Neolithic (Other Keyword)
201-225 (327 Records)
Landscape archaeology in Central Europe has historically built on a foundation of high-resolution excavations of village structures. In this poster, we combine results of systematic plowzone survey carried out by two research groups to explore and reflect on the contributions of regional survey for understanding Neolithic land use in southern Germany. Surveys were conducted in two areas with contrasting archaeological records and geographic characteristics. On the southeastern Swabian Alb...
Neolithic Pigs and People along China's Fertile Arc: Regional Expression and Domestication (2018)
The foothills of mountain chains along river catchments, or "Hilly Flanks", have repeatedly been shown to be key to understanding the origins of agriculture throughout Eurasia. During the Neolithic, sites in the northern part of China’s Fertile Arc (see Ren et al. 2016)—showing the the earliest evidence of the cultivation of Chinese Millets—are situated along China's own "Hilly Flanks". In contrast, southern sites along the Arc cultivating rice, are located in a diverse array of landforms...
Neolithic Resource Use and Adaptation in the Eastern Gobi Desert: A Functional Analysis of Axes and Adzes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Flaked and ground stone axes and adzes first appeared in the eastern Gobi Desert at 8.0 cal BP and were incorporated into the technological package. At the same time, changes in local ecological conditions reflect a transition from continuous grass/shrub-steppe across the Mongolian Plateau to the development of dispersed patches of dune-field...
Neolithic Spread Models, Agricultural Islands and Pivotal Parameters: Impressions Gleaned from Simulating the Spread of Agriculture in the West Mediterranean (2016)
The significance of the spread of agriculture cannot be overstated and for this reason strong disagreement continues to arise over the processes responsible for the shift from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Four influential models have been proposed for the spread of agriculture in the west Mediterranean and can be applied to the circumstances of the Impresso-Cardial spread: the Wave of Advance Model, the Capillary Model, the Maritime Pioneer Colonization Model and the Dual Model. All four...
Neolithic Tales from the Eastern Mediterranean Basin: A Graduate Student’s Experience under Dr. Alan H. Simmons at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in the 1990s (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Las Vegas Valley in southern Nevada experienced unprecedented growth in the 1990's. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) was not immune to this progress and as a result began to attract the attention of top researchers, professors, and graduate students out...
The Neolithic transition in Europe: Archaeology versus Genetics (2017)
There are two mechanisms of Neolithic spread: demic diffusion (dispersal of populations) and cultural diffusion (acculturation of hunter-gathterers). Archaeological data imply that demic diffusion was more important than cultural diffusion in determining the spread rate of the Neolihtic in Europe. But those results are very uncertain. We now use ancient genetic data in addition to archaeological data, and estimate the relative importance of demic and cultural diffusion. We find that demic...
The Neolithic Transition in Northern Iroquoia (2015)
While details remain debated, the general outline of the emergence of semi-permanent sedentary domestic architecture in Northern Iroquoia is well understood. Communities comprised of bark longhouses came to be associated with subsistence maize horticulture over the course of the last millennium prior to European contact. Various factors triggered periodic community relocations throughout Northern Iroquoia, migratory events that were usually short-distance but occasionally involved long-distance...
Neolithic Voyagers: Why Colonize the Mediterranean Islands—The Example from Cyprus (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The "Neolithic Revolution" in the Near East and Anatolia is the oldest known in the world. This transformative economic and social event occurred in several mainland locations, and conventional wisdom was that it did not spread to the adjacent Mediterranean islands until relatively late, essentially being a "Neolithic footnote." Cyprus has the oldest...
Neolithic vs. Late Stone Age: The Neolithic Revolution in the Horn of Africa Reconsidered (2015)
This poster assesses the applicability of the term "Neolithic" to describe the beginning of sedentism and agriculture in Ethiopia, and whether we can compare it to similar periods in other regions. The use of the term "Neolithic" has been criticized in recent years (Finlayson 2011; Zeder 2009) both for the implication that the period was one of revolution and its associated package of characteristics. This designation originally derived from the definition of the term as including the birth of...
Nephrite Jade Mapping in Southeast Asian Prehistory: Petrological and Mineralogical Study of Stone Artifacts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Two Approaches to Archaeological Jades: Source Characterization and Social Valuation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-site and laboratory geochemical analyses have been carried out on jade and jade-like artifacts including unfinished pieces in the mainland of Southeast Asia by p-XRF and SEM-EDS respectively. In Vietnam, the results from more than 100 analyses show that the lingling-Os and double animal-headed...
Networks through Time: Filling in the Gaps (2015)
The Middle Neolithic circular ditched enclosure of Goseck in Central Germany was built and used during the Stichbandkeramik period. Subsequently, during the Gatersleben period, another ditched feature was constructed, which intersected the earlier enclosure. However, between these two periods, in the intervening century, during the Rössen period, the site was not in use. This temporal gap has been glossed over in narratives of the site that stress continuity. This paper will examine the...
