Europe (Geographic Keyword)
901-925 (1,217 Records)
PXRF Analysis of the Pylos Linear B Tablets In 2015 and 2016 I analyzed all of the Mycenaean Linear B clay tablets and sealings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos for their chemical composition using a portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer. Sealings were used on containers of oil, wine, etc., and on baskets of tablets. Leaf-shaped tablets usually contain one entry or line of information. Page-shaped tablets contain several entries of related information. There are questions that these...
The Queen of Heaven in Iron Age Greece: Analyzing Religious Ideology and Symbolism on Multiple Scales (2015)
In this paper, I approach religion and ideology in the archaeological record through an analysis of iconographic symbols, one that centres on the dialectic between longstanding meanings of symbols as they are transmitted across space and time and the local social, political, and intellectual contexts in which they appear. I situate my analysis within recent models from cultural evolutionary psychology, which see religion, along with its attendant rituals and symbolisms, as an adaptive mechanism...
A question of place: economies and intimacies in early Sweden’s smallest upland communities. (2016)
Can we understand the connections between the state, farming economies, and the lived experience of smallholders in past societies? Using archaeological examples from the smallest smallholdings – crofts on marginal lands in northern Europe – the view of land as a rare, precious, and highly managed resource is examined. Despite the still-pervasive materialist notion that smallholders are passive mechanisms with shortsighted, self-defeating land management strategies, anthropologists have...
Rabbit remains analysis in the Upper Paleolithic in Portugal (2015)
Ongoing excavations and research at the cave site of Lapa do Picareiro in the Estremadura region of Portugal have recovered a large number of faunal remains, including thousands of rabbit bones. These remains have yielded new data and insight on human exploitation of small prey during the Upper Paleolithic. This poster focuses on the spatial and temporal distribution of rabbit remains within the cave and the taphonomic processes acting on these bones. The work builds upon previous research using...
Raising the Ground, Building a Mound: Bronze Age ‘Barrowscapes’ in Southern Britain (2017)
The prehistoric record of Britain is punctuated by episodes of monumental building, with the Early Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age being particular cases in point. Yet the Neolithic megalithic monuments and long barrows are quite different forms of funerary and ritual architecture compared to the succeeding Bronze Age barrow traditions. The former could be continuously accessed and activated until their final blocking. On the other hand, once a mound was erected over a Bronze Age grave, that...
Rapid climate change and demographic decline at the end of the Irish Bronze Age (2016)
The accumulation of large 14C data-sets over recent decades provides archaeologists with a substantial resource which has only recently begun to be systematically explored. Such data-sets offer the potential to explore temporal variations in the intensity of past human activity at a range of geographical scales, although the ‘reading’ of such data is far from unproblematic. One area of clear potential is the relationship between patterning evident in 14C and palaeoclimate data-sets. In this...
The rapid generation and visualization of 3D timelapse reconstructions of the excavation at the Paleolithic site Arma Veirana in Italy. (2017)
Arma Veirana is a Middle/Upper Paleolithic cave site of the Maritime Alps of Liguria, Italy, which has the potential to offer insight into the interaction between Modern Humans and the Neandertals. Preliminary excavations have shown a continuous occupation between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic time periods, yet the complexity of the cave morphology and geology have made it difficult to isolate erosion as well as environmental and non-natural factors to understand the full image of hominin...
Raw Material Variability in Levallois Flake Manufacture (1985)
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.
(Re)Articulating Ancient Lives: Diet and Movement in Late Bronze Age Societies in the South Caucasus (2015)
The sudden appearance of hilltop citadels and vast cemeteries on the Late Bronze Age landscape of the South Caucasus suggests that it was a period of dynamic socio-political transformation as society shifted from highly mobile agropastoralism to a more settled lifestyle revolving around fortresses. Yet, within the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia, there is little archaeological evidence of domestic architecture and activities, throwing into question people’s residential and subsistence practices....
Re-casting from scrap: The role of Ayia Irini in Bronze Age Aegean metallurgy (2016)
Metallurgy is considered key in understanding the prominence of Ayia Irini during the Bronze Age in the Aegean Sea. Over the course of the Bronze Age, metal production and circulation flourish, with Attica and the western Cyclades considered primary ore sources, with their importance fluctuating within this period. The role of Ayia Irini, located in the center of this metal-bearing zone and with extensive evidence for local metallurgical activities, remains to be clarified. A new project by the...
Re-evaluating the evidence for systematic exploitation of mammoth during the European Middle Palaeolithic. (2015)
The recurrent presence of mammoth, elephant and rhinoceros at Middle Palaeolithic sites, together with Neanderthal isotopes signalling meat as a prominent protein source, have been used to argue for a central role of these species in Neanderthal subsistence. Key to this model are the bone heap horizons from La Cotte de St Brelade (CSB, Jersey), previously interpreted as game drive debris resulting from systematic Neanderthal hunting. However, this hypothesis has never been rigorously tested....
A Re-examination of Magdalenian Social Organization Ten Years Later (2015)
A decade ago this author completed a synthesis of information about the circulation of exotic lithic raw materials, items of personal ornamentation, and portable decorated objects across western Europe during the Magdalenian ca. 17,000 to 12,000 B.P. Tests of hypotheses about the relationship between population density and visual display suggested that population density was probably not the sole driving force behind the types and intensities of visual displays used by generations of Magdalenian...
