Environmental Archaeology Flashcards
Coarse Sieving -To coarse sieve the samples is poured directly on the sieve of desired size and a student would use his or her hands or trowel to encourage the soil through the mesh. The sieve is under constant observation for archaeological material.
Bulk Sieving -Sub-sample or entirety of context • Flow of water directed over soil sample on mesh – collect ‘flot’ and residue and fine mineral particles washed through
Sub-sampling
- Organic rich flots can be sub-divided randomly using a ‘riffle box’
- Flots/residues may be washed/shaken through a bank of sieves of decreasing mesh size
Tollund Man -a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BCE, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950 on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, buried in a peat bog which preserved his body.
Lindow Man (Cheshire) -the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The body was found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat-cutters. Dated to some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period.
Biostratigraphic sampling Cores – for sequences, e.g. pollen, molluscs
Hand collection
- Recovery by eye during excavation
- Bias towards larger remains
Waterlogging
- Anaerobic environment prevents decay by micro-organisms
- Wetlands, underwater, ditches, wells, latrines
- Flora from local environment • Wooden structures • Faeces
Preservation Bias: seeds and leaves from local vegetation
e.g Flag Fen, Peterborough, England, a Bronze Age site developed about 3500 years ago, comprising over 60,000 timbers, arranged in five very long rows, creating a wooden causeway (around 1 km long) across the wet fenland.
Carbonisation
- Burning with insufficient oxygen for complete combustion to occur
- Crop processing, clearance, catastrophic events (e.g. destructive fire)
- Bias against flimsy plant parts, (e.g. leaves, cereal chaff) as burn completely
- Some distortion (puffing); lose colour
Mineralisation
- Phosphates (urine) and calcium (soil) = calcium phosphate
- Plant parts replaced by calcium phosphate
- Fruit stones and pips
Bias towards remains that can survive the digestive system
Desiccation
- Not usually in this climate!!!
- Lack of moisture prevents microbial decay
- Exceptional preservation in arid places
- Preservation bias: Sealed tombs, dry climate/ microclimates
Cavity casts at Pompeii Cavities in ash filled with plaster to make casts e.g vine roots
Plan of Roman vineyard showing where vines and trees would have been, developed through the recovery of plant macrofossils.
Palynology- study of pollen
Identification of pollen in preserving deposits – Cores provide sequences of change over time
Identifying pollen
- Identifying vegetation and environmental conditions
- Dissolving (digesting) inorganic matrix using strong acid
- Pollen viewed, identified and counted on slides under microscopes
Elm decline
- No safe indicator – Other possibilities – E.g. disease
- Cereal ‘signature’ very faint
- Accompanying weeds, more reliable
Sexing Some species are “sexually dimorphic” – systematic differences between sexes – Teeth (canines) – Horns, antlers – Baculcum
e.g tusk from a male pig
Ageing Immature individual: growth plate of hyaline cartilage separates the metaphysis from the epiphysis. Amount of epiphysis cartilage shows age.
Dental ageing: • In mammals, both deciduous and adult teeth ‘erupt’ in order • This is a very accurate method of ageing cranial remains
Mortality profile: age and sex
Milk kill-off pattern, with males killed at an early age as they use the milk.
• Mortality profile: age and sex
Meat kill-off pattern where females are kept for breeding and males are killed when they reach maturity.
Climatic indicators
- Insects probably adapt to climate change more quickly than plants
- Therefore good palaeoclimatic proxy Estimated July temperature based upon beetle assemblages
Archaeoentomology
- Very sensitive to climatic change
- Usually waterlogged deposits
- Recovered via wet-sieving and paraffin (keratin absorbs paraffin and floats)
- Often derive from ditches, waterlogged pits/wells etc.
Beetles
- Populations wiped out during last glaciation
- From ca. 13,000 BP, re-colonisation
Medieval refuse disposal
- Frequent remains of Sitophilus granaris from deposits from Medieval organic rich deposits from The Bolts, Scarborough
- Along with species associated with decomposing matter, buildings, stored goods
- Domestic refuse, including spoiled grain, hay etc.
- Increase in pests such as grain wevil in the Roman Era
Mollusc shells can be preserved in Shell middens. However, 700 would need to be eaten by one person per day to gain the calories needed to survive, so they were likely not the main source of sustinence.
Technology and status
Murex shell Remains found dating to the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean > 8000 molluscs required for a millilitre of dye
Murex shells from Troia Kakirlar & Becks, 2009 ‘Murex Hill’, Sidon 100 m high, 50 m long
