•Radiocarbon date of wooden stilts from 11 villages suggest phases of construction from ∼1st to 13th centuries A.D. (1912 ± 82 to 816 ± 88 calibrated years BP).•A radiocarbon date from one site ...suggests a much earlier habitation in the 4th millenium B.C (6622 ± 119 calibrated years BP).•The Formoso site has dates spanning the longest duration, ∼417 years (255–579 years).•Ceramic sherds and artifacts at Formoso suggest ceremonial activity and possibly foreign cultural influence.•The Formoso site has an uncommon village layout, possibly meant to resemble the Pleiades.
Archaeological surveys conducted in the Maranhão estuaries of Brazil, near the Atlantic coast, revealed the remnants of 21 prehistoric stilt villages constructed on piles of Tabebuia handroanthrus hardwood above three seasonal flood water estuaries. Radiocarbon dates of 27 samples from 11 of those sites yielded an Archaic Period of construction (6622 ± 119 calibrated years before present) followed much later by consecutive construction periods from approximately the first century B.C. to the thirteenth century A.D. (1994 to 728 cal. yrs BP). The Formoso site—currently dated as the longest occupied site (1509 to 930 cal. yrs BP)—yielded early Incised-Punctate/Arauquinoid pottery, a previously unreported pottery style in the Amazon region. Additionally, using StarryNight astronomy software, the night sky at Formoso was compared with a map of the pile dwelling layout, revealing a statistically significant resemblance to the Pleiades. This paper focuses on the Formoso site, suggesting that it may have served cultural significance to the Pleiades as early evidence for the later widespread ethnographic use of the star cluster’s annual sighting to mark the seasonal flood cycles and the management of agricultural and ecological activities throughout tropical South America.
In this paper we estimate the degree to which the range and proportion of wild plant foods are under-represented in samples of charred botanical remains from archaeological sites. We systematically ...compare the differences between central European Neolithic archaeobotanical assemblages that have been preserved by charring compared to those preserved by waterlogging. Charred archaeobotanical assemblages possess on aggregate about 35% of the range of edible plants documented in waterlogged samples from wetland settlements. We control for the ecological availability of wetland versus terrestrial wild plant foods on assemblage composition and diversity, and demonstrate that the significantly broader range of wild plant food taxa represented is primarily a function of preservation rather than subsistence practices. We then consider whether observed fluctuations in the frequency of edible wild taxa over time can also be attributed to preservation, and demonstrate that it cannot; and thus conclude that there are significant changes in plant food diets during the Neolithic that reflect different strategies of land use and, over time, a decreasing reliance on foraging for wild plant foods. The wild species included in our analyses are not spatially restricted—they are common throughout central Europe. We maintain, therefore, that our results are relevant beyond our study area and more generally illustrate the challenges of attempting to reconstruct the relative importance of wild plant foods—and thus plant diet breadth—in Neolithic archaeobotanical assemblages from charred data alone.
•We compare differences between charred and waterlogged samples at European Neolithic sites.•The broader range of wild plant food taxa represented in waterlogged samples is due to preservation.•Diachronic changes in edible wild taxa in the Neolithic reflect different strategies of land use.•Neolithic plant diet breadth cannot be reconstructed from waterlogged samples alone.
On the prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad (Ohrid, North Macedonia) on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid a total of 799 wooden elements were recorded from a systematically excavated area of nearly 100 ...square metres. Most of them are pile remains made of round wood with diameters up to almost 40 cm. A comprehensive dendrochronological analysis allows the construction of numerous well-replicated tree-ring chronologies for different species. High agreements between the chronologies prove that oak, pine, juniper, ash and hop-hornbeam can be crossdated. The chronologies are dated by means of radiocarbon dates and modelling using wiggle matching. An intensive settlement phase is attested for the middle of the 5th millennium BCE. Further phases follow towards the end of the 5th millennium BCE and in the 2nd millennium around 1800, 1400 and 1300 BCE. Furthermore, the exact, relative felling dates allow first insights into the minimum duration of the settlement phases, which lie between 17 and 87 years. The multi-centennial chronologies presented in this study can be used as a first robust dating basis for future research in the numerous not yet dated prehistoric lake shore settlements of the region with excellently preserved wooden remains.
