West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (292 Records)
The Early Bronze Age site of Khirbet Iskander is located on the central plateau, south of Madaba, Jordan. Excavations at the site have focused primarily on the fortified Early Bronze Age III (EBIII) city remains and the transition to the Early Bronze Age IV (EBIV) agricultural settlement. The well-known and much debated collapse or abandonment of the early cities at the end of the EBIII has been documented at many sites in the Levant and is evident at Khirbet Iskander as well. Excavations of...
Evidences for Social Structure and Ritual Practices from Körtik Tepe at the Beginning of Settled Life (2015)
Until the end of the 1990s, southeastern Turkey was considered a secondary center of Neolithisation. However, excavations in the context of the Ilisu Dam project have shown that there was a long local tradition of permanent settlement since at least the Epipaleolithic. Evidences from Körtik Tepe indicate strong commitments to the site and to households. Social and emotional relationships were consolidated by intense ritual behavior, including burials beneath house floors, the increasing use of...
An Examination of Economic Specialization in the Early Bronze Age City of Tell es-Safi Using Isotopic Analysis of Ovicaprines (2016)
Early urban economies during the Early Bronze Age of the southern Levant are often treated as if they relied upon locally-available food resources that were largely produced at the household level, such as the herding of domestic livestock around the periphery or territory of the city-state. In this paper, we investigate whether the pastoral component of economies was a small-scale local affair or was conducted remotely, which would have involved productive specialists such as nomadic...
Excavation Narratives and Reflexive Practices at Çatalhöyük (2017)
A microcosm in itself, The Çatalhöyük Research Project has, in one way or another, intellectually, emotionally and physically altered the lives of its members. The project ethos, in turn, has changed through time with the dynamics that surround research and managerial practices of the individuals making its body. Further the project has been part of a local landscape enduring sociopolitical changes within Turkey. As a member of the Çatalhöyük Research Project since 1997, in this paper, I reflect...
Experimentations in Social Complexity:the Halaf Period and evidence from Domuztepe (2017)
The Late Neolithic Halaf period (c. 6100-5200 cal. BCE) is one of critical importance for understanding the emergence of social complexity in the Ancient Near East. During this period, people in Northern Mesopotamia were beginning to experiment with altering the scale at which their social, economic, and political networks were structured. By examining gradual shifts in the scale of cooperation within groups, we can identify changes in social interaction and organization. I demonstrate this...
Explaining Isotopic Variability among the Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers of Lake Baikal (2017)
Lake Baikal is unique in continental northern Eurasia for the size of its large hunter-gatherer cemeteries with good preservation of human bone. Many hundreds of stable carbon and nitrogen measurements are available on human bone collagen, made over the last two decades. The isotope ecology of Lake Baikal is very complex and highly variable, showing one of the largest ranges of δ13C values in the world. Thus, it is not surprising that the human results show considerable variation. This...
Exploring Domestic Tasks at Kharaneh IV using Lithic Microwear Analysis (2015)
The use and division of space in the Early Epipalaeolithic gives insights into the nature of social interaction in the Southern Levant prior to the advent of permanent architecture. This presentation presents preliminary results from the microwear analysis of the Jordanian Epipalaeolithic site Kharaneh IV to explore the nature of domestic tasks within a hut structure. Kharaneh IV is located in the Azraq basin, Eastern Jordan, dating to the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic periods. The site’s...
Exploring Hominin Cognition via Palaeolithic Obsidian Provisioning, Transport, and Technology (2015)
A central issue in palaeoanthropological research is understanding the cognitive and behavioral variability of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic hominins, including differences with respect to the modern humans who replaced them. Some scholars argue that these hominins had fundamentally different cognition and behavior than Homo sapiens, whereas others hold that their capabilities are essentially indistinguishable from those of modern humans. In obsidian-rich landscapes, artifact sourcing and lithic...
