In the Near East, nomadic hunter-gatherer societies became sedentary farmers for the first time during the transition into the Neolithic. Sedentary life presented a risk of isolation for Neolithic groups. As fluid intergroup interactions are crucial for the sharing of information, resources and genes, Neolithic villages developed a network of contacts. In this paper we study obsidian exchange b...

Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) are known to be excellent computation accelerators. However, their approach to data processing is very different from regular CPUs. This makes it harder for a regular developer to program these devices. In the past few years, several frameworks were introduced to simplify the programming of GPU devices. Accelerate and Obsidian are two of these frameworks, writt...

Blood residues from several animal species have been discovered on the surfaces of chert, basalt, and obsidian prehistoric tools (1000 to 6000 years old) from open-air sites along the western coast and in the northern boreal forest of Canada. A screening test has been developed to detect residual blood. Hemoglobin has been crystallized from the residues, and the species of origin determined.

The paper presents two experimental methods for basalt processing by microwaves, and their results. One method employs a single-mode cavity to melt basalt, and to produce a volcanic glass (obsidian). The other method uses an open-end applicator (i.e. a microwave drill [1]) to form holes in basalt rocks. Experimental observations of the basalt interactions with microwaves in these two schemes ar...