Past studies have demonstrated that Ruppia cirrhosa (Ruppia), which typically grows in brackish water, is far too unreliable to serve as the chronological basis for radiocarbon dating because of the hard water effect (HWE). Despite this unreliability, Ruppia seeds have been used to date footprints along the margins of paleo-Lake Otero in southern New Mexico to around 23,000–21,000 cal yr BP. In this study, we employ a modern analog approach using δ13C values and radiocarbon dates from modern Ruppia plants growing in Salt Creek to calculate a maximum limiting age range for the footprints. Those plant samples with higher δ13C values produced greater age discrepancies. This simple relationship can be used to correct for the HWE and demonstrates that the human footprints purported to have been made during the local last glacial maximum could be at least ~7500 yr younger.

In arid and semiarid coastal areas, freshwater resources are scarce and are frequently affected by salinization processes. The aim of this work is to evaluate the influence of Late Quaternary climatic events on the hydrogeologic characteristics conditioning the distribution of fresh, brackish, and saline ground water in the Holocene and Pleistocene beach ridges in coastal aquifers of northern Patagonia. To achieve this, geologic, geomorphological, geophysical, hydrochemical, and isotopic studies were carried out, which allowed the identification of the hydrolithologic characteristics controlling groundwater salinity in a context of Quaternary geologic–geomorphological–climatic evolution. In Pleistocene beach ridges, it was recognized that the formation of calcretes in an arid period after Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e conditioned the permeability of superficial sediments, strongly decreasing infiltration rates. During the Holocene, beach ridges were deposited and sea water entered the Pleistocene ridges. Subsequently, with the sea-level drop and wetter climatic conditions, rainwater began to infiltrate, recharging the aquifers and displacing seawater, allowing development of freshwater lenses. However, freshwater lenses only developed in Holocene ridges due to the lower permeability of Pleistocene ridges, which determines that in these geoforms, sea water cannot be displaced by rainwater, and therefore groundwater is brackish to saline.

The arch of Gordian III at Mustis (Al Karib, Tunisia) has been the subject of scholarly work since the eighteenth century, and its dedicatory inscription has drawn the attention of antiquarians and archaeologists since the early nineteenth century. The transcription and reconstruction of its text were proposed by the editors of the eighth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum in numbers 1577 and 15572. This version has prevailed in scientific literature ever since, even though Beschaouch announced in a short note in 1969 the discovery of a fourth block that substantially alters the information it contains. However, a comprehensive study of the complete inscription was never published due to the lack of graphic material. Thanks to the drawing by J. Vérité, the architect in charge of the monument's restoration, we can analyse the inscription as a whole. We conclude that the proposal by the CIL editors is incorrect, we provide the complete transcription of the epigraph, and we propose a new date for the dedication of the arch, in 240 AD.

Large stratovolcanoes in the Cascade Range have high equilibrium-line altitudes that support glaciers whose Holocene and latest Pleistocene advances are amenable to dating. Glacier advances produced datable stratigraphic sequences in lateral moraines, which complement dating of end moraines. New mapping of glacial deposits on Mount Rainier using LIDAR and field observations supports a single latest Pleistocene or early Holocene advance. Rainier R tephra overlies deposits from this advance and could be as old as >11.6 ka; the advance could be of Younger Dryas age. Radiocarbon ages on wood interbedded between tills in the lateral moraines of Nisqually, Carbon, and Emmons glaciers and the South Tahoma glacier forefield suggest glacier advances between 200 and 550 CE, correlative with the First Millennium Advance in western Canada, and during the Little Ice Age (LIA) beginning as early as 1300 CE.

These results resolve previous contradictory interpretations of Mount Rainier's glacial history and indicate that the original proposal of a single pre-Neoglacial cirque advance is correct, in contrast to a later interpretation of two advances of pre- and post-Younger Dryas age, respectively. Meanwhile, the occurrence of the pre-LIA Burroughs Mountain Advance, interpreted in previous work as occurring 3–2.5 ka, is questionable based on inherently ambiguous interpretations of tephra distribution.

Prehistoric and historic iron metallurgy in the Holy Cross Mountains in central Poland developed along with human Przeworsk Culture activity (during the Roman period) and within the boundaries of the Old-Polish Industrial District (OPID) during the Middle Ages and during recent centuries. At the Świślina catchment, there are many archaeological sites showing intense prehistoric metallurgical activity. The later medieval and modern iron industry was significantly smaller. At the Doły Biskupie site, slags and microscopic iron spherules (hammerscales) were found in alluvia. The microscopic spherules separation method (MSS) enabled analysis of these small artefacts created during iron ore smelting and forging. Iron spherules were detected in floodplain sediments, which are characterized by increased content of trace elements. The presence of these artefacts in shallow sediment layers in the confluence section of the river may be an indicator of archaeologically confirmed prehistoric metallurgical activity in the catchment area. Study of these residues enabled an attempt to reconstruct the river valley environment during the prehistoric and historical period. The MSS method can be used to detect iron spherules in alluvia in other river catchments, confirming the presence of yet-undiscovered bloomery sites.

