Asia (Continent) (Geographic Keyword)
1,451-1,475 (1,722 Records)
The McMaster Archaeological XRF Lab is dedicated to undertaking major regional obsidian sourcing studies, not least in the Eastern Mediterranean where we have the North American geological source sample collection. We take a holistic, integrated approach, melding chemical composition with the artefacts’ techno-typological characteristics, contextual information and other pertinent data to produce ‘thick description’ narratives. In this case we consider obsidian circulation and consumption...
Social Interactions along Korea’s Southern Coastline: The Legacy of the Protohistoric Port of Neukdo (ca. Second Century BCE to First Century CE) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern coastline of the Korean Peninsula acted as a stage for maritime interactions from as early as the Neolithic. However, with the establishment of an international port of trade at Neukdo Island, the range of the maritime network in operation along Korea’s southern coastline expanded to areas as far away as...
Social Reactors Project datasets
Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project
Society Against the State in Prehistoric Cyprus? Exploring the Politics of Village Life (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite decades of critique, the study of early state formation remains bound up with an evolutionist narrative that situates the state as the natural endpoint of sociopolitical development. It is clear, however, that alternative political projects and trajectories were not only possible but common in the human past. Particular attention has been drawn to...
The Socio-Ecological Entanglement of Water and Resilience in Past and Present Tropical Societies (2017)
Urban resilience and sustainability have gained increasing prominence in the literature as concerns regarding water resources and climate change continue to grow. Cities, particularly those in the midst of extreme urban development, are facing a wider range of stresses that call for greater enhancement of resilience techniques. This paper highlights the work of the Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) project, whose goal is to investigate resilience and vulnerability within...
Socio-Ecology and the Sacred: A Comparative Study of Historic Natural Sites in Tropical Asia (2017)
Within the complex socio-ecological systems of South and Southeast Asia, ancient sacred natural sites were created by and imbued with cultural and ideological values; these were seen as liminal spaces or threshold environments. In this context, sacred natural sites act as transitional landscapes between the human and non-human worlds in ancient and modern times. This sub-project involves examining the roles of sacred natural sites in each of these three early state formations from 800-1400 CE:...
Soil Micromorphology Analysis of Area D at Manot Cave, Israel:insights into site formation processes. (2017)
Manot Cave, discovered in 2008 in Western Galilee (Israel), represents one of the richest Upper Palaeolithic assemblages in the Levant. The site has produced a ca. 55,000 year old anatomically modern human calvarium, as well as Middle Paleolithic to Post-Aurignacian lithic and bone artefacts. The deepest stratigraphic sequence is found in Area D, located halfway down the steep talus. This area shows continuous stratification from dolomite bedrock to an early sterile colluvium, an archaeological...
Soil, Hands, and Heads: An Ethnoarchaeological Study on Local Preconditions of Pottery Production in the Wei River Valley (Northern China) (2017)
This paper approaches ceramic production by combining four aspects of data: geographic background, archaeological find, ethnoarchaeological work, and material analysis. Taking the middle Neolithic site of Yangguanzhai in Shaanxi as a case study, this paper examined the preconditions and processes of pottery making in northern China during the Yangshao Period (5000-3000 BC). Materials from over ten years of excavation and survey at Yangguanzhai and the results of ethnoarchaeological studies in...
A Soil-Stratigraphic Record of Landscape Evolution and Human-Environment Interaction at the Yangguanzhai Archaeological Site, North-Central China (2017)
This paper presents the results of soil-stratigraphic investigations and stable isotope analysis at Yangguanzhai, a Middle Neolithic site (~5500 cal. years B.P.) in the Wei River Valley of north-central China. At Yanguanzhai, there is a well-preserved sequence of alternating sediment and buried soils, indicative of multiple fluctuations in landscape stability. Human occupations are associated with three buried soils: the two lower soil horizons contain Middle Neolithic (~6000-5500 cal. yrs....
Some botanical characteristics of green foxtail (Setaria viridis) and harvesting experiments on the grass (1998)
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...
Sometimes at the Crossroads: Preliminary Results from New Fieldwork on the Southeast Ararat Plain of Armenia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ararat Plain, part of the upper Araxes River valley system in the South Caucasus mountains, represents the largest expanse of arable land in Armenia today. At the southeastern edge of this plain, the Vedi River valley, a tributary to the Araxes, connects the agricultural zones of the plain with the resource-rich mountains and Lake Sevan to the east. The...
A Song Dynasty Roof Tile Kiln at Qijiaping: Gender and Pyrotechnology in Medieval China (2018)
During the 2016 and 2017 excavations at the site of Qijiaping, Guanghe, Gansu, China, the Tao River Archaeological Project excavated a large intact kiln that turned out to be a Song Dynasty roof tile kiln. The kiln is well preserved, and the first of its kind reported in an archaeological excavation in this region. Inside the flues of the kiln were many objects, deliberately disposed of, presumably at the moment when the kiln was put out of commission. Among these objects is a stone phallus in...
