Mediterranean (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (290 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. San Miguel de Mercadal is one of 23 villages abandoned in the late 15th century during the Medieval Crisis in the Comunidad de Aldeas de Daroca created AD 1248 to encourage resettlement and self-defense of the southern borderlands of the Kingdom of Aragon. In 2023 we conducted a geophysical and satellite survey of Mercadal and its surroundings combined...
Micromorphological Investigations of Site Formation History between Layers XVII and XVIII at Middle Paleolithic Rockshelter Crvena Stijena, Montenegro (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rockshelters are subject to many geological processes driven by natural and human agents alike. The sedimentary context that surrounds artifactual data is a vital resource to the scientific exploration of human behavior in the Middle Paleolithic. To connect assemblages and...
Micromorphology of Earthen Architecture at Palaikastro, Crete (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent geoarchaeological studies of earthen architecture have demonstrated the social and environmental information that may be gained from combined macroscopic, microscopic, and elemental analyses of mudbricks and degraded building materials. Micromorphology can elucidate construction...
Microstratigraphic and Geochemical Contributions to the Study of the Burial Practices and Taphonomy of the Mycenaean Shaft Grave of the ‘Griffin Warrior’, Pylos, Greece (2018)
Results of a microstratigraphic and geochemical approach are presented here in reference to study of the Mycenaean ‘Griffin Warrior’ shaft grave at ancient Pylos. Soil and sediment micromorphology are used to address questions concerning the preparation of the tomb, the mode of corpse deposition, and taphonomy of the burial. Processes and activities such as the preparation and configuration of the floor and other earthen constructions inside the tomb are considered, as well as the rapidity of...
Middle Paleolithic Land Use in the Northern Adriatic: Preliminary Data from the Open-Air Site of Campanož (Croatia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Campanož, located in the south of the Istrian peninsula, is a relatively new discovery of the Middle Paleolithic record of Croatia. Because it is a stratified open-air site, its discovery has opened questions regarding Middle Paleolithic land use in a region that has until now been heavily biased toward cave...
Minoans at Aghios Nikolaos? Preliminary Results of the Khavania Topographical and Architectural Mapping Project (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary results of the Khavania Topographical and Architectural Mapping Project (2019), whose primary objective was to document all natural and anthropogenic features at the coastal site of Khavania, East Crete. Exploration of the eastern and southern shores of the Mirabello Bay has produced abundant evidence for cultural...
Mirrors in the Adriatic Region: Holders, Contexts, Exchanges (2024)
This is an abstract from the "And They Look into the Mirror for Answers: Mirror Analysis to Understand Its Holder" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Adriatic Sea (seventh–second century BC) was a place where consistent encounters and trades happened between the many peoples and cultures who lived on its shores (Etruscan, Picenes, Daunians, Greeks, Illirian . . .). This paper focuses on the use of mirrors in this area by analyzing the...
Mobilities of Potters and Pot Painters in Ancient Mediterranean: The Test Cases of Classical Athens and Southern Italy (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Movements of artists and artisans was a common phenomenon in Eastern Mediterranean both in prehistoric and historical times, with sculptors and wall painters being the most frequently mentioned in ancient texts. The mobility of makers of figured ceramics in Classical Athens and in Southern Italy has often been posited based on stylistic affinities, but not...
Mobility and Animal Economy in the Early Nuragic Culture: A Case Study from South-Central Sardinia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of Sardinia’s Bronze Age Nuragic Culture remain poorly understood. Few early Nuragic sites have been systemically excavated and published, making it difficult to assess the social, political, and economic processes that took place in the Middle Bronze Age and laid the foundations for the culture’s Late...
Mobility in North-Eastern Italy between the Late Roman and Byzantine Periods (2018)
The upheaval caused by the fall of the Roman Empire brought armies and new settlers in Italy in chaotic ways, producing significant changes to the socio-economic and political organization of the Empire. Material evidence has been irresolute in determining the actual significance of migratory movements due to the fast adoption of foreign customs to attain social power in the new political landscape. An interdisciplinary research using strontium isotope analyses on Late Roman and Byzantine...
Money and Inequality in Roman Mediterranean Gaul, ca. 125 B.C.–A.D. 100 (2018)
The Roman conquest of Mediterranean Gaul between 125-121 B.C. significantly altered the Celtic societies living in the region. Two of these dramatic transformations were the increasing use of coins in economic transactions, and a marked rise in socio-economic inequality within the conquered province. This paper examines the connections in Roman Mediterranean Gaul of the first century B.C. through the first century A.D. between the emergence of a monetized economy, debt, and increased...
Morgantina's Lost Port: Geoarchaeological Insights into the Paleohydrology of Central Sicily (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient city of Morgantina is today located deep in the dry Sicilian interior, more than 50 km from the sea’s edge and the expansive maritime networks of the Mediterranean. Yet, despite the site’s remote inland location, there is ample archaeological evidence that in antiquity Morgantina enjoyed the status of an...
