Andrew Bevan

GIS, Archaeological Survey, and Landscape Archaeology on the Island of Kythera, Greece

Abstract GIS and quantitative analysis are used to explore a series of simple but important issues in GIS-led survey. we draw on information collected during intensive archaeological field survey of the island of Kythera, Greece, and consider four questions: the relationship between terracing and enclosed field systems; the effect of vegetation on archaeological recovery; site definition and characterization in multi-period and artifact-rich landscapes; and site location modelling that considers some of the decisions behind the placing of particular Bronze Age settlements. we have chosen GIS and quantitative methods to extract patterns and structure in our multi-scalar dataset, demonstrating the value of GIS in helping to understand the archaeological record and past settlement dynamics. The case studies can be viewed as examples of how GIS may contribute to four stages in any empirically based landscape project insofar as they move from the spatial structure of the modern landscape, to the visibility and patterning of archaeological data, to the interpretation of settlement patterns.

Modelling the Geographical Origin of Rice Cultivation in Asia Using the Rice Archaeological Database

We have compiled an extensive database of archaeological evidence for rice across Asia, including 400 sites from mainland East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This dataset is used to compare several models for the geographical origins of rice cultivation and infer the most likely region(s) for its origins and subsequent outward diffusion. The approach is based on regression modelling wherein goodness of fit is obtained from power law quantile regressions of the archaeologically inferred age versus a least-cost distance from the putative origin(s). The Fast Marching method is used to estimate the least-cost distances based on simple geographical features. The origin region that best fits the archaeobotanical data is also compared to other hypothetical geographical origins derived from the literature, including from genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics. The model that best fits all available archaeological evidence is a dual origin model with two centres for the cultivation and dispersal of rice focused on the Middle Yangtze and the Lower Yangtze valleys.

The data deluge

Archaeology has wandered into exciting but daunting territory. It faces floods of new evidence about the human past that are largely digital, frequently spatial, increasingly open and often remotely sensed. The resulting terrain is littered, both with data that are wholly new and data that were long known about but previously considered junk. This paper offers an overview of this diluvian information landscape and aims to foster debate about its wider disciplinary impact. In particular, I would argue that its consequences: a) go well beyond the raw challenges of digital data archiving or manipulation and should reconfigure our analytical agendas; b) can legitimately be read for both utopian and dystopian disciplinary futures; and c) re-expose some enduring tensions between archaeological empiricism, comparison and theory-building.

Multiscalar Approaches to Settlement Pattern Analysis

This paper has emphasized the highly reflexive approach necessary for the correct identification and interpretation of the processes behind settlement patterns. In our opinion, the key challenges are: (i) to define a sample/study area and its levels of search intensity appropriately (correcting for or exploring “edge effects” statistically where necessary); (ii) to assess and sub-divide site size, function and date range (analysing comparable features only and/or arbitrating uncertain cases statistically); (iii) to account for the resource structure of the landscape (either by only considering environmental homogenous sub-regions or by factoring resource preferences into the significance-testing stage of analysis), and (iv) to use techniques of analysis that are sensitive to detecting patterns at different spatial scales. The latter in particular is an area increasingly well-explored in other disciplines, but as yet with minimal impact on archaeological practice. There remains some value in Clark and Evan’s nearest neighbour function for identifying relationships between sites at one scale of analysis, but it may fail to detect larger-scale patterning. More critically, the dichotomy it encourages between “nucleated” and “dispersed” is at best an overly simplistic model and, at worst, bears little relationship to the reality of settlement organization, which at different scales can show both nucleated and dispersed components. In our Kytheran case study, there is obviously further work to be done, but even with the existing dataset, we have shown that using a combination of Monte Carlo testing, frequency distributions, local density mappings and Ripley’s K-function allows a more sensitive assessment of multiscalar patters and therefore a more critical evaluation of the processes underlying settlement distributions.

Spatial methods for analysing large-scale artefact inventories

Finds distributions plotted over landscapes and continents, once the mainstay of archaeological cultural mapping, went into a lengthy period of decline when it was realised that many were artefacts of modern recovery rather than patterns of their own day. What price then, the rich harvest of finds being collected by modern routine procedures of rescue work and by metal-detectorists? The author shows how distribution patterns can be validated, and sample bias minimised, through comparison with maps of known populations and by presenting the distributions more sharply by risk surface analysis. This not only endorses the routine recording of surface finds currently undertaken in every country, but opens the door to new social and economic interpretations through methods of singular power.

