Republic of Moldova (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
826-850 (982 Records)
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...
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 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...
Social Reactors Project datasets
Datasets from various publications of the Social Reactors Project
Social Spaces of Central Italy and the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Every space humans inhabit tells a story about the cultural values, social norms, and lives of those who utilized the space. This paper focuses on the archaeological remains of a medieval fortification and presumed castle located in Barbarano Romano, Italy, atop 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...
Socio-Economic Class Status and Health on the Roman Danube: Skeletal Indicators and Mortuary Treatment at Late Antique Viminacium (2018)
Cross-culturally and through time, anthropologists have found that--within hierarchical societies--elites tend to manage resources and allocate risk primarily to their own benefit. There is little reason to believe that Late Roman Imperial frontier elites would have behaved any differently. This paper examines the archaeological relationship between biological 'stress' or health--as inferred from skeletal remains--and socio-economic status / class--as evaluated on the basis of mortuary...
Sociopolitical Change and Its Effect on the Biology of a Medieval Polish Population through Isotopic Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Jagiellonian Period (1386–1572) in Poland underwent a shift toward a feudal sociopolitical and economic structure leading to an increase in social stratification and unequal distribution of power, opportunity, and resources (e.g., food). The medieval site of Gać (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries) provides a unique opportunity to gain insight into the...
Something Other – Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia (2017)
Human-bird relationships in Early Iron Age Slovenia are marked by apparent contradictions – birds are extremely rare in the zooarchaeological record as a whole, and completely absent from mortuary contexts that are otherwise notable for the deposition of animal remains. Yet birds are the most frequently represented animal in Early Iron Age art. Experience of birds would have been relatively constant – birds are almost always present, yet human relationships with them were likely based more on...
Sources and Distribution of Palmarola Obsidian in the Central Mediterranean during the Neolithic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tiny island of Palmarola, about 35 km south of Cape Circeo (between Rome and Naples, Italy), was an important source of obsidian during the Neolithic in the Central Mediterranean. While thought to have been a minor source, compared to Lipari and Sardinia, extensive artifact analyses in recent years of museum and other collections show that Palmarola...
Sourcing Building Stones in the Ancient Mediterranean: A Review of 25 Years of Provenance Research at the Wiener Laboratory (2018)
From its very inception, the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens has fostered and supported the integration of geological techniques and methodologies into archaeological research programs in the eastern Mediterranean Basin. One such area of focus includes provenance studies of rocks used in architectural and sculptural programs spanning from the prehistoric to Late Antiquity. By tracing the source quarries of ancient artifacts and features, archaeologists...
Soviet Materiality and its Ruins (2018)
To borrow Yuri Slezkine’s formulation, "the Soviet Union was an empire—in the sense of being very big, bad, asymmetrical, hierarchical, heterogeneous, and doomed". In this it differed little from the early empires that have long held archaeology’s attention. But unlike its precursors, the U.S.S.R. was guided by a political ideology premised vigorously on the relationship between humans and things—between labor, the non-human inputs of production, and property. Imperial sovereignty rested on...
Space and Activity on an Upland Neolithic Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of Neolithic cultural landscapes in Southern Germany raise questions about relationships between clusters of settlements, low-density artifact scatters, and empty space, and call for analysis of individual settlements in the context of broader cultural landscapes. This poster presents results of test excavations on an upland LBK settlement in...
Space, Workforce, and Scale of Production: Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Craft Workshops in Ancient Mediterranean (2017)
More than dots on a map, the craft production loci need to be examined for the space they occupy: their size, organization, and capacity. Spatial analysis can put constraints on workforce size and scale of production, allowing us therefore to reconstruct more accurate models of craft economy. We can also attempt to correlate space occupancy with scales of craft specialization. The "chaîne opératoire" can be examined parallel to the "espace opératoire" to establish what the spatial requirements...
Spaces and signs of transfer of jade and callaïs in the Neolithic of Western Europe (2017)
Two different groups of green stones with a distant origin are found together in the Neolithic tombs of the Carnac Region (Brittany, France): the Alpine jades (jadeitite, omphacitite, eclogite) were used as raw material for polished axes and disc-rings, while the Iberian callaïs (variscite, turquoise) for pendants and beads. The way in which these transfers took place will be the subject of this presentation, highlighting the specific features of each geographical area. With such aim in mind,...
Spatial analysis and sampling techniques of cremated remains from Bronze Age cremation urns in southeast Hungary (2017)
Since 2011, members of the Bronze Age Körös Off-Tell Archaeology (BAKOTA) Project have excavated 57 cremation urns from the Békés 103 site in Southeast Hungary. This exploratory study seeks to examine the percentages of cranial and postcranial elements present in microstratigraphic levels in order to better understand the spatial distribution of bones within the burial urns. As a way to explore new approaches, two sampling methods were employed for the analysis of three burials. The first...
Spatial Differences in Site Use at the Middle Paleolithic site of Lakonis (Peloponnese, Greece) (2017)
Lakonis is a Middle Paleolithic rockshelter on the coast of the Mani Peninsula of southern Greece. It is well-known for the preservation of a Neandertal tooth in the late Middle Paleolithic layers, which is one of the few Pleistocene hominin remains from Greece. The site preserves several occupation areas spanning 120,000-40,000 BP. Lithic and faunal remains are abundant, though the faunas are highly fragmented due to heavy concretion of the sediments. During excavation, researchers defined at...
Sperm Whales and Neolithic Whaling Socieites along the Coasts of Atlantic Europe (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. Sperm whales played a central role in the cosmological world view of early megalithic societies (4700-4200 cal BC) in the Bay of Morbihan, Brittany, France. The whales were engraved as iconic signs on colossal standing stones, some of which were re-used to build megalithic graves. The largest of these standing...
Spiraling like a Boss: exploring elements of Bronze Age ceramic style at the micro-regional level (2017)
Fortified tell site excavations in the 20th century formed the basis for construction of a Bronze Age chronology in the Carpathian Basin. Typological and stylistic elements observed on these sites were used to create archaeological cultures for large areas, whose distributions changed over time. However, the use of large archaeological groups obviously masks internal regional variation, both chronologically and stylistically. Different river-valleys, as micro-regions, may have formed the basis...
The SPLASHCOS Viewer: The First Online Atlas of Submerged Prehistoric Sites in Maritime Europe and the Mesolithic Site of Strande, Kiel Bay (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The EU-funded SPLASHCOS network promoted the fledgling discipline of "Continental Shelf Prehistoric Research." This discipline is based on an interdisciplinary research approach combining archaeological, geophysical, geological, oceanographic, and biological methods. Investigations so far have already enormously expanded the...
Stable Isotopic Examination (δ18O, δ15N, δ13C) of Human Remains from the Santa María de Zamartze, Uharte-Arakil Municipality, Navarre Region, Spain (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An initial subset (n = 5) of the human remains (N = 155) recovered during the 2011 to 2015 excavation seasons from the Santa María de Zamartze church burial grounds were analyzed for stable oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon isotopic values derived from bone and tooth carbonate and collagen. As this site is positioned in close geographic association with a Medieval...
A Stable Isotopic Investigation into Diet and Mobility at the Medieval Cemetery at Sutton Road, Milton, Oxfordshire (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A stable isotope investigation of diet and mobility was conducted on individuals excavated from the medieval cemetery of Sutton Road, Milton, Oxfordshire. Fifty individuals were excavated from the cemetery, many of whom exhibited evidence for degenerative diseases and trauma. Skeletal analysis also indicates a significantly older population than is common...