Europe (Geographic Keyword)
401-425 (1,158 Records)
While we have gradually accepted that archaeological survey is as integral to our research as the overly-valued practice of excavation, the emotional dimensions of survey where one connects with the landscapes and with its occupants are hardly discussed, especially in the case of long-term surveys. What does a heart-centered survey project look like? How does the intimacy that comes from field walking inform the archaeology? As well, we are all participants in the field of archaeology, and...
Filling the Gap: Caves, Radiocarbon Sequences, and the Meso-Neolithic Transition in SE Europe (2017)
Radiocarbon sequences from some cave sites in the Balkan and Italian peninsulas show a temporal gap between Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations. Some authors have seen this as a regional phenomenon and have sought to explain it in terms of a general population decline in the late Mesolithic, which facilitated the replacement of indigenous foragers by immigrant farmers. In this paper, we re-examine the evidence and consider alternative explanations for the Meso-Neolithic ‘gap’, focusing on...
Finding millet in the Roman World (2016)
Examining the evidence for millet in the Roman empire, during the period, circa 753BC-610AD, presents a number of challenges: a handful of scant mentions in the ancient surviving agrarian texts, several frescoes, only a few fortuitous preserved archaeological finds and limited archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence. Ancient agrarian texts note millet’s ecological preferences and multiple uses but disparage its lowly status. Recent archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence has shown that millet was...
Fire, Humans, and Landscape Evolution: Modeling Anthropogenic Fire and Neolithic Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean (2016)
Archaeological and paleoecological analyses demonstrate that human-caused fires have long-term influences on global terrestrial and atmospheric systems. For millennia, humans have intentionally burned landscapes to drive game, clear land, engage in warfare, and propagate beneficial plant and animal species. Around the world, Neolithic transitions to agriculture often coincided with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation community composition and distribution. Although this...
Fireplace Variability in the Aurignacian: a Multiscale Analysis at the Open-air Campsite of Régismont-le-Haut (Hérault, France) (2015)
Through the study of several contemporary fireplaces at the Aurignacian open-air site of Régismont-le-Haut we will distinguish differences in the function and operation of a common-place form of archaeological vestige. To achieve this goal we rely on multiscale examination of hearths, which consists of classic planimetric and stratigraphic observation coupled with both micromorphological and geochemical analyses. Results are also compared with experimental hearths analyzed using the same...
The first cultural landscapes of Europe - and before... (2017)
Cultural landscapes appear relatively late in the human history. In Europe, between c. 40-20.000 BP, people for the first time seem to have transformed (parts of) their environment intentionally on a significant spatial scale in order to make places and areas "fit" for future activities. Already between 40.000 and 30.000 BP, prominent natural formations and hidden places were marked with signs and symbols to enable distant communication. From c. 25.000 BP onwards, on-site constructions, such as...
The First Quarantine: Lessons from Past Epidemics (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a world changed by COVID-19, it is valuable to look at past reactions to epidemics and learn from them. Modern economies and political systems are designed with the assumption that such events cannot happen. The real risks in food and staples production and distribution in America and Europe or the inability to protect the work force for just a few months...
Fluctuating asymmetry, developmental stress and the socioeconomic structure of an Great Moravian Early Medieval society (2015)
Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is thought to reflect the ability of an organism to cope with genetic and environmental stress during its development. As there is substantial literature discussing this property of FA; we evaluated additional stress indicators (enamel hypoplasia, cribra orbitalia, Harris lines) in non-adult individuals of Middle Ages... The socioeconomic structure of an early medieval society from the Mikulčice settlement (Czech Republic) was studied by applying the FA methodology on...
Fluid Ethnoarchaeology: A Study of British-Era Water Fountains in Athienou, Cyprus (2017)
The Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has conducted excavation and survey work in Cyprus since 1990. Ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic research have accompanied the other field investigations to create a holistic examination of the community situated at the southern end of the Mesaoria, a fertile agricultural plain in the central part of the island. The semi-arid summer climate makes access to water a major concern of the residents of Athienou. A number of public fountains scattered...
Fluorescence Applied to Modern Carnivore Excrements. A Reference Collection for Archaeological Deposits (2018)
Traditionally, coprolite identification in archaeology has been limited to hyenids, the most well-preserved and recognizable fossilized faeces, although non-hyena carnivore coprolites are also present in some Pleistocene deposits displaying a wide range of morphological variation (e.g., elongate, spherical, globular, sub-cylindrical, oval, tubular). Common micromorphological characteristics of these different excrements are the appearance of an amorphous phosphatic, optically isotropic and, a...
Folklore and Fairy Forts: Re-Use of Archaeological Landscapes in Ireland (2016)
The re-use of sites and landscapes in both ancient and contemporary contexts is widely recognized in archaeology. In Ireland, many sites show evidence of use throughout prehistory and into the historical era, although the meaning of these places changed substantially over time and continues to evolve today. This paper will examine historical and contemporary folklore surrounding archaeological sites in Ireland, focusing largely on the nineteenth and twentieth century understanding of raths,...
Following the early maritime routes from the Adriatic to Greece (2016)
During Late Bronze Age it was not unusual to find objects of Mycenaean origin at any part of eastern and central Mediterranean. The only area that seems to have been omitted from Mycenaean naval routes was the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland. However, during earlier times that coast was not as marginal to the Aegean world. The period in question was Early Bronze Age when Cetina Culture saw its birth in the valley of the eponymous river in the hinterland of the eastern Adriatic coast....
Following the Herd: Isotopic access to faunal commodity chains in LBA Mycenae, Greece (2015)
This paper explores variation in the management and distribution of faunal resources recovered from disparate socio-economic spheres of consumption at the palatial settlement of Mycenae, Greece, during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC). It has long been acknowledged that early state economies comprise multiscalar, intertwining spheres of economic activity. Mechanisms driving these spheres of interaction are predicated on the modalities of exchange which connected nodes of production and...
