Mediterranean (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (218 Records)
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
Storage And Empire: Choreographies of Time and Matter at Rome’s Harbours (2018)
The capacity for storing surplus has been a key parameter in the hierarchical rankings of socio-political evolution, with empire at the apex. With its large-scale ports and massive warehouses, the Roman empire easily fits this bill. Models of socio-political evolution, however, not only build on top-down templates of power, but also adopt a view of things (i.e. stored goods) as passive resources. But in the light of recent material culture theory, storage becomes a more complex mediation of time...
Students Discover Heritage: Lessons from the Field Boston University Field School in Archaeological Heritage Management (Menorca-Spain) (2018)
Boston University’s field school in Menorca, Spain, started 17 years ago as a traditional field school experience. Over the years, we incorporated the study of archaeological heritage management—both theoretical and practical—as an integral part of the curriculum. In the last decade, the increasing number of students interested in cultural heritage management inspired us to move to a heritage management-only field school. This poster will present the results of our first season. Menorca is a...
A Study of Medieval Intrasite Find Distribution on the San Giuliano Plateau, Lazio, 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) excavates a site in Lazio, Italy, known as San Giuliano. The medieval component of the San Giuliano site is a local manifestation of the widespread, but still poorly understood “*incastellamento” process (the...
Submerged Paleolithic of the Eastern Adriatic: Research Results, Problems, and Perspectives (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. For a long time, underwater archeology has complemented the image of the past in different periods ranging from prehistory to the Industrial Age. In some regions, such as the Adriatic, it focused primarily on Greek and Roman periods, and on shipwrecks, while research on prehistoric sites has been rare but recently...
The S’Urachi Project: Cultural Encounters and Everyday Life around a Nuraghe in Phoenician and Punic Sardinia (2018)
Nuraghi, the famous dry-stone walled towers of Sardinia, are usually just regarded as prehistoric monuments of the Bronze Age. They continued to be inhabited long after, however, and were transformed into often substantial settlements of later periods. Nuraghi are key sites for the investigation of the colonial encounters and cultural interactions between local Sardinians, Phoenician traders and Punic settlers, because they are the only places that were continuously inhabited before and during...
Taking the Palace out of Palatial Control (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hierarchical models of political and economic organization still pervade the scholarship of complex societies in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. This is especially the case for those societies such as Late Bronze Age Greece identified as “palatial” in which the palace and its officials are accorded near complete control over the economy. There is much...
A Tale of Two Landscapes: Agricultural Evidence from a Classical/Hellenistic City and a Nearby Hellenistic Farmstead, Greece (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeobotanical results from a coastal 4th c. BC city and from a 2nd c. BC farmstead located 6 km away demonstrate two different agricultural strategies employed in coastal Thrace. While both sites show a reliance on cereals, the 2nd c. farmstead also contains substantial evidence for the cultivation of bitter vetch, lentils, and chickpeas, as well as...
A Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Iron Oxhide Ingots from the Cape Gelidonya Shipwreck (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geometric morphometric-based landmark analyses have long been used as a method for quantifying the shape of biological data sets, but their utility for non-biological samples is often overlooked. The Cape Gelidonya shipwreck, dated to 1200 BCE, contained cargo consisting of over one ton of fragmentary and complete copper oxhide ingots originally classified by...
Trade Winds: A Study of Roman Ceramic Trade in the Balearic Islands (2018)
The Balearic Islands, located off the coast of Spain, were occupied by the Romans beginning in 123 B.C.E. Under Roman occupation, the islands saw the development of Roman-style infrastructure and architecture in place of the pre-existing megalithic style of groups such as the Talayotic people. Sanisera and Pollentia are examples of Roman cities developed to facilitate trade and support the military needs of the empire. While excavations of the Balearic Islands have provided a wealth of data,...