The fluvial environment of Early Holocene small‐ to middle‐sized lowland rivers in northwest Europe is mostly unstudied due to a lack of preserved and accessible deposits. A rescue excavation in the Scheldt valley in northern Belgium offered the opportunity to study a Boreal alluvial succession in detail. The results of palaeoecological and sedimentological analyses (diatoms, pollen, botanical macro‐remains, molluscs, grain size) characterize the biotic and physical environment in the middle reach of this medium‐sized river system. Although the Early Holocene in the Scheldt Basin has often been portrayed as a period of fluvial stability with marshy conditions and diffuse discharge, this study showed evidence of point bar formation by a small, low‐energy meandering river between ~9.5 and ~8.8 cal. ka BP. The point bar was at least temporarily vegetated and shows a shift from herbaceous riparian vegetation to an open willow‐dominated alluvial forest. This evidence points to a more open vegetation and a more energetic environment than traditionally described for rivers of this size and age. A link to the 9.3 ka BP cooling event is suggested and possible reasons for the scarcity of records of this type of deposits are discussed.

Simulating trial trenches for archaeological prospec- tion: assessing the variability in intersection rates. In this study we draw attention to the inherent variability in the results of trial trenching, when taking into account the countless variations in orientation and positioning of trenches. Grids of trial trenches were simulated time and again on the excavation plans of 16 archaeological sites from Flanders, Belgium. Orientation and positioning of the grid layout was shifted randomly, whilst the area cov- erage varied from 2,5 % to 80 %. The intersection rates of the archaeological features allow to gain more insight in trends and variability that are inherent to the chosen design of trial trenches. It is assessed how robust a cho- sen grid layout performs on (multi-period) archaeological sites and how variable these results might be. The most effective layout appears to be a grid with short, parallel and discontinuous trenches or a standard grid, closely followed by 2m wide continuous trenches. Implement- ing 4m wide trenches reduces the effectiveness of the lat- ter method substantially. When the area coverage of the trenches is below 10 %, the results of the archaeological prospection become unreliable and can potentially lead to a substantial over- or underestimation of the actual feature density on the site.

In this study we draw attention to the inherent variability in the results of trial trenching, when taking into account the countless variations in orientation and positioning of trenches. Grids of trial trenches were simulated time and again on the excavation plans of 16 archaeological sites from Flanders, Belgium. Orientation and positioning of the grid layout was shifted randomly, whilst the area coverage varied from 2.5% to 80%. The intersection rates of the archaeological features allow to gain more insight in trends and variability that are inherent to the chosen design of trial trenches. It is assessed how robust a chosen grid layout performs on (multi-period) archaeological sites and how variable these results might be. The most effective layout appears to be a grid with short, parallel and discontinuous trenches or a standard grid, closely followed by 2m wide continuous trenches. Implementing 4m wide trenches reduces the effectiveness of the latter method substantially. When the area coverage of the trenches is below 10%, the results of the archaeological prospection become unreliable and can potentially lead to a substantial over-or underestimation of the actual feature density on the site. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

InleidingIn de jaren 1999-2002 voerde het voormalig Instituut voor het Archeologisch Patrimonium (iap) archeologische opgravingen uit in de gemeente Hove, onder

The excavations at Kilise Tepe in the 1990s inevitably left a range of research questions unanswered, and our second spell of work at the site from 2007 to 2011 sought to address some of these, relating to the later second and early first millennia. This article gathers the architectural and stratigraphic results of the renewed excavations, presenting the fresh information about the layout and character of the Late Bronze Age North-West Building and the initial phases of the Stele Building which succeeded it, including probable symbolic practices, and describing the complex stratigraphic sequence in the Central Strip sounding which covers the lapse of time from the 12th down to the seventh century. There follow short reports on the analyses of the botanical and faunal materials recovered, a summary of the results from the relevant radiocarbon dating samples and separate studies addressing issues resulting from the continuing study of the ceramics from the different contexts. Taken together, a complex picture emerges of changes in settlement layout, architectural traditions, use of external space, artefact production and subsistence strategies during the centuries which separate the Level III Late Bronze Age settlement from the latest Iron Age occupation around 700 BC.

