This thesis presents an investigation into how geopolitical change and religious control are reflected in the composition of copper-alloy costume artefacts, recovered from Roman and early medieval... Show moreThis thesis presents an investigation into how geopolitical change and religious control are reflected in the composition of copper-alloy costume artefacts, recovered from Roman and early medieval contexts. It engages with the challenging topic of portable X-ray Florescence Spectrometry use in archaeology, especially as applied to corroded copper-alloy artefacts. The relevance is twofold. Firstly it helps us better understand the globalising effects of the Roman Empire on distant cultures and the emergence of the western economy after the end of antiquity. This is investigated by detecting changes in craft production, considered a proxy for understanding changes in past economies and societies. Secondly it advances a methodology for the study of copper-alloy objects. Subsequently the composition of Roman brooches from Germania Inferior, suggested a strong link between brass and Roman military production. This connection was also seen in other parts of the Roman world, suggesting a degree of centralisation or control. The earliest roman objects found in the Baltic States, far north of the Limes frontier, are also in this 'Roman' alloy. These objects had a lasting impact on the peoples of this region. They adopted and adapted them stylistically to suit their local preferences for centuries after they first appeared. Show less
This dissertation is a study of archaeological remains left behind by nomadic communities in the Black Desert, situated in the northeast of modern Jordan. Between the Hellenistic and Early Islamic... Show moreThis dissertation is a study of archaeological remains left behind by nomadic communities in the Black Desert, situated in the northeast of modern Jordan. Between the Hellenistic and Early Islamic periods - roughly the late 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD - the Black Desert was frequented by nomadic communities who are best known for the Safaitic inscriptions and rock art they left behind on the basalt boulders that characterise this desert environment. These remains, however, provide an incomplete view of those who carved them, and this study aims to provide new information on these nomads by studying the rich and well-preserved archaeological remains they left behind. It specifically focuses on stone-built architecture, notably burial cairns found often on hilltops and ridges, and enclosures situated at campsites used by nomads. These features are studied through archaeological methods such as remote sensing, field surveys and excavations. The study makes clear that in addition to textual and pictorial carvings nomadic communities invested significantly in their surroundings through the construction of elaborate and long-lasting structures. These served various social and economic purposes on the short and long term. The study thus provides an alternative view on nomad-landscape interaction in anntiquity. Show less
There is little evidence of the routes connecting Amerindian communities in the Caribbean prior to and just after 1492. Uncovering possible canoe routes between these communities can help to... Show moreThere is little evidence of the routes connecting Amerindian communities in the Caribbean prior to and just after 1492. Uncovering possible canoe routes between these communities can help to explain the structure, capabilities, and limitations of the physical links in their social and material networks. This book evaluates how routes connecting islands indicate the structure of past inter-island networks, by using computer modeling. Computer modeling and least-cost pathway analysis is a popular approach for analyzing the physical connection between sites in archaeology. Over the past three decades researchers have explored several theories and methods to analyze least-cost pathways on landscapes. Land-based least-cost efforts have outpaced the number of works evaluating optimal travel routes across the sea’s surface. Perhaps as a result, no community standard for using computer- and GIS-based methods to model canoe or sailing routes exists. Although methods used in previous research often focus on determining the time-cost and success of specific routes, these measures have been calculated or judged in different ways. One way this book adds to the discussion of seascape modeling is by focusing on inter-island voyaging, or the process of maintained connections between island sites, a technique rarely explored in sea-based least-cost pathways analysis. Show less
Britons abroad is a contribution to the study of ancient mobility in the Roman Empire with the focus on the mobility of materials and people and the ways objects and people interact dialectically... Show moreBritons abroad is a contribution to the study of ancient mobility in the Roman Empire with the focus on the mobility of materials and people and the ways objects and people interact dialectically when brought to a new environment. This study looks at Britons who, voluntarily or forcedly, moved overseas in the period of the first to third centuries AD and identifies the ways one can use to trace their mobility. It also explores the changes in the personal and communal identification as expressed by Britons, who settled abroad, and tries to locate a unified element in the (ethnic) identities when compared to those people who stayed put with those who migrated. The exploration of ‘Britishness’ abroad in the Roman Empire is set out on a variety of levels: individual (personal migration from Britain) and communal (the occurrence of British military units abroad); human mobility and mobility of artefacts; movement of British-born and Continental-born to and from Britain. This research approaches the study of mobility and social changes in moved communities through a province-by-province study of archaeological sites and their assemblages but is not limited to the physical borders of the Roman Empire. Show less
Patterns of paleomobility in the Caribbean were studied through an inter-disciplinary approach using a combination of archaeological, osteological, mortuary, and isotopic data. Samples of human... Show morePatterns of paleomobility in the Caribbean were studied through an inter-disciplinary approach using a combination of archaeological, osteological, mortuary, and isotopic data. Samples of human enamel from 360 individuals from multiple sites spanning a broad range of geographic and temporal contexts were analyzed for strontium isotope composition. These results were interpreted in reference to a database of strontium isotope variation for the Caribbean biosphere created through the analysis of 288 modern and archeological animal and plant samples. These combined strontium isotope datasets contributed to assessments of the spatial patterning of bioavailable strontium isotopes in the region and to estimations of the local range of isotope variation for the different site populations. These ranges were used to determine whether individuals were of local or nonlocal origin and were then analyzed to examine variability in patterns of migration, with a specific focus on testing possible relationships between residential origins and biological sex, age at death, chronology, grave goods, and dietary practices. Carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of dental enamel were also conducted on a subset of 50 individuals to assess their potential for provenance studies in the Caribbean region and for investigating the origins of suspected long-distance migrants. Show less
In this book the concept of mobility is explored for the archaeology of the Amazonian and Caribbean region. As a result of technological and methodological progress in archaeology, mobility has... Show moreIn this book the concept of mobility is explored for the archaeology of the Amazonian and Caribbean region. As a result of technological and methodological progress in archaeology, mobility has become increasingly visible on the level of the individual. However, as a concept it does not seem to fit with current approaches in Amazonian archaeology, which favour a move away from viewing small mobile groups as models for the deeper past. Instead of ignoring such ethnographic tyrannies, in this book they are considered to be essential for arriving at a different past. Viewing archaeological mobility as the sum of movements of both people and objects, the empirical part of Amotopoan Trails focuses on Amotopo, a small contemporary Trio village in the interior of Suriname. The movements of the Amotopoans are tracked and positioned in a century of Trio dynamics, ultimately yielding a recent archaeology of Surinamese-Trio movements for the Sipaliwini River basin (1907-2008). Alongside the construction of this archaeology, novel mobility concepts are introduced. They provide the conceptual footholds which enable the envisioning of mobility at various temporal scales, from a decade up to a century, the sequence of which has remained a blind spot in Caribbean and Amazonian archaeology. Show less
