Annelou Van Gijn
Universiteit Leiden, Facuty of Archaeology, Faculty Member
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China is a major centre for rice domestication, where starch grain analysis has been widely applied to archaeological grinding tools to gain information about plant use by ancient Chinese societies. However, few rice starch grains have... more
China is a major centre for rice domestication, where starch grain analysis has been widely applied to archaeological grinding tools to gain information about plant use by ancient Chinese societies. However, few rice starch grains have been identified to date. To understand this apparent scarcity of starch grains from rice, dry‐ and wet‐grinding experiments with stone tools were carried out on four types of cereals: rice (Oryza sativa L.), foxtail millet (Setaria italica), Job's tears (Coix lacryma‐jobi L.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). The results reveal that dry‐grinding produces significant damage to starches to the point where they may be undetected in archaeological samples, while wet‐grinding causes only slight morphological changes to the starch grains. Moreover, rice starch grains have the most substantial alterations from dry‐grinding, possibly impeding their identification. These findings provide a possible means to explain the relative scarcity of rice starch grain...
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In the western Netherlands Neolithic axes are hardly ever found in a complete state. Flint is scarce in this area and when these axes were exhausted, or when they broke during use, they were often re-used as flake cores. Vlaardingen... more
In the western Netherlands Neolithic axes are hardly ever found in a complete state. Flint is scarce in this area and when these axes were exhausted, or when they broke during use, they were often re-used as flake cores. Vlaardingen Culture (3400-2500 BC) sites often yield large quantities of flakes and retouched tools made on polished axe fragments. Using an experimental approach, we tried to better understand the importance of recycling of these objects. For the experiments we reconstructed four so-called Buren axes. The experiments provided insights into the usefulness of broken axes as flake cores. It was also demonstrated that flakes struck from axes generally do not have a remnant of a polished surface, indicating that the importance of broken axes as flake cores has so far been underestimated. Furthermore, it was concluded that micro-debitage can successfully be studied to identify areas where broken axes were flaked.
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Arctic archaeologists generally accept that Dorset Paleo-Inuit (Tuniit) (c. 800 BC-1300 AD) toolkits exhibit high levels of typological uniformity across Arctic Canada and Greenland. This understanding implies that the artifacts were... more
Arctic archaeologists generally accept that Dorset Paleo-Inuit (Tuniit) (c. 800 BC-1300 AD) toolkits exhibit high levels of typological uniformity across Arctic Canada and Greenland. This understanding implies that the artifacts were likely produced according to a standardized set of practices that were somehow reinforced over time and shared across the isolated sites and communities inhabiting this vast region. In contrast, recent theoretical developments in the study of technology highlight that material culture traditions are reproduced through localized social practices, and involve both individual and community-based decision making processes, which would predict a higher level of variability in local manufacture and design features. Our aim in this pilot-study is to test whether Dorset artifacts are, in fact, produced and used in highly standardized ways. We focus on two important tool types crucial to survival in the North: needles and harpoon heads. We sampled assemblages from three Dorset sites located up to 800 km from one other and dating to different Dorset cultural periods. Our results indicate that the sets of tools were made and used in very different ways despite their outward typological similarity. This may reflect the fact that local technological traditions were being learned and practiced differently at each site, though much more work is needed to fully understand the implications of these results in terms of social learning, cultural inheritance, and inter-regional interaction patterns.
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Large collections of beads, pendants and other bodily ornaments have been recovered from pre-Colonial contexts on the shores of the Lake Valencia in north-central Venezuela. Most excavations took place in the early and mid-part of the... more
Large collections of beads, pendants and other bodily ornaments have been recovered from pre-Colonial contexts on the shores of the Lake Valencia in north-central Venezuela. Most excavations took place in the early and mid-part of the 20th century, but the ornaments have not been thoroughly studied to date. These artefacts were produced by the bearers of the Valencioid culture (AD 900-1500) and are currently held in several public and private collections dispersed throughout the world. This paper aims to recontextualize shell, lithic, and clay ornaments from the Alfredo Jahn collection, housed in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Production and use wear traces were investigated through microwear analysis and were combined with data concerning raw material acquisition strategies and depositional contexts. By combining these results with new, unpublished data provided by Jahn’s excavation report from 1901 and with up-to-date Valencioid archaeology, we were able to recontextualize a...
