scholarly journals Ageing of low-firing prehistoric ceramics in hydrothermal conditions

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Zemenová ◽  
Alexandra Klouzková ◽  
Martina Kohoutková

Remains of a prehistoric ceramic object, a moon-shaped idol from the Bronze Age found in archaeological site Zdiby near Prague in the Czech Republic, were studied especially in terms of the firing temperature. Archaeological ceramics was usually fired at temperatures below 1000?C. It contained unstable non-crystalline products, residua after calcination of clay components of a ceramic material. These products as metakaolinite can undergo a reverse rehydration to a structure close to kaolinite. The aim of this work was to prove whether the identified kaolinite in archaeological ceramics is a product of rehydration. The model compound containing high amount of kaolinite was prepared in order to follow its changes during calcination and hydrothermal treatment. Archaeological ceramics and the model compound were treated by hydrothermal ageing and studied by XRF, XRD and IR analyses. It was proved that the presence of kaolinite in the border-parts of the archaeological object was not a product of rehydration, but that it originated from the raw materials.

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Harris

The aim of this research is to compare the cloth cultures of Europe and Egypt in the Bronze Age and New Kingdom. The comparison focuses on the fourteenth century cal BC and includes four geographically separate areas, including the oak coffin burials of southern Scandinavia, the Hallstatt salt mines of central Europe, Late Minoan Crete, and the tombs and towns of the later Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The comparative approach can bring insights even when applied to unconnected cultures or regions. However, in this study I concentrate on a restricted chronological period and areas that were connected, directly or indirectly, by widespread networks of trade or exchange. The concept of cloth cultures is used to include both textiles and animal skins as these were closely related materials in the prehistoric past. Information was gathered according to the following categories: raw materials, including textile fibre, and species of skins; fabric structure and thread count (only for textiles); decoration and finish; and use and context. From this study, it is possible to recognize the universally shared principles of cloth cultures and the great versatility and creativity in the regional cloth cultures of the Bronze Age.


2022 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-910
Author(s):  
E. V. Podzuban

The article introduces prehistoric artifacts from the sites of Karasor-5, Karasor-6, and Karasor-7 obtained in 1998. The archaeological site of Karasor is located in the Upper Tobol region, near the town of Lisakovsk. Stone tools, pottery fragments, a ceramic item, and a bronze arrow head were collected from a sand blowout, which had destroyed the cultural layer. The paper gives a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools were examined using the technical and typological analysis, which featured the primary splitting, the morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks, plates, flakes, and finished tools, the secondary processing methods, and the typological composition of the tools. The nature of the raw materials was counted as an independent indicator. The pottery fragments, the bronze arrow head, and the ceramic item belonged to the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The stone industry of the Karasor archeological cluster proved to be a Mesolithic monument of the Turgai Trough. The technical and typological analysis revealed a close similarity with the Mesolithic sites of the Southern and Middle Trans-Urals, as well as the forest-steppe part of the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve. The stone artifacts were dated from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-330
Author(s):  
Viktória Kiss

This paper presents recent research questions which have been raised and methods which have been used in the study of Bronze Age metallurgy in connection with available natural resources (ores) in and around the Carpathian Basin. This topic fits in the most current trends in the research on European prehistoric archaeology. Given the lack of written sources, copper and bronze artifacts discovered in settlement and cemetery excavations and prehistoric mining sites provide the primary sources on which the studies in question are based. The aim of compositional and isotope analysis of copper and tin ores, metal tools, ornaments, and weapons is to determine the provenience of the raw materials and further an understanding of the chaine operatiore of prehistoric metal production. The Momentum Mobility Research Group of the Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities studies these metal artifacts using archaeological and scientific methods. It has focused on the first thousand years of the Bronze Age (2500–1500 BC). Multidisciplinary research include non-destructive XRF, PGAA (promptgamma activation), TOF-ND (time-of-flight neutron diffraction) analyses and neutron radiography, as well as destructive methods, e.g. metal sampling for compositional and lead isotope testing, alongside archaeological analysis. Microstructure studies are also efficient methods for determining the raw material and production techniques. The results suggest the use of regional ore sources and interregional connections, as well as several transformations in the exchange network of the prehistoric communities living in the Carpathian Basin.


Quaternary ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Guido S. Mariani ◽  
Italo M. Muntoni ◽  
Andrea Zerboni

Human communities at the transition between the Eneolithic period and the Bronze Age had to rapidly adapt to cultural and climatic changes, which influenced the whole Mediterranean. The exact dynamics involved in this crucial passage are still a matter of discussion. As newer studies have highlighted the key role of climatic fluctuations during this period, their relationship with the human occupation of the landscape are yet to be fully explored. We investigated the infilling of negative structures at the archaeological site of Tegole di Bovino (Apulia, Southern Italy) looking at evidence of the interaction between climate changes and human strategies. The archaeological sedimentary deposits, investigated though geoarchaeological and micromorphological techniques, show the presence of natural and anthropogenic infillings inside most structures. Both human intervention and/or natural events occurred in the last phases of occupation of the site and its subsequent abandonment. The transition to unfavorable climatic conditions in the same period was most likely involved in the abandonment of the site. The possible further impact of human communities on the landscape in that period, testified by multiple other archives, might have in turn had a role in the eventual change in land use.


