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  • ItemEmbargo
    Living (with the) past – on the everyday experience, performance, and valuation of heritage
    Ruf, Kim Eileen; Ruf, Kim [0000-0003-4484-8882]
    In the past, a range of studies has investigated how individuals encounter and relate to heritage in the role of the visitor and in contexts of designated heritage places and spaces, which are frequently established and administered by the Authorised Heritage Discourses. The majority of these approaches, however, reduce people either to statistical masses to be quantified, or mere ‘users’ and ‘consumers’ of heritage. Thus, these encounters do not capture the complex character of the relationship between individuals and heritage in everyday life. Moreover, the definitions, value, and relevance of authorised heritage (such as monuments, archaeological sites, museums, and similar heritage structures) are thoroughly specified and grounded in statutory texts – yet there is no official consensus on what everyday heritage is, how and why it may be considered valuable, and in what context this might be the case. This dissertation aims to expand on everyday heritage and reflect on how it is valued, both from an official and individual standpoint. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis, policy evaluation, and qualitative interviews, it investigates how people create and engage with heritage on a daily basis, as well as how their perceptions of heritage may differ from those of the Authorised Heritage Discourses. Through reflecting on everyday heritage, this research is critical to understanding heritage in its various mundane forms and expressions. This study is also significant in that it addresses the perspectives of non-marginalised individuals and communities, for whom a connection to and specific positioning toward heritage may not be inherent. In short, it seeks to explore heritage beyond its definitions and valuation based on grassroots approaches and (community) activism, which emphasise involving stakeholders from various social backgrounds, and particularly marginalised and minority groups, in official heritage (e)valuation processes – as opposed to individual accounts of heritage and meaning-making in the everyday. The study of everyday heritage can help close the gap in our understanding of what heritage may mean to many people and individuals. In shifting the focus on what (else) is valued as heritage, this research raises awareness of the range and variety of heritage to question its dominant narrative. Especially regarding the realm of the everyday, this can help to reconsider how people attribute significance to the tangible and intangible aspects of heritage around them – beyond the authorised and official.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Life, Art, and Industry: A History of the English and Welsh Leather Economy, 1700-1900
    Henderson, Stuart
    This study represents the first comprehensive academic exploration of the transformation of the English and Welsh leather economy from predominantly small-scale localised economy, striving to meet local leather demands, into a modern industrialised sector. Sometime between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, prior to the widespread use of modern chrome tanning techniques, this industry developed the capacity to fulfil the burgeoning needs of a rapidly growing populace with a diverse range of leathers and leather wares. Eventually, it generated a sufficient surplus to enable active participation and considerable success in the global leather trade. Beginning with the sourcing of hides and skins, this research offers a comprehensive examination of each pivotal phase of leather production, reviewing the availability of hides and skins and the expansion of international trade in raw materials, the creation of novel domestic and foreign leathers, total domestic leather output, improving technologies, the intricate legal history governing the leather industry, among other important facets. Moreover, it culminates in a detailed analysis of the various professions that made up the wider leather economy.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Finding balance in unequal relations: the burial of humans and animals in the Viking Age world
    Mazza, Selene
    The nature of human-animal relationships in the past, like in the present, is intrinsically unbalanced, with humans ultimately holding power over the life and death of many other animal species. This is also true for Viking Age burial customs, where different types of animals were commonly killed to be placed in human graves. Acknowledging this asymmetry, however, does not imply that animals were - and should be considered - passive and inanimate props unilaterally used by humans based on modern anthropocentric ideas of hierarchical interspecies relations projected onto past societies. Animals were not simply deposited in Viking Age graves like objects; they were mixed with human remains, buried in close contact with human bodies, and sometimes buried without humans at all. Animals were also not simply ‘animals’, as shown by the multiple modalities in which different species - and individual members within them - could be involved in funerary practices. Some people, on the other hand, were not buried with animals at all. Humans, as well, were not simply ‘humans’. Moving away from traditional approaches seeing animals as either food or symbols, the main aim of this work is to balance out archaeological interpretations of human-animal relationships in Viking Age burials by focussing on the animals themselves as living agents rather than mere dead bones. This requires first and foremost the development of a theoretical framework based on posthumanist approaches and focussed on relationality, integrating notions from other disciplines like animal studies, ethology, anthropology, and feminist theory into (zoo)archaeological theory. Building on this theoretical background, this research adopts a contextual and interdisciplinary methodological approach aimed at incorporating traditional zooarchaeological methods into the broader field of archaeology as well as combining the material record with additional evidence derived from Viking Age iconography and Old Norse studies. The core of the project is formed by two main strands of investigation: a quantitative statistical database analysis and a qualitative osteological case study. The former centres on a database of more than 2000 burials from multiple parts of the Viking Age world, from the Scandinavian homeland to the Norse settlements in the west (British Isles and Iceland) and the trade routes in the east (the Rus’). The case study, on the other hand, focuses on the osteological investigation of a relatively small number of graves with unburnt animal remains from central Norway. While the database analysis is primarily aimed at detecting possible shared characteristics and regional trends in the deposition of animals in burials to be used as a starting point for future, more in-depth investigations, the main purpose of the case study is to delve deeper into the lives and deaths of specific humans and specific animals. This is done through building animal osteobiographies when possible, and integrating contextual information into the analysis, spanning not only the buried humans, grave goods, and the grave itself, but also data from other archaeological contexts and external sources like written records. Both