Investigating migration and mobility in the Early Roman frontier. The case of the Batavi in the Dutch Rhine delta (c. 50/30 BC–AD 40) (original) (raw)
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Conte et al 2018 Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
Knowledge of glass trading in protohistoric Southern Italy has been limited by a lack of archeometrical data available to date, preventing comparison with the well-known Northern Italian context. The aim of the present work is to help fill the data gap for Southern Bronze-Iron Age vitreous items and enable a general overview of protohistoric Italian glass supply routes. The paper presents physical-chemical data for 61 vitreous items from 11 Southern Italian sites, dated from the beginning of the Bronze Age up to the Archaic period (22nd-6th century BC), ensuring a complete diachronic analysis. SEM-EDS, EMPA, LA-ICPMS, and XRD analyses permitted definition of the raw materials and manufacturing techniques employed, as well as determination of item provenance. The sample set exhibits great variability of glass chemical types, including plant ash glass, mixed alkali, and natron samples. A complex picture emerges, mostly as regards the different natron glass typologies (High-Zr, Low-Zr, Black, etc.) and their rapid technological evolution in the early 1st millennium BC. Taking into account the data reported in this study and those available in literature for both Northern and Southern Italian Bronze-Iron Ages items, this work demonstrates the existence of different trade routes for the first time. This is especially true for the Early/Middle Bronze Age periods, with Northern Italy involved in trade with Central Europe, and South already involved in Mediterranean trade circuits.
Faraway, so close! The dialectics of archaeological theory and science in palaeomobility studies
2021
The recent EAA meeting in Maastricht selected as a general theme the “Third Scientific Revolution” in archaeology. As stated by Kristian Kristiansen in 2014, this revolution embraces new developments in archaeological sciences (genetic and stable isotopes analysis) and new methodological trends in relation to statistical quantification and modelling. Past mobility studies have been among the domains of archaeological scientific enquiry that have benefitted the most from relevant advances in ancient DNA, isotopes and agent-based modelling approaches. These scientific advances accompany a theoretical acknowledgement of the complexity of past human movement; an acknowledgement that reflects the culmination of decades of archaeological thought around the subject of human mobility. Early in the advent of western science, archaeologists employed ‘migration’ as an axiomatic explanatory approach to cultural change rather than a dynamic social process. This trend was followed by an appreciation that empirical results coming from the natural sciences would be employed as self-evident proof for the interpretation of social phenomena, such as human mobility, drawing upon positivist approaches, which were subsequently criticized as oversimplifying complex social dynamics. The aim of this contribution is to map the diverse approaches implemented by archaeological theory and archaeological sciences and explore how these get entangled in order to explore the complex and dynamic nature of past human mobility. Emphasis will be placed on identifying where relevant interdisciplinary research currently stands and what its future directions may be.
YRA 5th Workshop (Young Researchers in Archaeometry) , 2022
This contribution concentrates on the development of a petrographic approach to the study of two distinctive archaeological contexts. The first is related to the provenance of roman pottery from the Middle East, especially from Palestine; and the second case is connected with the technology of indigenous pottery from the Amazon. Despite distinctive regions and periods, in both cases, as I hope to demonstrate, the application of archaeometric research provided genuine new insights into the respective past societies. Thus, increasing our knowledge significantly. The cases under discussion serve to reinforce the efforts on developing a demonstrably interdisciplinary methodology for the study of ancient pottery and archaeological sites, combining geoarchaeology and social anthropology. Although incorporating data at the micro-level, a landscape-oriented anthropological perspective is interested in human adaptation to changing (social, economic, religious) and environmental conditions, especially as related to increasing settlement density, mobility, and social-religious-ecological relationships.
