Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (DPhil (Cultural History))--University of Pretoria, 2001. / Historical and Heritage Studies / unrestricted

A series of recent excavations on the 2nd Century AD Antonine frontier forts of the Midland Scottish valley, have produced results which suggest that the army was making its own pottery on an appreciable scale. This was at a time when pottery production was thought to have moved almost exclusively into civilian hands. The possible local ware groups identified by the excavations were largely independent of firm source indicators such as kiln and waster material and the number of available samples was often-small. A program of Neutron Activation and Thin Section petrological analyses was undertaken along with an investigation into Textural Analysis, a facet of the Petrological toolkit. The aim was both to define the site ware groups and a group of specialist vessels thought to be local to Scotland, the Mortaria, and to make statements as to their provenance. Although the Mortaria analysis was limited by problems of sample group size and availability, by improving the objectivity of the statistical handling of the derived data sets and developing methods for the high level study of textural data, the site ware groups were defined successfully at both the "intrall and "inter" site levels. The analyses also furnished interpretations as to the mode and nature of the site production schemes. Through the full analysis of' site Daub samples linked to more traditional provenancing techniques, in all but one case the ware groups could be assigned to the source sites, where contrasting production modes could be identified with military as opposed to civilian production. / SERC

This paper deals with the ceramics of Alvastra pile dwelling. The main question are what the ceramics represent, what it was used for, if it was manufactured in the pile dwelling and if there is any resemblance to other places of interest. The essay uses ceramic material from shaft F and the Western shaft. The result shows four different ceramic groups, a few probably made in the pile dwelling and the purpose was food storage and offering.

No / Gas chromatography (GC), GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and GC-combustion-isotope ratio MS (GC-C-IRMS) analyses of absorbed and surface lipid residues preserved in potsherds were used to explore the extent of pig product processing exploitation in the later British Neolithic Grooved Ware tradition. Assessments were made regarding whether porcine lipids were associated with specific Grooved Ware traits, i.e. decoration, substyle, geographical area and type of site. Two hundred and twenty-two Grooved Ware potsherds were analysed, 70% of which contained lipid concentrations considered significant (>5 μg g−1). All the lipid residues were dominated by animal fats, although plant and beeswax were also detected in a small number of extracts. δ13C values of the major fatty acid components of degraded animal fats (C16:0 and C18:0) were determined for 126 extracts and used to assign ruminant or porcine origins to the residues; 16% of these were found to have a predominantly porcine isotope signature. Statistical associations with pig exploitation were shown to exist with substyle, geographical area and site type, whereas, no relationship was seen between decoration and the type of commodity processed. Intact triacylglycerols were preserved in 19% of the sherds; half of these had distributions consistent with the identifications based on δ13C values, the remainder differed either due to the presence of mixed commodities or because lower molecular weight homologues had been lost due to degradation. In addition to the detection of pig exploitation, results from lipid residue analysis showed a good correlation with faunal assemblages, suggesting that stable isotope analysis may be used as a proxy for animal exploitation at sites where bones have not survived.

This thesis deals mainly with the Middle Neolithic period (ca. 3200-2300 BC) on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The aim is to deepen the understanding of how the islanders related to their surroundings, to the landscape, to places, to objects, to animals and to humans, both living and dead. The archaeological material is studied downwards and up with a focus on practices, especially the handling and deposition of materials and objects in graves, within sites and in the landscape. The study is comparative and the Middle Neolithic is described in relation to the Early Neolithic and the Mesolithic period on the island. From a long term perspective the island is presented as a region where strong continuity can be identified, regarding both way of life and economy. In contrast, substantial changes did occur through time regarding the islander’s conceptions of the world and of social relations. This in turn affected the way they looked upon the landscape, different sites and animals, as well as other human beings. During the Mesolithic, the islanders first saw it as possible to create their world, their micro-cosmos, wherever they were, and they saw themselves as living in symbiosis with seals. With time, though, they started to relate, to connect and to identify themselves with the island, its landscape and its material, with axe sites and a growing group identity as results. The growing group identity culminated during the Early Neolithic with a dualistic conception of the world and with ritualised depositions in border zones. The Middle Neolithic is presented as a period when earlier boundaries were dissolved. This concerned, for example, boundaries towards the world around the islanders and they were no longer keeping themselves to their own sphere. At the same time individuals became socially important. It became accepted and also vital to give expression to personal identity, which was done through objects, materials and animals. Despite this, group identity continued to be an important part in their lives. This is most evident through the specific Pitted Ware sites, where the dead were also treated and buried. These places were sites for ritual and social practices, situated in visible, central and easy accessible locations, like gates in and out of the islands’ different areas. The dead were very important for the islanders. In the beginning of MN B they started to adopt aspects from the Battle Axe culture, but they never embraced Battle Axe grave customs. Instead they held on to the Pitted Ware way of dealing with the dead and buried, and to the Pitted Ware sites, through the whole period, with large burial grounds as a result.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1986. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 482-490. / William Robert Ware (1832- 1915) planned and directed the first collegiate program in architectural education i n the United States. He was educated in the liberal arts and civil engineering at Harvard University and received further training in architects' offices before entering into practice with Henry Van Brunt (1832-1903). In 1865 Ware was appointed to the newly established Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He remained on the faculty until 1881, when he was called to Columbia University to organize still another collegiate program in architecture. During 1866-67, Ware traveled in Europe, paying particular attention to the role of national schools and professional organizations in the teaching of architecture in Britain and France. Formal instruction in architecture at M.I.T. began in the fall of 1868. Ware devised a curriculum, which he adjusted throughout the 1870s, including drawing and design, architectural history, and construction and practice (i . e., building materials and components, specifications, and contracts). In the spring of 1872, he recruited Eugene Letang (1842-1892), an alumnus of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, to teach design. From this time on, the routine studio problems at M.I.T. began to emulate those of the Ecole, and the eclectic neoclassicism of the Beaux-Arts began to predominate in students' drawings. The Department of Architecture at M.I.T. in these earliest years functioned best in providing a one- or two-year course of special study for persons who were graduates of four-year colleges or who had some experience in architects' offices. It also served to prepare Americans for the formal or informal study they intended to pursue in Paris. Ware's department offered, in effect, a postgraduate program, a program in continuing education, and a preparatory program for advanced study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. By virtue of its location in cosmopolitan Boston, the M.I.T. Department of Architecture emerged in the 1870s as the preeminent American collegiate program, attracting more students from more diverse parts of the country than the other important early programs at Cornell University and the University of Illinois. Ware trained some 235 students at M.I.T., and many of them became the leaders in architecture and architectural education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. / by John Andrew Chewning. / Ph.D.

