Session: #440

Content:

People tend to recurrently use specific areas of their landscape or living space, as well as particular artefacts, for specific activities. This enduring use of spaces and materials produces an accumulation of evidences (chemical and/or physical), which represent the result of the activity that produced them. Ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology drive the inferential reasoning that creates the model(s) connecting the concentration of particular proxies with a specific activity. We define this/these model(s) as ‘anthropic activity marker’ (AAM). The possibility to identify, analyse and connect these markers to the original activity is pivotal to our understanding of past human behaviour.
An interdisciplinary approach is fundamental for the identification of anthropic markers. In particular, the spatial distribution and variability of the fingerprints taken into account is considered a fundamental part of the definition of AAM.
For this session, we seek contributions that challenge the problem of identifying and interpreting AAM from different points of view and at different scales. Contributions can be related, but not limited to: remote sensing, archaeological prospection, botanic analyses (i.e. phytholits, starch and pollen), chemical analyses of soils and floors, archaeozoology, microdebitage, micromorphology but also residue analyses from artefacts. Ethnoarchaeological testing and archaeological applications of these methods will be equally considered. We particularly welcome multi-proxy and multi-disciplinary studies that illustrate both case-studies as well as methodological approaches.

Session: #440

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