Inspired by archaeological finds from Kilise Tepe in southern Turkey, this paper explains how the internal structure of nacreous shell can indicate which type of shell was its source. Previous work in the biological sciences demonstrated that it is possible to distinguish between gastropods/cephalopods and bivalves by observing the arrangement of the aragonite tablets in the nacreous layer, and that the thickness of these tablets is fairly constant within taxa but can differ between them. This study verifies these properties by scanning electron microscopy on modern and ancient material, and discusses the benefit in the field of archaeology. The text is not the result of full-scale research but rather a proof of concept to explore the potential of the topic. It is shown that the difference between gastropods/cephalopods and bivalves can indeed be established by looking at the internal architecture of their mother-of-pearl, but that it is problematic to further discriminate between taxa. The thickness of the aragonite tablets is not a reliable distinctive feature. The microstructure of the overlying prismatic layer is a useful parameter when it is preserved.

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Analyses of pollen, plant macrofossils (seeds, fruits, wood and mosses), molluscs, diatoms and vertebrate (mainly fish) remains allowed a detailed reconstruction of a middle-Holocene alluvial forest and its associated hydrological conditions. The use of multiple proxies resulted in a taxonomically more detailed and environmentally more comprehensive understanding of terrestrial as well as aquatic habitats. The results demonstrate possible biases in palaeoecological reconstructions of alluvial and estuarine environments drawn from single proxies. Many locally occurring woody taxa were underrepresented or remained undetected by pollen analyses. Seeds and fruits also proved to be inadequate to detect several locally important taxa, such as Ulmus and Hedera helix. Apparently brackish conditions inferred from diatoms, pollen and other microfossils conflicted strikingly with the evidence from molluscs, fish bones and botanical macroremains which suggest a freshwater environment. Brackish sediment (and the microfossil indicators) is likely to have been deposited during spring tides or storm surges, when estuarine waters penetrated more inland than usual. Despite the reworking and deposition of estuarine and saltmarsh sediment well above the tidal node at such events, local salinity levels largely remained unaffected.

Abstract In the summers of 1994–1998 a rescue excavation took place at Kilise Tepe, an archaeological site occupied from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, located in the Göksu valley in Cilicia in southern Turkey. This article analyses the shell finds from environmental and archaeological perspectives. Three categories of molluscs are identified: terrestrial, freshwater and marine. The first two are the remnants of local fauna that lived on or near the site; the marine shells came from the Mediterranean shore adjacent to the Göksu delta and the delta itself. There are indications that freshwater mussels served as tools. Marine shells were worn as ornaments. Özet Türkiye'nin güneyinde yer alan Kilikya bölgesindeki Göksu vadisinde bulunan ve Erken Tunç Çağı'ndan Bizans dönemine kadar kesintisiz iskan edilmiş bir arkeolojik alan olan Kilise Tepe'de 1994–1998 tarihleri arasında kurtarma kazıları yapılmıştır. Bu makalede, kabuk buluntuları ekolojik ve arkeolojik açılardan incelenmektedir. Karasal, tatlı su ve deniz olmak üzere üç grup yumuşakça tespit edilmiştir. İlk iki grup, yerleşim yerinde veya yakınında yaşamış olan yerel faunanın kalıntılarıdır. Deniz kabukları ise Göksu deltasına yakın Akdeniz kıyısından veya bizzat deltanın kendisinden gelmektedir. Tatlı su midye kabuklarının alet olarak kullanıldığını gösteren belirtiler mevcuttur. Deniz kabukları ise süs eşyası olarak kullanılmıştır.

The fauna is described from a refuse layer, excavated at Fort Frederik Hendrik on the island of Mauritius and dating to the last quarter of the 17(th) century AD. The animal remains enable the reconstruction of the food procurement strategies of the Dutch inhabitants of the fort and document the fauna at a time when the island's original fauna had apparently already suffered heavily from human interference and from the negative impact of introduced species. The animal remains do not include any bones from the dodo, or other endemic birds, and neither is there evidence for the exploitation of the large, endemic terrestrial tortoises, also now extinct. Dugong, which are locally extinct nowadays, and marine turtles were also exploited as food, but the major meat providers were the introduced mammals: cattle, pigs, and especially, goat and Java deer. Fish was also a regular food resource and must have been caught in the local lagoon and estuaries. The absence of parrotfish and the relatively small size of the groupers suggest avoidance of these food items, probably out of fear of fish poisoning.