Mediterranean (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (290 Records)
The Least Cost Path analysis in ArcGIS has been a critical tool in archaeological reconstructions of movement and connectivity, but until recently these analyses have been limited to land travel. From the Neolithic onwards, sea travel was an equally important mode of transportation in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean. In this study, I utilized the Least Cost Path tool in ArcGIS to model sea travel in the Aegean. Bathymetric data and speed and direction of local wind and currents were inputs in...
'Least Talked About Among Men?': the verbal and spatial rhetoric of women's roles in Classical Athens (ca.450-350BCE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I argue that comparing views derived from texts and material culture highlights the conscious manipulation of both media by their creators in order to communicate specific messages. I suggest that an awareness of this kind of manipulation has a vital role to play, not only in the interpretation of textual...
Life and Death in Medieval San Giuliano (Lazio Province, Italy) (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. The medieval period in northern Lazio saw significant restructuring of social and economic relationships through *incastellamento, the process by which people chose or were forced to move onto fortified hilltops. Here, I present results from four seasons of mapping,...
Like a Lion, as a Man: Seals and Poetry in Minoan Crete (2018)
This paper investigates how parallels were drawn between lions and human in Bronze Age Crete, and how this parallelism potentially developed concurrently through material culture worn on the human body and oral narrative. I argue that the unique qualities of seal stones, namely their close association with human identity and their physical location on the human body, positioned them to be potent venues for asserting parallels between man and beast. I begin in the late Early Bronze Age, with a...
Linking Multiple Scales in Time and Space: Small Worlds and World-Systems Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This contribution proposes that world-systems analysis could benefit from greater consideration of a local-scale, or “small world,” perspective. These maritime and terrestrial small worlds, defined by face-to-face interaction and often...
Lithic Raw Material Procurement and Mobility in a Geological Diversed Environmental Setting in Prehistoric Eastern Sicily (2018)
The geological constitution of Sicily is enough complex as the characteristics of the geological units are consequences of the tectonic compression that happened between the beginning of Miocene and the beginning of the Pliocene. Three structural units are basically distinguished: 1. To the north, in the western side (towards Palermo) there is prevalence of carbonatic reliefs while in the oriental side (Nebrodi Mounts and Peloritani Mounts) there are metamorphic and terrigenous deposits 2. the...
Littoral Society and the Heterotopic Fabric of Early Medieval ports (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. Ports have long been recognized as nodes within grand skeins of connectivity, the thresholds over which goods and ideas move into a wider hinterland. But how, and to what extent, do ports function as their own world, and what can we say about littoral society and the contextual relationship of sea-adjacent peoples...
Livestock Economy and the Emergence of Urbanism in Central Italy during the Iron Age and Archaic Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses subsistence specialization, livestock mobility, and husbandry strategies at Gabii during the eighth–fifth centuries BCE, a time of transition to state-level, urbanized political systems. The site of Gabii is one of several emerging cities in the Lower Tiber Valley that grew along a similar trajectory, expanding from dispersed hut...
The Living Archive of Çatalhöyük (LAC): Providing Big Data Laboratories as Open Environments for Archaeological Research (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In archaeology data are stored in ways that reflect the strategies of research while conventional data repositories tend to freeze the original databases within their initial storage logic. In contrast, the interpretation of primary evidence changes during a project's lifecycle, and it becomes difficult for later researchers with different research questions,...
Local Actions and Long-Distance Interactions: Challenging the Paradigm for the Emergence of Social Complexity on Cyprus during the Bronze Age (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. Complex social networks or social complexity emerges from the actions and interactions of people as they pass information, goods and services. During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, particularly on the island of Cyprus, it has been hypothesized that two actions and interactions are particularly important for...
A Long Walk from Town: Early 19th Century Landuse in the Territory of Bova (2018)
In the early 1800s the majority of Bova's citizens live in their hilltop town while holding small plots of land in multiple locations, some quite a distance from the town itself. Archival records from notaries, diaries, and cadastral holdings paint a picture of an independent community of low income citizens plying their trades and rather detached from the larger economic systems around them. Despite the abundance of natural resources available in the landscape, the community was not fully...
Long-Distance Obsidian Trade from Multiple Island Sources to Prehistoric Tuscany, Italy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian tools and flakes are regularly found at prehistoric sites in Tuscany, indicating long-distance trade and distribution during the Neolithic through Bronze Age periods (ca. 6000-1000 BC). Some 436 artifacts from six archaeological sites in Florence, Siena, and Grosseto, some 300 km from the nearest geological obsidian source, were tested with a...
