The aim of this paper is to show how micromorphology is able to furnish information with the degree of precision necessary for analysing site formation processes and traces of activities in a variety of settings. Use of large resin-impregnated thin sections allows contextual analysis of taphonomy and depositional relationships between sediments and artefact and bioarchaeological remains. We illustrate this by reference to results from a three-year NERC project which examined depositional sequences in core domestic and ritual contexts in three early urban sites in the Near East in different sociocultural and environmental contexts. We discuss how micromorphology is able to trace different pre-depositional, depositional and post-depositional histories of components, before considering its contribution to detecting spatial and temporal variation in uses of space; enabling identification of single depositional episodes within secondary contexts. Together these capacities are providing richly networked data on human activities and behaviour.
Moseley’s (1975) Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis challenges, in one of humanity’s few pristine hearths of civilization, the axiom that agriculture is necessary for the rise of complex societies. We revisit that hypothesis by setting new findings from La Yerba II (7571–6674 Cal bp) and III (6485–5893 Cal bp), Río Ica estuary, alongside the wider archaeological record for the end of the Middle Preceramic Period on the Peruvian coast. The La Yerba record evinces increasing population, sedentism, and “Broad Spectrum Revolution” features, including early horticulture of Phaseolus and Canavalia beans. Yet unlike further north, these changes failed to presage the florescence of monumental civilization during the subsequent Late Preceramic Period. Instead, the south coast saw a profound “archaeological silence.” These contrasting trajectories had little to do with any relative differences in marine resources, but rather to restrictions on the terrestrial resources that determined a society’s capacity to intensify exploitation of those marine resources. We explain this apparent miscarriage of the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization (MFAC) hypothesis on the south coast of Peru by proposing more explicit links than hitherto, between the detailed technological aspects of marine exploitation using plant fibers to make fishing nets and the emergence of social complexity on the coast of Peru. Rather than because of any significant advantages in quality, it was the potential for increased quantities of production, inherent in the shift from gathered wild Asclepias bast fibers to cultivated cotton, that inadvertently precipitated revolutionary social change. Thereby refined, the MFAC hypothesis duly emerges more persuasive than ever.
In 1998 a circle of timber posts within the intertidal zone on the north Norfolk coast was brought to the attention of the Norfolk County Council Archaeological Service. A subsequent programme of archaeological recording and dating revealed that the structure was constructed in the spring or early summer of 2049 BC, during the Early Bronze Age. Because of the perceived threat of damage and erosion from the sea a rescue excavation was undertaken during the summer months of 1999. The structure was entirely excavated, involving the removal of the timbers and a programme of stratigraphic recording and environmental analysis. A survey was also undertaken within the environs of the site which has identified further timber structures dating from the Bronze Age. Detailed examination of the timber from the circle has produced a wealth of unexpected information which has added greatly to our understanding of Early Bronze Age woodworking, organisation of labour and the layout and construction of timber ritual monuments.
Intensifying water management for rice farming and related land use involves with increasing labour investment in transforming local landscapes. By applying geoarchaeological investigation at the well preserved late Neolithic rice paddy site of Maoshan, Lower Yangtze River during the excavation, this study provides detailed information of the changing relationship between water management, agricultural intensification, environmental change and social evolution during the critical time period of the late Holocene. It illustrates that the intensification of rice farming was facilitated by successful water management and landscape management in most time, and it was the combined effect of gradually increasing aridity, fluctuating sea-level patterns, and increasing labour investment in water management that led to the eventual abandonment of the paddy field at the end of the Neolithic in this region. This study therefore draws attention from large-scale sites to small-scale, but economically important sites in enhancing our understanding of the dynamic relationship between human societies and environmental changes during the late Holocene in this region.
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