Europe (Geographic Keyword)
626-650 (1,217 Records)
Le Volgu consists of at least 15 exquisitely manufactured bifacial stone tools (17 were originally reported in 1874) found in Saône-et-Loire near the confluence of the Arroux and Loire Rivers, about 60 km (37 miles) west of Le Solutre, the type site for the Solutrean culture. The assemblage is interpreted as an artifact cache or ritual deposit and the artifacts themselves are considered exemplary of Solutrean bifacial technology. This paper reports the results of applying methods developed for...
Leapfrog Migration: Bumppo and Beyond (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. David Anthony and I coined the concept and term "Leapfrog Migration" for a graduate seminar at the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. We called its first iteration the "Natty Bumppo model" after the frontier scout hero of Cooper’s "Leatherstocking Tales." We used it to explain...
The Legal Status of Caribbean Collections Abroad (2016)
While the restitution debate has developed substantially since the Second World War – some even herald the age of ‘post-restitution’ – this is not necessarily the case for the Caribbean. Although archaeological and ethnographic objects of Caribbean origin have long been expropriated, the restitution debate has not played as essential a role in post-colonial discourse in the islands as in other former colonies. This is due to a number of reasons: first, most of the cultural objects outside the...
Les Cottés Sequence: A New Lens for Investigating the Cultural Changes Occurring during the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic Transition. (2017)
During the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, the replacement of Neanderthal populations by Anatomically Modern Human ones is concomitant of major cultural transformations. Progressively, human population incorporated new raw materials in their personal gear cumulating into an explosion of the cultural material diversity. Les Cottés in France preserves a detailed sequence with levels attributed to the late Mousterian, Chatelperronian, ProtoAurignacian and Early...
LiDAR data and the temporal trends in the frequency of hunter-gatherer sites in the northwest coast of Finland 10,000-2,000 calBP (2017)
Investigation of LiDAR visualizations has become a standard tool in archaeological site detection in Finland, as large part of the country has been LiDAR scanned. Because archaeologists alone do not have enough resources to thoroughly analyze these big data, part of the work has been crowd sourced. Thanks to active volunteers, not only the number of sites has increased, but we now have new types of sites, and sites in environmental contexts that have previously been ignored in archaeological...
Life and Death by the Lake in Pomerania: Introducing the Late Medieval Cemetery at Żelewo Site 1-3 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late medieval cemetery in Żelewo is in northwestern Poland, near Miedwie Lake, on the moraine hill named Catherina’s Hill. Excavations began in 2019 and continued in 2023 as a salvage archaeology project. The site is part of the Kołbacz Monastery’s estate—founded in 1173—the oldest Cistercian monastery in Pomerania. The cemetery is related...
Life history from human teeth microstructure: Methods for the analysis of hydroxyapatite from tooth cementum (2017)
Life-history events such as pregnancies, skeletal trauma, and renal disease can be estimated from growth layers of tooth cementum. Cementum is a mineralized tissue surrounding root of each human tooth consist of an inorganic calcium phosphate mineral approximated by hydroxyapatite (HA) and collagen. Several parameters have an influence on the calcium metabolism and result in a lack of available calcium at the mineralization front of tooth cementum. The year of occurrence of certain life-history...
The Life History of Early Celtic Vessels: An Experimental Approach towards Exploring the Inferential Limits of Interpreting Pottery Function (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the context of the BEFIM project ("Meanings and Functions of Mediterranean Imports in Early Central Europe") the life history of (drinking) vessels from the Early Celtic hillfort settlements of Heuneburg and Vix-Mont Lassoix was examined, studying the way of production and use. We set up an extensive experimental program of dozens of experiments to explore...
Life in Suleiman’s Army: Preliminary Investigations of Health in an Ottoman Cemetery Site (2016)
In recent years, analyses of human skeletal remains have significantly contributed to our understanding of the past. A cemetery collection of 160 skeletons from the 16th and 17th centuries excavated from the city center of Timişoara, Romania have provided a rare opportunity to study a brief, tumultuous time when the Ottoman Empire extended into Central Europe. The inhumations, representative of the Ottoman population that relocated into the fortified city center after Turkish expansion, provide...
