100 research outputs found
Site studies
No full textIn this chapter, we draw together and integrate the studies relating to the Nebelivka megasite at the site level. Three sources of palaeo-environmental evidence – pollen analysis, soil micro-morphology and molluscan analysis – are used to build up a picture of the landscape on and around Nebelivka before, during and after the occupation of the megasite. The pollen, charcoal and non-pollen palynomorphs from the Nebelivka P1 core provide crucial insights into the unexpectedly low level of human impact on the landscape, which has had such profound effects on our approach to the understanding of the megasite. In a fundamental part of this chapter, Duncan
Hale presents the only complete geophysical plan of a Trypillia megasite to date, enabling Brian Buchanan’s analysis of movement in and through the site by Visual Graph Analysis and a series of nested analyses of the social space comprising the megasite – the Quarters, Neighbourhoods and houses. Stuart Johnston summarises the results of the experimental programme of house construction, house-burning and excavation of the burnt house. A lengthy section by Bisserka Gaydarska summarises the results of the Ukrainian-British excavations at Nebelivka. Andrew Millard presents the Bayesian analysis of the over 80 AMS radiocarbon dates for the megasite, while Natalia Shevchenko reports on her analyses of the building materials from the Megastructure
4 Site Studies
No full textIn this chapter, we draw together and integrate the studies relating to the Nebelivka
megasite at the site level. Three sources of palaeo-environmental evidence – pollen
analysis, soil micro-morphology and molluscan analysis – are used to build up
a picture of the landscape on and around Nebelivka before, during and after the
occupation of the megasite. The pollen, charcoal and non-pollen palynomorphs from
the Nebelivka P1 core provide crucial insights into the unexpectedly low level of human
impact on the landscape, which has had such profound effects on our approach to
the understanding of the megasite. In a fundamental part of this chapter, Duncan
Hale presents the only complete geophysical plan of a Trypillia megasite to date,
enabling Brian Buchanan’s analysis of movement in and through the site by Visual
Graph Analysis and a series of nested analyses of the social space comprising the
megasite – the Quarters, Neighbourhoods and houses. Stuart Johnston summarises
the results of the experimental programme of house construction, house-burning and
excavation of the burnt house. A lengthy section by Bisserka Gaydarska summarises
the results of the Ukrainian-British excavations at Nebelivka. Andrew Millard presents
the Bayesian analysis of the over 80 AMS radiocarbon dates for the megasite, while
Natalia Shevchenko reports on her analyses of the building materials from the Mega-
structure
Animal bones [from Nebelivka]
No full textIn this book, a team of international authors examines the hypothesis of independent Eastern European urbanism using the evidence gathered from the multi-disciplinary investigation of the Trypillia megasite of Nebelivka
Let’s Talk About Gender—The Place of Gender in Current Archaeological Debates
No full textThis chapter, and the volume that it introduces, situates gender in current archaeological debates. The central argument is that gender archaeology as a field of study is in crisis, although some research communities are better positioned than others. This predicament not only affects the relevance and credibility of the field before the larger archaeological community, but also the circumstances in which gender-concerned archaeologists conduct their research. First, we assess the state of gender archaeology in Europe and North America, attempting to find explanations and propose solutions for the field’s decline. We then review the place of gender within the major theoretical and methodological debates which have influenced archaeology in the past decade, especially in Western research traditions, such as the Third Science Revolution, posthumanism, new materialism, intersectionality, mobility, and violence. We argue that although gender has largely been absent from these debates, this should be an inseparable component of research and narratives on the human past. Finally, we explore the impact of present global tensions and online trends in the dissemination, visibility and accessibility of archaeological gender research
LOW-DENSITY URBANISM. WHAT IS IT?
No full textAn Interview with Bisserka Gaydarska and John Chapman (Durham University, Department of Archaeology, Durham, UK
Place and Time at Trypillia Mega-Sites: Towards a New Synthesis of Analyses and Social Theory - Appendices
No full textThe Trypillia mega-sites (‘TMS’) form an exceptional aspect of the broader Cucuteni–Trypillia group in the Balkan and East European Neolithic and Chalcolithic. The TMS are currently the largest sites and the earliest urban complexes in Eurasia in the fourth millennium cal. BC. In this article, we chart the trajectories of theoretical and methodological development of TMS research. We build on the social implications of the Visibility Graph Analysis of Nebelivka and Bayesian modelling of three significant TMS. In the key section, we examine TMS in the light of three points made in Graeber and Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything: cultural schismogenesis, the three elementary forms of freedom and those of domination. The integration of the latest analytical results and political theory provides a new platform for future investigations of TMS.
