West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (292 Records)
Inter-site motif variability is understudied in a systematic way to understand the complicated design vocabularies, paint colors, textures and vessel forms of ceramics from the Halaf cultural horizon (5,900-5,350 Cal. B.C.E./5,200-4,500 uncal. B.C.E.), a culture-historical entity in the Late Pottery Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia (southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq). Together, these motifs create an almost music-like multidimensional symphony of pattern including naturalistic...
Interpreting uses of cereal threshing tools and straw storage structures from Neolithic, Chacolithic and Bronze Age sites in the near East (2015)
Optical reflected light and transmitted light microscopy, laser confocal analysis, SEM and EDX analyses, accompanied by field and laboratory experiments, were used to study surfaces and residues for stone and bone tools, soil deposits and mudbrick. Case studies presented here suggest two types of intensive threshing practices were occurring from the beginnings of agriculture. Bone tools from the early Neolithic in Iran show large amounts of cereals were threshed so as to leave long stems,...
Introduction to Smallholders and Complex Society, with a Note on Pigs and Mesopotamia (2016)
In this introduction, I discuss the literature on smallholders in complex societies and directions for current and future archaeological research. I attempt to answer several questions: What is a smallholder? How can we detect them in the archaeological record? How does a focus on smallholders contribute to studies of other social groups, such as classes, gender, and ethnicity? I conclude my presentation with a discussion of the role of smallholders in pig husbandry in Chalcolithic and Bronze...
Investigating the diet and health of Neolithic boar in Central Turkey: A pilot study from Boncuklu Höyük (2017)
Boncuklu Höyük (the 9th millennium to the 8th millennium cal. BC) is an Early Neolithic settlement found in the Konya Plain, Central Anatolia. At this site, wild boar (Sus scrofa) is the most common species found in the mammal remains. This pilot study tries to explore the relationship between Boncuklu boar and the community that inhabited this area. Samples of archaeological boar’s teeth from Boncuklu Höyük are analysed using three methods: (1) dental morphometrics, (2) dental microwear...
Investigating the Late Prehistoric (6500-2400 BC) socio-economic landscapes in the Burdur Plain, SW Turkey (2016)
A diachronic intensive survey in the Burdur Plain, carried out by the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, revealed that the excavated mound sites, such as Hacılar and Kuruçay Höyük, were no isolated features in the landscape, but part of a large settlement system of both shorter lived hamlets and small villages. The paper presents our survey results from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age II period (ca. 6500 – 2400 BC), alongside our outcomes of the provenance analyses (i.e....
Investigating the Social Dynamics of Iron Age Copper Production: Preliminary Results from New Excavations at Khirbat al-Jariya, Jordan (2015)
This paper presents preliminary results from the 2014 Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) excavation at Khirbat al-Jariya (KAJ), an Iron Age copper production site in southern Jordan’s copper ore-rich Faynan region. To complement earlier work on copper production activities at KAJ, industrial and administrative areas were sampled. Stratigraphic excavations in both these areas applied a cutting-edge cyber-archaeology workflow in order to ensure the best-possible spatial...
Is the fortification always about fortress? The case of Middle Bronze Age fortified settlements in Northern Eurasia (2015)
There are 22 fortified settlements of the Middle Bronze Age discovered in Russia for last 40 years through the methods of aerial photography analysis and field excavations. All together they are known as Sintashta archeological culture of Southern Urals. The typical Sintashta settlement is usually enclosure consists of 1-4 meters deep ditch and the wall built of dirt and clay. However, the current analysis of the settlement patterning using GIS suggests that people chose the place of living...
Kalas and Urbanism in Western Central Asia (2017)
Kalas (qalas), as iconic fortified enclosure sites, were nodes within dispersed and low-density settlement patterns of Central Asian oases. The largest kalas functioned as the equivalent of urban centers for mobile, agro-pastoral societies. A complex and diversified system of agro-pastoral subsistence and production strategies were employed within the oases in response to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. This paper will focus on the transition from the Late Antique to Early...
