Republic of Albania (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
426-450 (842 Records)
Spatial analysis of landuse data from Napoleonic era Cadastral records provides a window into the social and economic status of individuals in the town of Bova (Calabria, Italy) during the Post-Medieval period. Using GIS to explore the cadastral records and archaeological evidence from field survey conducted by the Bova Marina Archaeological Project, this study explores how economic strategies and social relations in this community located in the foothills of the Aspromonte is reflected in the...
Landscape and Plant Use in High Albania: New Results from the Late Neolithic to Iron Age at Gajtan and Zagorës (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2013 – 2015, the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH) conducted a regional surface survey and targeted excavation at several settlement and tumulus sites in the Shkodër province of northern Albania. Two of these settlement sites, Gajtan and Zagorës, are fortified hilltop sites that preserved intact deposits with well-preserved macrobotanical remains...
Landscape reconstruction at the Black Sea cost (2017)
Landscapes are subject to ongoing geological transformation which change, hide or even destroy for their part anthropogenic remains. The reconstruction of historic landscapes as well as the causes of their changes is subject of geoarchaeology. A noteworthy example for a reconstruction of the historical landscape of a whole region is demonstrated by an interdisciplinary and international project on the South Russian Taman peninsula in the North Pontus. The new insights that were made by...
Landscapes of Acquisition and Mobility: Sourcing Raw Lithic Materials and Their Distribution in Central Cyprus (2018)
Making use of several long-term survey projects in central Cyprus, the connection between chert sources, find spots and sites are analyzed using chemical and spatial analyses to examine the relationship between mobility and community structure. The Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of some 150 samples shows that distinct types of chert were preferred, primarily Lefkara translucents. Spatial analyses investigate the associations between particular chert outcrops, small lithic scatters and larger...
The Langobards in Italy: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of the Seventh-Century A.D. Necropolis of Sovizzo in Vicenza, Italy (2017)
The Romans and Byzantines in Veneto (northeast Italy), experienced invasions from a Germanic tribal group, the Langobards, in AD 567, with occupations lasting until the 8th century AD; however, Langobard diet and health are largely unknown during this period of transition. Information on Langobard diet and health is pertinent to understanding the political, economic, and social changes that occurred during the Langobard arrival and subsequent occupation. To address these questions, we focused on...
Lapa do Picareiro and the Gravettian-Solutrean Transition: Refining the Chronology of the Solutrean Techno-complex in Western Iberia. (2017)
The Solutrean techno-complex, traditionally divided into three broad temporal phases, has been an area of great interest for those studying human adaptations during the Upper Paleolithic, specifically the Last Glacial Maximum. Distinguishing more discrete phases of the Solutrean period is hampered by the lack of adequate radiocarbon dates from secured contexts. Currently, Solutrean stratigraphic information relies mostly on older excavations that produced lower resolution data. This paper...
Large-scale Socioecological Transformation: The Effects of Subsistence Change on Holocene Vegetation Across Europe (2018)
During the early and middle Holocene, the introduction of agropastoral subsistence to Europe resulted in significant social and economic transformations. For decades, researchers have recognized that early agricultural communities had an ecological impact on the surrounding landscapes. As a whole, paleoecological records indicate increases in charcoal abundance and changes in vegetation communities’ distribution or diversity related to Neolithic agricultural land clearing, burning, or pastoral...
The Last Great Escape: Recovery of 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers, an American World War II Bombardier Imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW Camp (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many recoveries, locating 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers required research, persistence, and good old-fashioned luck. While imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW camp in German-occupied Poland, complications from an injury sent Sconiers to a hospital in a neighboring town—where he died. His burial occurred in...
Late Antiquity Revealed: Assessing Urban Change at Roman Nedinum in Northern Dalmatia, Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015, the Nadin-Gradina Archaeological Project (NGAP) began as a collaborative effort between the University of Zadar and University of Maine to unravel the long-term record of urban change in the Ravni Kotari region of northern Dalmatia, with a primary focus on the Nadin-Gradina archaeological site. Since its inception, the NGAP has confirmed a 2,500-year...
Late Bronze Age in the North Caucasus – Shaping a new culture for a new millennium (2017)
After more than one millennium of mobile pastoral lifeways, the mid-2nd millennium BC witnessed the reappearance of village-based life in an area stretching from the Black Sea, across Caucasia to Anatolia and North Western Iran. Its manifestation is the emergence of stone-built dwellings clustered in small or middle-sized settlements. Concurrently, the transformation of the 3rd millennium BC mobile pastoralism into combined mountain agriculture allowed retaining a pastoral economy in spite of a...
Late Glacial to middle Holocene demographic dynamics in Iberia: a chronological modeling approach (2017)
This paper presents the preliminary results of the research project MULTI-SCALARDEM and our current work in the context of a new ERC supported project: PALEODEM. Both projects aim to reconstruct the population history of the Iberian Peninsula from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.16,000-8,000 cal BP), a time framework of major cultural and socio-economic adaptations to climatic and environmental change. For this presentation, we will focus on the analysis of the radiocarbon record...
The Late Introduction of Metals in Southern Italy: Studies from Sicily and Calabria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Metallurgy arrived quite late in Calabria, Sicily and Malta compared other regions, including the same Italian peninsula. Current hypotheses include an allogenous origin of metallurgy, brought by Aegean merchants, and an indigenous origin due to the presence of mines. The delicate state of many metals has prevented destructive analyses, but it has been...
