Republic of Albania (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
801-825 (969 Records)
In the 9th century, Viking 'armies' are recorded raiding (and in some cases conquering) in Britain, Ireland and the Frankish kingdoms. Contemporary sources indicate that the largest of these were comprised of hundreds of ships and, by inference, thousands of men. Many of these accounts give round numbers, and historical opinion is divided between those who accept that the figures may represent approximations rather than absolute historical fact, but are nevertheless representative of very...
Size isn't everything: are our data good enough to be big? (2017)
Archaeological data may not yet meet the criteria for Big Data, but the growth of archaeological cyber-infrastructures is providing the foundations for ‘big data’ research. Using digital repositories such as the ADS in the UK and tDAR in the USA, we have access to millions of records, from multiple resources. Data and text mining tools allow us to extract information from published and unpublished fieldwork reports, whilst the ability to create Linked Open Data or to integrate metadata via...
Skeletal evidence suggesting biological continuity in the ruling lineage throughout the Late Helladic, Sub-Mycenaean and into the Dark Ages on the Greek Island of Kefalonia. (2017)
The cluster of sites on Borzi Hill near the village of Tzannata on the island of Kefalonia includes several habitation areas and various tombs. The evidence suggests an extensive occupation during the Mycenaean (Late Helladic) Period, including the largest tholos or "beehive" tomb in the Ionian Islands. The tomb was built around 1350 BC at the same location as an older tomb that had collapsed. Although the tomb was looted in antiquity, excavations have yielded a number of notable finds including...
Skuggi and Siglunes: Two Icelandic Settlement Sites (2017)
This paper presents results from multidisciplinary investigations at two Icelandic sites from the same region: Skuggi and Siglunes. The small subsidiary farm at Skuggi was likely settled during the earliest stages of Icelandic colonization and was located on a steep mountain slope, about 150 m above the valley bottom. Ideas on its occupation history and causes of abandonment will be discussed, as well as the possibility that the decision to abandon the settlement was heavily influenced by...
The sling in medieval Europe (2006)
J. Whittaker: History, accounts of accuracy, good refs.
Small Carnivore Use in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic of Kephalari Cave (Peloponnese, Greece): Opportunistic or Optimal? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene of southern Greece adheres to many predictions set forth by human behavioral ecology concerning the use of small game in the face of demographic growth, ecological change, and advancements in procurement technologies. In Peloponnese, an increase in small, fast game use...
Social Bioarchaelogy of Forager-Farmer Transition in the Balkans (2017)
In Europe, Greece and the Balkans were the first areas to be reached by expanding Neolithic, agricultural lifestyles. The Danube Gorges of the central Balkans represents one of the best case studies in Europe for studying bioarchaeological consequences of the change from foraging to farming thanks to abundant settlement and mortuary record found here. It also provides a good regional anchor point for the contextualization of other contemporaneous sites across the Balkans. A large number of...
Social complexity and wealth inequality in middle-range society: A complex systems and network science approach to the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2017)
Economic and social leaders create and maintain unequal or dominance relationships within and between communities by controlling labor, and limiting access to technological, material and ideological resources, and trade networks. Through these kinds of actions and interactions, social networks are structured and restructured altering the flow of goods, services and information. From this bottom-up process, social complexity emerges. To understand how the structure of underlying social networks...
Social Connections Near and Far: The Role of Local and Exotic Goods in the Emergence of Complexity on Cyprus during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of international goods has long been a signifier of social complexity on Cyprus, but the accumulation of local goods and interregional imports may be equally as important for understanding the formation of hierarchical social networks during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2400–1700 cal BC). This period marks...
The social consequences of climate-driven changes in the spatial distribution of human populations during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). (2017)
Risk-reducing strategies allow humans to manage ecological risk while minimising disruptions. Unpredictable resource fluctuations, i.e. ecological risk, are driven by a combination of climate conditions and climate variability. Under extreme conditions reduction strategies may fail, however, forcing a reorganisation of the social and economic structure of affected populations, as well as their technological systems. Risky conditions during the LGM, for example, affected the spatial distribution...
Social Dynamics and Archaeological Sciences at Neolithic Tells: Investigations on the Great Hungarian Plain by the Körös Regional Archaeological Project (2017)
Investigation of social dynamics at Neolithic tells, Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor, Hungary, included surface collection, geophysical and geochemical surveys, targeted excavations, micromorphology, stable isotope studies, compositional analysis, and contexual analyis of 14C dates, cultural materials, and burials. Both sites were established ca. 5200 B.C., cal., and they are located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River, seven km apart. However, they have different dimensions and...
The Social Dynamics of Obsidian Use in the Prehistoric Western Mediterranean: Temporal Changes in Maritime Capabilities, Lithic Technology, and Sociopolitical Complexity (2017)
In the western Mediterranean, obsidian was an important lithic material, coming from four Italian islands and found at archaeological sites up to several hundred kilometers away. Analytical studies of many thousands of artifacts have identified their specific geological sources, and revealed chronological and geographic changes in their selective use through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (ca. 6000-1000 BC). These data are used to assess economic and social dynamics regarding access to and...
