Republic of Palau (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
426-450 (633 Records)
Yangguanzhai is a valuable resource for paleoethnobotanists to understand human-plant interactions in Neolithic northwestern China due to its excellent conditions for the preservation of macro-botanical materials. In recent years, several palaeoethnobotanical studies on Yanguanzhai have been carried out on site, yielding many results that greatly contribute to our understanding of Neolithic agriculture in the region. Presented in this paper are the results of two systematic flotations conducted...
The Paleolithic Site Marita in Eastern Siberia:New discoveries and new situation (2017)
Mal'ta is located in southern part of Eastern Siberia, near Baikal. This site has been known as unique Paleolithic settlement, including a double human burial of two children, 30 human figurines carved from ivory and 15 dwelling clusters. While the original interpretation of Mal'ta was that of a single cultural layer, recent investigations have identified over 10 cultural layers, dated between the OIS 3 to OIS 2 stage. Since 2010, we have been continued the Russian- Japanese Joint research for...
The Past inside the Present: Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of Weaving in Mainland Southeast Asia in the Light of Present-Day Textile Making Traditions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Woven textiles have played an important role in Southeast Asia both as practical items and markers of status, a role that continues to this day. Many important traditions and techniques, ranging from simple to complex, have survived to the present day, or the recent past. In this paper I will review the archaeological...
The Past, Present and Future of Archaeological Lidar: A View from Southeast Asia (2018)
In the last five years multiple campaigns of airborne laser scanning (or lidar) have been conducted by archaeologists over Angkor-period sites in Cambodia and neighbouring countries such as Thailand. Analysis of the lidar data is still underway and will continue for many years both in the lab and on the ground, but some key outcomes have now been published, and it is already clear that the advent of lidar represents an important milestone in the history of archaeological remote sensing. This...
A Pattern of Islands: Ethnography, Remote Sensing, and Community Archaeology in Kosrae and Pohnpei, Micronesia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Knowledge of navigation and island living among indigenous people of the western Pacific Ocean retain lifeways, legends, and oral history about their migrations in the region. Western enlightenment theories of Pacific migration persist in describing this migration as a wave or diffusion of peoples seeking new lands. However, among islanders, it is...
The Patterns of the Drums: An Evaluation Of Iconographic Variation In Dong Son Drum Motifs Of Vietnam (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the larger debates in studies of Bronze age Vietnam is the symbolic meaning of Dong Son drums. However, in the academic haste to find this overarching meaning there are several questions that have been left unanswered regarding iconographic variation. In this paper, it is my goal to address the iconographic variability of these drums and explore the...
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,...
The People of Solomon: Performance in Cross-Cultural Contacts between Spanish and Melanesians in the SW Pacific 1568–1606 (2018)
In 1568, 1595 and 1606 Spanish expeditions out of Peru explored the Solomon Islands (S.W. Pacific) with the intention of establishing colonies. The motivations for these voyages were an uneasy amalgam of ambitions for Imperial and familial advancement, attempts to find the gold mines of Ophir, and religious fervor for converting indigenous populations. Despite repeated historical retelling, little attention has been paid to the structures of the cross-cultural encounters described in the...
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,...
The Perplexing Complexity of Some New Guinea Communities (2017)
At contact, a number of New Guinea communities boasted considerable ‘horizontal’ complexity – very large populations (up to 2,500 people) and ceremonial arenas that engaged even more. Many also constructed monumental architectures of organic material and staggering size. These communities included complex fisher-foragers and Big-man horticulturalists, organizations that are commonly identified as only minimally hierarchical. Certainly, their hierarchical institutions were insufficiently...
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,...
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...
Pigs by Sea: The Establishment of Pig Husbandry on Wallacean Islands during the Late Holocene (2018)
Domestic pigs play a crucial role in the socioeconomic systems of Island Southeast Asian cultures today. However, the timing of their introduction into the region during the late Holocene and details of their use by prehistoric inhabitants is not entirely clear. The introduction of domestic pigs by maritime Neolithic horticulturalists to the Wallacean island region of eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste, which has never been connected to a major landmass, appears to have been an advantageous...
Placemaking through Objects: The Global World in 19th Century Towns in the Philippines (2018)
This paper will explore the idea of placemaking in Philippine towns established in the latter part of 19th century AD under the Spanish colonial period. The Spanish regime through the Laws of the Indies significantly altered the indigenous concepts of territory and space. I propose that the Europeanised local elites straddled between the European and indigenous ideas of boundaries and space. Following the colonial religious and administrative boundaries and the customary notions of interactions,...
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...
Placing the Early Pre-Latte Period Site of San Roque on Saipan in Its Broader Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This comparative assessment of the San Roque site in northern Saipan to other early Pre-Latte period sites in the Mariana Islands, circa 1500–1100 BC, presents far from uniform data that suggest that maritime settlers of the archipelago may have targeted a range of natural settings for survival upon arrival. These...
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,...
Populations expansion as a replacement or merging of peoples: insights from the rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave), Northern Territory Australia (2017)
The rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave) in the Northern Territory of Australia provided a valuable lesson in the difficulties of interpretation without local knowledge. Now, newly recorded motifs at the site—some only visible through digital enhancement—highlight the dangers of relating stylistic changes to population replacement. When considered in the context of local history, developments in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk during the second half of the twentieth century can be...
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...
Possible Prehistoric Translocation of Non-human Primates to Remote Oceania (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New archaeological excavation at the Ucheliungs site, located in the Rock Islands region of Palau (northwest tropical Pacific), has yielded evidence of mortuary activity and small-scale marine foraging dating to the earliest period of human settlement in the Palauan archipelago, ca. 3000 BP. The assemblage includes a small number of artifacts consisting of...
Potentials and Pitfalls for ZooMS Analysis in the Pacific: A Case Study from Ofu Island (Manu‘a Group, American Samoa) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological analysis in the Pacific is often limited by the large proportion of small, highly fragmented, non-diagnostic remains recovered from archaeological sites. Recent advances in biomolecular methods, including collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (a.k.a. ZooMS) enable increased taxonomic identifications and refine...
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...
The Power of Pyrotechnologies: Ceramic, Iron, and Bronze in the Rise of the Angkorian Khmer Empire, Cambodia (Ninth to Fourteenth Centuries CE) (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. Crafting with fire is a central feature in the expansion of premodern states. In mainland Southeast Asia, the Angkorian Khmer (ninth to fourteenth centuries CE) possessed a unique mastery of three types of pyrotechnological production: stoneware ceramics, copper-base alloys, and iron. While the products of each craft...
Pre-Contact Hawaiian Animal Burials: Interspecies Interactions and Embodied Experiences (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological analyses of pre-contact Hawaiian midden deposits have yielded significant information on subsistence practices and, to a lesser extent, associated foodways practices. Archaeologists have also occasionally excavated burials of non-human domesticated animals, including dog, pig, and chicken. These ritual deposits provide unparalleled...