Shepherds and sediments: Geo-ethnoarchaeology of pastoral sites

Brochier, Jacques Élie; Villa, Paola; Giacomarra, Mario; Tagliacozzo, Antonio

doi:10.1016/0278-4165(92)90010-9

Cited by 212 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Alternatively, sediment thin section micromorphology analyses of undisturbed samples supported by image analyses techniques has the potential to discriminate between different fuel ash residues in mixed sedimentary environments at the microscopic scale and is the technique applied in this study. Micromorphological indicators of fuel ash residues may include colour, indicative of iron immobilisation when heated [10]; charcoal material [12,38]; calcitic pseudomorph crystals [6,7]; and silica phytoliths and diatoms [10]. Such analyses of fuel residues have, in a range of environmental contexts, permitted distinctions to be made between wood sources, including burning temperature, and between grass, sedge and animal manure sources, suggesting that identification of fuel sources in an Icelandic landnám context may be possible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement

Simpson¹,

Vésteinsson²,

Adderley³

et al. 2003

Journal of Archaeological Science

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One little understood aspect of the settlement and colonisation of Iceland is fuel resource use. In this paper we identify fuel ash residues from temporally constrained middens at two contrasting settlement age sites in Mývatnssveit, northern Iceland, one high status, the other low status and ultimately abandoned. Fuel residues derived from experimental combustion of historically defined fuel resources are used to provide control for thin section micromorphology and complementary image analyses of fuel residue materials found in the midden deposits. The results suggest that fuel resources utilised at the time of settlement were for both low temperature and high temperature use, and included a mix of birch and willow wood, peat, mineral-based turf and cow dung. There are, however, marked variations in the mix of fuel resources utilised at the two sites. This is considered to reflect social regulation of fuel resources and socially driven changes to local and regional environments that may have contributed to the success or failure of early settlement sites in Iceland.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement

Simpson¹,

Vésteinsson²,

Adderley³

et al. 2003

Journal of Archaeological Science

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“…One of the more reliable means of identifying a dung signature in sediments is through the study of spherulites, fibrous crystalline aggregates of calcium carbonate from the guts of ungulates (Brochier et al 1992;Canti 1997Canti , 1999Shahack-Gross and Finkelstein 2008;Lancelotti and Madella 2012). Studies of spherulites can provide a direct indication of dung, and they have been identified at the early farming site of Jeitun in Turkmenistan (Canti 1997).…”

Section: The Archaeology Of Dungmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dung burning in the archaeobotanical record of West Asia: where are we now?

Spengler

2018

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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In the early 1980s Naomi Miller changed the field of palaeoethnobotany; her research into whether the ancient seed eaters of southwest Asia were human or herbivore opened an ongoing debate over the impact that burning of animal dung had on the formation of archaeobotanical assemblages, and how researchers can differentiate between human and animal food remains. As the number of systematic archaeobotanical studies across West Asia and many other parts of the world increase, we are continually confronted with the question of the significance of dung burning. Herd animal dung is the dominant fuel source in many parts of West Asia today and the high densities of seeds of wild plants in archaeobotanical assemblages suggest that people were using dung as fuel across Inner Asia for millennia. Seed assemblages that represent herd animal dung are assisting scholars in understanding palaeoecology and herd animal diet in the past as well as human economy and pasturing practices. However, interpreting these assemblages is not always simple and there are predictable biases that need to be taken into account, notably an overrepresentation of endozoochoric seeds (seeds dispersed through animal ingestion). In West Asia, the most prominent of such seeds in dung assemblages are from the Amaranthaceae family, notably Chenopodium.

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“…Reworking of older deposits appears to have been a primary process in the formation of the Neolithic layers in Edera (Boschian and Montagnari Kokelj 2000). This discontinuity also marks a completely different use of caves: from gatherings of people in the Mesolithic, to animal shelters or sheep pens in the Neolithic, which is a well-known pattern in caves and rockshelters throughout the Mediterranean (Brochier et al 1992; see also Boschian and Montagnari Kokelj 2000). This could explain the presence of Late Mesolithic Castelnovian microliths in Neolithic deposits in the Triestine karst caves (Montagnari Kokelj 1993) and the presence of anomalous radiocarbon dates and inversions in radiocarbon sequences.…”

Section: Continuity or Gap?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Reassessing the Mesolithic\Neolithic ‘gap’ in Southeast European cave sequences

Mlekuž¹,

Budja²,

Payton

et al. 2008

Doc. praeh.

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Radiocarbon sequences from some northern Mediterranean cave sites show a temporal gap between Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations. Some authors regard this as a regional phenomenon and have sought to explain it in terms of a general population decline in the late Mesolithic, which facilitated the replacement of indigenous foragers by immigrant farmers. New evidence from the rockshelter site of Mala Triglavca, in Slovenia, leads us to question this view. The results of AMS radiocarbon dating of samples recovered in excavations in the 1980s and associated soil/sediment analyses reveal evidence of substantial postdepositional disturbance of the cave sediments by human agency and geomorphological processes, which have created ‘temporal gaps’ and ‘inversions’ in the radiocarbon sequence and secondary deposits with residual finds.

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Shepherds and sediments: Geo-ethnoarchaeology of pastoral sites

Cited by 212 publications

References 17 publications

Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement

Fuel resource utilisation in landscapes of settlement

Dung burning in the archaeobotanical record of West Asia: where are we now?

Reassessing the Mesolithic\Neolithic ‘gap’ in Southeast European cave sequences

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