New Approaches to Jomon Dogu: Case Studies from Eastern and Western Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a study of the clays used in the manufacture of ceramic figurines, or dogu, from the Jomon period of Japanese archaeology. Analyses of clays in dogu from sites in Niigata (eastern Honshu) and Okayama (western Honshu) using a handheld XRF machine will be discussed in the context of...
A New Hypothetical Framework of Understanding the Evolution of Agriculture in the Lower Yangzi Region (2018)
Although a number of studies in recent years have contributed fresh knowledge to our understanding of the origins and development of agriculture in the Lower Yangzi, updated data have made this issue even more complicated. The empirical evidence shows very little information about any hunter-gatherers who might have lived in this area and indicates that, 10,000 years ago, humans first appeared here as successful resource managers or niche constructors. The human ecosystem characterized by...
New Insights from a Reanalysis of the Flaked-Stone Assemblage from the Neolithic Site of Wadi Shu’eib, Jordan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the ongoing research on the Neolithic of the Southern Levant, flaked-stone assemblages continue to play a key role in interpretations of social organization and interaction. Despite the prominence of research on lithic assemblages during the Neolithic, few comprehensive studies come from the large settlements with long, continuous occupation spans (2,000...
New Multi-disciplinary Studies Re-shape our Understanding of Neolithic Peopling and Biocultural Adaptations in Western Liguria (Northwestern 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. Beginning in the mid-1800s, about 200 burials and an undefined number of scattered human remains have been reported from several caves and rock shelters in western Liguria. The skeletal series, excavated following the methodology of the time, were considered likely/probably/possibly "Neolithic" or "Middle Neolithic",...
A New Multi-Scalar, Multi-Methodology for the Detection, Identification and Analysis of Ancient Animal Dung (2017)
Animal domestication has traditionally been investigated through archaeozoological approaches which can be problematic and may not detect the earliest stages in this important transformation (Zeder 2006). The study of dung provides an alternative line of evidence for the investigation of: animal presence and proximity, increased animal management, domestication and sedentism, potential secondary product use, animal diet and environment. To identify and analyse faecal material there is still the...
New Stones, New Uses: Sillimanite Ground Stone Tools from Central Iberia (5000–2500 BCE) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground stone tools can indicate important patterns in food production, craftwork, and farming practices in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia due to their varied use. As Iberian communities adopted sedentary practices and social inequalities emerged, they began to create tools made from new raw materials, indicating a changing relationship with their...
The Nitrogen Challenge at Çatalhöyük (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic values of archaeobotanical remains from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük have presented us with a series of challenges for interpreting ancient crop management systems in a complex environment. An exceptionally wide range of δ15N values (0 to 18‰) obtained...
The Not Very Patrilocal European Neolithic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two decades of strontium isotope and aDNA research on Central European Neolithic cemetery populations have consistently interpreted patrilocality, which is now a foregone conclusion. This paper questions those interpretations from a social anthropological perspective. Models are presented for interpreting strontium isotope ratios and aDNA that consider the...
Nutrient hotspots and pastoral legacies in East African savannas (2015)
Negative impacts of pastoralists on African savannas have been debated but creation of nutrient hotspots may have significant positive effects. African savanna productivity is largely nutrient limited, however, ecologists show corrals in abandoned Maasai pastoral settlements have high nitrogen and phosphate levels, and distinctive vegetation and grazing successions. Such hotspots may drive ecosystem structure and function, but little is known about how long-term or how widespread they may be....
"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...
On the Neolithic Edge: Predicting Crop Adoption by Paleolithic Foragers of Taiwan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The adoption of agricultural crops by intensified foragers occurred throughout Southeast Asia, resulting in mixed and low-level economies. Behavioral ecology provides models for evolutionary decision-making for mixed forager-gardener economies. The Paleolithic to Neolithic transition in Taiwan is represented by a...
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 Agriculture and Neolithic in the American Southwest: The View from Western Europe (2016)
The transition from foraging to farming is certainly one of the most dramatic processes in human history. The use of domesticated plants spread widely across Western Europe from the Near East, and across the American Southwest from Mexico. Research in Western Europe has traditionally focused on the movement of farming communities across the region which displaced or subsumed local foragers. Recently various aspects of this process have been discussed including climate change, the expansion of...
An Overview of Technological Changes in the Pottery of the Early Holocene Shangshan Culture, Zhejiang Province, China (2018)
This presentation provides a preliminary overview of the diachronic modifications that occurred in the Shangshan ceramic technological tradition (approximately 11,400 to 8,600 cal. BP). It is hypothesized that Shangshan peoples engaged in low-level cultivation of rice and began the process of bringing this crucial cereal under domestication. The authors explore the relationship between changes in Shangshan pottery technology, culinary practices, and the emergence of rice cultivation as factors...