West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (292 Records)
This paper considers the phenomenon of plastered skulls from the Neolithic of the Middle East, exploring a re-interpretation of evidence. Plastered skulls result from the burial and later retrieval of crania, onto which is sculpted a face using plaster. These were then used and displayed within household contexts. Rather than traditional interpretations which revolve around status and hierarchy or social cohesion, this paper suggests a reinterpretation based on the modern bereavement theory of...
Localizing the Imperial Grain Economy in Mamluk Syria: Expressions of Village-Level Initiatives in 14th-Century Transjordan (2017)
How did the medieval Islamic state realize its objectives in natural resource management? How can we distinguish the "hand of the state" from that of local initiatives in land use? This paper is an attempt to evaluate planting and watering strategies, differentiating imperial agro-policies from local practice at the village level. The focus is the intensification and diversification of grain production in 14th century Syria. Grain fields were the most valuable of the agrarian iqṭaʿāt (grants of...
Long-term Memory, the Individual and the Community in the later Prehistory of the Levant (2015)
Shared historical memory is a given feature of every human society as a basic component of group identity and cohesion. With increasing tendencies towards sedentism the material culture evidence for communal memory increases, as reflected in spatial correlates at both the inter- and intra-site levels. It appears that social stress, deriving from increased community sizes and staying together for prolonged periods of time in close proximity, amongst others, raised the need for mechanisms to...
Manot 1 brain characteristics (2017)
Manot is a nearly-sealed, active karstic cave located in the hilly landscape of the western Galilee, Israel. It contains abundant archaeological accumulations attributed to the early phase of the Upper Palaeolithic (UP) period as well as evidence for the Middle Palaeolithic (MP). During the initial survey of the cave (2008), a nearly complete calvaria (Manot 1) was found. The specimen was dated to ~55 ky by the U-Th method. In an earlier study, Hershkovitz et al 2015 described the...
Manot 1 calvaria and Aduma skull: are they the same? (2017)
The Manot 1 calvaria demonstrates a mosaic of "archaic" and modern traits. Although the taxonomic significance of this combination of features is not clear, a similar combination of archaic and modern features exists in the fossil record across sub-Saharan African and the Middle East until after 35 kya. The aim of the current study is to examine the possibility that the Aduma skull, Ethiopia (60-90 kya) is the mother population that gave rise to the Manot Cave hominins. This was carried out by...
The materiality of life and death: Dress ornaments and shifting identities at Hasanlu, Iran (2017)
The site of Hasanlu, Iran, was destroyed thoroughly by a marauding army in approximately 800 BCE, leaving a hulk of smoking rubble that was a virtual tomb for the hundreds of residents and combatants who weren’t able to escape its citadel. The excavations of Hasanlu, led by Robert H. Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, took place between 1956 and 1977, and uncovered a remarkable range of contexts containing personal ornaments within the relatively narrow historical horizon of...
Medieval worldbuilding and cosmopolitics: Armenia on the Silk Road (2017)
This paper presents observations from recent seasons of research in the Vayoc Dzor region of southern Armenia, in the context of a long-term and multi-sited program of investigations into the intersections of locally situated highland social phenomena within the broader Silk Road cultural ecumene during the late medieval period (AD 12th-15th centuries). This ongoing project builds on an understanding of late medieval Armenian participation in and co-production of the worlds of the Silk Road,...
Memory and mortuary practice in Neolithic Anatolia (2016)
Social memory has been argued to be a key component in the formation of the large Neolithic village site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. This assertion has focused on daily practice centered within the house (Hodder and Cessford 2004), and may have extended to more architecturally elaborate houses as a central repository for memory and symbolism (Hodder and Pels 2010). Surrounding this discussion of social memory, there has been less focus on human burials; particularly on the treatment of human remains...
Mental topographies of ancient Mesopotamia: textual perspectives on learned and lived highland-lowland interactions (2015)
Textual sources from southern Iraq’s early historical periods constitute a surprisingly rich body of material for exploring highland-lowland interactions in ancient southwest Asia. Cuneiform inscriptions typically convey only one perspective on these interactions, namely, that of the elite inhabitants of city-states and territorial polities of the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. However, these decidedly one-sided representations were hardly monolithic, and in this paper I explore the various...
