Landscape Archaeology

The Lake George Basin is a small, closed basin about 50km NE from Canberra, Australia's capital city. The basin is a very distinct landscape unit, and for many generations it has been a natural meeting place for several Aboriginal groups. There is evidence of at least 6000 years old human artefacts on the shores of the lake, and a currently ongoing PhD project is adding detail to our understanding of the human occupation of this area. There are also known mega-fauna fossil finds, including of the extinct kangaroo genus Procoptodon from deposits originally dated to between 21,000 and 26,000 years BP, but now considered to be older. The site for Canberra was chosen in 1908, resolving a long running debate about where the National Capital should be located. The main rivals were Sydney and Melbourne, and the diplomatic compromise was to establish a new capital midway between the two. Lake George had been a substantial body of water until 1900, and the Lake George Basin had been considered as a possible site for the new capital. Luckily, another nearby site was chosen because lake levels fell during several years of drought and the lake was dry from 1901 to 1915 and on several occasions since. Currently the lake is dry again, giving access for a large interdisciplinary team to study the landscape, its tectonic, sedimentary and hydrogeological evolution, as well as the paleontological and archaeological history of the area. The Lake George Fault, elevated 200 metres above the western shores, is a 75 km long major north-south tectonic feature. The lake bed is filled with up to 165 metres of sediments, providing the longest known continuous Quaternary and Pliocene sedimentary record of any lake in Australia, encompassing approximately 4 million years. Today the land around the lake is privately owned, while the lake bed is Crown Land. The landscape elements are defining features in current land use, planning and development. Our research aims to create new knowledge that will advance the protection and sharing of the landscape without hampering its development. Our project is " work in progress " , with funding for another two years. Funding is provided from the Australian Research Council (LP140100911). We acknowledge the First People of Australia as the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work.

Venerdì 12 novembre 2021, ore. 20:30
Caspoggio - Sala dell'Immacolata

Conferenza di presentazione dei risultati della prima e seconda campagna di scavi archeologici in località Castello a Caspoggio, sito dell'antico Castrum de Malenco. Il castello è oggetto di scavi di ricerca da parte dell'Università degli studi di Bergamo in regime di concessione ministeriale MIC.

Through a landscape archaeological survey conducted in 2010– 2013 in
Ascalon, the author has been able to reconstruct the historical landscape of Tel Ascalon through various periods. Creating reconstructions of the landscape on the Tel and the surrounding area enables us to learn about the interrelationship between people and their natural environment in this area. It also enables us to examine various historical events within their environmental and archaeological contexts, such as the 1099 Battle of Ascalon and the 1153 and 1187 sieges of the city. This study has identified various surviving landscape and archaeological features which we can relate to historical events, demonstrating how these events continue to resonate and influence the development of the Ascalon landscape, and even the post- crusader city.

The nature of the relationship between the Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite states is often represented in the writings of archaeologists and ancient historians under the rubric of imperialism, Assyrian sovereignty, and the Syro-Hittite resistance, an unchanging formula largely based on center-periphery models. This structuralist model of fixed relationships is thus characterized as a firmly-set trajectory of power relations and a teleological narrative of conquest, ending without exception with the eventual and complete submission and subjugation of Syro-Hittite states to Assyrian military power. While Syro-Hittite states are represented as vulnerable and politically weak entities, the Assyrian state is referred as an “expansionistic imperial power” or “superior invading force”. Had they escaped direct Assyrian sovereignty, these peripheral communities were at least deemed “Assyrianizing” in their material culture. This a priori qualification of Syro-Hittite-Assyrian relationships as an imbalanced power distribution is an outcome of the preponderance of studies of Assyrian sovereignty with an obsession with the (cosmic) image of the sovereign in his visual and verbal manifestations. Secondly it is often assumed that the study of Assyrian imperialism has always operated through coercion and military violence. Alternative forms of engagement between the Neo-Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite kingdoms such as diplomacy, political negotiation, trade, exchange of ideas, politics of settlement, land management, taxation or traveling craftsmen and circulation of technology and knowledge are much more rarely discussed. In this paper, I suggest that historical perspectives on the unchallenged Assyrian imperialism are often driven by the alluring, yet biased perspectives offered by the sumptuous, if not excessive corpus of Assyrian annalistic accounts, state sponsored texts, and imperial monuments. Therefore such perspectives prioritize short-term political histories of conquest and domination over other longer term and more horizontally distributed aspects of the past such as cultural practices, ecological histories, political landscapes, socialization, or material worlds. The historicist accounts of the Near Eastern past can be challenged and perhaps balanced by evidence offered by archaeological, material, and environmental research, which present alternative and often contrasting perspectives on these particular histories. Prioritizing textual evidence often leaves out the material flows, delicate negotiations of power, dynamics of trade and exchange and the politics of resource extraction. Attending to other forms of evidence allows us to reflect on the complexity of the relationships between Assyria and the Syro-Hittite states. In this article, I pay particular attention to such interactions and encounters that are other than military in nature, and give priority to material evidence that challenge standard imperialist narratives of Assyrian textual accounts.