The thesis identifies and discusses some fundamental changes that took place during the middle neolithic period in Sweden, with the introduction of the Boat Axe Culture. The possibility of intrepreting the Corded Ware Cultures by way of networks, identified through the regional designes of battle axes, are proposed. With the aid of a reconsideration of the typology of the Swedish boat axes, ethnographic examples of gift-exchanges, and a theoretical reappraisal of the implications of archaeological praxis for prehistorc life-worlds, new possibillities for interpreting the changing role of such prestige items as the boat-axes are presented. A new chronological scheme is also presented for the Swedish boat axes, with a tripartite division of the latter middle neolithic into MN BI-III. The value of the boat axe is further considered to be explicable only in terms of a prestige item, dependent on a system of exchange for its continual valuation. Central to this discussion is the relationship between value and exchange. Several regions within the Swedish Boat Axe Culture are identified, and the boat axes in two of these regions in the southern part of the Mälar valley are thoroughly examined. It is shown that during the cours of the Boat Axe period, the emphasis gradually changed from a regional to an intra-regional focus concerning the development of types and special designes of the boat axes. Identified similarities and dissimilarities of contemporary boat axes within and between regions are explained as a result of a parallel change in gift exchanges, from a regional focus to an intra-regional focus. An hierarchical ordering of the latter middle neolithic soceity is also identified, where only a portion of the boat-axes were selected as burial gifts. This development is chartered onto the broader neolithic development in Sweden, with special focus on the role of prestige items such as battle axes. A fundamental change is identified as taking place during the Boat Axe period, when the full implications of a prestige economy were implemented and the major strategies for power settled on the inter-regional level.

The nature of the relationship between the Pitted Ware Culture and the Boat Axe Culture has dominated Swedish Middle Neolithic research, since the question was raised a century ago. Basically, the debate is concerned with whether or not the two material cultures express two different ethnical groups. Proponents for the currently established perspective stress that the cultures represent two distinct ethnic groups. A large amount of research has focused on identifying differences between the two cultures in the archaeological record. This study will test an alternative approach to the archaeology of the Middle Neolithic. Rather than presuming an antithetical relationship between the two cultures attention will be given to investigating the relationship between the Pitted Ware Culture and the Boat Axe Culture. This will be done by a landscape centered approach. In the first case I will test the conventional opinion expressing that the two cultures are spatially separated to the coast and the inland. In addition, the analysis seeks to understand how different activities were located in relation to various landscape phenomena. In the second case study, phenomenology and current landscape theory combined with a viewshed GIS-analysis will form the basis for a discussion regarding the localisation and function of the Pitted Ware sites. In the third case I will discuss connective features of the Middle Neolithic landscapes in the Lake Hjälmaren area. Focus will be given to the long-term processes and the reproduction of the cultural landscapes over time. Based on the results, I will propose that the Middle Neolithic archaeological record, rather than being the result of two ethnic groups, express a dynamic and active society that manifests itself through a variety of different places, which were maintained for specific purposes.

In this essay the author has chosen to analyze the similarities and differences between some of the northern Europe’s late Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures. The research is of a processual standpoint and the information is mainly gathered from secondary sources as well as ethnological studies. The material collected has been analyzed in both a processual and a post-processual manner to most accurately study the foundations of the three primary theories describing the Pitted Ware Culture’s origin. During the course of the study the author also found a possible fourth alternative, and the possibility of exogamy as a factor in the emerge of the Pitted Ware Culture has also been questioned. This work has prompted for a rigorous collection of information to be able to properly present all theories strong and weak points, without bias for any theory. The conclusion of these studies is that it is very hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that has given the Pitted Ware Culture its typical cultural traits, although a possible sequence of events has been presented in this text.

Analysis of organic residue absorbed in to the walls of ceramic vessels has proved to be a valuable contributor to the knowledge of prehistoric societies. Based on the analysis of absorbed lipids in the wall of ceramic vessels and existing knowledge and theories about the Pitted Ware culture, an attempt of understanding of the Pitted Ware site Vendel is made. Based on the obtained results and evidences presented throughout the paper it is argued that the Vendel site is a permanent or seasonal settlement, and furthermore that the results seem to reflect a change in vessel use towards the end of the Pitted Ware Culture, and possibly even a change of society, ideology and economy.