quinta-feira, 12 de abril de 2012
sexta-feira, 6 de abril de 2012
36th Hauptversammlung der Deutschen Quartärvereinigung
Dear colleagues
On behalf of the organizing committee of the 36th Hauptversammlung der Deutschen Quartärvereinigung e.V. (DEUQUA 16.-20.9.12 in Bayreuth) around Prof. Ludwig Zöller I would like to invite you to the session below, which will be held in English and German language and which might be of interest to you.
DEUQUA is granting all HOG members the same reduced fees as for its own members. Registration and more details can be found at http://www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/deuqua2012/.
Please, forward this invitation to all colleagues who might be interested.
Sincerely
Daniel Richter
DEUQUA 2012 Session:
"LITHIC HUMAN SOCIETIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE - THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL RISK"
The cause of human biological and cultural evolution is often claimed on grounds of geological/climatological changes (geo determinism). However, the discussion is often led by ideologies and the evidence for the
claimed causal connections is not well founded, while having to be questioned in principle. Furthermore, for more recent periods humans are actively involved and not only 'suffer' but are also the cause environmental change.
The session "Lithic human societies and environmental change - The archaeology of environmental risk" will examine the interaction of humans and the environment with approaches combining archaeological and
geological aspects/topics. Is it possible to link changes or aspects of the archaeological record to environmental risks and correlate these to climatic changes? In this wide range of themes presentations on the presence/absence of humans (D/O cycles, glacial maximum, etc.), subsistence changes as a reaction to environmental change, human caused environmental changes (e.g. colluviation, etc.), are welcome.
Million-year-old ash hints at origins of cooking
South African cave yields earliest evidence for human use of fire.
Ash found in a South African cave hints that humans were cooking with fire one million years ago.
The discovery is the earliest evidence yet found for use of this revolutionary technology, say the researchers behind the finding. But some experts caution that more proof is needed before we conclude that humans were cooking regularly at this date.
 |
| The plant and animal ash was found thirty metres inside the Wonderwerk Cave — beyond the reach of a lightning strike. GREATSTOCK PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY / ALAMY |
Francesco Berna, an archaeologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, and his colleagues found ash of burnt grass, leaves, brush and bone fragments in sediments 30 metres inside the Wonderwerk Cave in the Northern Cape province. The cave is one of the oldest known sites of human habitation, showing traces of having been lived in from almost two million years ago.
It is not possible to say for certain which species of hominin inhabited the cave one million years ago, but the team believes it was probably Homo erectus.
The bits of ash, which range from a few millimetres to a few centimetres long, are well preserved. They have jagged edges, showing that they were not burned elsewhere and blown or washed into the cave, which would have worn such edges away.
Berna and his colleagues searched the sediments for bat faeces, because large piles of rotting guano can become hot enough to ignite spontaneously. But there were no traces of such droppings.
“This left us with the conclusion that the fire had to have been created by hominins,” says Berna. The evidence is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
Hot stuff
Cooking makes food easier to chew and digest, so the first humans to adopt it could get more energy from the same amount of food and spend less time foraging. But it has proved difficult to work out when humans made this leap.
Unlike stone tools, evidence of burning, such as ash and charcoal, is easily destroyed by wind and rain. And even when such remains are found, determining whether the fire was natural or human-made is tricky.
Burned materials have been found that date back to 1 million to 1.5 million years ago, at the Swartkrans site in South Africa2, and 700,000–800,000 years ago, at a site in Israel called Gesher Benot Ya`aqov3. But both these sites are in exposed spots, where lightning could have ignited the fire.
That could not have happened in the Wonderwerk Cave. But using fire and mastering it are not the same thing, cautions Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
“I think it likely that humans were using fire at this site, but I don’t think that this means these hominins were regular fire users. For a claim like that to be made, we would need to see hearths and fire places, and we do not,” he says. “If we were to discover many more fire sites at this time in history and find that natural cave fires look distinctly different, that would support an early-cooking hypothesis, but we are not there yet."
The earliest unequivocal evidence for regular human cooking dates back 400,000 years4.
Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in Boulder, argues that further searches are needed. “Isolated finds are not conclusive. For these arguments to stand up, the sediment layers of many different sites of the same time period need to be analysed,” she says.
Berna thinks that more evidence might be found. “The fire was only confirmed when the sediment was analysed at the microscopic level. It is possible that the reason we have not yet seen more evidence of early fire use is because we have not been using the appropriate methods,” he says.Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10372
Berna, F., et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA (2012).
Brain, C. K. & Sillent, A. Nature 336, 464–466 (1988).
Goren-Inbar, N., et al. Science 304, 725–727 (2004).
Roebroeks, W. & Villa, P. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA (2011)
In nature.com
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Canhão encontrado na Austrália não é português
O canhão encontrado em janeiro de 2010 no norte da Austrália, que se supôs ser do século XVI e de origem portuguesa, "não o é", disse hoje à Lusa um arqueólogo da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL).
