Georgia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
726-750 (1,204 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Ephemeral Aggregated Settlements: Fluidity, Failure or Resilience?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While traditional research on early urbanism has focused predominantly on ‘successful cities’, i.e. urban settlements that show long settlement histories, recently scholarship has also started to pay increasing attention to cases of short-lived agglomerations which only lasted for some decades or generations. In this...
Neandertal artists? Exploring misconceptions about Neandertal symbolic capacities through rock art studies. (2017)
The question of whether Neandertals created art is one that is currently under debate within the field of prehistoric art studies. Originally thought to be brutish and unintelligent, Neandertals have recently come to be acknowledged as complex humans with symbolic capacities, through discoveries of Neandertal-associated modern behaviours including burials, pigment use, and ornament creation. One of the last hold outs separating the symbolic and artistic abilities of Neandertals from those of...
Neanderthal Short-Term Occupations in Open-Air Sites: An Overview from Eastern Germany (2017)
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers frequently relocated in order to avoid foraging in previously depleted areas, and lakes and rivers played important roles in these movements as fix locations on the landscape where foragers could have access to water and ambush parched animals. The types of human occupations along lakes and rivers could have been various according to the aims of displacements (e.g., logistical, residential) and the activities carried out at the shore (e.g., bivouac, hunting station,...
Neanderthals, Denisovians and Modern Humans: What material culture differences can we see during their overlap ? (2017)
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...
Negotiating Power? Explaining Dispersed Low-Density Mega-sites in Late Iron Age Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The mega-sites that emerged in the European Late Iron Age (ca. third century BCE–first century CE), often referred to as oppida, have struggled to be understood in the context of traditional concepts of urbanism. Comparative approaches to urbanism have, however,...
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 Pastoralist Practices at Masis Blur, Armenia’s Ararat Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic settlements appeared across the Southern Caucasus in the early sixth millennium BCE. Ongoing excavations, along with zooarchaeological and isotopic research, are clarifying how these communities used the landscape and managed livestock in the context of mixed farming. In this paper we present new zooarchaeological data from recent...
The Neolithic Stone beads of Nahal Hemar Cave, Israel (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) site of Nahal Hemar Cave in the Judean Desert yielded, among others, many beads made of wood, plaster, shell and stone. The study of 35 stone beads recovered at the site highlights three main inter-related aspects: a broad range of raw materials used, the workmanship of bead production according to their types, and the...
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 Georgia
This project pertains to the compositional analysis of ceramic materials from Georgia. 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....
A New Excavation In Southeast Turkey: Kece Cave (2018)
Kece Cave is located in Kahramanmaras - Elbistan Province in Turkey. The first excavation was carried out in 2015 and since that year, it has been continued by excavation team that includes different university experts. According to preliminary reports, first excavations were realized on terraces in front of the cave and inside. Preliminary findings have been remarkable. Although during the last season excavation, most amazing findings than before were obtained in the terrace excavation area and...
New Identities and Changing Funerary Practices in the Mid–Late 2nd Millennium BC in the Carpathian Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 – 1300 BC) in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. While the narratives have somewhat shifted from the traditional model that primarily associated these changes with the arrival of the Tumulus culture population, and...
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...
New Insights on Neanderthal Subsistence Strategies in Central Europe Using Faunal and ZooMS Analyses at Crvena Stijena (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable research on Middle and Late Pleistocene subsistence has been conducted in Western Europe, little is known about variation in the hunting abilities and dietary behavior of Neanderthal populations in Central Europe. Here, we present new faunal results from...
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,...
A New Method for Monitoring Socio-Economic Changes through Settlement Placement (2018)
There is a recursive relationship between socio-economic institutions and the environment. Decisions about where to place settlements in a landscape were informed by existing economic institutions, but placement of sites in turn effected how social and economic institutions were organized. In this paper, I present a new GIS-based method for quantifying socio-economic organization and change in prehistoric societies. Catchment analyses, as employed in this study, define the availability of...
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...