Mit 21 lokalen, regionalen und überregionalen Studien bietet der Sammelband einen Querschnitt durch die Erforschung frühmittelalterlicher Zentren und Siedlungsstrukturen vornehmlich des bayerisch-ostfränkischen Raumes und benachbarter Landschaften. Das thematische Spektrum reicht dabei von überregional bedeutsamen Zentren wie Pfalzen und Bischofssitzen zu solchen ländlicher Gesellschaften, z.B. Mühlen oder Pfarrkirchen. Der zeitliche Rahmen spannt sich von der Spätantike bis in das beginnende Hochmittelalter.  Im Mittelpunkt des Interesses stehen Kriterien für Zentralität, methodische Probleme wie die Abgrenzung von Zentrum und Peripherie, Ursachen für strukturellen Wandel von Zentren sowie die räumliche Verteilung zentraler Funktionen innerhalb überörtlicher zentraler Räume.

A decade of studying the topography/archaeology/history/geography of the Surrey parish I grew up in has left me with a clutch of discoveries of local and supra-local significance, as well as a host of questions to be answered in the future by myself and any more capable researchers who might be interested in taking up the challenge. The paper (like the extended and extensive research process behind it) takes what is very much a long view to the subjects in hand. So far as the medieval period is concerned, it sets out the evidence that suggests the landscape was recast during a "long twelfth century" which saw Puttenham emerge as a manor, village and parish, but within a more complex and heterogenous local context. Further research should show the degree to which the situation within the parish matched or was at odds with that from other parishes within Surrey and beyond.

***Follow link below to view paper***

Hercolaneum lies from the top of Vesuvius to the sea. It is situated
in the middle of the Bay of Naples, in a wonderful position.
It has a very complex landscape, characterized by a mix of archaeological
and historical town up to the current one. The modern
Hercolaneum was built on the ancient one, which it is, in
some parts, 30 metres underground. During the great eruption of
Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the ancient town was covered by mud and
ash that, once solidified, became a good base for the new town.
Therefore, Herculaneum and Resina were independent. They were
collocated in two different heights, but in the same way they feed
each other. The Vesuvius overlook the landscape and it’s a perfect
background of the modern town, in which volumes and curtain
walls stop in order to give space to the ruins. The dissertation
wants to show the connection between the archaeological site and
the urban pattern, through the consideration of Bay as the main
parameter during the processes of restoration and preservation.

Draft final completed section of the South Yorkshire Archaeological Research Framework on behalf of Historic England and the South Yorkshire Archaeology Service. The final published version will be in the form of an interactive website hosted by Historic England that will feature all of the regional archaeological resource assessments and research frameworks, which should be going online in 2020. I would like to thank Andrew Lines, Jim McNeil, Zac Nellist, and Dinah Saich of the South Yorkshire Archaeology Service; for approaching me to see if I would be interested in producing this document. The comments made during and after the day workshop on the Iron Age and Roman periods by the many colleagues who attended were extremely useful, and where possible have been incorporated within this document.

This dissertation examines multiple scales of Indigenous history on the Northwest Coast from the disciplinary perspective of archaeology. I focus on cultural lifeways archaeologically represented in two key domains of human existence: food and settlement. The dissertation consists of six individual case studies that demonstrate the utility of applying multiple spatial and temporal scales to refine archaeological understanding of cultural and historical variability on the Northwest Coast over the Mid-to-Late Holocene (ca. 5,000-200 BP). The first of three regionally scaled analyses presents a coast-wide examination of fisheries data indicating that Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) exhibit a pervasive and previously under-recognized importance in Northwest Coast Indigenous subsistence practices. Next, I use zooarchaeological data from the southern British Columbia coast to identify a pattern of regional coherence in Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth hunting traditions reflecting the scale of intergenerational cultural practice. The third study re-calibrates the settlement history of a small and historically significant locality in Coast Tsimshian territory (Prince Rupert Harbour) to clarify the temporal resolution of existing radiocarbon datasets and test inferences about social and political change. Following this regional exploration of scale, I document site-specific temporal variability in archaeological fisheries data from a Nuu-chah-nulth ‘big-house’ reflecting climatic and socio-economic change. I examine Indigenous oral histories and archaeological datasets to evaluate these parallel records of settlement in the neighbouring territory of an autonomous Nuu-chah-nulth polity before and during the occupation of a large defensive fortress. Finally, I demonstrate how everyday foodways are archaeologically expressed and reflect ecological differences and active management strategies within several spatially associated sites over millennial timescales. These linked case studies offer new clarity into long-standing debates concerning archaeologically relevant scales of cultural-historical variability on the NWC. They collectively demonstrate an enduring regional and temporal coherence for key aspects of Indigenous resource use and settlement and a historical dynamism at finer scales. I argue this has cultural, historical, and archaeological significance as well as relevance for contemporary understandings of the Northwest Coast environment. I conclude that a focus on the pervasive aspects of the everyday over millennia offers insight into individual actions across broader patterns of history.

