D D Gilbertson
Biographic Data
| ID | 2946790 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D D Gilbertson |
| GIVEN NAMES | D D |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilbertson |
| SIGNATURE | GILBERTSON D D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 410 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Floodwater farming and quarrying at Jabal Hamra Arlbieg in the Jordanian desert
Post-depositional alteration of humid tropical cave sediments
The 'human revolution' in lowland tropical Southeast Asia
The local and global dimensions of metalliferous pollution derived from a reconstruction of an eight thousand year record of copper smelting and mining at a desert-mountain frontier in southern Jordan
Micromorphology of Cave Sediments in the Humid Tropics
This is the first detailed study of the micromorphology of archaeologically important cave sediments in the Great Cave of Niah, in the humid tropics of Sarawak, Borneo. Micromorphology is used to describe the sediments and post-depositional alteration, reconstruct the palaeoenvironments, and refine the environmental history of late Pleistocene deposits associated with the human remains (the so-called Deep Skull dated to ca. 43,000-42,000 B.P.). M…
The Human Use of Caves in Peninsular and Island Southeast Asia
This paper introduces the essays in this volume. The challenging complexities of site formation and cave taphonomy in humid tropical environments are emphasized, as is the need for more sophisticated understanding of the geomorphological, biological, and taphonomic processes that affect tropical caves if archaeological remains within them are to be better understood. As the case studies in this collection illustrate, however, tropical cave excava…
Past Human Activity and Geomorphological Change in a Guano-Rich Tropical Cave Mouth
This paper presents initial interpretations of the processes and events responsible for the late Quaternary sequence in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of Niah, in the hot and humid lowland rainforest and swamp forest of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. It evaluates the geomorphological context of the site within the known pattern of rapid late Quaternary climate change. Attention is given to the proximity to the sea and the likelihood of humid trop…
Early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan, Jordan
Evidence for early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan in the rift-margin in souther Jordan is described. The early Holocene of Jordan is not well known and palynology, plant macrofossils and molluscs from Wadi Faynan provide evidence for a much more humid-forest-steppe and steppe-environment than the present stony desert and highly degraded steppe. The early-Holocene fluvial sediments in the Faynan catchment are predominantly fine-grained, …
Prehistoric Foragers and Farmers in South-east Asia
The paper describes the initial results from renewed investigations at Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 of the c. 40,000–year old ‘Deep Skull’. The archaeological sequences from the West Mouth and the other entrances of the cave complex investigated by Tom and Barbara Harrisson and other researchers have potential implications for three major debates regarding the prehistory of south-east Asia: the ti…
Romano-Libyan Dryland Animal Husbandry and Landscape
Archaeology and Desertification in the Wadi Faynan
This report describes the fourth season of fieldwork by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers working together to reconstruct the landscape history of the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan. The particular focus of the project is the long-term history of inter-relationships between landscape and people, as a contribution to the study of processes of desertification and environmental degradation. The 1999 fieldwork contributed si…
Allochthonous and autochthonous mire deposits, slope instability and palaeoenvironmental investigations in the Borve Valley, Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
This paper suggests that sediment depth-age anomalies, and the lithological and palaeoecological properties of a peat core from Borve mire on the Outer Hebridean island of Barra, reflect the episodic impacts of rapid mass-movement of superficial peats and mineral soils from the adjacent hillslopes in the period 3000 to 1750 14 C years BP. Alternative explanations such as mismeasurement of radiocarbon or contamination by floods, are thought less l…
Environment and Land Use in the Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan
This report describes the third season of fieldwork by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers working to reconstrnct the landscape history of the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan over the past 200,000 years. The particular focus of the project is the long-term history of inter-relationships between landscape and people, as a contribution to the study of processes of desertification and environmental degradation. The geomorpholo…
Sand-drift and Soil Formation Along an Exposed North Atlantic Coastline
Environment and Land Use in the Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan
This report describes the second season of fieldwork by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers integrating geomorphological, palaeoecological, archaeological and hydrological studies to construct a model of landscape development for the past 10,000 years in the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan. Geomorphological fieldwork has provided further understanding of the sedimentary fills of the survey area, and underlined the importanc…
The Wadi Faynan Project, Southern Jordan
