Republic of Latvia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
801-825 (986 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early European peopling (about 1.5 Ma) is characterized by a low number of sites and lithic assemblages often consisting of a few hundred pieces. Despite these limitations, it is possible to define the technical behavior of these early Europeans with sufficient accuracy. The reduction sequences are always...
Short-term Neanderthal Occupations and Carnivores in the North-East of Iberian Peninsula (2017)
Short-term human occupations can be developed in very distinct places and be related to very diverse functions. The low number of items left by the human groups in these sites usually generates discrete assemblages, which often adds difficulties to the subsequent archaeological interpretations. In the European Middle Paleolithic, are common short-term human occupations in caves and rock-shelters frequented by carnivores as well (bears, hyenas, large felids, canids and other small carnivores) as...
Siberian Indigenous Traditions of Game Keeping and the Supernatural: Historical Continuities and Discontinuities (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Siberian Indigenous communities have been used for centuries as a stand-in for various western categories, mostly as a contrast to civilized, developed or familiar groups. This paper will consider the importance of history when archaeologists contemplate the role of the supernatural and the centrality of game...
Simple Non-Destructive Extraction of Biomolecules from Human Skeletal Remains (2017)
Opportunities for the biomolecular study of archaeological human skeletal remains (HSR) can often be limited by museum regulations that only permit non-destructive analyses. This restriction, coupled with the fairly common practice in England of quick reburial (due mainly to a lack of storage space), can result in a wealth of information being lost. It is therefore important that bioarchaeologists work to establish successful non-destructive methods for the biomolecular analysis of...
Site Hierarchy and Ceramic Display: Regional Variation in Bronze Age Ceramic Assemblages in the Eastern Carpathian Basin (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tell settlements have played a key role in the study of Middle Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC) societies in the Carpathian Basin since the end of the nineteenth century. Researchers primarily use data from these sites and cemeteries in discussions over relative and absolute chronologies, questions of variability in material culture, the extent of interaction...
A Site with a View? A 3D Reconstruction of the Structures at Dun Ailinne (2019)
This is an abstract from the "On the Periphery or the Leading Edge? Research in Prehistoric Ireland" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Dún Ailinne (Knockaulin) in County Kildare is one of four major ceremonial sites of the Irish Iron Age. The site sits on a large, isolated hill in an otherwise flat landscape on which a large earthen bank and ditch encloses approximately 13 ha of land at the top. Excavations in the 1960s-1970s, as well as...
The size and character of Viking armies in the light of Viking camps from England and Ireland (2017)
In the 9th century, Viking 'armies' are recorded raiding (and in some cases conquering) in Britain, Ireland and the Frankish kingdoms. Contemporary sources indicate that the largest of these were comprised of hundreds of ships and, by inference, thousands of men. Many of these accounts give round numbers, and historical opinion is divided between those who accept that the figures may represent approximations rather than absolute historical fact, but are nevertheless representative of very...
Size isn't everything: are our data good enough to be big? (2017)
Archaeological data may not yet meet the criteria for Big Data, but the growth of archaeological cyber-infrastructures is providing the foundations for ‘big data’ research. Using digital repositories such as the ADS in the UK and tDAR in the USA, we have access to millions of records, from multiple resources. Data and text mining tools allow us to extract information from published and unpublished fieldwork reports, whilst the ability to create Linked Open Data or to integrate metadata via...
Skeletal evidence suggesting biological continuity in the ruling lineage throughout the Late Helladic, Sub-Mycenaean and into the Dark Ages on the Greek Island of Kefalonia. (2017)
The cluster of sites on Borzi Hill near the village of Tzannata on the island of Kefalonia includes several habitation areas and various tombs. The evidence suggests an extensive occupation during the Mycenaean (Late Helladic) Period, including the largest tholos or "beehive" tomb in the Ionian Islands. The tomb was built around 1350 BC at the same location as an older tomb that had collapsed. Although the tomb was looted in antiquity, excavations have yielded a number of notable finds including...
Skuggi and Siglunes: Two Icelandic Settlement Sites (2017)
This paper presents results from multidisciplinary investigations at two Icelandic sites from the same region: Skuggi and Siglunes. The small subsidiary farm at Skuggi was likely settled during the earliest stages of Icelandic colonization and was located on a steep mountain slope, about 150 m above the valley bottom. Ideas on its occupation history and causes of abandonment will be discussed, as well as the possibility that the decision to abandon the settlement was heavily influenced by...
Slave Ships of the Viking Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Viking ships were slave ships. Between 750 and 1100 CE, clinker-built vessels were used across Northern Europe on raids for collecting captives and transporting them on routes that linked the North Atlantic to Central Asia. We have extensive knowledge about these ships through a unique...
