Spatio-temporal patterns of cemetery use among Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Cis-Baikal, Eastern Siberia

Ramsey, Christopher Bronk; Bazaliiskii, Vladimir I.; Goriunova, Olga; Weber, Andrzej

doi:10.1016/j.ara.2020.100253

“…Recent achievements in extracting specific biomarkers from absorbed food residues in pottery vessels have proven to be very helpful in providing clues to the absolute ages of the consumption of specific foodstuffs, pottery utilization, and typochronologies (Casanova et al, 2020). In this case, improvements in sampling calibration methods and programs, as well as new calibration curves, confirm the increased potential for high-resolution chronological studies of archeological events (Reimer et al, 2020;Bronk Ramsey et al, 2021;Reimer, 2021). When comparing advances in radiocarbon dating between China and the West in the past decades, however, we have to recognize that there is a long way to go not only in the methodology of radiocarbon dating but also the breadth and depth of its applications in archeology.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Radiocarbon dating and its applications in Chinese archeology: An overview

Chen

¹

2023

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Radiocarbon dating is a well-established chronometric technique that has been widely employed in Chinese archeology since the first radiocarbon laboratory started operating in the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1965. In the three decades of studies that followed, achievements were made in radiocarbon dating, especially in measurement techniques, sample preparation, and the establishment of regional chronological frameworks. There is no doubt that Chinese archeology entered a golden age with the assistance of radiocarbon dating techniques at the beginning of the 2000s. It is, however, also true that compared to Western countries, China has reported far fewer radiocarbon dates than expected. This paper presents an overview of the history of the radiocarbon dating technique and its significant applications in Chinese archeology, focusing on the transition from β-decay counting to accelerator mass spectrometry. Some of the breakthroughs in studies of the Upper Paleolithic, early Homo sapiens, neolithization, and the Xia and Shang dynasties are highlighted. We conclude the paper with a brief discussion of future work and research directions that need to be explored.

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“…The introduction of an artefact type at more sites can be modelled individually but modelling its spatio-temporal progress across the landscape using geography as prior information, remains challenging in spite of recent progress (e.g. 54).…”

Section: Modelling Change Within a Bayesian Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dividing Time – An Absolute Chronological Study of Material Culture from Early Iron Age Urnfields in Denmark

Rose,

Meadows

2023

Preprint

0

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Chronological frameworks based on artefact typologies are essential for interpreting the archaeological record, but they inadvertently treat transitions between phases as abrupt events and disregard the temporality of transformation processes within and between individual phases. This study presents an absolute chronological investigation of a dynamic material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark. The chronological framework of Early Iron Age in Southern Scandinavia is largely unconstrained by absolute dating, primarily due to it coinciding with the so-called ‘Hallstatt calibration plateau’ (c.750 to 400 cal BC), and it is difficult to correlate it with Central European chronologies due to a lack of imported artefacts. This study applies recent methodological advances in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modelling, specifically a statistical model for wood-age offsets in cremated bone and presents the first large-scale radiocarbon investigation of regional material culture from Early Iron Age in Southern Jutland, Denmark. Dated material is primarily cremated bone from 111 cremation burials from three urnfields. The study presents absolute date ranges for 16 types of pottery and 15 types of metalwork, which include most of the recognised metalwork types from the period. This provides new insights into gradual change in material culture, when certain artefact types were in production and primary use, how quickly types were taken up and later abandoned, and distinguishing periods of faster and slower change. The study also provides the first absolute chronology for the period, enabling correlation with chronologies from other regions. Urnfields were introduced at the Bronze-Iron Age transformation, which is often assumed to have occurred c.530-500 BC. We demonstrate that this transformation took place in the 7th century BC, however, which revives the discussion of whether the final Bronze Age period VI should be interpreted as a transitional phase to the Iron Age.

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“…The introduction of an artefact type at more sites can be modelled individually but modelling its spatio-temporal progress across the landscape using geography as prior information, remains challenging in spite of recent progress [e.g. 41 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dividing time—An absolute chronological study of material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark

Rose,

Meadows

2024

PLoS ONE

0

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Chronological frameworks based on artefact typologies are essential for interpreting the archaeological record, but they inadvertently treat transitions between phases as abrupt events and disregard the temporality of transformation processes within and between individual phases. This study presents an absolute chronological investigation of a dynamic material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark. The chronological framework of Early Iron Age in Southern Scandinavia is largely unconstrained by absolute dating, primarily due to it coinciding with the so-called ‘Hallstatt calibration plateau’ (c.750 to 400 cal BC), and it is difficult to correlate it with Central European chronologies due to a lack of imported artefacts. This study applies recent methodological advances in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modelling, specifically a statistical model for wood-age offsets in cremated bone and presents the first large-scale radiocarbon investigation of regional material culture from Early Iron Age in Southern Jutland, Denmark. Dated material is primarily cremated bone from 111 cremation burials from three urnfields. The study presents absolute date ranges for 16 types of pottery and 15 types of metalwork, which include most of the recognised metalwork types from the period. This provides new insights into gradual change in material culture, when certain artefact types were in production and primary use, how quickly types were taken up and later abandoned, and distinguishing periods of faster and slower change. The study also provides the first absolute chronology for the period, enabling correlation with chronologies from other regions. Urnfields were introduced at the Bronze-Iron Age transformation, which is often assumed to have occurred c.530-500 BC. We demonstrate that this transformation took place in the 7th century BC, however, which revives the discussion of whether the final Bronze Age period VI should be interpreted as a transitional phase to the Iron Age.

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Spatio-temporal patterns of cemetery use among Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Cis-Baikal, Eastern Siberia

Cited by 12 publications

References 39 publications

Radiocarbon dating and its applications in Chinese archeology: An overview

Radiocarbon dating and its applications in Chinese archeology: An overview

Dividing Time – An Absolute Chronological Study of Material Culture from Early Iron Age Urnfields in Denmark

Dividing time—An absolute chronological study of material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark

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