Archaeological Site Formation Processes

Canteen Kopje is a well-known archaeological site in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, having had a long and complex history. The site, and nearby town of Barkly West, were initially put on the map in the late 1800s following the discovery of diamonds in the surrounding Vaal River gravels. It was during these early diamond diggings that extremely large quantities of Stone Age artefacts were unearthed, which attracted the attention of scholars. In 1948, the site was subsequently declared a national monument in recognition of this heritage.

Most recently, Canteen Kopje has been the focus of both local and international collaborative research teams, and a range of studies has been conducted exploring various aspects of this intricate palaeolandscape. From this research we now have a better understanding of how the gravels were deposited at the site, what they contain in terms of the preserved archaeology, and what these assemblages represent within the current framework of our southern African regional Stone Age sequence.

This presentation will provide a general discussion of the significance of Canteen Kopje, and it will provide an overview of both past and present research. It will also explore issues that the site currently faces within the broader context of a developing nation.

In recent years there has been a surge of new Palaeolithic research in China. New scientific breakthroughs are allowing us to reassess old opinions and to be ever more critical of current debates. This paper will discuss these new perspectives and highlight their relevance in answering important questions about hominid technological complexity and regional occupation patterns.

Canteen Kopje has yielded rare in-situ assemblages of the Fauresmith, a poorly defined industry often associated with the later Acheulean. The Fauresmith assemblages yielded from other sites, such as Kathu Pan, contain precocious developments in technology as early as ~0.5 Ma–features which only become widespread in the ensuing Middle Stone Age. The Fauresmith as a regional industry provides insight into technological practices during the period of significant behavioural diversification associated with archaic Homo sapiens. Studies of Fauresmith assemblages have often suffered from a lack of adequate contextual information. Previous excavations at Canteen Kopje were conducted with relatively low spatial resolution. A new excavation, Pit 4 West (P4W), was conducted in 2016 to investigate the spatial, stratigraphic and contextual association of the Fauresmith horizon in this area of the site in greater detail. A multi-disciplinary, stratigraphically sensitive, fine resolution geoarchaeological and geospatial approach was applied in this research. A nuanced assessment of the Fauresmith’s context was developed which included both macroscopic and microscopic sedimentological analyses. The combination of which has provided a dataset that indicates diverse depositional and post-depositional features affecting the Fauresmith assemblage in various ways and at different scales. The purpose of conducting a lithic techno-typological study was to try to isolate the different industries (above, below and including the Fauresmith) that were present within the P4W sequence and, based on these observations, compare to and combine the lithic dataset with the described sedimentological and spatial datasets produced for this research. This multi-disciplinary study has allowed for the clarification of the integrity of the Fauresmith in P4W. The artefact sample size for Fauresmith at Canteen Kopje was increased and the presence of diagnostic tools has aided in formally defining the Fauresmith in P4W.

Canteen Kopje has long been known for its alluvial diamond-bearing gravel deposits, and historically these have featured frequently in archaeological literature over the last century. Studies have shown the site preserves a strati!ed gravel sequence with assemblages of Fauresmith mixed into the upper gravels, Victoria West Acheulean (1.2±0.07 Ma) and two Early Acheulean assemblages (1.51±0.8 Ma and > 1.51 Ma). Although previous geomorphological studies provide an understanding of site formation, most recently describing the gravels as a splay deposit at the terminal point of a palaeo-channel, or loop, there have been debates regarding their origin and whether they represent colluvial and/or alluvial deposition. This palaeo-channel facilitated the interaction between two nearby koppies and the palaeo-Vaal River, which subsequently in"uenced the nature, composition and character of the gravel deposits found across the site. Yet no study has investigated the visibly dipping surface of the gravels, nor sought to explain gravel fabric patterns that are preserved in exposed sequences. Through recording fabric data, this study con!rms that the gravels retain an easterly dip direction, which provides strong evidence for the east-to-west "ow of water from the upstream direction of the palaeo-channel. These !ndings challenge earlier models suggesting the upper gravels at Canteen Kopje are colluvial, and have implications for understanding the preserved Earlier Stone Age assemblages. This research also provides a better understanding of geomorphological processes involved in site formation and investigates the overall role that colluvial processes have played at Canteen Kopje.

