Search

Elevated concentrations of total mercury (THg) are found in the surface soils and flanking wetland sediments at the Classic Maya coastal site of Marco Gonzalez, Belize. Significant concentrations (up to 1.3 µg·g−1 dry mass) of THg occur in leaf litter-rich soils, as well as in the artefact-rich anthrosol spread over the vegetated mound site of structures and occupation debris. The abundance and spatial pattern of major and trace elements measured in the surface soils indicate both site-scale controlling factors of topography, structures and vegetation on soil geochemistry as well as local highs in concentration compared with background, due to human activity. Geochemical stratigraphy of wetland sediment cores shows that a shift from carbonate-reef sediments to mangrove peat in the 13th century AD was attended by an input of allogenic (mineral) elements, including mercury. A THg concentration peak (0.8 μg·g−1) in brackish pool sediment is 210Pb-dated to 1960–1970 AD, but the incorporation of mercury in multiple cores adjacent to the site shows increasing mercury inputs to have occurred before, during Classic-period Maya occupation and following the sites abandonment. Analysis of element values from site-scale soil sampling, combined with results from off-site cores, provides a numerical framework upon which outlier values of THg and other element spatial patterns can be assessed, especially the spatial co-association of elements related to differences in soil–sediment matrices. Geochemical results from active soils developing from occupation deposits (anthrosols) and sediment cores open up questions concerning contemporary and past mercury accumulation at coastal Mayan sites, and the wider interaction of human and natural biogeochemical processes that occur in human-modified soils and coastal wetland sediments.

Viking Age burial mounds are usually interpreted with reference to their exterior dimensions, the funerary treatment of the deceased and the artefacts placed within them. The process of constructing these mounds, however, may also have played an important role in funerary traditions. Investigations at the Gokstad mound in Norway demonstrate that the building of this mound—in terms of its phases and material expressions—formed an integral part of the overall burial rite. The complex construction sequence contained references to both the physical and mythical landscapes, revealing the potential of the study of burial mound construction at other sites in Viking Age Scandinavia and beyond.

This article reports on a new project to investigate the activities of early Homo sapiens in the area of the Chotts ‘megalake’ in southern Tunisia. Excavations in 2015 and 2019 at Oued el Akarit revealed one of a number of Middle Stone Age (MSA) horizons near the top of a long sequence of Upper Pleistocene deposits. The site identified as Oued el Akarit (Sondage 8) consists of lithic artefacts, bone fragments of large ungulates and pieces of ostrich eggshell. Many of the objects are burnt. Excavation of about nine square metres revealed that these were associated with a lightly trampled and combusted occupation surface. Amongst the identified artefacts were Levallois flakes some of which could be refitted, thereby indicating the generally undisturbed nature of the occupation. The lithic finds also included side scrapers and other tools diagnostic of the MSA but significantly no bifacial or tanged tools. OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) dating of the sediments and AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) radiocarbon dating of ostrich eggshell have produced uncalibrated age determinations in the range 37,000–40,000 years ago, one of the youngest ages for MSA sites in the region. This is the first example of a securely dated later MSA occupation in a riparian environment in south-eastern Tunisia. Introduction and background The site and its context - Structural geology and sedimentological setting Sondage 8 excavation - Description of the lithostratigraphic sequence and interpretation - Soil micromorphology, chemistry and magnetic susceptibility -- Soil micromorphology -- Micromorphology results: (1A and 1B) - Dating studies (optical luminescence, radiocarbon and tephrochronology) - Description of lithic assemblage -- Raw material -- Debitage -- Refitting evidence - Faunal evidence Discussion and conclusions

The deforestation of the upland landscapes in southwest Britain during prehistory is an established archaeological narrative, documenting human impacts on the environment and questioning the relationship of prehistoric societies to the upland landscapes they inhabited. Allied to the paleoenvironmental analyses of pollen sequences, which have provided the evidence of this change, there has been some investigation of prehistoric paleosols fossilized under principally Bronze Age archaeological monuments. These analyses identified brown earth soils that were originally associated with temperate deciduous woodland, on occasion showing evidence of human impacts such as tilling. However, the number of analyses of these paleosols has been limited. This study presents the first analysis of a series of pre‐podzol brown earth paleosols on Exmoor, UK, two of which are associated with colluvial soil erosion sediments before the formation of peat. This study indicates these paleosols are spatially extensive and have considerable potential to inform a more nuanced understanding of prehistoric human impacts on the upland environments of the early‐mid Holocene and assess human agency in driving ecosystem change.