The Wadi Faynan Project of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (BIAAH) has as its principal objective the provision of a detailed case study in the relationship between environmental change and human history in the arid zone, from prehistory to the present day. This report describes the preliminary findings of an initial campaign of fieldwork in geomorphology and landscape archaeology conducted by an inter-disciplinary team…
Ulvs Xxviii
This paper examines the intentions, successes and failures of remarkable Romano-Libyan floodwater farmers who settled the arid Libyan pre-desert and used complexes of walls to manage the occasional floodwater as well as the desert's soils, sediments and biota. The paper presents and analyses a near ‘total’ data-set on the determinable locational properties of these ancient walls within one wadi — the 10 km long Wadi Umm el-Kharab. The organisatio…
The Airfall-pollen Budget of Archaeologically Important Caves
Ulvs Xxvi
This paper describes an integrated series of sedimentological and palynological studies of the arenaceous deposits which infill the large alluvial basin of Grerat D'nar Salem, which is located on a limestone plateau in the semi-arid pre-desert of Tripolitania north-west of the town of Beni Ulid. This research shows that in the early and middle Holocene this depression was occupied by a large semi-permanent or permanent water body which was surrou…
The statistical modelling of the grain size distributions of cave sediments using log skew laplace distributions
Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey XXIII
This report presents the preliminary results of the final season of the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey, that took place in October 1989. The fieldwork was divided in two parts. The first part of the work concentrated on the settlements in the Wadi Buzra, a northern tributary of the Wadi Sofeggin, especially at Souk el Awty. The major monument here consists of a substantial church (published elsewhere by D. A. Welsby in this volume), which was inves…
The Cultural Landscape
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey XXI
The Romano-Libyan farm Lm4 includes a ‘barrage’, water control walls and farm buildings. These were built as part of an agro-hydrological farm system at the confluence of the Wadi el Amud and the Wadi Umm el Bagul in the Libyan pre-desert. The farm appears to have functioned in a geomorphological environment not dissimilar to that which prevails today — with occasional rain storms producing overland flow and floods interrupting a dominance of aeo…
The Description and Classification of Grain Size Data from Ancient and Modern Shoreline Sands at Lepcis Magna using Log Skew Laplace Distributions
The description and analysis of particle size distributions using log skew Laplace distributions is a new technique designed to overcome various mathematical and computational problems associated with other approaches. This paper presents an application of the method. In particular, it describes fitting log skew Laplace distributions to modern and ancient shoreline sands from Lepcis Magna (near Horns), Tripolitania, with the purpose of discrimina…
Ulvs Xxii
White surface encrustations developing on basalt which had the same ‘reflectance signature’ on digital Landsat imagery as that from the limestone terrain in the Tripolitanian pre-desert are shown at the Wadi Gobbeen to be the thalli of the crustose lichen of the genus Aspicilia . The reproductive structures and ascospores of the lichen are described. The lichen is seen to be aiding the weathering and disintegration of the basalt cobbles. The abse…
The 'human revolution' in lowland tropical Southeast Asia
The local and global dimensions of metalliferous pollution derived from a reconstruction of an eight thousand year record of copper smelting and mining at a desert-mountain frontier in southern Jordan
Past Human Activity and Geomorphological Change in a Guano-Rich Tropical Cave Mouth
This paper presents initial interpretations of the processes and events responsible for the late Quaternary sequence in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of Niah, in the hot and humid lowland rainforest and swamp forest of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. It evaluates the geomorphological context of the site within the known pattern of rapid late Quaternary climate change. Attention is given to the proximity to the sea and the likelihood of humid trop…
Sand-drift and Soil Formation Along an Exposed North Atlantic Coastline
Micromorphology of Cave Sediments in the Humid Tropics
This is the first detailed study of the micromorphology of archaeologically important cave sediments in the Great Cave of Niah, in the humid tropics of Sarawak, Borneo. Micromorphology is used to describe the sediments and post-depositional alteration, reconstruct the palaeoenvironments, and refine the environmental history of late Pleistocene deposits associated with the human remains (the so-called Deep Skull dated to ca. 43,000-42,000 B.P.). M…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey 1980
Two seasons of work have now been conducted by British and French survey teams, in conjunction with members of the Libyan Antiquities Department, under the charge of Dr. Abdullah Shaiboub. The objectives of the survey are to locate, survey and analyse the extensive remains of the ancient agricultural settlements that can be found in the wadis of the hinterlands of Tripolitania and the Sirtica. Within the framework established by the Department in…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey 1979–1981