This article examines the productivity of agriculture at the Postclassic polity of Xaltocan, Mexico. Employing multiple lines of data (remote sensing, artifactual, ecofactual, chronological, demographic, historic, ethnographic, and environmental), it reconstructs the potential productivity of an integrated raised field, chinampa system that surrounded the polity. This exercise reveals that the system was capable of producing a sizeable caloric surplus above the needs of the kingdom's estimated total population and the number of laborers necessary to maintain full production. To situate the processes related to agricultural production, the paper considers how farmers' strategies were articulated with multiple institutions. Increased integration between political, social, and household institutions possibly fostered residents' incorporation into the body politic and provided mechanisms to finance the political economy. Such integration and dependency fractured, however, when Xaltocan was conquered.

Finds from the arable fields in Brabant (NL) are usually regarded as waste that was mixed in with the manure, or as objects that were lost during the work on the land. As such they are thought to be of little archaeological relevance. Occasionally, however, metal detector hobbyists retrieve artefacts from these fields for which such explanation seems unlikely. These include a.o. papal seals, and the seal matrix of a distant priory. Questions on the nature of these artefacts were the starting point of a metal detector survey on a open field complex in Veldhoven. A pilot project (Verspay 2012) produced interesting results, suggesting that a part of these finds could be linked to religious practice aimed at the protection of the crops, securing a good harvest.

In order to test this hypothesis a subsequent survey was conducted on the neighbouring field complex De Looker. This time covering an entire historical block....

This report covers the results of this systematic study as well as an illustrated catalogue of our findings.

This paper explores the role of public architecture in anchoring Cherokee communities to particular points within the southern Appalachian landscape in the wake of European contact in North America. Documentary evidence about Cherokee public structures known as townhouses demonstrates that they were settings for a variety of events related to public life in Cherokee towns, and that there were a variety of symbolic meanings associated with them. Archaeological evidence of Cherokee townhouses—especially the sequence of six townhouses at the Coweeta Creek site in southwestern North Carolina—demonstrates an emphasis on continuity in the placement and alignment of public architecture through time. Building and rebuilding these public structures in place, and the placement of burials within these architectural spaces, created enduring attachments between Cherokee towns and the places in which they lived, in the midst of the geopolitical instability created by European contact in eastern North America.

The zooarchaeological data from rural settlements (casalia), castles (castra) and cities (civitates) of Medieval Apulia
during the late Middle Ages (10th-15th centuries) allow to recognize different ways of production and distribution of animal resources on the territory. Pig breeding played an important role in the diet of the region although it is difficult to establish a single pattern of exploitation for this animal that supplied meat and fats. In all the sites pigs generally lived more than one year and they were butchered during their second year of life. The killing of young individuals does not seem to reflect human privileged conditions, but it could indicate the difficulties to keep the animals until the sexual maturity, when they reached the maximum meat yield.

The Lake George Basin is a small, closed basin about 50km NE from Canberra, Australia’s capital city.
The basin is a very distinct landscape unit, and for many generations it has been a natural meeting place for several Aboriginal groups. There is evidence of at least 6000 years old human artefacts on the shores of the lake, and a currently ongoing PhD project is adding detail to our understanding of the human occupation of this area. There are also known mega-fauna fossil finds, including of the extinct kangaroo genus Procoptodon from deposits originally dated to between 21,000 and 26,000 years BP, but now considered to be older.
The site for Canberra was chosen in 1908, resolving a long running debate about where the National Capital should be located. The main rivals were Sydney and Melbourne, and the diplomatic compromise was to establish a new capital midway between the two. Lake George had been a substantial body of water until 1900, and the Lake George Basin had been considered as a possible site for the new capital. Luckily, another nearby site was chosen because lake levels fell during several years of drought and the lake was dry from 1901 to 1915 and on several occasions since.
Currently the lake is dry again, giving access for a large interdisciplinary team to study the landscape, its tectonic, sedimentary and hydrogeological evolution, as well as the paleontological and archaeological history of the area.
The Lake George Fault, elevated 200 metres above the western shores, is a 75 km long major north-south tectonic feature. The lake bed is filled with up to 165 metres of sediments, providing the longest known continuous Quaternary and Pliocene sedimentary record of any lake in Australia, encompassing approximately 4 million years.
Today the land around the lake is privately owned, while the lake bed is Crown Land. The landscape elements are defining features in current land use, planning and development. Our research aims to create new knowledge that will advance the protection and sharing of the landscape without hampering its development.
Our project is “work in progress”, with funding for another two years. Funding is provided from the Australian Research Council (LP140100911). We acknowledge the First People of Australia as the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work.