Late Magdalenian Lithic Technology at Lapa do Picareiro, Central Portugal (2017)
Lapa do Picareiro, a cave located in Portuguese Estremadura, contains continuous deposits dated to the Late Pleistocene. As one of the highest elevation Upper Paleolithic sites currently known in Portugal, questions are raised about the function of the site during this time. The high resolution data sets generated from the ongoing excavation allow for various types of analysis to help shed light on a broader understanding of the site’s function. This poster presents a comprehensive analysis of...
Leapfrog Migration: Bumppo and Beyond (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. David Anthony and I coined the concept and term "Leapfrog Migration" for a graduate seminar at the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. We called its first iteration the "Natty Bumppo model" after the frontier scout hero of Cooper’s "Leatherstocking Tales." We used it to explain...
Least Cost Path Analysis of Maritime Routes in the Ancient Aegean (2018)
The Least Cost Path analysis in ArcGIS has been a critical tool in archaeological reconstructions of movement and connectivity, but until recently these analyses have been limited to land travel. From the Neolithic onwards, sea travel was an equally important mode of transportation in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean. In this study, I utilized the Least Cost Path tool in ArcGIS to model sea travel in the Aegean. Bathymetric data and speed and direction of local wind and currents were inputs in...
'Least Talked About Among Men?': the verbal and spatial rhetoric of women's roles in Classical Athens (ca.450-350BCE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I argue that comparing views derived from texts and material culture highlights the conscious manipulation of both media by their creators in order to communicate specific messages. I suggest that an awareness of this kind of manipulation has a vital role to play, not only in the interpretation of textual...
Les Cottés Sequence: A New Lens for Investigating the Cultural Changes Occurring during the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic Transition. (2017)
During the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, the replacement of Neanderthal populations by Anatomically Modern Human ones is concomitant of major cultural transformations. Progressively, human population incorporated new raw materials in their personal gear cumulating into an explosion of the cultural material diversity. Les Cottés in France preserves a detailed sequence with levels attributed to the late Mousterian, Chatelperronian, ProtoAurignacian and Early...
LiDAR data and the temporal trends in the frequency of hunter-gatherer sites in the northwest coast of Finland 10,000-2,000 calBP (2017)
Investigation of LiDAR visualizations has become a standard tool in archaeological site detection in Finland, as large part of the country has been LiDAR scanned. Because archaeologists alone do not have enough resources to thoroughly analyze these big data, part of the work has been crowd sourced. Thanks to active volunteers, not only the number of sites has increased, but we now have new types of sites, and sites in environmental contexts that have previously been ignored in archaeological...
Life and Death in Medieval San Giuliano (Lazio Province, Italy) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The medieval period in northern Lazio saw significant restructuring of social and economic relationships through *incastellamento, the process by which people chose or were forced to move onto fortified hilltops. Here, I present results from four seasons of mapping,...
Life history from human teeth microstructure: Methods for the analysis of hydroxyapatite from tooth cementum (2017)
Life-history events such as pregnancies, skeletal trauma, and renal disease can be estimated from growth layers of tooth cementum. Cementum is a mineralized tissue surrounding root of each human tooth consist of an inorganic calcium phosphate mineral approximated by hydroxyapatite (HA) and collagen. Several parameters have an influence on the calcium metabolism and result in a lack of available calcium at the mineralization front of tooth cementum. The year of occurrence of certain life-history...
The Life History of Early Celtic Vessels: An Experimental Approach towards Exploring the Inferential Limits of Interpreting Pottery Function (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the context of the BEFIM project ("Meanings and Functions of Mediterranean Imports in Early Central Europe") the life history of (drinking) vessels from the Early Celtic hillfort settlements of Heuneburg and Vix-Mont Lassoix was examined, studying the way of production and use. We set up an extensive experimental program of dozens of experiments to explore...
Life in Suleiman’s Army: Preliminary Investigations of Health in an Ottoman Cemetery Site (2016)
In recent years, analyses of human skeletal remains have significantly contributed to our understanding of the past. A cemetery collection of 160 skeletons from the 16th and 17th centuries excavated from the city center of Timişoara, Romania have provided a rare opportunity to study a brief, tumultuous time when the Ottoman Empire extended into Central Europe. The inhumations, representative of the Ottoman population that relocated into the fortified city center after Turkish expansion, provide...
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...
Liminal agents: exploring the social, ritual and cosmological aspects of fishhook manufacture in Middle Mesolithic coastal communities (8300-6300 BC) (2017)
This contribution aims to investigate the entanglement of environment, materiality, technology and cosmology in the Middle Mesolithic Stone-Age (8300-6300 cal. BC), of the North East Skagerrak area, Eastern Norway and Western Sweden, by focusing on the manufacture of bone-fishhooks. I argue that fishhooks are keys objects for exploring the world-views of Middle Mesolithic coastal groups. Fishhooks were linked with daily subsistence, invested with much labour, and their manufacture entwined with...
Lithic Adaptive Strategies of Early Modern Humans in Southwestern Iberia: New Data from Vale Boi’s Layer 7 and 8 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The arrival of modern humans in Iberia is a continuously debated topic, especially when it comes to its southernmost regions due to the evidence of late Neanderthal occupations. In Southwestern Iberia, there is evidence for the presence of both groups in the late Pleistocene. Although the exact moment of replacement is still unclear due to the lack of absolute...