bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Origins of Domestic Sheep and Goats: a Reconsideration in the Light of the Fossil Evidence
Authors: Payne Sebastian 
Published: February 2015

In recent discussions of the origins and process of animal domestication (Reed, 1961, Zeuner, 1963), both authors rely on two kinds of evidence: on the one hand, the present distributions and characteristics of the different breeds of whatever animal is being discussed, together with its feral and wild relatives, and, on the other hand, the past record, given by literary and pictorial sources and the bones from archaeological and geological sites. Increased recognition of the limitations of the past record, whether in the accuracy of the information it appears to give (as in the case of pictorial sources), or in the certainty of the deductions we are at present capable of drawing from it (this applies especially to the osteological record), has led these authors to argue mainly from the present situation, using the past record to confirm or amplify the existing picture.Arguing from the present, many hypotheses about the origins and process of domestication are available. The only test we have, when attempting to choose between these, lies in the direct evidence of the past record. The past record, it is freely admitted, is very fragmentary: the information provided by the present situation is more exact, ranges over a much wider field, and is more open to test and control. Nevertheless, the past record, however imperfect it is, is the only direct evidence we have about the process of domestication.
Notes on the Possible Misuse and Errors of Cumulative Percentage Frequency Graphs for the Comparison of Prehistoric Artefact Assemblages
Authors: Kerrich J. E. , Clarke D. L. 
Published: February 2015

For many years archaeologists interested in the study of the Palaeolithic in North Africa and Eurasia have been using cumulative percentage frequency graphs for the comparison of prehistoric artefact assemblages. For examples we refer to the references at the foot of this text. However, it is perhaps time to carefully review this technique and its future utility.Statistical techniques and mathematical models are slowly infiltrating and reshaping the discipline of archaeology—increasing the power and depth of both analysis and synthesis. It is perhaps already possible to distinguish the cumulative advance of these techniques in archaeology from the initial role of demonstrative aids and methods of data display towards an increasingly powerful analytical role with a capacity for predictive inference. In the ranks of the first generation we have the early use of graphs, frequency polygons and histograms for mapping severely limited numbers of percentages or attribute ratios. In the second generation of statistical techniques the impact of the computer is felt for the first time and archaeology is developing an array of exploratory attempts to integrate the probing capacity of such methods as factor analysis, matrix analysis and principal component analysis.
The Anatomical Study of Cremated Fragments from Archaeological Sites
Authors: Spence T. F. 
Published: February 2015

Cremated remains, usually interred in urns, most commonly occur in cemeteries dating from the latter part of the Bronze Age, the closing phase of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and the Pagan Saxon period. Although such remains are fragmentary, they are now recognized as providing a basis, after appropriate treatment and anatomical study, for assessing the numbers of individuals cremated, together with their age and sex (Gejvall, 1947). Sometimes, additional information can be gleaned about endemic pathological conditions (Lisowski, 1955).The physical characteristics of the cremated remains vary from site to site, depending, as discussed by Gejvall (1963), on such factors as the method used in cremation, the firing temperature, and the extent of any subsequent pulverisation—natural or artificial. But despite the fact that there is always a large proportion of unidentifiable fragments, there are invariably certain parts, often of appreciable size, which can be recognized. It is from these fragments, when separated, that information about the number of individuals present, together with their sex and age can be obtained.
The Prehistory of Southwestern Iran: A Preliminary Report
Authors: Hole Frank , Flannery Kent V. 
Published: February 2015

