For a Discussion About Epigraphic Evidence of the Activities of Byzantium in the Mountainous Crimea in the 6th Century

Introduction. In the basilicas discovered on the Mangup plateau (fig. 3), in the Karalez valley (fig. 1) that begins at its foot and on Eski-Kermen (fig. 2, 1), inscriptions were found, the interpretation and dating of which caused many years of discussion. Some scientists considered them as evidence of the activities of the Eastern Roman Empire in the region in the 6th century, while other specialists doubted both such an interpretation of the inscriptions and their dating. Methods. To substantiate the chronology of the mentioned inscriptions, it is important to consider the formulas and linguistic features contained in them, as well as the stratigraphy recorded during the excavation of temples and the revealed dated closed ceramics complexes. Analysis. The text of the inscription with the name of Justinian I is correlated with the information of Procopius about the construction of the “Long Walls” in the Dory region at the behest of the emperor. Most likely, the inscription reported the construction of one of the “Long Walls” in the Karalez valley at the foot of Doros. It is possible that the stone (fig. 1) with the typical Byzantine graffiti with the formulas ΦΩС ΖΩΗ and κ(ύρι)ε βοήθ(ει...) was inserted into a wall of an apse of the basilica right after its construction in the Karalez valley in the second half of the 6th century. On a stone over the graffiti ΦΩС ΖΩΗ letters of the second graffiti “Ἰς νικᾷ” are cut out which means Ἰ(ησοῦ)ς (Χριστὸς) νικᾷ – “Jesus Christ wins”. In Byzantium the images of a cross with the formula IC XC NI ΚΑ (Ἰ(ησοῦ)C Χ(ριστὸ)C Ν(ικ)Α) appeared at the iconoclast emperor Leo III (717–741) and were distributed in later time. Results. Undisputed evidence of Byzantium’s activity in the region in the 6th century is only the fragment of a plate with a building inscription that means the emperor Justinian I found in a late slab grave at the basilica on Mangup. According to the stratigraphy, revealed in 1938 during the excavations of the Baptistry on Mangup, the graffiti (fig. 3) that caused a long discussion was carved on the back of the cornice in the second construction period not earlier than in the 9th century.

Determining the age of paintings at JSARN-113/23, Jawoyn Country, central-western Arnhem Land plateau

Western Arnhem Land in northern Australia has the rare distinction, both at national and global scales, of containing a vast landscape of many thousands of rockshelters richly decorated with art, some of which was probably made tens of thousands of years ago, others as recently as a few decades ago. Yet the challenge remains as to how to date this art, how to find out how old it is. While relative dating methods have been commonly applied, in particular patterns of superimposition and changing faunal themes supposedly signalling changing environmental conditions, we still lack a clear understanding of the age of almost all the region’s art styles or conventions.Other chapters in this volume report direct dates for Arnhem Land art using radiocarbon determinations on beeswax figures with the likelihood that the ‘art event’, the time when a beeswax figure was made, is at most a few years different from the ‘carbon event’, the time of the last biological capture of atmospheric carbon, which is the actual date measured by radiocarbon. But many, in fact most, sites have no beeswax figures or other ways directly to date the art. Sometimes, as again reported in this volume, there is some indication of date when a radiocarbon determination is obtained on, for instance, charcoal in an archaeological deposit that can be related to the art. Often that route is also blocked: many a painted surface without beeswax figures is in no close relation to a deposit that might so be dated. What can be done then? Here we present results of investigations at a small rockshelter in Jawoyn Country, in the centralwestern part of the Arnhem Land plateau. Since its art cannot be directly dated, we follow a different path. In the first instance, we aim to understand the history, and antiquity, of the decorated rock surfaces, since the exposed surfaces of the boulder have undergone repeated transformations over a long time. Determining when now-decorated rock surfaces were formed can give us maximum possible ages for the art, since we can date when the surface first was available. Taken with related archaeological evidence from deposits, such as ochre fragments with signs of use, we can arrive at some indications for the age of the art, or at least how the range of possible dates is constrained. This approach is akin to that used at other sites in Jawoyn Country (see Chapters 11 and 15)

The archaeomagnetic field recorded in ancient kiln walls in Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai