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Flint and amber artefacts from Dutch Funnelbeaker (3400-2900 cal BC) megaliths were examined from a biographical perspective, also involving microwear analysis. It is shown that both flint and amber contributed to the materiality of... more
Flint and amber artefacts from Dutch Funnelbeaker (3400-2900 cal BC) megaliths were examined from a biographical perspective, also involving microwear analysis. It is shown that both flint and amber contributed to the materiality of Funnelbeaker burial practices, which above all stressed the collective identity of the local community. This is evident in the selection of agricultural tools for deposition. Agriculture was of course an important collective task. There are also indications that flint knapping took place around the tomb. A third observation concerns the enigmatic scratches on the transverse arrowheads and flakes, forming regular patterns that cannot have a post-depositional origin. Lastly, both the axes and the amber beads ended up in the grave in a used state, indicating a previous life. However, prior to deposition both items were reground, obliterating any traces of individual ownership before they could be deposited in the communal burial ground.
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The present paper examines bodily ornaments made of semiprecious lithic materials from the site of Pearls on the island of Grenada. The site was an important node in long-distance interaction networks at play between circum-Caribbean... more
The present paper examines bodily ornaments made of semiprecious lithic materials from the site of Pearls on the island of Grenada. The site was an important node in long-distance interaction networks at play between circum-Caribbean communities during the first centuries of the Common Era. Pearls was an amethyst bead-making workshop and a gateway to South America, from where certain lapidary raw materials likely originated. The importance of the site for regional archaeology and local stakeholders cannot be overstated. However, it has undergone severe destruction and looting over the decades. Here, we present a study of a private collection of ornaments from Pearls, which combines raw material identification, typo-technological analysis and microwear analysis. We identify great diversity in lithologies and in techniques adapted to their working properties. Multiple abrasive techniques for sawing, grinding, polishing and carving are identified. Furthermore, the use of ornaments is e...
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Research into the Early Neolithic bandkeramik occupation in Limburg has long been characterised by the well-known excavations of Geleen, Stein, Sittard and Elsloo. Apart from these sites however, more sites have been excavated and... more
Research into the Early Neolithic bandkeramik occupation in Limburg has long been characterised by the well-known excavations of Geleen, Stein, Sittard and Elsloo. Apart from these sites however, more sites have been excavated and investigated over the past century. A new research project funded within the NWO-Odyssey program enabled the study and publication of these sites, some of which were excavated in the first half of the 20th century. Settlements on both sides of the Meuse river were studied both with respect to site location and settlement structure. Next to this all the ceramics, flint and stone material were re-analysed. The new results enable a more complete and diverse picture of LBK settlement in Dutch Limburg. They also provide an interesting perspective for future research into the relationship between the Graetheide cluster, the Caberg sites around Maastricht and the Hesbayan group in Belgium.
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This paper examines aspects of the agricultural activities and network supported by ‘Canaanean' blade segments from Ninevite V sites located principally in Syria and Iraq. Technological and functional analyses of an extensive sample... more
This paper examines aspects of the agricultural activities and network supported by ‘Canaanean' blade segments from Ninevite V sites located principally in Syria and Iraq. Technological and functional analyses of an extensive sample of these tools, alongside experimental and ethnoarchaeological reference data, points to their use as instruments for working cereals, but not a harvesting tool (sickle) as is usually assumed. Our analyses indicate that these blades were standardised inserts used in a special raft-like threshing sledge as described in contemporary cuneiform texts. The functional study was enlarged to include an extensive experimental program that studied harvesting and other manual tools. In particular, we analysed all effects of the functioning of reconstructed threshing rafts, armed with reproductions of Canaanean blade segments. Microscopic silica phytolith ‘sheets', extracted from soil samples taken from structures in various sites, indicated that straw chopped with the instrument was used in large quantities as mudbrick temper, fuel and animal fodder. Experimental studies carried out on blades to examine indicators of the knapping method revealed traces of a special manufacturing technique—pressure debitage with a lever and a copper-tipped point, which was identified on standardised Canaanean blades in the northern Mesopotamian sites studied. Our findings suggest that these Canaanean blade segments were produced in northern Mesopotamian workshops and then distributed over the region to equip threshing sledges. This lends support to hypotheses that local centres controlled extensive networks of village sites in the Ninevite V period, and were devoted to the large-scale production, storage and redistribution of agricultural products, possibly in exchange for items such as the specially produced threshing sledge blades
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Research Interests: History and Archaeology
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Adhesive production is one of the earliest forms of transformative technology, predating ceramics and metallurgy by over 150,000 years. The study of the adhesives used by Neandertals and early modern humans currently plays a significant... more
Adhesive production is one of the earliest forms of transformative technology, predating ceramics and metallurgy by over 150,000 years. The study of the adhesives used by Neandertals and early modern humans currently plays a significant role in debates about human technological and cognitive evolution. Depending on the type of adhesive used, different production sequences were required. These can vary in complexity and would have needed different knowledge, expertise, and resources to manufacture. However, our knowledge of this important technological development is severely hampered by poorly understood taphonomic processes, which affects the preservation and identification of adhesive materials and leads to a research bias. Here we present the results from a 3-year field preservation experiment. Flint flakes hafted and non-hafted with replica adhesives were left to weather naturally on and below the surface at two locations with different soils and climatic conditions. Differentia...
