Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T18:09:04.164Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modeling Spatial Innovation Diffusion from Radiocarbon Dates and Regression Residuals: The Case of Early Old World Pottery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Fabio Silva ,
James Steele ,
Kevin Gibbs  and
Peter Jordan
Fabio Silva
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, UK School of AHA, University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter SA48 7ED, UK
James Steele
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, UK SGAES, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Kevin Gibbs
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, UK Archaeological Research Facility, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Peter Jordan*
Affiliation:
Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, Netherlands
*
Corresponding author. Email: p.d.jordan@rug.nl.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article introduces a method of exploratory analysis of the geographical factors influencing large-scale innovation diffusion, and illustrates its application to the case of early pottery dispersal in the Old World. Regression techniques are used to identify broad-scale spatiotemporal trends in the innovation's first occurrence, and regression residuals are then analyzed to identify geographical variation (climate, biomes) that may have influenced local rates of diffusion. The boundaries between the modeled diffusion zones segregate the western half of the map into a Eurasian hunter-gatherer pottery-using zone affiliated by cultural descent to the Siberian center of innovation, and a lower-latitude farming and pastoralist zone affiliated by cultural descent to the north African center of innovation. However, the correlation coefficients suggest that this baseline model has limited explanatory power, with geographical patterning in the residuals indicating that habitat also greatly affected rates of spread of the new technology. Earlier-than-predicted ages for early pottery tend to occur in locations with mean annual temperature in the range approximately 0–15°. This favorable temperature range typically includes Mediterranean, grassland, and temperate forest biome types, but of these, the Mediterranean and the temperate deciduous forest biomes are the only ones on which regression residuals indicate earlier-than-predicted first observed pottery dates.

Type
Eurasian Archaeology
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , 2014 , pp. 723 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackland, GJ, Signitzer, M, Stratford, K, Cohen, MH. 2007. Cultural hitchhiking on the wave of advance of beneficial technologies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104(21):8714–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ammerman, AJ, Cavalli-Sforza, L. 1971. Measuring the rate of spread of early farming in Europe. Man New Series 6(4):674–88.Google Scholar
Ammerman, AJ, Cavalli-Sforza, L. 1984. The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biton, R, Goren, Y, Goring-Morris, A. 2014. Ceramics in the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: evidence from Kfar HaHoresh, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science 41:740–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braconnot, P, Otto-Bliesner, B, Harrison, S, Joussaume, S, Peterschmitt, J-Y, Abe-Ouchi, A, Crucifix, M, Driesschaert, E, Fichefet, T, Hewitt, CD, Kageyama, M, Kitoh, A, Laîné, A, Loutre, M-F, Marti, O, Merkel, U, Ramstein, G, Valdes, P, Weber, SL, Yu, Y, Zhao, Y. 2007. Results of PMIP2 coupled simulations of the Mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum - Part 1: experiments and large-scale features. Climate of the Past 3(2):261–77.Google Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, C. 2009. Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon 51(1):337–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caneva, I, editor. 1983. Pottery-Using Gatherers and Hunters at Saggai (Sudan): Preconditions for Food Production. Rome: Origini 12.Google Scholar
Chambers, JM. 1983. Graphical Methods for Data Analysis. New York: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Craig, O, Saul, H, Lucquin, A, Nishida, Y, Taché, K, Clarke, L, Thompson, A, Altoft, D, Uchiyama, J, Ajimoto, M, Gibbs, K, Isaksson, S, Heron, C, Jordan, P. 2013. Earliest evidence for the use of pottery. Nature 496(7445):351–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davison, K, Dolukhanov, P, Sarson, GR, Shukurov, A. 2006. The role of waterways in the spread of the Neolithic. Journal of Archaeological Science 33(5):641–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davison, K, Dolukhanov, PM, Sarson, GR, Shukurov, A, Zaitseva, GI. 2009. Multiple sources of the European Neolithic: mathematical modelling constrained by radiocarbon dates. Quaternary International 203(1–2):10–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gkiasta, M, Russell, T, Shennan, S, Steele, J. 2003. Neolithic transition in Europe: the radiocarbon record revisited. Antiquity 77(295):45–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hijmans, RJ, Cameron, SE, Parra, JL, Jones, PG, Jarvis, A. 2005. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 25(15):1965–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hommel, P. 2009. Hunter-gatherer pottery: an emerging 14C chronology. In: Jordan, P, Zvelebil, M, editors. Ceramics before Farming: The Dispersal of Pottery among Prehistoric Eurasian Hunter-Gatherers. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. p 561–9.Google Scholar
