State of Israel (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
626-650 (1,200 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kenan Tepe, Turkey, is a multi-period archaeological site that was occupied during the Ubaid period (5000–4000 BCE), the Late Chalcolithic (3360–3020 BCE), and early Bronze Age (3000–2800 BCE) (Parker and Cobb 2012). During each of these periods residents of Kenan Tepe conducted distinct burial practices. These burials included the remains of individuals...
Like a Lion, as a Man: Seals and Poetry in Minoan Crete (2018)
This paper investigates how parallels were drawn between lions and human in Bronze Age Crete, and how this parallelism potentially developed concurrently through material culture worn on the human body and oral narrative. I argue that the unique qualities of seal stones, namely their close association with human identity and their physical location on the human body, positioned them to be potent venues for asserting parallels between man and beast. I begin in the late Early Bronze Age, with a...
Linking land use patterns to spatial logistics, institutional complexity and terrain constrains in farming-herding interaction. A theory-building Agent-Based approach. (2017)
The relation between the main variants of pre-industrial economic production in arid Eurasia, from nomadic pastoralism to irrigated agriculture, is known to have been unstable, with abundant examples of conflict and shifting patterns of land use right up to contemporary times. We present the latest development of a six-year effort, within the SimulPast project, in experimenting and generating theory that could help explain the different land use patterns. Using Agent-Based simulation models, we...
Linking Multiple Scales in Time and Space: Small Worlds and World-Systems Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This contribution proposes that world-systems analysis could benefit from greater consideration of a local-scale, or “small world,” perspective. These maritime and terrestrial small worlds, defined by face-to-face interaction and often...
Lithic Analysis of GaJj17: a Middle Stone Age Locality in Koobi Fora, northern Kenya (2017)
The Koobi Fora region in eastern Turkana, northern Kenya, is known for its preservation of Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossils. However very little is known about the Middle Stone Age (MSA) from this region. Fossil and genetic evidence suggest modern humans originated in eastern Africa ~200ka, adding to the significance of this time period and region. In 2016, we excavated site GaJj17, an MSA site located in Area 104 of Koobi Fora. Here we present lithic analysis of recovered in situ and surface...
Lithic artifact production at the Large-scale Pharaonic chert quarries of Wadi el-Sheikh, Egypt (2017)
Recent research into quarrying and lithic production in Wadi el-Sheikh, Egypt by the University of Vienna has identified activities extending from the Middle Paleolithic to modern times. These include Middle Paleolithic use of surface materials, Neolithic chert quarrying, Pharaonic gypsum extraction, quarrying and production of groundstone, ochre collection, and small-scale independent modern salt quarrying. However, the most striking activities are the large-scale Pharaonic period chert...
The lithic industries from Area C: typo-technological characteristics (2017)
The lithic assemblages from Area C derive from a thick section composed reworked terra rossa soil of dark brown to reddish brown, loose clay to silty clay loam with abundant biogenic and anthropogenic materials subdivided into eight units. The depositional sequence of the units is in a chronological order as shown by radiocarbon and U-Th dates (Hershkovitz et al., 2015). A typotechnological analysis of the all units suggest a shift in industries though the sequence. Unit 2-3 are small...
Lithic Procurement at a Levantine Desert Refugium during the Middle Pleistocene (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq Basin, Jordan have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date to the late Middle Pleistocene (300-220kya; 130-120kya). A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly arid and warm conditions in the region, similar to those of the present. Hominins living under these...
Lithic Raw Material Procurement and Mobility in a Geological Diversed Environmental Setting in Prehistoric Eastern Sicily (2018)
The geological constitution of Sicily is enough complex as the characteristics of the geological units are consequences of the tectonic compression that happened between the beginning of Miocene and the beginning of the Pliocene. Three structural units are basically distinguished: 1. To the north, in the western side (towards Palermo) there is prevalence of carbonatic reliefs while in the oriental side (Nebrodi Mounts and Peloritani Mounts) there are metamorphic and terrigenous deposits 2. the...
Lithic Taphonomy and Digital Hydrogeologic Models: A GIS Based Approach to Understanding the Formational History of Surface Assemblages (2018)
Surface assemblages play an important role in understanding human behavior. However, modern erosional processes—specifically flowing water—can limit the behavioral inferences that can be gained from surface assemblages by transporting materials from their original discard sites. The influence of these processes can be observed in the size distribution and condition of surface lithic assemblages. The topography and geomorphology of the landscape heavily dictates the degree to which fluvial...
Lithic Technology and Reduction Strategies at Shishan Marsh 1 (2017)
The 2013-15 excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 have revealed an impressive array of stone tools at this Middle Pleistocene Oasis. More than 7000 stone tools including: handaxes, scrapers, modified and utilized flakes, burins, Levallois points and flakes, cores, small pebble tools and debitage associated with tool manufacture and refurbishing, have been analyzed. Analysis was conducted on all tools and debitage using the lithic attribute analysis method, and low and high power magnification to...
Lithics and Learning: Communities of Practice at Kharaneh IV (2018)
Flintknappers during the Levantine Epipaleolithic were proficient at microlith production, these skills were learned and passed down from one flintknapping generation to another as no one is born with the innate ability to flintknap. By utilizing practice theory and a chaîne opératoire approach to the Epipaleolithic chipped stone tool reduction sequences of narrow-nosed cores at Kharaneh IV, I strive to identify how individuals learned to flintknap, from raw material acquisition to the...
