West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (292 Records)
The Azraq Marshes Archaeological and Paleoecological Project (AMAPP) aims to understand and evaluate the importance of the Azraq wetlands for Pleistocene hominin populations. Ongoing research since 2009 indicates that the northern wetland, the Druze Marsh, acted as a desert refugium for hominins throughout the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Excavations in the southern marsh—known as the Shishan Marsh—began in 2013 and uncovered a rich assemblage of bifaces, small tools, and flakes, along with...
Naomi F. Miller and Applied Paleoethnobotany of Southwest Asia (2017)
Naomi F. Miller’s work exemplifies the paleoethnobotanical approach towards understanding human interactions with botanical landscapes in the past using archaeological remains, rooted in theoretical traditions of American anthropological archaeology. On the occasion of her Fryxell Award in Interdisciplinary Research from the SAA, we reflect on her body of published research and active fieldwork to draw out five themes that highlight areas in which Miller has made significant contributions to the...
Narrativizing a Bioarchaeology of Care: A Case Study from Ancient Dilmun (2015)
Since 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has been studying and publishing the materials from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1940-41 expedition to Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, which now reside in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. By analyzing these skeletal and artifactual remains, our multi-disciplinary team is adding to anthropologists’ understanding of how life was experienced and death commemorated in Dilmun. One of the most exceptional skeletons belongs to a young woman who...
The National Park Service Archeology Program Role in Protection and Management of International Cultural Heritage (2015)
Since it began exporting the national park idea nearly a century ago, the National Park Service (NPS) has become instrumental in the protection and preservation of cultural heritage throughout the world. Cultural heritage conservation activities conducted in partnership with other nations enable NPS to disseminate important messages about the dangers of looting and the importance of protecting heritage sites. They also help to spread contemporary preservation practices and technologies to...
The Negotiation of Political Subjectivity in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (2015)
Thinking of political subjectification as the processes by which individuals recognize themselves as subjects to authority, this paper pursues the negotiation of this subjectivity for people living within the purview of the ancient Neo-Assyrian empire. Negotiation resides between the poles of subjugation and resistance to authority, and constitutes the ways in which people participate in defining the contours of their socio-political positions. In the provinces of Upper Mesopotamia in the...
A Neolithic Irregular Burial at Çatalhöyük (Turkey) (2016)
At Neolithic Çatalhöyük adult burials are usually located beneath platforms within habitations. Middens (waste areas) are, on the other hand, only sporadically used as burial locations at the site and, overall, are consistent with intentional exclusion from platform depositions, therefore representing a form of irregular burial. Here, we describe a young adult male from Çatalhöyük buried in a midden and presenting several skeletal anomalies (united and unhealed fractures, and bone structural...
Neolithic voyages to Cyprus: Wind patterns, routes and mechanisms (2015)
Humans first arrived in Cyprus around 12,000 calibrated years BP. Visits to Cyprus resulted in settlement on the island during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A beginning around 11,000 cal BP. Later occupations of the Cypro Pre Pottery Neolithic B testify to intensive connections with the mainland. We examined the possible routes to sail from the mainland to Cyprus and back by studying: sea level; options of available watercraft; sea conditions and currents; navigation skills; sailing routes; and...
New Evidence for Complex Occupation Patterns at Dmanisi, a 1.85-1.76 Ma Site in the Georgian Caucasus (2015)
Recent excavations and geoarchaeological testing at Dmanisi have revealed a large and complex site structure. Up to 7 meters of stratified deposits, with nine artifact and fossil-bearing strata, are now documented over an area of at least 35,000 square meters on the Dmanisi promontory. These new data indicate that the site was visited repeatedly for a considerable period, indicating a well-established pattern of group cohesion, mobility and planning. These patterns are rarely evidenced in the...
A new look at camp organization in open-air Late Pleistocene sites in the southern Levant (2017)
A wealth of Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene open-air camp-sites is recorded around the world. However, in sites pre-dating the use of stone for construction, central features such as huts and their floors are rarely preserved. Thus, the documentation of site structure and the identification of past activity areas are limited to hearths (when preserved) and their environs, and to distribution patterns of cultural remains. The focus of this paper are selected sites from the Mediterranean Levant,...
