Deciphering public spaces in urban contexts: geophysical survey, multi-element soil analysis, and artifact distributions at the 15th–16th-century AD Swahili settlement of Songo Mnara, Tanzania

Abstract

Open spaces are an integral part of past urban settlement worldwide. Often large and devoid of visible traces of past activities, these spaces challenge mainstream archaeological approaches to develop methodologies suitable to investigate their history. This study uses geophysical surveys, geochemical sampling and artifact distributions to examine open spaces at the Swahili stonetown of Songo Mnara, Tanzania. Initial, geophysical surveys have revealed a set of anomalies associated with activities across the open spaces at the site; a systematic soil/sediment sampling program was applied to map artifact and geochemical distributions across these areas. The spatial relationship between artifact distributions, specific chemical elements, and patterns of anomalies offers a new way to define areas that may have functioned as ‗public spaces' as well as possible activities that were carried out in them. The results suggest that open spaces at this Swahili site contained defined and protected public areas where small-scale production may have occurred.

Nova arheološka i geoarheološka istraživanja na praistorijskom lokalitetu Zecovi kod Prijedora, Bosna i Hercegovina

“…is suggests that there is a considerable quantity of wood ash in the deposits, no doubt derived from nearby settlement hearths. e strontium and zinc values are also weakly enhanced, and these also are suggestive of plant processing debris (Fleisher and Sulas 2015). Again, this serves to corroborate the high quantities of very ne to ne charcoal, frequent humi ed and silici ed plant remains, and common zones of micritic ash observed in thin section (see below).…”

Spectral Discrimination of Archaeological Sites Previously Occupied by Farming Communities Using In Situ Hyperspectral Data

“…Overall, the results for statistical analysis indicate that there is a significant difference in the concentration of elements in nonsites, middens, vitrified dung, and nonvitrified dung sites. is is because different anthropogenic activities have different effects on the composition of soil elements [15,116]. e concentration of P was significantly different across the nonsites, middens, vitrified dung, and nonvitrified dung byre.…”

“…Fieldwalking survey is the main method for identifying archaeological features visible on the Earth's surface [4,6,13]. However, in areas where archaeological features are not clearly visible or structural information about the use of space within a site is inconclusive, the concentration of elements in the soil has been analysed in order to identify archaeological sites [14] or different activity areas within the site [11,15]. e aforementioned traditional archaeological survey methods, geochemical analysis, and field walking are time-consuming and expensive to carry out.…”

A Neolithic palaeo-catena for the Xagħra Upper Coralline Limestone plateau of Gozo, Malta, and its implications for past soil development and land use

“…Multi-element analyses using the 35-element aqua regis ICP-AES method were conducted at the ALS Global laboratory in Seville (www.alsglobal.com), and the elements exhibiting greater than trace amounts and/or are generally considered to be enhanced by human activities (cf. Wilson et al, 2008;Fleisher and Sulas, 2015) are tabulated in Table 4.…”