In this study, we address interpersonal violence during the transition between the Middle and the Late Formative periods in the Central Andes, a critical period of political disintegration, hypothesized population pressure, and reorganization of the belief systems that is poorly known from a bioarchaeological viewpoint. Our objective is to understand the nature of the violence and associated factors in this context based on a detailed description of skeletal trauma in 67 well-preserved individuals (20 adolescents and adults and 47 subadults) recovered from Quebrada Chupacigarro cemetery (500–400 BC); this site is located in the middle valley of Supe on the Peruvian north-central coast. To detect patterns and potential causes, we registered the prevalence of traumatic injury according to age, sex, anatomic location, mechanisms (blunt, sharp, mixed, etc.), timing (antemortem or perimortem), and manner (inflicted or accidental). The results show a high prevalence of fractures in the whole population, but especially in adolescents and adults. Eighty percent of the adolescents and adults perished due to the intentional trauma and show patterns that suggest repetitive episodes of interpersonal violence. Perimortem injuries in the skull, face, and thorax are compatible with lethal interpersonal violence. The findings support a probable scenario of intercommunity violence in the middle valley of Supe around 500–400 BC.

Reconstructing the Mid-Holocene climate change in arid and semiarid areas can help predict regional moisture availability and resultant lake evolution and vegetation changes due to future warming. Here, we present a sediment core (YLH15A) from Moon Lake in the Tengger Desert, arid and semiarid China. Based on robust accelerator mass spectrometry 14C dating and multiproxy analyses (pollen, grain size, elements, and total organic carbon), we reconstructed regional climate changes since 7.6 cal ka BP. The climate was generally dry from 7.6 to 2.8 cal ka BP, as indicated by the dried-up lake, strong aeolian activities, and no vegetation, except for a short-term wet interval between 5.4 and 4.9 cal ka BP. The generally dry climate shifted after 2.8 cal ka BP, which is suggested by expanded steppe desert/steppe and increased vegetation cover; it was also accompanied by lake development, which was likely related to increased groundwater recharge originating from regional precipitation and temporary floods from adjacent mountain areas. Our results reveal a prolonged dry Mid-Holocene and relatively wet Late Holocene that are basically consistent with climatic records from the central–east Asian arid and hyperarid areas. The prolonged dry climate in the arid and hyperarid areas is likely to be related to high evaporation triggered by high temperatures during the Middle Holocene.

Connecting changes in erosion and vegetation is necessary for predicting topographic and ecologic change in thawing permafrost landscapes. Formerly periglacial landscapes serve as potential analogs for understanding modern permafrost landscape change, yet compared to paleoenvironmental records at these sites, less is known about concurrent geomorphic processes, particularly their rates and relationships to climate change. Here, we target sediments preserved in a central Appalachian peat bog to reconstruct sedimentation across the last deglacial warming. We use ground-penetrating radar and geochemistry of cored bog sediments to quantify sedimentation timing, style, and provenance. Using 14C dating of sedimentary and geochemical shifts, we connect depositional changes to global climate and local vegetation change. We show that deglacial warming promoted deep soil disturbances via solifluction at ca. 14 ka. In contrast, relatively wetter conditions from ca. 10–9 ka promoted shallow disturbance of hillslopes via slopewash, which corresponds to a time of vegetation change. Our results highlight climate-modulated erosion depth and processes in periglacial and post-periglacial landscapes. The existence of similar erosion and vegetation records preserved regionally implies these dynamics were pervasive across unglaciated Appalachian highlands, aiding in reconstructing erosion responses to warming at a resolution with implications for predicting high-latitude landscape responses to disturbance.

When the colonists who made up the Virginia Company of London established James Fort on the banks of the James River in 1607, they brought with them sheets of scrap copper. Based in large part on the experience of the earlier Roanoke Colony, the English knew that copper was a highly prized material among Native peoples of the Chesapeake, and they brought it with them as a trade item. Artifacts made from European smelted copper (impure copper and copper alloy) have been found at contact period sites (ca. AD 1607–1680) throughout Virginia, and James Fort has long been hypothesized to be the primary distribution point for that material. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the elemental composition of a sample of smelted copper artifacts from James Fort (1607–ca. 1625), as well as samples of copper artifacts from five Native sites in central Virginia. We also analyzed a sample of copper artifacts from another well-known European fort site—Fort San Juan (1567–1568) in North Carolina. The results suggest that although a portion of the smelted copper that circulated through Native networks in Virginia came from James Fort, the rest of it possibly came from English, French, or Dutch distribution points to the northeast.