New observations of looting at archaeological sites in southern Mesopotamia (2015)
Archaeological sites in Iraq have suffered the consequences of unstable political conditions. Due to this volatile situation law enforcement has been inconsistent and allowed antiquities looters to vandalize southern Mesopotamian sites. This resulted in differential rates of damage among the country’s cultural heritage sites. By focusing on the ancient archaeological site of Girsu (modern-day Telloh) and its hinterland, I used Digital Globe imagery, remote sensing techniques and recent...
No Aryans Needed: Toward explaining the distribution of Burnished Grey Ware Ceramics of the Third Millennium in Northeastern Iran (2015)
The Gorgan Plain in Iran has long been considered to be an important part of the northern frontier of the Ancient Near East. Only recently, however, has this region been considered a center of complex society in its own right during the third millennium BCE. While no society in this frontier zone would achieve literate statehood until much later, there is nevertheless mounting evidence that the societies of northeastern Iran developed incipient urbanism, craft specialization, and organized...
"Off with their heads": skull removal in the prehistoric Near East (2016)
While there is a huge difference in every aspect of existence between simple human societies, i.e. hunter-gatherers and complex ones, i.e. industrial groups, the head is always considered as the residing place of the essential part of what defines ‘us’ as rational human beings at the individual level. One may thus assume that this was the case also in prehistoric times, which at least partially explains the special treatment of heads that one can observe through millennia, from the...
The ordering of space at Boncuklu, central Anatolia (8500-7500 cal BC); household and community. (2015)
This paper explores the degree to which the spatial ordering of Neolithic settlements may be related to the nature of households and their inter-relationshps and where symbolic and cosmological factors may have had a role, using evidence from central Anatolia, notably from Boncuklu, where practices antecedent to those at Çatalhöyük are well attested. Still influential is a ‘ Domestic Mode of Production’ model in which it is proposed that increasing household autonomy in the Neolithic reflects...
The Origins of Social Complexity in Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia: Excavations at Surezha (2016)
Although much scholarship has focused on the emergence of towns and cities in southern Mesopotamia, archaeologists still know very little about comparable developments in northern Mesopotamia and especially Iraqi Kurdistan, due to the rarity of archaeological fieldwork in those regions until recently. The excavation project based at Surezha on the Erbil plain aims to contribute to our understanding of Chalcolithic northern Mesopotamia and illuminate the development of social complexity in the...
Paleoethnobotanical Investigations of the Economy of Islamic Ashkelon (2015)
The coastal city of Ashkelon, in present-day Israel, was a key economic port in the commercial system that connected the Mediterranean and Middle East from the Bronze Age into the Crusader Era. The advantage of its position is attested by its continued occupation as well as the luxurious and finely made, often imported, objects recovered from various time periods. The Islamic period (640-1153 CE) is considered a time of great expansion and growth, with evidence of fine craftsman having resided...
The People Who Harvest Together, Live Together. Ethnoarchaeological considerations on a Late Chalcolithic archaeobotanical assemblage from Çadır Höyük, Turkey (2017)
This paper presents archaeobotanical data from the Late Chalcolithic (LC) archaeobotanical assemblage at Çadır Höyük, a mounded site on the north central Anatolian plateau with almost continuous occupation from the Middle Chalcolithic through the Byzantine period. The analysis will focus on both descriptive and quantitative data from samples dating to around 3600 B.C.E. from a communal cooking area at Çadır. It will examine how archaeobotanical analysis can be used as a line of evidence to...
Peripatetic kingship, pilgrimage and pastoralism: Re-evaluating the politics of movement in the Ancient Near East (2017)
Pilgrimage is a popular phenomenon, one which involves people traveling to and gathering at specific places during specific times, usually as part of a shared religious tradition. In the Ancient Near East, religious travel existed alongside other forms of mobility with important political and social consequences, like peripatetic kingship—in which there is no one fixed court—a characteristic of the Urartian (ca. 800-600 BC), Achaemenid (ca. 550-330 BC), and Seleucid (ca. 300-100 BC) empires, or...
