Neolithic (Other Keyword)
51-75 (327 Records)
Prevailing theories concerning the role of climate change in the transition from foraging to farming in SW Asia view socioeconomic change as a response to climate deterioration (push theories) or improvement (pull theories) which caused resource depression or abundance respectively. With this paper I propose that periods of socioeconomic and cultural innovation correlate with periods of climatic instability, which occurred at the timescales of direct human experience of the landscape (i.e., at...
Collagen Fingerprinting on Neolithic Fish from Lithuania (2018)
Archaeological fish remains are more taphonomically sensitive than those of other vertebrates as they are typically smaller and less biomineralised. Therefore, it is essential to retrieve as much information as possible from assemblages that favour their preservation. One of the most time- and cost-efficient methods of objectively achieving faunal identity in ancient bone is collagen fingerprinting technique ‘ZooMS’ (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry). ZooMS harnesses the potential of...
The Color of Personal Ornaments in Prehistoric Periods of the Levant (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shell beads appear first in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Levant. Their use as personal ornaments is evidence for cognitive abilities and symbolic expressions, however, their colors are limited to white, red and black. Humans’ transition from a foraging economy to agriculture in the Neolithic of the Levant brought...
The Communalities of Pastoralist Life: Perspectives on Household Organization at the Pastoral Neolithic site of Luxmanda, Tanzania (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household organization has been a topic of relatively little archaeological discussion in the Pastoral Neolithic (PN) literature for eastern Africa, in part because domestic architecture has rarely been found. Scholarly literature has therefore focused on pastoralists’ putative mobility, rather than on their settlements. However,...
Communities of Archaeological Inquiry: Documenting a German Neolithic Landscape in Cooperation with Avocational Archaeologists (2015)
This poster explores the history, methods, motivations, and contributions of three avocational archaeologists whose lifelong legacies helped to shape an international research project on the Neolithic settlement of the southeastern Swabian Alb in Germany. Their efforts to document site locations and build significant private collections span three generations, from the 1920s to today, and led to the discovery of a rich archaeological landscape previously unrecognized by professional...
Communities, Violence and Fortification: A Study of Longshan Landscapes (2018)
The Late Neolithic period in Central China, known as the Longshan period, has long been associated with violence and warfare. There have been several theories as to what are the catalysts for for this period of increased violence. This paper will review the evidence of warfare and violence during this period. Using disparate spatial data this paper will investigate the implications of warfare and violence on the settlement patterning of the Central Plains of China. Through this investigation we...
Community and Agency in the early Neolithic of SW Asia (2015)
The accepted Neolithic narrative involves increasingly sedentary behavior within a context of villages composed of houses. Yet, although the novel way of life represented is given centre stage, there is little discussion of the nature of the communities that were developing, other than passing references to nuclear families, ancestor cults and the emergence of lineages and households. There is still less reference to human agency, with Neolithic people being buffeted around by a number of big...
Comparative Techniques to Uncover Networks of Ceramic Technology in Southern Vietnam (2017)
The analysis of ceramics in Southeast Asia has evolved from typologies and broad comparative discussions of vessel forms and surface treatments. Like other material culture, studies on ceramics from mainland Southeast Asian prehistoric sites that employ archaeometric techniques have escalated in recent years. The appearance of fine, incised and impressed ceramics in southern Vietnam dating to the Neolithic period (4500-3000 BP) is closely associated with sedentary settlements, cereal...
Comparing Population Dynamics in the Inland and the Coastal Regions during the Chulmun Period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines the population dynamics during the Chulmun period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea by analyzing paleoenvironmental proxies and 14C dates. It specifically focuses on the differences between the inland and the coastal regions concerning the period’s population decline phase in the context of changing...
Comparing Technological Choices for Grain Processing at Aşıklı Höyük, an Early Neolithic Village in Turkey: Experimental Removal of Chaff from Barley (*Hordeum vulgare) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Experimental studies can make significant contributions to understanding the function of grinding stones found in archaeological contexts. Milling technology at the early Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük in Turkey is dominated by querns or grinding slabs, but mortars and pestles are not uncommon. Most of the...
A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Göbekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC (2018)
Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB settlement sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem)...
Continuity and Change on the Gobi Frontier: Geoarchaeology of Human Adaptations to Desertification in Southern Mongolia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Northgrippian climatic stage of the mid-Holocene epoch in East Asia was marked by a period of pronounced warm/moist climatic conditions. This had a profound impact on the hydrology and vegetation in the northernmost region of the Gobi Desert located in southern Mongolia. Our geoarchaeological and archaeological...
Cooperation and Feasting at Late Neolithic Domuztepe: Assessing Emergent Political Complexity through Faunal Remains (2015)
Cooperation occurs at all scales of social life: among individuals, among households, and among groups that supersede the household level. In some cases, such cooperation precipitates the formation of complex social structures and institutions and perpetuates their endurance. The variability of forms such cooperation can take at all scales of social complexity is broad, but an increasing degree of scalar cooperation correlates with increasing social complexity. This study uses zooarchaeological...