Littoral Society and the Heterotopic Fabric of Early Medieval ports (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ports have long been recognized as nodes within grand skeins of connectivity, the thresholds over which goods and ideas move into a wider hinterland. But how, and to what extent, do ports function as their own world, and what can we say about littoral society and the contextual relationship of sea-adjacent peoples...
Lived Space of Displaced People: A Comparative Approach to Contested Spaces in Iron Age Northern Mesopotamia and Modern Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology grapples with the materiality of past subjects’ perception and organization of space, as drawn from objects, landscapes, architecture, and pictorial or textual representations. Generally what emerges from these data is a dominant or normative conceptualization of space. However, space is not merely the...
Livestock Economy and the Emergence of Urbanism in Central Italy during the Iron Age and Archaic Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses subsistence specialization, livestock mobility, and husbandry strategies at Gabii during the eighth–fifth centuries BCE, a time of transition to state-level, urbanized political systems. The site of Gabii is one of several emerging cities in the Lower Tiber Valley that grew along a similar trajectory, expanding from dispersed hut...
The Living Archive of Çatalhöyük (LAC): Providing Big Data Laboratories as Open Environments for Archaeological Research (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeology data are stored in ways that reflect the strategies of research while conventional data repositories tend to freeze the original databases within their initial storage logic. In contrast, the interpretation of primary evidence changes during a project's lifecycle, and it becomes difficult for later researchers with different research questions,...
Living with the Dead: Burial Practice at Kenan Tepe, Turkey, During the Ubaid Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Due to the generosity of Dr. Bradley Parker I had the opportunity to analyse the Ubaid Period burials from Kenan Tepe, Turkey. These burials provide a glimpse into the social dynamics and ritual practice of Kenan Tepe’s Ubaid Period community. The burials are divided into two groups: infants buried in courtyards...
Living with the Dead: Plastered Skulls and ‘Continuing Bonds’ (2017)
This paper considers the phenomenon of plastered skulls from the Neolithic of the Middle East, exploring a re-interpretation of evidence. Plastered skulls result from the burial and later retrieval of crania, onto which is sculpted a face using plaster. These were then used and displayed within household contexts. Rather than traditional interpretations which revolve around status and hierarchy or social cohesion, this paper suggests a reinterpretation based on the modern bereavement theory of...
Local Actions and Long-Distance Interactions: Challenging the Paradigm for the Emergence of Social Complexity on Cyprus during the Bronze Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Complex social networks or social complexity emerges from the actions and interactions of people as they pass information, goods and services. During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, particularly on the island of Cyprus, it has been hypothesized that two actions and interactions are particularly important for...
Local Organization in Imperial Settings: Evidence from Late Antique and Middle Islamic Dhiban, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the many intellectual legacies of Richard Redding’s work is his exploration of how local communities made provisioning decisions to meet both their own local needs and demands by political authorities. This paper examines these themes among inhabitants of ancient Dhiban, Jordan during the Late...
Localizing the Imperial Grain Economy in Mamluk Syria: Expressions of Village-Level Initiatives in 14th-Century Transjordan (2017)
How did the medieval Islamic state realize its objectives in natural resource management? How can we distinguish the "hand of the state" from that of local initiatives in land use? This paper is an attempt to evaluate planting and watering strategies, differentiating imperial agro-policies from local practice at the village level. The focus is the intensification and diversification of grain production in 14th century Syria. Grain fields were the most valuable of the agrarian iqṭaʿāt (grants of...
The Location for the Origin of Domesticated Sorghum in Africa: A Brief Review of Some Cultures in the Sahara, Nile, and Sahel (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent analyses have established the location for the origin of domesticated sorghum occurring in the far eastern Sahel of Sudan during the fourth millennium BC associated with the Late Neolithic Butana Group. For over a half century, sorghum domestication has been hypothesized as occurring somewhere in the Sahelian...
A Long Walk from Town: Early 19th Century Landuse in the Territory of Bova (2018)
In the early 1800s the majority of Bova's citizens live in their hilltop town while holding small plots of land in multiple locations, some quite a distance from the town itself. Archival records from notaries, diaries, and cadastral holdings paint a picture of an independent community of low income citizens plying their trades and rather detached from the larger economic systems around them. Despite the abundance of natural resources available in the landscape, the community was not fully...
Long-Distance Obsidian Trade from Multiple Island Sources to Prehistoric Tuscany, Italy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian tools and flakes are regularly found at prehistoric sites in Tuscany, indicating long-distance trade and distribution during the Neolithic through Bronze Age periods (ca. 6000-1000 BC). Some 436 artifacts from six archaeological sites in Florence, Siena, and Grosseto, some 300 km from the nearest geological obsidian source, were tested with a...
Long-distance trade in Late Antique Italy: Evidence from the Bova Marina Archaeological Project (2018)
It is well known that the state plays a major role in generating and structuring economic flows in complex societies. What happens, though, when a state's ability to do this is severely reduced? One example to consider is the Roman/Byzantine state in Late Antiquity. Using survey evidence from the Bova Marina Archaeological Project, changes in the presence of long-distance imports in the ceramic assemblage show a drastic shrinkage of the scope of trade, while other economic changes were less...