Author(s):  
Xosefina Otero ◽  
Mercedes Farjas ◽  
Manuel Santos ◽  
Jorge Angás

In this paper we present new methods of the documentation and registration of the petroglyphs of the exceptional archaeological site located on Khor Fakkan, emirate of Sharjah, on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates along the Gulf of Oman, and coordinates 24º59'06.06'' N - 56º20'36.70'' E. The engravings on the surface of the serpentine rock fragments, of the Semail ophiolite complex that was generated when the Saudí plate was introduced under the Iran-Zagros, in the Cretaceous, are made with the technique and striped characteristic of the Bronze Age and Iron Age. We conducted the study respecting its conservation without any intervention on them, using the latest available technologies and performing aerial, terrestrial and near object digital photogrammetry and applying at the same time the methodology of Landscape Archaeology.http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIGeo2017.2017.6593


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Sanjurjo-Sánchez ◽  
Juan Luis Montero Fenollós

Paleo-aktueel ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 23-29
Author(s):  
Hannie Steegstra

Saved for Science? (Summary, already written in 2008 by Jay Butler). Especially in northern France, much has been lost in the course of the wars that devastated the area, but much has been saved too. Particularly intriguing among the saved Bronze Age objects are the bronze casting moulds, which in prehistoric times must have been common objects, but which are now scarce because most examples would have been sacrificed to the smith’s ever-ready melting pot. One such object, a finely preserved half-mould for a socketed axe (of the Plainseau family, with slight plastic imitation wings) is in the possession of the Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch. It was purchased by the museum in 1962, for the sum of 50 Dutch guilders, from a reputable Eindhoven antique dealer, Dirven, in that city. The museum records state only that it was found in the north of France or in Belgium. A not uninteresting part of the work of a researcher working on the Bronze Age is the tracking down of missing finds: for example, a half-mould for a socketed axe, said to have been found in the surroundings of Amiens, which was seen, described and (well) drawn by Henri Breuil before 1902. This half-mould was said to be part of a hoard of bronze implements, which included spearheads, pins and socketed axes. Also belonging to the hoard was a core (also of bronze) for casting socketed axes.


Author(s):  
I. A. Valkov ◽  
◽  
V. O. Saibert ◽  
V. E. Alekseeva ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the results of field research in the autumn of 2020 at the settlement Firsovo-15. This archaeological site located in the in the Upper Ob region. The studied settlement complexes are mainly correlated with the Andronovo and Irmen cultures of the Bronze Age, as well as the Staroaleisk culture of the early Iron Age. For the first time, artifacts dating back to the Neolithic period were discovered on the settlement. The emergency condition of the settlement and the significant value of the materials obtained for the reconstruction of cultural and historical processes on the territory of the Upper Ob region allow us to consider the settlement Firsovo-15 promising for further research.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naruphol Wangthongchaicharoen ◽  
◽  
Supamas Duangsakul ◽  
Pira Venunan ◽  
Sukanya Lertwinitnun ◽  
...  

Ban Ta Po is located in the Ban Kao Subdistrict within an area that the Thai-Danish Expedition uncovered the famous Neolithic Ban Kao Culture in 1960. The two-season excavation in 2018 and 2020 discovered 17 burials dated to the Bronze age. The analysis of these individuals that were buried there were mostly infants and children. Two children appeared with some disease lesions on bones like porous on the cranium, a carious tooth related to the localized enamel hypoplasia, and the femoral bowing. All possibly indicate metabolic bone disease caused by a nutrition deficiency.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Kittel

AbstractPeriods of intense human impact on the relief and lithology of the area of the Smólsk site were recorded during geoarchaeological research accompanying archaeological field work. The phases of occupation of the area are known in detail from the results of the large-scale archaeological research of the site. The slope deposits with buried soils were recorded at the site area and researched in detail with the use of sedimentological, geochemical and micromorphological analyses. Beside geochronological deterioration, the chronology of the artefacts found in layers played an important role in the strict recognition of the age of deposits. The lower part of the studied slope cover is constituted by deluvium and the upper part by tillage diamicton. The origin and the development of the slope deposits are correlated with the phases of an intense prehistoric human impact as defined by the archaeological research. Four main phases of acceleration of slope processes were documented at the site and date to the Early Neolithic, the Middle Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document