Dataset to: Bisserka Gaydarska, Andrew Millard, Brian Buchanan, and John Chapman, ‘Place and Time at Trypillia Mega-Sites. Towards a New Synthesis of Analyses and Social Theory’, Journal of Urban Archaeology, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), 115–145 </p
Исследования по проекту «Ранняя урбанизация в праисторической Европе?: трипольские мегапоселения» в 2013 году / Research project “Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Trypillian mega-sites” in 2013)
No full textIn 2013, the Ukrainian-British expedition under the scientific research project "The Tripillian Mega-Sites Project (Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Tripillian mega-sites)" continued research on the settlement at Nebelevka. The Project successfully completed a five-week summer season, running from 15th July to 17th August 2013. The principal objectives of the 2013 seasons were defined before the season, as follows: geophysical prospecting of a further 160 ha of the mega-site, the excavation of several Trypillian features: a pit near a Trypillian house and sections across linear features on geophysical plots identified in the 2012. The Ukrainian side excavated a house-and-pit complex near the 2012 mega-structure trench (tr. 3), Bisserka Gaydarska and Toni Stoilka Ignatova began the excavation of a large pit (tr. 4). Excavations confirmed the existence of cultural layer around dwellings. There were investigated several pits, originally served for the extraction of clay. Later at this pits there were deposited artifacts, related to everyday life and sacral life of the nearest households. There were provided the mechanical coring and test-pitting of 50 burnt structures to recover samples for AMS dating, on-site soil micromorphological investigations; finished intensive, systematic field walking of a further 20 km2 of the Nebelivka hinterland; conducted palaeo-environmental investigations of further sites near to Nebelivka and within a 30 km radius; completed plan of site, based on magnetic survey, checked few types of the new kinds of archaeological objects found by geophysicists
Introduction: European Prehistory and Urban Studies
No full textThe idea for this special issue arose out of a session on ‘Pre-Roman Urbanism in Eurasia’ at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Istanbul in 2014. This was preceded by an international symposium in Vienna in 2012 on proto-urbanization in Western Anatolia and neighbouring areas in the fourth millennium BC, and succeeded by two more conferences on early urbanism with special focus on Eurasia at the universities of Buffalo (April 2016) and Durham (May 2016). This healthy interest reflects an emerging research agenda inspired by exciting new (and not so new) discoveries, some of which form the focus of the following papers. It also brought a skeleton out of the closet, that of the troubled relationship between European prehistory and the emergence of urbanism, a problem with two aspects. The first is the tacit assumption that the first impulses of urban development might be expected to follow the same Asiatic trajectory as the preceding Neolithization of Europe. Thus, the Minoan ‘first-generation secondary states’ (Parkinson and Galaty 2007, p. 118) should be considered the earliest European examples. Despite the well-argued case that the Balkans were an independent centre of innovations (Renfrew 1969)—in the case of copper metallurgy, even preceding Anatolia (Kienlin 2010)—diffusionist models affect research agendas to this day. The second aspect of the problem stems from another deep-rooted prejudice, whereby an essentialized view of the Classical, primarily Mediterranean, town or oppidum denied a fair ‘urban’ hearing to any Iron Age set of evidence that apparently deviated from this norm (Moore et al. 2013; Fernández-Götz et al. 2014). One of the aims of this special issue is to question the validity of these long-held views on the basis of new evidence. Simply ignoring this evidence or branding these cases exceptions is no longer sustainable: the new straws have already broken the old camel’s back. The second aim of this special issue is to address the common misconception that, if a given settlement form was not sustained for long enough (and how long that is has not been clearly defined), then it probably did not contribute to the overall urbanism phenomenon. The flaw in this view has been demonstrated by the now well-documented ‘boom and bust’ pattern that existed alongside a more stable pattern during the EBA urbanization in the Fertile Crescent (Wilkinson et al. 2014). Other patterns of urbanization may involve cycles of centralization and decentralization (Fernández-Götz et al. 2014). Permanently occupied, long-term settlements were but one part of the urban narrative, albeit an important part. Looking at the wider context should reveal different trajectories of living together, even if some of these ended up in evolutionary culs-de-sac
From surface collection to prehistoric lifeways. Making sense of the multi-period site of Orlovo, South East Bulgaria
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