Through the case study of the Shijiahe site, Tianmen, Hubei, this thesis investigates the dynamics of enclosures along the Middle Yangzi River during the third millennium BC. During the early third millennium over a dozen of enclosures were constructed in this region, earlier than elsewhere in China during this millennium. All were abandoned and some re-settled around 2000 BC, followed by another episode of abandonment. The major theoretical paradigms dominating the field are culture history and social complexity. The thesis argues that these are insufficient to fully appreciate the actual details and dynamics of the developments at the Middle Yangzi sites. As an alternative, this thesis employs a combination of approaches. A detailed practice-based analysis of the biography of Shijiahe reveals dynamics of identity formation and changes to tradition not observed before. The techniques of enclosure construction, reasons for their construction and abandonment will also be discussed. The thesis acknowledges the central importance of religion and interaction as two essential underlying currents of prehistoric lives that, in the case of China, have largely been ignored. From this angle a series of objects, such as red pottery cups, pottery pointed-bottom vessels and jade ornaments, from Shijiahe are investigated and their religious significance established. They and the practices they were used in are also mapped according to their find spots, which show the connection of Shijiahe with regions even beyond the Middle Yangzi, such as the Yellow and Huai river regions. These interactions were probably also stimulated by religious practices. The northward connections are of particular importance, as they confirm that the Yangzi, and the giant swamp of the Yunmengze in the Jianghan Plain, were formidable barriers southwards. The usually posited direction of movements from the Yellow River into the south must be challenged on the basis of this thesis, which argues for multiple directions of interaction and transmission of objects and ideas.

Ce travail de thèse, le premier pour la Sardaigne consacré entièrement à la production sur silex, offre un regard nouveau sur les assemblages en pierre taillée du Néolithique, mettant en lumière la manière dont les différentes phases de la production lithique sont mises en place, depuis l'acquisition de la matière première jusqu'à l'obtention de produits finis. Cela sur la durée et sur une aire géographique vaste. D’autre part, il permet de reconstruire le comportement des néolithiques par rapport à ce matériel et, par rapport aux autres ressources lithiques exploités durant l’arc chronologique analysé, l’obsidienne en particulier. / In Sardinia the use of siliceous raw materials for the production of chipped stone artifacts is frequent in prehistory, although to varying degrees in relation to the areas and periods analyzed. These lithotypes, characterized by different qualities, have a great variability and a wide spread over the entire region. This work presented a summary of the diachronic variations in lithic flint production during the Neolithic, focusing on the one side, to describe their typological and technological features and, on the other side, to illustrate the variations in the raw material selection behaviors occurred in this period.

This thesis focuses on the development of ceremonial landscapes of Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland, along with exploring the concept of ceremonial complexes within Scotland by looking at the patterns of development and reuse of sites and locations of ceremonial and funerary monuments built during the Neolithic through the Bronze Age. In order to accomplish this, three major ceremonial landscapes within Scotland, the Fife, southern Perth and Kinross regions; the Kilmartin Valley; and the Orkney Islands, are used as case studies. This study was conducted using site reports from the various excavations within the three case study areas, as well as using environmental studies, land use and soil maps, and topographical maps in order to understand what motivated the Neolithic communities to construct their funeral and ceremonial monuments where they did, and why the Bronze Age people either continued to use these areas or abandon them. Further, the methods of using various maps, such as land use, soil, and topographical maps, in understanding the reasons prehistoric communities had for the placement of monuments within the landscape are assessed with a discussion of the differences and similarities in the location of earlier cursus monuments and later henges. Of the sites studied within the three case studies, the majority of the Neolithic sites were found to be located on or near good arable farming land, usually near either lochs/waterways or valleys, which would have been used as routeways for travel across the landscape. During the Bronze Age, the sites follow a similar pattern with many monuments placed on or near Neolithic sites; however, several monuments were built away from earlier ones and found to be constructed on land less suited to agriculture and marginal land. These findings are mirrored within the discussion of the cursus monuments and henges, with the Early Neolithic cursus monuments located along or near waterways on arable farming land, while the later henges sited away from the cursus monuments were built in marginal locations. The positioning of these monuments along such travel routes would have made these sites important markers in the landscape for the transportation of goods and people for trade, migration, and pilgrimage as well as establishing a claim of the surrounding land for the communities who built and used them.

