Faroe Islands (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
776-798 (798 Records)
Throughout prehistory, dogs and humans have sometimes been interred together in the same grave, in different locations in the world. This practice raises the question of why this practice was so prevalent. Circumstances leading to this practice were variable, but its consistency suggests an underlying factor in common. Using one of the earliest known cases as a point of departure, Bonn-Oberkassel from Germany, we suggest that this underlying factor in common is that dogs and people were regarded...
When Lithics Hit Bones: Evaluating the Potential of a Multifaceted Experimental Protocol to Illuminate Middle Palaeolithic Weapon Technology (2017)
Recent zooarchaeological and isotope analyses have largely settled the debate surrounding Neanderthal hunting capacity. The vast numbers of Middle Palaeolithic sites containing the butchered remains of large ungulates demonstrates the ability to obtain and, often, highly process these carcasses. Nevertheless, evidence for the effectiveness and ubiquity of Neanderthal hunting technology, specifically composite hafted tools, has not been illustrated across either their entire spatial or temporal...
Where Are the Brewers? Feasting and Operational Chains in Anglo-Saxon England (2018)
The importance of alcohol in the landscape of feasting has been well documented across cultures, and early medieval Europe is no exception. The mead-hall in Anglo-Saxon Britain functioned as a location where social bonds were strengthened both vertically and horizontally; Vikings in Iceland relied on barley beer to demonstrate the power and generosity of chieftains. Production of alcohol in the large quantities required for feasting necessitates some degree of specialization, but to what degree...
‘Where Individuals Are Nameless and Unknown’: Osteobiography Reveals the ‘Big Man’, the Ritualist, the Heiress, and the Priest (2017)
In 1957, Christopher Hawkes (of the ladder of inference renown) wrote: "…. the most scientific and therefore the best, because the purest, kind of archaeology is the prehistoric kind, where individuals are nameless and unknown, and so cannot disturb our studies by throwing any of their proud and angry dust in our eyes."1 Because the social identity of the deceased cannot be identified from human remains without analysis, osteobiography, the bioarchaeological reconstruction of the lives and...
Where They Fight: Apsáalooke Spirituality on the Battlefield (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Hidden Battlefields: Power, Memory, and Preservation of Sites of Armed Conflict" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. By the mid-19th century, waves of settlers along the Overland Trail invaded Indigenous North Americans’ traditional homelands and hunting grounds. This pushed people like the Sioux westward as colonists threatened game, timber, water, and other resources. The U.S. called for a council resulting...
White bones in black caves: cave burials and social memory (2017)
White bones in black caves: cave burials and social memory Caves have always been part of contemporary, living landscapes: as such, they have acted not only as natural, cultural, social, economic and ritual places, but also as political locales. One of the most recent, and contested, examples of this phenomenon in Slovenia is the use of karstic shafts as sites of post-war executions between May 1945 and January 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Such sites of mass executions are...
Who Holds Your Light? Revealing relationships through a forensic approach to Upper Paleolithic cave art (2017)
The study of finger flutings, lines drawn with fingers in the soft surfaces of cave walls and ceilings, allows for the identification of unique individuals within a cave’s context. In early years of research we were able to identify men, women, and children in some of the 15 caves which have been studied. These led to discoveries as to which individuals which were often found together in their movement through the caves. The intimacy of cave spaces with artists working side by side, sometimes in...
Will your childhood years kill you earlier? A study exploring the relationship between height, stress and age at death. (2017)
Could shorter legs mean premature death? Stature is a highly complex trait which seems to be influenced by many different factors. To name a few; genetics, social status, through to environment, diet or health issues. However, it has been observed for some time that taller people live longer. For the purpose of current research, data from 10 multi-period sites were collected. The main focus of project is to explore the correlations between height and age-at-death. Additional to this, as it is...
William’s Patent "Cleaner" Ammunition: Enigmatic Bullets from the American Civil War (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "The Archaeology of Arms: New Analytical Approaches", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Williams Patent bullets (types I, II, and III) are the second-most common bullet type found on American Civil War military sites. Between December 1861 and January 1864, when the Army cancelled manufacturing contracts, an estimated 102,500,000 Williams Patent Bullets had been purchased by the United States Army. Despite their...
Winds of Change – Funerary practices at the dawn of Late Bronze Age in Southeast Hungary (2017)
The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. This transition is traditionally seen as a short, war-ridden horizon reflecting the arrival of the Tumulus culture population. Recent research, however, emphasizes the complexity of these transformations, and suggests a longer, less abrupt transition, in which existing Middle Bronze Age populations play a significant role in the...
