Republic of Armenia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
601-625 (970 Records)
The time frame from 50-30 kya contains evidence for at least three distinct human populations spread across northern and western Eurasia. These groups faced serious environmental challenges, and seem to have existed in widely spread, small populations with perhaps very similar basic cultural adaptations. As indicated by shared genes, these groups were evidently in contact. How are these populations represented in material culture ? To what extent can we begin to see typological and...
Negotiating Empires: Village Dynamics in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research on empires has focused on centers and periphery, with much less emphasis on the interstices of empires. During the first century of the common era, the polities of the Southern Caucasus were located between the competing empires of Arsacid...
Neolithic Dietary Practices: Comparison of Stable Isotopes and Dental Microwear (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct Middle and Late Neolithic dietary practices in Central Europe with the help of complementary evidence of stable isotope and dental microwear analysis. From a total of 171 individuals, carbon and nitrogen isotopic values were measured in bone collagen from 146 humans and 64 animals, and 113 individuals were included in...
Neolithic Enclosures in Neolithic Greece: A Geospatial Approach (2017)
The Neolithic in Europe is widely considered a key epoch. For the first time, societies got occupied with husbandry and settled for the cultivation of food-crops for sustenance. Thessaly (Central Greece) is of critical importance in this transformation serving as the gateway to what would become the widespread Neolithization of Europe which irreversibly altered the course of human history. In this archaeological setting, enclosures were essential parts of many settlements. Were they built as...
Neolithic Group Sizes – Further Thoughts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dominant paradigm concerning group size is frequently couched in terms of the "social brain hypothesis" (Dunbar 1998). On the other hand ethnographic evidence (Hill et al. 2014) posits much higher interaction rates amongst individuals than those based solely upon...
Neolithic Landscapes of Southern Germany: Insights from Regional Survey (2017)
Landscape archaeology in Central Europe has historically built on a foundation of high-resolution excavations of village structures. In this poster, we combine results of systematic plowzone survey carried out by two research groups to explore and reflect on the contributions of regional survey for understanding Neolithic land use in southern Germany. Surveys were conducted in two areas with contrasting archaeological records and geographic characteristics. On the southeastern Swabian Alb...
Neolithic Tales from the Eastern Mediterranean Basin: A Graduate Student’s Experience under Dr. Alan H. Simmons at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in the 1990s (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Las Vegas Valley in southern Nevada experienced unprecedented growth in the 1990's. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) was not immune to this progress and as a result began to attract the attention of top researchers, professors, and graduate students out...
The Neolithic transition in Europe: Archaeology versus Genetics (2017)
There are two mechanisms of Neolithic spread: demic diffusion (dispersal of populations) and cultural diffusion (acculturation of hunter-gathterers). Archaeological data imply that demic diffusion was more important than cultural diffusion in determining the spread rate of the Neolihtic in Europe. But those results are very uncertain. We now use ancient genetic data in addition to archaeological data, and estimate the relative importance of demic and cultural diffusion. We find that demic...
Networks of Material Mediation: Shopkeepers in Rural Community Social Dynamics (2017)
While archaeologists have explored networks of trade and exchange of manufactured goods between rural communities, regional market towns, and urban centers, less attention has been given to the way that rural shops and shopkeepers played a significant role in the accessibility and distribution of material goods in local economies. Focused on the emergence of rural shops in Western coastal Ireland and islands of Inishark and Inishbofin, 1840-1950, this study will contribute to an understanding of...
Neutron Activation Analysis of Ceramics from Armenia
This project pertains to the compositional analysis of ceramic materials from Armenia. These data were generated by neutron activation analysis (NAA) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) between the late 1960s and early 1990s. Data from the LBNL were transferred to the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri, where they were digitized for distribution through tDAR.
A New Bayesian Approach for Estimating Chronological Events and Phases with ChronoModel (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many issues in archaeology concern the issue of phasing—the beginning, end, and duration of a given period. We define a “Phase” as a group of Events (Event dates) that share common features. Currently used Phase models implemented in many software packages employ statistical models that concentrate posterior Event dates....
New Insights from a Reanalysis of the Flaked-Stone Assemblage from the Neolithic Site of Wadi Shu’eib, Jordan (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the ongoing research on the Neolithic of the Southern Levant, flaked-stone assemblages continue to play a key role in interpretations of social organization and interaction. Despite the prominence of research on lithic assemblages during the Neolithic, few comprehensive studies come from the large settlements with long, continuous occupation spans (2,000...
New Insights into Early Celtic Cooking and Drinking Practices: Organic Residue Analyses of Local and Imported Pottery (2017)
Our research focuses on consumption practices, particularly on feasting in Early Iron Age Central Europe (7th-5th cent. BC). The aim is to integrate the cooking and drinking practices to complete our knowledge of Early Celtic societies. We try also to identify exchange networks linked to biomaterial exploitation and circulation. To conduct this study, organic residues of pottery from several Central European sites (in particular the Heuneburg and Vix - Mont Lassois) were analysed. A wide range...