Exploring the Collapse of the Hittite Empire as a Social Phenomenon (2016)
In this paper, I explore how viewing collapse as a social and political phenomenon might change how we interpret the collapse of the Hittite empire in Turkey at the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BC). To this end, I consider the implications of changes and continuities in animal management at two sites in central Turkey following the collapse of the Hittite empire. The end of the Late Bronze Age was characterized by significant political and economic disruption throughout the eastern...
Exploring the Ethics of Archaeological Site Prospection in Google Earth (2015)
With the release of Google Earth for consumer use, archaeologists were an early professional group to begin exploiting this resource for identifying potential archaeological sites around the world. However, it seems as though the ability to detect sites using this powerful tool might have advanced faster than the ethical considerations of site detection, validation and protection that most countries require today. This paper will explore the history of site prospection via Google Earth and the...
The Expression of Ideology in Levantine Submission Scenes: The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III as Feasting in a Neo-Assyrian Context (2015)
Cultural appropriation of Levantine feasting forms by Neo-Assyria was an expression of agency that effectively subsumed, subverted and captured the dynamic of traditional Levantine polities. For those, the feast had represented an act of royal legitimation depicted iconographically by the figure of a king drinking from a cup. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire and the prominent appearance of this image, particularly in the 9th century BCE, deserves consideration as a probable co-opting of this...
Extreme weather events and 10,000 years of land-use change in the Gediz River valley (2015)
We analyze long-term community responses to extreme weather events in the Gediz River valley of western Anatolia. Today, as in antiquity, the valley is one of the most agriculturally productive in Turkey, and its agroecosystem is well-adapted to the seasonal variability of its Mediterranean environment. Nevertheless — and in spite of modern water-management infrastructure — unpredictable droughts, storms, and floods can still devastate the region’s food production. How were the valley’s ancient...
Faunal Remains from Recent Excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 (SM1), a Lower Paleolithic Open-Air Site in the Azraq Wetlands, Jordan (2017)
Excavations from 2013-2015 at the open-air site of Shishan Marsh 1 (SM1) located along the former wetlands shoreline in the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan have yielded substantial Middle Pleistocene lithic assemblages in association with faunal remains. Skeletal preservation is poor, favoring the representation of megafaunal species and more robust elements. Multiple megafaunal taxa have been identified, including Gazella sp. (antelope), Bos cf. primigenius (wild cattle), Camelus sp. (wild...
Feast or Famine: The Broad Spectrum Revolution Revisited (2015)
Widely accepted models for the diversification of subsistence economies that preceded the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East frame this key transition in the context of demographically induced resource pressure following a diet breadth model of forager decision making. Many of the supporting arguments for this scenario are open to an alternative view that casts these developments within the context of resource abundance and enhanced predictability. Contrasting explanatory...
Feeding the Troops?: Patterns of Agricultural Production in the Macrobotanical Remains of Nabatean-Late Roman sites in the Wadi ath-Thamad, Jordan (2015)
The macrobotanical record from Khirbat ez-Zona, a Late Roman castellum, reveals a pattern of crop refuse that does not fit the grand narrative of Roman agricultural practice or previous studies of contemporaneous military structures in the region. The Eastern Mediterranean witnessed a considerable boom in both population and agricultural productivity during the Late Roman period. This productivity can reflect the practices of an empire from religious ritual and pilgrimage, to preparation for...
A Finer View of Regional Socio-political and Economic Change in the Southeast Aegean: Ceramic Production along the Datça Peninsula (2017)
Situated along the dramatic Datça Peninsula in southwest Anatolia, the port-town of Burgaz provides a flourishing landscape of ceramic production and valuable case study for investigating the intersection of local dynamics and larger Mediterranean social, political, and economic shifts. During the Archaic and Classical periods Burgaz developed into a thriving commercial and cultural center by virtue of its proximity to fertile land and centrality within the Gulf of Hisarönü. From the mid-fourth...
Formation and Transformation of Communities in Prehistoric Khorasan (2017)
This paper evaluates the previously proposed sequence of transformations in prehistoric social organization in Northeastern Iran (Khorasan) using geospatial analysis of settlement distributions. The proposed sequence begins with agricultural villages during the Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, transitions to craft-producing towns during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, culminates in a process of proto-urbanization and the emergence of state-like structures during the Middle Bronze...