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The analysis of the Keinsmerbrug site, excavated in 1986, was the first step in our research within the framework of the Odyssey project ‘Unlocking Noord-Holland’s Late Neolithic Treasure Chest: Single Grave Culture behavioural... more
The analysis of the Keinsmerbrug site, excavated in 1986, was the first step in our research within the framework of the Odyssey project ‘Unlocking Noord-Holland’s Late Neolithic Treasure Chest: Single Grave Culture behavioural variability in a tidal environment’. The limited scale of the excavation made Keinsmerbrug an excellent choice, serving as a test case for the approach within the project Single Grave Project. In order to unlock and integrate cultural/ecological information and research data, a group of specialists worked together. In this volume the new results and interpretations are presented. The analyses show that Keinsmerbrug was a temporarily occupied settlement, used occasionally or perhaps even only seasonally within the time span of 2580-2450 cal BC. The main period of use – probably consisting of several episodes of short-term use – occurred from spring to autumn. The site of Keinsmerbrug is interpreted as a non-residential settlement: a gathering settlement in the broadest sense of the word, for the gathering of people and resources (special activity site). This scientific report is intended for archaeologists, as well as for other professionals and amateur enthusiasts involved in archaeology. The Cultural Heritage Agency provides knowledge and advice to give the future a past.
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Pre-colonial Caribbean jade objects from the National Museum of Denmark Hatt Collection were subjected to a provenance and microwear analysis. Thirty-nine jade celts and bodily ornaments from the US Virgin Islands, i.e., St. Croix, St.... more
Pre-colonial Caribbean jade objects from the National Museum of Denmark Hatt Collection were subjected to a provenance and microwear analysis. Thirty-nine jade celts and bodily ornaments from the US Virgin Islands, i.e., St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John, and five celts from the West Indies of unknown location, St. Vincent, Cuba and the Dominican Republic were analysed. A comprehensive in-depth examination of jade adornments from St. Croix, combining typo-technological and microwear analysis, is compared to other lithologies used for pre-colonial ornaments. A portable laser ablation system was used to sample jade celts and bodily ornaments on site in a quasi-non-destructive manner. Low-blank trace element and Sr-Nd isotope ratio data were evaluated with a multiclass regression provenance prediction model. This study demonstrates that the pan-Caribbean exchange of jade raw materials, pre-forms or finished objects during the Ceramic Age (400 BC to AD 1492) occurred on a more complex scale than previously thought involving jade sources in Guatemala, eastern Cuba and the northern Dominican Republic. In addition, the study of ornaments recovered from St. Croix reveals use of specific lithologies suggesting stronger ties to Indigenous communities on Puerto Rico than other Lesser Antillean Islands.
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437 Now Groningen Institute of Archaeology at the University of Groningen. 438 State Service for Archaeological Investigations, the forerunner of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 439 Both student dissertations (regarded as... more
437 Now Groningen Institute of Archaeology at the University of Groningen. 438 State Service for Archaeological Investigations, the forerunner of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 439 Both student dissertations (regarded as internal reports) were published within the framework of the inventory project in 2001; Sier 2001, De Vries 2001. 440 Hogestijn 1997. 441 Hogestijn 2001. 442 Hogestijn 1992. 443 Hogestijn 1997, 2001, 2005. 444 Drenth, Brinkkemper & Lauwerier 2008. 12.