strands of analysis show the complexity of human-animal relationships in the Viking Age, where a shared cultural background manifested in a variety of regional customs and interacted with other cultures and traditions, being adapted and reinvented in different ways depending on context. The preliminary results of the database analysis show that although present in certain contexts, associations between specific animals and specific human genders in the Viking Age were not universal, but held true only for specific groups of individuals, highlighting the importance of actively considering ‘gender neutral’ graves in the analysis. The results further support previous research on the relatively higher proportion of multiple burials with animals compared to single ones, and the widespread popularity of dogs and horses across space and cultures. Furthermore, the inclusion of cats, birds of prey, and perhaps brown bear in graves emerges as a Norse Scandinavian custom, as is the broad variety of animal species involved in funerary practices, while domestic chicken may represent a link between Sweden and the Rus’. Finally, both differences and analogies were detected between Scandinavia and the Rus’, prompting reflections on culture contact and suggesting caution when assessing the presence of Scandinavians in the Rus’ exclusively from the burial records as far as animals are concerned. The case study further highlights how bringing animals to the fore and approaching them as individuals capable of acting and reacting, as well as influencing human thought and behaviour in life as well as in death, represents a fundamental pre-requisite to start moving away from generalised, one-size-fits-all interpretations towards more nuanced and multifaceted case-by-case understandings of human-animal relationships in the past. First and foremost, the case study supports previous research advocating that animals were not considered a cosmological or eschatological necessity in Viking Age burials, pushing the argument one step forward to propose that physical animal bodies were not essential, while also raising the possibility that animals could participate in funerals in alternative, archaeologically invisible, ways. The study of central Norwegian graves with unburnt animal remains suggests that the inclusion of sea and shore birds may represent a possible Sámi element in hybrid Norse-Sámi burials. The results of the investigation further underline the centrality of decapitation in funerary rituals, the existence of ‘standardised’ placements of animal bodies based on species and/or grave form, and the importance of considering the physicality of human and animal bodies as well as environmental and biological factors when discussing burial practices. In the end this work might have raised more questions than provide definitive answers, a reflection of how the complex spectrum of human-animal relations in the past becomes hard to disentangle once generalised interpretations are abandoned. However, it is argued that more balanced and contextual approaches can nevertheless allow us to develop an interpretive framework to better address the possible reasons why certain humans were buried with certain animals. Ultimately, to really understand the interactions between different humans and different animals in Viking Age burial customs, it is fundamental to investigate in detail both the human and the animal, moving away from homogenising and monolithic views of both. At the same time, the ‘negative evidence’ represented by those people who were not buried with animals, and by the animals that were left alive, must necessarily be involved in the discussion if we want to really glimpse at the full picture of human-animal relationships in the past.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Invisible Etruscans: a study on rural landscape and settlement organisation during the urbanisation of Etruria (7th - 5th centuries BC)
    Zeviani, Camilla
    The present study focuses on the rural settlement data from Etruria, Central Italy during the key centuries, from the 7th and the 5th centuries BC, when urbanised institutions (and lifestyles) consolidated. Despite responding to similar stimuli, Etruscan centres adopted different strategies to control their lands and benefit from them. Urbanisation was however also met with resistance. These approaches led to a variety of ways of acting, reacting to and experiencing urbanisation, and have been abundantly studied through material culture recovered, for the most part, from cemeteries. My research will identify these differences from a quantitative point of view, analysing survey data obtained throughout the second half of the 20th century. The study of these rural sites will help define the rural infrastructure that sustained the genesis of Etruscan central places between the 7th and the 5th centuries BC. Four case studies were selected, representing different types of territorial control: the palatial site of Poggio Civitate, in open conflict with urbanised realities; Chiusi and Cerveteri, both urban central places but with different developments and ways to administer their territories; finally, Tuscania, a mid-ranking, regional central place tied to the city of Tarquinia. Through these case studies, I will answer three questions: 1. What can rural settlements tell us about the workings of the Etruscans? 2. Were different approaches adopted by different Etruscan cities? 3. How did elites contribute to or resist the development of urban polities? My research will enhance more recent studies focused on territoriality, which also employed rural data (Stoddart et al., 2020; Stoddart, 2020a). I will achieve this by reviewing the sites gathered from several survey projects, to analyse population changes. A GIS-based locational analysis, as well as a Land Evaluation Analysis, will be then carried out to assess environmental matters. The general framework for urbanisation will be provided by Central Place Theory (CTP) and Early State Module (ESM), with particular regard to their application to Etruria by Redhouse & Stoddart, 2014; Stoddart et al., 2020; Stoddart, 2020a. Through computational techniques, these works uncovered the dynamism of Etruscan landscapes by applying a related model, XTENT, able to indicate border formation and give useful insights on the development of Etruscan polities. These models, tied to the evolutionary anthropology and processual archaeology traditions, will be then completed with relatively new social anthropological studies on state formation and urbanisation, which have been only recently applied to Central Italian urbanisation. Contrasting roles of Etruscan elites in urban developments and in the administration of territories will be highlighted and discussed in light of the “House society” and “basal units” models, and Kopytoff’s “internal frontier” model. This approach will provide a more nuanced examination of how structured Etruscan landscapes became, how they were exploited, who lived there, and how relationships with the central place were developed, as well as the different decisions and responses of the central places’ leading families to such changes that transformed Etruria into an influential and competing player in the Mediterranean scene.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Across mountains and deserts: Patterns of movement and interaction in fourth and third millennium BC south-east Iran
    Jürcke, Friederike
