Europe (Geographic Keyword)
401-425 (1,217 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did the Roman Empire supply its very large frontier garrisons? Maintaining provision was key to the success of Roman imperialism, but we still know remarkably little about how Romans soldiers on the frontiers were supplied and the impact this had on the provincial countryside and its population. This paper...
Exploring sex-based variation in infant feeding practices in Byzantine Greece using stable isotope analysis of dentin serial sections (2017)
This paper explores whether sex-based differences in infant feeding practices existed at the early Byzantine Greek site of Nemea (5th-6th c.). Dentin serial sections were obtained from the permanent first molar and first premolar from 31 adults (11 males, 8 females, 12 unidentified) and analyzed for stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes. The isotopic data demonstrated that most individuals were breastfed and fully weaned at a mean age of 2.6 with a range of 1.8 to 3.6 years. Sex-based differences...
Exploring the Late Prehistoric (8000-2400 BC) human-environment interaction in the Western Taurus Mountains, SW Turkey (2016)
This paper presents a case study on human-environment dynamics in the Burdur Region (SW Turkey) during Late Prehistory (8000-2400 BC). Previous archaeological research in the area mainly focused on the fertile lowland areas, which revealed distinctive periods of continuity and collapse of farming communities, followed by a total abandonment of the plain areas for nearly a millennium, i.e. during the Middle Chalcolithic (5500-4100 BC). The working hypothesis is that people moved to more temperate...
Exploring the Roman Occupation and Abandonment of Salemi, Sicily: The Cistern at Largo Cosenza (2015)
Excavations in Salemi, Sicily have discovered a large, bell-shaped cistern dating from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. This feature appears to be contemporaneous with a large mosaic floor identified nearby in 1893. The Roman cistern contained a wide variety of domestic debris attesting both the economic interconnectivity and independence of this site. This paper discusses the use and abandonment of the cistern, contextualizing the site within the broader, western Sicilian region. ...
The Eye in the Sky: Use of an Aerial Drone to Record Landscape Alteration in the Malloura Valley, Cyprus (2017)
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones on archaeological projects has proliferated over the past few years. As with many new technologies, the use of drones has gone through several phases. Initially, there is the fascination with a new instrument, followed by more sober assessment of how the equipment can be used to address questions of scholarly interest. In an effort to record the changes in the local landscape of our study area in central Cyprus, the Athienou Archaeological...
Fabrics of space and time: Multiscalar analytical approaches to social process in the Middle Bronze Age Aegean (2015)
Acknowledging analytical scale, or emphasizing the importance of moving coherently from macro to micro to elemental, is not a new concept within ceramic analysis. The work of David Peacock since the 1970s has demonstrated the necessity of a multiscalar approach, yet our attempts to combine techniques that bridge these various scales of analysis have met with mixed success, particularly when confronted by assemblages that include a spectrum of fine to coarse wares. This paper highlights recent...
The faces behind the façade: monuments and their associated practices in Neolithic Britain (2015)
Over the last forty years the analysis of monuments has lain at the center of our understanding of Neolithic societies. Interpretative approaches toward monuments range in scale from the overarching view of Renfrew’s emerging chiefdoms to embodied perspectives focusing on their materiality. Regardless of analytical scale, most accounts treat monuments as complete architectural forms and fail to grasp the significance of the wider activities that surrounded their construction and use. This paper...
The Fast and the Furious. Innovations in Archaeological Visualisations at the Beginning of the 21st Ct. (2018)
The aim of the paper is to discuss current possibilities of complex approach to 3D virtual presentation of archaeological information, both to public and professional archaeologists. Virtual archaeology including 3D objects, reconstruction of building structures and even past landscape scenes has been for several years a standard and specific way of documentation and interpretation. However, what is currently changing is the general availability of the necessary technologies. A common feature of...
The fat of the land: An energetics approach to Paleolithic bone fat exploitation (2017)
I present an energetics approach to Neanderthal and anatomically modern human (AMH) exploitation of prey carcasses for bone marrow and bone fat, crucial nutritional resources during glacial periods in Paleolithic Europe. Previously established differences in daily caloric budget between the two groups predicate variation in behavioral cost thresholds, or a point at which an individual decides that the cost of processing a food resource outweighs the gain and abandons the task. A higher...
Fauna from the Eneolithic Mortuary Site of Verteba Cave, Ukraine (2015)
Animals associated with human burials provide insight into mortuary rituals of ancient groups. This study is the examination of faunal remains from Verteba Cave (3,951- 2,620 cal BC), a site in western Ukraine associated with the latest period of Eneolithic Tripolye-Cucuteni (TC) culture. Relative abundances of taxa were compared to published data from other TC sites. Remains from red deer and cattle are the most frequent fauna of the Verteba Cave assemblage. The sample also has a high...
Faunal evidence for the Neolithic colonization of Franchthi Cave, Greece (ca. 7000-6500 cal BC) (2015)
Franchthi Cave is a pivotal case in research on the mechanisms of the forager-producer transition in the southern Balkans region. Publications on this site have documented the geological, artifactual and macrobotanical records, but detailed information on the faunas is lacking. This zooarchaeological study focuses on the Final Mesolithic and Initial Neolithic periods and the question of whether livestock were adopted as isolated components by late Mesolithic foragers or the site was colonized by...
Faunal Remains from Medieval San Giuliano Plateau (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A large number of faunal remains were uncovered during the four seasons of excavation (2016–2019) at the San Giuliano Plateau (SGP), Italy. The collection consists of species that are typical to inland sites in the northern Mediterranean during the Medieval period,...