Current research on the prehistory of the Near East is proceeding at a pace unmatched since the ‘golden era of archaeology’ immediately preceding World War II. Iran, because of its great archeological potential and its stable political situation, has become a prime target for new investigations. Expeditions from the United States, Great Britain, Denmark, France, and Japan have all made substantial contributions to knowledge of Iranian prehistory in the last five years.One recurrent problem in the new research, however, is a lack of coordination and communication between expeditions, which means that many opportunities for useful cooperation are lost. For example, in 1961 we surveyed in some 15 valleys in western Iran, plotting the distribution of pre-Uruk settlements. Unbeknown to us, at least one American and one Danish survey team crossed our path, duplicated many of our survey runs, and excavated one of the sites found on our project. We later learned that we, in turn, had duplicated several survey runs made previously by a British team, who were interested mainly in later sites but would have been happy to share their data on sites in our range of interest. Had all of us known what our colleagues were doing, we could have saved ourselves many hours of duplication.This situation is worsened by the fact that many surveys and test-excavations remain unpublished, and diagnostic artifacts remain undescribed. With regard to pottery sequences, the urgency of the problem has recently been stressed by one of our colleagues (Young 1966: footnote 28).
Cultural Hominization among the Earliest African Pleistocene Hominids
Authors: Tobias Phillip V. 
Published: February 2015

For over 40 years South Africa and for over 25 years East Africa have been yielding fossilized remains of creatures identified on their bony structure as lowly members of the Hominidae or human family. From five sites in the Republic of South Africa (Taung, Sterkfontein, Kromdraai, Makapansgat and Swartkrans) and from three sites in the Republic of Tanzania (Garusi, Olduvai and Peninj) have emerged a considerable number of hominid fossils of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. Most of them have been classified as members of an extinct hominid genus called by R. A. Dart, the discoverer of the first specimen, Australopithecus. Although variable among themselves, the structural features which aligu these fossils with the Hominidae, rather than with the family of the apes or Pongidae, are as follows:—(1) Australopithecus showed modifications of his skeleton—especially the pelvis, femur, ankle and foot—which permit us to infer that he walked upright, even though such modifications had not progressed as far as in hominids of the genus Homo.(2) The calvaria or brain-case of Australopithecus was characterized by a number of hominid features, such as marked flexion of the axis of the cranial base; forward displacement of the occipital condyles by which the skull articulates with the vertebral column; a small, low nuchal area at the back of the base of the cranium, for the attachment of those muscles which tether the back of the cranium to the trunk—the last two features suggesting a different, more man-like poise of the cranium on the spine; the consistent development, early in life, of a pyramidal mastoid process as in man, and unlike the apes in which this process develops inconsistently and then only later in life (Schultz 1950).(3) The canine teeth of Australopithecus, like those of Homo, lacked the enlargement and marked interlocking which characterizes the upper and lower teeth of the apes—correspondingly, Australopithecus lacked the diastemata or gaps which, in apes, lodge the projecting tips of the enlarged canines.(4) Another dental characteristic shared by Australopithecus with Homo was the bicuspid structure of the first lower premolar tooth: in apes, this tooth does not possess two sub-equal cusps but is a cutting or sectorial tooth with one predominating cusp, like a canine tooth.(5) Although the brain-size of Australopithecus (as inferred from the volumetric capacity of the brain-case) was no bigger than that of some largerbrained apes, the shape or morphology of the brain, as preserved in endocranial casts, approached more closely to that of early Homo than to that of the apes. We have, however, no direct evidence whether these external observable differences between the brains of Australopithecus and of apes were paralleled by internal, microscopic, structural differences such as those which have been demonstrated between modern man and modern apes.(6) Many other detailed morphological features of the skull, the teeth and other bones of Australopithecus showed human resemblances.
Excavation of a Round Barrow on Overton Hill, North Wiltshire
Authors: Smith I. F. , Simpson D. D. A. 
Published: February 2015

The barrow is No. 6b in L. V. Grinsell's list for the parish of West Overton (V.C.H. Wilts., 1, Part I, 1957). It stood some 400 feet to the north of the most northerly member of the conspicuous group of bowl and bell barrows that straddles the A.4 road on Overton, or Sevenbarrow, Hill, 4½ miles west of Marlborough (SU 11966835). Its position is marked on the OS. 6-inch map (SU 16NW), but not on the 1-inch (Sheet 157). The height above sea-level is about 580 feet.The subsoil is Upper Chalk, its surface broken by irregular depressions and long parallel troughs filled with a soft buff material, evidently the result of weathering under periglacial conditions. The topsoil is a rendsina about 6 inches thick.Most of the barrows on Overton Hill are known to have been dug into in the past. No. 6b had escaped the attentions of antiquarians, but it was evident before excavation that it had nevertheless suffered extensive disturbances.
The Boats from North Ferriby, Yorkshire, England, with a review of the origins of the sewn boats of the Bronze Age
Authors: Wright E. V. , Churchill D. M. 
Published: February 2015

