Archaeologically monitored excavations in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh uncovered diverse remains da... more Archaeologically monitored excavations in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh uncovered diverse remains dating from prehistory to the First World War. The stratigraphic sequence included pits created in the middle of the Bronze Age, Early Historic features and deposits, a series of medieval surfaces, a section of the Flodden Wall and post-medieval building foundations. The Early Historic features provide rare evidence for Edinburgh’s development prior to the 12th century and form the focus of this article. Several features, created during the Anglian occupation of the Lothians, suggest the presence of a settlement between the late 6th and early 10th centuries ad, overlooked and possibly servicing a high status site on Castle Rock. The evidence is compared to archaeological results from other settlements formerly within the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia (Northumbria). Deposits over a structure were radiocarbon dated to the 11th–12th century, when the region was under Scottish control. Associate...
Résumé/Abstract This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironm... more Résumé/Abstract This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for the contextualization of human activity at the site of Domuztepe, southeast Turkey. The data come from cores excavated on a series of transects centered on the höyük and from samples collected for paleoenvironmental assessment and radiocarbon dating. The results indicate that the site is situated on an alluvial plain of some stratigraphic complexity. Deep (up to 9 m) sediment sequences consisting of peats, marls, silts, clays, ...
Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehi... more Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland and Britain. Typically Middle–Late Bronze Age in age (although both earlier and later examples are known), they are artefact-poor and rarely associated with settlements. The function of these sites has been much debated with the most commonly cited uses being for cooking, as steam baths or saunas, for brewing, tanning, or textile processing. A number of major infrastructural development schemes in Ireland in the years 2002–2007 revealed remarkable numbers of these mounds often associated with wood-lined troughs, many of which were extremely well-preserved. This afforded an opportunity to investigate them as landscape features using environmental techniques – specifically plant macrofossils and charcoal, pollen, beetles, and multi-element analyses. This paper summarises the results from eight sites from Ireland and compares them with burnt mound sites in Great ...
Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehi... more Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland and Britain. Typically Middle–Late Bronze Age in age (although both earlier and later examples are known), they are artefact-poor and rarely associated with settlements. The function of these sites has been much debated with the most commonly cited uses being for cooking, as steam baths or saunas, for brewing, tanning, or textile processing. A number of major infrastructural development schemes in Ireland in the years 2002–2007 revealed remarkable numbers of these mounds often associated with wood-lined troughs, many of which were extremely well-preserved. This afforded an opportunity to investigate them as landscape features using environmental techniques – specifically plant macrofossils and charcoal, pollen, beetles, and multi-element analyses. This paper summarises the results from eight sites from Ireland and compares them with burnt mound sites in Great ...
This paper describes preliminary work on the environmental and archaeological potential of the
Ce... more This paper describes preliminary work on the environmental and archaeological potential of the Cetina River Valley, Croatia. Two seasons of fieldwork and assessment have suggested that the valley contains a preserved landscape, much of which is waterlogged. It is clear that there is the potential to address many local and regional questions concerning land use, subsistence and environmental change in an area where previously only limited environmental archaeology has been undertaken. One pressing issue is how to prospect for both cultural and environmental archaeological deposits within this regional landscape. This is especially true in cases where little ‘base-line data’ exists. This paper outlines the current practice and suggests a number of new approaches to prospecting for environmental ‘hotspots
This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for t... more This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for the contextualization of human activity at the site of Domuztepe, southeast Turkey. The data come from cores excavated on a series of transects centered on the höyük and from samples collected for paleoenvironmental assessment and radiocarbon dating. The results indicate that the site is situated on an alluvial plain of some stratigraphic complexity. Deep (up to 9 m) sediment sequences consisting of peats, marls, silts, clays, ...
Approximately sixty years of survey and excavation have revealed the presence of extensive burial... more Approximately sixty years of survey and excavation have revealed the presence of extensive burial cairns, particularly in the north of Qatar, indicating that this monument class may number in the tens of thousands. While excavation demonstrates that many of the mounds date between 300 BC and AD 300, more recently the chronology of these monuments has been extended to the fifth millennium BC, suggesting that they reflect mortuary practices over a much longer period than previously thought. As the majority of mounds have been disturbed in antiquity, where possible this paper focuses on undisturbed examples representative of the currently known range of burial types. Where the same burial typology is evidenced from several excavations, representative examples have been cited with a preference for unpublished (and as a result) less accessible literature. These representative examples are used to propose a typology for the future classification of burials in Qatar and to address research priorities that could form the basis of a National Research Framework for the future excavation and study of these monuments.
