Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lan (Country) (Geographic Keyword)

1-25 (431 Records)

6k Years of Land Use in South Asia: Sustainability, Power Relations, and Tropical Variability (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Morrison.

Tropical environments vary significantly in terms of rainfall and seasonality; these differences make a difference in the kinds of land use strategies that work over the long term. This paper reviews some of the opportunities and constraints of tropical environments in South Asia, considering the range of land use practices deployed over the last 6,000 years in this region. I argue that some practices which could be called sustainable also come at a high cost in terms of human dignity,...


Acheulean Hominins and Out of Africa Dispersals: Challenges and Advances (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

The dispersal of Acheulean hominins outside of Africa is one of the most important research areas in human evolutionary studies, having been the topic of paleoanthropologists and archaeologists for many decades. Yet, precise knowledge about the timing and geographic movement of archaic hominins across Eurasia is still in its infancy. The aim of this presentation is to discuss what we currently know about the distribution of Acheulean hominins, and to report on new field work findings in southern...


The Agency of Monsoons in South Asia (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kanika Kalra.

Every June through September, the inhabitants of South Asia welcome and celebrate the southwest monsoons. The monsoon winds are the lifeline of this region but also a major threat, inspiring societies to devise mechanisms to both harness their potential and subvert the damage they may cause. This paper analyzes prehistoric and historical responses to monsoons in South Asia in terms of their unpredictable nature, and examines how the monsoons both facilitate and constrict people’s actions. In...


Agricultural Practices of the Qin People from the Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty: A Case from the Matengkong Site in Guanzhong Basin, China (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Liya Tang. Hui Zhou. Zhiyou Wang.

This is an abstract from the "Populations of Early Medieval China: Developing Anthropological Approaches to Historical Archaeology in China" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeological studies, the Qin people have often been the subject of research. The areas of investigation about the Qin include their origin, structure of tombs, funeral rites and interment processes, and cities and settlements. Although there are some studies on the Qin...


Agriculture development in the Bronze Age Hexi Corridor-archaeobtanic evidence from Xichengyi site (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Guiyun Jin. XianJun Fan. GuoKe Chen.

The combination of crops and weeds found in the site reflects a typical rainfed agriculture dominated by foxtail millet and broomcorn millet. Under the external cultural influences, wheat and barley started to be cultivated. Since late Machang culture and, through the agricultural development during the "Transitional type" period, were widely cultivated during the period of Siba culture, when marijuna appeared in the crop assemblages. The integrated study of archaeobotanical and...


Aku-Aku (1958)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thor Heyerdahl.

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...


Analysis of Ancient Chinese Pottery Utilizing X-Ray Fluorescence and Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Deibel. Corinne Deibel. Ye Wa. Liping Yang.

Field studies were performed at the Yangguanzhai Neolithic site near Xi’an, China, using an Olympus Delta Premium portable XRF spectrometer and an Agilent ExoScan FTIR spectrometer. 932 ceramic sherds collected from nine locations across the site were selected and classified based on color (red, tan and brown), decorations (painted, rope impression - cord or thread, and plain), and time period (Miaodigou and Banpo IV). Each sherd was broken, so that the analysis could be performed on a clean...


Analysis of the Faunal Remains at Shangjing city site, Inner Mongolia (2013 excavation) (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu Han.

The Shangjing city site is located on the boundary between agricultural and herding subsistence economies in the Western Liao River Basin, eastern Inner Mongolia. The site was used as the Upper capital in the Liao Dynasty (A.D 916 - A.D. 1125) and the Northern capital city in the Jin Dynasty (A.D. 1115 - A.D. 1234). In 2013, several burials in the Liao and Jin Periods were unearthed, and more than 36,000 faunal remains, including bones and teeth, were collected systematically. Although Liao and...


Ancient and Historic Glass Production in India: Preliminary Results of Raw Material Analyses (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn. Laure Dussubieux. Shinu Abraham. Alok Kanungo.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass—and particularly the glass bead—was a common commodity of Indian Ocean trade, beginning as early as the mid-first millennium BCE and continuing through the second millennium CE. While existing elemental and isotopic analyses of glass beads recovered from outside India have identified glass production recipes likely from...