Three seasons of intensive survey in the central Tripolitanian pre-desert, primarily in the regions of the Wadis Sofeggin and Zem Zem, have provided a new basis for the study of pre-desert cultures. Not only have hundreds of new sites been discovered, but the combination of environmental and geomorphological studies with archaeological survey is now providing important information about the underlying mechanisms which supported them. An increasin…
Prehistoric Foragers and Farmers in South-east Asia
The paper describes the initial results from renewed investigations at Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 of the c. 40,000–year old ‘Deep Skull’. The archaeological sequences from the West Mouth and the other entrances of the cave complex investigated by Tom and Barbara Harrisson and other researchers have potential implications for three major debates regarding the prehistory of south-east Asia: the ti…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey VII
Interpretations of ancient wall-technologies in the Libyan pre-desert are briefly reviewed. The forms, patterns, distributions and geological/geomorphic/hydrologic relationships of walls in a series of study areas are described and interpreted with the aid of a new, non-genetic, ‘wall-technology’ classification. The remarkable hydrological and geomorphic insights of their constructors are clear. Several wall types are shown to have been primarily…
Studies of late prehistoric and modern opal phytoliths from coastal sand dunes and machair in Northwest Britain
Ulvs Xiii
This article describes the interdisciplinary methods developed by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey in connection with the study of ancient agriculture. These methods combine the techniques of settlement archaeology with those of the earth sciences and palaeoeconomics. The interactive nature of the enquiry does not resolve all the questions, but it can help to re-shape those questions and suggest new lines of enquiry. The example of the Wadi Mansu…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey VIII
Digital image data from the Landsat satellite Multispectral scanner have been analysed using a Dipex Image Processor. The image data were classified by a clustering algorithm to produce a thematic map for trial use in areas of archaeological interest. The archaeological, pedological, geomorphic and geological importance of these new data are discussed in the context of ground data obtained during the UNESCO April 1984 field season
Post-depositional alteration of humid tropical cave sediments
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey V
The sedimentological properties of samples collected from exposures in wadi floors are reported. These studies emphasise the natural variability of erosional and depositional processes in this environment. Some of the sedimentological changes observed appear to be of archaeological significance. They indicate that in the recent geological past, either increased flooding occurring as a result of natural environmental fluctuations, or irrigation pr…
The Human Use of Caves in Peninsular and Island Southeast Asia
This paper introduces the essays in this volume. The challenging complexities of site formation and cave taphonomy in humid tropical environments are emphasized, as is the need for more sophisticated understanding of the geomorphological, biological, and taphonomic processes that affect tropical caves if archaeological remains within them are to be better understood. As the case studies in this collection illustrate, however, tropical cave excava…
Romano-Libyan Dryland Animal Husbandry and Landscape
Ulvs Xix
A geological reconnaissance of the Beni Ulid — Wadi Merdum region of the pre-desert of Tripolitania shows that at least twenty, stratigraphically distinct geomorphic events can be recognised from field exposures, field mapping and the analysis of Spacelab metric camera photography. The earliest events are provisionally attributed to the early Cenozoic and include uplift, tilting, faulting, the formation of karstic and karst-tectonic landforms, an…
Ulvs Xvii
This study documents the sediments, pollen, seeds, molluscs, vertebrates and mineral magnetism of deposits found in an abandoned water supply system at gasr Mm 10 in the Wadi Mimoun in the pre-desert of Tripolitania. These new data suggest (1) at or close to an episode of probable abandonment of that gasr , the growth of cereals (and perhaps general agricultural activity) still occurred on the wadi catchment upstream of the gasr , and (2) the veg…
Ulvs Xviii
This paper describes the Quaternary geology of the area around Gasr Banat which lies near the confluence of the Wadis N'f'd and N'fed in the pre-desert of Tripolitania. The site is of interest because of its aridity, the notable archaeological remains that occur in the region and the opportunity it offered to map the surficial deposits of an area otherwise largely unknown. The survey revealed that two Pleistocene cobble and gravel units laid down…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey IX
Active karst landforms (poljes, dolines, sinkholes, caves and rillenkarren) and hydration and weathering phenomena on anhydrite and limestone are described from the Tripolitanian pre-desert. Rainfall in the study area is considerably less than the 250–300 mm a −1 previously suggested as the minimum precipitation threshold for the development of karst landforms. These findings suggest that the presence of karst land-forms in an arid region cannot …
Early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan, Jordan
Evidence for early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan in the rift-margin in souther Jordan is described. The early Holocene of Jordan is not well known and palynology, plant macrofossils and molluscs from Wadi Faynan provide evidence for a much more humid-forest-steppe and steppe-environment than the present stony desert and highly degraded steppe. The early-Holocene fluvial sediments in the Faynan catchment are predominantly fine-grained, …