Archaeological Research on Migration as a Multidisciplinary Challenge
The Genetic Challenge to Medieval History and Archaeology
Migration is a key concept in archaeology. It is a common explanation for the distribution and diffusion of cultural traits. However, it is more often an axiomatic postulate than the result of sound methodological analysis. The weaknesses of this approach have become apparent and have brought migration-as-explanation into disrepute. For archaeological investigation of the Migration Period the problem is further aggravated. Ancient written sources report an abundance of migrations associated with particular peoples. These sources often provide the coordinate system of archaeological investigations with fatal consequences as archaeology runs the risk of losing its independent methodological basis. Recently, new methods derived from the life sciences have joined in and have created new approaches to migration analysis. These methods sometimes provide a corrective that can compensate for the weaknesses of archaeology’s own methodology. Archaeology now faces new challenges. Archaeological sources are often neither compatible with written sources, nor with the findings of the diverse life science methods. It is becoming apparent that archaeology has lost its previous methodological command for investigating migration. As a scientific discipline archaeology has to finds its place in migration research anew.
In: Vyacheslav I. Molodin / Liudmila N. Mylnikova (eds.), Mobility and Migration: Concepts, Methods, Results. Materials of the V International Symposium »Mobility and Migration: Concepts, Methods, Results« (Denisova Cave (Altai, Russia) 19–24 August 2019) (Novosibirsk 2019) 229–237.
Since archaeology was established as an independent scientific discipline in the 19th century, migration has been a central topic of archaeological research. Insofar one could expect that methods and theories of migration archaeology have been established, developed and matured over time. But this is not the case: hardly any of the central fields of archaeological research is as under-studied and under-theorized as migration archaeology. So far, there is no clear idea of how we should think about migration and how it should be investigated at all. Misconceptions, problematic assumptions and inadequate methods have recently led to a dead end. But the way out of this unsatisfying situation has also taken shape in recent years. In the following, ten basic points of a sound migration archaeology will be outlined.
Archaeology and Migration – Approaches to an Archaeological Proof of Migration
Current Anthropology 41, 2000, 539–567.
A clear deficit in the theoretical and methodological development of archaeological research exists with regard to migration; attributing archaeological distribution patterns to migration as opposed to diffusion or trade is still a major problem. This article uses the example of North American colonization to develop an approach that distinguishes the changes brought about by migration from those produced by other forms of cultural transfer. Because methods for gathering evidence do not sufficiently explore migration processes in their complexity, a model based on the study of historic and modern migrations is developed, and its practicability is demonstrated using the example of Anglo-Saxon migration.
2018
Genome-wide ancient DNA analysis of skeletons retrieved from archaeological excavations has provided a powerful new tool for the investigation of past populations and migrations. An important objective for the coming years is to properly integrate ancient genomics into archaeological research. This article aims to contribute to developing a better understanding and cooperation between the two disciplines and beyond. It focuses on the question of how best to name clusters encountered when analysing the genetic makeup of past human populations. Recent studies have frequently borrowed archaeological cultural designations to name these genetic groups, while neglecting the historically problematic nature of the concept of cultures in archaeology. After reviewing current practices in naming genetic clusters, we introduce three possible nomenclature systems ('numeric system', 'mixed system (a)', 'geographic-temporal system') along with their advantages and challenges. Recent methodological advances including the advent of second generation short read sequencing technologies, the application of targeted hybridisation capture, and the recognition of petrous bones as rich sources for preservation of DNA, have transformed ancient DNA analysis into a revolutionary new tool for investigating the past 1–4. The exponential increase in the publication of ancient genomes, however, has not been matched by the development of a theoretical framework for the discussion of ancient DNA results and their contextualisation within the fields of history and archaeology 5. A particularly striking instance of this is given by two ancient DNA papers published in 2015 by Haak et al. and Allentoft et al. that detected fundamental changes in the central European gene pool during the 3 rd millennium BCE due to a massive gene influx ultimately deriving from the Pontic steppe region 6,7. They revived the discussion of large-scale migrations in prehistory, an idea that had been substantially dismissed in archaeology since the 1960s 8,9. The genetic evidence for large-scale movements of people became undeniable in light of the DNA data, and so the question was no longer about whether ancient DNA analysis can be trusted, but how the results should be interpreted and presented. For example Furholt 2016, Vander Linden 2016, and Heyd 2017 all accepted the genetic findings, but expressed concern that the studies did not sufficiently deal with the complexities of migrations in that they summarised their findings with simplified migration models involving groups of people (populations) moving