Romanian Moldavia is the focus of a study, initiated in 2005, on Neolithic-Eneolithic (6000–3500 BCE) settlement dynamics and salt exploitation. The underlying hypothesis that exploitation salt, along with copper gold, contributed to emergence developed Eneolithic societies from beginning 5th millennium BC. By approaching this process through its geographical dimension, 6th BC, one can measure ...

Bitumen from north-eastern Mesopotamian seeps was exchanged across the Tigris and Euphrates in antiquity. Nonetheless, recent research proposed a decline its trade during Bronze Age alongside boost of central (Hit) trade. This paper presents new provenance studies ancient bitumen recovered at Tell Lashkir, 4th-2nd millennium BC settlement between lower upper Zab tributaries. The novel applicati...

Of the many diverse arts that flourished during the third millennium BC, textiles played an especiallysignificant role in society. Archaeological textiles offer an important source of material cultural testimony fordaily life in ancient times- relating simultaneously to agriculture, pastoralism, trade, migration, ritual, and soforth as well as to craft technologies. The study of the techniques ...

Many potteries have been discovered from excavations and a surface survey at Shahdad, but few works have beendone to examine craft specialization in pottery production at this important site. Different types of potteries, some ofwhich bearing potter marks demonstrate that craftsmen of the site had involved in manufacturing of centralized potteryproduction. A number of kilns and many waste of po...

• Terrestrial animal adipose fats were identified in most of the vessels. The oldest evidence beeswax on pottery surface Iberian Peninsula. Alternative uses for detected fat and are proposed. Residue analysis usually concerns habitat or funerary sites. In this work, we have studied 21 vases from Mines Gavà (Barcelona, Spain) which constitute mining focused variscite during IV th millennium BC. ...

Archaeological research in Central Eurasia is exposing unprecedented scales of trans-regional interaction and technology transfer between East Asia and southwest Asia deep into the prehistoric past. This article presents a new archaeobotanical analysis from pastoralist campsites in the mountain and desert regions of Central Eurasia that documents the oldest known evidence for domesticated grain...