Europe (Geographic Keyword)
1,151-1,175 (1,217 Records)
Anthropological research has demonstrated the influence of climate and environmental resources on the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. While most previous work has focused on environmental influences on hunter-gatherer economic and ecological behaviors, this research will evaluate the impact of different geographical and social environments on the social networks formed therein. This project will use an agent-based model to generate test expectations related to the processes that shaped the social...
Using cremain weight from a Bronze Age cemetery in Eastern Hungary as an indicator of sex (2016)
In well-preserved osteoarchaeological samples, traditional anthropological methods are employed to determine age at death, biological sex, differences in diet, activity level, pathologies, and genetics. Determining sex based on classical anthropological methods such as examining morphological and metric traits is often difficult or impossible with cremains due to fragmentation and post-depositional damage. A previous study conducted by Van Deest et al. in 2013 showed a correlation between...
Using Multiple Isotopic Analyses to Infer Population Mobility in Iron Age Britain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the ongoing results on isotopic research on Middle Iron Age (~400–200 cal BC) populations in Wessex and East Yorkshire. The multi-isotopic approach has been employed to infer population mobility for both the inhumed human population at a series of sites and the faunal assemblages from either the associated settlements or directly recovered...
Using multiple techniques to assess the crop marks of early medieval barrow cemeteries in Scotland (2017)
This paper will show how using multiple techniques will refresh our understanding of cropmark sites, which is imperative for their protection and preservation. This work comes out of a research project looking at barrow cemeteries in north and east Scotland, the wealth of aerial archive was reviewed and explored through multiple methods. Rectifying and transcribing the aerial APs was one aspect, but ground survey picked up newly identified upstanding barrows at multiple sites. The results extend...
Using oral health indicators as evidence of environmental instability and subsistence shifts in the Late Upper Paleolithic of Western Eurasia (2015)
Oral pathology prevalence can be used to make inferences about the behavioral and environmental factors that contribute to individual and population health. Late Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasian human groups were expanding geographically as well as increasing in density, and the major climatic oscillations that define this period stressed these pioneering humans. Evidence of this strain includes temporal differences in oral pathology prevalence, namely caries, periodontal disease, tooth loss,...
Using Photogrammetry to Complement and Visualize the Paleolithic Excavation of the Arma Veirana Cave in Italy (2016)
Archaeological excavations are increasingly using digital surveying techniques for better documentation and visualization. Using high resolution imaging systems and UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), photographic surveys were completed of the interior and exterior of the Arma Veirana Cave in Liguria, Italy. The aim is to contextualize the excavation within its environment for accurately geo-referencing the excavation trenches and to better understand how Neanderthals lived with respect to their...
Using pXRF to Unravel Raw Material Choices in Early Holocene Lithic Assemblages from the Island of Cyprus, Eastern Mediterranean (2017)
This poster presents the preliminary results of an extensive geo-chemical fingerprinting program using pXRF that was undertaken on a large and diverse lithic collection that included three different raw materials, namely obsidian, carnelian and picrolite. Specifically, the project investigated the use of these three raw materials in Early Holocene lithic assemblages - stone tools and ornaments - from the island of Cyprus, eastern Mediterranean. Obsidian, carnelian and picrolite have been defined...
Using spiked, fired clay samples for developing robust quantification algorithms for pXRF of pottery (2015)
Meanwhile absolute concentrations rather than relative, instrument and setting specific values are requested as scientific standard in publishing provenancing results. Recent publications suggest that there is no reliable vendor software for elemental quantification of pottery with pXRF. It is unclear whether this is due to a lack of precision in the given trace element values of reference standards, or uncorrected matrix effects, or both. We faced similar problems when using >30 reference...
Using Zooarchaeology to Explore the Origins of Medieval Urbanism: Evidence from Badia Pozzeveri near Lucca, Antwerp, and Ipswich (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origin of urbanism is one of the most significant transitions in human history. Archaeologists and historians have been interested in the origins and development of early medieval urbanism since the days of V. Gordon Childe and Henri Pirenne in the early twentieth century. While most of the early studies of medieval towns were based on historical...
Validating niche-construction theory through path analysis (2015)
Under the conventional view of evolution, species over time come to exhibit those characteristics that best enable them to survive and reproduce in their preexisting environments. Niche construction provides a second evolutionary route to establishing the adaptive fit, or match, between organism and environment, viewing such matches as dynamical products of a two-way process involving organisms both responding to problems posed by environments as well as setting themselves new problems by...
The Value of all that Glitters: Beads in the Tombs around Pylos, Greece (2016)
This paper aims to explore the value of faience and glass in Bronze Age Pylos with a view to reconstructing the wealth and status of the people with whom they were buried. These beads must have been imported to Pylos as finished objects since none of the raw materials are found locally and we have no evidence for their manufacture or production at Pylos. Indeed our analysis of a sample of the vitreous beads shows that some of these beads, or at least their substance, originated in Egypt and...
