Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology (QEG)
QEG at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress in Dublin
Jamie Woodward and Mike Morley presented invited papers at the 6th World Archaeological Congress in Dublin on June 30th. There were several sessions on Geoarchaeology and they presented the following papers in the session on The Cultural Use of Caves and Rockshelters
Rockshelter sediments as artefacts: bronze age stable-burn cycles in Sicily
Mike Morley, Jamie Woodward and Mark Pluciennik.
Abstract
Riparo 1 is a large sandstone rockshelter in central Sicily with a sediment record spanning the Middle Bronze Age. The site contains a highly distinctive stratigraphy of interbedded silts and ash-rich sediments. Micromorphological analysis and mineral magnetic data show that these sediments possess a strong anthropogenic signal from the repeated use of the site for the penning of sheep and goats for about 1000 years. Distinctive dark bands associated with ash-dominated sediments represent stable-burn cycles seen elsewhere in the Mediterranean, related to the over-wintering of livestock and the periodic burning of the stable floor. The sediments are artefacts and can aid understanding of the nature and timing of animal domestication during earlier parts of the Holocene. This is the first multi-proxy investigation of such a sediment record. This paper explores the wider significance of this approach and these deposits for the identification of these practices under varying degrees of preservation.
The clastic sedimentary records in rockshelters and caves: problems and prospects
Jamie Woodward and Mike Morley.
Abstract
Recent years have seen important advances in our understanding of the sedimentary processes in caves and rockshelters. The study of sediment micromorphology using large format thin sections and improvements in dating represent very significant developments. But key problems remain. Geoarchaeological research in these contexts has commonly failed to make effective linkages between on-site sediment records and the dynamics of the wider Quaternary landscape. This is a difficult objective since there is a serious mis-match between the temporal resolution of cave and rockshelter sediment records and the proxy climate data from lake sediments and speleothems and other environmental archives. How should we explore the relationship between the archaeological record of the Late Pleistocene and the high resolution proxy climate records? Decoupling the natural and anthropogenic components within rockshelter sediment records is also a major problem. This paper explores these and related issues using examples from records across the Mediterranean region.