Europe (Geographic Keyword)
826-850 (1,217 Records)
In this presentation, we make use of high-resolution paleogenetic data to better understand the peoples of the agropastoral Tripolye Culture. Verteba Cave is the only known site with associated Trypillian human remains. Here, we explore population origins and the Tripolye people’s relationship with local populations from the greater Carpathian and Dnieper regions, as well as possible connections to peoples from the Near East. Our motivation for this study derives from several unknowns....
The Paleolithic Domestic Dog Hypothesis (2015)
Using morphological and statistical techniques, Germonpré and colleagues have identified over 40 Paleolithic dogs, ranging from ~36,000 to 13,900 cal yrs BP. These unusual canids have a different dietary signature from wolves at the same sites according to isotopic analyses. MtDNA analyses by Thalmann and others show that at least Paleolithic dog had a unique mtDNA sequence. I propose that these canids represent early domesticated dogs which significantly improved human hunting success....
Palethnographic interpretation of the Gravettian site of La Picardie (Indre-et-Loire, France): a difficult path (2015)
After nine years of excavations (1998-2008) the site of La Picardie has delivered a major lithic collection (more than 13 000 artifacts piece plotted) chronologically related to the "Raysse burin" Gravettian (second phase of Middle Gravettian ca. 24 ky BP uncalibrated). Through the study of lithic material several major results have been brought to light (chronological attribution, description of a new retouched bladelet type, reconstruction of the flint knapping process for blade and bladelet...
A Paradigm Shift in Regional Archaeology? (2017)
The pace and scale of technological change in field- and lab-based applications in remote sensing, spatial sciences, and digital media (to name only a few) have fundamentally transformed archaeological research design and practice, especially on a regional level. But have these technological advances changed the discipline in ways that might constitute a paradigm shift? Have they resulted in new disciplinary priorities? Or do they simply represent newer, faster ways to pursue agendas not so...
Passage through a Palimpsest: Lower Magdalenian Lithic Manufacture and Maintenance Patterns in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, Spain (2016)
El Mirón cave, a major Upper Paleolithic residential site in Cantabria, Spain, has been the subject of long-term excavations led in part by Lawrence Straus. This presentation focuses on Level 17, a significant Lower Magdalenian deposit excavated in the cave’s outer vestibule. Level 17, which is a total of 33cm thick, was divided into 13 sublevels that were created using correlations made between depth measurements taken during the excavation in each square meter of the 9.5 square meter area....
Pastoral Categories for LandCover 6K (2017)
In this talk I will discuss the categories that will be used for the LandCover 6k Project to track pastoral land use over time. These new categories will be discussed in terms of the more traditional categories archaeologist and historians have used to talk about pastoralism. I will give examples of how these new categories can be used to track pastoral land use in Eurasia using archaeological data.
Patterns of Mobility during the Iron Age and Roman Periods in Apulia, Italy. (2016)
Archaeological and historical evidence indicates that the end of the Iron Age in southern Italy was characterized by political and social upheaval associated with a series of battles between the Roman Republic, indigenous Italian groups, Greece, and Carthage. The outcome for many local populations in southern Italy after the Samnite, Pyrrhic, and Punic wars was the subjugation of local populations, a decline in settlement size and density, and the confiscation of land by the expanding Roman...
A Peircean Analysis of Bucrania at Catalhoyuk (2015)
This paper attempts an analysis of the bucrania at Catalhoyuk from the perspective of Peirce's semiotic. The spatial situation of bucrania is one of entanglement. Peirce's triadic relation emphasizes the being-in-the-world-ness of the sign, and his synechism, the continuum of signs. Using this multidirectionality, the indexical nature of the skulls is explored, including the immediate contiguity of man and beast, the various interpretants and intersubjective effects of structural space, and the...
