Republic of Palau (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
626-650 (684 Records)
The Hexi Corridor of Northwest China was an important area for cultural exchange between west and east parts of the Eurasia during both historical and prehistoric times. Here we present new dataset of archaeobotanic, zooarchaeological and bone isotopic analysis, and radiocarbon dating from late Neolithic and Bronze sites in Hexi Corridor, and discuss the history of trans-continental cultural exchange in Hexi Corridor before Han Dynasty (202BC-220AD). Our results revealed the chronology of...
Trans-cultural interaction in China’s Shang Period: an archaeo-metallurgical perspective (2017)
The production of ritual bronze vessels is an internationally recognised feature of Bronze Age China, contrasting strikingly with other early civilizations across the world. Their manufacture exploded in the Shang period (16th to 11th centuries BC), when bronze metallurgy spread across the whole territory of present-day China. However, while the production of ritual bronze vessels predominated in the Central Plains, resent research is showing how surrounding regions exhibited strong local...
Transformation of the Jomon-era Ritual System: A Case Study of the Jomon / Yayoi transition in the 1st millennia BC in the Tohoku Region of the Japanese Archipelago (2017)
It has long been claimed that the Jomon-era cultural and ritual system was probably replaced by a new early farming cultural system (Yayoi Culture) brought by immigrants from the Korean peninsula. Recently, however, Japanese archaeologists have been working to determine the variability of ritual practices in each region of the Japanese archipelago. This paper analyzes the transformational process of ritual items (e.g., clay figurines and stone implements) of the Tohoku (northeastern part of main...
Transforming Ideologies and Hopes of the Past in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea (2018)
In the wake of several decades of resource extraction (logging and oil/gas exploration), the past as articulated in particular places, material things, names and narratives has taken on new urgency in the Purari Delta. For over a decade communities have struggled to marshal these assemblages of cultural heritage to demonstrate their traditional ownership to acquire resource royalties. An imperfect and highly political process, claimants must overcome the legacies of out-migration, Christianity,...
The Transition from the Middle to the Late Neolithic in the Yilan Plain, Northeast Taiwan (ca. 4,200 ~3,700 B.P.) (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 discusses the transition from the Middle to the Late Neolithic period in the Yilan Plain, Northeast Taiwan (ca. 4,200~3,700 B.P.) with a specific focus on analysing the material objects excavated from two sites, the Tatsuwei site (4,200-3,700 cal. B.P.) and the Wansan site (3,900-2,500 cal. B.P.). Previous research emphasized the importance of...
The Two Pillars of the Kingdom of Bagan, Myanmar: How Royalty and Religion Shaped the Settlement Patterns of an Empire (2018)
Bagan was the political, economic, and cultural centre of Myanmar during the country’s Classical Period (c. 800 – 1400 CE). This immense empire operated primarily on two institutions: the crown and the sangha (Buddhist monkhood). Kutho (merit) was arguably one of the most important Buddhist doctrines in Bagan as it was believed to guarantee better social status upon reincarnation. Kutho, for the elite, was most commonly obtained by contributing large donations to the sangha. These donations took...
Under the Church Bell: Reducción and Control in Spanish Philippines (2018)
The Spanish conquest of the Philippines redesigned the indigenous landscape to adhere to the idealized orthogonal plan outlined by King Philip II’s Ordinances of 1573, centered on the church plaza. This reconfiguration facilitated the successful political, economic, and religious control of the colonial possession. An aspect of this resettlement plan is the concept of Bajo de Campana (under the bell) that implied control through the ringing of the church bell. The plaza complex, which is...
Understanding Pleistocene and Early Holocene faunal exploitation at Barrow Island, North-west Australia (2017)
Barrow Island, located 50km off the modern Pilbara coast, contains the longest and richest archaeological record of Pleistocene coastal settlement in northern Australia. During lowered sea levels of the Pleistocene, the island was part of the greater Australian continent. Archaeological survey has revealed an array of sites in cave, rockshelter and open air-settings. The most diverse record has been recovered from a large limestone cave, where repeated visits began at c. 50 ka BP and continued...
Understanding the Settlement Structure of the Middle Yangshao Period (Miaodigou Phase) based on Recent Archaeological Discoveries in the Wei River Valley (2017)
As one of the most influential archaeological cultures in prehistoric China, the Miaodigou Phase of the Yangshao Culture has been found widely in many regions. During the Miaodigou Phase, a common cultural identity appeared across China for the first time, which had great significance for the later formation of Chinese civilization. However, archaeological research has until recently been limited to the study of ceramic styles. In recent years, investigations at the Yangguanzhai site in Shaanxi...
Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection and Management in Pacific Island States (2018)
The waters of the Pacific Ocean contains a wealth of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) encompassing the history of humanity from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age and witnessing climate change. This paper presents a summary of the outcomes of the UCH Programme in Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Notable progress includes the reference to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the UCH in SAMOA Pathway outcome document (2014), national and regional capacity building workshops, and...
Unearthing the History of Mokil Atoll: A Fresh Perspective through Zooarchaeological Exploration (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a dearth of research on atolls in the central-eastern part of the Caroline Islands, especially from a zooarchaeological perspective. We present the first zooarchaeological analysis for Mokil atoll, which has been continuously inhabited since 1700-1500 cal. BP. The material was excavated in 2013 on the islet of Kahlap. The majority of the...
Unentangling Hotspots and Episodes in Pre-domestication Cultivation of Cereals: Examples from West and East Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The growth of empirical archaeobotanical data has highlighted that domestication processes in cereals were spread out over both time (millennia) and space (100,000s rather than 10,000s of km2). Updated data from West Asian cereals and pulses, alongside Chinese millets and rice, are analyzed. These data allow...