Specific soil micromorphological, broader geoarchaeological and environmental archaeology signatures of settlement activities and land use have been identified from numerous case studies across Europe – from Romania to western Norway. In order to demonstrate how such investigations contribute to our understanding of settlement morphology and its wider landscape, an improved way of organising site-specific information or guide was created (Macphail and Goldberg, in press). Activities and land use are divided into ‘Within Settlement’, ‘Peripheral to Settlement’ and ‘The Settlement's Wider Landscape’. Major themes identified are: Constructions (and materials), Trackways and paths (and other communication/transport-associated features), Animal Management, Water Management, Waste Disposal (1: middening; 2: human waste), Specialist Domestic and Industrial Activities and Funerary Practices. In the case of trackway deposits, their characterisation aids the identification of intensely occupied areas compared to rural communications, although changing land use within urban areas has also produced ‘rural signatures’ (e.g. as associated with animal management), for example in Late Roman cities. Specialist activities such as fish and crop processing or working with lead and other metals, in-field and within-wall manuring, stabling and domestic occupation floor-use evidence, and identification of different funerary practice – cremations, boat graves and other inhumations, and excarnation features – and peripheral constructions such as boat-houses, are also noted. New information from the Chalcolithic tell site of Borduşani-Popină, Romania and seasonally occupied Viking settlement of Heimdaljordet, Norway, is introduced.

Research at the Maya archaeological site of Marco Gonzalez on Ambergris Caye in Belize is socio-ecological because human activities have been a factor in the formation and fluctuation of the local marine and terrestrial environments over time. The site is one of many on Belize's coast and cayes that exhibit anomalous vegetation and dark-coloured soils. These soils, although sought for cultivation, are not typical ‘Amazonian Dark Earths’ but instead are distinctive to the weathering of carbonate-rich anthropogenic deposits. We tentatively term these location-specific soils as Maya Dark Earths. Our research seeks to quantify the role of human activities in long-term environmental change and to develop strategies, specifically Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), that can be applied to environmental impact modelling today.

Geoarchaeological studies of landscapes immediately adjacent to archaeological sites can contribute information on the direct impact of small-scale societies on their associated landscapes. This direct connection allows us to understand aspects of the motivations, economic decision-making and agricultural strategies and how they affected local site catchments. The origin and spreading of farming communities onto the Loess Plateau of northern China provides a good example of this. We recorded sediment profiles that were immediately adjacent to the site of Huizui in the Yiluo River Basin. Here we identified evidence for human land-use beginning with the early Mid-Holocene deposits which are consistent with stable hillslope soils, indicating that the first mixed forager-millet farmers of the Peiligang Neolithic had a very light ecological footprint on the landscape. This is in contrast to the later middle Neolithic Yangshao Period farmers. Sediments from the Yangshao Period revealed paleolandscape and phytolith evidence for the earliest Neolithic paddy farming well outside of the natural habitat of wild rice. In addition to evidence for massive deforestation and soil erosion, a 15 m deep sediment sequence containing sets of gravels (beginning ca. 7200 cal BP) and gleyed soils dating from ca. 6600 cal BP, contained rice phytoliths, archaeological waste suggesting manuring, and micromorphological data indicating trampling. These signs of intensive landscape management go hand-in-hand with rapidly increasing social complexity.

