Mediterranean (Geographic Keyword)
226-250 (290 Records)
Despite the lack of cities, the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2400-1700 cal BC), an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, witnesses high wealth inequality and spatiotemporal variation in the emergence of social complexity or hierarchical social networks. Previous research has shown that social networks are malleable and cycle between egalitarian and hierarchical in different facets of complexity (control of labor, access to resources, participation in trade networks) through the Prehistoric...
Reconstruction of the Diet at the Iron Age Site of Cvijina Gradina, Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cvijina Gradina, located along the Zrmanja River in present day Croatia, was once one of the largest Liburnian settlements during the Iron Age period (6th – 1st century BC). The settlement was prominent in the region’s economic and sociopolitical sphere, leaving behind significant bioarchaeological evidence of diet to be researched. Based on the fragmentary...
Reevaluating Conclusions: New Data and Theories on Instrasite Find Distribution in Medieval Incastellamento, San Giuliano Plateau, Lazio, Italy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) began excavations in 2016 to elucidate the complex occupational history of the San Giuliano landscape in Lazio, Italy. The archaeological record indicates diachronic habitation spanning the Bronze Age to the medieval period evidenced by a large Etruscan necropolis and a hilltop medieval...
Regional Connections and Variations in the Archaeology of Healing and Disability: The Temples of Asclepius (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Asclepius was worshiped as the god of healing throughout the Mediterranean from c. 500 BCE to 400 CE. Temples to the god "Asclepieia" have been found across the region, from Epidaurus in Greece, to Pergamon in Asia Minor, to Tiber Island in Rome. In antiquity, asclepieia were renowned as places where the sick...
Religious Belief and Cooperation: A View from Ancient Greece (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent work in the interdisciplinary field of the Cognitive Science of Religion has proposed that the in-group cooperation needed for the development of the large, complex human societies that first appeared during the Holocene was fostered by belief in the existence of supernatural beings that monitor humans and punish misbehavior. Two competing...
Remote Sensing Methods for Investigating Modern-Day Land-Use Intensity in Archaeological Landscapes: A Case Study from the Sinis Archaeological Project, Sardinia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeological surveys are conducted in landscapes that are today being actively used for agricultural production. Farming practices, such as plowing, are in fact often essential for exposing and bringing to the surface formerly buried archaeological materials—the study of which allows archaeologists to develop regional-scale assessments of where...
Remote Sensing Remote Islands: Error Analysis of Lidar-Based Archaeological Survey of the Small Cycladic Islands, Greece (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cyclades, Greece, are islands with well-documented histories of human occupation and use. Among the larger islands in the archipelago there are many small, currently uninhabited islets with referenced land-use histories, including for agriculture and pasturage (goat islands). Despite these references, there have been few archaeological investigations...
Revisited Analysis of Early Bronze-Age Bone Tubes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Comparative analyses have long helped archaeologists identify characteristics of artifacts including origins, social life, and use. However, this tool becomes problematic when broad conclusions are drawn without evidence beyond similar characteristics between types of artifacts. One example of this are Early Bronze-Age bone tubes. Decorated bone tubes are...
Risk Management in Agriculturally Marginal Areas of Southwestern Anatolia during the Ottoman Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results of recent surveys around the Mediterranean have revealed a wealth of information about rural populations during the Ottoman period that had for a long time been ignored by historical and archaeological research. This has also brought to light the role of people who occupy politically, economically, or socially marginal niches. This paper aims to...
Risky Research (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sebastian Payne made a lasting impact on zooarchaeology, especially in the Old World, with his 1973 paper outlining age and sex mortality profiles that characterize the prioritization of meat, milk, or wool. Richard Redding was the first scholar not only to suggest that these optimizing models might not...
Ritual Performances in and around Caves in Bronze Age Sardinia (2018)
This paper understands performance as an embodied, site-specific and temporary event. It consequently emphasizes the diversity of ritual performances identifiable archaeologically, not only in the context of different types of cave and rock-shelter, but also between these and other types of site in the landscape. In doing so, the paper evaluates the liminality of these places and ritual performances, which were – to varying degrees – separated spatially, temporally and symbolically from the rest...
