image/svg+xml
109
X/2/2019
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Editorial IANSA 2/2019
Crossing the Threshold of a First Decade
Ondřej Mlejnek
Next year it will be exactly ten years since a group of central
European archaeologists and natural scientists decided to
establish a new purely-scientifc, English-written journal,
which was called Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica – Natural
Sciences in Archaeology. On 12
th
September 2019, members
of the IANSA Editorial and Advisory Board met at a joint
meeting in Sádek in Moravia, where they discussed a future
of this journal (Figure 1).
The frst topic discussed was how to commemorate the
journal’s anniversary next year. It was an universal decision:
it is worth preparing a special anniversary issue, where all
the members of the Advisory and Editorial Boards could
present results of their own team’s work in a scientifc paper.
Another decision was to rebuild the editorial board to make
it more international and gender equal. This should be done
by the end of the next year. We hope that this could help to
maintain the broad scope of our journal and, possibly, could
also attract even more high-quality submissions.
The current issue, a non-special, general one, appears to be
extremely diverse from a thematic, as well as chronological,
point of view. Therefore, we hope that it will attract a high
number of readers with diferent interests. Following this
editorial, it continues with an article written by Danielle
J. Riebe, analysing the sources of obsidian used as lithic
tools in Late Neolithic sites on the Great Hungarian Plain.
Based on the results of this preliminary study, the variation
in geological source exploitation may be linked to socio-
cultural practices that diferentiated the Tisza and Herpály
units – archaeological cultures present during the Late
Neolithic in this region.
Another paper, written by Dariusz Król and Jakub
Niebieszczański, deals with the spatial arrangement of the
Eneolithic settlement features dated back to the Funnel
Beaker Culture excavated at Skołoszów site in south-eastern
Poland. The geophysical survey conducted at this site
has enabled a space delimitation of the entire settlement,
including the non-excavated part, which should constitute an
area of at least 65×40 metres.
The next article, written by Freek Braadbaart
et al.
, deals
with charred organic material, heated by anthropogenic fres
and by hot tephra from the Minoan eruption (ca 1613 BC),
excavated at the Bronze Age site of Akrotiri on the Cycladic
island of Thera in Greece. The refectance measured on
the organic charred remains and their elemental analysis,
and opal phytoliths from the ash, have provided interesting
information about the temperatures at which the organic
remains were heated as well as about the functions of their
fres and the fuel resources used by the Akrotiri inhabitants.
Since the frst author passed away during the editorial
process, it is very much appreciated that the second author,
Anaya Sarpaki, together with the other co-authors, managed
to answer the remarks of the peer-reviewers and to prepare
the fnal revision of this paper, the publication of which can
also be seen as a memorial to Freek Braadbaart and his work
in archaeological science.
The last paper in the Articles section, written by Jana
Nováčková
et al.
, presents the results of the genetic analysis
of human remains from a defunct graveyard in the former
village of Obora in Prague. This graveyard was in use
between circa 1730 and 1770 AD and the main aim of this
study was to determine genetic kinship and genetic sex
of individuals buried either in the same grave, multi-level
grave, or neighbourhood graves. The genetic analyses of
23 individuals buried in four groups of graves proved that
there were no blood relatives among the analysed individuals.
Studies of historical written sources provided information
that the parish afliation at the time of death had a crucial
role in choosing the place for burial and that in a social group
of burghers it was even more important than family kinship.
Furthermore, it was also possible to determine the genetic
sex of children, an evaluation that could not be made by
morphological methods.
The thematic review section is represented by a paper
written by Martin Gojda, presenting the current development
in archaeological remote-sensing seen from a central
European perspective.
A look-into-the-region section presents the Department
for Bioarchaeology at the Austrian Archaeological Institute
of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Andreas G.
Heiss – and a team of scientists working at this institute –
Volume X ● Issue 2/2019 ● Pages 109–110
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2019 ● X/2 ● 109–110
Ondřej Mlejnek: Crossing the Threshold of a First Decade
110
refer to their recent projects and the results of their work. A
list of recently-published scientifc papers published at this
department is, as usual, part of this presentation.
Finally, we have a sad piece of news concerning our
colleague Slavomil Vencl, who passed away on 23
rd
June
2019 at the age of 82. His colleague from the Archaeological
Institute in Prague, Katarina Kapustka, has prepared an
Figure 1.
Members of the IANSA Advisory and Editorial Boards present at the joint meeting in Sádek in Moravia (Czech Republic).
obituary with an overview of his life and career. A list of his
selected publications is enclosed as well.
We hope that each reader will be able to fnd in this issue
something interesting from his or her feld of research and
we wish the journal every success as it enters into a new
decade.