Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lan (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (446 Records)
This article aims to examine the differences of social structure revealed (1) by the interpretations of the archaeological record through spatial analysis and, (2) by the data obtained through ethnographic research, both for same ethnic group. Applications of spatial technologies in archaeology began in the early 1980s. Although these GIS-based technologies brought about new research perspectives, their ‘effectiveness’ and ‘correctness’ needs more in-depth investigations. Using Old-Kucapungane...
Settlement Patterns in the Taojiahu-Xiaocheng Region of Jianghan Plain China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The especially early emergence of Neolithic walled towns in the Jianghan Plain is widely used as an indicator of social complexity. Several models have been suggested to explain the emergence of walled towns: inter-regional conflicts between the Central Plain and the Jianghan Plain, intra-regional conflicts among walled towns in...
Settlement, Socio-environmental Practice and the Long Durée of Landscape Production in South India: A Regional View from Maski, Raichur District, Karnataka (2017)
For five seasons, the Maski Archaeological Research Project has been collecting new multi-period archaeological and environmental data on changing patterns in settlement, agricultural, pastoral and metallurgical land-use practices from a 64km2 study area surrounding the large multi-period site at Maski. Our research documents significant temporal changes in the size, configuration, density and location of settlements, as well as those among a myriad of other sites (e.g. pastoral camps, field...
Sex and Gender in Southeast Asian Rock Art: Case Studies from Borneo (2017)
Multiple indigenous and intrusive Borneo rock art (the additive or reductive human modification of naturally fixed-in-place stone) traditions depict figures and abstract designs that can be interpreted as sexed/gendered. Dating from the terminal Pleistocene through modern period, these images are an untapped source of archaeological information regarding the roles and interactions of the biological sexes and culturally constructed and ascribed genders. This paper uses rock art to identify and...
Shifting Mobility Strategies in Neolithic and Bronze Age Mongolia (2017)
Mobility is a central part of the contemporary, traditional, historical and prehistorical economic strategies employed by hunters and pastoralists in Mongolia. While mobility is often contrasted with sedentism, there is much variation within the practice of "mobility" and how it is employed. Residential and logistical mobility are often used heuristics to discuss variations in mobility. A critical application of these terms to the archaeological record of Northern Mongolia illustrates their...
Shimao: the Prehistoric Pioneer of Rising States in Northern China (2017)
In ancient China, a number of ethnic groups and polities rose and declined in northern China. The competition and wars between these frontier polities and Central-Plain dynasties occurred frequently in Chinese history. A series of new archaeological discoveries in recent years have revealed that Shimao was the first state-level society emerging in northern China. The Shimao social group was mainly distributed in the Ordos region, where the social complexity experienced a leaping development in...
Shipwrecks with stories (2013)
The presence of European sailing ships with masts and gun ports drawn on the walls of the 18th century Buddhist temples is a fascinating phenomenon, as these frescos show the stories of Lord Buddha and ancient Sri Lanka. They display how the traditions of the people living on the Sri Lankan coast were greatly influenced by Europeans. The presence of sailing ships anchored near the ports may have become a routine event which impacted how locals perceived local shipping traditions. Shipwreck...
Six Thousand Years of South Asia: Implications for Climate Modeling. (2017)
We review the archaeological evidence for land use patterning in South Asia over the past 6,000 years as part of a larger effort of the PAGES-supported Landcover6k and LandUse6k project to reconstruct global land use and land cover data sets for the purpose of improving models of anthropogenic land cover change used by climate scientists. Here, we use archaeological and paleoecological data from our study areas to trace land use shifts from the Southern Neolithic through the Middle or...
Small-Scale Complexities: Tekkalakota and the Archaeology of the Southern Deccan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the MAST project, a multi-year excavation program in South India that is designed to explore the role of small-scale societies in the development of larger interregional social formations. In particular this project will focus on areas of Iron Age and Early Historic occupation and production at the site Tekkalakota, and on the diachronic...
