			Home About us Contact

Historic Period (historic + period)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	75%

Kinds of Historic Period

early historic period

Selected Abstracts

On the Relative Isolation of a Micronesian Archipelago during the Historic Period: the Palau Case-Study

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
Richard Callaghan
Contact between Europeans and Pacific Islanders beginning in the early 1500s was both accidental and intentional. Many factors played a role in determining when contacts occurred, but some islands remained virtually isolated from European influence for decades or even centuries. We use Palau as a case-study for examining why this archipelago was free from direct European contact until 1783, despite repeated attempts by the Spanish to reach it from both the Philippines and Guam. As computer simulations and historical records indicate, seasonally-unfavourable winds and currents account for the Spanish difficulty. This inadvertently spared Palauans from early Spanish missionaries, disease, and rapid cultural change. © 2007 The Authors [source]

The effects of temporal and spatial patterns of Holocene erosion and alluviation on the archaeological record of the Central and Eastern Great Plains, U.S.A.

GEOARCHAEOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 2 2002
E. Arthur Bettis III
Patterns of erosion and deposition act as a filter that strongly influences the disposition of the archaeological record of the Central and Eastern Plains of the North American Midcontinent. Detailed studies of alluvial valley stratigraphy in four drainage basins in the region reveal temporal and spatial patterns of fluvial system behavior that control the preservation and visibility of past human activity. These basins are located on a 600-km-long longitudinal gradient extending from semiarid southwestern Kansas to moist-subhumid central Iowa. Despite significant environmental variability along this transect, basin-wide patterns of Holocene erosion and deposition are similar across the study area. From ca. 11,000 to 8000 yr B.P., aggradation, punctuated by slow alluviation and/or stability around 10,000 yr B.P., was the dominant process in large and some small valleys. The early and middle Holocene (ca. 8000,5000 yr B.P.) was a period of net erosion and sediment movement in small valleys, sediment storage in large valleys, and episodic aggradation on alluvial fans. During the late Holocene (post-5000 yr B.P.), alluvial fans stabilized, small valleys became zones of net sediment storage, and aggradation slowed in large valleys. Basin-wide aggradation followed by entrenchment and channel migration characterizes fluvial activity during the Historic period. Consideration of the effects of these temporal and spatial patterns of Holocene erosion and alluviation on the archaeological record is crucial for developing efficient cultural resource sampling strategies and for accurately interpreting the archaeological record. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source]

FROM SUSA TO ANURADHAPURA: RECONSTRUCTING ASPECTS OF TRADE AND EXCHANGE IN BITUMEN-COATED CERAMIC VESSELS BETWEEN IRAN AND SRI LANKA FROM THE THIRD TO THE NINTH CENTURIES AD*

ARCHAEOMETRY, Issue 3 2008
B. STERN
In contrast with artefactual studies of long-distance trade and exchange in South Asia during the Prehistoric and Early Historic periods (Ardika et al. 1993; Gogte 1997; Krishnan and Coningham 1997; Tomber 2000; Gupta et al. 2001; Ford et al. 2005), few scientifically orientated analyses have focused on artefacts from the region's Historic period. During excavations at the ancient city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, a number of buff ware ceramics with a putative organic coating on the interior were recovered (Coningham 2006). Dated stylistically to between the third and ninth centuries ad, analysis of the coatings using gas chromatography,mass spectrometry (GC,MS) and stable isotope analysis (carbon and deuterium) confirmed that the coatings are bitumen,an organic product associated with petroleum deposits. There are no known bitumen sources in Sri Lanka, and biomarker distributions and isotopic signatures suggest that the majority of the samples appear to have come from a single bitumen source near Susa in Iran. The relationship between the bitumen coatings and the vessels is discussed, and it is suggested that the coatings were used to seal permeable ceramic containers to allow them to transport liquid commodities. This study enhances our knowledge of networks of trade and exchange between Sri Lanka and western Asia during Historic times. [source]

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON MISSOURI RWER BASIN WATER YIELD,

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION, Issue 5 2001
Mark C. Stone
ABSTRACT: Water from the Missouri River Basin is used for multiple purposes. The climatic change of doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide may produce dramatic water yield changes across the basin. Estimated changes in basin water yield from doubled CO2 climate were simulated using a Regional Climate Model (RegCM) and a physically based rainfall-runoff model. RegCM output from a five-year, equilibrium climate simulation at twice present CO2 levels was compared to a similar present-day climate run to extract monthly changes in meteorologic variables needed by the hydrologic model. These changes, simulated on a 50-km grid, were matched at a commensurate scale to the 310 subbasin in the rainfall-runoff model climate change impact analysis. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) rainfall-runoff model was used in this study. The climate changes were applied to the 1965 to 1989 historic period. Overall water yield at the mouth of the Basin decreased by 10 to 20 percent during spring and summer months, but increased during fall and winter. Yields generally decreased in the southern portions of the basin but increased in the northern reaches. Northern subbasin yields increased up to 80 percent: equivalent to 1.3 cm of runoff on an annual basis. [source]

Crannogs and Island Duns: Classification, Dating and Function

OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2000
D. W. Harding
A recent paper, Islets through Time (OJA 17, 2, 227--44), by Jon Henderson highlighted the fact that the majority of dated crannogs were occupied in the later prehistoric or early historic period, and offered a new classification of artificial islets. This paper addresses consequential issues of definition and classification and urges that artificial islets, whether classed hitherto as crannogs or island duns, should be seen as complementary elements within a spectrum of settlement types, in particular for the Early Iron Age and the early historic periods. Comparison shows that studies of crannogs and their land-based counterparts have faced similar problems of interpretation and that typological compartmentalization has acted to the detriment of a proper understanding of both. [source]

Defining the OE hearg: a preliminary archaeological and topographic examination of hearg place names and their hinterlands

EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 4 2007
Sarah Semple
The OE term hearg is interpreted variously as ,pagan temple', ,hilltop sanctuary' and even ,idol'. It is a rare survival in the English place-name record. When it can be identified, the place name is commonly considered to refer to a location of pre-Christian religious activity, specifically a pagan Anglo-Saxon temple. Taking inspiration from the extensive and methodologically well-advanced studies in Scandinavia, which have successfully related place-name evidence for cultic and religious sites with the archaeology and topography of these localities, this paper adopts and uses a similar methodology to investigate the archaeological and topographic character of a selection of hearg locations. The traditional interpretations of the place name are questioned and evidence is presented that these sites are characterized by long-lived, localized cult practice spanning the late prehistoric to early historic periods, but with activity reaching a zenith in the late Iron Age to Romano-British eras, rather than the fifth to seventh centuries AD. [source]