This research introduced a geological perspective into an archaeological setting, the Ness of Brodgar, a Middle to Late Neolithic site in the West Mainland of Orkney. Discovered in 2003, the site is located on an isthmus of land between two lochs and is equidistant between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness stone circles. The site consists of more than two dozen drystone buildings encircled by a massive wall. To date, ten per cent of the site has been excavated. This research established a systematic framework of protocols and procedures for the recovery, macro geological assessment and identification of the rock and mineral species in the non-tool, non-structural rocks, termed Foreign Stone for this research. Once identified, the frequency and distribution of the rock in the Foreign Stone finds were calculated, providing a geological basis for understanding any patterns of rock choice across the site. Integrated into a more conventional archaeological study of the Worked Stone artefacts was a systematic macro petrological analysis of these finds. Additionally, selected segments of the interior drystone walling were assessed to identify the rock in the various members. These petrologic analyses combined to provide insight into the range of rocks transported to and utilized within the site. Comparative analysis of the data from all three aspects, Foreign Stone, Worked stone and walling, was undertaken to identify trends in frequencies and patterns of use of the various rock species. Archival and more current information on the petrologic resources available within Orkney were synthesized in a gazetteer identifying the location(s) of rock outcrops and deposits. This permitted the source location(s) of many of the rocks from the Ness of Brodgar to be identified.

This thesis presents the results of zooarchaeological investigations into diet in Neolithic central Europe. The aim of these investigations was to gain a better understanding of animal carcass processing, particularly dietary decisions made concerning intensity of exploitation of meat and fat resources. The primary focus was the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, a sedentary community of farmers dating from c. 5500-4900BC in central Europe suspected to be the first society to utilise milk and its products in this region. The adoption of dairying, currently under scrutiny by the NeoMilk project, would have increased the availability of fat on settlements, and could have affected the way in which people utilised primary animal products. Using in-depth zooarchaeological analysis of butchery, fracture and fragmentation, this thesis presents a snapshot of Neolithic meat and fat exploitation. Patterns of butchery and heat exposure suggest differential cooking practices between sites, with a possible focus on nutrient retention at some, contrasted with a cultural preference for roasting at others. Intensive processing of bone fats, namely bone grease, was not detected at any site and it is likely that the domesticated LBK diet rendered this practice unnecessary to subsistence. Bone marrow was a much more commonly exploited resource, but variation was considerable between sites. It is possible that the intensification of dairying had a significant effect on the utilisation of bone marrow. Sites with the most evidence for milk use, detected through lipid residue and osteoarchaeological evidence, show less intensive exploitation of bone marrow than those with little or no evidence of dairying. This thesis therefore presents evidence of zooarchaeologically detectable dietary decisions being made in the face of adoption of new foodstuffs.

This essay is a study and analysis of the funnel beaker pottery at Gullarve 1:13 in Väte parish. The purpose of the study is to analyse the chronology of the settlement by determine the distribution, stratigraphic context and the ornamentation of the pottery. Another purpose is to discuss the geographical location of the settlement in the landscape.In this essay a short review of the pottery and the funnel beaker culture as well as a description of the pottery from the archaeological excavation from 1984 at Gullarve 1:13 is presented. Since the documentation of the archaeological excavation from 1984 is missing or is very inadequate, no spatial analysis can be carried out. The distribution of the pottery can’t contribute to the result of the essay, though if possible it probably would have provided some interesting results. A clear stratigraphic difference of pottery with ornamentation and flint is indicated. The earliest radiocarbon date of the settlement is approximately 5000 BC. The funnel beaker pottery is generally dated to 4200 BC, which suggests that the Väte settlements on Gotland are the earliest agriculture settlements in Sweden. This area provide a productive natural resource area around the settlement, including a sweet water lake and sandy soil, which indicates a typical funnel beaker settlement at Gotland. One can easily understand why the inhabitants of the early Neolithic settlement chose to live at Gullarve 7000 years ago.