Social difference between Songze culture and Liangzhu culture as reflected on jade artifacts (2017)
The Liangzhu Culture (3300–2000 BC) and the Songze Culture (4000 – 3300 BC) are two Neolithic cultures in the lower Yangtze River Delta in China. The two cultures are quite similar in many aspects especially those reflected on ceramics. This research intends to study the difference of social hierarchy between two cultures through an analysis of jades collected from over 20 archaeological sites in the Lake Tai region. By doing so, it is argued that jades in the Songze Culture are precious...
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, 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....
"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...
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...
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...
Standardization in pottery production of the Jinsha site, Chengdu Plain, China (2017)
In earlier studies, scholars have focused on the measurement of vessels’ dimensions to assess the degree of standardization. It should be noted however that not all dimensions are culturally salient or equally important. Moreover, when manufacturing processes can be decomposed into multiple stages, cultural idiosyncrasies that have been shaped through either institutionalized or unconscious ways might affect and be sought in any of these stages. This has called for analyses on ceramics by using...
Starch Grain Analysis of Human Dental Calculus from Guanzhuang Site, Henan Province (2017)
This research aims to investigate the human foodstuffs and lifestyle during the Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasties in the core area of the Central Plains using starch grain analysis of human dental calculus. Plant microfossils, starch grains and phytoliths, which were found in most of calculus samples from Guanzhuang site, were from millets, bread wheat, rice, adzuki, tubers and acorns. Diversity of starch grains and phytoliths in morphological characteristics extracted from dental calculus...
Starch Remains from Human Teeth Reveal the Bronze and Early Iron Ages Vegetal Diet of Xinjiang, Northwest China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has long been a vital link between Europe and eastern Asia. In the past, understanding prehistoric diets in Xinjiang was based mainly on carbonized plant remains unearthed from archaeological sites and isotopic analyses of excavated human bones. Here, we report on our analysis of human dental residues preserved on...
Stone age techniques in nineteenth-century India (1961)
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...
The Stone-Construction Tombs of Xiaguanzi in Maoxian county, and the Question of Cultural Contact throughout Western China (2017)
Xiaguanzi site in Maoxian County, located at the junction of the upper reaches of Min and Fu Rivers, is an important node on the channels of culture transmission between North and South China. From 2014 to 2015, Neolithic remains and stone-constructed tombs were excavated. The Neolithic remains include pottery, stone and bone artifacts, leather objects, animal bones, plant seeds, house remains, tombs, and ash pits. Although there no painted pottery occurred at Xiaguanzi, the pottery found here...
A Study of the Archaeological Landscape of Bairat, Jaipur district, Rajasthan (2017)
Bairat is a region located in the present day, Viratnagar tehsil of Jaipur district in Rajasthan. So far it is known for yielding two Ashokan inscriptions in the 19th century and being identical with the mythological Viratnagara of Mahabharata. This paper develops a larger understanding of the history of Bairat by studying its material culture which came into light after post-Independence excavations and explorations. To understand the settlement from about 7th century BCE upto 3rd century CE, I...
Study on the subsistence of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age China using published mammal records (2017)
This research is based on all published zooarchaeological study on Chinese Neolithic and Early Neolithic sites and mainly focuses on the animal subsistence economy in the same period. With the advent of quantitative analysis, refined models can now be built and analyzed from all the published data. The application of big data studies on animal remains provided information of range and relative importance of taxa and their possible change through time-scale and region which may reflect an ancient...
Subsistence in the Late Pleistocene of China: A view from Laonainaimiao site (2017)
The paper presents the taphonomic and zooarchaeological analyses of the fauna from the Laonainaimiao site of Late Pleistocene in the central plain area of China. The taphonomy observation shows that the bones were accumulated by human activity. The taxa of the fossil assemblage is composed mainly of Equidae and Bos primigenius, followed by gazelle, deer, wild boar, rhinoceros etc. Most carcasses of Equidae and Bos were likely to be transported to the site as a whole. The carcasses were...