The Fortress Refigured: Authority and Community in the South Caucasus (ca. 1500-300 BC) (2015)
In many world regions, the mountain fortress has long stood as little more than a practical instrument of institutionalized force. Such reductionism obscures more than it reveals, for fortresses are equally salient as projects of communal labor, mediators in the making of subjects and authorities, and objects of contestation, curation, and commemoration. In the South Caucasus, fortresses played a crucial role in the reproduction of polities from the Late Bronze Age to the mid-first millennium...
Fox Overabundance and Human Response in the Earliest Villages of the Near East (2017)
Ethological and ecological studies point to the proliferation of small mammalian carnivores, most notably red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in human-modified environments. Foxes prey on human trash and consequently their populations in and around settlements are denser, their survival rate is improved and their foraging territories contract, centering on refuse dumps. This carnivore overabundance leads to a series of effects on the local ecosystems. The foxes’ strong commensal relationship with humans...
Framing the "Ethnoarchaeological" Other: The Direct Historical Approach in Victorian Bible Customs Books (2015)
One of the most popular genres of late-Victorian literature was the Bible Customs book. Often written by missionaries who had lived in Palestine for years, these books were intended to help illuminate the Bible based on observations of the flora, fauna, topography, and especially of the people living in the land in the 19th century. Organized according to subject or by Biblical verse, these books presupposed a connection between the people of Biblical times and 19th-century Palestine. In these...
Funerary Practice and Local Interaction on the Imperial frontier, 1st century AD: a case study in the Serur Valley, Azerbaijan. (2016)
Military campaigns and conflict defined the years leading to the 1st century AD in the South Caucasus. This mountainous frontier region acted as a buffer zone between the Roman and Parthian Empires competing for territorial expansion. Local alliances were cyclically forged, broken, and mended for territorial control. Yet, little archaeological evidence remains of these interactions. How are military campaigns being conducted in the eastern frontier? How are foreign forces interacting with local...
Geospatial Analysis of Areal (Polygonal) Units: Applications at the Site Level (2015)
Currently, and for the first time in the age of GIS, there is a growing resurgence of interest in intra-site level spatial analysis. Many studies focusing on the application of GIS technology to site level phenomena focus, either explicitly or implicitly, on the analysis of fine resolution datasets. Realistically, however, few archaeological data are recorded as sub-centimeter points. The majority of archaeological data tends to be recorded at the resolution of the 1x1 or 2x2 meter excavation...
GIS Models of an Iron Age Central Eurasian Macro-scale Religious Landscape (2016)
Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu peoples lived in northern central Eurasia throughout the Iron Age (1,000-100 BCE). Current research in this region has revealed a variety of economic strategies employed by people who lived in this time period: agriculture, pastoral nomadism, and metallurgy. This project seeks to fill gaps in current understanding of landscape utilization and consistent iconographic usage by attempting to identify and study processes driving religious complexity utilizing a GIS-based...
Glass at the Crossroads: Production and Emulation at Phrygian Gordion (2015)
Glass vessels recovered from over sixty years of archaeological investigation at Gordion (central Turkey), the capital of ancient Phrygia, range in date from the eighth century BCE through the Roman period and represent nearly all techniques of glassworking. Several groups of luxury glass from Gordion illuminate key moments in the transmission of cultural influence and of glassmaking technology, production, and utilization from the Near East into the Mediterranean basin in the first millennium...
Good Collectors of Archaeological Artifacts from the Holy Land? (2017)
In an ideal world there would be no looting, selling, or collecting of archaeological artifacts. But, given the centuries old lure of material from the Middle East, it is unrealistic and naïve to think that there will be a cessation of collecting. This desire for Holy Land antiquities has resulted in a bifurcated community of consumption: those willing to purchase undocumented artifacts, and Good Collectors, the discerning individuals and institutions who ask questions about archaeological find...