Archaeology

Among the grandest and most controversial proposals for a holistic, cross-disciplinary prehistory for humanity is the hypothesis that it was the adoption of agriculture that lay behind the dispersals of the world’s greatest language families. Conspicuous by its absence from this debate, however, is one of humanity’s rare independent hearths of agriculture and ‘pristine’ civilisation development: the Central Andes.

Here we look to this region’s little-known linguistic prehistory, particularly the initial expansions of its two major indigenous language families, Quechua and Aymara. We then set these scenarios alongside archaeological evidence on where, when and how agriculture originated there. The different time-depths of these processes appear to preclude any simplistic cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

Yet we go on to identify significant idiosyncrasies in the origins and development of food production in the Andes, which call for a number of refinements to the basic agriculture—language dispersals hypothesis. These are framed within a generalising principle able to reconcile the appealing explanatory power of the hypothesis at great time-depths with a reining-in of any claims to unique and universal applicability in more recent times. The Andean case ends up transformed — an exception that more proves the rule than refutes it.

The sanctuary on the island of Keros takes the form of deposits of broken marble vessels and figurines, probably brought severally for deposition from elsewhere in the Cyclades. These acts of devotion have now been accurately dated, thanks to Bayesian analyses of the contemporary stratigraphic sequence on the neighbouring islet of Dhaskalio. The period of use precedes any identified worship of gods in the Aegean and is among the earliest ritual destinations only accessible by sea. The authors offer some preliminary thoughts on the definition of these precocious acts of pilgrimage.

The Settlement at Dhaskalio is the first volume in the series The Sanctuary on Keros: Excavations at Dhaskalio and Dhaskalio Kavos, 2006-2008, edited by Colin Renfrew, Olga Philaniotou, Neil Brodie, Giorgos Gavalas and Michael Boyd. Here the findings are presented from the well-stratified settlement of Dhaskalio, today an islet near the Cycladic island of Keros, Greece. A series of radiocarbon dates situates the duration of the settlement from around 2750 to 2300 BC. The volume begins with a discussion of the geological setting of Keros and of sea-level change, concluding that Dhaskalio was in the third millennium BC linked to Keros by a narrow causeway. The excavation and finds (excluding the pottery, discussed in later volumes) are fully documented, with consideration of stratigraphy, geomorphology, organic remains, and the evidence for metallurgy. It is concluded that there was a small permanent population of around 20, increased periodically by up to 400 visitors who would have participated in the rituals of deposition occurring at the Sanctuary at Kavos, situated opposite, on Keros itself, for which the detailed evidence (including abundant fragmented pottery, marble vessels and sculptures) will be presented in Volumes II and III.