Knapping flint on a brush hut floor: An example from Ohalo II, a 23000 year-old camp in Israel (2017)
Thousands of open-air camp sites dating to the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene have been recorded around the world. However, most suffer from significant preservation issues which limit available data on two levels: the general camp structure, and the details of each feature. The excellent preservation of the submerged site of Ohalo II (23,000 cal BP) provides an opportunity to analyze such a site on both levels. The focus of the paper is a flint assemblage (n=5,621) from a...
Kurd Qaburstan, A "Second Generation" Urban Site on the Erbil Plain (2016)
While the emergence and early trajectory of urbanism has been extensively studied in southern Mesopotamia and in Syria, similar research has been conspicuously rare in northern Iraq. Fieldwork at Kurd Qaburstan (ancient Qabra?) on the Erbil plain conducted by the Johns Hopkins University now affords an opportunity to investigate a major Bronze Age urban center of northern Iraq. Since its main period of occupation is the Middle Bronze Age (Old Babylonian period, early second millennium BC), work...
Lagging, Uneven Hellenism in the Hellenistic East (2016)
Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire ushered in the Hellenistic period, so called because of the ostensible spread of Greek culture across a vast landscape. Such a characterization is supported by the presence of Greek inscriptions and Greek style art and architecture at cities founded by Alexander and his successors. But this picture becomes complicated the further one moves from the centers of power. I Maccabees, an account of a Jewish revolt against the Seleucid dynasty...
Land use patterns in the arid Eurasia. Models and historical examples (2015)
The relation between the main variants of pre-industrial economic production in arid Eurasia, from nomadic pastoralism to irrigated agriculture, is known to have been unstable, with abundant examples of conflict and shifting patterns of land use right up to contemporary times. We present a brief review of our experience using Agent-Based models to identify mechanisms and system dynamics that could help explain the different land use configurations, which have been recorded archaeologically for...
Landscape archaeology and new technologies at Tel Akko and in the Plain of Akko (2017)
Excavations at the ancient port site of Tel Akko in 2010 were co-directed by Ann E. Killebrew (The Pennsylvania State University) and Michal Artzy (The University of Haifa). Located on the only natural bay in the southern Levant, Akko is frequently mentioned in historical sources ranging from the Bronze Age through the present time. Among the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project’s primary goals is the development and implementation of new technologies devoted to 3D documentation and to a high...
Landscape archaeology and political ecology in Anatolia: Yalburt Yaylasi Project 2014 Season (2015)
Since 2010, Yalburt Yaylasi Archaeological Landscape Research Project has been investigating the politics of Hittite borderlands in a region known as Pedassa in antiquity, currently located within the Turkish province of Konya. In 2013 and 2014 seasons, the project focused on the Kuru Gol Basin, a dried lake basin within the survey region, where Turkey's largest coal operated power plant and its open pit mine is planned in the next few years. Due to recent marginalization of this waterless...
Landscapes of Belief: Structured Religious Practice in Iron Age Central Eurasia (2017)
Realistic, symbolic and metaphorical representations of animals (i.e., Animal Style Art), and associated themes ("griffins"/animal fusion, combat, geometric design within animal) depicted on artifacts attributed to Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu, from Iron Age (ca., 1,000-100 BC) north central Eurasia are the focus of statistical analyses identifying structured usage amongst the regions, linked to religious beliefs. Common expression of symbolic subject matter and themes on artifacts is analyzed...
Landscapes of Death and Burial in the South Caucasus: The Kurgans of Naxçivan, Azerbaijan (2016)
While burials have long been an important source of archaeological information, they have traditionally been studied mainly from a site-based perspective. This traditional view focuses on the form of the burial, the grave goods contained, and osteological evidence on the age, sex and health of the interred individual. By contrast, the landscape approach studies burials as part of a broader natural and cultural landscape that extends beyond site boundaries. This project focuses on kurgan burials...