The Demise of the European Neolithic Mode of Animal Husbandry: A Combined Effect of Milk Consumption, Zoonotic Diseases, and Genetic Changes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new form of husbandry developed by the Neolithic settlers of Europe provided solid foundations for their unprecedented growth and sustainability. Its constituting elements comprised the secondary product’s mode of exploitation, the effective adaptation of major domesticates to different environmental and ecological zones, and changes in their genomes....
Depictions of Human Trophies in Arabian Rock Art (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ritualistic use of various detached human body parts is a circumglobal phenomenon that has been documented for cultures extending backward through time for millennia. Its symbolic purposes are diverse, but war trophies and ancestor worship are two of the most common. Artists’ depictions of displays of human body parts...
A Design Diagram and Production Process for Ground Stone Tools at Wufengbe Site during the Liangzhu Culture Period (5300-4200 BP) in China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Wufengbei Site is located in the Mudu Ancient City Neolithic sites at Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, southern China. Excavations in 2016 yielded a total of 3850 pieces of lithic artifacts. Based on the concept of Chaîne Opératoire, artifacts were classified and analyzed by the hierarchical dynamic typology and use-wear...
Determining the Biographies of the Indonesian Standing Stones at Harvest Preserve, Iowa City, Iowa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous megaliths on the islands of Indonesia, including the island of Flores where their constructions date to 2500-1000 BCE. Some of the stones that comprise these megaliths have been trafficked to other countries in recent years. In the early 2000s an Iowa City collector purchased a set of 50 of these standing stones from a location or locations...
Development and Idea of Neolithic longhouses in Middle Europe (2015)
The earliest longhouses of the first agricultural population in Central Europe appear discontinuously, without continuity with the previous settlement; only indirect information about the residence patterns of the latter is available. This is due to both different settlement strategy of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups, and the state of research. Therefore, only the evolution of Central European Neolithic longhouses can be assessed. Their introduction in Central Europe is supposed to be of...
Did the Neolithic Revolution Revolutionize the European Landscape? An Analysis of the Relationship between Climate, Vegetation, and the Arrival of Agro-pastoral Subsistence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have long recognized the spread and adoption of agro-pastoral subsistence in Europe as a transformative economic and social process. While many studies have tied site-specific changes in vegetation communities to the arrival of the Neolithic, very few attempts have been made at synthesizing these data to examine the Neolithic revolution in...
Diet Reconstruction of Ancient Population from Banlashan Cemetry, a Neolithic Hongshan Archaeological Culture Site in China—Based on Stable Isotopic and Dental Microwear Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hongshan culture is a famous archaeological cultures in the Neolithic Age in China, and its economic structure has always been the focus of academic attention. According to the bone material unearthed from the cemetery, the diet characteristics of the late Hongshan people can be effectively recovered through the integrating stable isotopic and dental microwear...
Different but similar? Colonisation processes on islands and continents compared (2017)
As discussed elsewhere (Spriggs 2008) the ‘islands as laboratories’ trope can be overblown, and factors beyond size, circumscription and vulnerability have to be taken into consideration. Indeed none of these are concerns uniquely limited to islands. In this paper I stress too that colonisation on its own may be too limited a concern. We need to examine longer archaeological sequences for a truly comparative archaeology, where what happens after initial colonisation is also key to understanding....
Differentiating Ecological Contexts of Plant Cultivation and Animal Herding: Implications for Culture Process (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. Over the last few decades archaeologists around the globe have documented a much more variable pattern of prehistoric foraging and food production than was previously imagined. We have also made great progress understanding the macroecology related to variation in hunting-gathering subsistence and social...
Digital Archaeology at Çatalhöyük: New Inferential Methods for the Interpretation of Neolithic Buildings (2015)
The 3D-Digging Project started at Çatalhöyük in 2009 with the intent to digitally record in 3D all the archaeological stratigraphy in some areas of excavation assembling different devices and technologies for virtually reconstructing all the process in desktop and virtual reality systems. The introduction of 3D data recording and 3D simulation marks a qualitatively new phase of the research process at archaeological sites. This shall facilitate a new mode of inference that can fundamentally...
The Diros Project: Multidisciplinary Investigations at Alepotrypa Cave and Ksagounaki Promontory, 2010-2015 (2016)
This paper summarizes the results of multidisplinary research conducted by The Diros Project in Diros Bay on the western Mani Peninsula of the southern Peloponnesos. The project centers around Aleptorypa Cave, a massive cave that was used for burials and other ritual and domestic activities throughout the entire Neolithic period (ca. 6,000-4,000 BC). Under the direction of Dr. Giorgos Papathanassopoulos (Honorary Ephor of Antiquities), The Diros Project was established by a team of international...
The Dissemination of Miaodigou Culture Painted Pottery (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technology and Design in 4th and 3rd Millennium BCE China" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cultural sequence of the Wei River valley, as exemplified by Miaodigou Culture of the Middle Yangshao Period, represents a pinnacle as reflected in its masterfully crafted ceramics. The classical forms are pointed-bottomed amphorae, flat-bottomed bottles, coarseware jars, deep basins, and deep bowls. Of special importance are...