The fortunate discovery by the first author and his son, R. W. Wright, in March 1963 of a third in the series of sewn boats from North Ferriby, making the fourth in the group from the Humber basin, if the Brigg ‘Raft’ is included, has provided a convenient starting point for a review of the whole subject in the light of new evidence as to age. This in turn has led to rather firmer conclusions about their possible affinities and origin than were possible when the report on the first two examples was prepared. There are reasonable grounds now for putting out speculations about the pattern which has resulted in the occurrence of related techniques of boat-building over a great span of time and distance.The preliminary excavation and recovery were directed by Mr Bartlett and the first writer. Preservation is being carried out at the Hull Museum under Mr Bartlett's control. Such photographic recording as was attempted was largely done by Miss Isla McInnes of the Hull Museum Staff, Mr Derek Cutts and his wife (who also achieved a graphic motion picture record of the proceedings in colour) and Mr Allen Binns. Limitations on photography were accepted deliberately in the interests of speed since no attempt was made at detailed cleaning before removal of the remains. The weather seldom helped.
The Kitchen Midden Site at Westward Ho!, Devon, England: ecology, age, and relation to changes in land and sea level
Authors: Churchill D. M. , Wymer J. J. 
Published: February 2015

The occurrence of submerged forests in places along the British coast has long attracted attention, and led to speculation on the relative displacement in land and sea levels that enabled such forests to grow. Many of these forest beds are only visible between high and low water of the spring tides; others, not so readily seen, are known to occur in beds to a depth 60 feet below present sea level. The melting of the ice sheets after the last glaciation and the consequent rise of sea level accounts for the submergence of many of these forest beds, although the actual height at which they are found, may be affected by displacement from the contemporary level by subsequent compaction of sediments and tectonic movement. The submerged forest at Westward Ho! rests on consolidated sediments and is not subject to change in level due to compaction. The tectonic factor is discussed in relation to analogous deposits of comparable age elsewhere in southern Britain.The presence of the submerged forest in Bideford Bay (Barnstaple Bay) at Westward Ho!, was recorded in a survey published by De la Beche in 1839, and in 1866 Ellis called attention to the presence of flints in the submerged forest bed. The peat was found in patches between a pebble ridge and low water mark and in places for about 200 yards along the beach.
Cultural Grouping within the British pre-Roman Iron Age
Authors: Hodson F. R. 
Published: February 2015

In a previous article in these Proceedings I raised some doubts about the current system of classifying the British pre-Roman Iron Age (Hodson 1962). My main criticisms were that the first stage of this classification into three divisions A, B and C did not reflect a clear threefold division within the material to be classified and also that this system did not deal satisfactorily with the British Iron Age as part of a wider European phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to look for steps towards a modified first classification that may overcome these objections. Following the four principles of classification suggested (Hodson 1962, p. 153) an attempt will be made to pick out the most distinctive characteristics or type-fossils within the pre-Roman Iron Age and to see whether these features recur together in definite groups in Europe as a whole. These groups should represent cultures in the archaeological sense and afterwards their interpretation should provide a general archaeological account of the early Iron Age in Britain.Although attempting to put forward for discussion a provisional classification of some sort, the real purpose of this paper is to emphasize serious gaps in the available evidence. Until these gaps are filled, no classification can hope to be in any way definitive.It is first necessary to establish some simple chronological system by which to inter-relate any cultures that may be established. A direct reference to absolute dates (or periods of, say, a hundred years) would be most convenient.
The Chambered Cairn at Beacharra, Kintyre, Argyll
Authors: Scott J. G. 
Published: February 2015