The increasing interest in understanding and quantifying the effects of postdepositional processes in the formation of lithic assemblages promoted the application of taphonomic approaches that allowed discussing the genesis of patterns considered of behavioral origin (technological, functional). Indeed, those taphonomic approaches showed that different environmental contexts within a region (with their specific combination of agent and processes) possess variable effects on lithic assemblages. Thus, a taphonomic approach to the settings of the archaeological record and to their local and regional dynamic make us aware of morphological and distributional characteristics of the taphonomic background noise (pseudoartifacts). In other words, the systematic incorporation of actualistic taphonomy-including both naturalistic and experimental components-to the archaeological research contributes to building frames of reference that allow refining our interpretations of the archaeological record. This paper presents and compares actualistic and archaeological data obtained from the application of this approach to the study of Casa de Piedra de Roselló site (Chubut, Argentina). I conclude that taphonomic background noise may inflate the representation of the local raw material in the lithic artifact assemblages recovered at the site.

RESUMEN
El creciente interés por comprender y cuantificar los efectos de los procesos posdepositacionales en la formación de los conjuntos líticos ha promovido la aplicación de abordajes tafonómicos que permitieron discutir el origen de patrones que a priori son considerados conductuales (tecnológicos, funcionales). Asimismo, esas aproximaciones tafonómicas mostraron que los diferentes contextos ambientales de una región (con su particular combinación de agentes y procesos) poseen efectos variables sobre los conjuntos líticos. Una aproximación tafonómica al entorno y su dinámica a escala local y regional permite estimar las características morfológicas y distribucionales del ruido tafonómico de fondo lítico (pseudoartefactos). En otras palabras, la incorporación sistemática de la tafonomía actualística-con sus componentes naturalista y experimental-a la investigación arqueológica contribuye a la generación de marcos de referencia que permiten refinar nuestras interpretaciones del registro lítico. Aquí se sintetizan algunos de los resultados obtenidos de la aplicación de este abordaje al estudio del sitio Casa de Piedra de Roselló (Chubut, Argentina). Se analizan y comparan los atributos morfométricos de una muestra experimental y un conjunto lítico procedente de la superficie del talud del sitio. Se concluye que el ruido tafonómico de fondo puede sobredimensionar el aporte de la materia prima local al conjunto lítico del sitio.

Palabras clave: tecnología lítica; tafonomía lítica; arqueología experimental; Casa de Piedra de Roselló, Patagonia.

This paper presents the results of a trampling experiment on obsidian artifacts conducted as part of a larger archaeological program aimed at assessing the effects of postdepositional processes on lithic artifacts. Flaked artifacts were made from obsidian nodules from Huenul source (Neuquén, Argentina) and were laid on two plots-hard and soft substrate. Here we report the breakage frequency and artifact metric variables relevant for fracture occurrence. Following the methodological proposal to assess the Trampling Fragmentation Potential (TFP), we apply the data mining technique known as decision tree to analyze the experimental obsidian datasets. Results show that fracture ratio is significantly higher on hard substrates, and that the value of maximum fracture thickness shows no variations in obsidian. Finally, including the obsidian dataset to the decision tree showed that certain raw materials may modify the relevant variables and/or their influence on the TFP.