Landscapes of the Dead: Mapping, Survey, and Site Monitoring at Fifa, Jordan (2015)
Birds’ eye views of archaeological sites and landscapes provide excellent vantage points for our understanding of the past. Images from archives, balloons, drones, kites, poles, and satellites are changing the ways in which we carry out archaeological investigations. In cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities under the umbrella project of Follow the Pots, the Landscapes of the Dead Research Project is using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, ‘drones’) to monitor archaeological site...
The Late Natufian culture dynamics during the Younger Dryas event (2015)
The Natufian culture coincided with the Terminal Pleistocene, a period of climatic unpredictability. In the Southern Levant the Late Natufian phase corresponds to the global Younger Dryas event and directly precedes the abrupt transition to early Neolithic entities at the beginning of the Holocene climatic regime. The unique cultural dynamics of the Natufian, shifts in subsistence strategies and the environmental setting of various sites are the key for understanding the process of...
Leaving the Blanks Unfilled: a case study in productive ambiguity from Early Bronze Age Lebanon (2017)
An oft-heard sentiment in prehistoric archaeology, particularly for contexts without traditionally visible indicators of gender (i.e., bodies or identifiable representations of bodies), is that "the evidence just isn’t there" to productively introduce intersectional gender research. This is partly due to the trend-sensitivity of archaeology, which often draws from other disciplines to supplement its own scope. Intersectionality is used in the same way, as archaeologists attempt to reframe their...
Legal responses to the intentional destruction and looting of cultural sites: The paradigm of Syria (2015)
The civil war in Syria, now in its fourth year and with multiple parties, has engendered probably the most widespread and numerous examples of destruction, damage and looting of cultural sites since the Second World War. Several international legal instruments, including the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its First Protocol, were drafted in the wake of World War II to prevent the repetition of such harms inflicted on cultural...
Levantine foragers during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene (2015)
The Levant is geographically limited by the sea in the Mediterranean in the west, deserts in south and east with the only widened extension of wetter condition in the Euphrates and Tigris basins. Abrupt climatic changes allowed for the demographically growth of Terminal Pleistocene foragers in the Levant and led to increasing territoriality. Pressures were increased with the expansion of hunting-gathering groups from the Nile Valley into Sinai and the Negev. The social and economic impacts...
Light the Beacons! GIS Analysis of Fortress Inter-Visibility in Iron Age Armenia (2016)
GIS analysis can helpfully intervene in highly-theorized debates about archaeological landscapes by allowing archaeologists to empirically evaluate assertions about (inter)visibility. In recent decades, visibility studies have clarified the sociocultural significance of structures such as tombs, settlements, signalling installations and other landscape markers. However, it is often difficult to evaluate inter-visibility and challenging to distinguish intentionally-constructed inter-visibility...
Linking land use patterns to spatial logistics, institutional complexity and terrain constrains in farming-herding interaction. A theory-building Agent-Based approach. (2017)
The relation between the main variants of pre-industrial economic production in arid Eurasia, from nomadic pastoralism to irrigated agriculture, is known to have been unstable, with abundant examples of conflict and shifting patterns of land use right up to contemporary times. We present the latest development of a six-year effort, within the SimulPast project, in experimenting and generating theory that could help explain the different land use patterns. Using Agent-Based simulation models, we...
The lithic industries from Area C: typo-technological characteristics (2017)
The lithic assemblages from Area C derive from a thick section composed reworked terra rossa soil of dark brown to reddish brown, loose clay to silty clay loam with abundant biogenic and anthropogenic materials subdivided into eight units. The depositional sequence of the units is in a chronological order as shown by radiocarbon and U-Th dates (Hershkovitz et al., 2015). A typotechnological analysis of the all units suggest a shift in industries though the sequence. Unit 2-3 are small...
Lithic Technology and Reduction Strategies at Shishan Marsh 1 (2017)
The 2013-15 excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 have revealed an impressive array of stone tools at this Middle Pleistocene Oasis. More than 7000 stone tools including: handaxes, scrapers, modified and utilized flakes, burins, Levallois points and flakes, cores, small pebble tools and debitage associated with tool manufacture and refurbishing, have been analyzed. Analysis was conducted on all tools and debitage using the lithic attribute analysis method, and low and high power magnification to...