Simulating the impact of ground surface morphology on archaeological orientation patterning

Li, Li; Lin, Sam C.; Peng, Fei; Patania, Ilaria; Guo, Jialong; Wang, Huimin; Gao, Xing

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2020.105310

Cited by 7 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…While these variables are frequently used to infer water sorting or reworking of lithic and bone material, they may also be influenced by other factors including the nature of the initial artefact assemblage and original source materials (e.g., Domínguez-Rodrigo et al, 2014). Another relevant variable, of artefact orientation and plunge (e.g., Shackley, 1978), was not recorded by either D2019 or B2020, but even this might be influenced by the roughness of underlying surfaces and the patchiness of modern sediments at the site as much as by the hydrodynamic regime (Li et al, 2021).…”

Section: The Risks Of Assessing Relative Chronology From Stone Artefa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED: Applying geoarchaeological principles to marine archaeology: A reappraisal of the “first marine” and “in situ” lithic scatters in the Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia

et al. 2022

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The absence of known prehistoric underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites on the Australian inner shelf stands in stark contrast to the thousands of sites revealed elsewhere in the world. Two recent claims—Dortch et al. (D2019) and Benjamin et al. (B2020)—put forward the first in situ (i.e., primary context) UCH sites in the shallow waters of the Dampier Archipelago, North West Australia, each arguing that the stone artefact scatters are at least 7000 years old and are now submerged because of postglacial sea‐level rise. We present new hydrodynamic modelling and data on coastal erosion and bathymetry, and reassess each site's sedimentary setting and archaeological site‐formation history. D2019 and B2020 clearly present lithic cultural artefacts, but the arguments for their sites being of primary context and reflecting early Holocene land surfaces are mistaken. Rather, these sites occur in the intertidal zone, and many or all artefacts are likely to have been reworked. Sites of secondary context, if treated appropriately, can inform our understanding of site‐formation process and change, and may support more powerful contributions to submerged archaeology than attempts to seek the first or the oldest.

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Section: The Risks Of Assessing Relative Chronology From Stone Artefa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED: Applying geoarchaeological principles to marine archaeology: A reappraisal of the “first marine” and “in situ” lithic scatters in the Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia

et al. 2022

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“…Regarding the data on plunge, we see a higher plunge variance (Table 4) that might reflect an uneven, rugged surface morphology (Li et al 2021) for GH 7, 7a and 7aa. For GH 14, as for the bearing, the plunge differs from the other layers (Table 4).…”

Section: Fabric Analysismentioning

confidence: 84%

“…The analysis of the orientation and dip angle of artefacts and clastic, geological elements has been extensively applied in the interpretation of depositional and postdepositional processes acting within geological deposits and at archaeological sites (Benn 1994 Li et al 2021). Fabric shape analysis relies upon the relative values of the three eigenvalues (Benn 1994;McPherron 2005McPherron , 2018, calculated from the orientation and dip angle data.…”

Section: Fabric Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We decided to analyse the material inside the features separately from that outside, since dumping is a purely anthropogenic process if not influenced by slope movement, and so the features should show different results for the dip and the bearing compared with the more geogenic deposits. To perform the fabric analysis, we adapted the script published by McPherron (2018) and Li et al (2021) in the R statistical software (R Core team 2019). The data required to reproduce the results can be found on GitHub as supplementary information (https:// github.…”

Section: Fabric Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, fabric analysis on natural clasts within a debris flow reveals that the long axes of clasts are often oriented parallel to the slope direction (Bertran et al 1997;Lenoble and Bertran 2004), to the extent that the clast in these deposits show weak or strong imbrication, as is the case in grain flows (Bertran and Texier 1999). Therefore, by recording the orientation (trend and bearing) of elongated artefacts and natural clasts during excavation, researchers can use fabric analysis to reconstruct potential modes of deposition (Benito-Calvo et al 2009;Sánchez-Romero et al 2016;McPherron 2018;Giusti et al 2019;Li et al 2021) and also investigate the impacts that previous substrate morphologies have on the clast orientation (Li et al 2021). Despite the increasing regularity with which fabric analysis has been employed for the reconstruction of site formation processes, little work to date has focused on the analysis of fabrics internal to combustion features.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Burning, dumping, and site use during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic at Hohle Fels Cave, SW Germany

Marcazzan

Miller

Conard

2022

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Dumped deposits are a valuable source of information for inferring past behaviour. They provide insights into site maintenance, social organization and settlement dynamics. Hohle Fels Cave in SW Germany offers a unique opportunity to investigate the importance of dumping and site maintenance during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of the Swabian Jura. In this paper, we analyse anthropogenic deposits at Hohle Fels employing micromorphology and fabric analysis in order to reconstruct their formation and understand the human behaviours behind their accumulation. Our study indicates that dumping residues from combustion features in the interior of Hohle Fels Cave has a long history extending back to Neanderthal occupation at the site during the Middle Palaeolithic. Despite some reworking via down-slope movement, most of the features demonstrate that the site’s inhabitants dumped burnt material, which was previously the fuel for domestic hearths, in specific locations within the cave. The intentionality of the action and the characteristics of the features provide important information for reconstructing the mode and spatial organization of occupations at the site. The combustion features from the Middle Palaeolithic allow us to reassess the hypothesis that Neanderthals’ use of the site was less intense and documented a lesser degree of spatial patterning than subsequent Upper Palaeolithic occupations. This research also provides insight for examining the regional variability of pyrotechnology and site maintenance during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic.

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Intra-Site Structure of the Early Ahmarian Site of Al-Ansab 1, AH 1 (Jordan)

Schoenenberg

Sauer

2022

J Paleo Arch

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The Early Ahmarian represents an Early Upper Palaeolithic cultural unit, which spans throughout the Levant to the Sinai Peninsula. At least 40 sites belong to this unit. Both open-air and cave sites provide different amounts of archaeological material at various spatial resolutions. The team of the Collaborative Research Centre 806 “Our Way to Europe” excavated the site of Al-Ansab 1, Wadi Sabra, since 2009. The site provides one of the largest lithic assemblages of the Early Ahmarian. Analysis of intra-site distributions and patterns has been conducted for a small number of sites, providing scarce information on the spatial makeup of Early Ahmarian occupation layers. The internal structure testifies to repeated settlement without task specialisation. While this has been described for the sites on the Sinai Peninsula, the situation has been unclear for locations placed in the escarpments of the Transjordanian Highlands. At Al-Ansab 1, we can observe the repeated, relatively ephemeral occupation of a specific location in the Wadi Sabra for the execution of various tasks such as processing of faunal elements and raw material exploitation. Our results correlate to a pattern of mobility observable at other Early Ahmarian sites such as Abu Noshra II. These sites are usually attributed to relatively small and highly mobile bands of hunter-gatherers. Analysing these patterns of intra-site and regional spatial behaviour in the context of environmental patterning highlights potential external drivers to the expression of human occupation at sites such as Al-Ansab 1, archaeological horizon 1.

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Simulating the impact of ground surface morphology on archaeological orientation patterning

Cited by 7 publications

References 46 publications

RETRACTED: Applying geoarchaeological principles to marine archaeology: A reappraisal of the “first marine” and “in situ” lithic scatters in the Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia

RETRACTED: Applying geoarchaeological principles to marine archaeology: A reappraisal of the “first marine” and “in situ” lithic scatters in the Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia

Burning, dumping, and site use during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic at Hohle Fels Cave, SW Germany

Intra-Site Structure of the Early Ahmarian Site of Al-Ansab 1, AH 1 (Jordan)

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