CUSP · Cementochronology Unravels Seasonality in Prehistory

Archaeological sites are by and large palimpsests of coarse-grained chronological resolution, with many episodes of (re-)occupation where often undifferentiated blocks of time are used as units for temporal reckoning. The methodological advances provided by cementochronological approaches can provide powerful means of temporalising and refining our understanding of annual scheduling of site occupation. Cementochronology examines alternating incremental translucent and opaque bands that are laid down throughout life in tooth cementum as physiological responses to seasonal rhythms. Counting pairs of bands on thin sections under polarized transmitted light provides accurate age estimates. The outermost band represents the season-at-death, which is used to infer seasonality of site occupation. This method is particularly relevant for prehistoric periods when seasonal scheduling of lifeways was of paramount importance. The CUSP project uses the most recent methodological breakthroughs in the study of Tooth Cementum Annulation (TCA) to establish (1) a robust protocol for the study of TCA in red deer, which is often found at prehistoric sites as hunted game; and (2) infer seasonality of occupation of archaeological sites in the chosen case study by determining season-at-death in both red deer and humans. Age-at-death estimates will be made for the analyzed samples too, enabling the applicant to build mortality profiles important for estimates of past human population demography and red deer hunting strategies. The case study are Mesolithic sites in the Danube Gorges region of the Balkans where CUSP will test the hypothesis about possible sedentary occupation of this region in the Mesolithic. The applicant has worked extensively on the archaeological sequences in this region and is best placed to examine this question by receiving training-through-research during the outgoing phase at New York U. He will transfer the acquired knowledge to Sapienza U. of Rome.