Marco Gonzalez, on the south-west end of the island of Ambergris Caye, Belize, has well-preserved Maya archaeological stratigraphy dating from Preclassic times (ca. 300 B.C.) to the Late Classic period (ca. A.D. 550/600 to 700/760). Although later occupations are recorded by house platforms and inhumations (Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic), and use of the site continued until the 16th century A.D., intact stratigraphy is rare in these cases owing to a greater degree of disturbance. Nonetheless, understanding site formation entails accounting for all processes, including disturbance. The site’s depositional sequence—as revealed through soil micromorphology and chemistry and detailed here—has yielded critical information in two spheres of research. As regards archaeology and the elucidation of Maya activities on the caye over time, soil micromorphology has contributed beyond measure to what we have been able to distinguish as material remains of cultural activity. Detailed descriptions of the nature of the material remains has in turn helped us to clarify or alter interpretations based on artefacts that have been identified or sediments characterised according to traditional recovery techniques. The other major sphere in which soil micromorphology and chemistry play a critical role is in assessment of the environmental impact of human activity, which enables us to construct and test hypotheses concerning how the site formed over time; what materials and elements contributed to the character of the sediments, especially in the formation of a specific Maya Dark Earth type that is developed from carbonate rich deposits; and how the modern surface soils acquired the appearance of a Dark Earth, but essentially differ from them. In terms of agricultural soil sustainability, the Marco Gonzalez surface soil is neo-formed by a woodland vegetation drawing upon the nutrients and constituents present in both the Dark Earth and underlying better preserved stratified deposits.

The deforestation of upland areas in southwest Britain during the mid-Holocene has become an archaeological narrative, derived from the analysis of pollen within upland peat deposits. The transition of these environments from brown earth soils supporting temperate deciduous woodland, into the now familiar podzolic peat mire landscapes is seemingly associated with abandonment of the uplands in late prehistory. The prehistoric archaeological records of these landscapes are rich and significant questions remain unanswered about prehistoric societies and their role in the environmental transition of these upland systems. Despite these rich archaeological records and detailed palaeoecological studies, the geoarchaeological study of the pre-peat sediments has remained somewhat limited. This paper provides the analysis of a Mesolithic heated pit infilled with a brown earth soil, and the pre-monument deposit sequences at two burnt mounds dating to the Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age. The analysis of these dated sequences provides an increased understanding of these environments prior to the transition of these areas into stagnogley podzols and identifies considerable human impacts, indicating that anthropogenic activities were linked to important processes negatively impacting on soils in these upland areas and contributing to their degradation.

Although best known for its spectacular Gravettian features and art, the open-air site of Kostenki 1 (located near Voronezh on the Don River [Russian Federation]) also has played an important role in the study of the early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) of Eastern Europe. New excavations at Kostenki 1 were undertaken in 2004–2012 with a focus on the EUP layers (Layers III–V), which represent temporal zones of recurring occupation, buried in low-energy slope deposits (5% slope). Soils formed during periods of increased surface stability. A new set of radiocarbon estimates on wood charcoal indicates that Layer III dates between 33,000 and 38,000 cal BP. Layer V underlies the CI tephra (~ 40,000 cal BP), which is redeposited and identified only by microscopic analysis of sediment samples in most of the (downslope) areas of the site excavated during 2004–2012. Large and medium mammal remains recovered from the EUP layers include mammoth, horse, reindeer, arctic fox, and wolf, and taphonomic analyses indicate that carcasses were processed at the site. All EUP layers yielded artifacts typical of the East European Strelets industry (e.g., bifaces, side-scrapers), but earlier excavation (1948–1953) of Layer III also produced diagnostic Aurignacian artifacts (e.g., carinated scrapers, retouched bladelets). The new chronology for Layer III suggests an association between the Aurignacian of the central East European Plain and the warm intervals (GI 8–GI 7) following the HE4 cold period (~ 38,000–40,000 cal BP).