    The valleys of south-east Iran are ideally situated to investigate patterns of interaction among the communities of this part of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, and their connections with regions as far flung as Mesopotamia, Turkmenistan and the Indus River Basin in the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (c.4000-2000 BC). Excavations at sites such as Tepe Yahya, Konar Sandal and Shahr-i Sokhta, and surface collections have revealed evidence for a variety of local, regional and interregional dynamics across a fragmented landscape of high mountain ranges and arid desert basins. Mobility, its forms, and manifestations have long been a key issue in understanding these interactions. In this thesis I examine the nature of interactions in south-east Iran by situating them within their physical landscapes. Using a combination of archaeological legacy data, ethnohistorical data and a novel computational approach to modelling movement I reconsider where and how people, goods and ideas may have moved and what characterised the changing landscapes of interaction between 4000-2000 BC. To that end, four interlocking analyses are presented. First, a review of recent studies of the material record defines connections through material similarities and the distribution of raw materials. Second, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of diachronic settlement patterns throughout the region. Third, it examines in detail the diaries of Sir M. Aurel Stein for their information on the practicalities of moving through south-east Iran. Fourth, it assesses and applies a novel multi-factor, multi-temporal least-cost corridor model to generate corridors between major archaeological sites. For that purpose, a semi-automated workflow has been developed to calculate corridors over different cost surfaces and from various start points using open-source software. Ethnohistorical data from Stein’s diaries is used to inform and test the model’s parameters and a new method was developed to test the fit of corridors to historically reconstructed routes. The results provide a more nuanced picture of interactions in Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age south-east Iran. The review of the archaeological evidence demonstrates diachronically changing interactive dynamics and the simultaneous existence of overlapping and diverging connections. As the first analysis of interregional settlement patterns in south-east Iran since the 1980s, the thesis highlights that settlement was not only confined to alluvial plains, but that small communities existed along several steep mountain valleys connecting these plains. The diaries of Sir M. Aurel Stein provide an experiential component to interpretations of interaction in south-east Iran and challenge tacit assumptions of least-cost modelling in archaeology. The assessment of the multi-factor corridor model highlights the importance of additional cost factors beyond slope, especially when modelling long-distance connections. The corridors further reveal structuring characteristics of the landscape with regard to movement and allow us to theorise issues of decision making and socio-political circumstances. The results demonstrate that interactions in south-east Iran developed within landscapes that are at times permeable and at times forbidding. Drawing these analyses together reveals a nuanced picture of the differing patterns of interaction in south-east Iran and beyond and highlights areas for future archaeological work.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Drumming Trees and Stone Percussion: An Evolution of Rhythm
    Pham, Victoria Anh-Vy
    In the tapestry of human evolution, rhythm emerges as a luminous thread that weaves through the fabric of existence. In the context of evolutionary dynamics, rhythm's influence emerges as a pivotal force. Beyond its functional utility, rhythmic patterns become conduits for comprehension and empathy. As human development progressed, the capacity to perceive and decode the nuances of rhythm facilitated the exchange of knowledge, nurturing cooperation and social harmony. With active and attentive rhythm perception, individuals contributed substantially to the thriving and evolution of their communities. The significance of rhythm is not confined to a mere skill but rather a catalyst propelling cultural and societal advancements. Two empirical studies in this thesis address rhythm use and its advantages, which present novel methodologies to visualise and evaluate rhythmicity. The first half of the thesis focuses on buttress drumming in wild chimpanzees as a cultural communication system. The second half of the thesis examines rhythmicity in tool use and manufacture, culminating in an experimental archaeology study that assesses rhythm and Achulean hand-axe quality. *Chimpanzee Buttress Drumming* examines rhythmicity where research in primate percussive behaviour remains limited. This study obtained 106 buttress drumming videos from camera traps deployed between January 2012 and July 2022 in two neighbouring chimpanzee communities from the Seringbara Valley in West Africa, Guinea. This analysis investigates variations in drumming bouts by employing a novel methodology, the lexicon technique. By investigating chimpanzee buttress drumming, this study will provide insights into the complexity of communication and cultural transmission in animals and demonstrate rhythmic entrainment. By highlighting variation and combinatoriality in buttress drumming in chimpanzees' rhythm and rhythmic patternation, this study contributes to our understanding of the complexity and cultural aspects of chimpanzee long-distance communication. The findings enhance our knowledge of animal communication beyond vocalisations, paving the way for future research on how animals express and transmit cultural knowledge. *Rhythm and Tool Use* assesses rhythmicity in percussive activities, nut-cracking for chimpanzees, and flintknapping in humans. This research builds on earlier studies demonstrating the positive effects of rhythmic group activities in humans, exploring the constructive impact of music and rhythmic patterns in labour-related tasks. The thesis highlights rhythmic systems requiring social or cultural entrainment by differentiating between pulse and metre perception. From this, the second half of the thesis explores the potential correlation between rhythmic proficiency and physical abilities such as nutcracking and flintknapping. These studies aim to elucidate whether inherent rhythmicity confers advantages during the initial stages of being introduced to knapping techniques. By delving into rhythmic proficiency within tool use, this thesis contributes to understanding the correlations between motor skills, lithic industries, synchrony, and cognitive evolution. These studies urge for continued research human behaviour and material culture's coevolution. This thesis' examination of rhythmicity in contemporary chimpanzee buttress tree drumming and human flint-knapping demonstrates a novel and interdisciplinary approach to considering auditory and synchronous behaviours within the context of evolution.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Modelling Past Land Routes in Archaeology: A ‘Roman Roads’ Theoretical and Methodological Rethinking
    Lewis, Joseph; Lewis, Joseph [0000-0002-0477-1756]