Variability and Change in the Middle Paleolithic of Western Europe and the Near East. In: the Mousterian Legacy (1983)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Variability in Neolithic Cattle Populations: a Case Study from the Orkney Islands (2015)
The Orkney archipelago, at the northern end of Scotland, has a rich and well preserved record of Neolithic settlement. Radiocarbon dates from northern Scotland indicate the establishment of farming communities quite soon after those in southern England. However, the process by which agriculturalists reached these far northern territories is still not well understood. Faunal analysts (Watson 1931, Noddle 1983) have drawn attention to an apparent distinction in morphology between the cattle...
'Various Styles of Urn'---Cemeteries and Settlement in Southern England Circa 1400-1000 BC. In: the Archaeology of Death (1981)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
The variscite of Gavà, Spain: characterization and system of exploitation and diffusion in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula (2017)
This paper presents a synthesis regarding the exploitation of the variscite mineral in the prehistoric mines of Gava, Spain, as well as the manufacturing of ornaments and their dissemination during the Neolithic period. Special emphasis will be given to the results of the latest research in both the mineralogical characterization and archaeological interpretations derived.
Vestigial Religion: The Legacy of Byzantine Christianity in Ottoman and Venetian Greece (2017)
This paper offers a glimpse into the roles played by religion during the decline of one empire and the emergence of another, from the perspective of a historical case study: the Mani Peninsula. Mani is a peripheral region in the Peloponnese, Greece, that converted to Orthodox Christianity under the Byzantine Empire, and its occupants maintained this religious identification throughout the subsequent periods of Ottoman and Venetian rule. This unbroken religious continuity, which can be traced in...
View of the site (2015)
View of the excavation from the entrance. We use two total stations, one for each half of the cave.
Viking Age Grave Reentry within the Context of Mortuary Drama (2017)
The present study traces the history of grave manipulation and reentry in Scandinavia from the Stone Age through medieval times, but with a special emphasis on the context and implications of funerary activity during the Viking Age and the early medieval period. During this time span, the people of Scandinavia became a major force that reshaped the economic, political, and social structure of Europe. I examine the phenomenon of grave reentry and alteration within the framework of Neil Price’s...
Viking Age tar production and the exploitation of the Outlands (2017)
In Sweden, recent excavations have revealed how the production of tar evolved from a small scale, household operation situated within the settlements of the Roman Iron Age, to a large-scale activity in the forests during the Vendel and Viking periods. The resulting quantities of tar far exceeded ordinary household requirements. This change in production coincides with the introduction of the sail, characteristic for the Viking Age, with extensive need for large amounts of tar. The change in...
The Viking Great Army: Weighing Up Reuse (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on reuse of material culture looted by the Viking Great Army when it raided England in the late ninth century CE. This material included gold, silver, and copper alloy, which was sometimes melted down to turn into other artifacts and also cut up for use in exchange in the form of...
The Viking Phenomenon (2017)
In December 2015, the Swedish Research Council made an unprecedented investment in archaeology with a ten-year, multi-million dollar grant to establish a center of excellence in Viking Studies at Uppsala University. Much of the recent research into the Vikings and their time (c. 750-1050 CE) has focused on the complex processes of state formation and Christian conversion that eventually gave rise to the modern Scandinavian nations. Far less attention has been devoted to the very beginnings of...
Viking skeletal remains in northern Europe: a survey (2015)
This paper presents the preliminary findings of a systematic survey of Viking skeletal remains in northern Europe. The survey covers Viking Age skeletons from the homeland countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as putative Viking skeletons from several countries subject to Scandinavian colonization, including England, Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland. Among the attributes we are recording are the degree of skeletal completeness, chronological age of the specimens, and the evidence that...
Vikings on the Move: Combined Methods to Reassess Mobility and Migration in Early Medieval Europe (WGF - Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship) (2021)
This resource is an application for the Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Over the past decade, new bioarchaeological methods such as isotope analysis and ancient DNA have become standard tools for studying migration and mobility. Yet with an increasing amount of data now available, it is apparent that these methods come with significant limitations: each, on its own, rarely able to confidently characterise migration. It is, therefore, crucial to develop new ways...
Violence, Politics and Power: Iron Age and Pictish Reinventions of a Prehistoric Mortuary Landscape at the Sculptor’s Cave, NE Scotland (2017)
The Sculptor’s Cave in NE Scotland saw a long history of use, from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Medieval (Pictish) period. Late Bronze Age activity is characterised, as in other caves along this stretch of coast, by complex communal funerary practices involving the exposure and processing of human bodies. Veneration continued for many centuries, yet by the Roman Iron Age (c. 3rd century AD) perceptions of the cave had markedly changed. During this period, several adults were decapitated...
A virtual documentation of excavation through 3D modeling; is it worth the effort? (2016)
Illustration of various means has always helped in visualising complex information, and archaeologists have used means such as photographs, drawings and even three-dimensional illustration to present complex archaeological data. Archaeologists began using three-dimensional models of various archaeological monuments only in 1990s. However, in recent years, and with high-end computer applications, archaeologists are able to document different stages of excavations using 3D illustration, which has...