Republic of India (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (642 Records)
Rita Wright’s pioneering work on the ceramic stylistic and technological traditions of the Indo-Iranian borderlands highlighted the potential of new theoretical approaches to our understanding of cultural boundaries within South Asia. This work highlighted the complex nature of technology and style boundaries within specific contexts of cultural interaction. This paper takes inspiration from Dr. Wright’s work and applies this framework to another frontier of the Indus: the northwestern state of...
Ceramic Technology beyond the Rim: Reconstructing (and Firing) a Late Neolithic Chinese Kiln (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The past several decades have seen a shift in the focus of ceramic studies in Neolithic China from ceramic products toward ceramic production, as scholars have pushed beyond typological analyses to investigate the people who made, handled, and used these wares. Despite this turn toward process, comparatively little attention is given to the many...
Ceramic, Lithic, and Settlement Variability of the Incipient Jomon Sites on Tanegashima Island, Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although conventional thinking has associated the advent of pottery with farming, sedentism, and groundstones, more recent research suggests that emergence contexts vary. Case studies on intra-regional variability are required to better understand the timing and behavioral context of the adoption of pottery. In this study, we provide the case of the first...
Cereals in Southeast Asian Prehistory (2017)
Rice is the most important crop in Southeast Asia today. The evidence is that rice was equally important in Southeast Asia’s past. From the Neolithic period to the Middle Ages, rice has been discussed as food, a ritual item, a farming system, a culinary tradition, a tradable commodity and the basis of power. However, was it always the staple crop in Southeast Asia? The archaeobotanical studies conducted in Central Thailand by Weber revealed that in some instances and places, millet was more...
Changes in Land Use and Landscape in Twentieth-Century Chengdu Plain Survey Area (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various available aerial imagery from the 1960s through 2000s allow for examination of changing ground surface conditions in the Chengdu Plain in recent decades. Surface conditions impact accessibility, visibility, and preservation of archaeological evidence of ancient human activity in the area. They...
Changing landscapes of the Paleolithic/Neolithic transition in Taiwan (2017)
Toward understanding the Paleolithic/Neolithic transition in Taiwan, a paleo-terrain approach allows reconstruction of the ancient landforms and habitats of where people lived. Those ancient contexts help for us to situate the activities of people using their landscapes in different ways at intervals of 7000, 6000, 5000, and 4000 years ago. This approach needs to account for significant change in tectonic movement of land masses, slope erosion and re-deposition patterns, fluctuating sea level,...
Changing Perspectives for the Palaeolithic Research of the Japanese Archipelago (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Apart from sporadic finds of human bones and artifacts, systematic research on the Palaeolithic began in Japan with the Iwajuku excavation in 1949. In spite of the relatively short history of 70 years, and the negative impact of the "Fujimura Scandal" of 2000, which resulted in nullification of...
The Character of Carbonized Rice in Hunan Archaeological Site (2018)
Based on the comprehensive analysis of grain shape and embryos of carbonized rice from archaeological sites, the author draws conclusions as follows: a. There is a difference in shape of spikelet base between cultivated rice and wild rice, but it is difficult to make comparable measurements. Therefore, it is possible to identify rice by using the characteristics of the spikelet base based on one’s experience, but it is difficult to make comparisons between different researchers. b. According to...
Characterization of early imperial lacquerware from the Luozhuang Han tomb, China (2017)
This paper focuses on presenting the characterization of materials from fragmented pieces of an imperial lacquer plate in the Luozhuang Han tomb, which dates to the early Western Han dynasty. Various non-invasive and minimally invasive techniques were performed, including optical and electron microscopy, XRF, Raman spectromicroscopy, FT–IR, XRD and THM-Py–GC/MS. The lacquerware pieces consist of a five-layer structure, which includes (from the top): a red pigmented layer, two lacquer finish...
Characterization of Neolithic Jade Objects from Shimao and Xinhua, Shaanxi Province, China, Using Handheld Portable Techniques (2017)
50 jade objects from the Late Longshan period, excavated from the Shimao (25) and Xinhua (25) Neolithic sites, were characterized mineral groups using handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (hhXRF) and handheld specular reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (hhFTIR). The objects were found to belong to three types of minerals. 22 objects found in Shimao (88%) are nephrite (19 tremolites and 3 actinolites), two are calcite and one antigorite. From Xinhua, 9 objects (36 %) are nephrite...
Chaîne Opératoire in Jade Study (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. Since Wu Da-cheng’s Catalogue of Ancient Jades in the Qing Period, research of Chinese jades has largely focused on analyses of their social and ritual significances. In latter half of the 20th century, excavations in Liangzhu, Hongshan, and Xinglongwa culture sites discovered many prehistoric jades. These important discoveries...
Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey Culture Distributions: Integration and Interpretation of the CPAS Data (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey generated two complementary datasets that provide evidence of the distribution of archaeological material across the survey region: surface survey data and coring data. These datasets are combined to create “Activity Areas,” archaeological constructs that we argue...
China Vegetation Atlas (2001)
his atlas is another summary result of the publication of "Chinese Vegetation" and other monographs by the vegetation ecology workers in China for more than 40 years. It is a basic map of the country's natural resources and natural conditions. It reflects in detail the distribution, horizontal zonality, and vertical zonal distribution patterns of 11 vegetation types, 54 vegetation types of 796 and subgroups, and reflects more than 2,000 plant dominant species in China. This Atlas consists of...
The Church of Todos los Santos and its associated cemetery in the Spanish colony of San Salvador, Heping Dao, Taiwan (17th century) (2017)
Archaeological excavations in the setting of the former Spanish colony of San Salvador, founded in 1626 in current Hoping Dao, northern Taiwan, have uncovered remains of a European building that can be identified as the Convent or Church of Todos los Santos, founded while the Spanish colony was active and possibly preserved afterwards under Dutch rule. Several burials have also been excavated, which constitutes a formal cemetery associated to the church. The human remains in the cemetery of...
Cities, Towns, and Villages in the Diverse Environments of the Indus Civilization (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The urban phase of South Asia’s Indus Civilization (ca. 2600–1900 BC) does not offer simple parallels to other contemporary complex societies. This paper will present new insights into Indus settlement networks and the diversity of Indus urbanism. There were apparently only four large-scale (80+ ha) Indus settlements, which were...
City of Sand: Urban Ecologies and Uncertain Life in Chennai (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) (2021)
This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In Chennai, and elsewhere, sand is a constitutive element of modern urban life. Through its many material arrangements and circulations, sand mediates lifeworlds and landscapes. For example, in Chennai, sand mined or dredged from riverbanks, beaches, and the Bay of Bengal flows into the city, where it supplies the "raw" material required for urbanization. Much of this sand becomes concrete,...
Climate Amelioration and the Rise of the Xiongnu Empire (2017)
Climate has been debated by historians and archaeologists as one possible contributing factor for the emergence and collapse of complex societies. Recently, connections have been proposed between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of Chinggis Khan’s 13th-century Mongol Empire. If favorable climate and increased rangeland productivity do indeed play a critical role in the politics of pastoral nomads, then we should be able to observe this in other cases too. This...
Climatic Narratives across Eurasia: A Comparative Study of the 4.2k Event in Western and Eastern Asia (2018)
In the last two decades, climatic narratives have returned as a central issue in archaeological discourse. The field has been flooded with publications on paleoclimatic reconstructions and we believe it is time for a critical evaluation – both as means of seeking better science, and for building better archaeological narratives. Climate history is composed by an overlapping meshwork of long-standing trends, punctuated events and short-term phases, with impacts ranging from the local to the...
The Co Loa Settlement: Biography of an Anomalous Place (2017)
In the archaeological study of ancient large-scale settlements, there is considerable debate regarding definitional criteria for categories of "city" and "urban". New field studies from different world areas have enriched our understanding of the variability of past settlement configurations along dimensions of utility, meaning, space, scale, and demography. In northern Vietnam, the remains of monumental constructions of the prehistoric settlement of Co Loa still stand today. Dating to the first...
Coastal Resource Use During the Prehistoric Times in the Amami and Okinawa Archipelagos, Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ryukyu archipelago, Japan, is located between Kyushu and Taiwan islands, stretching approximately 1200 km. The Amami and Okinawa archipelagos occupy the central part of the Ryukyu archipelago. Astonishingly, Homo sapiens settled these islands as early as ca. 30,000 years ago. Based...
Collapse, or Drastic Socio-cultural Transformation?: Some Cases from Japanese Prehistory (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper proposes to redefine 'collapse' as a type of human responses to changes that happen to the (variously perceived, experienced and utilized) environment in which we live. It is argued that the phenomena commonly termed as 'collapses', such as the disintegration of settlement systems and the...
Communities, Violence and Fortification: A Study of Longshan Landscapes (2018)
The Late Neolithic period in Central China, known as the Longshan period, has long been associated with violence and warfare. There have been several theories as to what are the catalysts for for this period of increased violence. This paper will review the evidence of warfare and violence during this period. Using disparate spatial data this paper will investigate the implications of warfare and violence on the settlement patterning of the Central Plains of China. Through this investigation we...
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...
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...