RESUMEN
Como continuación de un proyecto destinado a contribuir al conocimiento arqueológico de los efectos de los procesos post-depositacionales sobre los materiales líticos, se realizó una experiencia de pisoteo sobre artefactos de obsidiana. El experimento incluyó el planteo de dos pistas-una sobre sustrato blando y otra sobre sustrato duro-en las que se depositaron artefactos experimentales manufacturados a partir de nódulos de obsidiana procedente de la fuente Huenul (Neuquén, Argentina). Siguiendo la propuesta planteada para evaluar el Potencial para la Fragmentación por Pisoteo (PFP), los datos experimentales son analizados con la técnica de data mining denominada árbol de decisión. Se informan las frecuencias de fractura y las variables métricas artefactuales relevantes en su ocurrencia. Como fuera registrado en experimentaciones previas, se observó que el sustrato duro promueve la ocurrencia de fracturas y contrastamos los espesores máximos de fracturas obtenidos. La incorporación de los datos de obsidiana al árbol de decisión mostró que ciertas materias primas pueden modificar las variables de relevancia y/o su influencia sobre el PFP.

Palabras clave: experimentación; obsidiana; potencial para la fragmentación por pisoteo; tafonomía lítica.

El 1er Congreso Argentino de Estudios Líticos en Arqueología, celebrado en la ciudad de Córdoba en el año 2018, reunió a especialistas de las principales líneas de investigación sobre materiales líticos en la actualidad. De este valioso encuentro nace este volumen especial, que con cada dossier se busca consolidar la propuesta y plasmar los avances en la materia. El dossier que aquí presentamos tiene como objetivo convocar a las y los autores que participaron del simposio titulado "El estudio de los procesos de formación del registro arqueológico y sus efectos en los conjuntos líticos", y que con sus contribuciones enriquecen el panorama de los estudios sobre la temática. Buscamos reunir especialistas en tecnología lítica que compartan la pregunta acerca de los efectos que los procesos postdepositacionales tienen sobre los conjuntos líticos y sus implicancias en las interpretaciones y explicaciones conductuales sobre los grupos humanos del pasado. En este dossier se presentan estos cuestionamientos y la búsqueda de explicaciones en torno a un problema arqueológico en casos de estudio a lo largo del país, en diferentes contextos y escalas de trabajo. El estudio de las complejas formas en las que el registro arqueológico puede presentarse ha llevado al desarrollo de una serie de marcos teóricos-metodológicos que se enfocan en las relaciones existentes entre factores culturales, biológicos y físicos. Desde los primeros planteos teóricos metodológicos de la década del '70, y la proliferación y preocupación por este enfoque en los procesos de formación en los '80 en adelante, es una línea de trabajo que sigue vigente, y ha afinado sus preocupaciones, interactuando con otras áreas disciplinares. Estos estudios generan un corpus de datos que permiten afinar las interpretaciones y posibilita acceder a la dinámica del registro arqueológico en el pasado y en la actualidad; evaluando las decisiones y acciones prácticas que los grupos humanos desarrollaron en torno al uso, descarte y reutilización de los materiales arqueológicos. Desde una perspectiva tafonómica Borrazzo presenta el artículo titulado "Aportes de la Tafonomía actualística al estudio arqueológico de los pseudoartefactos". En este trabajo la autora se propone evaluar el aporte del componente pseudoartefactual en los conjuntos líticos arqueológicos. Toma para ello el caso de estudio el complejo de alero del sitio Casa de Piedra de Roselló, en la provincia de Chubut. Presenta una síntesis de resultados obtenidos en las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en este contexto, pero independientemente del caso de estudio, la propuesta de Borrazzo es una invitación a discutir el origen de patrones que a priori son considerados conductuales y que una aproximación desde el análisis tecnomorfológico, a veces, resulta insuficiente. Este trabajo representa una propuesta sobre un tema que fue abordado anteriormente desde distintos enfoques. Abordado desde una perspectiva de tafonomía actualista, los componentes fundamentales, y que se dejan ver en el trabajo, son los estudios naturalistas y experimentales, que se complementan enriqueciendo así el abordaje de este problema de equifinalidad. Creemos que este aporte, y desde este simposio se busca la incorporación sistemática de la tafonomía actualista a la investigación arqueológica para ajustar las interpretaciones sobre el registro lítico. Borrazzo, Weitzel y Ceraso exploran como los artefactos líticos responden al pisoteo, diseñando un estudio experimental sobre artefactos de obsidiana en el trabajo titulado "Exploración experimental de los efectos del pisoteo sobre artefactos de obsidiana". En base a los datos obtenidos evalúan las frecuencias de fracturas y la existencia de variaciones en los valores del Potencial para la Fragmentación por Pisoteo (PFP) obtenidos en estudios previos. Es de destacar la importancia que le otorga este trabajo a la experimentación, cuyos datos