The Source of the Hemudu Culture and Environmental Change during the Early-Middle Holocene: New Evidence from the Jingtoushan Site, Yuyao, East China (2018)
The source of the Hemudu Culture has remained a key issue for more than 40 years. Recently, the coring survey at the Jingtoushan site has provided a chance to promote our understanding of this issue. Its cultural deposits are deeper than those of any other prehistoric site along the coastline of East China. It is overlain by Late Holocene marine deposits of 6 meters deep. Twenty radiocarbon dates, along with the particular depth of midden deposits and pottery sherds, indicate that the site dates...
Sourcing of Grave Stones in the Late Jomon of Central Hokkaido (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this paper is to determine the source of grave stones for exploring the political economy among regional groups on the Ishikari Plain in the Late Jomon of central Hokkaido who created shuteibo (a type of communal cemetery characterized by a circular embankment). Our previous petrological analyses based on polarizing microscopical observation of...
"The South" as object of knowledge between archaeology and history (2017)
With a focus on writing about the medieval period in southern India, this paper will interrogate how south India came to be defined as an object of knowledge, and thus, a space for representation. Narratives on the south Indian past, from the writing of the Dravidian proof in early 19th century Madras to Nilakanta Sastri’s iconic History of South India in the year of India’s independence, have engendered polyvalent inheritances for current historiographical projects. In unpacking these...
Sowing the Seeds of Empire: New Insights into Xiongnu Agriculture and Agronomy (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Xiongnu period (ca. 250 BC–AD 150) was a particularly transformative time in the history of the eastern Eurasian steppe. Intensive study of the dimensions of sociopolitical, technological, subsistence, and material cultural transformation associated with the emergence of the...
Space and Scale in Reconstructions of the Social Organization of Craft Production (2017)
Archaeologists often speak of production in spatial terms, contrasting nucleated and dispersed forms of crafting. However, the importance of the scale of spatial patterning in production activities (as opposed to "scale" in reference to quantitative output) has yet to be fully explored. It is impossible to relate the spatial distribution of crafting activities to a particular social organization of production without considering spatial scale. An examination of spatial distributions at multiple...
A Space for Living and Dying: The Life-History of Kharaneh IV Structures (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The built environment delineates space for daily actions and important moments. Separating the occupants from the external world, walls can create barriers between the outside or can build communities within them. Recent excavations of two structures at Kharaneh IV, an Epipalaeolithic site in Eastern...
Spatial Dynamics of Urbanization at the Onset of the First Turk Empire (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Medieval Eurasian Steppe Urbanism" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The contours of medieval urban transformation astride the Tarim-Tian Shan mid-latitudes are to a large extent viewed through the lens of religious iconography and Chinese political history. Thus, research is often directed at finds evincing the materiality of interregional cultural forms that demarcate routes of transmission conforming to...
Spatial patterns of human land-use from surface collections in NW Mongolia (2017)
The spatial distributions of artifacts from different periods of time reveal change in the nature and intensity of human activities in different kinds of places. This is particularly useful when trying to establish how patterns of human mobility and land-use evolved during periods of dramatic environmental or economic change. The Uvs Nuur Basin of northwest Mongolia played host to both. Here, the distribution of glaciers, vegetation zones, and lake systems changed rapidly from the late...
Special Report on the Importance of Palmyra (2015)
The purpose of this report is to provide a concise introduction to the site of Palmyra and its importance so that the international community can better understand why it should be saved. The ancient city of Palmyra stands out as one of the most remarkable archaeological sites in Syria and, indeed, the world. Following the takeover of the site and the adjacent town of Tadmor by ISIL (IS or ISIS), Palmyra has been in the news daily. On May 12, 2015, ISIL launched an attack on Palmyra. ISIL...
A Specialized City: Fatimid-Era Agriculture at Ashkelon (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient city of Ashkelon was a major economic port in the Near East during the Early Islamic period (ca. 636–1200 CE). Located on the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Israel, it was a cosmopolitan city, an administrative center, and a stronghold in the coastal...
Spinning through Time: Comparing Spindle Whorl Assemblages from the Southern Levant (2018)
Spindle whorls, a flywheel attached to a shaft used for the production of thread, are one of the only artifacts related to the textile industry which survives in the archaeological record. At the crossroads between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the southern Levant is at the intersection of cultural and technological change, particularly throughout the chronological scope of my study: the Pottery Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze I periods. There has yet to be a comprehensive study of...
Spokoyny Creek Artifact Photographs (2006)
Artifact photos from Spokoyny Creek.
The spread and development of Iron Techologies in China (2017)
Iron production in this paper is divided into two types; wrought iron and cast iron. Wrought iron was spread through the Eurasian grasslands to China two times; at the middle of second millennium BC and 9th to 8th century BC. At the later time, wrought iron daggers with golden or bronze handles spread to northwestern China. After wrought iron arrived in the Central Plains of China where bronze working was developed, there was the invention of cast iron technology. Development of cast iron...