Europe (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (1,217 Records)
Hillforts are a typical feature of the Iron Age settlement patterns of the north-west Mediterranean (Southern France and North-East of Spain). Their morphology appears as relatively homogeneous, and gives a prominent importance to the domestic sphere, the stone ramparts being often the only clearly communitarian building. The development of these agglomerations –quite small according to central European standards- is broadly contemporary with the beginnings of Greek colonization and with the...
The Dead in a Transylvanian Village (2017)
The present paper is part of a doctoral research project.The project develops and reworks a 1930s sociological exploration,conducted as part of the Sociological School of Bucharest. In this paper I will make a broader framing, at a Romanian macro-level, of the funerary practices conducted within the village of Clopotiva,Transylvania. I intend to use both data from the 1930s research,as well as a new exploratory input gained during my fieldwork, which began in 2012.I will tackle handling of the...
Death Games: exploring the Békés 103 cemetery using 3D technology (2017)
3D modelling has become an important tool in the distribution and analysis of archaeological data. This technology also has the potential to make archaeological information more widely available to the public. The goal of this project was to develop an interactive 3D environment based on the Békés 103 cemetery in the Körös region of eastern Hungary. This environment allows users to navigate the site in the first person while examining the burial practices of the Bronze Age people who populated...
Death Undone: The Contextual Importance of Human Skeletal Remains in an Analysis of Diachronic Mortuary Practices at Mesambria Necropolis, Bulgaria (ca. 400 BC–AD 1400) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study addresses the contextual importance of human skeletal remains in identifying diachronic changes and constants in mortuary practices from the Mesambria necropolis, on the banks of the Black Sea in modern Nessebar, Bulgaria. Skeletal remains are the central element of mortuary practices but are often excluded from archaeological interpretation,...
Debating early urbanization in temperate Europe: From Heuneburg to Bourges (2015)
The genesis of large fortified central places is one of the most important phenomena in Later Prehistoric Europe. In Temperate Europe, the origins of urbanism have long been identified with the emergence of the Oppida of the 2nd-1st centuries BC, considered to be the ‘earliest cities north of the Alps’. However, large-scale research projects carried out over recent years have started to challenge this long-established view, to the point that nowadays it is possible to assert that the term...
Deciphering Dog Domestication: A Combined Ancient DNA and Geometric Morphometric Approach (2016)
Research into animal domestication has now broadly established the geographic and temporal origins of the major livestock species, but has failed to do so for dogs. We will apply ancient DNA (aDNA) and geometric morphometric (GM) techniques to archaeological canid remains, of which we have examined ~4000 specimens across the globe through multiple time periods. Using this multifaceted approach, we expect population level distinctions revealed by aDNA analyses to be mirrored by GM analyses. This...
Decoding the Molecular Structure of Food Culture (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many different ways to approach food and food culture as windows into past lifeways. In this paper we discuss how food plant evidence, landscape data, and new technologies can be combined to provide new approaches that allow the study of webs of communication that can explain variable socioeconomic settings through time...
Decoupling Decoration and Dates: A New Absolute Chronology for the Transylvanian Middle Bronze Age (2015)
Metal from southwest Transylvania fueled the development of inequality and regional polities across Eastern Europe during the Bronze Age. However, little is known about the communities in the resource-rich region. Through regional survey, test excavation, and digitization of existing collections, the Bronze Age Transylvania Survey (BATS) Project seeks to understand the long-term dynamics of social organization throughout the Middle Bronze Age in southwest Transylvania (2000-1400 BC). A robust...
Deer Hunters: Star Carr Reconsidered (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.
Deer Offerings in the Stone Age of Eurasia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Deer Cult was a primary element of the myth-ritual complex of ancient hunter-gatherers. Deer worship included rituals related to natural and economic cycles, including the human life cycle. In the Upper Paleolithic,...
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....
Demographic and cultural dynamics of the Portuguese Estremadura in the 4th-3rd millennia BC: A multi-proxy approach (2016)
The cultural dynamics of the Late Neolithic-Copper Age of the Portuguese Estremadura have traditionally been viewed in purely socio-economic terms, involving an increase in social differentiation and economic intensification. In this study, by using analyses of dental morphology and stable and radiogenic isotopes from collective burial populations in the region, we contribute additional lines of evidence to this historical trajectory. In particular we use this biological evidence to elucidate...
Destruction of Wealth in Later Prehistory (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.