Ancient DNA analysis of early Neolithic cattle from Houtaomuga site, Northern China (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawei Cai. Quanjia Chen. Hui Zhou. Dongya Y Yang.

The Houtaomuga site is located on the east bank of Xinhuangpao Lake, in Da'an County, Jilin Province, Northeast China. According to the archaeological excavations, the Houtaomuga site can be divided into seven phases from the early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age (8000-2050 BP). Although many Bos skeletal remains were found in the phases Houtaomuga III (6300-5500 cal. BP) and Houtaomuga IV (5000 cal. BP), it was very difficult to identify to the species level. In this study, ancient DNA...


Ancient DNA of a nomadic population provides evidence of the genetic structure of the royal ancient Mongols (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jiawei Li. Ye Zhang. Xiyan Wu. Yongbin Zhao. Hui Zhou.

The genetic diversity of the ancient Mongols, especially the Gold family of Genghis Khan remains unclear. Gangga site was a nomadic site dated to the 8th to 10th centuries AD in the HulunBuir grassland, northeast China. This site belonged to the Shiwei population, believed to be the direct ancestors of the ancient Mongols. Nine graves at the Gangga site were excavated with log coffins, which were considered the characteristic burial custom of the royal ancient Mongols, included the Gold family...


Ancient DNA Studies of Domesticated Cattle in Northern China (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Xin Zhao. Dongya Yang. Jing Yuan. Xiaoling Dong. Hui Zhou.

This study aims to use ancient DNA techniques to characterize the genetic features of ancient domesticated cattle in order to trace the origin and spread of cattle in ancient China from eight Late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Northern China. DNA was successfully extracted from ancient cattle bone or tooth samples in dedicated ancient DNA labs following vigorous protocols for contamination controls. This study was focused on amplifying mitochondrial D-loop using standard PCR techniques....


Ancient genomics of Neolithic to Bronze Age Baikal hunter-gatherers (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter De Barros Damgaard. Jeremy Choin. Andrzej Weber. Martin Sikora. Eske Willerslev.

Genome-wide data from hunter-gatherer populations of the Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic has provided unprecedented insight into the human evolutionary and demographic trajectory. However such datasets have hitherto been largely confined to Western Eurasia. The sole representative of Inner Asian past populations post-dating the split between paleolithic Europeans and Asians, as well as paleolithic Siberians and East Asians, are the Mal'ta and Afontova Gora individuals, the Ancient North East...


Ancient Residues Indicate Prehistoric Subsistence and Culinary Practices in the Korean Peninsula during the Middle Holocene (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Seungki Kwak.

This study attempts to understand ancient human subsistence using isotope analysis on the organic residues extracted from the archaeological potsherds collected from prehistoric coastal shell midden sites in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. In Korean archaeology, shell middens are useful for isotope analysis because they provide suitable condition in terms of organic preservation. To date, the subsistence of these prehistoric coastal and island dwellers remains poorly known. However,...


An ancient wind-powered iron smelting technology (1996)
DOCUMENT Citation Only G Juleff.

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...


Animal utilization and animal rituals of the Okhotsk culture: with special reference to their period and regional differences (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Takao Sato. Andrzej Weber. Taichi Hattori. Tomonari Takahashi. Hirofumi Kato.

In the animal utilization and animal rituals of the Okhotsk culture, chronological and regional differences can be observed. Significant differences can be seen between the northern and eastern regions of Hokkaido in terms of the volume of archaeological artifacts recovered relating to both domestic animals (dogs, pigs) and wild animals. In northern Hokkaido, there are conspicuous differences in the use of a variety of fishes and types of sea urchins between the early period (Towada) and the...


The Anthropocene Divide: Obscuring our Understanding of Socio-Environmental History (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Bauer. Erle Ellis.

Much scientific debate has focused on the timing and stratigraphic signatures for the Anthropocene. In this paper, we argue that strident debate about the Anthropocene’s chronological boundaries arises because its formal periodization necessarily forces an arbitrary break in a long history of human alteration of environments. The aim of dividing geologic time based on a "step-change" in the global significance of socio-environmental processes goes directly against the socially differentiated and...