    Since the 1990s, the use of movement models for predicting and explaining past land routes has become common-place in archaeology. Despite their long use, movement models remain largely theoretically unjustified and methodologically immature. Without addressing these issues, outcomes from movement models will continue to lack a theoretical connection to the land route being examined, and thus remain unreliable, offering predictions and explanations that are epistemologically weak. This thesis investigates the generative processes behind land routes created in the past, using Roman roads as its case study. Theoretically informed and methodologically robust movement models are developed for examining the factors that influenced the placement of Roman roads in Britain and Sardinia, how these factors differed across roads, and what these factors reveal about the structure of individual Roman provinces and the Roman Empire. First, the methodological robustness of outcomes from movement models was assessed in light of error in digital elevation models used to represent the landscape. This was tackled through the use of a novel Monte-Carlo simulation approach, whereby error in the digital elevation model is propagated throughout the analysis to produce a probabilistic outcome. This is demonstrated through the explanation of a Roman road in north-west Britain, finding that minimising energy expenditure can only explain sections of the Roman road. Second, the impact of how movement models formally represent hypotheses was examined using Multiple Model Idealisation and Robustness Analysis. Through the use of computer simulations under known conditions, it is shown that whilst model outcomes from movement models representing the same hypothesis produce similar results, model outcomes representing different hypotheses can also produce similar results. Thus, hypotheses as represented by different movement models have the risk of being underdetermined when used for explaining land routes created in the past. These insights were then applied for the explanation of a Roman road in Sardinia, Italy, showing that the placement of the road was not constructed to minimise time taken or energy expended. Finally, theoretically informed and methodologically robust movement models were developed for the explanation of Roman roads in the British section of the Antonine Itinerary. Through the use of Approximate Bayesian Computation and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, it is shown that the influence of factors on the placement of Roman roads was not homogenous but rather reflects the specific circumstances that were present during their individual construction.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Home from Away: Challenging Extinction Discourse through the Repatriation of Indigenous Beothuk Human Remains
    Daly, Leanne
    From the era of European colonialism of the so-called “New World” to today, the categorisation of certain Indigenous peoples as “extinct”, like the Beothuk of Newfoundland, Canada, has persisted. This discourse of Social Darwinism (where extinction takes place within parts of the human species rather than extinction of the species) has largely been applied uncritically and unquestioningly to such peoples. Literature on “extinct” peoples like the Beothuk comes to be defined by this categorisation and limited by it. This thesis reveals how extinction discourse is not accurate or useful to those on either side of the repatriation process and is reductive and damaging to the understanding of peoples categorised as “extinct”. This is done through critically analysing the discourse of Beothuk extinction through texts (from history books to memorials and museum exhibitions) and tracking the repatriation of remains of two of the last known Beothuk individuals, Nonosabasut and Demasduit, while investigating how those involved in repatriations understand the Beothuk and operate when faced with cases of peoples categorised as “extinct”. Ultimately, the alternative application of the concepts of genocide and social death is proposed as they more appropriately describe what has until now been called “extinction” of Indigenous peoples.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Challenges in Reconstructing Past Exploitations of Atlantic Cod: A Zooarchaeological Case Study from Early Medieval England
    Blevis, Rachel
    The thesis presents a novel zooarchaeological, statistical, and ecological analysis of fish bone assemblages from early medieval England. Comprehensive evidence is presented of coastal and pelagic fishing of larger bodied, healthier populations in England from the 8th cent.CE, pushing back the assumed rise in marine fishing commonly referred to as the ‘Fish Event Horizon’, or the FEH, by 300 years. The findings are an important contribution to assessing past human impacts on aquatic ecosystems, which to date have not been widely researched. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) was selected as the main focus of the study due to its prominence in modern and historical fishery economies, based on studies of modern and archaeological materials. Identifications of diverse marine taxa, including cod, were part of the zooarchaeological analysis of a previously unexamined, exceptionally large assemblage from the pre-FEH monastic site of Lyminge. Lyminge was chosen for analysis due to its early occupation dates, which precede the previously theorised onset of marine fishing, and its exceptionally large fish bone assemblage. Fish body sizes were estimated from both newly developed and preexisting regression models. The novel models were constructed from a uniquely large and diverse dataset of modern cod specimens collected for this purpose, and applied to new data from Lyminge and to a legacy dataset from Coppergate. The estimated archaeological cod sizes were further compared to modern trawl survey data. A significant temporal decrease was observed between both archaeological datasets and the modern data. The larger archaeological cod body sizes suggest significantly improved weights, reproductivity, and health of cod populations prior to the onset of commercial fishing in the North Sea. Furthermore, shifts in past food web interactions are also suggested, revealing shifting ecologies of other species interacting in the same food web. Combined with the positive identifications of other pelagic species, the larger archaeological sizes indicate that the fish were sourced from pelagic environments. The contextualization of these findings in the wider study area of northwest Europe suggests that early medieval communities had the technological abilities and traditional knowledge required to conduct offshore marine fishing as early as 1,300 years ago. The analysis of skeletal elements and butchery patterns of the Lyminge cod further indicate that stockfish was prepared for local consumption, and possibly for trade, in the same era. Unique statistical tools are presented for estimating past cod sizes, expressed as Total Length (TL), through both newly defined and preexisting measurements of archaeological bones. The robustness and convenience of estimating cod TLs from previously unutilized vertebrae and cranial measurements is demonstrated through the reported accuracy of the developed regression models, and their application to the archaeological case studies where such elements are common but have remained unutilized. Lastly, the ecological results based on the developed regression models highlight the damaging effects of intensified fishing practices in later periods, a trajectory that has led to diminished health, and even complete collapse, of modern populations.