Across the prehistoric period in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), very few architectural remains and settlements have been identified and there is an absence of evidence for dwellings and domestic ...spaces. Loc Giang (3980–3270 cal BP) in Long An Province, southern Vietnam is one of the few prehistoric settlements excavated in the region, revealing compacted, laterally extensive layers hypothesised to be floors in association with several other occupation deposit types. Due to the complex occupation stratigraphy encountered in the field, as well as intensive post-depositional processes of tropical environments, a state-of-the-art micro-geoarchaeological approach was used to identify site formation processes. Here, we present a description and depositional history of eight major deposit types (microfacies); among these, we identify constructed lime mortar floors, pile dwellings, evidence for the systematic treatment of waste, and prepared organic deposits likely associated with the management of dog and pig populations. Through the study of site formation we reconstruct at high resolution the nature of dwellings and organisation of domestic spaces within one of the earliest neolithic and sedentary settlements in the region. We demonstrate that within destructive burial environments of the tropics, micro-geoarchaeology offers an effective scientific toolkit for detecting settlement features with low macro-archaeological visibility, thereby enabling us to reconstruct pile dwellings and associated lime floors that were poorly characterised previously in MSEA prehistory.
•First micro-geoarchaeological study of a prehistoric settlement in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA).•Micro-geoarchaeology identifies pyrogenic lime mortar floors and pile dwellings.•Differential preservation of construction materials result from tropical post-depositional processes.•Early evidence (3510–3150 cal BP) for substantial dwellings and sedentism in MSEA.•Micro-geoarchaeology reconstructs the settlement record formerly missing in MSEA.
•The prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad shows outstanding preservation conditions.•The analyzed wood provides well replicated dendrochronological mean curves.•Several construction phases of ...Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements are evidenced.
Specialized and systematic underwater fieldwork at the prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad at Gradište (North Macedonia) on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid was undertaken in 2018 and 2019. It has substantiated the archeological site’s outstanding preservation condition, and furthermore proven the numerous construction timbers’ suitability for dendrochronological analysis. Dendrochronological analysis on archaeological timbers was applied, combined with radiocarbon dating. Bayesian radiocarbon modeling allowed to ‘wiggle match’ the dendrochronological mean curves, i.e. allowed the precise chronological anchoring of ‘floating’ tree-ring sequences. Furthermore, radiocarbon dates of plant remains from the site’s main archaeological layer are statistically evaluated.
Based on the new findings, the strikingly high density of wooden piles at the site can be attributed to several construction phases of Neolithic (middle of 5th millennium BC) and Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC: 1800, 1400 and 1300 BCE) settlements. Intense settlement activity is furthermore evidenced by a cultural layer of mainly organic material under the lakebed up to 1.7 m in thickness, which accumulated during the Neolithic occupation of the bay in the middle of the 5th millennium BC. The presented research enables precise absolute dating of a series of settlement phases at Ploča Mičov Grad from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, and hence provides important reference points for an absolute chronological framework for the prehistory of the southwestern Balkans. The investigations underline the potential of future research on waterlogged prehistoric settlements in the region.
•Palaeobotanical and palaeozoological analyses of lacustrine deposits with Neolithic archaeological layers.•Impact of Neolithic hunter-fisher-gatherer communities on the palaeolake shore ...environments.•Diversified subsistence strategies between 7 and 2 ka BC in Eastern Europe.•A record of minor cultural contacts between hunter-gatherer-fisher communities and groups practising agriculture.
A multi-proxy record derived from sediments collected from an infilled lake basin within the area of the Serteya II site, Western Russia, was used to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment development of this site over the past ca. 9000 years. Despite there being archaeological evidence of a human presence in this area spanning several millennia, the results from pollen analysis indicate only a small-scale human impact on vegetation during the prehistory, reinforcing existing ideas that lifeways based upon hunting, fishing and gathering (h-f-g) were maintained over an extended period of time at this location. Human activities remained relatively extensive during the historical periods, although the first evidence of cereal cultivation dates to the Middle Ages. The results of earlier investigation, which suggested that cereal cultivation and animal husbandry may have begun at Serteya in the Late Neolithic, have not been confirmed by the presented dataset (or, at least, cannot be seen in it). The results from macrobotanical analysis reveal a gradual lowering of the lake-level, but with intervening transgression phases ca. 5550–3600 cal. BC and, more briefly, around the time of the 4.2 ka BP cooling event. The Late Neolithic pile dwelling settlement (dated to 2500–2200 cal. BC) that was present in the immediate area, and from which the samples are drawn, was situated in shallow water - the depth of which varied seasonally - and in the close vicinity of the shoreline. The gathering of berries and nuts, as well as starch-rich aquatic plants, seems to have played an important role in subsistence, which was further supported by hunting and fishing. Following a brief phase during which the pile dwelling settlement went into decline, the increased exploitation of aquatic plants appears to have intensified between ca. 2200 and 2000 cal. BC.
