Achaeology

This article details the importance of the 1705 Van Delft expedition for the early European history and culture contacts of northern Australia. The expedition sailed from Batavia with three ships under the command of Maarten van Delft and spent nearly three and half months exploring along the north coast of Australia—Tiwi Islands, Cobourg Peninsula and Croker Island. Along the way, they interacted with different groups of Indigenous peoples and possibly collected the cultural material now held in the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures—the earliest known existing cultural material collected from Australia. This article provides a detailed synthesis of Indigenous interactions with the Dutch prior to 1770 and accords the Van Delft expedition its proper significance in terms of the extent and detail of its survey and its importance in ending Dutch colonial interest in Australia. Through detailed analysis of the primary sources for the Van Delft expedition, including cartography, this study demonstrates that the expedition covered parts of the Australian mainland and Croker Island, and that Van Delft’s crews interacted with mainland Indigenous groups as well as Tiwi Islanders.

Nell’ambito di lavori realizzati dal Comune di Palermo nell’area del Centro Storico, è stato eseguito un intervento di scavo archeologico preventivo a Piazza Bologni, situata nella parte mediana dell’odierno Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, l’asse stradale che sin dall’antichità ha caratterizzato l’impianto urbanistico della città. La piazza si trova, inoltre, nel cuore della Madīnat Balarm islamica, che coincideva con il nucleo della città antica. Il settore nel quale si è operato è situato nella parte occidentale della piazza, in una trincea lunga in totale 80 m ca. e larga in media 2,50 m, compresa tra il Corso Vittorio Emanuele II a nord e il vicolo Panormita a sud. Lo scavo dell’area, fortemente condizionato dalle esigenze di cantiere, è stato realizzato in due momenti diversi, il primo nei mesi di ottobre-novembre del 2011, il secondo tra luglio e agosto del 2012. Per esigenze di scavo, la metà nord dell’area è stata indagata nel 2011, mentre la parte più meridionale è stata esplorata nel 2012. Si sono così individuate evidenze archeologiche comprese tra l’Età Ellenistica e il Medioevo, tra cui contesti di Età Bizantina e varie strutture databili all’Età Islamica. Inoltre, sono stati messi in luce ben otto pozzi, di diverse tipologie e posti a varia distanza l’uno dall’altro.

Bu çalışmada da turizm ve arkeoloji alanlarında lisans düzeyinde eğitim alan öğrencilerin ne düzeyde müze ziyaret alışkanlığına sahip oldukları belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Müze ziyaret alışkanlığının oluşmasında belirleyici olan etkenler ile bunların öğrencilerin demografik özellikleri açısından farklılık gösterip göstermediği araştırmada irdelenmiştir. Adnan Menderes Üniversitesi,Muğla Sıtkı Koçman Üniversitesi ile Pamukkale Üniversitesi Arkeoloji ve Turizm bölümlerinde lisans eğitimi alan öğrenciler araştırmaya dahil edilmiştir. Araştırma verilerinin toplanmasında anket yönteminden yararlanılırken, araştırma hipotezlerinin testinde Anova ve t-test yöntemleri kullanılmıştır.

The Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project (RCSP) conducted regional archaeological survey in the Alanya and Gazipaşa Districts of the Province of Antalya. Between 1996 and 2011, the RCSP successfully conducted thirteen field seasons (1996–2005, 2007–2008, 2011). The survey investigation strategically targeted three distinct landscape regions in the survey area: the urban sites, flood plains, and ridges along the coast (Coastal Regions, 1996–1999); the Midlands or “Mesogeia” (Adanda Canyon, Çoruş, and Kaledran Basin, 2000–2004, 2011); and the Gazipaşa Highlands (the Bıçkıcı Highland and the Taşeli Plateau, 2003, 2007–2008, 2011). In all, some 1000 hectares of Rough Cilician rural terrain were investigated, some 160 “sites” were inspected, and some 9400 fragments of pottery were processed (fig. 1). We are pleased to announce the publication of three separate RCSP archives online at Purdue University. These include the RCSP Ceramics Study Collection and the RCSP Context Pottery in Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), and the RCSP Annual Field Reports in e-Pubs.