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    A Communications Revolution? The emergence of images and writing in Early Iron Age Greece and Central Italy
    Scholz, Elisa
    In this thesis I consider the (re)emergence of writing and figurative art during the Early Iron Age in Greece and Central Italy. The two main questions I ask are: why do script(s) and figurative representations emerge in the same years over such a broad area? What can the different patterns in the use of writing and images at different sites reveal about the production and consumption of these two media and the societies adopting them? I analyse a corpus of almost 4,000 objects from 7 sites, selected for their profusion of early writing or images (or both): Athens (Agora, Kerameikos Cemetery, Dipylon Cemetery), Cerveteri, Knossos (North Cemetery, Fortetsa Cemetery), Pithekoussai, Corinth, Methoni and the Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros at Eretria. The four key sites are Athens, Cerveteri, Knossos and Pithekoussai, with Corinth, Methoni and Eretria playing ancillary roles. Starting from the scattered objects before the eighth century BC, I analyse the material (half) century by (half) century, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, to demonstrate the importance of comparing the big patterns against the small scale, the social and collective against the cognitive and individual. After a review of the literature on the subject in Chapter II, I point out the main gaps in the discipline: 1) the separation of the study of text and the study of image; 2) the focus on Greece in isolation (and consequent search for ‘Greek’ explanations); 3) the overwhelming reliance on qualitative studies. In Chapter III, where the quantitative and qualitative patterns are analysed, I show that before the eighth century, images were already spreading considerably and that writing circulating from the Near East was already being ‘appropriated’. The sub-chapters on the eighth and first half of the seventh centuries highlight the continuation of trends emerging much earlier, and at the same time, the scarcity of written and figurative material (particularly the rarity of humans) and the consequent exceptionality of pieces that bear either. They also shed light on the early relationship between inscriptions and (figurative) art. The last two sub-chapters, on the second half of the seventh and the early sixth centuries, explore the development of images, primarily, and their growing closeness to text. Issues of contexts and absences are also explored in depth. The main consequences of the findings are discussed in Chapter IV. These are: 1) the importance of the Italian material; 2) the necessity to look both ‘behind’ and ‘ahead’ to understand what we witness in the eighth century; 3) the connection between text and images, which occupy the same space in the human mind: the more writing develops, the more humans we find in art. The more humans we find in scenes accompanied by writing, the more ‘typical’ they become. What emerges in this thesis is that neither formal nor geographical isolation is a helpful way of looking at text and image in this period, because of the simultaneous wide spread of both practices and because of the links that bind them. I show that studying script and picture in isolation is not only a gross negligence, but also based on a misunderstanding of how the two work cognitively and socially. Finally, I propose that the study of early writing cannot be separated from (figurative) art and, more importantly, that it is impossible to look at the history of (Greek) figurative art, without also looking at writing. I establish that the adoption of these two practices was a slow and gradual process, which began in the tenth century BC, that it was not uniform or unilinear, and that, even within the same centres, the use of writing and figurative art at different sites evolved along different trajectories. That if it was a ‘revolution’, this ‘revolution’ was long in the making.
  • ItemRestricted
    Politics, Identity and Ethics in Heritage Preservation: Managing Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey
    Doğan, Elifgül; Doğan, Elifgül [0000-0002-0839-9023]
    [Restricted]
  • ItemOpen Access
    Genobiography: The Beethoven Genome Project as a case study integrating genomics into historical biography
    Begg, Tristan
    Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is among the most influential and popular composers in Western Art Music. Health problems significantly impacted his career as a composer and pianist, including progressive hearing loss, recurring bowel problems and liver disease. In 1802, Beethoven requested that following his death, the causes of his illness be described and made public. Medical biographers have since proposed numerous hypotheses to account for Beethoven’s history of poor health, including several with heritable or infectious aetiologies that are potentially amenable to diagnostic testing or risk stratification via genomic analyses. A series of recent advances in laboratory and bioinformatics methods were integrated into existing methods to produce a highly sensitive protocol for historical hair samples, enabling the sequencing of high-coverage genomes from small quantities of historical hair. Eight independently sourced locks of hair plausibly attributed to Beethoven underwent genomic analyses. Five of these were found to originate from a single European male with an ancestry profile and DNA damage patterns consistent with that expected for Beethoven. In light of their reconstructed provenance histories, two of which were perfect, these matching samples were deemed to be almost certainly authentic. Beethoven’s genome was sequenced to 24-fold genomic coverage using extract from 275cm of hair. Although no genetic predisposition for hearing or gastrointestinal disorders could be identified, several significant heritable and infectious risk factors for liver disease were discovered. Beethoven was homozygous for the most robustly implicated variant associated with the full range of progressive liver disease in *PNPLA3*, and compound heterozygous for two hereditary hemochromatosis variants in *HFE*. In addition, metagenomic analyses and targeted capture revealed that Beethoven was infected with hepatitis B virus during at least the months leading to his final illness. The definite identification of heritable and infectious risk factors for liver disease refines the range of plausible aetiologies for Beethoven’s final illness. Unexpectedly, an analysis of Y-chromosomes sequenced from five living members of the Van Beethoven patrilineage revealed the occurrence of an extra-pair paternity event in Ludwig van Beethoven’s patrilineal ancestry. In addition, no long shared identical-by-descent segments were detected among three descendents of Beethoven’s nephew, Karl van Beethoven, suggesting the possibility of a second EPP event. Finally, authentication analyses revealed that a lock of hair, previous analyses of which have led to conclusions that plumbism caused or compounded Beethoven’s health problems, is inauthentic.