The sling in medieval Europe (2006)
J. Whittaker: History, accounts of accuracy, good refs.
A Small Rock Holding Back the Waves (2018)
Islands are both understudied and spatially constrained, with often turbulent colonial histories. This paper reconsiders the conceptual basis of intra- and inter-island relationships in the context of archaeology. We argue that islands need not be isolated as geographic, ecologic or cultural entities and have not been so during the proto-historic and prehistoric periods. Using 21st century equilibrium theory and gateway theory we suggest that islands may be in some contexts central places. We...
Social Bioarchaelogy of Forager-Farmer Transition in the Balkans (2017)
In Europe, Greece and the Balkans were the first areas to be reached by expanding Neolithic, agricultural lifestyles. The Danube Gorges of the central Balkans represents one of the best case studies in Europe for studying bioarchaeological consequences of the change from foraging to farming thanks to abundant settlement and mortuary record found here. It also provides a good regional anchor point for the contextualization of other contemporaneous sites across the Balkans. A large number of...
Social complexity and wealth inequality in middle-range society: A complex systems and network science approach to the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2017)
Economic and social leaders create and maintain unequal or dominance relationships within and between communities by controlling labor, and limiting access to technological, material and ideological resources, and trade networks. Through these kinds of actions and interactions, social networks are structured and restructured altering the flow of goods, services and information. From this bottom-up process, social complexity emerges. To understand how the structure of underlying social networks...
The social consequences of climate-driven changes in the spatial distribution of human populations during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). (2017)
Risk-reducing strategies allow humans to manage ecological risk while minimising disruptions. Unpredictable resource fluctuations, i.e. ecological risk, are driven by a combination of climate conditions and climate variability. Under extreme conditions reduction strategies may fail, however, forcing a reorganisation of the social and economic structure of affected populations, as well as their technological systems. Risky conditions during the LGM, for example, affected the spatial distribution...
The social context for archaeological reconstruction in England, Germany and Scandinavia (2000)
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...
Social Dynamics and Archaeological Sciences at Neolithic Tells: Investigations on the Great Hungarian Plain by the Körös Regional Archaeological Project (2017)
Investigation of social dynamics at Neolithic tells, Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor, Hungary, included surface collection, geophysical and geochemical surveys, targeted excavations, micromorphology, stable isotope studies, compositional analysis, and contexual analyis of 14C dates, cultural materials, and burials. Both sites were established ca. 5200 B.C., cal., and they are located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River, seven km apart. However, they have different dimensions and...
The Social Dynamics of Obsidian Use in the Prehistoric Western Mediterranean: Temporal Changes in Maritime Capabilities, Lithic Technology, and Sociopolitical Complexity (2017)
In the western Mediterranean, obsidian was an important lithic material, coming from four Italian islands and found at archaeological sites up to several hundred kilometers away. Analytical studies of many thousands of artifacts have identified their specific geological sources, and revealed chronological and geographic changes in their selective use through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (ca. 6000-1000 BC). These data are used to assess economic and social dynamics regarding access to and...
Social history of Scandinavia: an experimental approach (1971)
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...
Social Inequalities by Diet in Archaeology: The Contribution of Isotopes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research about the biological impacts of social inequality is at the center of the humanities and social sciences. Social inequalities impact multiple determinants of health such as lifestyle, diet, and housing. Questions about inequalities, therefore, can be addressed by using isotopic data related to collected by archaeologists. This project compiles...
Social Inequality in the Middle-Late Neolithic? Stable Isotope Analysis of the Individuals from Beli Manastir-Popova Zemlja (Slavonia, Croatia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beli Manastir (Slavonia, Croatia) is the largest Middle-Late Neolithic habitation site discovered in Croatia. A total of 37 individuals were found in different burial positions and different areas of this site, and sometimes within burial clusters, with only 3 individuals buried with abundant grave goods. The burials were, in most cases, placed between or...
The Social Life of Crash Sites: Understanding World War II Sites in Context in the Search for Missing Air Crew (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Fulfilling a Nation’s Promise: The Search, Recovery, and Accounting Efforts of DPAA and Its Partners" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites are only rarely preserved as pristine moments in time, unaltered since the site was formed. More often, they are a continuous production, forming a part of the social and cultural landscape of the surrounding area. In this paper, we draw upon Appadurai’s idea of the...
Societies against the Chief? re-assessing the value of ‘heterarchy’ as a concept for describing European Iron Age societies (2017)
As a reaction against the dominant warrior chiefdom model of European Iron Age society, much of recent scholarship has emphasised the negotiated nature of power in these societies. Such approaches frequently characterise these societies as ‘heterarchical’ yet the dynamics of how communities operated above the level of the household remain relatively under-theorised. This paper reassesses the value of concepts of heterachy for two regions of Europe, southern Britain and North-western Iberia. It...
Sociopolitical and Environmental Change and its Effect on the Biology of a Medieval Polish Population through Isotopic Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Medieval to Early Modern periods in Poland underwent a shift toward a feudal sociopolitical structure and experienced environmental changes leading to an increase in social stratification and an unequal distribution of power, opportunity, and resources (e.g., food). This project examines how a non-elite Polish population biologically...