Archaeology, Society and Environment

ASE - ISSN 2752-4507 - © ISTE Ltd

Journal issues

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Recent articles

Presentation

This special issue of the journal Archéologie, société et environnement (vol. 3, no 1) is dedicated to the publication of the proceedings of the international meeting entitled "Journées Bois. Échanges interdisciplinaires sur le bois et les sociétés" held on October 18 and 19, 2021 at the INHA in Paris. The aim of these days was to bring together all approaches to the study of wood, with no geographical barriers, no chronological limits, whatever the discipline.

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Editorial. Journées Bois: Interdisciplinary Meeting on Wood and Societies

This editorial note introduces the publication of the proceedings of the international meeting entitled "Journées bois: Interdisciplinary Meeting on Wood and Societies" organized on October 18th and 19th, 2021 at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. Over these two days, thirty-three oral communications and nine posters were presented by researchers and students in the natural sciences and humanities, as well as architects, engineers and craftspeople, on four different themes : i) methods and techniques for studying wood in archaeological contexts, ii) wood resources, climate and societies – reconstructing environments and interactions, iii) wood craftsmen, and iv) wood in societies – analysing woodworking techniques. The aim of these days was to bring together all the possible different approaches to studying and working with wood, without any geographical barriers or chronological limits, no matter the discipline involved. These proceedings comprise twenty-two papers based on oral contributions and posters presented at the Journées Bois.

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Wood in a unexpected state. Traces of neolithic and protohistoric installations in pits and ditches of acid and well-drained silty soils (Middle Belgium and northern France)

Neolithic settlement structures and protohistoric burials on well-drained and deeply decarbonated silts have revealed blackish horizontal laminated traces that we have called dark clayey laminations. Micromorphology and botany allow us to relate them to wood in specific anthropic installations and contexts (ovens, pits, tombs, ditches, etc.). Archaeo-pedological and botanical studies had made it possible to specify the diversified nature of these installations, their function and their mode of conservation. A new study of some of the thin sections by a botanist and micromorphologist brings some insights that are more precise.

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A blade to cleave wood/antler: how to work hard materials of vegetal and animal origin in the Lower Magdalenian (Taillis des Coteaux, Vienne, France)?

During the Upper Palaeolithic, the boom in the work of bone materials reflects a diversity of techniques for its implementation. Splitting is part of this technological diversity, in the same way as grooves and splitting, these two techniques consisting in extracting elongated supports. Because it often went unnoticed, the evidence of splitting during the Magdalenian period is rare. Our study allowed us to examine its presence among the technical practices dedicated to the bone industry for this period, by questioning its methods of application and its links with the vegetal sphere. Wood is sometimes exceptionally preserved for the Magdalenian and almost absent at the Taillis des Coteaux (Vienne). The use of splitting allows us to indirectly approach the idea of a technical interaction of hard materials from the vegetal and animal worlds. We propose in this article a new look at this technical choice, by studying it in a systemic way around the different materials involved, using a technical and structural analysis of the tools, coupled with the results of the very first experimental tests that we drove. This part of the work made it possible to recognize splitting actions in the Early Magdalenian levels of the Taillis des Coteaux (17,500–16,900 BP) and to describe stigmata left on the debitage waste and the potential tools used.

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Contribution of ¹⁴C wiggle-matching to dendroarchaeology of coastal Birnirk and Thule sites in northern Alaska

Along the coast of Northern Alaska, wood remains from Birnirk and Thule archaeological sites are extremely well-preserved and have the potential to document climatic variations and cultural transformations in the early 2nd millennium CE in northwest Alaska. In this treeless coastal tundra, the primary wood resource is driftwood that come from the boreal forest carried by major interior rivers and ocean currents. While in northern Alaska, some Birnirk and Thule archaeological wood samples can be dated using the rare existing millennial tree ring master chronologies, many come from geographical areas where tree-ring master chronologies are too short (250-300 years). Here, we explore the potential of high-resolution wiggle-matching to accurately date tree-ring series that cannot be dated by conventional dendrochronology and develop preliminary tree-ring chronologies. We present the wiggle-matching results based on 75 radiocarbon dates for eight archaeological timbers from the Piġniq, Rising Whale and Pingusugruk coastal sites in northern Alaska. Wiggle-matching makes it possible to reduce the calendrical interval of these timbers’ last growth ring from centennial to decadal range and position 22 timbers in calendar time. These results open new insights into tree-ring dating of others Birnirk and Thule architectural treering samples and analyzing climatic variations of the early 2nd millennium CE, in different regions of Alaska.