Jordan, P, Zvelebil, M. 2009. Ex oriente lux: the prehistory of hunter-gatherer ceramic dispersals. In: Jordan, P, Zvelebil, M, editors. Ceramics before Farming: The Dispersal of Pottery among Prehistoric Eurasian Hunter-Gatherers. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. p 33–89.Google Scholar
Kuzmin, Y. 2013. Origin of Old World pottery as viewed from the early 2010s: when, where and why? World Archaeology 45(4):539–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Mière, M, Picon, M. 1999. Les debuts de la céramique au Proche-Orient. Palaéorient 24(2):5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemmen, C, Gronenborn, D, Wirtz, KW. 2011. A simulation of the Neolithic transition in Western Eurasia. Journal of Archaeological Science 38(12):3459–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohammed-Ali, A, Khabir, A. 2003. The wavy line and the dotted wavy line pottery in the prehistory of the Central Nile and the Sahara-Sahel belt. African Archaeological Review 20(1):25–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nieuwenhuyse, OP, Akkermans, PMMG, van der Plicht, J. 2010. Not so coarse, nor always plain – the earliest pottery of Syria. Antiquity 84(323):71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, DM, Dinerstein, E, Wikramanayake, ED, Burgess, ND, Powell, GV, Underwood, EC, Kassem, KR. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on Earth. BioScience 51(11):933–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Malley, J, Kuzmin, Y, Donahue, D, Jull, A. 1999. Direct radiocarbon AMS dating of the earliest pottery from the Russian Far East and Transbaikal. Mémoires de la Société Préhistorique Française 26:19–24.Google Scholar
Pinhasi, R, Fort, J, Ammerman, AJ. 2005. Tracing the origin and spread of agriculture in Europe. PLoS Biology 3(12): e410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reimer, PJ, Baillie, MGL, Bard, E, Bayliss, A, Beck, JW, Blackwell, PG, Bronk Ramsey, C, Buck, CE, Burr, GS, Edwards, RL, Friedrich, M, Grootes, PM, Guilderson, TP, Hajdas, I, Heaton, TJ, Hogg, AG, Hughen, KA, Kaiser, KF, Kromer, B, McCormac, FG, Manning, SW, Reimer, RW, Richards, DA, Southon, JR, Talamo, S, Turney, CSM, van der Plicht, J, Weyhenmeyer, CE. 2009. IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon age calibration curves, 0–50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon 51(4):1111–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, T, Silva, F, Steele, J. 2014. Modelling the spread of farming in the Bantu-speaking regions of Africa: an archaeology-based phylogeography. PLoS One 9(1):e87854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sadig, A. 2013. Reconsidering the ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ in Sudan. In: Shirai, N, editor. Neolithisation of Northeastern Africa. Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Environment 16. Berlin: ex oriente. p 23–42.Google Scholar
Silva, F, Steele, J. 2011. Modeling boundaries between converging fronts in prehistory. Advances in Complex Systems 14(5):1–21.Google Scholar
Smith, P. 1978. An interim report on Ganj Dareh Tepe, Iran. American Journal of Archaeology 82(4):537–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, J. 2010. Radiocarbon dates as data: quantitative strategies for estimating colonization front speeds and event densities. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(8):2017–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Etten, J, Hijmans, RJ. 2010. A geospatial modelling approach integrating archaeobotany and genetics to trace the origin and dispersal of domesticated plants. PLoS One 5(8): e12060.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ward, GK, Wilson, SR. 1978. Procedures for comparing and combining radiocarbon age determinations: a critique. Archaeometry 20(1):19–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, FI, Lomas, MR, Kelly, CK. 2004. Global climate and the distribution of plant biomes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 359(1450):1465–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wu, X, Zhang, C, Goldberg, P, Cohen, D, Pan, Y, Arpin, T, Bar-Yosef, O. 2012. Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China. Science 336(6089):1696–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeder, MA, Hesse, B. 2000. The initial domestication of goats (Capra hircus) in the Zagros Mountains 10,000 years ago. Science 287(5461):2254–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar