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Abstract
In the fifth century BCE, Athenians intensified the worship of non-Athenian and non-Greek deities, a fact which has resulted in massive scholarly attention (Garland 1992; Parker 1996; Neumann 2022). While the legal facet of this procedure has been extensively analysed (Parker 1996; 2011), the spatial aspect of the establishment of new cults – the ‘placemaking’ – has been mainly neglected. This article re-examines the placement of the cults of Asklepios, Bendis and Deloptes, commonly assumed to have been a healing hero and a paredros of Bendis. Based on the iconographical analysis of Piraean votive reliefs for these divinities in combination with the spatial and temporal setting of these attestations, I argue that the Athenians provided space for this first wave of officially accepted religious newcomers close to the Zea harbour. At the temenos, which is usually identified as the Asklepieion and its immediate surroundings, several originally non-Athenian cults were installed during the Peloponnesian War, making it an anchoring point for the divine new arrivals.
Abstract
In this response to the article Archaeology, Language, and the Question of Sámi Ethnogenesis by Asgeir Svestad and Bjørnar Olsen (2023), we correct major misunderstandings made by Svestad and Olsen concerning the methodology of historical linguistics and its relation to archaeology. Our comment concerns the following topics: We explain that there cannot be one ethnogenesis that could be approached by different disciplines because different disciplines are independent and meet only momentarily. We also demonstrate that continuity does not disprove migration, nor vice versa, and explain some methods of linguistic substrate studies that the authors have misunderstood. In Svestad and Olsen’s article, there are also some clearly erroneous statements that we correct in our response. In spite of our critical comments, we genuinely encourage multidisciplinary discussion and cooperation because we share the same research interest: to deepen our understanding of the human past.
Abstract
The extent of spatial overlap between late Funnel Beaker (TRB) and early Corded Ware or ‘Single Grave’ finds has figured prominently in discussions of how the latter became established on the Jutland Peninsula after 2850 BCE. Working mainly from regional distribution maps and often framing the issue in terms of ‘territories’, decades of debate have focused not least on the question of whether elements of Corded Ware culture primarily arrived in this region with incoming migrants or whether the late TRB groups that already inhabited the region during the early 3rd millennium BCE played a central role in adopting a new tradition. Recently, the results of aDNA research have shifted the relevant questions from whether migration played a role to which role migration played, how it interacted with other factors and how both processes and outcomes varied. The task of answering these questions calls for local-scale analyses and for comparisons across cases and contexts. This article examines site locations and the more detailed location of burials, ritual structures and funerary monuments at specific sites within a 40 × 40 km large area in northern Jutland across the late TRB – early Corded Ware period transition. The results show a high degree of continuity in the location of cemeteries in the landscape, in some cases down to individual burials superposing one another, and this leads to a discussion of different scenarios that may explain the apparent correspondence across the general shift in burial customs. The results obtained in the selected area in northern Jutland are also compared with site locations in another part of the peninsula, i.e. the Horsens Fjord area in eastern-central Jutland, which has also been studied thoroughly recently and where a very different pattern is found (Madsen 2020). The article concludes by discussing the background of these two different patterns and the presumably rather different cultural processes that took place across the late TRB – early Corded Ware transition in these two areas.
Abstract
In October 2019, the wrecks of two warships were found in the inlet to Stockholm. According to historical sources, Vasa’s three so-called sister ships might have been sunk in the area to block off a strait. These large ships were launched in the years 1629–1634 and built by the same master shipbuilder who participated in the construction of Vasa. However, after further archaeological investigations, the two ships were identified as Apollo and Maria, two medium-sized warships launched in 1648. The wrecks shed light on a twenty-year period when ships of this type were prioritized because they were considered more practical and offered more value for money. The ships were heavily constructed and could carry heavy armament for their size. They could be at sea in difficult conditions and be used for a variety of purposes. Despite the fact that the investigations did not match initial hopes of finding Vasa’s sister ships, important results were achieved. In 2021, Äpplet, one of Vasa’s sister ships, was found in the vicinity of Apollo and Maria.
Abstract
This article discusses the use of statistical methods for systematising 96 archaeological ship finds, mainly from the southern and south-eastern coast of Norway. It draws on an article published in 2009 by Jan Bill, where he did a similar investigation of material from the Danish area. The method of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) provides a way to summarise categorical data in a reduced number of dimensions. The results are presented in a geographical space, a plot, that can be used for making interpretations and assumptions of cohesions and divergences in the material. It is a way of analysing continuity and change in boatbuilding techniques that avoids using arbitrary and ambiguous concepts of historical (ship) types. Instead, the building techniques, the ways of ‘doing things’, make the premises for classification. The results in this article can be considered preliminary, its primary function being a discussion on methodology.
Abstract
Large underwater construction projects generate hundreds of potential cultural heritage objects requiring archaeological assessment and – potentially – mitigation. Some can easily be avoided in planning, whereas others cannot. Singular objects tend to present a dilemma in heritage management: their archaeological significance tends to lie in their association to an – at the time of finding – unknown context rather than in the object itself. Though these objects may be protected by heritage legislation, they are often undesired in museum collections, and even if destined for disposal, they can only be salvaged and documented at significant cost. Their cultural heritage ‘value’ is often, though mostly tacitly, considered low or at least undecided. We argue that in-situ preservation by record can be a viable solution for such objects, provided that appropriate documentation methods are employed. Fortunately, these objects are often targeted by other types of pre-construction surveys and inspections, usually conducted using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), making hours of third-party video footage available to the archaeologist. This article examines if existing third-party video inspection data can be used towards acceptable archaeological recording without compromising the cost-efficiency so crucial to the industry. Hence, the focus of this article is the typical industry-standard inspection-, work class-, or even low-end hobby-ROV (from where the jump to legacy data or, indeed, crowdsourcing is obvious), suggesting a few simple amendments to data acquisition specifications which may potentially save the cost of a dedicated archaeological inspection campaign.