Europe (Geographic Keyword)
851-875 (1,158 Records)
The practice of cremation and inhumation can occur within the same cemetery during the same time period. This co-mingling of burial forms is found throughout Western history from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe to Ancient Rome and Greece through the Early Medieval Europe and today. Despite its wide chronological and geographic extent, data-driven study of co-occurrence of burial treatments is limited for a number of reasons; the most problematic being the disciplinary perception that cremation...
Problematizing Religious Transformation: burial evidence for the transition to Christianity (2015)
The identification of religion through the examination of burials is faced with many problems, mainly the different avenues of interpretation. This paper will examine the conflicting evidence for religious belief used to identify religious practice in burials. The use of a few key features, or lack of features, to designate a burial of one religion or another does not take into account variation or coincidental practices, which only resemble a particular religion. Mixed burials present...
Producing Knowledge Through the Production of 3D Digital Artifacts (2017)
It is becoming more common to see 3D digital artifacts used for analysis and interpretation, often as if these digital forms are equivalent to the original. This paper discusses the process of creating a 3D model as an essential but often under considered aspect of the final product that should be taken into consideration in their use in any archaeological analysis and interpretation. Digital artifact models inhabit a strange place amongst the suite of traditional archaeological data – their...
Profiling the Past: About the Importance of Excavating Side View and Sieving with a Small Mesh for Retrieving Blade/Bladelet Production in Middle Paleolithic and Early Upper Paleolithic Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Developing Paleolithic Excavation Methods for the Twenty-First Century" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavation involves working both in side-view (i.e., with profiles), to recognize the stratigraphy, and in plan-view to excavate features and layers. Here we want to elaborate on the advantages of working mainly in side-view at Paleolithic sites with long, complex stratigraphies with high find densities. Sieving is...
Program in Spain, William L. Bryant Archaeological Foundation (1955)
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.
A provenance study of ceramics from Final Bronze Age sites in Corsica using non-destructive pXRF analysis (2016)
This paper presents the results of a study of Final Bronze Age ceramics in Corsica, which took place during summer 2015. More than three hundred sherds from six different sites were analyzed using a non-destructive technology, XRF (X-ray fluorescence), to identify trace elements. The use of a hand-held device allowed the archaeometric study in situ of collections preserved in the Sartene museum, which could not have been removed and sent for analysis otherwise, and their comparison with...
Provenance Study of Obsidian Artifacts from the Neolithic Settlement Masis Blur (Armenia) using Portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (2015)
Over the past two decades, provenance research on obsidian from Armenia has been on the rise, primarily for provenience purposes, however, with only few studies on obsidian archaeological artifacts. In these studies, the geochemical characterization of obsidian artifacts and geological sources was carried out using different laboratory-based techniques such as INAA, ICP-MS and XRF. The current project presents preliminary results obtained with a portable XRF (pXRF) on the chemical...
Provisional Model of an Iron Age Society and Its Settlement System. In: Models in Archaeology (1972)
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.
Public Archaeology in a Digital Age: An Overview of my Research (2015)
This paper examines the impact of the democratic promises of Internet communication technologies, social, and participatory media on the practice of public archaeology in the UK. This work is based on my doctoral research undertaken from 2010-2014 and addresses the following issues: the provision of authoritative archaeological information online; barriers to participation; policy and organisational approaches to evaluating success and archiving; community formation and activism, and the impact...
Publishing masterclass (2015)
This is a publishing masterclass covering five major aspects of the publishing process: copyright (what it is and what it's for) ethics (plagiarism, fabrication and falsification); retraction, expression of concern, correction (or erratum). Open Access and CC licenses: what are the options Impact Factor and other metrics: what they are, how they are calculated how to be not just a reviewer but a great reviewer The topics will of course be relevant for all disciplines and all academic...
PXRF Analysis of the Pylos Linear B Tablets (2017)
PXRF Analysis of the Pylos Linear B Tablets In 2015 and 2016 I analyzed all of the Mycenaean Linear B clay tablets and sealings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos for their chemical composition using a portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer. Sealings were used on containers of oil, wine, etc., and on baskets of tablets. Leaf-shaped tablets usually contain one entry or line of information. Page-shaped tablets contain several entries of related information. There are questions that these...
The Queen of Heaven in Iron Age Greece: Analyzing Religious Ideology and Symbolism on Multiple Scales (2015)
In this paper, I approach religion and ideology in the archaeological record through an analysis of iconographic symbols, one that centres on the dialectic between longstanding meanings of symbols as they are transmitted across space and time and the local social, political, and intellectual contexts in which they appear. I situate my analysis within recent models from cultural evolutionary psychology, which see religion, along with its attendant rituals and symbolisms, as an adaptive mechanism...
A question of place: economies and intimacies in early Sweden’s smallest upland communities. (2016)
Can we understand the connections between the state, farming economies, and the lived experience of smallholders in past societies? Using archaeological examples from the smallest smallholdings – crofts on marginal lands in northern Europe – the view of land as a rare, precious, and highly managed resource is examined. Despite the still-pervasive materialist notion that smallholders are passive mechanisms with shortsighted, self-defeating land management strategies, anthropologists have...
