Republic of Latvia (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
701-725 (879 Records)
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...
Settlement and rituals. The red deer at Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement sites in SW Norway (2017)
The red deer is one of the most common motifs at several Late Mesolithic rock carving sites along the coast of southern Norway. It is assumed that this animal was both an important food resource as well as an object of rituals and religious beliefs during this period. The focus of this paper will be to examine how the red deer appears in different contexts at settlement sites during the Stone Age, and to explore how these contexts reflect diverse activities, including rituals and ceremonies. Our...
Settlement scaling and the emergence of the Greek polis (2017)
The collapse of the Mycenaean palatial centers at the end of the Late Bronze Age (circa 1190 BCE) and the nature of society in the ensuing "Dark Age" or Early Iron Age have long been important topics in the study of prehistoric Greece. The centuries after the collapse were characterized by a seeming decrease in population, changing patterns of settlement, less political centralization, a decline in trans-Mediterranean trade and the production of luxury goods, and the disappearance of the Linear...
Settlement scaling in Medieval Europe and Tudor England (2017)
From an archaeological perspective, the settlements of Late Medieval Europe lie far to one end of the social complexity spectrum. But from a modern perspective, they are decidedly ancient. Without the institutions and technologies of modern capitalism or the industrial revolution, Late Medieval settlements are commonly characterized as unproductive consumers within dynamic agrarian economies. Both economists and historians have assumed that the benefits of urban agglomeration economies – their...
Settlement scaling theory, specialization, and the Greek and Roman world (2017)
In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in using urbanism as a means of investigating the economy of the Greek and Roman world. The most recent research on the relationship between urbanization and economic growth suggests that the correlation between them is not as straightforward as once thought. There is a growing corpus of theory, however, that suggests that modern settlements act as ‘social reactors’, which increase the number of opportunities for interactions between...
Severe skeletal lesions and loss of bone mass in a child associated with a case of spinal tuberculosis and prolonged immobilization (2017)
This paper describes the lesions identified in the skeletal remains of a 9 year-old girl who died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Lisbon, Portugal, in the 1940s. This individual is housed in the skeletal collection at the National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon. These remains show a variety of lytic lesions on the ribs and thoracic vertebra, with complete destruction of the bodies and fusion of the vertebral arches of 4 vertebrae at a 60 angle. The individual was likely bedridden for...
Sex differences in pre- vs. post-Black Death trends in developmental stress markers (2017)
Previous research revealed trends in periosteal new bone formation in medieval London that are consistent with improvements in health following the Black Death (c. 1347-1351). However, periosteal lesions can occur in response to a wide variety of factors at any age, so it remains unclear how the epidemic affected patterns of physiological stress specifically among subadults. To further our understanding of changes in physiological stress before and after the Black Death, this study examines...
The Shaman in the Cave? Testing for entoptic imagery in Upper Paleolithic geometric rock art. (2017)
It has been proposed that much of the rock art of Upper Paleolithic (UP) Europe can be interpreted as the result of shamanistic visions and related spiritual practices (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1998; Clottes and Lewis-Williams 2001; Lewis-Williams 2002; Whitley 2005). This theory is based on a combination of analogy with modern hunter-gatherer groups, and recent neuroscience studies on the universality of human physiological response when in a trance state. Specific geometric signs found...
Shared Heritage: World War II American Military Loss Sites in Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historic archaeological sites associated with World War II American military losses on foreign lands represent the physical remains of a shared cultural heritage. Such sites are irreplaceable phenomena of significance to the past of both nations and for the knowledge and understanding of our shared cultural...
Sharing and Using Knowledge Derived from Experience: Early Cultural Resource Evaluations of the OCS (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Perspectives on the Future, and the Past, of Underwater Archaeology in the Cultural Resource Management Industry" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the 1970s, the United States federal government initiated a program to protect submerged cultural resources of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) from the impacts of federally permitted undertakings. The impact of permitted mineral exploitation on cultural...
Ships and feet in Scandinavian prehistoric rock art (2017)
Scandinavian rock art was created from the Late Neolithic through the Early Iron Age. The majority of these images were produced in the Bronze Age – a period when postglacial isostatic uplift altered much of the Scandinavian coastline. Although the lexicon of rock art motifs is diverse in Scandinavia, this paper will focus on two key figurative motifs: ships and human feet. It presents results from two different studies. The first is a Scandinavian-wide GIS-based analysis that explores the...
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...
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...