Archaeological dating is crucial in archaeology as it is a key to understand human history. However, traditional dating methods used by archaeologists such as potassium-argon dating and luminescence dating can provide ambiguous age results, e.g., argon loss during the dating returns young apparent ages. Therefore, I plan to establish an archaeomagnetic secular variation (ASV) curve to resolve this problem and use the ASV curve as an alternative tool to date archaeological artefacts. However, archaeomagnetic data in Thailand are absent from literature. Therefore, the ASV curve cannot be constructed from the archaeomagnetic data for this locality. To provide archaeomagnetic data to construct the ASV curve, the directions of the Earth’s magnetic field recorded in kiln walls from Ban Ko Noi (KN123, age 1,370 ± 100 A.D.), Si Satchanalai were measured. The mean declination and inclination of 49.6° and 32.6° with 95% confidence limit of 5.4° were determined from 10 samples from kiln KN123. Mean directions from this study were also compared with the directions of the Earth’s magnetic field in Thailand during 1,370 A.D. from the global archaeomagnetic field model ARCH3k.1. Declination and inclination from this study show significant departure from the field predicted by the ARCH3k.1 model.

Funeral Rite and Morphology of a Buried Man from Kurgan of Tau Cemetery (Western Kazakhstan)

Introduction. The paper presents results of the funeral rite and material culture study of the Sauromat time Tau cemetery located on the territory of Western Kazakhstan, and also provides anthropological analysis of the skull discovered there. Methods and materials. An interdisciplinary approach was applied in the course of the study with inclusion of typological, analog and cross-dating methods regarding the funeral rite and material culture examination, methods for studying craniometrical and cranioscopic signs, as well as methods of skull pathology evaluation. The source of the study material as well as the male skull discovery site is burial 1 of kurgan 1 of Tau cemetery. Discussion and results. The funeral rite and clothing inventory data confirms that the burial belongs to Sauromat archaeological culture and, within the chronological framework, could be dated back late 6th – early 5th centuries BC. Furthermore, the funeral rite and weaponry features, including a quiver set with a short sword, attribute this burial to this epoch. Historical and archaeological source analysis suggests that there must have been a cult of the Hand in the Sauromat-Sarmatian society; consequently, the separate interment of the right hand in the examined burial reveals its military trophy origin. The male skull possesses Caucasian features with a weakened horizontal facial profile. The morphological features of the skull from the Tau cemetery have analogies in the synchronous population of Western Kazakhstan, Southern Urals and Lower Volga regions. The skull pathology analysis showed the presence of periodontitis, intravital trauma to the frontal bone, as well as some acute sinusitis signs.

SEEKING THE MARKS OF KNITTING WITHIN THE HISTORY: NALBINDING

Being a textile surface formation method basing on binding and passing the loops prepared separately with an assistant such as crochet needle, knitting needle or shuttle and coming from the ball through one another, weft knitted fabric’s development process within the history has mostly been associated with hand-knit started with knitting needles. Together with this, scientific examinations and dating methods conducted on the needles and breadths brought out in the archaeological digs carried out world-wide proves that the commencement of hand-knit within the history dates back older times. The findings came up in archaeological digs show that knitting began with world-widely known nalbinding technique or single needle knitting. Nalbinding is based on binding the loops formed with needle and thread to one another in the form of a cyclic hoop within themselves. Although nalbinding is expressed in several Turkish resources related to knitting, it is an old technique that is not commonly used. This technique used in Northern Europe shows similarity with shuttled knitting, fishnet knitting, point lace techniques commonly known in Anatolia and in terms of formation of surface with thread hoop and usage of single thread carrier. Even though nalbinding technique is not common in Anatolia, the fact that some needles thought to have been used as knitting needle were found in the recent archaeological digs (Başur Höyük–Siirt, Körtik Tepe-Diyarbakır) makes us consider that the history of knitting dates back to 11.000 BC in these lands and knitting technique made by using knitting needle might have been used in Anatolia. Besides this, there is not an assessment on whether nalbinding was used in Turkey or not. It is observed that there is an increasing interest in nalbinding technique, which is used for gloves, socks and knit cap around the world since 1970s. Revival of this technique in Scandinavian countries is in question. For that reason, this research was designed for the ones showing interest to textile design techniques as a collection to introduce the history and technique of nalbinding technique, and its needles over knitting needles found out in recent archaeological digs conducted in Turkey and around the world. Keywords: Knitting, nalbinding, single needle knitting, knitting in archaeological digs, knitting textile findings

Divergence time estimation of Galliformes based on the best gene shopping scheme of ultraconserved elements

