Republic of Palau (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (633 Records)
The prehistoric colonization of remote islands in Micronesia represents some of the most significant series of diasporas in human history. While archaeological and genetic research is shedding new light on the origins and timing of what were clearly multiple and chronologically disparate entries into the western and eastern Micronesian archipelagoes, many of these colonizing ventures are poorly understood. This is particularly true of Yap in the Western Caroline Islands. Unlike the Palau and the...
The Commensal animals in the Pacific – What might DNA results suggest about the animal-human relationships through time? (2017)
For the last twenty years we have been studying modern and ancient DNA of the various commensal animals in the Pacific. Different patterns of distribution and genetic variation exist and may provide information regarding the animal-human relationships and the role these animals played in the various Pacific cultures through time.
A Commensal-Prey Relationship in Early Mainland Southeast Asia? The Case of the Burmese Hare (Lepus peguensis) (2018)
Rabbits and hares are often a central part of human subsistence strategies in both the past and the present. However, the Burmese hare (Lepus peguensis) – the sole member of the family Leporidae indigenous to mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) – is rarely eaten today, and its status in the past is unclear. Although this taxon is currently abundant across a wide geographic range, it has a poor zooarchaeological record during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Identified specimens occur sporadically in...
Community memories? Ritual animal use of "Qijia Culture", Evidence from Mogou Cemetery, Lintan County, Gansu Province, China (2017)
This study focuses on human ritual animal use behaviors of Qijia communities, with the study of animal bones recovered from the Mogou Cemetery in Gansu Province. More than 1600 tombs have been excavated at the Mogou site. Since multiple burials with a few individuals of both sex and different ages were common and human bones were clumped together, most burials were classified as multiple and/or secondary burials. Animal offerings were also common in these burials, and animal bones were found...
Community Training and Traditions: Accessing Archaeological Methodology In Creating a Baseline for Trail Stewardship (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Along the base of Muliwai Pali in Waipio Valley, Hawaii the King’s Trail gently travels through a traditional cultural landscape rich in moʻolelo (story) and genealogy. During the summer of 2020 descendants of Waipio, Muliwai and Waimanu participated in the documentation and mapping of select portions within a 1.5 mile corridor of this kuamoʻo (trail) from...
A Comparative Approach to Deciphering Past Agricultural Strategies in the Tropics: The Shared Trends of Resiliency, Vulnerability, and Complexity (2017)
Tropical environments are defined by a shared suite of climatic and environmental variables. These unifying characteristics led past archaeologists to delineate these regions as incapable of fostering state level civilizations. These interpretations presumed a lack of resources required to support agricultural production at the level obligatory for the urban centers that define states. Modern studies in tropical ecology question this perspective by identifying a high degree of localized resource...
A Comparative Study on Ceramic Production from Central Plain China and South China in Early Shang Dynasty (2017)
The site of Panlongcheng is located 450 kilometers south of Zhengzhou in present-day Hubei province serves as the join point between the Central Plain Culture and the Lower and the southern regions of Yangtze River. Unlike almost all of more than twenty bronzes vessel shapes are represented in the Panlongcheng finds, there are three different ceramic types discovered at Panlongcheng: Typical Central Plain style(Erligang style), local style and numerous stoneware/hardware(some glazed). In pursuit...
Comparative Techniques to Uncover Networks of Ceramic Technology in Southern Vietnam (2017)
The analysis of ceramics in Southeast Asia has evolved from typologies and broad comparative discussions of vessel forms and surface treatments. Like other material culture, studies on ceramics from mainland Southeast Asian prehistoric sites that employ archaeometric techniques have escalated in recent years. The appearance of fine, incised and impressed ceramics in southern Vietnam dating to the Neolithic period (4500-3000 BP) is closely associated with sedentary settlements, cereal...
Comparison Study of Ceramic Traditions in Neolithic Southeast Mainland China and Taiwan and Their Possible Interaction Modes (2017)
For a long time, scholars have noticed that there are similarities in Neolithic ceramics from Southeast mainland China and Western Taiwan from specific periods. The provenance study adopting XRF (X-ray fluorescence) and ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) of analyzing stone adzes by scholars in recent years demonstrates that people in Southeast mainland China and western Taiwan did interact during the Neolithic dating back to 7450 B.P. From these studies, it is known that...
Computer simulation of the effect of urban centers on the development of wealth inequality in pastoral nomadic society (2017)
Agent-based computer simulation is an approach that models the behavior of individual agents, allowing for the observation of emergent phenomena created by the aggregate effects of individual actions. This presentation builds on a recent series of agent-based computer simulations exploring the development of wealth inequality as a function of environmental change in pastoral nomadic societies. When simulating a pure pastoral nomadic economy, it was found that wealth inequality increased under...
Confirming the Subtropical Paleoecology of Yahuai Cave in Guangxi, China, at 120 Kya through the Taphonomic Analysis of Rodent Remains (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main questions in human evolution concerns the dispersal of modern humans into Eurasia. Given the current tropical environment of South China, we may wonder whether early modern humans entering this region could penetrate the rainforest to forage for food, and indeed whether the environment in this area was...
Conservation Recommendations for Human Skeletal Remains Excavated from Desert Oases, Cave Shelters, and Permafrost, in China and Mongolia (2017)
Tomb excavations have been documented in East Asia for over 100 years, however the focus has been on artifact collection. The systematic excavation and collection of human skeletal remains is new to this region. This study will outline three cases where there was a demonstrated need for the implementation of conservation techniques. The first case included several naturally mummified skulls from Xinjiang, Province, China. A graduate student had decided to wash the skulls to remove skin and hair....
