Georgia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,101-1,125 (1,204 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The semi-arid region of Northern Mesopotamia has consistently encountered significant climatic variations. Therefore, human societies in the region developed innovations in environmental management and agricultural strategies, given the crucial role of agriculture in economy, trade, and politics all throughout history and in our modern world. Among all the...
Understanding Interactions Between Iron Age Polities in Cyprus through the Microscopic Lens (2017)
This paper will address economic and political interactions of two Cypriot polities during the Iron Age prior to political transitions in about 450 BCE. Idalion is a polity in the interior, near the copper-bearing Troodos Mountains and Kition is a port town on the southern coast. These polities are separate by 20km of rolling hills and plains. By 450 BCE, Kition had obtained political control of Idalion, but there has been little research about these two urban areas interactions prior to this...
Understanding Resource Allocation and Dietary Stress through the Presence of Scurvy in Nonadults from Gać and Dzwonowo, Poland (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries) (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. As a result of the energy requirements related to growth and development, non-adults are more susceptible to biocultural change than adults, making them ideal proxies to examine environmental stress within a population. The village of Gać and town of Dzwonowo (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) in Greater Poland provide a unique opportunity to...
Understanding Stylistic and Technical Variation in Middle Chalcolithic Painted Pottery Decoration—A Test from Tel Tsaf (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research explores the social interaction between Tel Tsaf and northern Mesopotamia through pottery decoration similarities. This ongoing research questions another possible connection between northern Mesopotamia and Tel Tsaf in the central Jordan Valley, representing one of the most southern sites discovered. The Middle Chalcolithic (5600-4500 BC) site...
Understanding Temporal Patterns of Occupation at Small Sites: The case of early Neolithic al-Khayran, west-central Jordan (2015)
Beyond their identification and recording during survey, small sites have only occasionally and sporadically been the object of significant research in archaeology. Yet, such sites can be of great significance when trying to understand a wide variety of social systems and practices. While the potential practices associated with small sites in the past are virtually limitless, some patterns are commonly found within specific forms of settlement systems. Within autonomous village-based settlement...
Understanding the Short-term Occupations of the Lateglacial and Early Mesolithic Groups in Western Europe (2017)
Prehistoric archaeology is now focusing on past hunter-gatherers societies behaviors and relationships with their environments. In Western France, the Late glacial and the Early Holocene were the stage of an important research dynamic. The chrono-cultural organization has been revised relying in particular on the excavation of new key sites. This research shed greater light on the human territories and paleo-economic behaviors. Understanding human mobility depends on our control of time linked...
Unearthing Earthen Architecture: A Geoarchaeological and Environmental Perspective (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation combines the findings of two distinct studies focusing on earthen building materials in different border regions, shedding light on the evolution of earthen architectural practices. The first study delves into the geoarchaeological analysis of earthen materials and...
Unearthing Holocene lowland landscapes as tool to detect archaeological sites, a case study from Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran) (2017)
Over the past century archaeological research in Upper Khuzestan has shown a long history of settlements in the alluvial plains. The Lower Khuzestan plain has barely been studied with research has been restricted to superficial surface surveys. The nearby presence of the Persian Gulf and the downstream parts of the rivers Karun and Jarrahi, the first one being the largest river in Iran, offer great potential for human settlements and activities. In lowlands, however, processes of sedimentation...
Unentangling Hotspots and Episodes in Pre-domestication Cultivation of Cereals: Examples from West and East Asia (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. The growth of empirical archaeobotanical data has highlighted that domestication processes in cereals were spread out over both time (millennia) and space (100,000s rather than 10,000s of km2). Updated data from West Asian cereals and pulses, alongside Chinese millets and rice, are analyzed. These data allow...
The Unexpected Fauna of Pleistocene Saudi Arabia and the Earliest Evidence of Hominin Butchery Activity (2018)
Work in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia, has been fundamental for establishing the importance of the Arabian Peninsula for Pleistocene hominin populations and their dispersals out of Africa. Recent palaeontological and archaeological exploration in the Western Nefud Desert has uncovered numerous fossiliferous palaeolake deposits and associated archaeology. Fossil assemblages include taxa with both African and Eurasian affinities and indicate a greater diversity in large mammals than resides in...
A United Europe of Things: Similarities and Differences in Small Finds across Later Medieval Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The idea of “unity of culture” in medieval Latin Europe is well known in historical texts, especially when it concerns the so-called “Europe north of the Alps.” Scholars have often suggested that due to long-distance trade, widespread knowledge of Latin, and shared religious ideas, we can...
united in blood! Rituals of violence and warfare in Iron Age britain (2017)
Discussions of ritual in society often focus on how ritual is used to bring individuals, communities, and larger social groups together. The role of ritual in violent interactions and warfare is less often considered and often what discussion there is focuses on the use of warfare to procure captives for public rituals, such as execution. Virtually ignored in this discussion is the role ritual plays in routinizing violence and warfare and how this ultimately impacts individuals and societies....
Uniting the archaeological body: the bioarchaeological investigation of human remains and mortuary behaviors (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeology has the unique power to deeply investigate mortuary space not only to identify lived experiences from human remains but also to illuminate elements of mortuary ritual. However, these two aspects of bioarchaeology still remain conceptually separated: one is biological and the other socio-cultural, one is scientific and the other...
