Structured Deposition (Archaeology)

Pozzetti, buche, piccole fosse, silos…" Le strutture in negativo neolitiche di piccole dimensioni: metodi di indagine e problemi interpretativi "Small pits, digs, holes, silos…" Neolithic small dug-out structures: research methods and interpretative issues ABSTRACT BOOK ISTITU TO ITALIANO DI PRE ISTO RIA E PROTO STO RIA 2017 -w w w.iip p.it -ISBN 9788 8604 5061 6 INCONTRI ANNUALI DI PREISTORIA E PROTOSTORIA, 3 (2017) ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI PREISTORIA E PROTOSTORIA TERZO INCONTRO ANNUALE DI PREISTORIA E PROTOSTORIA "Pozzetti, buche, piccole fosse, silos…" Le strutture in negativo neolitiche di piccole dimensioni: metodi di indagine e problemi interpretativi Firenze, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Via della Pergola 65 -8-9 maggio 2017 THIRD ANNNUAL MEETING OF PREHISTORY AND PROTOHISTORY "Small pits, digs, holes, silos…" Neolithic small dug-out structures: research methods and interpretative issues Firenze, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Via della Pergola 65 -May, 8-9 2017

In this work we highlight the existence of a long lasting tradition of ditched enclosures in Southwestern Iberia during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Actually, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, countless ditched enclosures (recintos de fosos) were built.

Despite their abundance and the huge size of some of them -over 100 ha in certain cases-, references to Iberian recintos de fosos have been scarce, partial or inaccurate in international meetings and collective works on the matter. This state of affairs can be explained in part by the traditional tendency of both Portuguese and Spanish archaeologists to isolate themselves from the surrounding European academia. Methods and techniques that had been proved to be successful in other parts of Europe were not applied until recently; e.g. aerial photographs, geophysical surveys, extensive excavations, etc.

One of the ideas we defend is that Iberian recintos de fosos must be understood in an European context, especially Neolithic causewayed enclosures. It all contrasts with traditional approaches to the problem in Iberian Archaeology, but we think is very state-of-the-art when considered in a broader academic environment. We also found that formation processes of the archaeological record were a crucial aspect of the problem which had gone partly unnoticed.

The results of our research have been very fruitful, getting a lot of attention in Portuguese and Spanish academic circles lately.

Contextual analysis provides a valuable tool to understand the diversity of ways in which ritual ties a place to the lives of a group of people. Using four case studies from the Late Neolithic off-settlement site of Toumba Kremastis Koiladas, this chapter provides an insight into the variety of activities that took place outside the residential area, many of them presumably of ceremonial/ritual character. Stratigraphy and all the finds from well defined contexts were taken into account, but further emphasis is put on pottery to show how the interplay of ritual and mundane domestic aspects of life may leave marks on an assemblage. Two of the four distinct contexts contain remains of ritualistic behaviours relating to the dead, but with obvious differences. The other two contexts are more focused on the house, with specific emphasis on storage and rubbish removal respectively.

Cornwall Archaeological Unit undertook a watching brief at Tyringham Road, Lelant, during groundworks  associated with a housing development. The most significant discovery was a pit associated with Beaker  pottery and a worked stone assemblage. An initial date on charcoal from the pit produced an Early Neolithic radiocarbon determination, reflecting much earlier activity than the pottery. Interestingly, the pit was  overlain by deposits of sandy soils which had preserved a quantity of animal bone. Animal bone rarely  survives in Cornwall’s harsh acidic soils, so a few fragments were submitted for radiocarbon dating. These produced a later medieval date, with a range from the mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth century AD.

Die hier vorgestellten Projekte des Instituts für Vor-und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie der Universität Hamburg repräsentieren das breite Spektrum vielfältiger Aktivitäten und Forschungen von Lehrenden und Studierenden, die chronologisch von der Steinzeit bis in die jüngste Vergangenheit und räumlich teils weit über Norddeutschland hinaus reichen. Feldforschungen an Land und unter Wasser, Studienprojekte, Drittmittelvorhaben, Auswertungen älterer und neuerer Grabungen, Studien zur Geschichte des Faches, Geoprospektionen, Experimentalarchäologie, Herstellungs-und Gebrauchsspurenanalysen, 3D-Mikro-skopie und digitale Modellierungen zeigen, wie vielfältig die Vor-und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie an der Universität Hamburg tätig ist. Über all dies wird in diesem Buch exemplarisch und allgemeinverständlich berichtet.

Το παρόν έργο πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας προστατεύεται κατά τις διατάξεις του ελληνικού νόμου (Ν. 2121/1993 όπως έχει τροποποιηθεί και ισχύει σήμερα) και τις διεθνείς συμβάσεις περί πνευματικής ιδιοκτησίας. Απαγορεύεται απολύτως η άνευ γραπτής άδειας του εκδότη κατά οποιοδήποτε τρόπο ή μέσο αντιγραφή, φωτοανατύπωση και εν γένει αναπαραγωγή, εκμίσθωση ή δανεισμός, μετάφραση, διασκευή, αναμετάδοση στο κοινό σε οποιαδήποτε μορφή (ηλεκτρονική, μηχανική ή άλλη) και η εν γένει εκμετάλλευση του συνόλου ή μέρους του έργου.

The site of Sarnevo in south-central Bulgaria is a Late Neolithic (late 6th millennium cal BC) pit field characterized by numerous cuts used during a relatively brief period by a nearby community to deposit a range of material culture including ceramics, animal remains, artifacts, and burnt structural debris. The patterns of deposition at Sarnevo allow us to identify a ‘ritual package’ that includes the systematic knowledge of depositional practices as well as the physical and symbolic links that
accompanied them. Thus far, Sarnevo is the only pit field in Bulgaria where numerous analyses have been brought together to investigate the prehistoric practices involved in its creation, and therefore provides a
unique opportunity to understand the elements of Neolithic rituals that were integral to creating and maintaining social life.