The construction of archaeological practice: Sex/gender and sexuality on the fringe (2017)
Archaeologists have incorporated sex/gender and sexuality research in projects for decades, yet such foci have failed to become widespread as they are largely considered a specialty or niche topic. This paper first looks at why the topics in question have remained on the fringe of archaeological research. The subsequent discussion analyzes ways in which contemporary practices can counteract deeply embedded ideas about the archaeology of sex/ gender and sexuality, making this approach to the...
Consuming Our Pasts: Food as Nature and Culture (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Taking inspiration from post-humanist theory, I frame my work about human life both past and present in a way that attempts to avoid traditional concretized definitions of humanity and culture that envision these subjects as separate from nature or the environment. Post-humanists view humanity as only part of a much bigger and...
Contacts between Chinese Regional Cultures and Northern Grasslands during the Early Bronze Age: a case study of turquoise-inlaid ornaments (2017)
The turquoise-inlaid bronze plaques with animal motifs excavated from the Erlitou sites are among the most conspicuous artifacts ever discovered in the Culture. This work explores issues regarding the function and origin of these items, which were worn as ornamental objects at the wrists of the deceased at the time of excavation. Through an analysis of the deposition and placement of these artifacts in the graves, it is speculated that this unique artifact type could be traced all the way back...
Contextualizing a Collection: Compositional, Morphological, and Trade Network Insights from an Iron Age Collection of Rare Southeast Asian Glass Ornaments (2023)
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. Though Iron Age (500 BCE–500 CE) Southeast Asian glass ornament research is a well-established field, previous studies have almost exclusively examined the glass beads comprising the majority of glass ornament assemblages at Iron Age Southeast Asian sites. Even when other ornament types are noted, these descriptions are of...
Continuity and Change in Early Colonial-Era Hawai‘i: An Examination of Foreign Artifacts from Nu‘alolo Kai, Kaua‘i Island (2018)
Archaeologists increasingly emphasize the role of social and cultural context in understanding how indigenous groups in colonial settings appropriated foreign goods. While documentary accounts of explorers, traders, and missionaries have long been used by Pacific historians to examine foreign trade in Hawaii’s early colonial period, archaeological sites from this period have rarely been identified. As a result, we know little about how foreign goods acquired through such exchanges were actually...
Continuity and Evolution in the Taiwanese Sailing Raft (2017)
The Taiwanese or Formosan sailing raft likely has considerable antiquity as well as geographic distribution on the coasts of China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and possibly as far south as the Coromandel Coast of India. The Taiwanese version is the most studied and may have the longest continuous evolution into the 20th century. These seagoing craft were initially constructed from bamboo, equipped with lug sails, and steered using center boards in a very sophisticated manner. Analysis of their performance...
Contrast and Connection in a Colonial-Era Hawaiian Hinterland: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Households on the Nā Pali Coast, Kaua‘i Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While researchers once considered the residents of hinterlands as the passive recipients of social and cultural influence, scholars have increasingly reframed these regions as dynamic zones of innovation and creative adaptation. Hinterlands have often been mentioned in investigations of indigenous sites in the context of European colonialism. Still,...
Cooking up a Storm (2017)
Food is not only essential for survival but also an important element of any culture. Artifacts for the storage, preparation and serving of food and drink form a large proportion of archaeological assemblages demonstrating that this has always been the case. Understanding how these artifacts were used gives us valuable insight into our past. Organic residue analysis allows us to more accurately determine how a vessel was, in fact, used. My research looked at several vessels sourced from Thailand...
Coral Islands, High Islands: A Case of Continued Contact and Cultural Divergence in East Polynesia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polynesian atolls are often viewed as outlying provinces or "outer Islands" as compared to larger high islands. These often remote and diminutive coral islands are, and were, home to relatively small populations. Many coral island groups trace ancestry to, and had sustained contact with, high islands. These past connections and modern sociopolitical...
Core-Hinterland dynamics in New Zealand Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of ‘hinterland’ encompasses ideas of distance, marginality and challenge and is often contrasted with ‘core’, which in turn implies centrality and resource richness. In this paper we address the applicability of both these concepts in New Zealand and examine their role in understanding long-term Maori history. We suggest that high...
Cranial Trepanations in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Xinjiang (2017)
Trepanation is defined as the intentional removal of a piece of bone from the cranial vault of a living individual without penetration of the underlying soft tissues. In China, practicing trepanation can be traced back to the Neolithic, and it can still be found today in some populations in other parts of the world. Nine skulls with lesions from four Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cemeteries (Yaer from Hami, Goukou from Jinghe, Yanghai from Tulufan, and Choumeigou from Changji) (4000BP–2000...
Cranial Vault Modification in the Mariana Islands (2018)
Cultural flattening of the posterior skull, rare in the Mariana Islands, was recently observed in multiple human skeletons from a Latte Period site in Guam. Prior to this study, only one case of possible artificial cranial modification was reported for this region. The cranium of a young adult female from Songsong Village, Rota, was described as having "asymmetrical deformation in the occipital region consistent with artificial shaping practices." In a review of the ethnohistoric literature,...
Creating, enduring and transforming: pots and people in southern Taiwan. (2017)
This paper seeks to reframe archaeological thinking on what constitutes ‘an object’ and how such objects endure through time. I will consider the changing presence of pots among the Paiwan people of southern Taiwan over the past 2000 years. The Paiwan are understood to have ‘lost their pots’ at least 100 years ago, in the sense that they chose to stop making them. This ‘loss’ is has been presumed to result from Chinese and Japanese colonial interventions during the 19th and 20th centuries. ...