Oak disks from pile dwellings of the prehistoric site of Gran Carro (lake Bolsena, Italy) were analysed in order to estimate wood degradation. Micro-morphological observations showed that the ...microbial decay could be mainly attributed to erosion bacteria. The most important physical properties, i.e. Maximum Water Content (MWC), Residual basal Density (RDb), and the calculation of the Lost Wood Substance (LWS) highlighted that heartwood (HW) was moderately preserved, with MWC values slightly higher or comparable to that of recent oak, whereas sapwood (SW) was very degraded. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was tested as an alternative method for the chemical characterisation of archaeological wood. The TGA profiles were critically discussed taking into account the results of the physical and micro-morphological analyses. Potentialities and drawbacks of TGA were underlined.
Multi-proxy analysis of the coprolites which were found during excavations at two Late Neolithic (fourth millennium
bc
) pile-dwelling sites (Črnelnik and Stare gmajne) in Slovenia yielded some new ...insights into human–dog relations and behaviour. The digested content is presented in a multidisciplinary approach, in which palynological, palaeoparasitological, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological features are studied and genetic signs are tested. Beside the origin of the coprolites, the size of an animal and the diet, the faeces provided some additional information, such as health, status, nutrition habits, environment and season.
The onset of the Bronze Age (approximately 4150 yrs cal. BP) in the southern Lake Garda region (N-Italy) is marked by an increase in the number of settlements and by the widespread adoption of ...pile-dwelling building techniques. The prominence of this phenomenon polarized the attention of local palaeoenvironmental investigations. As a result, pre-Bronze age landscape and climate dynamics have been investigated to a lesser degree. In an attempt to address this disparity, our contribution focuses on the period between ∼7100 and ∼3800 yrs cal. BP, i.e. approximately between Early Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The location of our analysis is the former lake of Bande di Cavriana (Mantua). Multi-proxy investigations highlight few major climatic shifts prior to the Bronze Age onset. A first transition into more warm/dry conditions is recorded between ∼6300 and 6100 yrs cal. BP. Similar conditions occur again after ∼4600 yrs cal. BP, peaking at ∼4300 yrs cal. BP. Speculatively, taking into account dating uncertainties, this second shift might represent the local expression of the ‘4.2Ka’ event. A marked transition into a colder/more humid situation occurs then after ∼4300 yrs cal. BP and persists into the Bronze Age. Major vegetational changes begin during the Neolithic with the steady rise of Carpinus betulus pollen (from ∼5700 yrs cal. BP). A more rapid expansion of this taxon after ∼5100 yrs cal. BP might reflect shifts in forest exploitation strategies during the Copper Age (e.g. coppicing) or changes in the ruminant fauna (e.g. grazing vs. browsing habits), arguably due to human intervention. Nonetheless, pollen grains of anthropogenic indicators appear with consistent frequency only since the Bronze Age. The establishment of the Bande di Cavriana pile dwelling (∼3950 yrs cal. BP) is marked by declining arboreal pollen values and growing anthropogenic taxa. This behavior likely reflects a more intense landscape exploitation (deforestation, expansion of arable fields and meadows), although an influx of herbaceous pollen from near-site activities (e.g. cereal processing, garbage dumping) should not be overlooked.
•Climate and land cover changes are investigated between ∼7100 and 3800 cal. BP.•A first transition into warmer/more arid conditions occurs between ∼6300 and 6100 cal. BP.•A second warm/arid event begins ∼4600 cal. BP and peaks at ∼4300 cal. BP.•The Carpinus betulus rise after ∼5100 cal. BP was arguably favored by human intervention.•The Bronze Age onset (∼4150 cal. BP) occurs during a marked colder/wetter shift.
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