Wiebke Bebermeier

An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Stone Quarrying Techniques in Historical Anuradhapura

Ancient rock quarries in the surroundings of the ancient city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka provide evidence of quarrying by splitting stone blocks. Bedrock outcrops with natural foliations or weathering fractures were preferred starting points for stone quarrying. Additionally, fractures were created artificially, removing bedrock material by channeling or heating the bedrock surface and imposing pressure on the rock through percussion. These quarrying techniques are mainly based on a series of chiselled holes set along the part of the block to be separated. These holes frequently appear as half holes in the separated rock fragments. This investigation explores the working procedure related to the chiselled holes and wedge quarrying technique, and aims to identify the tools used and to estimate the time necessary for the splitting. Investigations are based on observations of a stone craftsman still applying traditional techniques of quarrying.

Critical Physical Geography in Practice: Landscape Archaeology

Landscape archaeology is an emerging interdisciplinary field where researchers from humanities and sciences investigate human/environment interactions and interrelations as well as human perceptions of the environment. It is closely related to Critical Physical Geography except that the investigated humans are long gone. Insights about past societies and their relations to the environment are only indirectly accessible via material traces. We present different challenges when interpreting such material remains that are produced by coupled eco-social systems. In order to tackle these challenges, critical physical geographic thinking is necessary that iteratively questions the application of methods from physical and social science, their data selection and interpretation of results in order to arrive at a comprehensive, transdisciplinary understanding of long gone societies within their environment.

Ancient Colonization of Marginal Habitats

The present contribution deals with the concepts of marginal habitats in selected regions of the ancient world, ranging from modern Spain to the Jordanian desert and from Turkey to the Ethiopian highlands. Central to this research is the hypothesis that the occupation of areas beyond the ‘normal’ settlement patterns corresponds to colonization processes which reflect specific social strategies and may have stimulated the development of new technological skills. A review of ‘marginality’ research in various disciplines indicates that there is no comprehensive definition of the concept, which can be approached from a multitude of perspectives and with manifold objectives. A survey of the eight case studies and two more in-depth discussions of the sites of Musawwarat (Sudan) and Ayamonte (Spain) highlight the potentials as well as the limits of the archaeological investigation into past marginalities. Patterns of spatial marginalization are the easiest to detect. The studies also show that we must not limit our analysis to the adverse factors connected to different kinds of marginalities. Instead, our analyses suggest that spatially marginal areas were deliberately chosen for settlement – an integration with core-periphery approaches may help us to understand these scenarios, which have received little attention in ‘marginality’ research in archaeology or elsewhere so far.