Tiina Manne
The University of Queensland, Australia, School of Social Science, Department Member
Located on the edge of Australia’s North West continental shelf, Barrow Island is uniquely located to address a number of research questions, such as the antiquity and changing nature of Indigenous occupation, including shifting uses of... more
Located on the edge of Australia’s North West continental shelf, Barrow
Island is uniquely located to address a number of research questions,
such as the antiquity and changing nature of Indigenous occupation,
including shifting uses of regional economic resources in response to
post-glacial sea-level rise. These questions are addressed from a range of archaeological, zooarchaeological, and geoarchaeological disciplines.
Although only preliminary, results to date indicate the presence of marine resources dating to before sea-level stabilization (∼ 7.5 ka) that
contain both dietary and utilitarian species, including high-ranked
species such as sea turtle. The marine assemblages reflect a variety of
habitats and substrates with a 17,000-year record for the presence of a
former tidal marsh or estuary. We also note recently obtained 14C and
OSL dates that extend the dietarymarine faunas and initial occupation
to well before 41 ka. This demonstrates that consumption of coastal
resources began prior to the Holocene, when we begin to observe more
widespread evidence of marine resource exploitation in the broader
Canarvon Bioregion of northwest Australia. This evidence supports arguments for further research to directly test both the productivity of,
and human reliance on, marine habitats from initial occupation.
Island is uniquely located to address a number of research questions,
such as the antiquity and changing nature of Indigenous occupation,
including shifting uses of regional economic resources in response to
post-glacial sea-level rise. These questions are addressed from a range of archaeological, zooarchaeological, and geoarchaeological disciplines.
Although only preliminary, results to date indicate the presence of marine resources dating to before sea-level stabilization (∼ 7.5 ka) that
contain both dietary and utilitarian species, including high-ranked
species such as sea turtle. The marine assemblages reflect a variety of
habitats and substrates with a 17,000-year record for the presence of a
former tidal marsh or estuary. We also note recently obtained 14C and
OSL dates that extend the dietarymarine faunas and initial occupation
to well before 41 ka. This demonstrates that consumption of coastal
resources began prior to the Holocene, when we begin to observe more
widespread evidence of marine resource exploitation in the broader
Canarvon Bioregion of northwest Australia. This evidence supports arguments for further research to directly test both the productivity of,
and human reliance on, marine habitats from initial occupation.
Research Interests:
The role of degradational processes that act on archaeological faunal assemblages after burial has attracted less attention than it warrants, in part because many of the changes take place over time scales that are not amenable to... more
The role of degradational processes that act on archaeological faunal assemblages after burial has attracted less attention than it warrants, in part because many of the changes take place over time scales that are not amenable to experimental investigation. We propose a straightforward method for evaluating the level of post-depositional degradation in a stratified archaeological faunal assemblage based primarily on trends in the burning composition of the assemblage. The twin foundations of the method are: 1) the experimentally verified changes in physical properties that occur in bone as it is progressively burned through carbonized to calcined stages: and 2) postulated contrasts between burning stages in susceptibility to a suite of degradational processes that operate in the burial context, including a range of microbial, fungal, thermal and chemical processes. We present data from seven archaeological sites from Australasia and three ethnographic assemblages from Papua New Guinea, including sites in open-air, rockshelter and cave contexts, and sites with both acidic and alkaline soil conditions. Each of the archaeological sites is treated as a temporally-seriated assemblage that documents the potential impacts of post-depositional degradation on the faunal assemblage. We compare the relative abundance of un-burned, burned/carbonized or calcined bone through each sequence and identify commonalities of pattern that are highly suggestive of post-depositional degradation. For each assemblage, these patterns are verified by visual inspection and identification of classic signs of surface degradation such as pitting and root channelling. In each of the acidic contexts there was a clear trend of increasing degradation of bone with excavation depth (= age). Assemblages from alkaline deposits were more complex, but some also provided more subtle evidence of degradation within the profile. Investigation of burning profiles in combination with careful examination of bone macro-damage provides a useful tool for identifying the pattern of post-depositional degradation within a stratified sequence and for distinguishing this from other various kinds of taphonomic patterning, and from signals produced by human behaviour.
Research Interests:
The Upper Paleolithic site of Vale Boi in coastal, southwestern Portugal currently represents one of the earliest known cases of grease-rendering in Eurasia, with initial occupation of the site occurring during the early Gravettian at... more
The Upper Paleolithic site of Vale Boi in coastal, southwestern Portugal currently represents one of the earliest known cases of grease-rendering in Eurasia, with initial occupation of the site occurring during the early Gravettian at ~28,000 BP. Already by this time, Vale Boi foragers were intensively processing ungulate carcasses by rendering grease from their bones. Zooarchaeological evidence of grease rendering includes extensive fragmentation of red deer and equine remains, abundant evidence of impact features on specimens and a lower proportion of preserved grease-rich skeletal portions. Comparisons of red deer and horse bone portions with density assays and utility indices suggest that ungulates at Vale Boi were systematically processed for their marrow and bone grease. The early onset of grease-rendering at Vale Boi, in addition to heavy rabbit exploitation may have been spurred by ungulate communities unable to support human consumer-demand on their own. However, the continued practice of grease-rendering at Vale Boi over the course of the Upper Paleolithic may also be closely related to the significance of bone fats for mobile hunter-gatherers e as a highly valued, storable and easily-transportable resource.
Research Interests:
The late Pleistocene record for human exploitation of marine resources is generally accepted as being underrepresented world-wide. The global lowering of sea levels during the last glacial maximum (LGM) extended coastlines, presumably... more
The late Pleistocene record for human exploitation of marine resources is generally accepted as being underrepresented world-wide. The global lowering of sea levels during the last glacial maximum (LGM) extended coastlines, presumably causing much of the evidence for coastal living from that period to be inundated today. The southern coast of Iberia is no exception, having a gently sloping, submerged continental shelf along much of its coastline. During the LGM, this continental shelf would have been partially exposed, with the coastal shore lying a considerable distance south of where it is today. This set of circumstances has no doubt contributed to the lack of known Upper Paleolithic coastal sites in southern Iberia containing records of marine exploitation. However, two key southern Iberian sites provide evidence of long-term marine resource use in this region: Cueva de Nerja and Vale Boi. The southeastern Spanish site of Cueva de Nerja is known for its record of marine fish and shellfish exploitation beginning in the Solutrean (Cortés-Sánchez et al. 2008; Jorda 1986; Morales and Rosello 2008; Serrano et al. 1995). Now the Portuguese site of Vale Boi significantly adds to the evidence of long-term utilization of coastal resources, with its record of marine resource exploitation beginning in the Gravettian.
Research Interests:
Before the 90s, data on Paleolithic human occupation of southern Portugal was very scarce. During the last decade, the knowledge of the Upper Paleolithic of Algarve increased substantially due to the work of a research team based at the... more
Before the 90s, data on Paleolithic human occupation of southern Portugal was very scarce. During the last decade, the knowledge of the Upper Paleolithic of Algarve increased substantially due to the work of a research team based at the University of Algarve. The present paper is a report on the recent results from Algarve, focusing specially on the site of