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    There is this island: Social dynamics and connectivity in Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus
    Laoutari, Rafael
    The ca.750 years of Cypriot history known as the Prehistoric Bronze Age (ca.2500–1750BCE) have mostly been approached through evolutionary frameworks aiming to explain how the simple societies of the island transformed into more complex ones emerging by the end of this period. Through this teleological approach, Cypriot society has mostly been envisioned as a place of competing aggrandised elites who controlled resources, primarily metal, to achieve dominance within and beyond their communities. Consequently, most members of these communities appear as passive objects of history. This makes such reconstructions of society problematic, as agency for social change is ascribed to only a minority of people. This thesis takes a different perspective towards understanding the PreBA society. Through a bottom-up approach and a heterarchical conceptual framework, all Cypriots are understood as active agents in the social changes of their communities. Cypriot society is investigated through different scales, namely the communities, their regions and the island. The aim is to elucidate how regional and island-wide patterns are interrelated with community ones and how this shaped diverse social roles and relationships across Cyprus. The scarcity and geographical bias of the PreBA settlement record renders it unsuitable for such an approach. This study therefore combines three different datasets, firstly ceramics (macroscopic fabric, morphology, surface treatment), secondly metal items (morphology, chemical composition), and thirdly the deathways of communities. For the latter, emphasis is placed on the size and form of tombs, storage capacities, presence of precious liquid containers and consumption vessels, and deposition of metal artefacts, as proxies of the mortuary choices of the groups organising them. This combined approach argues for the presence of distinct regional traditions across the island throughout the period. From the earliest phases, communities with different interests and affordances, composed of groups involved in diverse activities, engaged in strong intra-regional networks, frequent contacts among neighbouring regions, and occasional offshore exchanges, as well as creating an island-wide network of exchange involving tableware, liquids and rare metal. By the end of the period, this network was flourishing, including the regular movement of people, leading to the blurring of some regional attributes and the emergence of new ones. The study of the social dynamics and connectivity of Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus is presented as a promising framework through which ranked societies are approached in a bottom-up manner which conceptualises human agents within diverse scales of interactions in order to understand social change over time. It, thus, creates the opportunity for more inclusive social interpretations, moving beyond the assumptions and constrains of evolutionary societal models.
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    Early Agricultural Communities in Lejja Southeastern Nigeria: An Archaeobotanical Investigation
    Ngonadi, Chioma; Ngonadi, Chioma [0000-0002-8504-8112]
    This thesis investigates food production and subsistence practices among early iron using communities in southeastern Nigeria. Lejja is a cluster of villages in Igboland, southeastern Nigeria where iron smelting flourished on an industrial scale from around the late first millennium BC. The huge number of slag blocks on the surface reveals that ironworking here was a highly sophisticated, long lived and well developed tradition with its technique that involved large scale metal production. Despite the research conducted into iron production, little attention has been paid to domestic archaeology and archaeobotanical studies of food production in Lejja are rare. Rather, previous scholarship on food production was based on hypothetical assumptions drawing from oral history and ethnographic data. Prior to this study, there had been no previous archaeobotanical studies conducted in southeastern Nigeria. Thus, this study is the first to examine the subsistence practice and food economy in ancient Igboland to understand how these iron smelters sustained life, fed themselves and navigated the quest for food. The thesis demonstrates that earlier inhabitants of Lejja had longstanding agricultural practices that supported the sophisticated industrial scale technology of ironworking from at least 840-2100 BP This is evidenced by archaeobotanical remains recovered from deeply stratified excavations at Amaovoko (AM) and Amaebo-Attamah (AA) Lejja. This thesis demonstrates the presence of oil palm and tubers but the absence of cereal crops such as pearl millet. These data are further used to argue that the past inhabitants of Lejja consisted of a single community engaged in both smelting and farming who were involved in local production and the exchange of materials and ideas between themselves.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Bayesian regional models of gold and copper alloys from pre-Hispanic Colombia
    Vieri, Jasmine; Vieri, Jasmine [0000-0002-3826-2167]
    Throughout the two millennia preceding the European conquest of the Americas, the region of present-day Colombia was witness to the emergence and development of highly sophisticated metallurgical technologies. Alloys of gold, silver, copper, and platinum were used in the creation of a wide range of artefacts intended for personal ornamentation, ceremonial use, funerary goods, functional tools, and votive offerings. While our understanding of the region’s societies has been transformed by a century of research highlighting the diversity of its metallurgical practices, many aspects remain less well understood. This is particularly the case when it comes to understanding the variability of alloy selection and use across space. For the first time, this thesis collates all known compositional data (>2,300 object analyses) on archaeological alloys from within the region, dating to before c. 1600 AD. It addresses research questions relating to the role of technological, environmental, and cultural factors behind alloy selection, at two different scales of analysis. The first focuses on an overview of alloy use across the whole of present-day Colombia. The second presents in-depth modelling of alloying practices for one of the metallurgical regions of Colombia, the Muisca (600-1600 AD). These Bayesian models provide a significant contribution to the field of archaeological science, by introducing a novel set of statistical approaches (multilevel, Gaussian Process, and beta regression modelling) that simultaneously account for sampling uncertainties and interdependencies; allow for the explicit modelling of spatial autocorrelation; and accommodate for the compositional nature of analytical data. It is argued that other archaeological research projects working with large-scale, regional datasets have much to gain from adopting similar methodologies that mitigate the risk of reaching incomplete or biased conclusions. The archaeological implications are used to discuss how Muisca metalworking practices were embedded within complex symbolic frameworks and politically and ritually intertwined exchange networks. The cross-regional Colombian analyses, in turn, are used to highlight the importance of pre-Hispanic metal synergies, where the use of both gold and copper was highly interlinked through space. Notable variations of technological practices across space are also witness to the variability of human responses to different environmental and cultural stimuli – with local adaptations not readily explained by dichotomous metal symbolism, or by the local availability of ore sources.
