Catriona Pickard

Deep-Sea Fishing in the European Mesolithic: Fact or Fantasy?

Some previous authors have argued for the practice of offshore, deep-water fishing in the European Mesolithic. In this article, various lines of evidence are brought to bear on this question: the kinds of fishing gear employed, the evidence relating to the use of boats and navigation, site location, ethnographic data, and fish biology and behaviour. It is concluded that the existence of deep-sea fisheries cannot be demonstrated on the basis of the available data. However, around much of Europe Mesolithic shorelines now lie below sea level and the study highlights the need for underwater archaeological investigation of submerged landscapes.

Chronological and dietary aspects of the human burials from Ajdovska Cave, Slovenia

Ajdovska Jama (The Pagans Cave) in southeast Slovenia lies within the catchment of the River Sava, a major tributary of the Danube. The site is well known for its Neolithic burials and has been excavated to a high standard on various occasions since 1884. The human remains at the site occurred as distinct clusters of mainly disarticulated bones belonging to at least 31 individuals. Hitherto, dating of the burials has been based on the associated archaeological finds, including a few low-precision radiometric radiocarbon measurements on charred plant material. In the present study, bones from 15 individ- uals were subsampled for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and stable isotope analyses. These comprised adults and chil- dren from 3 of the clusters. The results of the study indicate that the burials all belong to a relatively short time interval, while the stable isotope data indicate a mixed diet based on C3 plant and animal food sources. These interpretations differ somewhat from those of previous researchers. The AMS 14C and stable isotope analyses form part of a wider investigation of dietary and demographic change from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age in the Danube Basin.

Northern outpost of the Caliphate: maintaining military forces in a hostile environment (the Dariali Gorge in the Central Caucasus in Georgia)

Abstract The strategic significance of the Dariali Gorge, the main pass across the central Caucasus, has long been recognised. It forms a border today as it has done for much of the past 2000 years. But how was an effective military force sustained in an isolated Alpine environment? Excavations, osteoarchaeology and landscape survey have revealed that the Early Middle Ages saw as much investment in controlling this key route as there was in Antiquity. Guarded by the same Muslim-led garrison for at least a quarter of a millennium, its survival in a harsh environment was made possible through military effort and long-distance food supplies.

Boats and Pioneer Settlement: The Scottish Dimension

boats’. His main point is that the boats were ‘simple’, and had ‘only moderate seagoing qualities’ and that their use was restricted to ‘small-scale sea traffic’. Evidently, the long-term history perspective needs to cool down theMesolithic, to enhance the contrast to ‘the great change in the Scandinavian history of communication’, with the late Neolithic ‘plank built boats, metal craft and elite networks throughout Europe’. With reference to Prescott and Glørstad (2011), this is claimed to be an ‘historical watershed’. In the need for a better profile in the long-term cultural trajectory, the Mesolithic needs some flattening, to be rendered more basic and primitive, a handto-mouth, barely-making-it lifestyle. In the world according to Glørstad, the colonizers are left with vessels that he most certainly would not recommend for himself or his immediate family, not even on calm days, perhaps not even for his worst cousin. The connection between ‘plank-built boats’ and the ‘historical watershed’ is turned on its head. I also believe that overseas travels (like crossing the North Sea) did not occur until late Neolithic/Bronze Age. But overseas seafaring was hardly a result of new boat-building techniques. Quite the opposite, it was the need for travels as a strategy in a new political and social regime, it was the urge for objects, alliances, warfare that followed in the wake of long sea journeys that carved out a need for the bigger boats that could make this happen. Thus, there is no need (or any archaeological clues) to ‘reserve’ this technological development for the ‘big watershed’. Quite to the contrary, plank boats may just as well have considerable longer traditions. The polished or pecked gouges of basaltic rock, including the local Nøstvet adzes in the Oslo region, were a new development in parallel with the emergence of the Boreal forests. As demonstrated by Sanger (2009), there is no clear-cut relation between gouges and dugout canoes like Glørstad suggests. These gouges could also have been involved in a wood– splitting and plank-procurement industry, making seaworthy vessels for the coastal regions of Scandinavia throughout the millennia of marine foraging societies. Without reducing the importance of the late Neolithic achievements, it seems timely to hint at the often experienced fact that ‘historical watersheds’ tend to coincide with focuses of interest. Is there any reason to claim that the development of marine foraging and the colonizing of Scandinavian seascapes are achievements of lesser grandeur and cultural importance?

Animal keeping in Chalcolithic north-central Anatolia: what can stable isotope analysis add?

Stable isotope analysis is an essential investigative technique, complementary to more traditional zooarchaeological approaches to elucidating animal keeping practices. Carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope values of 132 domesticates (cattle, caprines and pigs) were evaluated to investigate one aspect of animal keeping, animal forage, at the Late Chalcolithic (mid-fourth millennium BC) site of Çamlıbel Tarlası, which is located in north-central Anatolia. The analyses indicated that all of the domesticates had diets based predominantly on C3 plants. Pig and caprine δ13C and δ15N values were found to be statistically indistinguishable. However, cattle exhibited distinctive stable isotope values and, therefore, differences in diet from both pigs and caprines at Çamlıbel Tarlası. This difference may relate to the distinct patterns of foraging behaviour exhibited by the domesticates. Alternatively, this diversity may result from the use of different grazing areas or from the foddering practices of the Çamlıbel Tarlası inhabitants.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder in Prehistory

Individuals with ‘extraordinary’ or ‘different’ minds have been suggested to be central to invention and the spread of new ideas in prehistory, shaping modern human behaviour and conferring an evolutionary advantage at population level. In this article the potential for neuropsychiatric conditions such as autistic spectrum disorders to provide this difference is explored, and the ability of the archaeological record to provide evidence of human behaviour is discussed. Specific reference is made to recent advances in the genetics of these conditions, which suggest that neuropsychiatric disorders represent a non-advantageous, pathological extreme of the human mind and are likely a by-product rather than a cause of human cognitive evolution.

Variability along the frontier: stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio analysis of human remains from the Late Roman–Early Byzantine cemetery site of Joan Planells, Ibiza, Spain

Carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen from 38 individuals was undertaken to assess diet at the Late Roman–Early Byzantine (AD 300–700) cemetery site, Joan Planells, in Ibiza, Spain. The results (δ13C = − 18.7 ± 0.5‰ and δ15N = 10.1 ± 1.3‰) show that the diet of this population was derived predominantly from C3 terrestrial resources; plant foods were likely dietary staples along with meat and/or dairy produce comprising an important component of diet. Variation in stable isotope ratio values suggests individual differences in diet. Two individuals, both males, are statistical outliers with distinctive δ15N values (14.4 and 14.8‰) that point to significant consumption of marine resources. Females, on average, have higher δ13C values than males. The parsimonious explanation for this observation is the greater inclusion of C4 resources such as millet in the diets of females. Comparison of the diet of the Joan Planells population with other Late Roman period sites on the Hispanic mainland and other parts of the Mediterranean region suggests that populations may have been responding to a combination of socio-political and environmental factors that could have included Roman influence of food consumptive practices in some of these distant locales.