Republic of Armenia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (970 Records)
Recent research in the borderlands has increased our knowledge on the irrigation systems and urbanization plans of the Sasanian Empire in the late antiquity. In particular, surveys and excavations in the Mughan Steppe indicate that irrigation canals connected nearly all Sasanian settlements. Evidence suggests that after the 7th century AD most of the elaborate settlement system was abandoned and its irrigation infrastructure went out of use. While the exact date of this abandonment is unclear,...
Climate Stability and Societal Decline on the Margins of the Byzantine Empire in the Negev Desert (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 absence of a high-resolution climate archive in Negev Desert, southern Israel, it has been challenging to understand why the Byzantine Empire built large towns in this arid region in the fourth century CE—and why it abandoned them three centuries later. In this study, we use dietary and mobility patterns of animals recovered from three Byzantine Negev...
Climatic Narratives across Eurasia: A Comparative Study of the 4.2k Event in Western and Eastern Asia (2018)
In the last two decades, climatic narratives have returned as a central issue in archaeological discourse. The field has been flooded with publications on paleoclimatic reconstructions and we believe it is time for a critical evaluation – both as means of seeking better science, and for building better archaeological narratives. Climate history is composed by an overlapping meshwork of long-standing trends, punctuated events and short-term phases, with impacts ranging from the local to the...
Closely Observed Layers: Small Stories and the Heart (2017)
When I tell people I'm an archaeologist, their eyes light up with a wistful look and they say "I've always wanted to be an archaeologist". I could describe one reality, that it is not as glamorous as they think, work is slow and repetitive, and that leaves them disappointed. But usually I describe another reality: what I love about what I do - and they are delighted. However, I have never articulated it in a professional presentation or publication: I excavate layers of dead people’s residential...
Coastal Erosion as an Arena for Change (2017)
The problem facing archaeological heritage through loss and damage caused by rising sea levels and increased storminess requires responses that are multi-facetted and creative. Sufficient resources to deal with exposed archaeological sites and deposits through established ‘preservation by record’ methodologies are not available anywhere. In the Scottish archipelago of Orkney the combination of sand and low lying shores and extremely rich archaeological heritage make the problems of coastal...
Collaboration, collaborators, and conflict: ethics, engagement, and archaeological practice (2017)
Collaboration in contemporary archaeological parlance principally refers to active engagement with one or more selected groups of stakeholders and co-producers of knowledge. But knowledge is always produced for a purpose, and collaboration, or to be a ‘collaborator’ in conflict settings implies an allegiance, often deceitful, to one cause or another. When embedding archaeology in conflict transformation activities, being seen as a ‘collaborator’, or partisan, can actively work against the aims...
Collective Action in Iron Age Europe: Public Assemblies as Arenas for Participatory Government (2017)
Public assemblies were a common phenomenon in Iron Age and Early Medieval Europe. In these large collective meetings, important decisions concerning war, peace, the choice of military leaders, legislation and the administration of justice were taken. Together with their political role, they also fulfilled other simultaneous functions, including religious festivals and the holding of fairs. Once believed to be archaeologically invisible, recent research has identified the remains of a large...
The Color of Personal Ornaments in Prehistoric Periods of the Levant (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shell beads appear first in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Levant. Their use as personal ornaments is evidence for cognitive abilities and symbolic expressions, however, their colors are limited to white, red and black. Humans’ transition from a foraging economy to agriculture in the Neolithic of the Levant brought...
Come for the Harvest, Stay for the Beer: Alcohol Production in an Ubaid Household in Upper Mesopotamia (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. In New Perspectives on Household Archaeology, Bradley Parker and Catherine Foster urged archaeologists to approach households as a dynamic location of repetitive actions and gestures that shaped the formation of the personal, economic, social, political and ideological trajectories of the community. In his...
The coming of the age of iron (1980)
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...
Communicating in Three Dimensions: Questions of Audience and Reuse in 3D Excavation Documentation Practice (2018)
After excavating the Praedia of Iulia Felix at Pompeii in 1755, architect Karl Weber published the building with an axionometric illustration that showed the remains in three-dimensional perspective. In doing so, Weber communicated additional information about the form of the building in a manner that was both accessible to a lay audience and sufficiently "scientific" for a scholarly one. By contrast, digital 3D documentation methods in current archaeological practice often reinforce a division...
Community action at sites threatened by natural processes (2017)
Around the world, thousands of archaeological sites are threatened by coastal processes. Although many countries have successfully implemented schemes to address threats from development, this is not the case for sites at risk from natural processes. Without developers to fund mitigation projects, the scale of the problem appears enormous, and it is difficult for individual agencies to commit to preserving, or even recording, everything at risk. Systems are needed to update information and...
A Comparative Analysis of Mortuary and Domestic Artifacts from Petra’s North Ridge (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpreting the use of material culture in mortuary contexts provides an intimate view of social identity of both the deceased and mourners in ancient societies. However, the material remains of mortuary practices throughout the Nabataean Kingdom in Jordan have not been systematically investigated. Comparing the material culture between contemporary...