Life on the Northern Frontier, Bioarchaeological Reconstructions of 11th century Households in the Skagafjörður Region, North Iceland. (2016)
Iceland was settled in the 9th century by people of Norse and Celtic stock. Located on the margins of the Viking world, the Skagafjörður region was, by the 11th century, home to a large number of independent households forming core social units in a country without a king or central government. Although they maintained close ties with their old home world, ship arrivals were erratic and individual households were largely dependent on their own produce for survival. Early settlers lived in a...
Lime preparation in ancient Roman architectural and marine mortars (2015)
Romans prepared lime for the volcanic ash mortars of conglomeratic concretes using methods (Vitruvius, de Architectura 5.1.2-3) that are reflected in modern Italian lime industry terminology. In mortars of architectural concretes in Rome (1st C BCE–3rd C CE) builders mixed quicklime with freshwater to form stiff putty (grasello di calce) and then incorporated moistened scoriaceous ash, shown by an experimental reproduction. Pure calcite in unburnt particles (incotti) suggests pre-orogenic...
Liminal agents: exploring the social, ritual and cosmological aspects of fishhook manufacture in Middle Mesolithic coastal communities (8300-6300 BC) (2017)
This contribution aims to investigate the entanglement of environment, materiality, technology and cosmology in the Middle Mesolithic Stone-Age (8300-6300 cal. BC), of the North East Skagerrak area, Eastern Norway and Western Sweden, by focusing on the manufacture of bone-fishhooks. I argue that fishhooks are keys objects for exploring the world-views of Middle Mesolithic coastal groups. Fishhooks were linked with daily subsistence, invested with much labour, and their manufacture entwined with...
Lithic Adaptive Strategies of Early Modern Humans in Southwestern Iberia: New Data from Vale Boi’s Layer 7 and 8 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The arrival of modern humans in Iberia is a continuously debated topic, especially when it comes to its southernmost regions due to the evidence of late Neanderthal occupations. In Southwestern Iberia, there is evidence for the presence of both groups in the late Pleistocene. Although the exact moment of replacement is still unclear due to the lack of absolute...
Lithic Analysis of Late Mousterian Assemblages at Riparo Bombrini (2015)
We present a preliminary analysis of the Late Mousterian lithic assemblages from Riparo Bombrini, in Northwestern Italy. Riparo Bombrini is an important site because it contains some of the most recent Neanderthal occupations for that region. Our analysis includes both retouched pieces and unretouched debitage, focusing especially on piece dimensions; the presence, kind, and intensity of retouch; platform and termination types; as well as raw material procurement. These multiple dimensions...
Lithic assemblages in NW Turkey during the 7-6 mill BC (2015)
This paper deals with the main features of the lithic technology, which appeared at the settlements south and east of Marmara Sea and Eastern Thrace during the 7-6 mill BC. The new results show evident invariability in those technological and typological characteristics, which may provide direct proof for common lithic traditions and possibly similar environment features in the region. A new question arises after the research of the Central Northwest Anatolia lithic aterfacts. This empirical...
Lithic Production and Consumption in a Chert-Rich Upland: Exploring Local Patterns on a Neolithic Landscape in Southern Germany (2018)
The intensity of extraction activities at Neolithic quarries and mines in Central Europe has fueled debate about the scale and organization of chert and flint extraction and exchange during this period. However, most studies of stone consumption and exchange in the region have been based on lowland settlement assemblages at some distance from stone sources. This paper presents results of a regional project combining survey, remote sensing, analysis of private collections, and test excavation to...