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Presentation (terminologie, problematique et contenu des articles) de la rencontre sur la contribution des analyses traceologiques et de l'experimentation archeologique a l'etude des activites artisanales et du traitement de la... more
Presentation (terminologie, problematique et contenu des articles) de la rencontre sur la contribution des analyses traceologiques et de l'experimentation archeologique a l'etude des activites artisanales et du traitement de la nourriture a la Pre- et Protohistoire. Cette manifestation s'est tenue a l'Institut de Prehistoire de l'Universite de Leiden du 1er au 4 novembre 1994. Chaque intervention est analysee dans une notice bibliographique individuelle
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eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for... more
eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item.
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In this paper some basic characteristics of Dutch Bronze Age flint assemblages from settlements in the Central Netherlands are discussed, with special reference to raw materials, core-reduction strategies and typo-morphological aspects.... more
In this paper some basic characteristics of Dutch Bronze Age flint assemblages from settlements in the Central Netherlands are discussed, with special reference to raw materials, core-reduction strategies and typo-morphological aspects. Special attention is paid to the use-wear analyses of formal and informal tool-types.
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The Middle Neolithic site of Schipluiden is located on a coastal ridge near the present day town of The Hague. The 2003 rescue excavation yielded an enormous amount of artefacts of flint, various types of stone, as well as amber, bone and... more
The Middle Neolithic site of Schipluiden is located on a coastal ridge near the present day town of The Hague. The 2003 rescue excavation yielded an enormous amount of artefacts of flint, various types of stone, as well as amber, bone and antler objects. A technological and functional analysis of these artefacts demonstrated the presence of different toolkits, thus providing insight into the technological system. The characteristics of these toolkits suggest the existence of a long term tradition of tool making and using in the wetlands of the Rhine/Meuse delta.
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Subject of this monograph is the Late Neolothic site Zeewijk, that was located in a tidal environment in the northwest of the Netherlands. The analyses show that Zeewijk was a location where recurrent habitation took place, year-round and... more
Subject of this monograph is the Late Neolothic site Zeewijk, that was located in a tidal environment in the northwest of the Netherlands. The analyses show that Zeewijk was a location where recurrent habitation took place, year-round and intensive, alternating with subsistence activities. It is a permanent mosaic of different assemblages: relocated dwellings, cultivated plots, a large variety of local crafts and the building and partial demolition of a remarkable ritual structure in Zeewijk-East. This points to a community of several families, with ties of kinship both genetic and affinal.
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Research Interests: Neolithic Archaeology, Economic archaeology, European Prehistory (Archaeology), European Archaeology, Lithic Resource Identification, and 9 moreLithic Industries, Archaeology, Lithic analysis and organization of technology, Flint Mining, Geoarchaeology and Lithic Studies, Lithic Raw Material Sourcing, German prehistory, Dutch Prehistory, Austrian Archeology, and France prehistory
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Ornamentation of the body is recurrent across different societies and time periods. It generally takes a variety of forms: from objects added to the bodies of people to modifications of the body itself. Body ornamentation is often... more
Ornamentation of the body is recurrent across different societies and time periods. It generally takes a variety of forms: from objects added to the bodies of people to modifications of the body itself. Body ornamentation is often connected to group identity and cosmology; in addition, ornaments and their exotic raw materials have been circulated through long-distance exchanges. Extensive variability is seen in terms of ornament types, raw materials, and attachment systems. In face of this cross-cultural and long-term importance, alongside material variability, a broad range of instruments of analysis has been used for studying archaeological bodily ornaments, especially beads. In the last 20 years, different scientific approaches have emerged, including optical microscopy at different magnifications, SEM imaging and SEM-EDS, -CT scanning, XRF, morphometrics, etc. Focus has been placed on one or several of ornaments’ traits: raw material characterization and sourcing, morphology, technologies of drilling, carving and grinding, use and its duration, and material preservation. An important concern has been the use of non- or minor destructive analytical techniques. The present session invites papers concerned with the use of scientific approaches to the study of ornaments of different raw materials, such as stones, minerals, shell, bone, teeth, and metal. Focus on one or multiple aspects of ornament biographies are both welcomed. We also encourage a reflection on the different toolkits available for their study and the methodological choices that guided analysis. It is the final aim of the session to discuss the differences, advantages and shortcomings of selected methods of analysis.
