Europe (Geographic Keyword)
1,201-1,215 (1,215 Records)
Four decades ago this summer, newly arrived in a country where we barely spoke the language, our field crew began excavation of an Iron Age hill fort. First encounters quickly taught us that local identity was grounded in the tradition of the Iron Age Celts, not the later arriving Romans, Franks, or the region’s powerful medieval dukes. My intention was to see how indigenous peoples had fared before and after the Roman conquest; I planned a colonization framework. But the site was a surprise,...
Why Classics Needs Anthropology (2016)
While it is true that theoretical advancements are slow to cross disciplinary boundaries, when disciplines by necessity overlap, it seems almost willfull ignorance that perpetuates old frameworks. For example, it has been over thirty years now that anthropology and colonial studies have come to terms with the complexities of identity in colonial contexts and yet scholars in related disciplines, such as Classics, still argue over which label imposed by colonizers should be used for which...
Why We Need to Succeed: Assessing the Outcomes of Community Archaeology Practices in County Galway, Ireland (2016)
Public involvement and collaboration with communities are major concerns for archaeologists around the world. Community outreach efforts are major components of research projects and require an immense amount of resources. Further, different stakeholders have varied responses to those efforts. This paper uses data from the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project’s community outreach on Inishark and Inishbofin, County Galway, Ireland, islands five miles into the Atlantic Ocean. This...
Will your childhood years kill you earlier? A study exploring the relationship between height, stress and age at death. (2017)
Could shorter legs mean premature death? Stature is a highly complex trait which seems to be influenced by many different factors. To name a few; genetics, social status, through to environment, diet or health issues. However, it has been observed for some time that taller people live longer. For the purpose of current research, data from 10 multi-period sites were collected. The main focus of project is to explore the correlations between height and age-at-death. Additional to this, as it is...
Winds of Change – Funerary practices at the dawn of Late Bronze Age in Southeast Hungary (2017)
The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. This transition is traditionally seen as a short, war-ridden horizon reflecting the arrival of the Tumulus culture population. Recent research, however, emphasizes the complexity of these transformations, and suggests a longer, less abrupt transition, in which existing Middle Bronze Age populations play a significant role in the...
Witches and Aliens: How an Archaeologist Inspired Two New Religious Movements (2017)
Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray was a major figure in the creation of professional archaeology in the United Kingdom, President of the Folklore Society, and advocate for women’s rights in higher education. However, another major part of her legacy was the mainstream acceptance of the concept of the "witch-cult," a hidden ancient religion dating back to the Pleistocene but continuing until at least the seventeenth century when it was persecuted by witch-hunters. Historians have...
With a Little Help from my Friends: New Radiocarbon Dates from the Great Hungarian Plain (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The expanded availability and use of radiocarbon dating by archaeologists has significantly reshaped the understanding of longstanding prehistoric narratives. These advances have also challenged the cultural-historic notion of archaeological cultures that have dominated research for over a century. In this paper, we examine recently collected radiocarbon...
Wizards, Dragons and Giants: Creating Motte Castles in an English Landscape (2017)
Medieval motte castles are large flat-topped earth and stone mounds, often coupled with an enclosure or bailey, and represent a characteristic component of the British landscape. Mottes often dominate their immediate surroundings, with many remaining visually impressive monuments to this day. Although their creation often involved substantial landscape change, it is becoming increasingly clear that continuity could also be maintained. Many mottes were placed at points in the landscape with...
Women in small-scale societies: how demographic archaeology can contribute to gender archaeology (2017)
Demography has re-emerged as a growing research area within archaeology. Recent studies have refined archaeological demographic methods and developed models which cite demographic change as a key variable in explaining social and artefactual change. However, one aspect which has not been explicitly acknowledged is how archaeological demography is intrinsically concerned with women. In this paper I explain the importance of women to the demographic regimes of small-scale societies and discuss...
Words for domestic animals used as metaphors in coastal naming (2017)
Place-names are important sources to understand and reimagine past conceptions of the landscape. Toponyms map animal lives on to the landscape. In some cases, however, words for animals – wild as well as domestic – are used as metaphors. In some names denoting sunken rocks along the Norwegian coast, e.g. Sugga (’sow’), Oksa (‘bull’), Hesten (’horse’), Porthunden (‘watchdog’), the words either refer to the shape or sound of the locations, or to some special circumstances, e.g. dangerous rocks in...
Working on the Margins of the Modern World and Within Archaeology: The Historical Archaeology of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentith-Century Ireland (2017)
In Ireland, historical, post-medieval, or modern world archaeology as a discipline is located on the margins. The time period and material comprising our research is argued by many to be relevant only to the pursuits of historians and folk studies. In this paper I discuss the importance and relevance of a discipline on the margins and the study of Ireland’s impoverished class during the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This marks one of the most dynamic periods in Ireland’s...
World prehistories and the development of a global archaeological narrative (2017)
The origins of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline lie in the New Learning of the 16th and 17th centuries and derive from a number of sources: antiquarian researches in northwest Europe; European exploration and the encounter with non-European peoples; and speculative accounts of human origins and development. It was only in the 19th century that these strands first began to be woven together to create a global narrative of human prehistory. Such a narrative raises a number of problematic...
Worn Down: Dental Attrition and Dietary Differences at an Early Medieval Settlement in Central Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval diets may have differed in preparation rather than composition, with certain classes, genders, or age groups eating more abrasive and/or more cariogenic preparations of the same foods (Beranová 2007; Esclassan et al. 2015). This study is a bioarchaeological examination of dental attrition at the 9-11th century site complex of Libice nad Cidlinou in...
Your Horse Is a Donkey! Identifying Domesticated Equids Using ZooMS (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) play essential roles in human culture and economy. Unlike most other domesticates, horses and donkeys can produce hybrids. Mules, offspring of female horses and male donkeys, have been found in archaeological contexts across the Old World. Written sources describe the choice of horse, donkey, or mule as...
Zooarchaeological Remains from the Roman Harbor Vada Volaterrana (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Roman harbor of Vada Volaterrana was supported by a network of structures immediately surrounding the port at Vada's San Gaetano site. A 2015 GPR survey identified a series of rectangular buildings of unknown purpose in the southern sector of this site whose subsequent excavation produced several botanical and faunal remains. In 2019, a...