In December 2011 the Qatar National Historic Environment Record (QNHER), Qatar Museum Authority, ... more In December 2011 the Qatar National Historic Environment Record (QNHER), Qatar Museum Authority, and University of Birmingham, collaborated with Texas A&M University–Qatar (TAMUQ) to visualize sea-level change and its effects on patterns of human occupation on a site-specific level. These data were derived from extensive coring and subsurface modelling in Wādī Debayān, north-western Qatar. During prehistory, the wadi would have been subject to dynamic periods of environmental change. This has been related to two periods of dramatic sea-level rise during the Holocene geological epoch (12,000 BP to the present era). Evidence from other sites in Qatar indicates that these two episodes may have reached ‘highstands’ of between 1 and 3 m above modern sea level. Visualizing the prehistoric environment of the wadi presents an important opportunity to test several assumptions about past environments and contributes to ongoing research aims. Immersive visualization allows the examination of the dramatic effects that dynamic environmental change would have had on past populations and prehistoric environments in the Arabian Gulf. This tool not only has applications for academic research but also for providing easy public access to the results of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research. There are important benefits for schools, universities, and museums, where visual representation can convey concepts more readily than descriptive narrative.
Archaeologically monitored excavations in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh uncovered diverse remains da... more Archaeologically monitored excavations in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh uncovered diverse remains dating from prehistory to the First World War. The stratigraphic sequence included pits created in the middle of the Bronze Age, Early Historic features and deposits, a series of medieval surfaces, a section of the Flodden Wall and post-medieval building foundations. The Early Historic features provide rare evidence for Edinburgh’s development prior to the 12th century and form the focus of this article. Several features, created during the Anglian occupation of the Lothians, suggest the presence of a settlement between the late 6th and early 10th centuries ad, overlooked and possibly servicing a high status site on Castle Rock. The evidence is compared to archaeological results from other settlements formerly within the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia (Northumbria). Deposits over a structure were radiocarbon dated to the 11th–12th century, when the region was under Scottish control. Associate...
Résumé/Abstract This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironm... more Résumé/Abstract This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for the contextualization of human activity at the site of Domuztepe, southeast Turkey. The data come from cores excavated on a series of transects centered on the höyük and from samples collected for paleoenvironmental assessment and radiocarbon dating. The results indicate that the site is situated on an alluvial plain of some stratigraphic complexity. Deep (up to 9 m) sediment sequences consisting of peats, marls, silts, clays, ...
Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehi... more Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland and Britain. Typically Middle–Late Bronze Age in age (although both earlier and later examples are known), they are artefact-poor and rarely associated with settlements. The function of these sites has been much debated with the most commonly cited uses being for cooking, as steam baths or saunas, for brewing, tanning, or textile processing. A number of major infrastructural development schemes in Ireland in the years 2002–2007 revealed remarkable numbers of these mounds often associated with wood-lined troughs, many of which were extremely well-preserved. This afforded an opportunity to investigate them as landscape features using environmental techniques – specifically plant macrofossils and charcoal, pollen, beetles, and multi-element analyses. This paper summarises the results from eight sites from Ireland and compares them with burnt mound sites in Great ...
Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehi... more Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland and Britain. Typically Middle–Late Bronze Age in age (although both earlier and later examples are known), they are artefact-poor and rarely associated with settlements. The function of these sites has been much debated with the most commonly cited uses being for cooking, as steam baths or saunas, for brewing, tanning, or textile processing. A number of major infrastructural development schemes in Ireland in the years 2002–2007 revealed remarkable numbers of these mounds often associated with wood-lined troughs, many of which were extremely well-preserved. This afforded an opportunity to investigate them as landscape features using environmental techniques – specifically plant macrofossils and charcoal, pollen, beetles, and multi-element analyses. This paper summarises the results from eight sites from Ireland and compares them with burnt mound sites in Great ...