My research uses a case study of Hemudu culture (7,000-5,000 BP) in eastern China to explore technological constraints of earth-working implements as a factor to explain the prolonged processes towards Neolithic agricultural land use and sedentary settlements. Early Hemudu populations lived in small villages and cultivated rice in the lowlands. They employed earth-working implements made from water buffalo scapulae; however, these implements were replaced with stone variants after 6,000 BP. These phenomena invited the following questions: (1) how did bone earth-working implements become a tradition and persist until 6,000 BP; (2) why was use of these artifacts replaced by use of stone spades; and (3) how did the choices of earth-working implements affect land use? Following ideas from Human Behavioral Ecology, Dual-Inheritance Theory, and Behavioral Archaeology, I examined bone implements' use contexts, raw material availability and procurement, costs and benefits in manufacture, techno-functional performance characteristics, and the Hemudu people's social learning strategies. These investigations involved soil science, bone and stone technologies, use-wear analysis, and zooarchaeology, along with many controlled experiments. Multiple sources of evidence led to the conclusion that the early adoption of bone spades was encouraged by scapulae's convenient morphology and acquisition, and they fulfilled the functional needs at the beginning of Kuahuqiao (8,200-7000 BP) and Hemudu exploitation of lowland environments. Frequency-dependent bias helped ensure the persistence of bone spades in Hemudu even when raw material became scarce and other artifacts would have provided marginal functional advantages. This tradition imposed significant technical and conceptual constraints that inhibited the communities from adopting other forms of agriculture and settlement construction. My research has broad implications to archaeological theories and methods for studying technological choices and our understanding of the pathways to agriculture and sedentism. It shows that although Human Behavioral Ecology and Dual-Inheritance Theory are useful for studying and interpreting technological choices, applying the framework proposed by Behavioral Archaeology helped lead to a stronger argument. Many of the analytical tools that I developed in this project can be used to investigate relevant questions in other times and cultures. My experimental designs can also be used as templates in future research.

No description available.

The main object of this thesis is to reassess critically the nature and development of the earliest metallurgy of the Greek mainland in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods (c. 4800 - c. 1900), both in its technological and socio-economic context. The aims of the research are thus to: 1) show whether or not the LN finds represent the beginnings of autonomous mainland metallurgy or whether they simply represent artefacts imported from contemporary neighbouring cultures involved in metalworking. Diffusionists regard the development of EBA metallurgy as some revolutionary break. Accumulating evidence should put the Greek mainlandindustries more into line with those from the Aegean; 2) show whether the LN industry was ancestral in some way to that of the EBA or if the development of the EBA industry was due to external influence; 3) make some chronological assessment of the initial progress of technological ability as well as the structure and organisation of metallic mineral acquisition. This will further provide data on the degrees of communication between communities and metalworking sites; and, 4) examine the socio-economic context which permitted the development of metallurgy. To achieve these aims it will be necessary to demonstrate the potential availability of copper, tin and other minerals and to show clearly through analytical techniques the range of technical skills known and mastered (especially smelting and alloying). Evidence on the relationship between metalwork, settlement, sources and the role of foreign influence will also be required. The first step was to compile a fully up-to-date catalogue of metal finds and evidence for metalworking. This was done from published material, museum collections in Greece and Britain, tracing artefacts referred to in publications but never fully described and obtaining information on artefacts from recent excavations and finds (until end 1986). This work had the effect of doubling the number of artefacts to come under study and justified taking a fresh look at the state of the industry, the range of types and techniques, and, through them, the evidence for foreign or internal relations. This was a necessary preliminary to the analytical study and the study of the contexts of the metals. No single typological study had been devoted specifically to the LN and EBA material and so one was made, devising at the same time a standard typology and comparing previous classification systems. The typological affinities of the artefacts from every sub-phase of the LN-EBA period were then studied and discussed. This study brought out the range of local types, the continuity of some types from the LN to the EBA and the evidence of foreign influence. The next task was to demonstrate that this large collection of metals could have been produced from local sources, the geological evidence for metallic minerals in Greece was reviewed and a visit was made to one of the richest mineral areas in Greece to assess the types of deposits with which we were dealing. It was demonstrated that the copper, arsenic, gold, silver and lead supplies of the mainland were more than adequate to meet the needs of the local industries in the LN and EBA. Tin was not locally availably and so an extensive review of all possible sources was carried out and two potential supply areas were designated -Yugoslavia and north west Anatolia. The analytical programme presented the chemical and lead-isotope results of over seventy mainland artefacts, attempting to interpret these results for both the technological and chronological information which they could give, formed the main part of the programme. The actual analyses were carried out, in the main, by Dr N H Gale (Oxford). To assist the interpretation of the results a review was made of the metallurgical processes used in the manufacture of copper, arsenical copper, tin bronze, lead, silver and gold. The historical background of the metal technology of the Old World was reviewed, in particular the beginnings of melting, smelting and the origins and development of alloying,in order to provide a reference with which to compare the status of the Greek mainland metallurgical industries. A brief review of the analytical techniques used then led to a full interpretation of the results themselves. The results of the lead-isotope programme demonstrated that several sources were used by both the LN and EBA metallurgies three sources were used in the LN and EBA periods - so there was some continuity of tradition. A new source was identified in the lead-isotope diagrams, though it was not geographically located. This source was used only by mainland communities and, on present evidence, it is highly likely that it is a local source. The chemical results for the mainland artefacts demonstrated that all the main techniques current in the Aegean were known and practiced on the mainland. These include smelting, alloying with arsenic tin and even lead, casting in single and double moulds, cupelling silver from lead and smelting lead as well as working gold. The Greek LN metal industry was not simply an offshoot of the Balkan industries and the EBA industry was in no way backward compared with the other industries of the Aegean. Over 200 chemical results mainly from the EBA Aegean were computed in order to obtain some new information regarding the status of the mainland industry and also to attempt a new approach to provenancing. All the computing work was carried out by Dr M Pollard (Oxford). First of all, the character of the mainland industry was assessed and then it was compared, using various computer techniques, with the industries of the Troad, the Cyclades and Crete. The result was that the mainland industry was basically quite distinct from the other three industries, though it did share several common techniques (or possibly sources) with other areas in the Aegean. Provenancing metals by chemical analyses has had little success in the past and so an attempt was made to utilise the vast bulk of chemical results available for the Aegean by devising a new approach to provenancing, employing the results themselves, lead isotope results (where available), computer cluster dendrograms and typological information, While the approach does not claim to be a general panacea for provenancing problems it did, when applied, offer a few insights into the problem and will become more effective when more lead-isotope data becomes available One of the advantages of the approach is that it provides a much needed check on the lead-isotope technique. A study of the temporal, spatial and socio-economic context of metals and the evidence for metalworking during the LN and EBA periods was quite revealing. The dating of artefacts showed that there were two main periods of increased metallurgical activity -the LN and the EBA II. Metalworking started in northern and southern Greece at roughly the same time, though there is more evidence for metals in northern Greece during the LN and in central and south west Greece during the EBA II and III. The relative distribution of different types of metals demonstrated that copper was always the main metal used, though lead and silver were restricted to southern Greece and gold was found mainly in northern Greece. The distribution of different types showed that weapons were most often found in central Greece, tools in northern Greece and tools and jewellery in southern Greece. Both artefacts and the evidence for metalworking tended always to be located on land routes or close to the sea. Most of the finds come from settlement sites, with grave finds being important only in central Greece.