El adobe como material de construcción para uso habitacional ha sido utilizado por miles de años por los pueblos indígenas de América, tanto en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos como en Mesoamérica y la región andina en Sudamérica. Actualmente el 50 por ciento de las casas del mundo están construidas con este material. La utilización del adobe representa una alternativa viable para resolver el problema de la falta de vivienda, a través de la propuesta de una casa autoconstruible de bajo costo. Sin embargo, una limitante para desarrollar tal alternativa consiste en que la mayoría de las técnicas constructivas tradicionales que utilizan materiales obtenidos a partir del suelo son resultado del conocimiento empírico. Dicho conocimiento generalmente es asistemático, varía en cada cultura y región y carece de una terminología interdisciplinaria. Por lo tanto, difícilmente esta opción ofrece, de modo directo, una base tecnológica universalmente válida.
El objetivo de este artículo consiste en contribuir al conocimiento formal relacionado con la naturaleza intrínseca y propiedades diagnósticas de uno de los materiales prehispánicos de construcción más extensamente utilizado: el adobe. Para ello, se considera viable la implementación de técnicas de medición de sus características. Con esta finalidad fueron seleccionadas y analizadas seis muestras de adobe prehispánico provenientes de los sitios arqueológicos de Zethé y Sabina Grande; ambos próximos a Huichapan, Hidalgo.
Para caracterizar formalmente a las muestras de adobe se utilizaron métodos analíticos aceptados por la Sociedad Internacional de la Ciencia del Suelo, así como por la Sociedad Americana de Pruebas y Materiales (American Society for Testing and Materials). Estos métodos incluyeron análisis físicos y químicos de rutina, complementados con análisis selectos, entre ellos: (i) determinación cuantitativa del tamaño de partícula, (ii) análisis micromorfológico, (iii) difracción por rayos X y (iv) fluorescencia de rayos X.

In 2013 an archaeological excavation was carried out on
the grounds of the castle in the village of Zdechovice
(Pardubice District) which was associated with the
construction of a sewage system. The most interesting
discovery was the unearthing of part of a 13thcentury
inhumation cemetery in the area of the socalled
cour
d'honneur, south of the castle (Fig. 3, Fig. 4). Apart from
the inhumation cemetery, the archaeological excavation
in the area of the cour d'honneur also exposed a number
of archaeological situations, usually associated with a later
fortified house, the castle building and its numerous
alterations. These situations are only briefly described in
the publication and only mentioned in cases when they
influenced the state of preservation of the cemetery and
the individual human skeletons.
The rescue excavation in the courtyard of the brewery
and in the area of the cour d'honneur exposed an extensive
cultural layer containing 10th to 12/13th century finds.
The inhumation graves were dug into this cultural layer
– perhaps as early as the late 12th century, but certainly
during the 13th century. A total of 104 graves with the
remains of 113 individuals were documented there – in
a pattern of deposition ranging from one up to three
layers. All the bodies were stretched out on their backs,
and their orientation was, with several minor divergences,
west – east (with heads to the west). Coffins were observed
in at least 17 cases (Table 1). Some of the grave pits were
lined with stones and at least 4 graves were covered by
tombstones. Grave pits were identified in 23 cases in the
cemetery. They were always rectangular in shape and their
corners were rounded (Fig. 7: 1–5). The length of the grave
pits were also influenced by the body height of the buried
person. The widths of the pits ranged between 35 and 60 cm,
the average being 50 cm. The lengths of the pits ranged
between 105 and 195 cm, the average being 141.8 cm.
However, the pit of grave 6 was different. It was an
irregular oval pit with a length of 238 cm which expanded
in a lobelike
fashion on the eastern side, next to the feet
of the buried person.
Due to a poor degree of preservation or small amounts
of skeletal material, it was only possible to determine in
some cases whether the individual buried in the grave was
adult or immature. Age was more precisely determinable
in 68 cases (Table 6). It was also possible to determine
the gender of 39 adult individuals. The ratio between
men and women at the cemetery was almost equal.
Pavel Horník – Radek Bláha – Petra Sehnoutková – Martin Mazáč
Zdechovice – medieval burial ground
Most graves contained no grave goods. Only grave 45
yielded a silver coin and a bronze finger ring (Fig. 9:5)
which was found on one of the fingers of the right hand.
Under the fingers, on the pelvis, a silver coin was placed
(Fig. 9:7, Fig. 44:1), which has been determined as a
middlesized
bracteate struck under Ottokar II of Bohemia
(1253–1278).15 It is a type from the years 1265–1267(?),
Cach 820b. Although the whole palm has not survived,
it is obvious that this means of payment had intentionally
been placed in the hand of the buried person and served
as the socalled
Charon's obol (Brádle–Horník 2014, 3–6),
i. e. as a means for providing for the needs of the deceased
in afterlife. Another finger ring was found in the cultural
layer between graves 26, 27 and 28. This open finger
ring with pointed ends (Fig. 9:6) was made from tape wire.
Its upper part is hammered out and decorated with a group
of mutually intersecting lines. Its dating is complicated,
but the 13th century cannot be ruled out. A small, but
from the viewpoint of dating the excavated situations very
important, assemblage consists of four temple rings (Fig.
9:1–4). The temple ring is a typical piece of jewellery
during the late phase of the Early and the beginning of the
High Middle Ages, i.e. the 10–13th centuries. Three temple
rings were found in test pit 2 (Fig. 9:1–3). Unfortunately,
their precise contexts could not be determined because
the jewellery was part of an accumulation of bones which
arose due to the collapse of the southern section of the
test pit. Two temple rings have an identical diameter of
35.9 mm (Fig. 9:1–2) and the third one even of 41.4 mm
(Fig. 9:3). All of them are made from a thin wire of onecomponent
brass16 with a diameter of 1.4–1.6 mm. The
fourth, somewhat more robust temple ring with a smaller
diameter (Fig. 9:4) comes from grave no. 54. However,
not even its precise location could be determined. The
grave was identified in the northern wall of test pit 5 and
part of the skeletal remains including the temple ring were
recovered only after the collapse of the excavation's wall.
It is made of copper and its surface is refined with silver
plating. Its diameter slightly exceeds 30 mm and amounts to
31.2 mm. The diameter is actually very important for dating
S-shaped temple rings. Pieces with a diameter of more
than 30 mm appeared sometime during the 12th century
(Štefan 2009, 182) and during the following century, temple
rings disappeared from grave goods (Nechvátal 1999,
124–125, compare Čechura 2010, 115). Settlement finds,
too, seem to confirm the dying away of this piece jewellery in the 13th century (Richter–Vokolek 1995, 80).
The temple rings in our assemblage can therefore be dated
to the advanced 12th century, with a possible overlap into
the following century.
A link between the cemetery and a sacral building is
questionable. We can rule out a direct link to the originally
Romanesque church of Saint Peter and Paul, which is
approximately 400 m distant from the excavation area.
The test pits dug in the cour d'honneur did not identify
any remains of a sacral building, which, however, can
only be due to the extent of excavation works. It is also
necessary to mention that there is the castle chapel in
the immediate southern vicinity of the excavation area,
but it is of Baroque origin and there is no evidence or
indication to allow us to speculate about an earlier sacral
building in its place.
The current state of research does not enable us to
establish the reasons for the cemetery's demise. There could
have been a number of causes, such as spatial conditions,
the cemetery’s location close to a water course (Červený
brook), etc. A possible reason could also be a change in
ownership and the emergence of a fortified noble residence
(or hypothetically its 'relocation' further from the church
of Saint Peter and Paul). Regardless of whether there was
an immediate cause or not, after the area stopped serving
as a cemetery, a fortified house with a moat was built. It
is first mentioned in written sources in 1373 (Rosůlek
1909, 116; Sedláček 1931, 244). The foundation of the
fortified house certainly preceded the first written account,
for the written sources of that time did probably not
record its very beginnings. Its construction at the close
of the 13th or in the first half of the 14th century therefore
cannot be ruled out, with respect also to its preserved
elements incorporated into the current castle building. The
construction of the fortified house with a moat probably
also resulted in damage to a section of the cemetery. Some
graves could also have been destroyed during the conversion
of the fortified house into a castle.