Cwm Cilio: Field system from the north-west Prehistoric field systems are, by their nature, extensive and often slight and intangible structures, most easily recognized when they are enclosed by walled, banked or ditched boundaries. The effects of many centuries of subsequent land use mean that many have been destroyed and those that remain complete and unmodified are of great archaeological value. This is the case even in north-west Wales, despite the presence there of many well-preserved examples of prehistoric settlement. These settlements have been the subject of numerous investigations but little is known about the types of agricultural activities that accompanied them. The present study was therefore designed to correct this imbalance by investigation of three examples of early field systems in north-west Wales. The methods used included ground survey, geophysical survey, excavation, palaeoenvironmental analysis and soil micromorphology.

Renewed fieldwork at the early Acheulean site of EF-HR (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) has included detailed stratigraphic studies of the sequence, extended excavations in the main site, and has placed eleven additional trenches within an area of nearly 1 km2, to sample the same stratigraphic interval as in the main trench across the broader paleo-landscape. Our new stratigraphic work suggests that EF-HR is positioned higher in the Bed II sequence than previously proposed, which has implications for the age of the site and its stratigraphic correlation to other Olduvai Middle Bed II sites. Geological research shows that the main EF-HR site was situated at the deepest part of an incised valley formed through river erosion. Archaeological excavations at the main site and nearby trenches have unearthed a large new assemblage, with more than 3000 fossils and artefacts, including a hundred handaxes in stratigraphic position. In addition, our test-trenching approach has detected conspicuous differences in the density of artefacts across the landscape, with a large cluster of archaeological material in and around the main trench, and less intense human activity at the same level in the more distant satellite trenches. All of these aspects are discussed in this paper in the light of site formation processes, behavioral contexts, and their implications for our understanding of the early Acheulean at Olduvai Gorge.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the archaeological materials. It deals with the use of soil micromorphology for examining archaeological materials, in order to understand their formation and the manner in which they enter the archaeological record. Soil micromorphology, using optical microscopy and associated techniques, is one of the best methods for characterizing and identifying archaeological materials, especially when they occur as microscopic fragments at archaeological sites. In fact, although bulk and microfossil studies can provide useful supporting information, often the data from these techniques can only really be properly understood when soil micromorphology is available. Archaeological materials include natural mineral and organic materials that have been used in their raw state or as little transformed material, as well as fully manufactured products. Other archaeological matter includes waste from occupation, such as dung and mineralized coprolites from domestic animals, human waste, food, and hearth remains.

The end of the last Ice Age in Britain (c. 11500 BP) created major disruption to the biosphere. Open habitats were succeeded by more wooded landscapes, and changes occurred to the fauna following the abrupt disappearance of typical glacial herd species, such as reindeer and horse (Conneller & Higham 2015). Understanding the impact of these changes on humans and how quickly they were able to adapt may soon become clearer, due to recent discoveries in the Colne Valley on the western edge of Greater London, north of the River Thames. An exceptionally well-preserved open-air site was discovered in 2014 as part of a wider project of archaeological investigation and excavation carried out by Wessex Archaeology (2015), on behalf of CEMEX UK. The site, at Kingsmead Quarry in Horton, is unusual because it has good organic preservation and, in addition to worked flint artefacts, it has yielded groups of articulated horse bone. The extreme rarity of such sites of this period in Britain makes this discovery especially significant and re-emphasises the potential importance of the Colne Valley (Lacaille 1963; Lewis 2011; Morgi et al. 2011).

