Mediterranean (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (218 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is becoming ever more clear that cooperative efforts amongst researchers trained in a wide variety of archaeological and geoarchaeological specialties during the planning, excavation, and interpretation of an archaeological site are crucial to a successful study. Middle Paleolithic deposits in Level XXIV of the rock shelter at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro are...
FLAME: Framing the Late Antique and Early Medieval Economy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The FLAME project is a collaborative effort of a dozen scholars worldwide to track the production and circulation of coinage in western Eurasia from CE 325-750 in order to investigate the transition from ancient economies to those of the Middle Ages in Europe, North Africa, and Western and Central...
Food and Eating Practices as Affirmative Bio-politics on the Border (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will explore the role of provision, preparation, and consumption of food among undocumented border-crossers on the island of Lesvos in Greece. In the various migrant centres run by solidarity groups, cooking and eating become the embodied experiences that bind migrants and solidarians together. Relying on primary...
Forensic Culinary Archaeology: Seeking the Longevity of Recipes and Their Flavors from Crete (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeobotanists and zooarchaeologists work very hard to gain information about the presence and frequency of past food ingredients throughout time, it has been almost impossible to get at actual recipes and flavor combinations from archaeological settings. Food archaeologists worked hard while making great strides uncovering the rich archaeological data about...
Formation Processes and Biases in Big Data (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of Harold Dibble’s career was focused on the formation processes of the archaeological record. Initially, formation theory encompassed both natural and cultural formation processes; however, in the last few decades most scholars have focused on natural biases in the formation of the...
From Agamemnon to the Animals: Zooarchaeological Research on Human-Animal Boundaries at Mycenae, Greece (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Late Bronze Age site Mycenae in Greece, animals have long been understood mainly in terms of records preserved on clay tablets and sealings, artistic depictions, and later references in Homeric epic echoed by Schliemann. The archaeological remains of animals record a more detailed record of complex...
From Field to Screen: Best Practices for Digital Recording and Global Sharing of Catacombs from Late Roman Sicily (2018)
Ten years after the seminal research on the digital recording of the monumental complex of The Catacombs of Saint Domitilla at Rome, undertaken by the Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften , the virtualization and the dissemination of 3d models of Late Roman catacombs is still a challenging research topic. While the catacombs of Rome are consistently considered for cutting edge digital archaeology projects, the underground cemeteries of Late Roman Sicily, the second in importance to those...
From Local to Regional Technological Landscapes – The Mobility of Aeginetan Potters (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper stems from a project entitled TRACT (TRAvelling Ceramic Technologies as markers of human mobility in the Aegean), funded through Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which aims to demonstrate that the informed and interdisciplinary study of ancient pottery can shed...
From Soil to Society: Local Variability in Inferred Climatic and Environmental Change and Landuse in the Valencian Community, Spain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climatic and environmental factors are ‘creeping’ phenomena with rapid thresholds, and there is a disjuncture between product and best-practice in terms of landuse. The ways in which people engage with their environment are necessarily influenced by the nature of the given region, but the form of that engagement is contingent on cultural and historical...
Full of Water, Full of Life: Water, Resilience, Sustainability, and Built Heritage in the 19th to 21st Centuries San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy (2018)
In the early 1800s wealthy landowners acquired lands in the San Pasquale Valley, located 50 km from the provincial capital of Reggio Calabria in southern Calabria, Italy. Internal migration of farmworkers to establish commercial bergamot, olive, grape, and mulberry orchards in this valley created a large and thriving community of farmworker families who built the landowners’ villas, the overseers’ and farmworkers’ houses, and the farming infrastructure of wells, cisterns, aqueducts, mills,...
A Geoarchaeological Study of Site Formation Processes at Arma Veirana, A Palaeolithic Cave in Liguria, 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. Arma Veirana is a cave situated along the steep flanks of the Neva river valley, ca. 14 km from the modern-day Mediterranean coast in the mountainous interior of Liguria. The cave formed tectonically within marble, schist and other metamorphic rocks and presents a large but relatively short cavity. Excavations since...
Geoarchaeology of Terraces and Building XVI at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus: Evidence for Site Formation and Settlement Activity (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoarchaeological research conducted in 2019-2020 as part of the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments (KAMBE) project focused on collecting multiscalar and high-resolution geoarchaeological data from the Late Bronze Age city of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios in south-central Cyprus. The aim of the geoarchaeological project is to determine the uses of space in...
GIS and Ancient Infrastructure: Modeling Water Distribution from the Aqua Augusta in Pompeii, Italy (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding access and distribution of resources is a key component of archaeological research. Tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be instrumental for modeling and understanding resource use in the ancient world. The incredibly well-preserved remains of ancient Pompeii offer an excellent case study for modeling urban infrastructure...
Going Deeper: Can We Use Network Approaches to Reconstruct Memory, Meaning and Emotion? (2018)
Understanding our past needs more than the long lens of nodes, links, and centrality measures: archaeology is bound to people’s things and people’s places. Although network analysis is concerned with relationships, it has not yet been harnessed to approach the meaning, memory and emotion encoded in our relationships with things and places. We must address this by ensuring that our network analyses incorporate these aspects of lived experience and make meaningful contributions to advancing the...
