Europe (Geographic Keyword)
801-825 (1,217 Records)
This paper focuses on the reconstruction of pottery recipes and their transmission in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic sites of Belovode and Pločnik (c. 5350-4650 BC; c. 5200-4650 BC). These two Vinča culture sites, located respectively in north-east and south Serbia, have recently yielded some of the earliest known copper artefacts in Eurasia. The rich material culture of these two sites, therefore, offers a unique opportunity for the study of the evolution of pottery craft technology during the...
On we sweep with thrashing oar: Interaction networks in Aegean Prehistory (2017)
Prior to the introduction of sailing technology during the 3rd millennium BCE, communication and movement throughout the Aegean Basin was greatly shaped by the region’s mixed landscape of open sea, island clusters, and mountainous interiors. Modeling the physical landscape and accounting for travel rates and physical restrictions to travel over both land and sea, I examine the nature of movement across the Aegean during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (6500-2000 BCE). Based on these...
Once Upon a Höyük (2016)
Oymaağaç Höyűk, the putative Hittite religious center of Nerik, was occupied as early as the second millennium B.C.E. .Nearly three thousand years later, the site was reclaimed as a burial ground for the local populace. Within the upper stratigraphic, tile (tegula) graves and the associated burials, relatively and radiocarbon dated to the Byzantine (i.e., Late Roman) period (A.D. 250-450), provide an informative look into the lives of the rural population. Employing archaeological context in...
The Ontological Mammoth Body: Varieties of the Human-Mammoth Ritual Drama Mediated by Cultural Interactions with Mammoth Remains in Pavlonian Moravia and Mezinian Ukraine (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. Ethnohistoric sources show hunters burnt the bones of prey or hung them on trees, heaped them on piles, deposited them in bogs, etc., in order to propitiate nature spirits such as the “Master of Animals” for game resurrection...
Open access, data reuse and the "democratization of knowledge": the case of Italy (2016)
Open Access (OA) data publication can widen the quantity of data available to researchers and scholars and thus can increase possibilities for cross-cultural comparisons. Low cost and ease of access to data can make possible a “democratization of knowledge”. This paper examines the archaeological community in Italy from the perspective of OA data publication in archaeology. OA data publication in Italian archaeology is not widespread and it currently lacks standards on data sharing that...
Operation Nightingale USA: Archaeology as a Vehicle for Peer Support in the Veteran Community (2017)
The potential archaeological fieldwork holds for facilitating positive change among disabled military veterans has only recently begun to be explored. Since 2012 three dedicated veterans’ archaeology programs have been developed within the United Kingdom (Breaking Ground Heritage, Operation Nightingale, and Waterloo: Uncovered), and one has been created within the United States (Operation Nightingale USA). These programs share an interest in integrating disabled serving and ex-service personnel...
Opportunistic fire in the Early Palaeolithic: evidence of small mammal incidental burning at Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Rio Quípar ( Murcia, Spain). (2015)
Cueva Negra, an upland rock-shelter in southeastern Spain, has revealed a delineated ash feature containing burnt macrofauna and chert within Early Pleistocene deposits (>0.78 Ma). This paper details a novel methodology utilizing heat-altered micromammal remains to identify opportunistic fire-use by the inhabitants of this site. We hypothesize that micromammal bones deposited in the by non-human predators were unintentionally modified by anthropogenic fire, and may be used as proxy evidence of...
Optimizing Cementochronology for Archaeological Applications: The CemeNTAA Project (2016)
Various methodological approaches have been developed in zooarchaeology to discuss how past population coped with seasonal constraints. Among them, the analysis of tooth cementum incremental structures (cementochronology) is often used for discussing seasonality in archaeological contexts. However, several issues have been raised about the method, such as the absence of a standardized protocol, the lack of data for specific species, variability between geographical populations and destruction of...
Opulent harvest in a kingdom of stones: landscape and livelihood in a marginal upland zone (2015)
Relationships between subjecthood and rulership in northern European societies changed significantly between the late prehistoric and early modern eras, as long-extant nations were absorbed by emergent states. Using a landscape approach to food production and livelihood affordances, we study changing conditions and production strategies of forest agropastoralists in a marginal Swedish upland, through episodes of climate change and turbulent interaction with governing powers. Perspectives on...
Origins of Paleolithic Art: Review and Critical Thoughts. In: the Mousterian Legacy: Human Biocultural Change in the Upper Pleistocene (1983)
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The Orkney Islands: Long-Term Human Ecodynamics and Enduring Culture (2015)
The Orkney Isles of Scotland, though greatly impacted by environmental shifts, are remarkably resilient and have a 5,000+, long-term occupation sequence. There has been a concerted effort by many researchers to study Orkney’s past in order to help Orkney move forward in the face of current sea-level rise and changing social identities. Current archaeological research is shedding light on land- and sea- scapes of power and monuments of control, social identity through burials & settlement...
Osteo-grammetry - Using Photographs to Rapidly Model Large Cemeteries in Three Dimensions (2017)
Recent excavations at the nineteenth century St Peter’s Burial Ground, Blackburn (UK) are the first to demonstrate the immense value of photogrammetry for recording human remains on a large scale. Photogrammetry is the process of using photographs to record objects in a measurable way. Recent developments have made the technique accessible and capable of high levels of detail in both geometry and texture. These attributes make photogrammetry very appealing to archaeologists and it should now be...
Osteoarchaeological assessment of generalized stress indicators in skeletons from the Tápé-Széntéglaégető cemetery, Hungary (2016)
Generalized stress indicators are non-specific anomalies produced by the body as an adaptive response to biological stressors such as malnutrition, disease or trauma. The prevalence of these lesions may be related to daily activity, lifestyle or differential access to resources. Based on archeological analyses, the Hungarian Bronze Age is associated with significant socio-economic changes, including population increases, agricultural intensification, and the emergence of social inequality. In...