Lithic production, managment and mobility strategies adaptation during the GS-1 and Early Holocene in North-Western France (2016)
The second half of the Late glacial is marked in North Western Europe by a major climatic instability with clear consequences on the vegetation and in resources density and distribution. At the end of this period, the GS-1 cooling is well recorded and is one of the most important of these events. During this period, hunter-gatherer groups experienced major changes in a large part of Europe extended from Spain to Scandinavia. This period is marked by the rapid spread of a phenomenon characterized...
Lithic technological organization and social networks during the LGM in Southwestern Iberia (2015)
Clusters of sites in particular regions of Southwestern Europe seem to reveal that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) settlement patterns form a scenario of relatively isolated refugia that may have contracted and expanded their cultural influence as climate fluctuated. Similarities between each of these niches have been long argued, based on the distribution of specific types of lithic weaponry. This paper will focus on a study of lithic technological organization during the LGM in Southwestern...
Lithic technology transfer and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the South Caucasus (2015)
Recently, several discoveries in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan have shed new light on the processes involved in the development of food production economy in the South Caucasus. If a series of excavations using modern techniques have provided an improved chronological and cultural framework for this complex phenomenon, several interrogations remain. What is the role of the hunter-gatherer population in the domestication process? Is the presence of Neolithic cultures in this area the result of...
Lithics, Landscapes & la Longue-Durée – Curation as an Expression of Forager Mobility (2016)
With the recognition that practically all archaeological sites are depositional composites unrelated to the activities of any contemporary group of individuals (i.e., palimpsests) and that forager adaptations are not ‘site-specific’ but rather landscape-scaled phenomena, statistical approaches designed to take these predicates into account have been developed over the past decade that depart from the traditional techno-typological systematics used for decades in much of Europe and the Levant....
Living through the Last Glacial Maximum. A view from the Eastern European (2016)
The region between the Eastern Carpathians in Romania and the Prut River in both Romania and Republic of Moldavia, knew both temperate and continental / cold climates throughout the Late Pleistocene, and still witnessed significant and rapid environmental shifts caused by global climate regimes, especially during the Last Glacial Maximum. I will examine in this poster the important interplay between technological, social, and land-use dynamics as culturally mediated responses to climate change...
Local Archaeology Societies in the UK (2017)
Local archaeology societies in the UK are unique. They are a product of the British political and legal system combined with cultural attitudes to the past and the development of the archaeological profession. They are a melting pot of inexperienced beginners, expert volunteers, professional archaeologists and everybody in between. As a unique form of public and community archaeology, they allow volunteers to have a significant positive impact for and on both archaeology and society. This...
Local Identity in the Mani Peninsula in Classical Antiquity (2016)
This paper presents a new approach to studying ancient identity in the Mani peninsula, using a combination of archaeological and epigraphic evidence and existing theoretical paradigms. Mani can be classified as an 'ahistorical historical' region – one that is inhabited within the historical period but which does not itself produce emic written evidence. Regions like Mani are often left out of typical inquiries into ancient Greek identity, which are overwhelmingly divided between studies of a)...
Local, Regional, and Supra-regional Political Economies in the Late Bronze Age South Caucasus: Unpacking the Contours of "Interaction" (2015)
The Late Bronze Age (LBA) South Caucasus (ca. 1500-1150 BC) has long been understood as an important moment in both the economic and political development of the region’s inhabitants. As local political authorities worked to produce formal governmental institutions and maintain social inequalities, they relied on trade networks of disparate lengths and intensities. The consumption of Mitannian cylinder seals from Mesopotamia and bronze weaponry from the North Caucasus can be contrasted with that...
The long and short of it: timescales for cultural change and transmission in the Vinca complex of SE Europe (2015)
The Times of Their Lives project has produced modelled date estimates for the major phases of the Vinca complex in SE Europe, spanning the later sixth to mid-fifth millennium cal BC. That is a considerable advance in our understanding of the broad rate of cultural change. But site-specific date estimates within the complex also allow detailed comparisons of the timing of the introduction of novel material forms, especially in pottery, down to a much more precise scale. Examples from the...