Perception et analyse des scènes dans l'art paléolithique européen (2017)
En art paléolithique, les "scènes" sont rares et leur identification repose le plus souvent sur la présence d'un acteur humain ou anthropomorphe. Paradoxalement, la thématique paléolithique compte moins de 5 % de figures humaines pour 95 % d'animaux. Cela signifie que la majorité des assemblages que l'on retrouve dans les grottes sont constitués d'images animales. Or dans nos cultures, l'image humaine est centrale et lorsque nous parlons de scène, nous recherchons intuitivement la référence à...
The Performativity of Measurement (2015)
This paper examines the archaeological traces of measurement in light of the roles of mensuration in quotidian rituals. Most archaeologies of performance emphasize public spectacle, coordinated by elites, usually taking place in highly visible ceremonies. While some instances of measurement do fall under this rubric, most occur with less fanfare. Nevertheless, even mundane acts of measuring may be accompanied by some amount of pageantry. Differences in context, furthermore, yield varying...
Perpetually on the move from the lowlands to the highlands in Northern Greece (2015)
"On the move" is a pan-Mediterranean project on transhumance implemented by the Mediterranean Consortium on Nature and Culture. As part of this project, I have produced a documentary that illustrates the life and experiences of transhumant pastoralists in Northern? Pindos, Greece. The seasonal movement of these people with their flocks from the valleys to the alpine meadows of Pindos, although a practice currently in decline, has for centuries been the backbone of the economy of Greece and many...
Personal Ornaments and the Middle Paleolithic Revolution (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition is a watershed. By the later Upper Paleolithic, all continents were occupied, all the world’s ecosystems were exploited, and all aspects of ethnographically observed hunter-gatherer culture the archaeological record can preserve are indeed found. Prior to about 100,000 years...
Petrographic and Chemical Analysis of Grinding Stones Collected in Shkodra, Albania (2017)
The Shkodra Archaeological Project (PASH) took place in the Shkodra region of northern Albania. Shkodra presents a wide variety of ecosystems and landscapes, which interact with each other, leading to variation in human settlement, social behaviors, and land use, from prehistory to modern times. During the project, fifty-nine grinding stones were collected from various sites. Preliminary analysis shows that they vary in size and type, are composed of different materials, and belong to different...
Petrography and chemistry live together in perfect harmony (2015)
Historically, pottery provenance studies in the Aegean were conducted by the application of chemical techniques for element determination. The underlying principle was that ceramics made with the same clay paste should exhibit lower chemical variability than those with different pastes. Although this principle has not changed over the years, pottery studies have undergone serious analytical and most importantly, methodological developments. The main reason for the methodological developments...
Phenotypic Perspectives on Biological Variation at Phaleron (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Bioarchaeology of the Phaleron Cemetery, Archaic Greece: Current Research and Insights" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Phaleron is an important site in the history of ancient Athens and preserves a unique record of life in the past. One of the more compelling aspects of the site is the range of mortuary treatments documented there, including multiple groupings of non-normative burials, a series of co-interments...
Phoenician Colonization of Nuragic Sardinia: A World-Systems Model of Periphery-Semiperiphery Interaction (2016)
The arrival of the Bronze Age (2300-1000 BC) ushered in many changes in the Mediterranean, including the emergence of the Nuragic culture on the island of Sardinia (Italy). The Nuragic culture takes its name from the nuraghi, the more than 7,000 dry-stone towers that dominate the landscape. The Nuragic population engaged in an extensive trade network within the Mediterranean throughout the Middle and Late Bronze Age (1700-1000 BC), trading with Mycenae, Cyprus, and mainland Italy. Contact with...
Photogrammetry at Lapa de Picareiro: 3D modeling of a Middle and Upper Paleolithic Cave Site (2016)
Archaeology as a practice is destructive thus once a site is excavated it is gone forever. Accurate and precise recording of spatial data is critical to preserving information. Higher resolution data collection may lead to better spatial analysis of the site. This endeavor improves with the continuing development of technology and methods of recording spatial data. Photogrammetry is a technology that has allowed researchers to accurately record spatial data on excavation, stratigraphy, features,...
