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L’orso e i Neandertal: incontri ravvicinati sull’altopiano di Pradis
No full textIn Friuli la Grotta del Rio Secco ha restituito l’eccezionale documentazione dell’uso di pelli e carne del grande carnivoro da parte delle popolazioni del Paleolitico medio delle quali finora poco si conoscono le reali capacità per una pratica venatoria così impegnativa e rischiosa
Ci troviamo nell’altopiano di Pradis, sulle Prealpi Carniche, provincia di Pordenone. Fra le molte cavità di natura carsica presenti nella zona c’è la Grotta del Rio Secco, uno dei rari siti del Paleolitico medio italiano (l’epoca che, fra circa 300 mila e 40 mila anni fa, vide il popolamento del continente europeo da parte dell’uomo di Neandertal) ad aver restituito tracce certe della caccia e del consumo dell’orso nella preistoria. Si tratta di un vasto riparo sulla riva sinistra del Rio Secco, a una ventina di metri d’altezza rispetto al corso attuale del torrente. Al centro del riparo si apre un’ampia cavità che al momento della scoperta era quasi totalmente ostruita da sedimenti e detriti.
Il potenziale archeologico di questo sito venne svelato nel 2001 da un sondaggio dell’Università di Ferrara, grazie al quale vennero alla luce reperti indicativi di ripetute frequentazioni della cavità tra Paleolitico medio e superiore. Le datazioni al C14 effettuate su ossa e carboni dei livelli di Paleolitico medio danno un’età compresa fra 48 e 41 mila anni fa e fanno della Grotta del Rio Secco uno dei contesti con le testimonianze più recenti dell’uomo di Neandertal nell’Italia nord-orientale. La forma della cavità, la perfetta conservazione della volta, la presenza di un riparo esterno e l’ampiezza dello spazio utilizzabile, lasciano ipotizzare che i cacciatori neandertaliani svolgessero le loro attività (scheggiatura, macellazione, cottura delle carni, trattamento delle pelli...) sia all’esterno che all’interno della grotta. Un’ampia camera-galleria sul fondo dell’antro aumentava la disponibilità di possibili “ambienti” per usi diversificati. [...
New challenges in the study of lithic raw materials in central Italy at the dawn of metal working societies: La Pietra and other radiolarite quarry-workshops in Tuscany
Get PDFIn central-southern Tuscany radiolarite has been used as a lithic raw material throughout prehistory. During the Copper Age it was selected for the local production of leaf-shaped artefacts. In the area considered, the Copper Age record is almost totally restricted to burials and virtually no settlements have been investigated so far. Radiolarite artefacts are found mostly as refined arrow and, possibly javelin, heads used as grave goods.
Within this context, the discovery and recent investigation of the large radiolarite quarry of La Pietra (Roccastrada, Grosseto) and of the related workshops is of great interest. Our aim here is to integrate the record from this site with other contemporary evidence of radiolarite exploitation. A programme of surveys has thus begun on the other radiolarite outcrops of the area in order to verify the existence of further rock quarrying or working. The discovery of a previously unknown quarry-workshop and two previously unknown workshops on radiolarite outcrops is presented here for the first time. The geological and archaeological data coming from the quarry-workshops will be used, in a future stage of research, to source the radiolarite artefacts found in Copper Age graves of Central Italy. The Copper age armatures are valuable artefacts mostly kept in museums and fully non-destructive analyses must be applied to them. To tackle these challenges, we followed a methodological approach which integrates field surveys, the individuation of petrographic markers of the most exploited radiolarite horizons and geochemical analyses. For geochemical characterization, we made use of pXRF portable spectrometer and here we present some preliminary results in the light of current methodological debate.
In conclusion, even if some methodological questions remain open, we verified the feasibility of this programme of geographical, geological and geochemical characterizations and need now to increase our dataset in order to reconstruct a viable picture of Copper age lithic economy in central-southern Tuscany
The Prehistoric Quarry of La Pietra (Roccastrada, Grosseto, Tuscany) Copper Age Lithic Workshops and the Production of Bifacial Points in Central Italy
No full textThe authors present the preliminary results of the research carried out at the prehistoric quarry of La Pietra, which is located in the Farma valley (province of Grosseto, Tuscany), within the ‘Tuscan Mining Geopark’. From a geological perspective La Pietra is a Late Jurassic radiolarite outcrop belonging to the Ligurian Domain. The present paper is concerned with the lithic material collected from the surface during a field survey in the 1990s. However, an excavation project of the site is currently in progress.