Detecting Olive Oil and Other Mediterranean Plant Oils: Experimental Considerations in Differentiating Lipids in Ancient Residues (2016)
This paper presents an experimental research program that assesses the possibility of distinguishing olive oil from other oils derived from Mediterranean plants based on fatty acid profiles. Due to the olive’s prolific use in the region, its oil is often presumed rather than demonstrated to be present in ancient residues. Other residue studies have suggested that different organic products may be differentiated based on specific ratios of fatty acid pairs. To evaluate this approach, a sample of...
Detecting spatially local deviations in population change using summed probability distribution of radiocarbon dates (2017)
The increasing availability of large radiocarbon databases encompassing continental geographic scales (e.g. CARD, EUROEVOL, AustArch, etc.) is now opening new possibilities for evaluating spatial variation in prehistoric population. We have, for the first time, the opportunity to determine whether and when different geographic regions experienced distinct demographic patterns using an absolute chronological framework. This line of research is however hindered by spatially uneven sample sizes...
Developing intra- and inter-continental research networks for the study of human adaptations to Lateglacial and early Holocene environmental changes (2016)
Over the last decade our knowledge of human-environment interaction in prehistory has been radically transformed. It has become increasingly apparent that prehistoric humans had to cope with a vast range of different environmental changes that had their own particular temporal and spatial dynamics. These changes ranged from millennial- and continental-scale ecosystem turnover and sea-level rise, to centennial- and hemispheric-scale abrupt climate change events, to extreme events such as tsunamis...
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...
Developmental stress and disease susceptibility: the association between skeletal indicators of leprosy and other physiological stressors (2015)
Leprosy has long interested bioarchaeologists because of its antiquity and because it can cause skeletal lesions. These lesions are primarily associated with lepromatous leprosy resulting from a minimal cellular immune response. This study tests the hypothesis that early-life developmental stress increases the risk of developing lepromatous leprosy by examining the association between skeletal signs of leprosy and other skeletal stress markers. A combined sample of 126 adults from two Danish...
Deviance in youth: Anomalous nitrogen and carbon isotopic values among individual subadults at Medieval Alytus, Lithuania (2015)
Rapid turnover of bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values in subadults can reveal dietary and physiological changes experienced by illuminating chronic stress not apparent as skeletal, pathological lesions. To assess subadult morbidity and mortality in Medieval Alytus, Lithuania, an osteobiographical examination was undertaken of individuals who presented humeral isotopic values ± 2σ from sample and cohort means (-20.02 ± 0.43‰; 11.09 ± 1.21‰). Four infants (0.1-2.9 years) and four juveniles (5-11.9...
Diasporas and Identities in the Viking Age (2015)
This paper briefly sets out and analyses recent terminological discussions among archaeologists and other scholars working on regions influenced and settled by 'vikings' in the Viking Age, c.800-c.1050CE. 'Diaspora' has, perhaps belatedly, been a term applied to the pattern of social and economic relationships linking some communities across Europe and the North Atlantic. The applicability of the term 'diaspora' or of seeing a series of diasporic communities will be considered alongside the more...
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 and Dentition on the Black Sea: An examination of dental health and dietary reconstruction at Medieval Mesambria (2017)
Dental health and dietary habits from the Bulgarian town of Mesambria have never been investigated for the medieval period. The town has its roots in Mediterranean culture, however, in the Early Byzantine and Medieval periods in Bulgaria, the Slavic Bulgars were vying for power and territory, and Mesambria became caught between the dying Byzantine Empire and the new Bulgarian state. The Bulgars brought with them a different diet, with a preference for millet, meat, and cheeses over the...
Diet and Health in the Context of Medieval Mortality Crises (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant) (2016)
This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Crisis mortality, a dramatic but temporary increase in mortality rate above the baseline level resulting from a single extraordinary factor, was an important phenomenon in past human populations and continues to affect living people in ways that might be preventable. One of the most important mortality crises in history was the Black Death; in Europe alone, the epidemic killed tens of millions of...
Diet and slavery in Viking Age Norway – the potential of isotope analyses of human remains in studies of social differences. (2016)
Viking Age Norway was a society structured by clear social differences. Archaeological finds from burials and settlements show a hierarchical distribution of material goods among the Norse, although the distribution of food has traditionally been difficult to trace. In the last few decades, advances in isotope analyses of human remains have made possible a discussion of these aspects, providing information on individual dietary variation. Considering the harsh climate of Scandinavia, the control...
Difference in Archaeology Theory and Practice: the Case of Classical Greece (2015)
The dichotomy between the "dirt" and the "word" has loomed large in the study of the Greek past, in a manner not shared by many other regions. This is true, ironically, for both the historical and prehistoric period. The interplay between the material record with the textual and the iconographic records in Greece is rich and complex, and one that extends across a broad time range. Disjunctions across these different avenues of inquiry are numerous, and often ignored. But it is precisely in these...