This is a regional synthesis, which draws together a wide range of data concerning the Neolithic and Copper Age in the Abruzzo-Marche region (c. 5750-2050 Cal. BC), and examines it in the light of contemporary archaeological methods and theories and current topics of debate within Mediterranean prehistory. In Chapter 1 a new chronological framework is established, using radiocarbon, stratigraphic and typological dating methods. Five main chronological phases are defined, namely the early, middle and late Neolithic, the final Neolithic/early Copper Age, and the middle-late Copper Age. Chapter 2 provides a generalized reconstruction of the Neothermal environment, and changes in it, based upon present-day and prehistoric data from central Italy. An increasingly unstable ecological situation may have developed on the coastal lowlands during the Copper Age. In Chapter 3 changing patterns of settlement and subsistence are examined within four major geographical zones. These patterns remain similar to those previously identified by Barker, although new details and interpretations are provided, concerning, for example, colonization, settlement infilling and cattle breeding. Chapter 4 examines changes in the nature, scale and direction of networks of communication and exchange. The emergence of certain sites as regional nodes of production, consumption and exchange is charted, and developments in long-distance ceremonial gift-exchange and alliance systems are also proposed. Chapter 5 considers mortuary practices, which were performed in residential sites, caves and special-purpose burial sites. Neolithic rites may have expressed concern over group unity, structural divisions in society and the threats of death and economic misfortune, whereas Copper Age transformations might be understood in terms of growing social advertisement. In Chapter 6 these different themes are drawn together, along with a greater emphasis upon social factors and intra-regional variation. The development of certain sites as social and economic centres is, in particular, given further consideration. Suggestions for future research are made throughout the thesis, with reference to limitations in the existing body of data.