Background Divergence time estimation is fundamental to understanding many aspects of the evolution of organisms, such as character evolution, diversification, and biogeography. With the development of sequence technology, improved analytical methods, and knowledge of fossils for calibration, it is possible to obtain robust molecular dating results. However, while phylogenomic datasets show great promise in phylogenetic estimation, the best ways to leverage the large amounts of data for divergence time estimation has not been well explored. A potential solution is to focus on a subset of data for divergence time estimation, which can significantly reduce the computational burdens and avoid problems with data heterogeneity that may bias results. Results In this study, we obtained thousands of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) from 130 extant galliform taxa, including representatives of all genera, to determine the divergence times throughout galliform history. We tested the effects of different “gene shopping” schemes on divergence time estimation using a carefully, and previously validated, set of fossils. Our results found commonly used clock-like schemes may not be suitable for UCE dating (or other data types) where some loci have little information. We suggest use of partitioning (e.g., PartitionFinder) and selection of tree-like partitions may be good strategies to select a subset of data for divergence time estimation from UCEs. Our galliform time tree is largely consistent with other molecular clock studies of mitochondrial and nuclear loci. With our increased taxon sampling, a well-resolved topology, carefully vetted fossil calibrations, and suitable molecular dating methods, we obtained a high quality galliform time tree. Conclusions We provide a robust galliform backbone time tree that can be combined with more fossil records to further facilitate our understanding of the evolution of Galliformes and can be used as a resource for comparative and biogeographic studies in this group.

RADIOCARBON VS. LUMINESCENCE DATING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL CERAMICS IN THE SOUTHERN ANDES: A REVIEW OF PAIRED DATES, BAYESIAN MODELS, AND A PILOT STUDY

ABSTRACT Archaeologists have been using luminescence to date pottery in South America since the late 1970s, inspired by early success in northern Chile. However, luminescence dates have not been rigorously compared to independent dating methods, which this paper’s goal. First, we present a compilation of 94 paired 14C and luminescence dates from the southern Andes, which reveals discrepancies across a range of contexts and ages. Second, we compare two Bayesian models of sets of 14C and thermoluminescence (TL) dates from three ceramic styles in the Azapa Valley, Chile, and the Inca occupation of Mendoza, Argentina. We find that only the 14C models produce results that agree with expectations based on independent data. Third, we present results from a pilot study in Mendoza that dated 6 sherds with 3 luminescence methods each and closely associated 14C dates. The reasons for disagreement between methods remain unclear, but Andean sediments with low and unstable luminescence sensitivity seem to be an important factor. Even though some luminescence ages are accurate, the clear trend of inconsistent results leads us to recommend that archaeologists use 14C rather than luminescence dates to build cultural chronologies.

COMMENTS ON THE ARTICLE AUTHORED BY M.V. MINTS AND K.A. DOKUKINA – THE BELOMORIAN ECLOGITE PROVINCE (EASTERN FENNOSCANDIAN SHIELD, RUSSIA): MESO-NEOARCHEAN OR LATE PALEOPROTEROZOIC?

The comments are given on the article authored by M.V. Mints and K.A. Dokukina – The Belomorian Eclogite Province (Eastern Fennoscandian Shield, Russia): Meso-Neoarchean or Late Paleoproterozoic? (Geodynamics & Tectonophysics 2020, 11 (1), 151–200). The Belomorian (White Sea) province of the Fennoscandia Shield is a key site for studying the tectonics of the early periods because numerous Precambrian eclogites have been found there. It was not anticipated, but the problem of age determinations of the eclogite metamorphism of gabbroids in the White Sea mobile belt has turned out to be extremely relevant not only for this region, but also for the Precambrian geology in general. The reason is that a number of authors determine the age of eclogites as Archean (2.7–2.8 Ga), which makes the White Sea mobile belt the only example of the Archean eclogite metamorphism in the world and, therefore, the only dated evidence in support of the plate tectonic model of the evolution of the Earth’s crust at the earliest stage of its formation. The article consistently provides a critical analysis of the arguments put forward by the supporters of the Archean age of the eclogites of the White Sea mobile belt. Special emphasis is made on the isotope geochronological and geochemical features of the composition of zircons from eclogite samples, as well as on the phase and chemical compositions and distribution patterns of mineral inclusions. Considering the age of eclogite metamorphism that led to the formation of eclogites in the White Sea mobile belt, we propose our interpretation based on a set of independent isotope geochemical dating methods, including the local U- Pb method for heterogeneous zircons with magmatic cores and eclogite rims, the Lu-Hf and Sm-Nd methods for the minerals of eclogite paragenesis (garnet and omphacite). And this age interpretation is fundamentally different from the one described in the commented article: all the three methods independently determine the eclogite metamorphism as Paleoproterozoic and yield the same age of circa 1.9 Ga. According to our data, the eclogites of the White Sea mobile belt are among the most ancient high-pressure rocks, their reliably established age of metamorphism is circa 1.9 Ga, and the age of the magmatic protolith is the range of 2.2–2.9 Ga.