Following the Signs: Tracking Geometric Rock Art across the Landscape of Upper Paleolithic Europe (2015)
Geometric signs are found at nearly all Upper Paleolithic rock art sites in Europe. Created between 10,000 and 40,000 BP, the signs are one of the major thematic categories of art from this era, however, they are often not as well-documented as their figurative counterparts. While there are some sites (e.g., Grotte Chauvet) where detailed inventories have been created for all of the imagery, there are many other sites where this has yet to be carried out. The geometric signs have the potential...
Food from the Hinterlands: Integrated Faunal and Archaeobotanical Studies at a Classical Emporion, Thrace (2015)
The movement of goods, information, and people across the Classical world has been a subject of intense archaeological investigation for over a century. Established trading outposts, known as Greek emporia, contained a multitude of cultural elements from indigenous communities, Classical Greece, the eastern Aegean, and beyond. The ongoing excavation of a coastal site in northern Greece as part of the Molyvoti Thrace Archaeological Project has revealed a Classical Greek settlement dating to the...
Food offerings and feasting in Bronze Age burial contexts from the Körös region, Hungary (2016)
While the collection and analysis of paleoethnobotanical material is increasingly common in settlement excavations, it still remains rare in burial contexts. Botanical material from cemeteries can provide important insights into mortuary practices and associative beliefs about the afterlife for investigated populations. Charred food remains may indicate food offerings or feasting around the burial site, as well as social inequality or aspects of the deceased’s personal identity. In the case of...
Forensic Methods for the 3D Reconstruction of an Infant Burial in Arma Veirana Cave, Liguria, Italy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatio-temporal models can function as detailed digital surrogates of archaeological sites, providing the context and content needed to enable analytical reasoning by means of interactive visualization. The starting point is often surveying techniques based on light detection and ranging as well as photogrammetry,...
Forging Identity: The social and symbolic significance of torques in the Iron Age Castro Culture (2017)
The Iron Age Castro Culture of northwestern Iberia was steeped in the crosscurrents of disparate cultural influences. Linked to areas of temperate Europe by Atlantic trade routes, the Castro Culture was also subject to the encroachments of Mediterranean powers moving through the Iberian Peninsula. These diverse influences manifested in the Castro Culture in a variety of ways, including in methods of personal adornment. The gold and silver torques left by the Castro people are the best example of...
Fortification, Ranking and Subistence. In: Ranking, Resource and Exchange (1982)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Fragments of Identity: Systematic ceramic analysis, technology, and colonial process (2016)
This poster reports the results of a systematic examination of composition for 188 ceramic samples from the Bay of Cádiz (Spain), and discusses the socio-economic ramifications of the findings. Petrographic, NAA, and portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) analysis focused on 166 Phoenician and Iberian sherds dating to c. 800-550 BCE. An additional 12 geological and ceramic samples were included as controls for the provenance determination. The findings reveal unexpected relationships between...
From burial grounds to the interpretation of past epidemics: Diagnostic approach and new insight on funerary practices (2015)
mass graves. Such discoveries testify to an abnormally high death rate linked to a specific event, such as wars or epidemics. Two research lines are fundamental to ascertain the nature of such crises: biological analysis of the exhumed skeletons (age, sex, and paleopathology), and research of DNA of the ancient pathogens which may have caused the deaths. Besides, these burial sites provide an insight of the impact of such a high mortality on funeral customs. At present, enough data is available,...
From Empire States to Country Estates – The Story of the Fallow Deer’s Global Conquest 6k BP to Present (2017)
It took millennia, but the European fallow deer (Dama dama) a beautiful cervid species native to the eastern Mediterranean has gradually been transported around the world - its modern distribution ranging from New Zealand to the Caribbean. The translocation of fallow deer was accompanied by a remarkably consistent culture of hunting and emparkment that altered landscape and environment. Using a combination of (zoo)archaeology, isotope analysis and genetic research to reconstruct the timing and...
From Goddesses to Zoomorphs: Figuring Out Figurines at Çatalhöyük (2017)
The infamous seated goddess, flanked by two leopards, is perhaps the most sensationalized figurine to have been unearthed at Çatalhöyük, prompting narratives of prehistoric cults and religion. Yet research conducted since its discovery by James Mellaart has shown that zoomorphic, rather than anthropomorphic, types are predominant in the figurine assemblage. In this paper, I trace the history of changing recording systems, analytical methodologies, and interpretations of figurines at Çatalhöyük....
From Invention to Methodology: the overlooked "DIY" in everyday archaeology (2015)
Archaeology has always been "DIY". It has borrowed nearly all of its physical tools and many of its intellectual instruments as well. In this still new, 21st century realm of digital archaeology our implements look different, but their basic implementation does not. From the shovel to the computer, from the trowel to the database, from the paintbrush to the paint program, archaeology has had to teach itself how to adapt an object - physical or digital - to the needs of the discipline. Using the...
From Iron Age Settlement to Etruscan Urban Sanctuary: Zooarchaeological Analysis at Veii (Campetti-Southwest Excavation) (2016)
Veii (Veio) was one of the most significant urban centers in central Italy during the Etruscan Period. The Campetti-Southwest excavations at Veii have uncovered more evidence from this site pertaining to its Iron Age settlement (Period I), the Etruscan period urban sanctuary (Period II), and later occupations. The focus of this research is Period I (late 9th to mid-7th cent. B.C.E.) and II (mid-7th to 4th cent. B.C.E.). The faunal remains from these time periods add to our understanding of the...