Quaternary Processes and Environments in the upper Thames Valley
In recent years, several new sites have been discovered in the upper Thames valley which enable the Quaternary history of the area to be reconsidered in a detail not attempted since the early work of Sandford. These sites have provided evidence of the nature of the environment during both glacial and inter-glacial stages of the middle and upper Pleistocene. Studies are still continuing, but sufficient information has been obtained to present a re…
A simple preparation technique for the study of opal phytoliths from archaeological and quaternary sediments
Ulvs Xii
Sediments of ?Pleistocene and Holocene age infilling an ancient irrigation channel adjacent to the Wadi Gobbeen in Tripolitania are described. The irrigation channel is part of a Romano-Libyan floodwater-farming system. Techniques for estimating the hydrological characteristics of floodwater-farming systems are applied to the irrigation channel to provide an indication of the water-carrying capacity of ancient floodwater-farming systems in the Li…
Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey XXIII
This report presents the preliminary results of the final season of the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey, that took place in October 1989. The fieldwork was divided in two parts. The first part of the work concentrated on the settlements in the Wadi Buzra, a northern tributary of the Wadi Sofeggin, especially at Souk el Awty. The major monument here consists of a substantial church (published elsewhere by D. A. Welsby in this volume), which was inves…
Quaternary Processes and Environments in the upper Thames Valley
In recent years, several new sites have been discovered in the upper Thames valley which enable the Quaternary history of the area to be reconsidered in a detail not attempted since the early work of Sandford. These sites have provided evidence of the nature of the environment during both glacial and inter-glacial stages of the middle and upper Pleistocene. Studies are still continuing, but sufficient information has been obtained to present a re…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey 1980
Two seasons of work have now been conducted by British and French survey teams, in conjunction with members of the Libyan Antiquities Department, under the charge of Dr. Abdullah Shaiboub. The objectives of the survey are to locate, survey and analyse the extensive remains of the ancient agricultural settlements that can be found in the wadis of the hinterlands of Tripolitania and the Sirtica. Within the framework established by the Department in…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey 1979–1981
Three seasons of intensive survey in the central Tripolitanian pre-desert, primarily in the regions of the Wadis Sofeggin and Zem Zem, have provided a new basis for the study of pre-desert cultures. Not only have hundreds of new sites been discovered, but the combination of environmental and geomorphological studies with archaeological survey is now providing important information about the underlying mechanisms which supported them. An increasin…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey V
The sedimentological properties of samples collected from exposures in wadi floors are reported. These studies emphasise the natural variability of erosional and depositional processes in this environment. Some of the sedimentological changes observed appear to be of archaeological significance. They indicate that in the recent geological past, either increased flooding occurring as a result of natural environmental fluctuations, or irrigation pr…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey VII
Interpretations of ancient wall-technologies in the Libyan pre-desert are briefly reviewed. The forms, patterns, distributions and geological/geomorphic/hydrologic relationships of walls in a series of study areas are described and interpreted with the aid of a new, non-genetic, ‘wall-technology’ classification. The remarkable hydrological and geomorphic insights of their constructors are clear. Several wall types are shown to have been primarily…
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey VIII
Digital image data from the Landsat satellite Multispectral scanner have been analysed using a Dipex Image Processor. The image data were classified by a clustering algorithm to produce a thematic map for trial use in areas of archaeological interest. The archaeological, pedological, geomorphic and geological importance of these new data are discussed in the context of ground data obtained during the UNESCO April 1984 field season
The Prehistoric and Medieval Field Archaeology of Crownhill Down, Dartmoor, England
Dartmoor, a granite massif in SW England, boasts the most completely preserved landscape of the 2nd millennium B.C. in Europe, with numerous burial cairns, houses, enclosures, fields, and territorial boundaries surviving. Systematic mapping of these remains has been in progress in the last decade, mainly by the University of Sheffield. This paper describes a low-lying area of moorland partially threatened by tungsten mining. The prehistoric field…
The Chronology and Environmental Framework of Early Man in the Upper Thames Valley
Linear banks on Crownhill Down, Dartmoor
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey IX
Active karst landforms (poljes, dolines, sinkholes, caves and rillenkarren) and hydration and weathering phenomena on anhydrite and limestone are described from the Tripolitanian pre-desert. Rainfall in the study area is considerably less than the 250–300 mm a −1 previously suggested as the minimum precipitation threshold for the development of karst landforms. These findings suggest that the presence of karst land-forms in an arid region cannot …