  • ItemEmbargo
    Liminal heritage and political transition in Burma/Myanmar since 1824
    Stevens, Alicia
    Since the turn of the 21st century, an anxious presentism has taken hold of global politics. Human beings are living through a deeply transitional moment characterised by a rise in authoritarian populism (Bugaric 2019) and a ‘brokenness of political reality’ that is both cause and effect (Wydra 2015a, p. 1) of the wicked problems that plague us, from the threat of nuclear warfare to the climate crisis. Infused with powers of annihilation, these crises suspend whole societies in uncertainty, requiring that we learn to live life in the transitional (Horváth, Thomassen, and Wydra 2017). Such extraordinary circumstances demand innovation of heritage critique, which lacks a framework for understanding cultural heritage amid the crisis of extreme forms of transition. This study presents an innovative approach to the problem, arguing for transferring the paradigm of contemporary liminality from political anthropology into heritage studies. Contemporary political anthropologists have adapted liminality’s ritual structure to wholesale experiences such as war, revolution, and transition, to understand these phenomena at the level of the communities living through them. Data are from Burma/Myanmar, where, since 1824, the difficult heritage of British colonial and military oppression and its concomitant heritage of civilian revolution has led to generations of overlapping transitional crises. Public commemoration of the atrocities endured might have provided Burmese people with the means for social recovery and transitional justice. Instead, enduring collective uncertainty has disrupted this potential. Cultural heritage is in the political fray amid transitional crises; as power shifts among competing political factions, its established meanings and symbols loosen. For those who learn to manipulate its interpretation, heritage becomes a tool for legitimising power or achieving empowerment amid extreme transition. The lens of contemporary liminality aids in deciphering these political uses of heritage and leads to a second innovation of this study – a new heritage taxonomy forged from transitional crisis.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Modelling spatio-temporal changes in the ecological niches of major domesticated crops in China: Application of Species Distribution Modelling
    Krzyzanska, Marta; Krzyzanska, Marta [0000-0002-3677-3086]
    This thesis explores how the dispersal of crops in the past related to their ecological niches. In particular, it presents the niche models for five historically significant crops in China: rice, millet, wheat, barley and buckwheat. These models are rooted in the Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) methodology and infer the potential areas suitable for the cultivation of each crop from the present distributional data. Model predictions are extrapolated on the palaeoclimatic reconstructions to obtain suitability estimates extending back to the initial uptake of each crop in China. Those are compared against the patterns of crops’ dispersal deduced from archaeobotanical data to assess the contribution of climatic factors and human niche construction to agricultural trajectories. Specifically, the study draws on ecological niche theory, niche construction theory, cultural evolution and gene-culture co-evolutionary theory to interpret how the observed patterns could result from different pathways to niche construction and distributional expansion. The analysis identified two modes of crop dispersal based on whether those pathways involved more deliberate efforts at spreading and maintaining cultivation or passive responses to the environment. Niche-forming characterised major domesticates which originated in China: rice and millet. It manifested in the gradual broadening of the environmental range occupied by the crops over time and was associated with the pathways that implied prioritisation by farmers. In contrast, a stable environmental range identified the niche following trajectories, expected when the spread of crops was more opportunistic than intentional. Foreign domesticates (wheat and barley) and buckwheat, a comparatively minor crop, exemplify this model. Furthermore, the analysis provided insights into factors that shaped the dispersal patterns of individual crops. Notably, it demonstrated that climate constrained buckwheat movement along major transcontinental dispersal routes, followed by crops such as millet, wheat and barley. In conjunction with the niche-following pattern identified for this crop, this provides an explanation for the delayed westwards spread compared to other East Asian domesticates. Furthermore, the models revealed the discrepancy between the high suitability of environmental conditions predicted in northeast China, and the relatively slow pace of agricultural developments documented in the area, opening up a discussion about possible explanatory factors. Finally, the analysis exposed the climatic shift in the inland southern part of the country. The models demonstrated that this shift opened up a corridor of dispersal for millet and might have facilitated the spread of agriculture in this direction.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Rajgir and Its Hinterland
    Harding, Robert
    This thesis is based on an archaeological survey of Rajgir, onetime capital of Magadha and one of the most important Early Historic urban sites. Its principal conclusions are: 1. The "walls" are more walkways than defensive structures and it's clear they were used as such during the first millennium AD. In a number of stretches they are clearly not defensive and for some areas they are easily the best means of moving around. Read the right way it's clearly what the monks are saying. 2. Despite the common assumption that the walls form a unified system, Marshall's map had already shown the north side was disconnected; and the survey showed the southern is also. 3. That they are related to the siting of Buddhist and Jain sites raises chicken and egg questions as to relative dating; but all one can say is that such huge, monumental structures are unique in the mid-first millennium BC. 4. A good candidate for the Elephant Stupa is the Balarama Temple. Some other sites mentioned by monks may be along the hill roads rather than on the flat. 5. The Rajgir topography found in Pali sources is irreconcilable with topographies of Sanskrit sources and with current names. 6. Bimbisara's Jail is a first-millennium AD monastic site. 7. Much of the "Inner Fortification", around the northern entrance to the valley is actually an occupation mound going back to at least c. 1000 BC if not before. 8. Finds of NBP and associated material of pre-Mauryan type (including in Inner Fortification walls) does lend support to arguments that the valley centre was occupied; the chronological relationship of Old Rajgir - New Rajgir has yet to be properly confirmed. 9. Giriak’s Daktar English mound on the river has plentiful Early Historic and "Kushan period" evidence to show that it must be included in a network of sites centred on the hills. 10. From the 19thC Rajgir and other Early Historic cities have been construed as “Buddhist sites”; and this had led to an under-emphasis of their urban functions.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Understanding the selection and co-existence of tin bronze alloying techniques in Antiquity. An experimental and archaeological approach with Northeast Iberia as case study (2800-200BC).