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Editorial. Archaeological carbonates: the memory of water

This text introduces the publication of the symposium "Archaeological carbonates, the memory of water" which was held at the MSH "Mondes" in Nanterre, France. This meeting gathered nine papers around the notion of "archaeological carbonates" studied in various contexts (caves, aqueducts, baths) and in a wide geographical area. Identified since Antiquity as reveal some historical texts of ancient authors (Vitruvius, Pliny the Elder, Strabo), carbonate deposits are relatively common in hydraulic structures associated with calcium saturated waters. Following the pioneering study of the carbonates of the ancient aqueduct of Nîmes in the 1990’s, different works combining different paleo-environmental and geoarchaeological approaches have recently completed the panel of studies of these archaeological carbonates. This special publication of the journal Archéologie, Sociétés et Environnement highlights the great interest of studying these carbonate deposits preserved in an archaeological context, true sedimentary archives of human activities and water managements by past human societies.

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Concretions in votive contexts of mineral waters: the Roman coins of Cuntis (Pontevedra, Spain)

Archaeological evidence testifies to the importance of the thermal town of Cuntis (Spain) in Roman times, an aspect that also appears to be reflected in literary sources and in its own toponym. The importance of the beneficial and cultual use of these thermal waters in Roman times is evidenced by the presence of collection wells located in the center of the village of Santa María de Cuntis, in the Burga or ‘Fuego de Dios’. It is the main collection system for the hot springs that supply the current spa, but also because it is a site steeped in an important historical tradition. In 1908, during the cleaning of this well, some objects were discovered and distributed among the neighbors, but by chance some of them were deposited in the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Ourense where they were recently identified. Among them, a key, a knife and some coins that have been altered by the action of mineral-medicinal waters from this source. In this work, we present this discovery, as well as we propose a first approach to the archaeometric study of these concretions, with the interest of evaluating how the different types of water affect the conservation and modification of the archaeological objects preserved in these thermal environments.

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The carbonate deposits of the Poitiers-Fleury aqueduct (Vouneuil-sous-Biard, 86): an unstable hydro-sedimentary dynamic recording?

Archaeological investigations conducted on an ancient aqueduct supplying the antique town of Poitiers, western France, in the municipality of Vouneuil-sous-Biard (86), has uncovered a 20 cm thick calcitic crust on walls of a buried channel. Two types of facies alternate in this crust. In the lower crust laminae are mostly comparable to speleothems that would be derived from relatively pure karstic waters. The mid and upper parts of the crust are influenced by microbial communities and probably derived from capture of surface streams rich in organic matter. The δ18O and δ13C values of these two facies, formed in a dark drain with little seasonal temperature variation, are intermediate between those expected for pure speleothems and tufa deposits. Alternance of very thin dark and light laminae exist, especially at the base of the crust. This may represent annual growths, but isotopic and petrographic existing data do not prove this hypothesis which would need further geochemical investigations.

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Origins, development and evidence of cleaning of the limestone concretions during the use of the Gallo-Roman aqueduct of Divona-Cahors (Lot)

The archaeological excavations carried out on the aqueduct that supplied the Gallo-Roman city of Cahors (Divona) have discovered sections partially filled with carbonate deposits. These deposits present a laminated facies and variations in thickness along the way of the aqueduct. The recent study of a sequence of deposits 28 cm thick presented here demonstrates the ancient maintenance of the hydraulic structure by identifying anthropic traces of cleaning, sometimes followed by re-capping with hydraulic mortar, in the sedimentary sequences.

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Carbonated concretions from the Gallo-Roman aqueducts of Villenoy (Seine-et-Marne, France) and the Suippe at Reims (Marne, France): petrographic study and questioning the origin of the recorded sequences

The recent archaeological study of two Roman aqueducts located in northern Gaul at Villenoy near Meaux (Seine-et-Marne) and Reims (Marne) was accompanied by a macroscopic and microscopic analysis of the carbonate concretions located on the sidewalls of the water channel. The sequencing of these concretions, although not very thick, allows us to retrace parts of the history of the aqueducts. For the aqueduct of Villenoy, the petrographic study confirms the chronological succession of two major phases and two types of operating modes. In the case of the aqueduct of Reims, it forces us to question the very short time recorded in the preserved concretions.