Rabbit remains analysis in the Upper Paleolithic in Portugal (2015)
Ongoing excavations and research at the cave site of Lapa do Picareiro in the Estremadura region of Portugal have recovered a large number of faunal remains, including thousands of rabbit bones. These remains have yielded new data and insight on human exploitation of small prey during the Upper Paleolithic. This poster focuses on the spatial and temporal distribution of rabbit remains within the cave and the taphonomic processes acting on these bones. The work builds upon previous research using...
Raising the Ground, Building a Mound: Bronze Age ‘Barrowscapes’ in Southern Britain (2017)
The prehistoric record of Britain is punctuated by episodes of monumental building, with the Early Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age being particular cases in point. Yet the Neolithic megalithic monuments and long barrows are quite different forms of funerary and ritual architecture compared to the succeeding Bronze Age barrow traditions. The former could be continuously accessed and activated until their final blocking. On the other hand, once a mound was erected over a Bronze Age grave, that...
Rapid climate change and demographic decline at the end of the Irish Bronze Age (2016)
The accumulation of large 14C data-sets over recent decades provides archaeologists with a substantial resource which has only recently begun to be systematically explored. Such data-sets offer the potential to explore temporal variations in the intensity of past human activity at a range of geographical scales, although the ‘reading’ of such data is far from unproblematic. One area of clear potential is the relationship between patterning evident in 14C and palaeoclimate data-sets. In this...
The rapid generation and visualization of 3D timelapse reconstructions of the excavation at the Paleolithic site Arma Veirana in Italy. (2017)
Arma Veirana is a Middle/Upper Paleolithic cave site of the Maritime Alps of Liguria, Italy, which has the potential to offer insight into the interaction between Modern Humans and the Neandertals. Preliminary excavations have shown a continuous occupation between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic time periods, yet the complexity of the cave morphology and geology have made it difficult to isolate erosion as well as environmental and non-natural factors to understand the full image of hominin...
Raw Material Variability in Levallois Flake Manufacture (1985)
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.
(Re)Articulating Ancient Lives: Diet and Movement in Late Bronze Age Societies in the South Caucasus (2015)
The sudden appearance of hilltop citadels and vast cemeteries on the Late Bronze Age landscape of the South Caucasus suggests that it was a period of dynamic socio-political transformation as society shifted from highly mobile agropastoralism to a more settled lifestyle revolving around fortresses. Yet, within the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia, there is little archaeological evidence of domestic architecture and activities, throwing into question people’s residential and subsistence practices....
Re-casting from scrap: The role of Ayia Irini in Bronze Age Aegean metallurgy (2016)
Metallurgy is considered key in understanding the prominence of Ayia Irini during the Bronze Age in the Aegean Sea. Over the course of the Bronze Age, metal production and circulation flourish, with Attica and the western Cyclades considered primary ore sources, with their importance fluctuating within this period. The role of Ayia Irini, located in the center of this metal-bearing zone and with extensive evidence for local metallurgical activities, remains to be clarified. A new project by the...
Re-evaluating the evidence for systematic exploitation of mammoth during the European Middle Palaeolithic. (2015)
The recurrent presence of mammoth, elephant and rhinoceros at Middle Palaeolithic sites, together with Neanderthal isotopes signalling meat as a prominent protein source, have been used to argue for a central role of these species in Neanderthal subsistence. Key to this model are the bone heap horizons from La Cotte de St Brelade (CSB, Jersey), previously interpreted as game drive debris resulting from systematic Neanderthal hunting. However, this hypothesis has never been rigorously tested....
A Re-examination of Magdalenian Social Organization Ten Years Later (2015)
A decade ago this author completed a synthesis of information about the circulation of exotic lithic raw materials, items of personal ornamentation, and portable decorated objects across western Europe during the Magdalenian ca. 17,000 to 12,000 B.P. Tests of hypotheses about the relationship between population density and visual display suggested that population density was probably not the sole driving force behind the types and intensities of visual displays used by generations of Magdalenian...
Re-use and Recycle: the various lives of prehistoric monuments (2015)
There are innumerable examples throughout prehistory (and history) of ancient monuments repurposed for a variety of reasons, such as the legitimation of power, land ownership and ancestry, among others. Today, many people, in particular Neo-Pagans, attempt to identify with past peoples and to incorporate ancient sites into their modern day religious beliefs. Although not inherently bad, interpretations of ancient sites through a Neo-Pagan lens tend to gloss over archaeological evidence and...
Re-worked Artifacts and Models of Raw Material Exploitation as Indicators for Settlement Duration on Middle Palaeolithic Sites in the Highlands of Central Europe (2017)
Short-term settlement of Middle Palaeolithic hunters leaves a specific tool kit on an archaeological site. In spite of this well known fact, in some cases, concerning the duration of stay of groups of Neanderthals, mere techno-typological analysis of inventories seems insufficient. Analysis of raw materials exploitation, combined with information about long use, or re-working of certain artifacts appears to be helpful. On most sites from the Middle Palaeolithic era, archaeological data,...
Reading the Landscape: a model of environmental legibility for assessing hominid dispersals during the Late Pleistocene. (2016)
The ability of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) to successfully navigate complex topographies and variable environments is hypothesized to have been a key adaptation for the long term success of our species, in comparison to other hominid groups. Additionally, the structure of the environment through which human dispersals occurred is arguably important to our understanding of the speed and scale at which population movements occurred. This paper demonstrates a new methodology for quantifying...