Republic of Tajikistan (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
551-575 (799 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropological approaches to value assert that creating and contesting value is at the heart of politics. Herd animals offer a complex window into this basic theoretical insight—they are simultaneously producers of and objects of value and their value cannot be easily reduced to the categories of economic or symbolic value. Analyzing...
Patterns of Land-Use and Political Administration Beyond the Core Areas of the Sasanian Empire (2018)
The landscapes of the Sasanian Empire have long been viewed as massive and state-sponsored development projects, in particular in politically and economically core zones. Despite these unparalleled understandings, our knowledge of peripheries and their connection with the sociopolitical organization of the time have still remained as some of the key gaps in the studies of late antiquity. To address these questions, I examine the settlement expansion, water management systems and agricultural...
People in Construction: Insights from Ethnographic, Historic, and Archaeological Accounts in China (2017)
Labor recruitment and management are essential to accomplish massive public construction in ancient times, as in today. Archaeologists across the world have examined ethnographic accounts and conducted experiments to understand labor costs and organizational structure for construction and maintenance of large architectural projects. Common conclusions are that the workforce in monument construction during the pre-Iron age could have been easily recruited by non-state level polities. However,...
Peopling of Jeju in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene (2017)
Paleolithic sties in Jeju Island have been found in the Quaternary sediment layers that are related to volcanic activities. Accordingly, research has been closely related to the geological investigation on sediment formation and volcanic activities. This presentation focuses on two Paleolithic sites, Oeododong along the north coast and Sangsugae cave along the south coast. The Oedodong site contains choppers and is dated to 32,000 BP; the Sangsugae cave site represents the Terminal Pleistocene,...
Perceptions of Disability and Care in Early Islamic Central Asia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Identity, Interpretation, and Innovation: The Worlds of Islamic Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we apply an index of care approach to a case study of an individual with progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia from an early Islamic cemetery at the site of Tashbulak in southeastern Uzbekistan. Joint degeneration and progressive impingement of nerves would have severely limited individual TBK...
Persistence in Pastoralist Practices During the Uruk Period at Tepe Farukhabad (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Uruk period (4100 - 3100 BCE) was a transformative time in Southwest Asia, marked by the precursors of writing, the rise of urbanization, and an intensification in cross-cultural interactions. Subsistence strategies were shifting as well, as hunting declined relative to herding and animals such as sheep and goats became favored for both their primary...
Phoenician Iron Smithing and Cult at Tel Akko, Israel (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations (2010 - 2018) directed by A. E. Killebrew and M. Artzy at Tel Akko, a major eastern Mediterranean Phoenician maritime center and emporium, have uncovered an unprecedented quantity of iron smithing slags, hearths and cultic artifacts, all dating to the sixth - fourth centuries BCE. This assemblage includes fragments of figurines and masks, a...
Photogrammetry, Provenance, and Preservation of Tangible Heritage in the Khangai Mountains, Mongolia (2017)
This study presents results from the photogrammetric documentation of rock art in western Mongolia. Unlike many traditional rock art documentation techniques practiced in Mongolia, photogrammetry presents unique advantages for the study and preservation of cultural heritage. These include the production of a digital 3D model, preservation of color and original lighting conditions, ease of documentation, and the inclusion of contextual information such as surrounding features, panel orientation,...
Photogrammetry, Spatial Patterning, and Site Formation of the Hominin-Bearing Layers at the Lower Paleolithic Site of Dmanisi, Georgia (2018)
The Lower Paleolithic site of Dmanisi, Georgia, is well known for its rich archaeological and paleontological deposits, which include bones from at least five individuals attributed to Homo erectus. Taphonomic analyses show that carnivores contributed greatly to the accumulation of faunal material, while contributions by hominins were present, but uncommon. Recent excavations in the hominin-bearing layers of Block 2 at Dmanisi have revealed a complex underlying basalt formation that likely...
Physiological stress, activity patterns and the emergence of social complexity in early China (2017)
Because of a lack of artifacts or archaeological features which can indicate social status, the Early and Middle Neolithic periods ca.7000-4000 BC in China are considered to be relatively egalitarian periods. Differences within and among settlements became pronounced in the third millennium BC. The adaptation of agricultural lifeways might be a cause of social complexity. However, it requires further investigation into how and why this happened. In the case when there are not enough artifacts to...
Phytoliths, Geochemistry and Ethnography: A Multi-method Approach for Interpreting the Neolithic Sites of WF16 and ‘Ain Ghazal (2018)
Understanding Neolithic sites in southwest Asia is often difficult because of the lack of preservation of organic remains and the effects of various taphonomic processes that alter the original record. It is, therefore, critical that we maximise the information that can be acquired from these sites. Here, we use an ethnographic approach to test the potential of using plant phytoliths and geochemistry to aid our interpretation of southwest Asian Neolithic sites. We sampled two Neolithic...
Picking Up the Pieces: The Continued Influence and Impact of Redding's “Breaking the Mold” on Animal Domestication (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Richard Redding’s work on “breaking the mold” on how we explain the development of food production is emblematic of the major contributions he made to zooarchaeological thinking: his creativity, curiosity, and willingness to question dearly held beliefs. In this paper, we overview some of Redding’s many...