The Luwian corpus written in Anatolian hieroglyphs consists of about 300 inscriptions. Though this is sufficiently large that Luwian is mostly understood, not all words are known in full writing. One of those is the word for ‘city, town’. Since cities play an important role in Luwian monumental inscriptions, it is remarkable that the word for such a central concept is still unknown. Using a multi-modal approach, combing orthographic, morphological, iconographical and archaeological analysis, I argue that the word for ‘city’ is /allamminna/i-/ ‘fortified settlement > city tout court’, and that the hieroglyph for ‘city’ depicts a merlon, a raised section of a fortification’s battlement, thus linking it to the Hittite tower-vessels that express the relationship between city and fortifications in a material way. The identification of /allamminna/i-/ also impacts the analysis of other Hittite and Luwian words that are hitherto not well understood or not understood at all. Furthermore, it increases our understanding of aspects of the material world and of the cultural and linguistic interactions between Anatolian and Syrian societies. Finally, it illustrates the impact of Luwian and Luwians on Hittite society.

This article examines the different uses made of a marble ostotheke (ossuary) that was discovered in 2021 during archaeological excavations in and around the church in the Araplıtepe district, near the ancient city of Metropolis. Information about the chest’s original use as a funerary object and its production date and ownership is followed by a discussion of its recycled (spolia) use as a sedimentation tank on a water channel, and by an explanation of its third and final function. A bronze lamp discovered inside the ostotheke provides important clues about the object’s final use and its relationship with its surroundings. Christian burials in and around the church dating to as early as the fifth to sixth centuries AD also provide insights into these processes. This ostotheke, which served a variety of functions from the second to the seventh centuries AD, shows that objects made in Roman times might continue to be used in different ways for a long time thereafter. This article therefore examines the ostotheke as a reflection and extension of the changing needs of people and communities over time, rather than simply as a carved marble object.

The emergence of Sardis as an urban centre in the early Iron Age coincided with local production of fine painted pottery in a distinctive regional idiom. Examples of Lydian-style pottery found across western Anatolia from the eighth century BC attest the city’s growing cultural and economic contacts as well as consistent materials and craft methods. Archaeo- metric study using neutron activation analysis (NAA) at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) examined representative specimens of Lydian-style ceramics from Sardis and compared their composition with later examples of red-gloss and red-slipped pottery, fine grey wares and transport jars commonly found at the site. The results confirm the sustained activity of local workshops from the early Iron Age into later historical periods, as Lydia became part of the Seleucid and Roman empires and Sardis a centre of regional innovation.

This study reassesses an inscribed victory catalogue from Sinope (IK Sinope 105) that is often discussed in scholarship concerning agonistic culture in the Roman world. One particularly curious element of this inscription is the empty nature of the penultimate line, which bears only the numerals rho-nu. In the existing scholarship, this is usually interpreted as the sum of all the athlete’s victories. This paper challenges the orthodox interpretation, using a combination of David French’s squeezes housed at the British Institute at Ankara, supported by autopsy and recent photographs of the stone itself. It goes on to reconsider the practice of summing athletic victories in honorific inscriptions more generally, examining a specially compiled dossier of 207 inscriptions of comparable date to IK Sinope 105, and concluding that the practice was relatively rare. Finally, this paper considers other possible interpretations of the rho-nu in IK Sinope 105, among which is the suggestion that rho-nu could be a chronographic feature. While the interpretation of the rho-nu in IK Sinope 105 remains open, the combination of a close analysis of the stone with a wider contextual consideration of the genre demonstrates how much more remains to be said about even a well-known and often cited inscription.

In recent decades, the Turkish government has adopted a proactive policy of pursuing the restitution of cultural objects it believes were illegally removed from its territory. Utilising open-access sale data, the following article examines the impact of this formal restitution policy upon antiquity market sales in Anatolian figurines between 1999 and 2022 across three major international auction houses and the internet market. By casting a forensic gaze upon seemingly decreasing sale rates and ostensibly improving standards of provenance, this study suggests that apparent improvements in the market for Anatolian figurines should not be attributed to the Turkish government restitution policy. Instead, it argues that salient commercial dynamics and the profit-oriented business strategies of individual auction houses are the operative factors in shaping antiquity market data. In doing so, it provides the first quantitative market analysis of auction house sales in Anatolian figurines, widens the applicability of existing methodologies for navigating the duplicitous nature of antiquity market data, and offers much needed empirical insights into the illicit antiquities trade.