Internet Archaeology: New in issue 56

[Judith Winters]

Three articles have been added to issue 56 over the last week

More details below

Wood J. R., Hsu, Y-T and Bell, C. 2021 Sending Laurion Back to the Future: Bronze Age Silver and the Source of Confusion, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.9

Robb, J. 2021 The Mobile Phone in Late Medieval Culture, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.7

Strupler, N. 2021 Re-discovering Archaeological Discoveries. Experiments with reproducing archaeological survey analysis, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.6

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Wood J. R., Hsu, Y-T and Bell, C. 2021 Sending Laurion Back to the Future: Bronze Age Silver and the Source of Confusion, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.9

Silver-bearing lead ores at Laurion in Attica were considered to have been first exploited with the introduction of coinage sometime around the birth of Classical Greece. However, in the late 20th century this chronology was radically revised earlier, to the Bronze Age, largely supported by lead isotope analyses (LIA). Here, we acknowledge that lead and silver metallurgy emerged from the earliest times but we propose that any correlation between these metals in the archaeological record is not a consequence of a geological association between lead and silver in ores such as galena until the middle of the first millennium BCE. We suggest that ancient metallurgists recognised that silver minerals (such as horn silver) dispersed in host rocks could be concentrated in molten lead and that LIA signatures of Bronze Age silver artefacts reflect the use of exogenous lead to extract silver, perhaps applying processes similar to those used to acquire silver in Bronze Age Siphnos. We further propose that lead from Laurion used for silver extraction resulted in the inadvertent transfer of its LIA signature (probably aided by roving silver prospectors) to silver objects and metallurgical debris recovered around the Aegean. New compositional analyses for the Mycenaean shaft-grave silver (c. 1600 BCE) support these conclusions. We believe that reverting to the mid-first millennium BCE for the first exploitation of silver from argentiferous lead ores is consistent with the absence of archaeological evidence for centralised control over Laurion until the Archaic period, the paucity of lead slag associated with silver-processing debris at Bronze Age sites, the scarcity of silver artefacts recovered in post-shaft grave contexts at Mycenae and throughout the Early Iron Age Aegean, the few Attic silver coins with LIA signatures consistent with Laurion until after 500 BCE and a single unambiguous mention of silver in the Linear B texts.

Robb, J. 2021 The Mobile Phone in Late Medieval Culture, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.7
This is an historical meditation - an essay on material culture and how humans relate to it. It is written as a science fiction piece, taking the form of a plenary address to a Material Culture conference sometime in the future. Mobile phones are well on their way to becoming universal devices and this playful essay explores ideas concerning the consequences of the mobile phone for humans, our relations with technology and our evolution. 

A playful 'preflection' which should engage those interested in material culture theory. Entertaining, enlightening, and terrifying in equal measure!

Strupler, N. 2021 Re-discovering Archaeological Discoveries. Experiments with reproducing archaeological survey analysis, Internet Archaeology 56. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.6

This article describes an attempt to reproduce the published analysis from three archaeological field-walking surveys by using datasets collected between 1990 and 2005 which are publicly available in digital format. The exact methodologies used to produce the analyses (diagrams, statistical analysis, maps, etc.) are often incomplete, leaving a gap between the dataset and the published report. By using the published descriptions to reconstruct how the outputs were manipulated, I expected to reproduce and corroborate the results. While these experiments highlight some successes, they also point to significant problems in reproducing an analysis at various stages, from reading the data to plotting the results. Consequently, this article proposes some guidance on how to increase the reproducibility of data in order to assist aspirations of refining results or methodology. Without a stronger emphasis on reproducibility, the published datasets may not be sufficient to confirm published results and the scientific process of self-correction is at risk.

Issue 56 https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue56/index.html remains open until the end of the calendar year, so keep checking back as new content is added! 

Judith

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Judith Winters
Editor, Internet Archaeology

Department of Archaeology, University of York YO1 7EP, UK

Twitter: @IntarchEditor
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