Osteobiographies of two peculiar women from early medieval Poland (2015)
The aim of this paper is to analyse the biographies of two peculiar women from early medieval Poland, one from Ostrow Lednicki and the other from Kaldus sites, both of which were the capitals of the Polish state. This paper presents the most representative and interesting biographies of the ill and the disabled from these sites. The very best sample for such a study is the giant woman whose skeleton was discovered in the cemetery on the Ostrow Lednicki. Her height was 215,5 cm. Osteoma of skull...
Osteonarratives in the German-Language Tradition (2017)
This paper will discuss the research history of "osteobiography" in German-language anthropology and archaeology. That the term "Osteobiographie" is actually not in use does not imply that the concept does not exist. Although German-speaking prehistoric anthropologists were and still are predominantly focused on population research, science-based stories relating to individuals have been told, for instance, about Ötzi the Iceman. On closer inspection such narratives reveal a tendency to surface...
The Otherness of Objects? The Material Turn and Historical Archaeology (2015)
The material turn in archaeology – and in humanities in general – has led to a new interest in the non-verbal and non-signifying aspects of the material world. Instead of discussing meaning of objects, issues such as longterm durance and agency of objects have come into focus. Consequently, many archaeologists have turned away from the textual metaphor to a recognition of the otherness of materiality. However, this material turn has above all taken place in a dialogue with modern ruins and...
The Ottoman Rule of Athens and How it Shaped the Topography of the Acropolis (2017)
This poster will discuss the topographical changes of the Athenian Acropolis and how it affected the city’s identity. The Acropolis is an iconic monument defining Athens as a city. It was erected in pre-classical times, and has been the center of religious festivals and the city itself ever since. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered Athens and made it their own. Most monuments, including the Acropolis, were altered to fit the Turkish lifestyle, giving the monuments a different function than the...
Pagan-Christian Interactions 11th to 13th Centuries CE: The Isotope Evidence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Balts are generally recognized as the longest persisting pagan-dominated community in temperate Europe, widely practicing until the fourteenth century CE. Historical research documents that trading, raiding, and crusading often brought the Balts into direct contact with Christians in the...
Paint It Black: the rise of metallurgy in the Balkans (2015)
This study integrates archaeological, microstructural and compositional data of c. 7000 years old metallurgical production evidence with an aim to address the how and why of the world’s earliest metallurgy. The main focus is set on copper ores and metal production debris coming from four Vinča culture settlements in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all dated between c. 5400 – 4400 BC. Chemical study of copper minerals throughout all sites points at striking uniformity in selecting black and...
Painting and Firing Technology in the Late Bronze Age Saronic Gulf: A study of ceramic microstructures by SEM (2016)
The end of the Bronze Age in the Saronic Gulf boasts at least three pottery production centers, at Kontopigado, Attica, on the north part of the island of Aegina and in northeast Corinthia. All three produce a similar range of goods and although each has a different set of production practices, certain technological information was shared. Focusing on the painted fineware pottery it is evident that all three centers decorated pots with dark-on-light motifs using either red or black paint....
Paisajes agrarios en la montaña costera del reino de Granada (2015)
En la misma costa del reino de Granada, situada al sur de la Península Ibérica, existen unos asentamientos conformados en época andalusí en los que la agricultura tiene unas características específicas. Ha de tenerse en cuenta que las condiciones geomorfológicas y climáticas no favorecen especialmente la creación de paisajes agrarios. Sin embargo, la disponibilidad de agua, que no siempre se concentra en un único punto, sino que se distribuye por todo el conjunto territorial, permite que haya...
The Palaeoenvironmental Impacts of Neolithic Colonization: Assessing Recent Palynological Data from the Mediterranean Islands (2017)
The Mediterranean islands were colonized sporadically ~12–4.5 kbp by agropastoralists practicing mixed cereal, pulse, and fruit farming augmented by husbandry of ovicaprids, pig, and cattle. While the timing of these colonization events is relatively well-understood, the palaeonenvironmental impacts of the introduction of this Neolithic package are not, particularly in terms of relative uniformity or variability. Here, we collate the available radiometrically-anchored palynological data for the...
Palaeolithic dogs in Europe and Siberia (2015)
Our group has demonstrated, on the basis of detailed morphometric analyses, the antiquity of the domestication of the wolf. The dog is the first domesticated animal and its origin can be traced to the Upper Palaeolithic. Two canid morphotypes can be distinguished in Pleistocene Eurasian sites dating from before and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM): a morphotype that is similar to extant wolves, described by us as Pleistocene wolves, and a morphotype distinct from wolves; relative to wolves,...
A Paleoclimate model of Neanderthal landscape-use during the last interglacial (2016)
Obstacles to our understanding of Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) land-use patterns during the Last Interglacial (130kya-116kya, Marine Isotope Stage 5e) include not only the scarcity of sites in Europe but also a lack of knowing what the landscape may have looked like during this time. This research explores the influence of climate and seasonal variability on Neanderthal land-use. Recently developed global climate models are capable of simulating past climate variables (e.g., precipitation...
Paleoethnographic and chronostratigraphic perspectives on the Aurignacian of the Vézère Valley : Abri Castanet, Abri Blanchard, Abri Cellier (2015)
New excavations at three historically important Vézère Valley sites provide insight into the spatial organization of Early Aurignacian campsites and the nature of the late Pleistocene landscapes surrounding them. These excavations provide new and robust data on fire-use, activity areas and the context of the production and use of symbolic materials (graphic imagery and personal ornaments) among early modern humans in SW Europe. Molecular filtration dates raise new questions about the chronology...