Ritual Production, Commodity Production, and Cultivating Agricultural Heritage in Ravni Kotari, Croatia (2018)
Agricultural crops may be selected not only because they "work" from the perspective of agroecology, but also for their value in maintaining religious affiliation, historical memory, and community identity. Drawing on emerging archaeobotanical evidence from the Ravni Kotari region of southern Croatia, this paper discusses the challenges of understanding continuities of cultivation practices over multiple millennia in relation to changing political-economic contexts within which cultivation has...
Sacrifice, Meat Consumption, and Bone Working at the Curiae Veteres: Zooarchaeological Findings from the Sixth- and Fifth-Century BCE Levels of the Palatine-Pendici Nord-Est Excavations in Rome, Italy (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological projects, such as those of the Palatine-Pendici nord-est excavation, are bringing new materials and new clarity to the processes of social change that lead to urbanism in Rome, Italy. The Curiae Veteres sanctuary, located in the heart of Rome on the northern slopes of the Palatine Hill, gives exceptional insight into the earliest...
Sales of Sail: The Production and Economy Behind Roman Sails (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Filling a gap in classical maritime literature by creating an economy of sails — how much they cost, where they were made, who made them — and the implications of such an economy, a sail production line is created through the formulation and analysis of a chaîne opératoire. Through a discussion of the primary base textiles used -...
Searching for Clues of Neanderthal Occupation and Mobility in Combustion Structure Residues: A Micromorphological and Biomarker Study of El Salt Unit Xb, Alcoy, Spain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Neanderthal lithic and faunal record shows a short-term occupation, high mobility trend throughout Eurasia. Although combustion structures, which are numerous and well preserved in most Middle Paleolithic sites, play a central role in short-term occupations, they have not been sufficiently investigated from a...
Settlement data from the 1960-1975 Basin of Mexico Surveys (2014)
Data analyzed in Ortman, S. G., A. H. F. Cabaniss, J. Sturm, and L. M. A. Bettencourt, The Pre-History of Urban Scaling, PLOS ONE (Feb. 2014).
Settlement Scaling and Increasing Returns in an Ancient Society (2015)
Main text and SI of published paper in PDF format. The SI includes a series of datasets derived from the Basin of Mexico surveys that are analyzed in the main text.
Siculo-Norman Tableware Consumption upon Monte Bonifato: A Spatial Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the Norman conquest of Sicily, the newfound rulers of the island found themselves greatly outnumbered in a land where a majority of the population had converted to Islam. Under these conditions, many of the technological and artistic innovations brought to the island by the Arabs continued under the new, Christian regime. Of particular interest to...
Sinis Archaeological Project: Preliminary Results of the First Season of Landscape Survey in West-Central Sardinia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sinis Archaeological Project is a new regional survey in west-central Sardinia that explores the landscapes of the Sinis Peninsula and adjacent territories from multi-scalar, diachronic perspectives. The region is a diverse landscape of agricultural plains, coastal areas, and mountainous territory. In antiquity, it was inhabited by both local Nuragic...
Small Carnivore Use in the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic of Kephalari Cave (Peloponnese, Greece): Opportunistic or Optimal? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene of southern Greece adheres to many predictions set forth by human behavioral ecology concerning the use of small game in the face of demographic growth, ecological change, and advancements in procurement technologies. In Peloponnese, an increase in small, fast game use...
Social Connections Near and Far: The Role of Local and Exotic Goods in the Emergence of Complexity on Cyprus during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of international goods has long been a signifier of social complexity on Cyprus, but the accumulation of local goods and interregional imports may be equally as important for understanding the formation of hierarchical social networks during the Prehistoric Bronze Age (2400–1700 cal BC). This period marks...
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...
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...
Son of a Son of a Sailor: Island Life and the Colonization of Cyprus (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For years the Mediterranean islands were considered devoid of much Neolithic or earlier occupation. That no longer is the case, with Cyprus being one island where recent research has rewritten the prehistory of the Mediterranean. We now know that its colonization was not a one-time “Noah’s Ark” event, but rather that the sea was a highway instead of a...