The Brazil nut effect (BNE) is a physical phenomenon by which large granular particles (i.e., archaeological artifacts) in a bed of small disturbed particles (i.e., soil), rise to the top surfaces. This paper examines the physical forces acting on archaeological artifacts-scattered on the surface and buried underground-to identify the major elements of site formation processes (SFPs). Combining theoretical advances in archaeology, pedology, granular physics and spectroscopy, we conducted accelerated laboratory tests on seven typical Israeli soils to form a SFP model. We suggest that the SFPs are the result of two opposing and continuous processes: soil coverage of the site started soon after human activity has ceased, and a force(s) that tends to lift buried artifacts up to exposed surfaces, acting in accordance with Brazil nut effect (BNE). The post-burial forces pressuring artifact movement upward are affected by the artifacts' density and size, soil characteristics and the local environment. As a result, some archaeological artifacts reach exposed surfaces, some are lifted to higher soil deposits but remain buried, and the rest remain in their original burial context.
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42990-020-00023-8#citeas

The majority of archaeological contexts are located within the soil, therefore processes of soil formation and soil geo-morphology play an important role in their formation history. These processes have important implications for the ways of observing and recording as well as understanding and interpreting these contexts. In order to demonstrate their implications a theoretical overview of only a few of those processes which seem most important for archaeology is given in this paper. This is accompanied by hypothetical profile depictions based on the presented theory in order to illustrate in a simplified manner some possible outcomes of the discussed processes reworking the archaeological record. The overview focusses on the difference between sediments and soil horizons and on processes of horizonation, bioturbation and additions or removals of material to or from the soil surface. It demonstrates that the principles of archaeological stratigraphy cannot be universally applied to sites altered by these processes. There the observed layers and contexts may not be the result of depositional events, be it anthropogenic or natural, to which these principles apply. Instead, they may be the result of in situ transformations of original contexts by long-term soil processes. In such cases, the principles of archaeological stratigraphy cannot be applied and the concept of stratigraphic contexts must be replaced with the concept of archaeological remains in soil context. The discussions of processes and accompanying hypothetical depictions in this paper should prove useful to archaeologists in the evaluation of such contexts and in thinking about how they may have been formed. However, the actual formation processes which resulted in the observed archaeological soil context can only be deciphered through interdisciplinary scientific research.

Armadillos constitute a recurrent taphonomic agent in the disturbance of archaeological sites in the Pampas region of Argentina. Their burrows generate vertical and horizontal movement of archeological and modern materials, creating anomalous associations, both on the surface, as well as at the deep levels of a site. Measuring the potential impact of armadillo burrows on a local environment in direct proximity with an archaeological site may help to reconstruct its taphonomic history. The objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of armadillo burrows on the formation processes of the Hangar site. Point provenience and morphometric measurements were recorded on 169 armadillo burrows located in direct proximity to the Hangar site archaeological excavation. The mean length of the burrow entrances was 70.7 cm, and the mean slope was 40.4°. The armadillos excavated an average of 0.036 m 3 from each burrow. Approximately 59% of the burrows surveyed presented material re-exposed by armadillos, including lithic, ceramic artifacts, prehistoric and modern faunal remains, and human bones. For the Hangar site, burrowing animals were signficant agents in the formation processes of the assemblage. Our results help explain the mixing of materials in the Hangar site, and could be used in the interpretation of other sites affected by armadillos in similar habitats.

