book, article or report was published
Year of Publication:
2003
Source
Where the record has come from or which dataset it was orginally included in.
Source:
BIAB (The British & Irish Archaeological Bibliography (BIAB))
Created Date
The date the record of the pubication was first entered
Created Date:
03 Feb 2004
Please click on an Article link to go to the Article Details.
Article Title
Access Type
Author / Editor
Page
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Abstract
Non-destructive geochemical and magnetic characterisation of Group XVIII dolerite stone axes and shaft-hole implements from England
Olwen Williams-Thorpe
Peter C Webb
M C Jones
1237 - 1267
Thirty-five polished stone axes and shaft-hole implements which had been previously assigned by petrographic (partially destructive) study to Group XVIII (assumed to be from the Whin Sill dolerite source in northern England), were characterised non-destructively using a combination of portable X-ray fluorescence analysis (PXRF) and magnetic susceptibility measurements. All the implements were compared with the Whin Sill, and with other petrologically and/or visually similar rock sources in the north of England and in Scotland, using a database of chemical elements constructed from the published literature, and statistical atypicality testing. Twenty-nine of the implements are good matches for the Whin Sill as expected, but three do not match Whin Sill rocks and may therefore need to be re-assessed as members of Group XVIII. A further three implements have ambiguous characteristics, perhaps as a result of surface weathering. One axe, an axe-hammer and an adze that had not previously been assigned to implement groups were also analysed, as a test of the robustness of the non-destructive methods. All three implements could be distinguished from Group XVIII on the basis of chemical and magnetic characteristics. Most of the distribution of Group XVIII implements is best explained by the opportunistic use of glacial erratics rather than trade from the primary source. Possible alternative sources for the non-Group XVIII implements include the Scottish Old Red Sandstone age lavas, which could also have been obtained as erratics. The chemical and magnetic characteristics established in this paper provide a non-destructive alternative to thin section study of potential Group XVIII artefacts.
Phosphatisation of seeds and roots in a Late Bronze Age deposit at Potterne, Wiltshire, UK
Lucy M E McCobb
Derek E G Briggs
Wendy J Carruthers
Richard P Evershed
1269 - 1281
The Late Bronze Age `midden-type deposit' at Potterne, Wiltshire, yielded a diverse assemblage of seeds and roots preserved in calcium phosphate. The majority of seeds comprise bare embryos but a small number of taxa also preserve mineralised seed coats. Flash pyrolysis'“gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (py-GC/MS) of examples of comparable living seeds revealed a significant variation in seed coat composition. The coats of several species analysed contain tannins and protein instead of, or in addition to, lignin and cellulose. The preferential phosphatisation of Urtica urens seed coats is attributed principally to their lack of lignin, although their thin undifferentiated structure may have allowed them to decay more rapidly than the more complex coats of the other seed taxa. The apparent bias towards mineralisation of dicotyledonous versus monocotyledonous roots at Potterne is attributed mainly to the greater robustness of dicot roots, allowing them to persist in the soil long enough for phosphatisation to take place.
When is technology worth the trouble?
A Ugan
J Bright
A Rogers
1315 - 1329
Human beings are unique in the degree to which they rely on technology to interface with their environment. Applications of biologically derived foraging models have typically taken this technology as a given when analyzing ethnographic and prehistoric subsistence practices. This paper departs from the standard approach by treating investment in technology as a decision variable and looking at how investment decisions might be expected to vary with changes in both the time available to forage and the nature of the local resource base. The study draws attention to the importance of understanding both the costs and the benefits of technological investment and how they relate to one another. We use ethnographic and hypothetical data to demonstrate how one might represent these relationships mathematically, discuss the importance for understanding investment decisions, and explore their implications in circumstances where resources are randomly and non-randomly encountered.
The reconstruction of a face showing a healed wound
C Wilkinson
R Neave
1343 - 1348
A facial reconstruction was produced from the skull of a white male soldier (number 16), aged 45--50 years, from the 1996 Towton Battle collection of the University of Bradford. This skull was fragmented and exhibited a well-healed blade injury to the left mandibular body. The facial reconstruction took into account the position and depth of this traumatic wound, and the nature of the healing process, in order that the face of the soldier was depicted as close to his appearance prior to death as possible.
Dogs, a crane (not duck) and diet at Star Carr: a response to Schulting and Richards
S P Dark
1353 - 1356
In a recent article in the same journal, Schulting and Richards (2002/787) present new carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bones from two dogs (Canis familiaris) and a common crane (Grus grus) from the Early Mesolithic sites of Star Carr and Seamer Carr, in the Vale of Pickering, north-east England (Excavations at Star Carr (1954); The Mesolithic in Europe (1989) 218). These, they argue, undermine the author's previous suggestion (97/1334) that the 13C values for the Seamer dog obtained by Clutton-Brock and Noe-Nygaard (91/347) could be explained by consumption not of marine foods, as originally interpreted, but from a diet that included foods from the freshwater carbonate-rich lake. The author discusses Schulting and Richard's new results and concludes that neither of the Vale of Pickering dogs need necessarily have consumed marine foods. Furthermore, the author argues that the choice of a crane to test her suggestion that animals feeding on foods from the lake could have elevated 13C values is inappropriate because the diet of this bird is unlikely to have included a significant component of freshwater foods. The author concludes that Schulting and Richard's new data do not, therefore, provide evidence for seasonal movement of early Mesolithic human groups between the coast and the inland lake.