Greeks in the Mountains: New Insights on the Landscapes of Ancient Greek ‘Colonization’ in Calabria, Southern Italy (2018)
This paper investigates the political and economic landscapes of Greek ‘colonization’, using as a case study the upland and lowland landscapes investigated by survey and excavation by the Bova Marina Archaeological Project. The study region lies between two neighbouring ancient Greek city-states, Rhegion and Locri Epizephyrii, established in the late 8th-7th century BCE. Ancient classical texts present a picture of deep, long-term hostility between them, as well as with the indigenous...
The Hippos Who Would Not Die: Akrotiri Aetokremnos, Cyprus, and a Scientific Dilemma (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Akrotiri Aetokremnos, a collapsed rockshelter in Cyprus, was excavated over 30 years ago. The site caused controversy for two reasons: it was the oldest site on the island, and it was associated with extinct pygmy hippopotami. The first issue has been resolved, with over 70 radiocarbon determinations centered around 10,000 cal BC, placing the site in the...
Hippos, Cows and CAARI: Alan Simmons’ impact on Cypriot Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When Alan Simmons first arrived on Cyprus in 1985, the Cypriot Neolithic was considered a poorly understood and uninteresting backwater lagging behind the developments of the Levant mainland. IN the mid-1908s, The Khirokitia Culture (KC) was thought to be the first...
Historic Water Management Infrastructure in the San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy (2018)
Over the last several field seasons, the Bova Marina Archaeological Project has been documenting the timing of construction and the physical characteristics of the original water management infrastructure as well as documenting the changes in the natural and social systems of the San Pasquale Valley in Calabria, Italy. The Valley was recolonized in the 19th and early 20th centuries for both large scale bergamot plantations and by peasant farmers. With large scale population exodus from the...
Human Adaptability to Fauna and Flora Changes during MIS 5-3. Is the Iberian Mediterranean Region a Refuge? (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. Neanderthal and AMH from the Early Upper Palaeolithic have a really good knowledge of their environment and its potential resources. The local landscape and its changes should influence their behavior and the availability of resources. In this sense, the faunal remains have been better documented than flora. But our team...
Hunting the Helmet: Social and Practical Aspects of Building a Boar’s Tusk Helmet (2018)
From the earliest occurrence of the boar's tusk helmet from Grave Circle B at Mycenae (ca. 1650BCE) to the latest from a sub-Minoan tomb from the North Cemetery at Knossos (ca. 1000BCE) presents a span of 650 years of reverence for this important accessory of Bronze Age warriorhood. Depictions and copies of this helmet in other cultures, including in the Hittite, Egyptian, and even later Roman cultures, demonstrate its pervasive and deeply respected meaning. Helmets of this kind were known to...
Iberian Mines and Imperial Matters: Re-conceptualizing Labor, Technologies, and Communities of Practice in Roman Iberia (2018)
The landscapes of the Iberian Peninsula were famous in antiquity for their richness in metals, and scholars have long claimed that these metals were a draw for colonial interest in the region from early on. This is especially true following the Roman conquest of Iberia in the late 3rd century BCE, when the scale of mining increased dramatically to accommodate the growing needs of the Roman empire. This was made possible through dramatic shifts in the organization of labor and the technological...
Images of Aphrodite, Sexual Desire, and the 'Chilly Climate' of Classical Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 1792, nine catalogues of surviving ancient Roman replicas of the Knidian Aphrodite—the first monumental image of an unclothed woman in Western art—have been compiled. During this time, the number of known ancient replicas has increased by two orders of magnitude, yet analyses of this...
Implications for Submerged Prehistoric Archaeology: Coastal Geomorphological Mechanisms on the Local Scale in the San Pasquale Valley, Bova Marina, Reggio Calabria (2018)
Marine reconnaissance off the coast of San Pasquale, Calabria in southern Italy revealed a dense offshore terrestrial peat deposit dating to the mid Holocene. Subsequent radiocarbon dating of samples revealed a conflict with regional relative sea level curves and local patterns of terrestrial uplift. As such, initial analysis suggests that these deposits result from a local hyperpycnal flood event and are not subaerial drowned deposits resulting from Holocene coastal evolution and rapid marine...
The Importance of Identifying Specific Obsidian Subsources on Sardinia to Interpreting Long-Distance Trade in the Neolithic Central Mediterranean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the Central Mediterranean island of Sardinia, studies have shown that the usage of obsidian from specific subsources changed over time. Human selection may have been based on their accessibility, physical properties of the raw material, and the size and quantity available. In addition, socioeconomic factors, lithic...
In the Hands of the God or in the Depths of a Well? Examining the Evolution of Disability in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study presents a cross-cultural comparison of disability in ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt from the beginning of the Bronze Age to the 4th century CE. I use archaeological and textual data to examine the temporal evolution of notions of disability in these three cultures. Results suggest that prior to Macedonian and Roman imperial expansion, Egypt’s...