Unlocking the data behind the Chora of Metaponto publication series: "on-the-fly" solutions for sharing and archiving an evolving collection
As archaeological research moves from the traditional model of print publication (as the definitive word), to a larger continuum of interpretation and reinterpretation, access to the supporting data is crucial. To do so, however, adds extra burden on academic units with large legacy collections, publication backlogs, and dwindling budgets. Digital repositories provide a home for static collections, but are not ideal for dynamic collections generated and evolving throughout the research...
Unprovenienced Ceramics from Georgia: Photographs (2011)
These images show the individual sherds from Georgia analyzed by neutron activation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Photographs were taken at LBNL and scanned by the Archaeometry Laboratory at MURR. Individual files were named according to the official catalog numbers of each image assigned by the Graphic Arts Department at LBNL.
Unraveling a Neanderthal Palimpsest from a Zooarcheological and Lithic Perspective: Abrigo de la Quebrada level IV (Valencia, Spain) (2017)
Excavations at Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia) have revealed 9 archaeological levels belonging to Neanderthal occupations. Level IV, characterised by a high density of lithic (>18,000) and bone (>100,000) remains, has been dated with AMS between 43,930±750 BP (Beta-244002) and >50.8 ka BP (OxA-24855). Human presence in the shelter has been favoured by its location, giving rise to a kind of natural trap where hunting animals would be feasible. The immediate environment is varied (abrupt...
Unravelling the Complexity of Magdalenian Engravings on Gönnersdorf Plaquettes: Investigating through Manual and Controlled Robotic Experiments (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our AHRC/DFG-funded Household Art project explores the content and wider context of the 15,800-year-old Gönnersdorf/Andernach Upper Palaeolithic engraved plaquettes (portable schist) curated at MONREPOS, Neuwied (Germany). We use state-of-the-art 3D scanning microscopic and use-wear technologies in MONREPOS’S TraCEr laboratory and visual psychological...
Unveiling Silenced Narratives: Ethical Codes and the Challenge of Knowledge Dissemination Facing Middle Eastern Archaeologists (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper delves into the glaring disparities faced by Middle Eastern archaeologists in disseminating their invaluable knowledge about their own heritage, elucidating how prevailing Western-centric ethical codes fail to redress these issues effectively. A profound asymmetry exists, wherein Middle Eastern...
Updated Perspectives on Sennacherib’s Siege at Tel Lachish (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From gypsum reliefs that once decorated the walls of the Assyrian capital at Nineveh, archaeologists know that Sennacherib’s army laid waste to the city of Lachish, Judah (now Israel) in 701 BC. There remains no consensus on how these events unfolded, but many researchers agree that the Lachish reliefs were intended to serve as both historical record and...
The Upper Paleolithic beginnings of the domestication of the dog (2017)
With this contribution, we would like to present our ideas concerning the first steps in the domestication process of the dog. Two main hypotheses on the origin of the dog have been proposed: 1)"Self-domestication" by wolves: Some wolves were following Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to scavenge on the remains of prey left by the prehistoric people at the human settlements. Generation after generation, these wandering wolves adapted themselves to the human dominated environment. 2)"Social...
The Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of Manot Cave: the dental perspective (2017)
The study on the partial calvarium discovered at Manot Cave, Western Galilee, Israel (dated to 54.7 ± 5.5 kyr BP, Hershkovitz et al. 2015), revealed close morphological affinity with recent African skulls as well as with early Upper Paleolithic European skulls, but less so with earlier anatomically modern humans from the Levant (e.g., Skhul). The ongoing fieldwork at the Manot Cave has resulted in the discovery of several new hominin teeth. These include a lower incisor (I1), a right lower...
Urban Ideologies and Demographic Revolutions in Ancient Mesopotamia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dramatic demographic growth is a hallmark of the urban process, yet reasons for population growth in emerging urban systems are not well understood. This paper draws on archaeological and textual evidence pertaining to ideology of the house and cultural values to explore why populations increased so dramatically in third millennium Mesopotamia. Additional...
Urban micromorphology at Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete: Evidence of transitions (2017)
Sequences at Bronze Age Cretan settlement sites are defined by destructive events, natural or anthropogenic, that capture cultural material in a particular time and space. The traditional approach of studying urban archaeological contexts based on these snapshots of material culture is not completely suitable for analyzing transitional phases that occur between these events. However, detailed micromorphological examination of the sediments present in these transitional stratigraphic sequences...
Urban Networks in Early Iron Age Europe: Nucleation and Dispersal (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Urbanization is a social process, rather than a final destination. More important than debating whether one specific settlement within a system should be classified as "urban," "proto-urban," or "nonurban" is to analyze the wider processes of settlement nucleation and centralization that take place within the larger landscape,...
Urban Spatial Relationships during the Early Islamic Period: Reassessing Investigations into the Market and Mosque at Sīrāf, Iran (2018)
There has been much debate on what defines an Islamic city (madīna) and what made cities become "Islamic" after the Islamic conquest. These studies have often marginalized the Islamic period, associating street encroachment and overall shifts away from the "classical" model as signs of decline. Scholars have relied on western notions of what defines a city and have used strict urban typological models, which do not conform to the region or period. In addition, these studies have neglected to...