Pit-House Complexes: A New Form of Rural Domestic Architecture in Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic Central Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date studies of ancient Central Asian rural architecture are marked by an imbalance with much attention focused on the estates of elite landowners and less effective nods to non-elite pithouse structures. Recent excavations at Bashtepa in the Bukhara Oasis of Uzbekistan (2021) have revealed an intermediary form of domestic...
Place Making and Ephemerality (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At first the two ideas of this paper’s title can seem contradictory, but as three separate words they come together. What is the valency between the hypothesised solidity of an archaeological place and the stream of events that go into making it, transforming it, and erasing it? The ephemeral nature of the archaeological sites created...
Placing Intramuros in global history: Insights from the ceramic consumption in Spanish Manila (2017)
Manila was a critical link between Asia, Europe, and the New World during a pivotal period in world history; however, little attention has been paid to its colonial live. This paper aims to fill this void by re-examining consumption patterns of various types of ceramics excavated from sites in the Spanish walled city. The result shows that the Spanish colonists consumed better products than other subordinate groups and demonstrated their power by using customized Chinese goods rather than their...
Plant and Animal Remains from Old Babylonian Ur (2018)
Archaeologists have been examining the great cities of ancient southern Mesopotamia for well over a century now, but as yet we have limited understanding of their subsistence economies. For decades researchers more or less ignored the wealth of faunal and botanical remains in and around ancient Mesopotamian architecture. Over the course of the twentieth century researchers began to recover animal bones and teeth, but as few digs dry-screened or floated their soils the resulting assemblages...
Plant Residues from the Pre-Austronesian Tanshishan site (c. 4300 BP) and Their Interpretation (2017)
A mid-Neolithic expansion of farming cultures into the coastal areas of Fujian province, located opposite Taiwan on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, occurred around c. 4300 cal BP. Crops including foxtail millet and rice formed part of these farmers' diet, and plant remains such as bamboo, possibly used for wooden cooking implements, were also common in sediments and residues at these Longshan-period sites. Plant residues from pottery fragments excavated from the Tanshishan site, located in...
Political Process, Polity Formation, and the Role of Urban Centers in Inner Asia (2017)
By 200 B.C.E. the eastern steppe regions of Inner Asia saw the development of expansive and complex political systems usually referred to as empires. The origins of these polities and the processes of consolidation can be described within the concept of a political community, reflecting the actions of competing groups in expansive social network. For Inner Asia, community was linked to issues of mobility, dispersed control hierarchies, and the economics of multi-resource pastoralism. Together,...
The Politics of Archaeology: Reflections on the Early Decades of the 21st Century (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 2003, Bradley Parker co-organized a workshop at the University of Utah exploring the politics of archaeology, with emphasis on the Middle East. Both at the workshop and in the resulting edited volume, Controlling the Past, Owning the Future: The Political Uses of Archaeology in the Middle East, contributors...
Portable XRF Analysis of the Pigments of Majiayao Pottery from Dayatou, NW China (2017)
The site of Dayatou is located on a terrace bluff in the Tao River Valley in Gansu province, Northwest China.In 2015, the Tao River Archaeological Project team conducted systematic collection across the surface of the bluff and recovered thousands of Majiayao culture potsherds. To identify the technology and provenances of these potsherds, in the 2016 field season we used a portable XRF in a handheld configuration to analyze the chemical elements of the black paint decorated on 124 selected...
Post-Charring Bacterial Degradation of Archaeological Lentils by Bacterial Degradation (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. According to common knowledge, the preservation of stable isotope values in archaeological seeds requires that they be charred at low temperatures, because charring reorganizes sugar and protein polypeptides into stable Maillard reaction products. Charred seeds are understood to be resistant to diagenetic...
Potential Refugia in the Levant During the Pleistocene and Their Use by Hominins (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interest in the possibility that refugia have played an important role in human evolution has grown in recent years. A refugium is a relatively small area in which a population may be able to survive during a period of unfavorable conditions. Here, we report preliminary results of a study that is seeking to identify refugia in the Levant that were occupied...
The Potentials of Anthracology and the Study of Archaeological Parenchyma in Vietnam Archaeology (2017)
Archaeobotanical studies in Southeast Asia has been gradually developing in the archaeological scene in providing interpretation of the past. In this paper, a macro-botanical study of Vietnam, focusing on the anthracology (wood charcoal) and archaeological parenchyma, was initiated. The principles and methods used by the archaeologists in other regions in the analysis of wood charcoal and parenchymatous plant tissue are applied in the analysis of the plant remains recovered in the archaeological...
Predomestic Animal Management and the Social Context of Animal Exploitation in SW Asia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than a century of faunal work seeking evidence for the origins of domestic livestock in SW Asia has shed considerable light on the timing, locations and processes of animal domestication. The early stages in the shift from hunting to herding, however, remain difficult to identify and as a result both the mechanisms and...
Prehistoric farming in Europe (1985)
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