Perspectives on water management systems in Mesopotamia (2016)
Over the years, Vern Scarborough has considered how water management systems have been created, altered, and in some cases abandoned, especially in response to the evolution of political systems. For a Mesopotamianist, Vern's work obviously resonates with that of Robert McC. Adams. In this paper I review some of the lasting contributions of Adams to the study of water management systems in Mesopotamia. I review especially a series of essays that Adams wrote after his retirement from the...
The Philistine Cemetery at Ashkelon:funerary remains and mortuary practice (2017)
During the 2013-6 seasons, an extramural cemetery was discovered at the coastal site of Ashkelon in Israel. Dated almost entirely to the Iron IIA period, more than 200 sets of remains were exposed and excavated, providing for the first time a secure and sizeable number of burials from which to generate an understanding of Philistine burial practices and mortuary ritual. The majority of bodies were found in primary inhumation with various depositional practices observed, among them simple pit,...
Plant niche construction; from forager to planter in the Zagros Mountains, Iran (2015)
In terms of niche construction, the development of agriculture at the end of the Palaeolithic was a realignment and expansion of existing hunter-gatherer plant ecology modifications to a transforming human and natural setting. This paper suggests that people's engagement with their surroundings altered under pressure of changes in the environment and their subsistence, residence and mobility strategies. Increased foraging efficiency and stability were sought. These relied on a suite of...
Playing with Fire at ‘Ais Giorkis: A Geospatial Analysis of Prehistoric Fire Residue (2015)
Kritou Marottou Ais Giorkis is an Early Neolithic (9.5 kya) site located, uniquely, in the western foothills of Cyprus’ Troodos Mountains. It is one of five near contemporary sites and has produced the largest chipped stone and faunal assemblages recovered thus far. There are also several preserved circular, cobbled platforms, whose function has yet to be determined. In fact, little is currently understood about the lifeways practiced at the site. This includes the intensity and duration of its...
Population Aggregation at the Early Bronze Age Settlement of al-Lajjun, Kerak Plateau, Jordan (2017)
The University of Minnesota Duluth Project is working at al-Lajjun to understand the initial period of population aggregation in the southern Levant. At this time, settlements of 5-10,000 people, some with fortification walls, developed. The economic and political organization of these larger groups of people, whether hierarchical or heterarchical, competitive or cooperative, embedded in or separate from kin groups is under debate. Our research seeks to add to this discussion by detailing the...
Post-mortem manipulation of the human skull in the Middle East during the Neolithic Period (2016)
The Neolithic Near Eastern inhabitants of the Levant and Anatolia removed the skulls or crania of females, males and children after decomposition of the body, ca. 8,500-5,000 B.C. They modeled facial or other features over the disembodied skulls and crania of adults and children using substances such as plaster, marl, or collagen, and then generally painted them, while others were only painted. Many of the skulls and crania, however, display no apparent post-mortem decoration. Some skulls of...
Predict and Confirm: Survey and Excavation at Three Candidate Sites in Wadi Quseiba, Jordan in search of Late Neolithic Occupation (2015)
In 2012 and 2013, a team from University of Toronto surveyed the Wadi Quseiba drainage in northwest Jordan. The survey had two goals. The first was to discover evidence of Late Neolithic habitation and landscape use. Many large villages declined or were abandoned at the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and we sought to augment our knowledge of Late Neolithic sites to help learn why this might be. The second was to increase the efficiency and reliability with which sites are located. To this end...
THE PREHISTORIC CULTURES IN THE TURKISH REPUBLIC OF NORTHERN CYPRUS (2016)
The Cyprus Island iş the third largest mainland in the Medditerranean, and it should have been connected by near lands in prehistoric times. Some evidences of this situation obtained from a few prehistoric settlements and geomorphological proof. The new researches has been started by assistant prof. Cevdet Merit Erek behalf of Gazi University in Ankara, from Turkish Republic. The new researches was carried out by permission of The Turkish Republic Government of Northern Cyprus. Major assistance...