Long-distance trade in Late Antique Italy: Evidence from the Bova Marina Archaeological Project (2018)
It is well known that the state plays a major role in generating and structuring economic flows in complex societies. What happens, though, when a state's ability to do this is severely reduced? One example to consider is the Roman/Byzantine state in Late Antiquity. Using survey evidence from the Bova Marina Archaeological Project, changes in the presence of long-distance imports in the ceramic assemblage show a drastic shrinkage of the scope of trade, while other economic changes were less...
Looters Can’t Steal Everything: Salvage Archaeology at the San Giuliano Necropolis (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. The Etruscan cemetery around the San Giuliano Plateau has been looted extensively, but salvage excavations of several emptied tombs have yielded results that increase our understanding of the funerary landscape. In the 2018 and 2019 field seasons, two vertically...
Love beyond What Is Lost: Expressions of Kinship through Mortuary Practice at Phaleron Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While discussions of kinship in Ancient Greece have largely been limited to the elite and their families, the Archaic cemetery of Phaleron (700–480 BC) provides a unique opportunity to investigate kinship relationships among people of lower socioeconomic status. This is especially true of interments of children, which can be interpreted not only as a...
Machine Learning for Chronology Building in Regional-Scale Synthesis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chronlogical control is essential for regional-scale research in order to establish contemporaneity or temporal sequences among spatially distributed assemblages. Archaeology has benefitted from advances in radiometric dating methods, as well as statistical protocols for combining dates to achive greater precision age...
Managing Forests in the 19th and Early 20th Century Bovese (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The town of Bova, located in the foothills of the Aspromonte in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, once dominated a region rich in forests and woods. Travelers from the 15th – 19th centuries commented upon the rich vegetation. Archival records ranging from tax declarations to legal disputes refer to the presence of trees and forests in locations around...
Manufacture of Late Neolithic Pottery from the Southern Balkans: An Integrative Approach (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout their life, from manufacture to final discard, ceramic vessels participated in different human activities within Neolithic communities throughout the Balkans. As a result, vessels, potters, and users are involved in a relational interaction leading to a continuous negotiation of various aspects of the Neolithic world. The outcome of this relation is...
Mapping Agricultural Landscapes in Roman and Post-Roman Italy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the context of an archaeological excavation in northern Lazio, Italy, this paper will discuss solutions for incomplete datasets in the study of pre-modern agriculture. The focus of excavation is a Roman imperial period, monumental fountain located 300 m from the western coast of Lake Bolsena in central Italy. Its...
Maritime Imagery of the Amalfi Coast, a Pilot Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Amalfi coast, with its jagged peaks creates a series of village enclaves nestled into the small, relatively flat river valleys along the peninsula. Although geographically isolated, the towns along the peninsula have a network of interconnectivity stemming from their outward maritime focus. Even today, many locals and visitors...
Maritime Mobility during the Western Mediterranean Iron Age (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. Research on the topic of seafaring in the western Mediterranean during the Iron Age has often focused on Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and Phoenician activity. By contrast, the maritime endeavors of other coastal populations have largely been ignored. Yet, historical accounts and archaeological evidence indicate that...
The Materiality of Surveillance: Scale, Complexity, and Polity (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Textual and archaeological evidence make clear that most ancient polities were concerned with surveillance in some way. However, the scale of material investment in surveillance suggests different motivations in different contexts. This paper compares the material signatures of surveillance in Greek Bronze Age...
Measuring Reduction Intensity in Laminar Cores: An Experimental Approach and Archaeological Application (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reduction intensity analysis plays a key role in understanding the formation of lithic assemblages and the occupation patterns of Paleolithic sites. Furthermore, technological variability and core classifications can be better understood if the diachronic component of the reduction is taken into consideration. The Volumetric Reconstruction Method (VRM),...
Medieval Settlement atop Monte Bonifato: A Case Study in Function over Form (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 1: Landscapes, Food, and Health" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Defensive Settlement or late medieval escape for nobility? When it comes to castles and many of their associated settlements it seems the latter has been pushed in English language literature more than the former for a few decades now. In this paper, we present a case study that showcases the development of a...
Mediterranean shipbuilding: the case study of Calvi I (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Ship Construction and Shipwrecks: A Journey into Engineering Successes and Failures (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Port of Calvi, located in the island of Corsica, southeast of the French mainland, was for several centuries a center of maritime activity in the Mediterranean. In 1979 French submariner Antoine Roucayrol found the shipwreck named “Calvi I”, the vessel was believed to...