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The goals and background of this study are presented. A sample of rudimentary artifacts, recovered through survey and excavation from contexts in the American Southwest and southern Mexico, were physically examined to verify or reject their assumed validity as tools and their use in agricultural activities. Macroscopic and microscopic examinations were undertaken on these often overlooked and misidentified artifacts to ascertain evidence of human manufacture and use-wear. The results of the study indicate the specimens represent three general form categories of tools that have uses related to excavation and earth moving. To augment this evidence, information was gathered regarding find contexts, historic records, and from relevant literature. The geographic find locations and contexts of the artifacts, as well as their temporal placement, and likely group affiliations, are then discussed. Evidence indicates that, although probably used for other purposes, these minimally-retouched, hand-held, digging and earth moving tools were used in the preparation and maintenance of agricultural fields and irrigation canals, and functioned to support the subsistence system from ca. 400-1450 CE. These implements evidently also held social and ceremonial values and functions. The rudimentary nature of these tools is often found not to be commensurate with the sophisticated complexity of the associated agricultural infrastructure. Initial, very tentative, hypotheses are presented for this incongruity.

The article discusses the results of a mineralogical analyses on a group of unique vessels found during excavations at the site of Hagoshrim in Israel. During the course of the study, the vessels were analyzed for mineralogical composition using polarizing and binocular microscopes as well as x-ray diffraction (XRD) to identify the rock from its original structure. It indicates that material culture evidence of the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic in the southern Levant suggests that communities had contacts with the northern parts of the Fertile Crescent.

The data that has been presented in support of a swidden model for the Central Plains tradition (CPt) are equivocal. If the current models of CPt subsistence and settlement Ore to be changed, either unequivocal evidence or pressures potentially driving that change must be identified. A GIS-based catchment analysis of the Glenwood locality indicates that even the most restrictive assumptions do not produce a scenario in which arable land is limited enough to create significant agricultural pressure. A comparison of the GIS data with excavated faunal assemblages from the same locality also indicates that use of wild food resources was approximately proportional to the available resource zones. The best explanations that have been offered for CPt settlement decisions focus on non-food woodland resources, and these still seem to be the most reasonable explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification and dendrochronological dating of secondarily used threshing boards in two graves from the Ust'-Al'ma necropolis have led to the first reliable archaeological evidence for the use of this agricultural tool since the mid-1st century BC on the Crimea. The Crimea is part of a region of similar climatic conditions and comparable economies which lies between the ancient Near East and Western Europe, and where numerous archaeological and ethnographic examples attest to the use of the threshing board from the Bronze Age up to the present day. The context of the find, together with the ethnographic parallels, affords the opportunity to study a new aspect of the grave ritual and hence also the beliefs of the Crimean inhabitants of the Late Hellenistic Period. A few examples show that the secondary use of threshing boards as death beds was apparently neither an isolated nor a local phenomenon, but has gone largely unrecognised because of the prevailing conditions, which were generally unfavourable for wood preservation. The targeted inspection of further grave finds would likely expand the database significantly and might help to uncover a connection to very similar finds in the Caucasus region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Between 1990 and 1993, we found 175 pebble-tools and two flake-tools on the western high-terrace south of Lyon (Southeast, France) at two different levels (290m and 235m NN). Most of them show the classical spectrum of choppers and chopping-tools, joined by six protobifaces. They all belong to the developed Olduvan (Olduvan II). On the lower terrace, corresponding with its younger age, we met a more progressive pebble-tool culture. Both stocks are secondary sites, brought from the East by the most extreme tongue of the Rhône glacier and, therefore, cannot be dated exactly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article reports on the discovery of twenty-eight Neandertal hand axes in debris by an amateur Dutch archaeologist at the east coast of England. Jan Meulmeester found the flint axes under thirty meters of water and were buried five to ten meters below the sea floor on December 2007. The axes were identified to have been created by the Neandertals more than 100, 000 years ago, suggesting that they were hunting mammoths and other creatures in a landscape long since underwater. The gravel-dredging company, where Meulmeester works on his day off, has stopped work in the area. Dutch and English officials are planning to survey the area for traces of the sunken landscape.

Focuses on the hand tools and mechanical implements used in Japanese farming for several centuries found in a white, wooden barn in the far suburbs of Tokyo. Information about the farming tools found in the barns; Importance of rice to all Japanese society; Technique use by the government to sustain and safeguard self-sufficiency in rice production; Implications of these metal and wooden devices to Japan's peculiar stance in the world market.

Several images of archaeological excavations including old coins, lead ingots, iron knife blade and spearpoint and others.