This paper describes preliminary work on the environmental and archaeological potential of the
Ce... more This paper describes preliminary work on the environmental and archaeological potential of the Cetina River Valley, Croatia. Two seasons of fieldwork and assessment have suggested that the valley contains a preserved landscape, much of which is waterlogged. It is clear that there is the potential to address many local and regional questions concerning land use, subsistence and environmental change in an area where previously only limited environmental archaeology has been undertaken. One pressing issue is how to prospect for both cultural and environmental archaeological deposits within this regional landscape. This is especially true in cases where little ‘base-line data’ exists. This paper outlines the current practice and suggests a number of new approaches to prospecting for environmental ‘hotspots
This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for t... more This article discusses the potential value of geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data for the contextualization of human activity at the site of Domuztepe, southeast Turkey. The data come from cores excavated on a series of transects centered on the höyük and from samples collected for paleoenvironmental assessment and radiocarbon dating. The results indicate that the site is situated on an alluvial plain of some stratigraphic complexity. Deep (up to 9 m) sediment sequences consisting of peats, marls, silts, clays, ...
Approximately sixty years of survey and excavation have revealed the presence of extensive burial... more Approximately sixty years of survey and excavation have revealed the presence of extensive burial cairns, particularly in the north of Qatar, indicating that this monument class may number in the tens of thousands. While excavation demonstrates that many of the mounds date between 300 BC and AD 300, more recently the chronology of these monuments has been extended to the fifth millennium BC, suggesting that they reflect mortuary practices over a much longer period than previously thought. As the majority of mounds have been disturbed in antiquity, where possible this paper focuses on undisturbed examples representative of the currently known range of burial types. Where the same burial typology is evidenced from several excavations, representative examples have been cited with a preference for unpublished (and as a result) less accessible literature. These representative examples are used to propose a typology for the future classification of burials in Qatar and to address research priorities that could form the basis of a National Research Framework for the future excavation and study of these monuments.
In December 2011 the Qatar National Historic Environment Record (QNHER), Qatar Museum Authority, ... more In December 2011 the Qatar National Historic Environment Record (QNHER), Qatar Museum Authority, and University of Birmingham, collaborated with Texas A&M University–Qatar (TAMUQ) to visualize sea-level change and its effects on patterns of human occupation on a site-specific level. These data were derived from extensive coring and subsurface modelling in Wādī Debayān, north-western Qatar. During prehistory, the wadi would have been subject to dynamic periods of environmental change. This has been related to two periods of dramatic sea-level rise during the Holocene geological epoch (12,000 BP to the present era). Evidence from other sites in Qatar indicates that these two episodes may have reached ‘highstands’ of between 1 and 3 m above modern sea level. Visualizing the prehistoric environment of the wadi presents an important opportunity to test several assumptions about past environments and contributes to ongoing research aims. Immersive visualization allows the examination of the dramatic effects that dynamic environmental change would have had on past populations and prehistoric environments in the Arabian Gulf. This tool not only has applications for academic research but also for providing easy public access to the results of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research. There are important benefits for schools, universities, and museums, where visual representation can convey concepts more readily than descriptive narrative.
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Papers by Emma Tetlow
Cetina River Valley, Croatia. Two seasons of fieldwork and assessment have suggested that
the valley contains a preserved landscape, much of which is waterlogged. It is clear that there is
the potential to address many local and regional questions concerning land use, subsistence and
environmental change in an area where previously only limited environmental archaeology has
been undertaken. One pressing issue is how to prospect for both cultural and environmental
archaeological deposits within this regional landscape. This is especially true in cases where little
‘base-line data’ exists. This paper outlines the current practice and suggests a number of new
approaches to prospecting for environmental ‘hotspots
Cetina River Valley, Croatia. Two seasons of fieldwork and assessment have suggested that
the valley contains a preserved landscape, much of which is waterlogged. It is clear that there is
the potential to address many local and regional questions concerning land use, subsistence and
environmental change in an area where previously only limited environmental archaeology has
been undertaken. One pressing issue is how to prospect for both cultural and environmental
archaeological deposits within this regional landscape. This is especially true in cases where little
‘base-line data’ exists. This paper outlines the current practice and suggests a number of new
approaches to prospecting for environmental ‘hotspots