A Mosque and a Castle: The Discovery of the Salemi Mosque (2018)
In the summer of 2007 an elaborate, colonnaded gypsum-plaster floor was discovered outside of the Salemi Castle in western Sicily. Believed to date sometime between the 10th and 12th centuries, this feature was constructed during a period when the island of Sicily was repeatedly invaded and conquered by a series of expanding political entities. As such, interpretation of this feature has proved to be somewhat difficult. However, its orientation in an eastward direction may suggest that this...
Multi-facetted Anthropology: Recent Work of the Athienou Archaeological Project in Central Cyprus (2018)
The Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has conducted multi-pronged investigations in central Cyprus over the past 27 years. The research has included excavation, survey, geophysical prospection, ethnoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, and cultural studies. The unifying thread in these endeavors has been a theoretical perspective that draws on Braudel’s concern with the central role of the environment in the Mediterranean’s historical development, world-systems analysis, and landscape archaeology....
Multi-isotope Evidence for Animal Husbandry, Transhumance, and Human Diet at San Giuliano, 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 San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) offers an excellent opportunity to investigate potential diachronic changes in human-animal interactions from the Etruscan to Late Medieval periods in central Italy. Here, we report on faunal and human...
Neanderthals in Porto Selvaggio, Southern Italy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Peninsular Southern Europe Refugia during the Middle Paleolithic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Porto Selvaggio of southern Italy is where the Uluzzian culture was first identified and documented, providing key insights into the transition of the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic. The area has also yielded evidence of continuous Neanderthal occupations spanning MIS 5-3. Situated in the Natural Park of Porto Selvaggio,...
Neolithic to Bronze Age Human Impact on Island Landscapes and Faunal Communities: Exploring the Wild/Domestic Dichotomy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper synthesizes zooarchaeological and stable isotope evidence from the eastern and western Mediterranean to consider the influence of humans on island landscapes and ecosystems from the earliest Neolithic through the Bronze Age. How did the importation of new faunal species, whether...
Neolithic Voyagers: Why Colonize the Mediterranean Islands—The Example from Cyprus (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The "Neolithic Revolution" in the Near East and Anatolia is the oldest known in the world. This transformative economic and social event occurred in several mainland locations, and conventional wisdom was that it did not spread to the adjacent Mediterranean islands until relatively late, essentially being a "Neolithic footnote." Cyprus has the oldest...
Network Models for the Emergence of Transportation Infrastructures in Central Italy (1175/1150─500 BC ca) (2018)
The period between the Late Bronze Age and the Archaic Age is a time of change and development in the Italian Peninsula, leading to the formation of the first city-states. In this study, we focused on the Tyrrhenian regions of Latium Vetus and Southern Etruria, by analyzing the emergence of the network of terrestrial routes as it has been inferred from archaeological evidences. Our goal was to explore the mechanisms that shaped the overall structure of these past transportation...
Never Built in a Day: Contextualizing Urbanism in Iron Age Western Sicily (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Iron Age was a transformative period in western Sicily, introducing the indigenous Elymian populations to Aegean and Levantine colonists who brought their own languages, crops, technology, materials, social customs, and ritual systems. Concomitant to the arrival of these foreigners was a transformation of indigenous lifeways. We examine this transformation...
New Multi-disciplinary Studies Re-shape our Understanding of Neolithic Peopling and Biocultural Adaptations in Western Liguria (Northwestern Italy) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in the mid-1800s, about 200 burials and an undefined number of scattered human remains have been reported from several caves and rock shelters in western Liguria. The skeletal series, excavated following the methodology of the time, were considered likely/probably/possibly "Neolithic" or "Middle Neolithic",...
No Country for Old Crones: Exploring the Presence of Grandmothers in the Ancient Greek Archaeological Record (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In scholarship, there has been a past tendency to ignore and obfuscate mortal mothers; this also extends to the mothers who live to see their grandchildren. While there has been a sentiment in the past that motherhood is invisible in the archaeological record, there has been very little consideration given to the presence and roles of grandmothers in ancient...
Oh Deer: A Zooarchaeological Approach to Understanding Hominin Behavior during the Last Interglacial (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of hominin subsistence behavior during the Last Interglacial is limited. Le Grand Abri aux Puces (GAP), a cave in Southern France in the foothills of the Alps, can provide a closer look into subsistence behavior as most of its layers are dated to the Last Interglacial. It has been suggested that hominins living around GAP during...
The Organic Residue Analysis from the Early Bronze Age Site of Sotira Kaminoudhia in Cyprus (2018)
This paper presents the final results of organic residue analysis from the Early Bronze Age settlement and associated cemeteries of Sotira Kaminoudhia. A total of twelve pottery samples were analyzed using Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (gc/ms) as part of a larger research program that aimed to identify prestigious, organic substances that would have been utilized on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus during the prehistoric Bronze Age. Three categories of prestigious substances...
An Osteological and Isotopic Assessment of Diet at Ancient Corinth and Ancient Paphos (2018)
Corinth and Paphos were two key centers of the ancient Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. While the commercial and political lives if these communities have been studied, less is known about aspects of day to day life such as diet and health. Here we present some insights based on paleopathology and collagen stable isotope analysis. This study (n = 275 individuals for Paphos; 94 individuals for Corinth) suggests populations that were under a certain amount of stress. Mean...