Geoarchaeological investigations of Bronze Age (10th-4th centuries B.C.), early historical (4th-10th centuries A.D.), and premodern to modern paddy soils (11 th Century A.D. to contemporary) in South Korea were carried out to understand soil alteration by irrigated rice agriculture. After a review of ancient cultivation micromorphology, especially in the context of wet-rice agriculture, paddy soils were examined from two archaeological sites, Gulhwa and Pyunggeo, which had been both intermittently occupied since the Bronze Age. This paper highlights anomalous pedofeatures (silty clay concentration features or SCCFs), repeatedly observed in both historical and modern paddy fields, which were studied us ing soil micromorphology, energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS), and microprobe analysis. Results suggest that there are several types of SCCFs, optically distinguishable from other textural pedofeatures. It is concluded that these SCCFs are probably associated with hydromorphic processes, formed under the influence of a tillage and repeated irrigation specific to paddy fields. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Multi-proxy analyses from floodplain deposits in the Colne Valley, southern England, have provided a palaeoenvironmental context for the immediately adjacent Terminal Upper Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic site of Three Ways Wharf. These deposits show the transition from an open cool environment to fully developed heterogeneous floodplain vegetation during the Early Mesolithic. Several distinct phases of burning are shown to have occurred that are chronologically contemporary with the local archaeological record. The floodplain itself is shown to have supported a number of rare Urwaldrelikt insect species implying human manipulation of the floodplain at this time must have been limited or episodic. By the Late Mesolithic a reed-sedge swamp had developed across much of the floodplain, within which repeated burning of the in situ vegetation took place. This indicates deliberate land management practices utilising fire, comparable with findings from other floodplain sequences in southern Britain. With similar sedimentary sequences known to exist across the Colne Valley, often closely associated with contemporary archaeology, the potential for placing the archaeological record within a spatially explicit palaeoenvironmental context is great.

This paper discusses the results of the investigation of Pleistocene sediments at the Royal Oak Portal (ROP) site on the new Crossrail scheme near Paddington Station, London. The site was sampled and recorded in May 2011 by archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology commissioned by Crossrail Ltd. The investigation revealed a sedimentary sequence associated with cool climate waterlain deposition towards the edge of the River Westbourne floodplain. During excavation an assemblage of around 100 identifiable large mammal bones was recovered, dating to the Late Pleistocene. The major concentration of bones, from bison and reindeer, was located and excavated from a shallow sequence of sediments. Analysis of the bones indicates that they represent a natural death assemblage, scavenged and subsequently disarticulated, transported by water, exposed and further dispersed and broken by trampling. The site is of regional and national importance because the assemblage derives from a well-constrained geological context, with associated dating evidence suggesting accumulation during the later parts of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 and continuing within MIS 4. The site is also of significance because it is one of a growing number of recently discovered sites away from the main fluvial archive for the British Middle and Upper Pleistocene. These sites have the potential to add significantly to our understanding of parts of the Pleistocene record that remain difficult to document through the investigation of the more active systems associated with major rivers such as the Thames, Severn or Trent.

Investigations of past coastal landscape development have included soil micromorphology, chemistry and microfossil recording of soils and sediments associated with marine inundation and terrestrial soil formation in marine sediments. This paper reports on similarly studied site formation processes at Norwegian coastal sites in Vestfold, Norway: the Viking Period Gokstad Ship Burial Mound and nearby contemporary harbour site of Heimdaljordet. At Gokstad, strategically-focused coring revealed mound composition and an example of its buried soil and geology. The latter investigation suggested that post glacial uplift led to a ‘slowstand’ period of intertidal reworking of till before ∼700 BC emergence and development of terrestrial soils. At Heimdaljordet, typically laminated intertidal silty clay loam sediments were sealed by beach sands, into which, for example, a boat grave was dug. Post-depositional processes affecting the Gokstad Mound were compared to those in other mounds, including those recorded in experimental earthworks. Waterlogged conditions in the Gokstad mound led to iron–phosphate migration and preferential deposition of vivianite in turf layers where relict litter (L) layers remained visible, and where wood chips from constructional activities are also very well preserved (as is the long ship itself). These soil insights and other paleoenvironmental studies of the buried soil and numerous turf sequences showed that the contemporary AD 900 Viking landscape was totally terrestrial. It had become wet sedge grassland managed for grazing. The partial weathering of turves and anomalous presence within them of ‘fresh’ roots apparently indicates the possibility that turves were stacked and stored ahead of mound building. The 10th C robber trench had developed muddy features, and rooting traces show that it was not backfilled, but was slowly infilled by humic soil silting from turf mound layers. This event did not affect the overall anaerobic burial conditions in the mound, which can be starkly compared to those at the Heimdaljordet boat grave. Here, because of acidic subaerial weathering, the wooden boat only survives as an acidic pellety humus formed of wood residues that are often ferruginised. Iron appears to be concentrated at iron nail locations. Unlike the Gokstad mound, no bone survives, but one sample found a typical ‘body stain’ of secondary iron and phosphate close by the iron encrusted sword in the grave (potentially the pelvic region of the inhumation). Here, mineralised faecal gut remains have an assumed hydroxyapatite composition, and embed phytoliths and pollen/spores, as found in human coprolites and cess deposits studied elsewhere.