Alexandre Monteiro, arqueólogo náutico e subaquático do Instituto de Arqueologia e Paleociências da UNL, explicou que se trata de "um canhão cópia dos portugueses, mas de fabrico asiático do século XVII ou XVIII, na medida em que após a chegada dos portugueses ao Extremo Oriente, e depois de terem introduzido as armas de fogo, muitas foram as fundições que começaram a produzir modelos idênticos, mas de deficiente qualidade".
 |
| Credits paginaglobal.blogspot.fr |
"Não há um escudo português ou brasão de armas, nem inserções de peso", explicou o cientista que afirmou poder tratar-se de um canhão de fabrico "malaio ou indonésio".
"Depois da introdução das armas de fogo naquela região do globo pelos portugueses, muitas foram as cópias - tecnologicamente mais fracas, claro está -, as designadas lantakas", explicou o Alexandre Monteiro.
O arqueólogo sugeriu que o canhão encontrado por Christopher, de 13 anos, numa praia do norte da Austrália, e sobre qual surgiu notícia em janeiro deste ano, terá sido "deixado na costa australiana por pescadores chineses de pepinos do mar [invertebrado marinho], que o usavam em sua defesa".
Os especialistas australianos e portugueses realizaram vários testes de autenticidade ao achado e concluíram que "não é de origem portuguesa, nem do século XVI, mas sim uma cópia das muitas fundidas na região, que seguiam o modelo das armas portuguesas".
Há muito que os historiadores gizam a hipótese de os navegadores portugueses terem alcançado as costas australianas no século XVI, antes da chegada oficial em 1606 do navio holandês Duyfken, a mando de Willen Jansz.
Caso este canhão fosse de facto português e do século XVI era uma prova material da primazia portuguesa na descoberta do continente australiano.
Quando foi noticiado o achado, o historiador Francisco Contente Domingues disse à Lusa que era "muito provável" que o canhão fosse de facto português.
"Não tenho dúvidas de que os navios portugueses possam ter chegado à costa Norte da Austrália no século XVI", disse o historiador, especialista na História das navegações e da expansão europeia dos séculos XV-XVII, que citou uma tese segundo a qual duas ilhas situadas a Norte daquele continente foram descobertas por portugueses.
"Os portugueses andaram pela Insulíndia [zona entre o Japão e o Norte da Austrália] e terão de facto aportado à Austrália e entrado em contacto com as populações", acrescentou na altura.
Mais de um século depois da chegada do navio neerlandês, em 1770, o capitão James Cook reclamou a costa oriental da Austrália para a Coroa britânica sob o pretexto jurídico de ser "terra de ninguém", tendo permanecido uma colónia inglesa até 1901. Actualmente, a Austrália é membro da Commomwealth, sendo Isabel II de Inglaterra, formalmente, a sua Chefe de Estado.
In dn.pt
Arqueologia ao Sul
Caros colegas,
O NAP tem a honra de organizar mais uma conferência Arqueologia ao Sul, desta feita proferida pelo Dr. António Carlos Varela: Os Perdigões e os seus contextos: um olhar problematizante.
A conferência terá lugar na Universidade do Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, no Complexo Pedagógico (CP), Anfiteatro A, dia 12 de Abril pelas 17h30.
Aguardamos a Vossa presença!
NAP
terça-feira, 3 de abril de 2012
Stories Written in Stone
As far as raw materials go, chert and other knappable stone stand out as some of the most common materials in the archaeological record, and at some sites the only preserved material. They were used in almost every corner of the world, from the Palaeolithic up until today. Use of these materials even predates the appearance of our own species. Being so widespread both geographically as well as chronologically, this topic merits a global meeting of researchers to discuss and compare our findings.
This conference will cover all aspects of knapped stone raw materials from geological origin, to mining, usage, and laboratory analyses on these materials. Although we expect that there will be more focus on chert and other microcrystalline quartz varieties, we also encourage presentations related to other knappable materials such as obsidian, quartzite, rhyolite and others. Papers will be accepted on any culture or time period. Whether you are a field archaeologist, laboratory researcher, ethnographer or a modern day knapper yourself, come tell us your stories.
Main Sessions
The symposium will focus on two major themes: (1) the chaîne opératoire of knapped stone artefacts, and (2) auxilliary sciences related to lithics (in particular microcrystaline quartz).
Theme 1 - Chaîne opératoire
- Raw material exploitation strategies — mining and surface collecting
- Ancient lithic trade and economics
- Stone tool production and processing techniques
- Use-wear analyses — signs of usage on stone tools (a.k.a. traceology)
Theme 2 - Auxilliary sciences
- Microcrystaline quartz as a geological material
- Characterising lithic sources
- Lithotheques — collections of comparative raw materials
- Gemology — Microcrystaline quartz as a gemstone today and in the past
Sessions Proposals
We are pleased to invite proposals for themed sessions, round table discussions or workshops for the upcoming symposium. Sessions are invited on current issues and research in the field of microcrystaline quartz (knapped or otherwise) or knappable materials in general. Sessions may be specific to methodology, regional research, or any other theme.
More information
For more information, please visit the symposium website, or contact Otis Crandell (otis.crandell@ubbcluj.ro) or Vasile Cotiugă (vasicot@uaic.ro).
This symposium is organised by Arheoinvest – Interdisciplinary Research Platform in the Field of Archaeology, Faculty of History, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iaşi, Romania
Downloads:
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)