Browsing by Author "de la Fuente, Guillermo"

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    Defining multiple inhabitations of a cave environment using interdisciplinary archaeometry: the ‘Christmas Cave’ of the Wadi en-Nar/Nahal Qidron, west of the Dead Sea
    (Springer, 2022-02-05) Rasmussen, Kaare Lund; van der Plicht, Johannes; Degano, Ilaria; Modugno, Francesca; Colombini, Maria Perla; de la Fuente, Guillermo; Delbey, Thomas; Frumkin, Amos; Davidovich, Uri; Porat, Roi; Shamir, Orit; Sukenik, Naama; Doudna, Greg; Taylor, Joan; Popović, Mladen
    The present study reports a series of interdisciplinary archaeometrical analyses of objects found in the Christmas Cave, which was discovered by John Allegro and his team in 1960 on the West Bank of the Dead Sea and assumed to be inhabited only in the Chalcolithic era and by Jewish refugees of the second century CE, at the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Like many other Judaean desert caves, there was an abundance of organic material, especially textiles, surviving in the dry environment. In the absence of clear stratigraphy and even a proper publication of the finds, the present study shows how archaeometry can provide important insights. We analysed food crusts on ceramics by gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection (GC–MS), made petrographic descriptions to estimated provenance of the ceramics, produced new radiocarbon dates from organic material and thermoluminescence (TL) dates from the pottery. It appears from the data that the Christmas Cave has been briefly inhabited or visited intermittently over a very long time, starting ca. 4000 BCE (the Chalcolithic period), and extending all the way to the Medieval period, even though there is also a concentration of dates near the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE). We argue, through a detailed analysis of the radiometric and TL-datings and by the artefactual evidence, that there was likely another refuge episode connected with the First Jewish Revolt during which people fled to this cave. However, we see no material connection to Qumran and nearby caves. Overall, our study demonstrates the importance of archaeometric studies in cave environments where stratigraphy is veritably absent.
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    Thermoluminescence and radiocarbon dating of pre-colonial ceramics and organic midden material from the US Virgin Islands: outline for a revised chronology
    (Springer, 2023-05-17) Torres, Joshua; Toftgaard, Casper Jacobsen; Delbey, Thomas; Brewer, David; Farchette III, John; de la Fuente, Guillermo; Rasmussen, Kaare Lund
    A sample of 128 pottery shards curated by the National Museum of Denmark, from seven archaeological sites in the US Virgin Islands, has been dated using the thermoluminescence dating (TL) technique with the purpose of refining local pre-colonial pottery chronology. The results of the TL-dating generally confirm chronologies offered by Wild for St. John and there is considerable variation identified in traditional frameworks due to overlap in distributions of various pottery styles. The results of this study show that the Virgin Islands offer a viable space for the application of TL-dating, and that TL-dating offer a reliable addition to the traditional radiometric radiocarbon technique in pre-colonial midden contexts. Using the TL-technique for dating of pottery assemblages allows for a nuanced chronology and better understanding of settlement timing, socio-cultural interaction, and information transmission.