A comparative assessment of Upper Paleolithic lissoir (smoother) manufacture and use (2017)
Recent studies have brought focus to a category of bone tools previously thought to be restricted to modern humans. Excavations of layers dating to approximately 50 kya from two different sites in southwest France, Pech-de-l’Azé I and Abri Peyrony, have produced four nearly identical fragments of bone tools identified as lissoirs (a French term meaning "smoothers"). Lissoirs are specialized tools thought to have been used in hide preparation. Although this tool type has been defined in various...
Comparative Eurasian Statecraft: al-Andalus in the context of the Medieval West (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Attempts to describe and explain differences between Western and Asian state structures have a long history, starting with Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production and Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism.The bottom-up approach offered here argues that differences between the two forms are due largely to the way primary...
Comparing bone structure and domestic sheep management strategies using microcomputed tomography (microCT) (2017)
Bone structure is known to reflect behavioral differences related to locomotion, diet, and activity patterns. We present new data using microcomputed tomography (microCT) to analyze cortical and trabecular bone structure on samples of modern domestic sheep bones from individuals with known biogeographies and life histories. Indicators of skeletal robusticity, such as thicker cortical bone, higher trabecular bone volume fraction, and thicker trabeculae, reflect consistently higher bone strain and...
Comparision of Fish Habit and Exploitation—A Comparison of Two Third-Millennium BCE Sites in the Arabian Gulf Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the third millennium BCE, one of the earliest civilizations emerged in South Asia, the Indus Valley Tradition/Civilization. It had a trade network that spread throughout the Persian and Arabian Gulf, including sites on the Omani coast. This paper will compare two sites, Balakot on the Makran coast of Pakistan associated with the Indus Valley...
A Comparison of "Scenes" in Parietal and Non-Parietal Upper Paleolithic Imagery: Formal Differences and Ontological Implications (2017)
Upper Paleolithic cave art is well-known for its skilled execution, specifically the use of shading, relief, and perspective to render life-like depictions of Pleistocene fauna. Cave art is equally well-known for a near absence of flora, humans, and scenes. In this regard, parietal imagery is distinct from "art mobilier," where these are more common. However, defining "scenes" as a graphic phenomenon can be problematic, and identifying them among superimposed and fragmented images more so....
A Comparison of Elemental Analysis Methods for Sediment Geochemistry (2017)
This poster will present preliminary interpretations from a study comparing different techniques of elemental analysis for sediment geochemistry, the goal of which is to determine the "best" technique to answer the questions at hand. "Sediment geochemistry" here refers to the collection of sediment samples and the elemental analysis of these samples in order to map activity areas across archaeological sites. This study used sediment samples collected from a modern, abandoned village called Eski...
Complete vs. broken:exploring assemblage variation in two Natufian sites from Jordan (2017)
Archaeological sampling of lithic assemblages is an important process for characterizing the make-up and range of variability of these materials. These characterizations often focus on complete pieces due to the greater number of variables that can be recorded and the uncertain utility of incomplete data. But do complete pieces adequately characterize assemblage variability? Are these samples capturing the same range of variation found in broken pieces (e.g., proximal pieces)? This paper...
Compositional Analysis of Roman and Late Medieval Terracotta Figurines found in Worms (antique Borbetomagus) (2017)
Nondestructive XRF was used to provenance Roman and 15th century molded figurines found in Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany). Three Roman kiln areas with waster material of various kinds of cooking and dining pottery were detected, but no coroplastics. Two kiln areas provided sherds with a highly uniform paste pattern identical to Roman amphora and roof tiles formerly analyzed by destructive WD-XRF, and supposed to be produced in Borbetomagus. A third kiln additionally contained utilitarian...
A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Göbekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC (2018)
Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB settlement sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem)...
Confirmation of an osteological feature, diploic veins, via three imaging modalities (2017)
Skeletons from site Tell el-Hesi (ca. 1400-1800CE; located in the southern Levant) have been undergoing renewed paleopathological analysis with the use of non-destructive imaging techniques. Upon assessing for pathology a computed radiograph image revealed multiple thin radiolucent structures within the cranial fragments of an individual that were not observed on the surface of the bone. These canal-like structures, thought to be some type of nutrient vessel, required further analysis to...
Confronting the Lost Cause through Conflict Archaeology: Natural Bridge, Florida (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Lost Cause is an essential underpinning of Jim Crow most visible in Confederate monuments but also in Civil War battles preserved as public monuments. Although it is true that the victors write the history books, there may not have been a push to do so in the case of small-scale engagements, which allowed the fabricated...
Connected through Things: Connectivity in Iron Age Mallorca (2017)
This presentation examines connectivity in the Late Iron Age on the island of Mallorca. While most case studies of connectivity in the western Mediterranean involve the movement of people and/or the construction of new settlements by non-local people, there is little evidence that this occurred in Mallorca. However, there is still abundant evidence that indigenous Iron Age Mallorcans were increasingly connected to the broader Mediterranean and that non-local goods were being consumed throughout...