A new look at camp organization in open-air Late Pleistocene sites in the southern Levant (2017)
A wealth of Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene open-air camp-sites is recorded around the world. However, in sites pre-dating the use of stone for construction, central features such as huts and their floors are rarely preserved. Thus, the documentation of site structure and the identification of past activity areas are limited to hearths (when preserved) and their environs, and to distribution patterns of cultural remains. The focus of this paper are selected sites from the Mediterranean Levant,...
New Methods for New Materials: Contemporary Archaeology and Coastal Plastic Pollution (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Methods for Monitoring Heritage at Risk Sites in a Rapidly Changing Environment", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As the issue of plastic pollution grows, coastal and maritime archaeological sites are increasingly being impacted by single-use plastic waste. While we can see these impacts at existing cultural resources, it is important to recognize role of plastic waste in creating entirely new, anthropogenic...
New on-site method to evaluate the quantity and quality of collagen in archaeological faunal assemblages using a portable FTIR and ZooMS (2017)
Faunal remains play an important role in helping reconstruct Paleolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence and mobility strategies. However, differential bone preservation is an issue in southern European prehistoric sites, which often makes morphological identification impossible. Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) is a new, low-cost method that will improve NISP statistical significance in a replicable way by using diagnostic peptides of the dominant collagen protein as a fingerprint of...
New Perspectives on Past Vitamin D Deficiency (2017)
Less than half of the current world population is estimated to have adequate vitamin D status and potential consequences are much debated. For those engaged in addressing the challenges that vitamin D deficiency poses, information on past deficiency provides an important time dimension to current debates. Over the last 15 years I have undertaken extensive collaborative work on past deficiency. Investigations at St. Martin’s, a 19th-century UK site, established diagnostic criteria and revealed...
New Romantic Archaeology: radiocarbon revolutions and revolutions in understanding (2017)
This presentation will reflect on the so called four ‘Radiocarbon Revolutions’ and their implications on archaeological narratives and theory generally, and Neolithic studies in Britain specifically. The timing of this reflection is critical given the implications of recent Bayesian analysis in order to produce precise, robust and probabilistic chronologies for parts of European prehistory. This paper will revisit the reactions to the initial radiocarbon revolutions by important theorists such...
New Technologies in Feature Recording for Archaeological Surveys: Potential and Challenges (2017)
Archaeological landscapes are complex three-dimensional environments, containing not only cadastral survey units and evidence of sites in the form of artifact scatters, but also anomalous topographical features and standing architectural remains of a variety of periods, types, and states of preservation. The time-consuming nature of careful architectural recording and the difficulty of acquiring the high-quality geodata required for a proper architectural survey in the remote countryside have...
The Nitrogen Challenge at Çatalhöyük (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic values of archaeobotanical remains from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük have presented us with a series of challenges for interpreting ancient crop management systems in a complex environment. An exceptionally wide range of δ15N values (0 to 18‰) obtained...
Nor Geghi-1 and the Process of Late Middle Pleistocene Technological Evolution in the Armenia Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Current data from Africa and Eurasia suggest that the intercontinental transition from bifacial to hierarchical core technology occurred independently within different geographically dispersed hominin populations already adept at a variety of complex knapping procedures inherent to the Acheulean. The episodic...
The North Sea and the "Long" Viking Age: Connections and Communication (2017)
This talk presents the results of a northern European collaborative pilot study on the compilation and analysis of internationally-derived datasets of metal-detected material culture. Drawing on nascent heritage initiatives across northern Europe designed to protect and record our at-risk portable material culture, the project seeks to develop and trial a methodology for the synthesis and analysis of metal-detected datasets from England, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, resulting in the...
Northern Norway’s sea of islands: processes of maritime colonization and settlement (2017)
Epeli Hau’ofa’s (1993) perception of Oceania as a ‘sea of islands’ is a useful point of departure for exploring the long-term trajectories of the many thousands of islands scattered along the coast of northwestern Norway. Hau’ofa’s vision of joined islands is also instructive as a way of emphasizing seaborne connectivity rather than insularity within maritime archaeology. This paper highlights problems related to island colonization and settlement since the Early Mesolithic (11,500-10,000 BP) in...
The Northern way – Conceptualization of Nonhuman Animals in the Animal Art of 5-6th century Norway (2017)
The presentation takes up a northern way of expression opposed to a southern one – namely the stylistic depiction and focus on animals and mixed animal/human designs prevailing in the Nordic Barbaric area opposed to a focus on the naturalistic ideal of the human body throughout the classical world. The complexity and continuity of this Nordic art form indicates that it was structurally incorporated in an overarching principle that reflects social and cosmic order. The mixed animal-human designs...
Not Going There: Seeing, Depicting and Interpreting Archaeological Topography through Digital Media (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores a tension in field practice and interpretation in landscape archaeology. Digital 3D topographic data have proliferated, and the increasing availability of lidar DTMs are transforming the practice of archaeological topographic interpretation. As a toolkit for interpretation tailored to this digital medium is being...