In archaeological practice it is possible to encounter either single-phase sites or multi-phase sites. The latter allow continuity and change to be traced through the different phases of a site, but require far more investment in terms of time and energy, especially when the locus of activity occupied the same place through time. In these cases, previous phases can only be explored with small test-pits conducted under the floors of later structures, and therefore require methodologies that are specifically devised to minimize the risks caused by the high level of inference and subjectivity imposed by the partiality of the documentation that is accessible to the excavators. These sites, moreover, are often investigated over very long periods of time, with different methodologies of excavation and recording that create a large corpus of legacy data that necessitates a thorough re-assessment before being used. 
This book focuses on Phaistos, a site located in Crete, and aims to establish the stratigraphic sequence of the site in the period that preceded the construction of a palace of Minoan type (a court-centred building) by using the data collected during three major excavation campaigns conducted between 1900-1909; between 1951 and 1966; and between 2000 and 2005. It is not the publication of the relative chronology of the site, i.e. of the pottery groups that define the various phases of the Early Bronze Age, as this is in the process of being completed under the auspices of the Italian Archaeological School in Athens; nor is it the publication of the results of the contextual re-assessment of the site, which has already been presented and discussed in a monograph length study, which challenged the old orthodoxy that Prepalatial Phaistos operated as a straightforward settlement that grew through the various phases of the Early Bronze Age to become a proto-urban centre. This book has been written to clarify the methodology followed by the author in re-assessing the settlement history of Phaistos prior to the construction of the palace, a methodology that was based on the cross-correlation of more than 180 stratigraphies excavated during the past 100 years that had at its core V .La Rosa’s excavation strategy, known as “Riscavare lo scavato”. This excavation programme entailed the opening of new trenches near old ones, and thus linked past and present investigations providing the opportunity to see with new eyes stratifications that had been simply described and poorly illustrated by the previous excavators.

Lisbon in the Early Neolithic: results of the escavations at the Ludovice Palace. The open-area archaeological excavations at the 18th century Ludovice Palace, in the Bairro Alto quarter (Lisbon, Portugal) revealed four phases of human occupation. The oldest phase belongs to the Early Neolithic and comprise several dwelling features and one burial, alongside numerous pottery and lithic objects. Field-based geoarchaeological observations suggests that these remains are spread over na occupation surface which, once abandoned, seems to have underwent puddling, slaking and pedogenesis. A thick deposit covered these layers with abundant reworked prehistoric objects. These data significantly increase the contextual knowledge regarding previous findings of the Neolithic settlement of Bairro Alto both culturally and chronologically and widens the debate on the neolithization process of the portuguese Estremadura.

This article aims to provide an interpretation of the structure and spatial patterning of the non-ceramic refuse from the Neolithic site of Bylany. The data are considered at three levels: tackling questions of refuse management and deposition in the vicinity of houses; the spatial distribution of refuse within the settlement area as a whole; and the quantity and structure of non-ceramic refuse from a long-term settlement perspective. The analysed assemblage of non-ceramic finds is divided into five categories: chipped stone, polished stone, whetstones, manos/metates, and other stones without use-wear traces. The analysis is based on GIS and multivariate statistics. The spatial distribution and quantity of refuse are analysed with respect to space (in terms of proximity to Neolithic houses and the whole of the excavated settlement area) and time (the duration of settlement in six chronological stages). No deliberate pattern of refuse management was identified in the vicinity of the houses, but the refuse was found to have a tendency towards peripheral grouping within the settled area as a whole. Refuse quantity depends on the number of houses and settlement duration. The negative correlation between the mean density of non-ceramic artefacts per house and the number of houses in corresponding chronological stages may be explained by the interpretation that refuse was commonly deposited within abandoned houses, which would be consistent with ethnoarchaeological observations.