The burial chamber of the Clyde-Carlingford cairn at Beacharra, Kintyre, Argyll, was excavated in 1892 by members of the Kintyre Scientific Association. The finds, consisting of six pots, a jet slider or belt-fastener and a utilized flint flake, were placed in Campbeltown Museum. A newspaper account of the excavation appeared at the time, and with the aid of this and of information from Mr A. Gray, who had been in charge of the excavation, T. H. Bryce was able to compile the first proper report upon the excavation. This he incorporated in the first of two papers on the cairns of Arran. A sketch plan of the burial chamber, prepared in 1892 by Mr P. Mackay and now in the records of the Kintyre Antiquarian Society, is reproduced (fig. 1).The importance of the pottery from Beacharra was fully recognized by Bryce, but it was not until 1929 that it was related by J. G. Callander to Scottish Neolithic pottery as a whole. Subsequently this evidence was analysed and placed in its British and European context by V. G. Childe and S. Piggott. In 1935 Childe introduced the term Beacharra to describe the pottery from sites of the Clyde-Carlingford culture in Scotland. The term was retained and the classification developed into Beacharra A, B and C by Piggott for the Clyde-Carlingford culture as a whole. More recently, and inadvisedly in the present state of knowledge, it has been suggested that the use of the term Beacharra, at least insofar as pottery from Ireland is concerned, should be discontinued.
The Climate, Environment and Industries of Stone Age Greece: Part I
Authors: Dakaris S. I. , Higgs E. S. , Hey R. W. , Tippett H. , Mellars P. 
Published: February 2015

This paper is the result of a survey of a part of Macedonia and Epirus carried out in 1962 and sponsored by the British School of Archaeology at Athens. In 1963 under the aegis of S. I. Dakaris, ephor of Epirus, excavations were carried out to confirm some of the hypotheses resulting from the earlier survey. The cost of the work was defrayed partly by the British Academy and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, and partly by the members of the expeditions themselves. In this paper it is proposed to place on record some of the findings of these expeditions. A more detailed consideration of them will be published after further information has been acquired in 1964.Prior to 1962 little was known of the Stone Age industries of Greece. In contrast with the industrial successions established in Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia and the Levant, Greece had remained virtually a blank on the Palaeolithic map. As late as 1923 Jardé had written that not a single palaeolithic tool was known from Greek soil. Apart from three pieces of uncertain provenance attributed by Breuil to the Upper Palaeolithic, and one from Saloniki noted by Obermaier, no further progress seems to have been made until the German and Italian occupation of Greece and Albania. In 1941 Stampfuss dug the cave of Seidi between Thebes and Levadia. He discovered an industry which contained backed-blades, burins, shouldered points and thick scrapers. It is undated, but is a Gravettoid industry, possibly at a fully developed or even later stage. Mustilli also reported in 1941 the finding of a Middle Palaeolithic industry in Albania. Since that time Servais has noted the presence of apparently early flints in the Peloponnese, a fact subsequently investigated by Leroi-Gourhan in 1962. Byelor has also reported some flakes of Levallois type. The most important work, however, has been that of Milojčić, published in 1958, and arising out of the work in previous years of the German Thessaly Expedition.
Some Wood and Stone Implements of the Bindibu Tribe of Central Western Australia
Authors: Thomson Donald F. 
Published: February 2015