This thesis focuses on the archaeological study of the Slave Cemetery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Here, methodological and theoretical principles are utilized to study the area that many enslaved workers call their final resting place. Through the use of this space, it is hypothesized that Mount Vernon’s enslaved community practiced distinct traditions, instilling in that spot a sense of place, and reinforcing their individual and communal human identities. This thesis will also investigate the cemetery within its broader regional and cultural contexts, to attain a better understanding of the death rituals and culturally resistant activates that slaves at Mount Vernon used in their day-to-day battle against the system that held them in bondage.

This new volume of the Amsterdam Archaeological Studies seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the integration of marginal areas in the Roman empire.  Starting from a multidimensional approach  it analyses the social dynamics that led to the development of a large villa in the relatively poor and peripheral hinterland of the Lower Rhine limes. A central role is attributed to agency and the interplay of military and urban networks and native social structures.

Three important Achaemenid monumental buildings have been discovered in the Persian Gulf region, in Dashtestan county (southwestern Iran) and near to the modern town of Borazjan, where historians locate the city called Tamukkan in the Elamite sources. In addition, during surveys conducted in this area, a large number of archaeological sites including those from the Achaemenid period have been recorded. In this paper, all the archaeological and historical sources regarding the Achaemenid era presence in Dashtestan have been compiled with the aim of interpreting them with the same approach of settlement studies which has produced excellent results in central Fars, especially in Persepolis. In doing so, the topography of Dashtestan in the Achaemenid era has been reconstructed in its general lines, sufficient to demonstrate the existence of the settlement of Tamukkan in this area. The main discovery is that the Achaemenid settlement of Tamukkan was probably of the same type as those of Persepolis and Pasargadae.

Although it is now commonplace for archaeologists to study use-alteration patterns on ceramics, the same cannot be said of one of the most ubiquitous classes of hunter-gatherer artifacts, fire-cracked rocks (FCR). It can be shown, however, that many of the same methods and theories applied to the study of cooking ceramics are also relevant to the investigation of rocks used as heating elements. Because use alteration analyses of FCR are so scarce, I describe a range of attributes with the goal of helping researchers identify use alterations (e.g., sooting, reddening, various fracturing patterns) on lithic artifacts from sites worldwide and evaluate their potential function in various cultural practices. These attributes are also outlined in order to create a standardized terminology for describing FCR use-alteration patterns. I discuss my analysis of FCR from three Late Archaic sites (Duck Lake, 913, and 914) on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, followed by an interpretation of their cooking contexts, as a case study. The results indicate great intersite variability among FCR characteristics, cooking methods, and cooking facilities (earth oven, stone boiling, and rock griddle). This use alteration analysis can be applied in archaeological contexts worldwide where similar materials are recovered.

Considers how landscape study helps us better understand the development of Cornwall. Reviews what landscape is, what aspects of it have been researched in Cornwall, and how that has affected the ways it is valued. From prehistory to the present.

GeoarchaeologIcal perspective to the reconstruction of coastal landscapes and settlement strategies of the Bronze Age Salento - Investigations of coastal landscape archaeology conducted over the last 10 years on the Adriatic and Ionian coastlines of the Salento allowed us to map many geoarchaeological markers of relative sea level changes; these data can give us accurate information on late Holocene phenomena of marine transgression offering a good opportunity to submit some fresh proposals of paleogeographic reconstructions of these territories. A particular attention was paid to the analysis of spatial, chronological and functional data of a group of archaeological markers (sunken and not) connected with forti ed and open settlements dated to the  rst half of the II millennium BC. Torre Santa Sabina, Torre Guaceto-Scogli di Apani and Scalo di Furno-Porto Cesareo stand out among long-lived settlements for the relevance of the research outcomes. Many archaeological evidences (forti cation walls, moats, pavements, occupation layers, dwelling structures, etc.) mark the ancient position and height of the relative sea level, but postholes have a leading role. The mapping and recording of these structural elements allow us to reconstruct the real extension of Bronze Age inhabited areas.