Evidence for intensive exploitation of the quarry by prehistoric communities is attested to by the huge amounts of discarded material covering a large area surrounding the outcrop. Among the artefacts collected during the field survey there are different kinds of blanks and transformed products such as unifacial and bifacial preforms, abandoned at different stages of their manufacturing, slabs at an initial stage of the knapping process, a few tools, and a lot of technical flakes.
La Pietra shows characteristics that are very similar to those of the radiolarite quarry of Valle Lagorara in Liguria and it was exploited, as was Valle Lagorara, during the Eneolithic/Early Bronze age period for the manufacture of preforms devoted to the making of flat retouched artefacts, mainly projectile points for weapons. Both the large amount of processed material and the small number of unbroken and finished artefacts suggest that most of the finished preforms was produced for trade.
In the surrounding area several Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age cave sites yielded leaf-shaped points made from radiolarite, mostly associated with burial contexts. Radiocarbon dating results from these sites range from 3650 to 2351 cal. BC and form a good chronological point of reference for La Pietra. At present no archaeometric study has as yet been carried out to establish the origin of the artefacts recovered from these sites but a characterisation project of the radiolarite from the different Tuscan outcrops has been undertaken, using completely non-invasive methodologies. According to the authors, this massive production of flat retouched tools could be connected to specialised craftsmen who worked on commission, as is also suggested by the high quality of the lithic components among grave goods.
In the final discussion the authors provide a synthesis of current knowledge about Eneolithic settlements, burial contexts and lithic workshops in central Italy, extending the field of investigation to the remainder of the Italian Peninsula, as far as workshops are concerned. According to data emerging from this account a large number of sites defined in the past as ‘Campinian’ can now be identified as workshops devoted to the production of leaf-shaped arrowheads. The authors argue that a critical revision, based on technological and functional analyses, of the old concept of ‘Campinian’ is needed. Equally, the assemblages from the Gargano and the Monti Lessini areas should be revisited from a comparative perspective based on an adequate interpretative framework.
This paper highlights the way in which the new scenario that has progressively emerged from the discovery and the study of workshops such as Valle Lagorara and La Pietra could substantially change the social-economic framework related to the Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age communities from several standpoints.
Although the phenomenon of the Copper Age/Bronze Age knapping workshops needs to be further investigated, it is nonetheless obvious that the emergence of several production centres, mainly aiming at armature production from the Late Neolithic/Early Eneolithic on, is recorded across the Italian territory. This innovative explanation of the function of these workshops, combined with the occurrence of a large number of weapons in the burial evidence, can be seen from a new social, behavioural, and economic perspective, with particular emphasis on the role played by the development of projectile points as a proxy for increasing bellicosity during the Copper Age and the ensuing Early Bronze Age
Cave clastic sediments as a tool for refining the study of human occupation of prehistoric sites: insights from the cave site of La Cala (Cilento, southern Italy)
No full textLa Cala (southern Italy) is an important prehistoric cave site containing a clastic sedimentary infill recording evidence of an almost constant human occupation from the Mousterian to the Copper Age. However, a cultural gap (estimated to be approx. 10.5–6.2 ka) has been identified between the Evolved Gravettian and the Evolved Epigravettian. This study presents a sedimentological and allostratigraphic study of the cave clastic infill. The succession at La Cala can be subdivided into four allostratigraphic units (CC1–4 in stratigraphic order), each one bounded by major erosional surfaces. The most prominent erosional surface (UN1), which separates unit CC1 from CC2, has a channel‐like geometry and is directly overlaid by cross‐stratified sediments, suggesting deposition in an underground stream setting. This documents an important hydrological change in the cave drainage with the development of an important phase of sediment erosion. The erosional surface UN1 stratigraphically marks the cultural time‐gap revealed by the archaeological excavations, suggesting that this hiatus may be due to the erosion of sediments rather than to a lack in human occupation. This study confirms the importance of cave clastic sediments in archaeological cave sites as a helpful tool for refining the timeframe of human presence
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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