Ulvs Xii
Sediments of ?Pleistocene and Holocene age infilling an ancient irrigation channel adjacent to the Wadi Gobbeen in Tripolitania are described. The irrigation channel is part of a Romano-Libyan floodwater-farming system. Techniques for estimating the hydrological characteristics of floodwater-farming systems are applied to the irrigation channel to provide an indication of the water-carrying capacity of ancient floodwater-farming systems in the Li…
Ulvs Xiii
This article describes the interdisciplinary methods developed by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey in connection with the study of ancient agriculture. These methods combine the techniques of settlement archaeology with those of the earth sciences and palaeoeconomics. The interactive nature of the enquiry does not resolve all the questions, but it can help to re-shape those questions and suggest new lines of enquiry. The example of the Wadi Mansu…
A simple preparation technique for the study of opal phytoliths from archaeological and quaternary sediments
Ulvs Xvii
This study documents the sediments, pollen, seeds, molluscs, vertebrates and mineral magnetism of deposits found in an abandoned water supply system at gasr Mm 10 in the Wadi Mimoun in the pre-desert of Tripolitania. These new data suggest (1) at or close to an episode of probable abandonment of that gasr , the growth of cereals (and perhaps general agricultural activity) still occurred on the wadi catchment upstream of the gasr , and (2) the veg…
Ulvs Xviii
This paper describes the Quaternary geology of the area around Gasr Banat which lies near the confluence of the Wadis N'f'd and N'fed in the pre-desert of Tripolitania. The site is of interest because of its aridity, the notable archaeological remains that occur in the region and the opportunity it offered to map the surficial deposits of an area otherwise largely unknown. The survey revealed that two Pleistocene cobble and gravel units laid down…
Ulvs Xix
A geological reconnaissance of the Beni Ulid — Wadi Merdum region of the pre-desert of Tripolitania shows that at least twenty, stratigraphically distinct geomorphic events can be recognised from field exposures, field mapping and the analysis of Spacelab metric camera photography. The earliest events are provisionally attributed to the early Cenozoic and include uplift, tilting, faulting, the formation of karstic and karst-tectonic landforms, an…
Studies of late prehistoric and modern opal phytoliths from coastal sand dunes and machair in Northwest Britain
The Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey XXI
The Romano-Libyan farm Lm4 includes a ‘barrage’, water control walls and farm buildings. These were built as part of an agro-hydrological farm system at the confluence of the Wadi el Amud and the Wadi Umm el Bagul in the Libyan pre-desert. The farm appears to have functioned in a geomorphological environment not dissimilar to that which prevails today — with occasional rain storms producing overland flow and floods interrupting a dominance of aeo…
The Description and Classification of Grain Size Data from Ancient and Modern Shoreline Sands at Lepcis Magna using Log Skew Laplace Distributions
The description and analysis of particle size distributions using log skew Laplace distributions is a new technique designed to overcome various mathematical and computational problems associated with other approaches. This paper presents an application of the method. In particular, it describes fitting log skew Laplace distributions to modern and ancient shoreline sands from Lepcis Magna (near Horns), Tripolitania, with the purpose of discrimina…
Ulvs Xxii
White surface encrustations developing on basalt which had the same ‘reflectance signature’ on digital Landsat imagery as that from the limestone terrain in the Tripolitanian pre-desert are shown at the Wadi Gobbeen to be the thalli of the crustose lichen of the genus Aspicilia . The reproductive structures and ascospores of the lichen are described. The lichen is seen to be aiding the weathering and disintegration of the basalt cobbles. The abse…
Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey XXIII
This report presents the preliminary results of the final season of the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey, that took place in October 1989. The fieldwork was divided in two parts. The first part of the work concentrated on the settlements in the Wadi Buzra, a northern tributary of the Wadi Sofeggin, especially at Souk el Awty. The major monument here consists of a substantial church (published elsewhere by D. A. Welsby in this volume), which was inves…
The Cultural Landscape
The statistical modelling of the grain size distributions of cave sediments using log skew laplace distributions
Ulvs Xxvi
This paper describes an integrated series of sedimentological and palynological studies of the arenaceous deposits which infill the large alluvial basin of Grerat D'nar Salem, which is located on a limestone plateau in the semi-arid pre-desert of Tripolitania north-west of the town of Beni Ulid. This research shows that in the early and middle Holocene this depression was occupied by a large semi-permanent or permanent water body which was surrou…
The Airfall-pollen Budget of Archaeologically Important Caves
Archaeology (41 works) · Geography (40 works) · Geology (30 works) · Paleontology (23 works) · Wadi (18 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (17 works) · Ecology (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (11 works) · Holocene (10 works) · Archaeological and Historical Studies (9 works)