The Middle Bronze Age II is a period during which there exists a contemporaneous usage of arsenic copper and tin bronze for metal weaponry production. In order to learn more about the alloys used in this period, the blades and rivets from 65 daggers of two significantly different types, which were discovered at the Rishon LeZion (RL) cemetery, Israel, were tested by the non-destructive method of X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The results reveal new knowledge of the alloys selected for dagger and rivet production, both of which represent fine examples of the Middle Bronze Age II Southern Levant in metal industry.

Una de las formas más visibles y persuasivas de memoria es el paisaje monumental. La monumentalidad de guerra acentúa aún más dichas características por ser de índole evocativa, emotiva y vinculada a hechos gloriosos y traumáticos. La conmemoración de una batalla es el resultado del accionar de emprendedores de la memoria que quieren dejar asentado en un espacio su visión del hecho, así como su eterno recuerdo. Buscan erigir una memoria espacial imponiendo marcas materiales. En este trabajo se analizará el paisaje monumental de la Bata-lla de La Verde. Para ello se desarrollará su "historia social". A tal fin, se integrarán diversas vías de información: análisis espacial y excavación, documentación histórica y memoria oral. Los resultados de dichos análisis permitieron reconstruir la historia del paisaje monumental de guerra y sus cambios (1876-2016), así como comprender el rol jugado por la materialidad y los imaginarios espaciales construidos por las comunidades locales actuales.