Social Inequalities by Diet in Archaeology: The Contribution of Isotopes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research about the biological impacts of social inequality is at the center of the humanities and social sciences. Social inequalities impact multiple determinants of health such as lifestyle, diet, and housing. Questions about inequalities, therefore, can be addressed by using isotopic data related to collected by archaeologists. This project compiles...
The Social Life of Crash Sites: Understanding World War II Sites in Context in the Search for Missing Air Crew (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Fulfilling a Nation’s Promise: The Search, Recovery, and Accounting Efforts of DPAA and Its Partners" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites are only rarely preserved as pristine moments in time, unaltered since the site was formed. More often, they are a continuous production, forming a part of the social and cultural landscape of the surrounding area. In this paper, we draw upon Appadurai’s idea of the...
Social Reactors Project datasets
Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project
Social Spaces of Central Italy and the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (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. Every space humans inhabit tells a story about the cultural values, social norms, and lives of those who utilized the space. This paper focuses on the archaeological remains of a medieval fortification and presumed castle located in Barbarano Romano, Italy, atop the...
Societies against the Chief? re-assessing the value of ‘heterarchy’ as a concept for describing European Iron Age societies (2017)
As a reaction against the dominant warrior chiefdom model of European Iron Age society, much of recent scholarship has emphasised the negotiated nature of power in these societies. Such approaches frequently characterise these societies as ‘heterarchical’ yet the dynamics of how communities operated above the level of the household remain relatively under-theorised. This paper reassesses the value of concepts of heterachy for two regions of Europe, southern Britain and North-western Iberia. It...
Socio-Economic Class Status and Health on the Roman Danube: Skeletal Indicators and Mortuary Treatment at Late Antique Viminacium (2018)
Cross-culturally and through time, anthropologists have found that--within hierarchical societies--elites tend to manage resources and allocate risk primarily to their own benefit. There is little reason to believe that Late Roman Imperial frontier elites would have behaved any differently. This paper examines the archaeological relationship between biological 'stress' or health--as inferred from skeletal remains--and socio-economic status / class--as evaluated on the basis of mortuary...
Sociopolitical and Environmental Change and its Effect on the Biology of a Medieval Polish Population through Isotopic Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Medieval to Early Modern periods in Poland underwent a shift toward a feudal sociopolitical structure and experienced environmental changes leading to an increase in social stratification and an unequal distribution of power, opportunity, and resources (e.g., food). This project examines how a non-elite Polish population biologically...
Sociopolitical Change and Its Effect on the Biology of a Medieval Polish Population through Isotopic Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Jagiellonian Period (1386–1572) in Poland underwent a shift toward a feudal sociopolitical and economic structure leading to an increase in social stratification and unequal distribution of power, opportunity, and resources (e.g., food). The medieval site of Gać (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries) provides a unique opportunity to gain insight into the...
Something Other – Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia (2017)
Human-bird relationships in Early Iron Age Slovenia are marked by apparent contradictions – birds are extremely rare in the zooarchaeological record as a whole, and completely absent from mortuary contexts that are otherwise notable for the deposition of animal remains. Yet birds are the most frequently represented animal in Early Iron Age art. Experience of birds would have been relatively constant – birds are almost always present, yet human relationships with them were likely based more on...
Son of a Son of a Sailor: Island Life and the Colonization of Cyprus (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For years the Mediterranean islands were considered devoid of much Neolithic or earlier occupation. That no longer is the case, with Cyprus being one island where recent research has rewritten the prehistory of the Mediterranean. We now know that its colonization was not a one-time “Noah’s Ark” event, but rather that the sea was a highway instead of a...
Sources and Distribution of Palmarola Obsidian in the Central Mediterranean during the Neolithic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tiny island of Palmarola, about 35 km south of Cape Circeo (between Rome and Naples, Italy), was an important source of obsidian during the Neolithic in the Central Mediterranean. While thought to have been a minor source, compared to Lipari and Sardinia, extensive artifact analyses in recent years of museum and other collections show that Palmarola...
Sourcing Building Stones in the Ancient Mediterranean: A Review of 25 Years of Provenance Research at the Wiener Laboratory (2018)
From its very inception, the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens has fostered and supported the integration of geological techniques and methodologies into archaeological research programs in the eastern Mediterranean Basin. One such area of focus includes provenance studies of rocks used in architectural and sculptural programs spanning from the prehistoric to Late Antiquity. By tracing the source quarries of ancient artifacts and features, archaeologists...
Space and Activity on an Upland Neolithic Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of Neolithic cultural landscapes in Southern Germany raise questions about relationships between clusters of settlements, low-density artifact scatters, and empty space, and call for analysis of individual settlements in the context of broader cultural landscapes. This poster presents results of test excavations on an upland LBK settlement in...