    Montes Landa, Julia; Montes Landa, Julia [0000-0001-9672-465X]
    From co-smelting through cementation to co-melting, there are different ways to make tin bronze. We can only tell these techniques apart through the analysis of production slag. Interestingly, archaeological evidence indicates that the oldest techniques were not replaced by more modern and ‘advanced’ ones, and that several techniques often co-existed in the same production contexts. This situation requires an explanation. This thesis evaluates how environmental and socio-economic factors may have affected the selection of bronze alloying techniques in the past. To do so, it was firstly necessary to assess differences in performance between techniques through a set of field-based alloying experiments. The results suggest that, although the end-product was of comparable quality, different techniques offer alternative trade-offs during production. Secondly, to evaluate the impact of socio-economic and environmental dynamics in technique selection, a series of archaeological assemblages from Northeast Iberia dated between Chalcolithic and Iberian times (2800-200BC) are presented. Archaeometallurgical by-products of these collections were analysed using pXRF, OM, SEM-EDS, and LIA to characterise technological choices through time. These choices were considered in relation to their performance characteristics, and subsequently contextualised within the relevant environmental and socio-economic dynamics. It was found that alloying technique choices were dependent on (1) the degree of instability associated to raw material procurement networks, and (2) the high or low selective pressures operating on the different performance characteristics of each technique. Socio-economic factors were generally conditioning both, but discrete combinations of these two variables can explain instances of co-existence of different alloying techniques, and examples of commitment to a single technique. The study of selection patterns behind bronze alloying techniques is presented as a promising tool to re-question existing models of bronze production organisation, and technological diffusion across Europe and beyond. The approach developed can be easily adapted to study other instances of counterintuitive adoption, rejection, or discontinuation of innovations in other technologies.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Scales of Interaction across the South China Sea between 6000 and 4000 BP. A chaîne opératoire approach to the Neolithic stone adzes of the Min River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Taiwan.
    Sponza, Francesco; Sponza, Francesco [0000-0002-6011-8612]
    This thesis investigates the variability of the Neolithic stone adzes (6000 to 4000 BP) retrieved from different sites located on the coasts of the South China Sea. The aim of this research is to provide an answer or multiple answers to the nature of the actors behind the emergence of this complex patterns of variability. For several decades the “Neolithicization” processes across the Asian-Pacific region were explained as the result of the diffusion of Proto-Austronesian speakers: the spread of Neolithic material cultures, food production, rice farming, animal domestication, etc. The assumed underlying cause was the migration of agriculturalists that started in China c.9000 years ago, passed through Taiwan and the Philippines c.4000 years ago, and eventually spread over the wider Pacific region. General criticisms of this “Out-of-Taiwan” model include the primacy of linguistic inferences over archaeology, its use as a mass migratory meta-narrative, and the lack of strong archaeological evidence of for the Neolithicization process. In broad critical terms, this synthesis is seen as a form of Culture-History oversimplification of complex sea-based interactions that, eventually, could lead to the emergence of material cultural similarities and differences in distant part of the Asian-Pacific region. To translate this complexity into sizeable and interpretable measures, this thesis uses an approach based on the study of the dynamic processes of production, use and discard of tools: namely the reconstruction of the *chaîne opératoire*. This approach is applied to the ground stone adzes retrieved from four sites of the Pearl River Delta (Fu Tei, Kwo Lo Wan, Sha Ha, Yung Long), one site from the Min River Delta (Tanshishan) and one site from Southwestern Taiwan (Nanguanli). The resulting figures are statistically charted and combined using a multivariate analysis approach across sites, adze types, and materials used, to explore patterns of dependency. The ultimate aim of this type of analysis is to demonstrate that the complexity of material culture variability in the South China Sea is not the result of a direct people diffusion, but a combination of different factors that are variously environmental, techno-cultural, and based both on pragmatic and representational choices. The dissertation reaches the conclusion that the variability in the archaeological record is the outcome of a mix of local particularism, cultural diffusion and demic diffusion, and that it was part of a multi- directional network of connectivity that linked the ‘Neolithic’ nuclei of Southern China and Southeast Asia. These movements of materials and ideas did not flow only on one level but on many levels: some reached a small distance from a propagating nucleus, spreading some material elements, some instead reached the furthest reaches of the South China Sea and spread other elements of material culture. This approach demonstrates that the complexity of the interactive networks, as emerging from the patterns of material culture variability in the Asian-Pacific region, cannot be tackled with the adoption of wide-encompassing meta-narrative models, revolving around purely cultural frameworks and rooted in 20th century Culture-History. It is instead necessary to take into account that the emergence of some material traits can be mechanical outcomes (forms of environmental adaptation, the exertion of material constraints over the morphological templates of the lithic workers) or super-structural outcomes (forms of socio-technological, socio-cultural acceptance or rejection of certain material innovations), and not simply mirrors of past diffusions or migrations of peoples.