In 1956–57 the remote and almost unexplored desert terrain that stretches for hundreds of miles north and west of Lake Mackay—a great salt morass that lies across the border between Northern Territory and Western Australia—was in the grip of a severe drought which had lasted for more than a year. This great tract of spinifex desert and red sand hills that extends westward to the Canning Desert was named the Great Sandy Desert by Colonel Warburton in 1873.During 1956 and again in the following year, reports had been coming in sporadically through Alice Springs of the existence of primitive nomadic aborigines far out in the sands beyond Lake Mackay. Some of these nomads were said to have come in to Mt. Doreen Station, which lies 225 miles to the west of Alice Springs on the fringe of the desert, but no accurate information was available.Having experienced tropical areas of high rainfall with their regular hunting and food-gathering cycle, I had always wanted to work in the arid interior of Australia, where the rainfall is not only extremely low but unpredictable. I had hoped to live and to hunt with a nomadic people of the desert and semi-desert, and to study the background ecology, the adaptation of these people to this arid terrain, and especially their hunting and food gathering, and so to understand the effect of these factors on the territorial grouping and on the social and ceremonial life of the aborigines as I had come to know it.
Archaeological Discoveries in the Raised Bogs of the Somerset Levels, England
Authors: Dewar H. S. L. , Godwin H. 
Published: February 2015

When C. E. Moss (1907) first described the vegetation of the peat areas of the Somerset Levels, he referred to them as ‘moors’, a term offering no distinction from upland peats such as those of the Pennines or Dartmoor. It was not until much later that they were recognized as the remnants, much degraded and dissected by peat-cutting, of an extensive complex of raised bogs (Godwin 1941). This was a conclusion of considerable significance since raised bogs belong to the category of ombrogenous mires, that is to say, of peat structures built up in almost total dependence on rain and snow falling directly upon them, and drawing not at all upon ground water. Such bogs receive very little mineral supply and become very acidic and poor in plant nutrients, so that their vegetation is highly specialized and most characteristic, consisting very largely of species of the moss genus Sphagnum, various flowering plants of the order Ericales, cotton-grass, deer-grass (Trichophorum caespitosum) and a restricted number of other species of equally restricted range. It is the various assemblages of the remains of these plants that allow us to identify given peat samples as having formed in raised bog, and often permit us to relate them to given communities characteristic of different aspects of the vegetation of still-active raised bogs.This is a very helpful circumstance, since the raised bogs are entities in such close dependence upon annual precipitation that they respond quickly to phases of increased or decreased wetness by altered surface vegetation. Thus in periods of dryness they become covered with ling (Calluna vulgaris), cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum) and sometimes trees, chiefly birch (Betula verrucosa), and the peat then formed is very colloidal, dark and fully humified. By contrast, when it is continuously wet the bog surface is covered with actively-growing Sphagna (which form a matrix for the associated higher plants), and the peat formed in these conditions is pale, fibrous, and undecayed. An abrupt transition from the one peat type to the other, if consistent across a bog, is referred to as a recurrence-surface (RY is the familiar contraction from the Swedish word).
A Reinterpretation of the Microlithic Industries of Wales
Authors: Wainwright G. J. 
Published: February 2015

The distribution of Mesolithic sites in Wales is controlled to a great extent by the terrain, for physiographically, Wales is a highland block defined on three sides by the sea and for the greater part of the fourth side by a sharp break of slope. Geologically the Principality is composed almost entirely of Palaeozoic rocks, of which the 600-foot contour encloses more than three quarters of the total area. There are extensive regions above 1,500 feet and 2,000 feet and in the north the peaks of Snowdonia and Cader Idris rise to 3,560 feet and 2,929 feet respectively. Indeed North Wales consists of an inhospitable highland massif, skirted by a lowland plateau and cut deeply by river valleys, providing only limited areas for settlement. The hills and mountains of Snowdonia with their extension at lower altitudes into the Lleyn Peninsula, and the ranges of Moelwyn, Manod Mawr, Arenig Fach and Cader Idris, are discouraging obstacles to penetration, save for a short distance along the river valleys. To the east of these peaks are extensive tracts of upland plateau dissected by rivers, bounded on the west by the vale of the river Conway and cleft by the Vale of Clwyd. To the east of this valley lies the Clwydian Range and further again to the east these uplands descend with milder contours to the Cheshire and Shropshire plains.To the south the district merges into the uplands of Central Wales, which are continuous until they are replaced by the lowland belt of South Wales.