Our study presents a Late Neolithic enclosed settlement from Lower Bavaria. This site arouses interest not only regionally but also on a Central European level, as several phenomena emerged during this period along the Danube in Lower Bavaria that are strongly linked to the Carpathian Basin and other parts of Central Europe. In our present report, we focus on one phenomenon of the many at Riedling, the so-called structured deposits. These find assemblages are probably results of intentional selection of the material culture deposited deliberately, perhaps related to single ritual events. (also downloadabale online at http://www.hungarianarchaeology.hu/?page_id=279#post-8604)

Within the last decades, the increasing number of extensive excavation projects on neolithic settlements in Northern Greece, coupled with interdisciplinary and systematic analysis of recovered archaeological material, has contributed to the identification and understanding of structured deposits. Such deposits, also known from prehistoric sites in Northern Europe,
as well as a number of neolithic settlements in the Balkans and several Greek Bronze Age examples, appear not only to have been relatively common throughout the Neolithic, but also
fully integrated in the social, ideological and/or symbolical, as well as economic, practices of neolithic societies, highlighting their importance as an hermeneutic tool.

The term “structured deposits” describes a socially organised, acceptable and identifiable, intentional and/or selective depositional practice of different categories of archaeological
material, within and outside the boundaries of settlements, inside pits and/or ditches, in the interior of houses and other buildings and in the free spaces in between, clearly distinguished and differentiated from mundane deposits, either in terms of the selection of included material and/or in the manner of their deposition, such as inclusion of complete or intentionally destroyed artefacts, which has been interpreted as marking the “end” of certain processes, people or even social groups. This paper presents the contents of pits unearthed at the neolithic settlement of Avgi in Kastoria, aiming to identify the social processes that led to their formation. In addition, it will be attempted to re-evaluate potential different patterns of deposition, structured or mundane and utilize their hermeneutic value for the investigation and understanding of the processes (such as the differentiated, more or less enunciated, management of material culture) adopted
by the neolithic society, in order to successfully integrate the past into the present.

Este trabajo presenta las características de una de las entradas documentadas en el foso 4 de Camino de las Yeseras, la mejor conocida y estudiada hasta el momento de todos los recintos de foso del yacimiento. Como ocurre con otros recintos de foso peninsulares y europeos, las zonas de acceso o tránsito son propensas a contener depósitos estructurados o presentar un carácter más singular en la naturaleza de sus contenidos. El objetivo de este trabajo es el de contextualizar si también en este caso la secuencia de colmatación del foso per-mite confirmar reiteradas actividades antrópicas que implican una manifiesta intencionalidad en los depósitos o si los rellenos son el resultado de una colmatación por abandono. La localización y estudio de estas zonas singulares supone un acercamiento cada vez más habitual en los trabajos sobre recintos peninsulares como vía de análisis de estas estructuras, tras unos primeros años de aproximacio-nes más procesualistas y materialistas sobre el tema centradas en la capacidad de estos asentamientos para agregar población, así como el grado de complejidad social desarrollado para llevar a cabo este tipo de construc-ciones. De este modo, en una primera parte del texto se revisa la ubicación del recinto 4 así como la orientación del acceso dentro del conjunto de recintos hasta hoy conocido y en relación a la topografía natural añadiendo, a lo ya conocido en publicaciones anteriores, algunas consideraciones astronómicas a la organización del espacio y a la estructuración arquitectónica de los fosos. En una segunda parte se describen los rellenos del foso en el acceso además de las principales características de los materiales que contienen y se hace una propuesta de secuencia temporal. La interpretación final que se propone sugiere la consideración del acceso como un lugar destacado en los recintos, en torno al cual se realiza-ban determinadas prácticas de carácter simbólico en las que los animales tienen especial significado, particular-mente los perros dada la cantidad de restos y la singularidad de algunos de los depósitos relacionados con esta especie.

In the last two decades, the archaeology of Greek and Roman ritual has become one of the central research topics in international scholarship: Archaeologists, ancient historians, anthropologists, and scholars in religious studies have recognized the materiality of ancient ritual practices and its various manifestations as key scholarly themes.

While the meaning of votive statuary and so-called monumental sacred architecture or the function(s) of ‘humbler’ materials such as figurines, pottery, and lead tablets have been long studied carefully, coins recovered in ritual contexts have not yet received the attention they certainly deserve.

Our understanding of coins – as opposed to other objects used in a ritual context – is biased largely by our assumption that they function solely as currency in the context of trade and commerce. The picture that emerges from numismatic studies that place coins in their archaeological context is significantly different. A growing amount of material evidence indicates that coins played an important role in the performance of rituals and served both ceremonial and religious functions in various spheres of daily life in the Ancient Mediterranean. Thanks to their functional complexity and polyvalence, they occupied a prominent place in ancient ritual. Thus, for example, coins could symbolize or substitute actual objects, act as tokens for the pecuniary value of votive offerings, or serve as dedicatory objects in their own (monetary and/or aesthetic) right.

This international workshop aims to address the nexus of coin use and ritual practice in a diachronic approach that will cover primarily the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Discussions will include both the religious agency of coins as objects and the human involvement in the mental and practical process of symbolically charging and selecting, depositing, and finally curating coins in a sacred context. Archaeologists, numismatists, anthropologists, and historians will present their research and thus actively contribute to this timely topic.

Keynote address: David Wigg-Wolf (German Archaeological Institute)


For further information visit: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/moneyandritual

Organizers:
Stefan Krmnicek (University of Tübingen)
Ioannis Mylonopoulos (Columbia University)