Witches and Aliens: How an Archaeologist Inspired Two New Religious Movements (2017)
Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray was a major figure in the creation of professional archaeology in the United Kingdom, President of the Folklore Society, and advocate for women’s rights in higher education. However, another major part of her legacy was the mainstream acceptance of the concept of the "witch-cult," a hidden ancient religion dating back to the Pleistocene but continuing until at least the seventeenth century when it was persecuted by witch-hunters. Historians have...
Wizards, Dragons and Giants: Creating Motte Castles in an English Landscape (2017)
Medieval motte castles are large flat-topped earth and stone mounds, often coupled with an enclosure or bailey, and represent a characteristic component of the British landscape. Mottes often dominate their immediate surroundings, with many remaining visually impressive monuments to this day. Although their creation often involved substantial landscape change, it is becoming increasingly clear that continuity could also be maintained. Many mottes were placed at points in the landscape with...
Women in small-scale societies: how demographic archaeology can contribute to gender archaeology (2017)
Demography has re-emerged as a growing research area within archaeology. Recent studies have refined archaeological demographic methods and developed models which cite demographic change as a key variable in explaining social and artefactual change. However, one aspect which has not been explicitly acknowledged is how archaeological demography is intrinsically concerned with women. In this paper I explain the importance of women to the demographic regimes of small-scale societies and discuss...
The Wood Age? The significance of wood usage in Pre-lron Age North-Western Europe (1982)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
Words for domestic animals used as metaphors in coastal naming (2017)
Place-names are important sources to understand and reimagine past conceptions of the landscape. Toponyms map animal lives on to the landscape. In some cases, however, words for animals – wild as well as domestic – are used as metaphors. In some names denoting sunken rocks along the Norwegian coast, e.g. Sugga (’sow’), Oksa (‘bull’), Hesten (’horse’), Porthunden (‘watchdog’), the words either refer to the shape or sound of the locations, or to some special circumstances, e.g. dangerous rocks in...
Working on the Margins of the Modern World and Within Archaeology: The Historical Archaeology of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentith-Century Ireland (2017)
In Ireland, historical, post-medieval, or modern world archaeology as a discipline is located on the margins. The time period and material comprising our research is argued by many to be relevant only to the pursuits of historians and folk studies. In this paper I discuss the importance and relevance of a discipline on the margins and the study of Ireland’s impoverished class during the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This marks one of the most dynamic periods in Ireland’s...
World prehistories and the development of a global archaeological narrative (2017)
The origins of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline lie in the New Learning of the 16th and 17th centuries and derive from a number of sources: antiquarian researches in northwest Europe; European exploration and the encounter with non-European peoples; and speculative accounts of human origins and development. It was only in the 19th century that these strands first began to be woven together to create a global narrative of human prehistory. Such a narrative raises a number of problematic...
Worn Down: Dental Attrition and Dietary Differences at an Early Medieval Settlement in Central Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval diets may have differed in preparation rather than composition, with certain classes, genders, or age groups eating more abrasive and/or more cariogenic preparations of the same foods (Beranová 2007; Esclassan et al. 2015). This study is a bioarchaeological examination of dental attrition at the 9-11th century site complex of Libice nad Cidlinou in...
Your Horse Is a Donkey! Identifying Domesticated Equids Using ZooMS (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) play essential roles in human culture and economy. Unlike most other domesticates, horses and donkeys can produce hybrids. Mules, offspring of female horses and male donkeys, have been found in archaeological contexts across the Old World. Written sources describe the choice of horse, donkey, or mule as...
Zooarchaeological Data as a Building Block for Knowledge Building in the Past (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological data is often looked at for what it can tell archaeologists about those utilizing the specimens in the past. However, these specimens (data) provided information to those utilizing the fauna themselves. In the maritime environment, the information transmitted by the fauna extracted was often one of the only sources of information available to...
Zooarchaeology of Marginality: An Investigation of Site Abandonment in Hegranes, North Iceland (2018)
The settlement of Iceland, a previously uninhabited landscape, began a series of human-induced environmental changes that have had lasting effects on not just the land but on social organization as well. As land claims were made for household farms, hierarchy developed and some were pushed to settle on the margins. In Hegranes, a region in Skagafjörður, northern Iceland, the sites that are on the margins are often much smaller than the others and may not have been farms at all but rather...
Zooarchaeology, Shifting Baselines and a Rapidly Changing Climate (2018)
Anthropogenic climate change will both aggravate existing and create new situations in which local communities encounter the power of larger networks looking to either exploit or manage resources in their area. This paper will discuss a variety of ways in which zooarchaeological data investigated in a historical ecological mode might be useful in such circumstances. Zooarchaeology creates a deep context for human and animal dynamics. It investigates anthropogenic as well as environmental...
Zoom skull a (2002)
HST cattle skull pictures