This paper presents an overview of the results of two brief excavation seasons (2008 and 2010) at Foxhole Cave, Gower, south Wales, placing them into the wider context of mid-Holocene Britain. No prehistoric pottery was found and the few pieces of worked flint recovered are diagnostic of the Mesolithic period. Typically for the Carboniferous limestone caves of Gower, bone was well preserved, however, and though much of the material in the heavily disturbed upper metre or so of the deposits was modern sheep and rabbit, scattered fragments representing the remains of at least six humans were also recovered, of which two have been directly radiocarbon-dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS 14C) to the Late Mesolithic and two to the earlier Neolithic (the remaining two providing Romano-British and medieval dates). Their associated stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values indicate a significant difference in diet between the two periods (contrary to the results from an earlier excavation in 1997), with marine foods contributing around half of the protein for the Mesolithic individuals and little or none for the Neolithic individuals. The new results are consistent with those from Caldey Island, Pembrokeshire, some 30km to the west. The floor of the cave has still not been reached at around 2m depth; limited investigation of the lowermost levels has yielded a Pleistocene fauna (including reindeer, aurochs or bison and collared lemming) with dates back to approx 33,500 cal bc, though with no definite evidence for human activity so far. A small, dark-stained fragment of human cranium was recovered from what may be pre-Holocene levels, but this failed to produce sufficient collagen for dating. In addition to a marked dietary shift, the combined stable isotope and dating programme provides further support for an equally striking temporal gap of some two millennia between the Mesolithic and Neolithic use of caves for burial.

List of ContributorsIntroductionPart I1. Recent advances in micromorphological interpretations of soils and sediments from archaeological sites Richard Macphail and Paul Goldberg2. Soil micromorphological data from traditional and experimental agriculture Anne Gebhardt3. Mircomorphological characterization and interpretation of occupation deposits and microstratigraphic sequences at Abu Salabikh Wendy MatthewsPart II4. Soil analysis and archaeological site formation studies Timothy A. Quine5. Studies of lithostratigraphy and lithofacies: a selective review of research developments in the last decade and their applications to geoarchaeology David D. Gilbertson6. Methodological approaches to archaeological context recording: X-radiography as an example of a supportive recording, assessment and interpretive technique Anthony J. Barham7. A mixed approach to geoarchaeological analysis Matthew Canti8. Plant macrofossil analysis from lake cores: an example from Polynesia Jon G. Hather and Joanna C. EllisonPart III9. Archaeology and the river environment in Britain: a prospective review Mark G. Macklin10. Important Quarternary Palaeolithic sites in Britain: their investigation and conservation David R. Bridgland

In a collaborative effort between the our university’s department of chemistry and the academic resource center, we designed a model for general chemistry recitation based on a problem manipulation method in which students actively assess the skills and knowledge used to answer a chemical problem and then manipulate the problem to create a new one. This reflective process aims to facilitate student engagement with the chemistry problem-solving process and to enhance student metacognition by helping students identify their knowledge gaps. The recitation format provides an opportunity for students to work collaboratively on this process and to present and discuss their work. Student response to this new style of recitation was overwhelmingly positive. In addition, students easily assimilated the vocabulary of the methodology into everyday conversation and were better able to articulate their learning needs.