Unraveling Neolithic Cultures in the Taipei Basin through Pottery Technology at Tzufakung (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Taipei Basin holds archaeological significance, particularly in illuminating the Neolithic era in Taiwan. The sites of Yuanshan and Botanical Garden each represent distinct Neolithic cultural phases. However, the coexistence, contemporaneity, or transition between Neolithic cultures has been a subject of debate. The nationwide site survey,...
Unsettling Settler-Colonial Archaeology: Constructing Indigenous Futurities at Puʻukoholā Heiau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Often thought of as a discipline that concerns itself with ruins—that which is in the past—archaeology also serves the settler-colonial project, in the present and the future. For that reason, archaeology inherently functions as a political tool, even if typically imagined as an apolitical means of “preserving” the past. In other words, archaeology offers...
Untangling the Urban Morphology of medieval Angkor, Cambodia (2017)
One of the largest puzzles for archaeologists at Angkor is untangling the extremely complex chronological development of the site. The region was host to hundreds of years of urban occupation arising out of a long tradition of habitation through the Bronze and Iron Age. Decades of archaeological investigations have established relational frameworks through which it is now possible to do more precise dating. Recent LiDAR investigations and the associated mapping and ground truthing have...
An Update on the Sonvian-Hoabinhian Controversy: Shape Analysis of Flakes and Cores from Mau A, Northern Vietnam (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding stone artefact variation in northern Vietnam can be challenging because of the underspecified cultural taxonomies that have dominated analytical frameworks. For example the Hoabinhian is often thought to be a descendant taxa to the Sonvian. Our recent excavations at Mau A challenge this sequence. We apply statistical shape analysis...
Urban Economies and State "Peripheries": Angkorian Stoneware Ceramic Production and Distribution (2018)
Angkor’s agro-urban capital covered more than 60 square miles, and its landscape housed farmers and artisans. Constraints of the archaeological record limit our ability to document production scale of most activities; the genealogical skew of Angkor’s epigraphic record in another reason. Yet Greater Angkor’s gardens and fields must have fed residents in the Angkorian state’s epicenter. Artisans built its temples, sculpted temple images, and cast metal goods; specialists and communities tended...
Urban Life Histories, Long-Term Angkorian Urbanism, and the Kok Phnov Site (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. Angkor was premodern Southeast Asia’s largest city from the ninth to fifteenth century. Centered in northwest Cambodia near the Tonle Sap Lake, this agro-urban agglomeration comprises extensive settlements linked through a series of road and water management systems. Research on Angkorian urbanism has focused on either...
Urban-palaeoecology of Cambodia's 'Middle Period' (2018)
The transition from the sprawling Angkor kingdom with its vast, low-density urban forms, to a constellation of smaller cities on the Mekong River was accompanied by profound changes to urban ecology and to landscapes – both in the failing low-density cities, and in the burgeoning trade-based centres that replaced them. Here, we present a paleo record of urban ecology that responds, in part, to changing population dynamics across Cambodia during the 15th to 19th centuries C.E. Implications for...
Urbanism and Residential Patterning in Angkor (2018)
Greater Angkor (9-15th centuries CE) was mainland Southeast Asia’s largest low-density urban area. Some of the most visible aspects of this landscape are the large stone temples constructed by Angkorian kings and elites. While many scholars have hypothesized that these temple enclosures were loci of habitation, few have documented this archaeologically. In this paper, we present the results of two field seasons of excavation at the temple site of Ta Prohm, part of a broader research program that...
Urbanization in Ancient Tonga: The Tongatapu Low-Density Urban System (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of low-density urbanization has been an important development in recognizing the diversity of past human settlements. However, the key challenge to studying low density urbanization with archaeological data, particularly in tropical zones, has been the...
The use of Chenopodium plants in China (2017)
This article reviews the use of Chenopodium plants in Chinese archaeobotanical record. We will draw attention to two regions particularly, Northeast and Southwest China. We will consider the use of Chenopodium food in the context of origins of agriculture in China.
Use-Wear Analysis on Cooking Vessels of the Longshan Culture: Case Studies on the Tonglin Site (2017)
Some preliminary research on ceramic vessels of the Longshan culture had indicated li vessels as the most important type of cooking vessels. Vessel's categories might not exclusively indicate a vessel type. As was observed for the Tonglin site, an important site of Longshan culture at Linzi, li, guan, and pen vessels are the most abundant categories type. However, li vessels of Tonglin site have small rim diameter sizes on average, and it is necessary to collaborating use-wear analysis for...
Use-wear and Standardization Analysis of Pottery from Dibaping, A Banshan Period Cemetery in Southern Gansu Province, China (2017)
Excavated in 1978, the cemetery at the site of Dibaping in southern Gansu Province, China revealed hundreds of Banshan period (2600-2300BC) ceramic vessels. The elaborately painted geometric motifs on many of the vessels led to them quickly being touted as an example of the pinnacle of artistic achievement in Neolithic northwestern China. Aside from typology, however, no other analyses have been done on these objects. The result is that little is known about how these vessels were created, the...
Using Sacred Landscape Model of Indigenous Cave Use in the Philippines (2018)
Caves are natural spaces, but like other natural settings, they can be perceived by people through highly variable cultural lenses. Caves are not generally used as utilitarian spaces, but are more often sacred spaces where rituals are performed. The material record of these subterranean features can provide insights for how past peoples connected to the symbolic landscapes of caves, thus affording opportunities to assess behaviors. Research on the ritual uses of caves is fairly new in the...