Re-use and Recycle: the various lives of prehistoric monuments (2015)
There are innumerable examples throughout prehistory (and history) of ancient monuments repurposed for a variety of reasons, such as the legitimation of power, land ownership and ancestry, among others. Today, many people, in particular Neo-Pagans, attempt to identify with past peoples and to incorporate ancient sites into their modern day religious beliefs. Although not inherently bad, interpretations of ancient sites through a Neo-Pagan lens tend to gloss over archaeological evidence and...
Re-worked Artifacts and Models of Raw Material Exploitation as Indicators for Settlement Duration on Middle Palaeolithic Sites in the Highlands of Central Europe (2017)
Short-term settlement of Middle Palaeolithic hunters leaves a specific tool kit on an archaeological site. In spite of this well known fact, in some cases, concerning the duration of stay of groups of Neanderthals, mere techno-typological analysis of inventories seems insufficient. Analysis of raw materials exploitation, combined with information about long use, or re-working of certain artifacts appears to be helpful. On most sites from the Middle Palaeolithic era, archaeological data,...
Reading the Landscape: a model of environmental legibility for assessing hominid dispersals during the Late Pleistocene. (2016)
The ability of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) to successfully navigate complex topographies and variable environments is hypothesized to have been a key adaptation for the long term success of our species, in comparison to other hominid groups. Additionally, the structure of the environment through which human dispersals occurred is arguably important to our understanding of the speed and scale at which population movements occurred. This paper demonstrates a new methodology for quantifying...
Recent Excavations and Research on Lithic Technology of the Swabian Aurignacian (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Examining Spatial-Temporal Variation in the Lithic Technology of the Early Upper Paleolithic" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Swabian Aurignacian goes back to fieldwork in the 1880s in Bockstein Cave in the Lone Valley. Subsequent generations of archaeologists have excavated well-known sites including Hohlenstein-Stadel and Vogelherd in the Lone Valley and Geißenklösterle, Hohle Fels, and Sirgenstein...
Recent Manifestions of Belief in Embodied Spiritual Power in the Western World (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. When considering the claim that it has long been common for people to attribute spiritual power to certain body parts and bodily substances of humans and nonhuman animals and incorporate them into their religious beliefs and...
Reconnaissance of a Greek Mountain City (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.
Reconstructing Anthropogenic Fire Regimes Using Multi-Disciplinary Methods: Preliminary Results from the Neolithic (7,700–4,500 cal. BP) in Eastern Spain (2017)
Charcoal is produced by the incomplete combustion of plant tissues and is used as an indicator of prehistoric fire activity in archaeological and paleoecological contexts. For millennia, humans have played an active role in shaping fire regimes, making the quantification and analysis of paleo-charcoal important for understanding long-term, social-ecological systems. Globally, prehistoric transitions to agriculture often coincide with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation...
Reconstructing naval and shipping connections through ceramic analysis from Isla del Rey, Menorca, Spain (2017)
Isla del Rey is a small off-shore islet, located on the Spanish Balearic Island of Menorca. The island is well known for a British Naval Hospital, constructed over multiple periods of British occupation in the 18th century. The hospital was used for 250 years by the British, French and Spanish, and abandoned in the second half of the 20th century. In 2013, the Boston University Field School in Archaeology and Heritage Management began investigating the building, which had not been previously...
Reconstructing Palaeolithic Prey Migration using Oxygen and Laser Ablation Strontium Isotope Measurements in tooth enamel (2017)
This presentation reports isotopic data collected for an investigation of food storage behaviours at the European Gravettian sites of Dolní Vĕstonice-Pavlov (Czech Republic) and Late Glacial site of Kostenki 11 (Russian Federation) dated between 30,000-20,000 years ago. Our methods use strontium isotope (high-resolution measurements by laser ablation) and oxygen isotope analysis to investigate seasonal mobility of the main prey species: woolly mammoth, reindeer, horse, fox and wolf. The isotopic...
Reconstructing Ships from Archaeological Ship Remains (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Digital Approaches in Nautical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Although it is often impossible to reconstruct ships from their archaeological remains with a fair degree of certainty, the interpretation of archaeological remains and the attempt to develop a plausible model of what an old ship might have been is an iterative learning exercise that can and should be public and participated. This...
Reconstructing Social Networks: Using 3D Scans to Infer Networks of Shared Manufacture Knowledge in Late Bronze Age Central Europe (2017)
This project is a case study using 3D scans of Late Bronze Age swords (~1200-800BC) to recreate community networks of knowledge. Measurements from 111 3D scans of bronze sword hilts were taken based on characteristics related to manufacture and style, including cross sections. Fourier analysis was used to represent the curvature of cross sections numerically. The measurements taken and the results of the Fourier analyses were then processed using principal component analysis to combine related...
Reconstruction of Genetic Diversity prior to Recolonization of Nearly Extinct Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex) using Ancient DNA (2017)
Human activity has driven several mammal species close to extinction. The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) suffered a severe bottleneck during the 19th century, when overhunting and habitat loss resulted in less than a hundred individuals surviving in the Italian Alps. Since then, the Alpine ibex has been successfully reintroduced across the Alpine ridge. Genetic analyses reveal a low genetic diversity in all extant populations, a common phenomenon in species that have gone through a recent bottleneck....
Recreating the Timing and Patterns of First Peopling with the Bayesian Approach (2017)
The timing and patterns of first peopling offer exciting opportunities to understand the legacies of colonization. In particular, islands are defined territories where colonization processes can be tracked through a rigorous synthesis of empirical data and a systematic application of Bayesian statistics. Iceland provides one of the world’s premier case studies for human interactions of pristine ecosystems because its colonization in the 9th century occurred relatively late in history....