Mesocarnivores and the Human Niche (2015)
Human settlements and occupations of any size or length present novel selective pressures and scenarios not only for the human populations composing them, but also for wild plant and animal communities surrounding them. The presence of human settlements, particularly those with increasing sedentism and intensified local landscape use, have lasting effects on wild animal communities as they interact with, tolerate, and even utilize human spaces. What happens to wild animal populations when they...
Mesopotamian Clay Tokens, Pilgrimage, and Interaction (2017)
This study explores the possibility that some Mesopotamian clay tokens were pilgrim’s tokens, which signified interaction with spiritual powers or transactions with a shrine’s religious specialists or administrators. Pilgrim’s tokens around the world have often been made of earth and clay, some as effigies of goods desired or symbols of shrines and their spiritual forces, that are carried in bags, miniature ceramic vessels, or bullae. Previous investigations indicate that earthen artifacts have...
Mesopotamian Megasites before Uruk (2017)
Discussions of "alternative" trajectories of urban growth are often compared to "classic" models from Old World civilizations, and most often Mesopotamia. It is said that Mesopotamian cities were dense and spatially discrete from their agricultural hinterlands, in contrast to new models of low-density urbanism. In fact, the earliest large settlement agglomerations ("megasites") in Mesopotamia were discontinuous and far less dense than the mature cities of the Bronze Age (after 3000 BC). This...
Metal production on Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Fortified Hilltops in the South Caucasus, c. 1500-600 BC (2016)
One of the challenges facing the study of technological change and craft production during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Near East is a lack of information about the spatial and social contexts in which metal production occurred. A new program of survey and excavation aims to explore these issues in an ore-rich transitional zone between lowland and highland areas of the South Caucasus. Fortified hilltop settlements dot lowland valleys as they narrow and rise towards the...
Micro-History and Macro Evolution: Material Geographies of Multi-Family Neolithic Households (2017)
The Near Eastern foraging to farming transition was characterized by the emergence of more powerful nuclear family and multi family households. It remains unclear, however, how this longer-term evolutionary transition was connected to small-scale daily household decision-making. Focusing on the archaeology sites of Tell Halula and Çatalhöyük, I explore archaeological evidence for the development of Neolithic multi-family households, and how they may have been connected to seasonal collective...
Microanalytical Perspectives on the Evolution of Glass-making Technologies (2015)
Glass has a number of distinct chemical types which are restricted in space and time and reflect several processes including (1) the spread of a dominant glass-making technology from an inferred single place of invention by the transfer knowledge and skill through the movement of people; (2) modification of the parent technology due to restricted availability of materials or selective improvement; (3) the re-invention of glass making due to stimulus diffusion in the form of exposure to imported...
The Microscopy and Macroscopy of Islamic Lustre wares (2015)
Petrographic and SEM studies of the lustre-painted glazed pottery of the Islamic world between c. 700 and 1400 have defined an elite, high-technology ware made in few centres, at times only one centre for the entire Middle East; with a distribution network that spanned the Old World. Production centres such as Basra in Iraq, and al-Fustat in Egypt created some of the most advanced and influential ceramic types of the period, utilising technologies developed locally. But scientific laboratory...
The Middle Paleolithic artifacts from Manot Cave (Western Galilee), Israel (2017)
Manot Cave in situated within the Levantine Mediterranean region. The site has an extensive Upper Paleolithic sequence, including both Aurignacian and Ahmarian traditions. Several of the artifacts found within these assemblages belong to the Levallois technology. A small number of the artifacts, found in association with Upper Paleolithic occupational surfaces, have a double patina, possibly due to reuse. The majority are fresh suggesting the presence of a Middle Paleolithic occupation at the...