Applying a Life History Framework to Analyzing Metal Age Metal Assemblages from Thailand (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Joyce White. Elizabeth Hamilton.

Application of archaeometric techniques to metals and related evidence from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia is in its infancy. One result is that sample sizes per site have in most cases been minute or even unspecified, although in rare instances, such as Ban Chiang, sample sizes for metallographic and elemental analyses have been more robust and representative. Small sample sizes obscure key evidence for intrasite and regional variability in technological and economic systems. Recent lead...


Approaching (In)Equality in the Indus Civilization: A Preliminary Analysis of House Size at Mohenjo-daro (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Green. Iqtedar Alam. Claudette Lopez. Cameron Petrie.

This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of South Asia challenges theories about the deep history of inequality, but data from its first cities are rarely included in comparative studies. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a preliminary analysis of spatial data produced by the early twentieth-century...


Archaeobotanical records of the Middle and Late Neolithic plant food utilization from North Jiangsu Plain (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhijie Cheng. Yuzhang Yang.

As an transition zone between the southern and northern China, the Huai river valley possesses distinct uniqueness in climate environment, agriculture, archaeological culture and other aspects. We have taken a series of archaeobotany case study on the Neolithic sites of different period,such as Shunshanji, Longqiuzhuang, Wanbei, in the lower Huai river valley. Combined with previous archaeobotany research in this area, so we can summarize the plant food utilization in various periods. The...


The archaeobotany of plant microfossils in South Asia - History and Perspectives (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Madella.

The analysis of plant microfossils has progressed immensely in recent years. The increase in the number of phytoliths and starch grains works in several disciplines has substantially extended our knowledge about these microfossils, while at the same time diversifying the approaches by which they can be used as archaeological and palaeoenvironmental proxies. This presentation will discuss the history and developments of plant microfossils in South Asia.


Archaeofauna and Archaeobotany studies in Northwestern South Asia: Past, Present, and Future (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Meadow.

Both Zooarchaeological and Paleoethnobotanical studies have been carried out on animal and plant remains from archaeological sites in northwestern South Asia for at least a century. These investigations, while providing important insights into the hunter-gatherer and agro-pastoral economies of the region, have lagged behind those carried out in other parts of the world in both quantity and quality. Indigenous practitioners of both sub-disciplines are few, and interest in these aspects of...


The archaeological study of cities in East Asia (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Gwen Bennett.

This paper explores the study of cities in China and the implications for their archaeological investigation. Walled settlements developed in China during the Neolithic and by the Bronze Age many had already grown to considerable size and complexity. While scholars in China and East Asia often consider cities to be a form of settlement organization starting at this early date, the concept of city used in their study is frequently unexamined, and historical examples of cities in the Chinese...


Archaeological Study of Ostrich Eggshell Beads Collected from Shuidonggou (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Chunxue Wang. Quanchao Zhang. Yao Li. Ningning Liang. Xing Gao.

Ostrich eggshell beads and fragments collected from Shuidonggou (SDG) reflect primordial art and symbolic behavior of modern humans. Based on stratigraphic data and OSL dating, these ostrich eggshell beads probably date to the Early Holocene ( 10 ka BP). Two different prehistoric manufacturing pathways are usually used in the manufacture of ostrich eggshell beads in the Upper Paleolithic. According to statistical analyses of the characteristics of ostrich eggshell beads, Pathway 1 is identified...


Archaeological survey of mound sites in Southwestern Shandong, China: Plants and people (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Xuexiang Chen. Wei Gong.

The surveyed area, Heze city of southwestern Shandong, China is located at the lower reaches of the Yellow River. Most archaeological sites in this region were deeply buried, from 3m to more than 10m. Very few archaeological works especially excavations had been taken due to the depth. Our survey of 2012-2015 revealed that these sites had been continuously occupied for a long history. The occupation started from Beixin culture (c. 5000 -4100 BC), continued to Dawenkou culture (c. 4150-2650 BC),...