Crossbows and imperial craft organisation: the bronze triggers of China’s Terracotta Army

The Terracotta Army that protected the tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang offers an evocative image of the power and organisation of the Qin armies who unified China through conquest in the third century BC. It also provides evidence for the craft production and administrative control that underpinned the Qin state. Bronze trigger mechanisms are all that remain of crossbows that once equipped certain kinds of warrior in the Terracotta Army. A metrical and spatial analysis of these triggers reveals that they were produced in batches and that these separate batches were thereafter possibly stored in an arsenal, but eventually were transported to the mausoleum to equip groups of terracotta crossbowmen in individual sectors of Pit 1. The trigger evidence for large-scale and highly organised production parallels that also documented for the manufacture of the bronze-tipped arrows and proposed for the terracotta figures themselves.

Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate

Significance The relationship between human population, food production, and climate change is a pressing concern in need of high-resolution, long-term perspectives. Archaeological radiocarbon dates have increasingly been used to reconstruct past population dynamics, and Britain and Ireland provide both radiocarbon sampling densities and species-level sample identifications that are globally unrivalled. We use this evidence to demonstrate multiple instances of human population downturn over the Holocene that coincide with periodic episodes of reduced solar activity and climate reorganization as well as societal responses in terms of altered food-procurement strategies. We consider the long-term relationship between human demography, food production, and Holocene climate via an archaeological radiocarbon date series of unprecedented sampling density and detail. There is striking consistency in the inferred human population dynamics across different regions of Britain and Ireland during the middle and later Holocene. Major cross-regional population downturns in population coincide with episodes of more abrupt change in North Atlantic climate and witness societal responses in food procurement as visible in directly dated plants and animals, often with moves toward hardier cereals, increased pastoralism, and/or gathered resources. For the Neolithic, this evidence questions existing models of wholly endogenous demographic boom–bust. For the wider Holocene, it demonstrates that climate-related disruptions have been quasi-periodic drivers of societal and subsistence change.

Vegetation recolonisation of abandoned agricultural terraces on Antikythera, Greece

Abstract Antikythera is a small, relatively remote Mediterranean island, lying 35 km north-west of Crete, and its few contemporary inhabitants live mainly in the small village at the only port. However, an extensive network of terraces across the island bears witness to the past importance of farming on the island, although the intensity of use of these cultivated plots has changed according to fluctuating population levels. Most recently, the rural population and intensity of cultivation have dramatically declined. Our aim is to understand the recolonisation process of agricultural land by plants after terraces are no longer used for the cultivation of crops. The results demonstrate a relatively quick pace of vegetative recolonisation, with abandoned farm land covered by dense scrub within 20 to 60 years. The archaeological implications are that, following even relatively short periods of abandonment, the landscape would have required arduous reinvestment in the removal of scrub growth, as well as the repair and construction of stone terraces, to allow cultivation once again.

Experiments in Crowd-funding Community Archaeology

Abstract This article reviews existing case studies in the ‘crowd-funding’ of community archaeology, as well as offering preliminary results from a small-scale experiment conducted alongside the wider crowd-sourcing efforts of the MicroPasts project (http://micropasts.org). In so-doing, it also considers the possible role of a hybrid reward- and donation-based model for micro-financing collaborative archaeological research. The article concludes with a summary of the key lessons drawn from experiences of crowd-funding archaeology so far, and highlights their particular implications for community archaeology.

ROMAN POTTERY FROM AN INTENSIVE SURVEY OF ANTIKYTHERA, GREECE

Recent intensive survey over the entire extent of the small island of Antikythera has recovered an episodic sequence of human activity spanning some 7,000 years, including a Roman pottery assemblage that documents a range of important patterns with respect to land use, demography and on-island consumption. This paper addresses the typological and functional aspects of this assemblage in detail, and also discusses Roman period Antikytheras range of off-island contacts and affiliations. Ρωμαϊκή κεραμική από μία εντατική επιφανειακή έρευνα στα Αντικύθηρα Η πρόσφατη επιφανειακή έρευνα η οποία πραγματοποιηθήκε σε όλη την έκταση του μικρού νησιού των Αντικυθήρων έφερε στο φως μια σειρά διαδοχικών επεισοδίων ανθρώπινης δραστηριότητας που καλύπτουν περίπου 7,000 χρόνια. Ανάμεσά στα ευρήματα συγκαταλέγεται και Ρωμαϊκό υλικό το οποίο τεκμηριώνει φάσμα σημαντικών πληροφοριών σχετικά με τη χρήση γης, τον πληθυσμό και την ενδο-νησιωτική κατανάλωση. Το συγκεκριμένο άρθρο αναφέρεται λεπτομερώς σε τυπολογικές και λειτουργικές πτυχές του κεραμεικού αυτού υλικού, ενώ παράλληλα εξετάζει τις εκτός νησιού επαφές και σχέσεις των Αντικυθήρων κατά τη Ρωμαϊκη περίοδο.