Midnight at the Oasis: Past and Present Agricultural Activities in Oman (2016)
Since the Early Bronze Age in Oman (ca. 3100 BCE to 2000 BCE), oasis agricultural communities have held social and economic importance in Southern Arabia. Throughout the Arabian Peninsula there are varying microclimates. This paper focuses on northeastern Oman, where an arid landscape is a defining environmental characteristic. In order to successfully maintain an agrarian lifestyle in these environs, strategic decision-making was key. This paper brings together previous work on agricultural...
Migration and Diversity in Ancient Xinjiang: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Investigation of Adunqiaolu Population (2017)
The Adunqiaolu site, located in western Xinjiang, belongs to the early Bronze Age and dates to the 19-17 centuries B.C. Archaeological evidence suggests that this group of people may have come from southern and/or southwest Siberia, north of Tianshan. Applying both cranial-metrics and aDNA analysis, this study explores regional variations in western Xinjiang and their relationships to other ancient populations. Ancient DNA analysis indicates that their genes are mainly European, specifically...
Mingled Bones, Mingled Bodies: Primary and Commingled Burials at Nabataean Petra, Jordan (2016)
Although bioarchaeologists have recently developed best practices for the analysis of commingled samples, few scholars have theorized the significance of communal, commingled burial. In many cases, the practice of commingling skeletal remains is but one possible variant in the mortuary process. Numerous societies, including the Nabataeans at Petra, utilize collective burial in addition to primary inhumation within the overall mortuary program. The actual practice of commingling, such as when and...
Mobile Pastoralists and Lowland-Highland Interconnectivity in Southeastern Turkey (2015)
In Turkey and other mountainous parts of Eurasia, archaeologists have primarily targeted lowland sites for investigation, leaving highland areas relatively unexplored. Drawing on ethnography of twentieth-century tribes, scholars have assumed that mobile pastoralists were one of the major agents connecting lowlands and highlands in all post-Neolithic periods. However, little data has been collected on such people or on mobility practices. In this paper I briefly review empirical evidence for the...
A Model of Body Part Representation in Archaeozoological Samples (2016)
The distribution body parts of animals consumed at a site is an important variable in understanding human subsistence behavior. I present a model of expected body part distributions for meat versus non-meat bearing elements that assumes whole bodies are transported to and deposited in a site. The model is based on observed fragmentation at three sites in the Middle East and Egypt: Hallan Chemi (Turkey), Farukhabad (Iran) and Heit el-Ghurab (Giza, Egypt). The model predicts that 33% of all...
More than a Source of Data: The Benefits of Active Collaboration between Macrofaunal and Specialist Analyses at Neolithic Ҫatalhöyük (2017)
The faunal remains excavated by the Ҫatalhöyük Research Project are notoriously voluminous, making them the focus of many specialist analyses over the course of the recent project. Stable isotopic data from zooarchaeological remains have long been used to inform paleoecology and past human dietary patterns. Zooarchaeological isotopic data have increasingly been used to revolutionize our understanding of past herding strategies, particularly in early herding contexts like Neolithic Ҫatalhöyük....
Morphometric Analyses of Cereal Grains from Central Jordan Improve the Resolution of Identifying Shifts in Crop Cultivation and Processing Strategies over 2000 Years (ca. 800 BCE - 1300 CE) (2015)
The measurement of carbonized domesticated cereal caryopses through a number of established morphometric parameters has the potential to provide information on past cultivation conditions, crop processing practices, and taphonomic processes. This poster presents the results of morphometric analyses using a microscope-mounted camera on carbonized cereal caryopses of wheat (Triticum aestivum/durum and Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) collected from the archaeological site of Dhiban,...
Motif and Milieu: Deconstructing the (Re)production of the Kura-Araxes Culture (3500-2400 BC) (2017)
How do material remains – and the imagery that adorns them – inform our understanding of past landscapes? How does knowledge of landscapes enrich our understanding of the objects produced within them? This paper explores the relationship between iconography and environment in the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes (3500-2400 BC) culture. The Kura-Araxes was arguably the most widespread archaeological horizon in the ancient Near East, extending from the Caucasus to the Levant to the Zagros Mountains....