Phytolith Analysis and Micromorphology of Neandertal Combustion Features at Roc de Marsal, SW France (2015)
Phytolith analysis can be used to investigate the relationship between hominins, plants, and environmental change. It has proven useful in understanding specific hominin behaviors (e.g., use of fire and fuel composition), and diachronic changes in plant species for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. The integration of phytolith analysis with soil micromorphology allows for an identification of the ways phytoliths were deposited in archaeological sites, and addresses both site formation...
Phytolith Analysis at Roc de Marsal, SW France (2016)
Phytolith analysis at Roc de Marsal, a Middle Paleolithic cave site, SW France, is used to investigate both environmental change and hominin behavior. Specifically, the aims include correlating phytolith types with the microenvironmental context of the site, and how these conditions changed diachronically. We also explore the pyrotechnological skills of Neanderthals at the site, broad patterns of plant acquisition and use, and spatial differentiation. Preliminary analysis of phytolith samples...
Picturing the Written, Read, and Spoken Prayers to Zell: Devotional Therapeutics for (In)Fertility and Motherhood at Mariazell (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mountains of the Austrian province of Styria, the Catholic pilgrimage shrine of Mariazell claimed many healing miracles during the later Middle Ages (ca. 1200–1550). Notably, many of these miracles address ailments of fertility and parenthood, including infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. Early sixteenth century visual culture of...
Pigs and Power Centres in Late Neolithic Britain (2015)
This paper explores the interplay between food provision, landscape and power centres in late Neolithic Britain. This period is characterised by iconic megalithic ceremonial complexes, the most famous of which is Stonehenge. These centres represent a new scale of labour mobilisation, not previously seen in Britain. Evidence for feasting, invariably focussing on pork, is rife is in the environs of these monuments, yet settlement evidence is generally sparse. It is likely that these feasting...
A Pilgrimage Lost and Found: Cultivation and the Cult of Saint Leo on Inishark, Co. Galway (2015)
Pilgrimage traditions on islands along the coast of Connemara in western Ireland provide a valuable context for exploring the relationship between ritual practice, identity, and political economic change from a long-term perspective. The island of Inishark, Co. Galway, contains a number of ritual remains dating from the 9th-13th centuries, including a church, a holy well, cross-slabs, one or more burial grounds, as well as a number of penitential stone platforms known as leachta. Islanders in...
Pilgrims and Pebbles: The Taskscape of Veneration on Inishark, Co. Galway (2017)
This paper explores how a relational approach centered on the concept of taskscape could reinvigorate analyses of how pilgrimages create, sustain, or transform human-environment relations. Medieval and modern traditions of pilgrimage in Ireland are renowned for their engagement with ‘natural’ places and objects, such as mountains, springs, and stones. Some take this focus as evidence of an animistic pre-Christian heritage, but few have questioned how such practices structured peoples’ ideas and...
PINTURA RUPESTRE POSTPALEOLITICA DE LAS SOCIEDADES COMPLEJAS EN EL SUR DE LA PENINSULA IBERICA (2015)
El arte rupestre de la Prehistoria Reciente de la Península Ibérica ofrece un conjunto de datos de importante relevancia para estudiar el aparato simbólico de las sociedades complejas y sus implicaciones territoriales. Su amplia distribución también ofrece la oportunidad de discutir sobre la ocupación del territorio desde la perspectiva de la Arqueología del Paisaje. El espacio se convierte en un eje estructural en el que también es posible plantear las alternativas socio-económicas de las...
Pirates of the North Sea? The Viking ship as political space (2015)
The contextualised meaning of specifically ‘Viking’ identities, in relation to the general population of early medieval Scandinavia, is a topic of perennial debate. Who were the Viking raiders, how did they see themselves, and how did others see them? How did our artificial construct of ‘the Viking Age’ actually begin? A key concept in unravelling these problems may be what the Vikings’ much later successors, the pirates of the so-called Golden Age, called "the new government of the ship". Over...