"The fear guards the sacred". The Sacred Natural Sites of Epirus, NW Greece (2015)
In various parts of the world local societies have effectively maintained mature groves through religious rules. A network of such sacred groves characterize the mountainous cultural landscapes of Epirus. These serve as protective wood belts above villages or form groups of veteran trees around churches. Except of settlements protection against natural hazards as also aesthetic functions, these locally-adapted management systems could regulate the use of natural resources for the community....
Feeding Vessels in Later European Prehistory (2018)
Small vessels with spouts, from which liquid can be poured, are known from settlements and graves of the European Bronze and Iron Ages. Sizes, shapes and decorations are highly variable, and although they generally fit the period-specific style, they represent a functional type. One explanation for this vessel form is libation – the act of pouring a liquid as a sacrifice to a deity. Recent discoveries, however, reinforce an association with children’s graves and suggest a function as feeding...
Female mobility in the Viking Worlds (2015)
Recent reassessments of the gender balance among Viking Age Scandinavian populations in the British Isles have suggested a greater presence of immigrant women than previously thought. At the same time, increasing support for a view of the Viking world as a diaspora, with a sustained network between the original and the acquired homelands, has necessitated a better understanding of the mechanics of the migration process. This paper evaluates interdisciplinary evidence for the level of mobility...
Feminism, Gender, and Heterarchy (2016)
When archaeologists, largely led by Carole Crumley, began applying the concept of heterarchy to prehistoric contexts, the focus was on social organization writ large. We generally used heterarchy to debate, illuminate, and/or clarify models of non-egalitarianism, stratification, and hierarchy. The concept seems to have come out of analyses of 20th century political systems. Some archaeological scholars of heterarchy have diversified into discussions of other aspects of human experience, such as...
Fetal Burials at San Giuliano (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The burial of unbaptized fetuses at San Giuliano exposes friction between the institutional church and medieval Italy's laity. The church's theology of Original Sin, baptism, and salvation left young children especially vulnerable to dying unbaptized and being denied...
Field Walking and Walking the Field (2017)
While we have gradually accepted that archaeological survey is as integral to our research as the overly-valued practice of excavation, the emotional dimensions of survey where one connects with the landscapes and with its occupants are hardly discussed, especially in the case of long-term surveys. What does a heart-centered survey project look like? How does the intimacy that comes from field walking inform the archaeology? As well, we are all participants in the field of archaeology, and...
Filling the Gap: Caves, Radiocarbon Sequences, and the Meso-Neolithic Transition in SE Europe (2017)
Radiocarbon sequences from some cave sites in the Balkan and Italian peninsulas show a temporal gap between Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations. Some authors have seen this as a regional phenomenon and have sought to explain it in terms of a general population decline in the late Mesolithic, which facilitated the replacement of indigenous foragers by immigrant farmers. In this paper, we re-examine the evidence and consider alternative explanations for the Meso-Neolithic ‘gap’, focusing on...
Finding millet in the Roman World (2016)
Examining the evidence for millet in the Roman empire, during the period, circa 753BC-610AD, presents a number of challenges: a handful of scant mentions in the ancient surviving agrarian texts, several frescoes, only a few fortuitous preserved archaeological finds and limited archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence. Ancient agrarian texts note millet’s ecological preferences and multiple uses but disparage its lowly status. Recent archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence has shown that millet was...
FINISTERRA - Population Trajectories and Cultural Dynamics of Late Neanderthals in Far Western Eurasia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, knowledge of the processes involved in the disappearance of the Neanderthals and the successful expansion of our species across Eurasia has substantially increased. Still, the spatiotemporal variability of the presumed mechanisms behind Neanderthals’ demise makes evaluating the replacement at a continental scale very challenging. Iberiaa,...
Fire, Humans, and Landscape Evolution: Modeling Anthropogenic Fire and Neolithic Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean (2016)
Archaeological and paleoecological analyses demonstrate that human-caused fires have long-term influences on global terrestrial and atmospheric systems. For millennia, humans have intentionally burned landscapes to drive game, clear land, engage in warfare, and propagate beneficial plant and animal species. Around the world, Neolithic transitions to agriculture often coincided with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation community composition and distribution. Although this...
Fireplace Variability in the Aurignacian: a Multiscale Analysis at the Open-air Campsite of Régismont-le-Haut (Hérault, France) (2015)
Through the study of several contemporary fireplaces at the Aurignacian open-air site of Régismont-le-Haut we will distinguish differences in the function and operation of a common-place form of archaeological vestige. To achieve this goal we rely on multiscale examination of hearths, which consists of classic planimetric and stratigraphic observation coupled with both micromorphological and geochemical analyses. Results are also compared with experimental hearths analyzed using the same...
The first cultural landscapes of Europe - and before... (2017)
Cultural landscapes appear relatively late in the human history. In Europe, between c. 40-20.000 BP, people for the first time seem to have transformed (parts of) their environment intentionally on a significant spatial scale in order to make places and areas "fit" for future activities. Already between 40.000 and 30.000 BP, prominent natural formations and hidden places were marked with signs and symbols to enable distant communication. From c. 25.000 BP onwards, on-site constructions, such as...
The First Quarantine: Lessons from Past Epidemics (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a world changed by COVID-19, it is valuable to look at past reactions to epidemics and learn from them. Modern economies and political systems are designed with the assumption that such events cannot happen. The real risks in food and staples production and distribution in America and Europe or the inability to protect the work force for just a few months...