Evaluating the incidence of hydrological processes during site formation through orientation analysis. A case study of the middle Palaeolithic Lakeland site of Neumark-Nord 2 (Germany)

Abstract

Lacustrine localities were attractive environments for Palaeolithic hominins, since they provide a large and broad spectrum of resources. Moreover, they are excellent archives that allow for high-resolution environmental, chronological and archaeological analyses. However, these deposits are often subject to complex formation and post-depositional factors, including water-related processes. Evaluating the influence of hydrological processes in site formation is thus essential to more accurately reconstruct the duration, intensity and types of hominin behaviour within these environments. In this paper we present the orientation analysis of archaeological material from the Last Interglacial site Neumark-Nord 2, Germany. Orientation analysis was done using GIS to calculate the orientation of artefact from digital plans of the excavation surface, which were subsequently tested using circular statistics. The results of the orientation analysis are compared with a hydrological model to check the relation between preferred orientations and reconstructed areas of water flow and accumulation. Results suggest that low-energy hydrological processes could have affected certain areas of the find-bearing deposits at Neumark-Nord 2 but, overall, there is no evidence for either high-energy hydrological processes or a significant movement of parts of the archaeological assemblage

Assessment of Accumulation Processes at the Middle Pleistocene Site of Ambrona (Soria, Spain). Density and Orientation Patterns in Spatial Datasets Derived from Excavations Conducted from the 1960s to the Present

“…These three parameters were calculated for each polygon that represents an archeological item. The study of orientation patterns makes it possible to infer the action of natural processes on anthropogenic assemblages [8], [28], [33–35], [38–39]. …”

“…The axial angles of all the items were plotted onto circular histograms, keeping the north at the top as the spatial reference. We used both the Rayleigh and Kuiper tests to differentiate isotropic distribution (uniform) from unimodal, bimodal or multimodal patterns [35], [38–39], [62] and Oriana software for the statistical analysis.…”

“…Their absence has been partly offset with excavation maps, which have proved to be useful for accurately estimating the axial orientation of the archeological remains with the aid of Geographic Information Systems [28], [35], [37]. Moreover, orientation analysis based on excavation maps has been combined with hydrological models, such as flume models [38] and GIS flow accumulation models [39], providing interesting new insights in evaluating accumulation processes at Paleolithic sites.…”

“…In this integrated approach, we measured the orientation of the Ambrona remains by comparing several GIS methods [28], [37]. When orientation patterns vary across the site, the spatial variability of the orientations is usually estimated with the aid of an artificial grid [28], [39]. …”

Middle Palaeolithic Percussive Tools from the Last Interglacial Site Neumark-Nord 2/2 (Germany) and the Visibility of Such Tools in the Archaeological Record

“…3). Although the levels were exposed to low energy overland flow (Mücher 2014;Sier et al 2011), this did not cause any discernible lateral movement of the archaeological material García-Moreno et al 2016) A large geological section near the centre of the former NN2 basin, Hauptprofil 7 (HP7), exposed its complete infill (Fig. 2).…”