West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (292 Records)
An incursion of immigrants into the Khabur River drainage of northeastern Syria exemplifies a set of historical processes that are sometimes suspected, but often discounted as unrealistic or unprovable. The principal processes are (1) emigration from a homeland and immigration into a new land, (2) selective transmission of culture traits to a new locale, (3) divergent adaptation, (4) assimilation of new traits, and (5) formation of a new cultural tradition. These processes are exemplified by...
Producing Pottery in a Province of the Hittite Empire (2015)
The Hittite Empire seized control of Cilicia, corresponding with the present-day states of Mersin and Adana in the Republic of Turkey, in the latter half of the second millennium BCE. While this region was under imperial rule, Hittite-style pottery became the most common ceramic type. Geochemical analysis of the pottery from Tarsus-Gözlükule, an urban center within Hittite Cilicia, indicates that the Hittite-style pottery was locally produced. At the same time, alternative ceramic types are...
Protecting cultural heritage by promoting community welfare in the Syrian conflict (2016)
The recent conflict in Syria and Iraq has upended all aspects of aspects of daily life. There are now over 250,000 dead, and millions have been displaced. Famous heritage sites embedded within the region’s cultural landscape have been damaged or destroyed. In the face of such human tragedy, what can archaeologists do? This paper discusses the efforts of the Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq (SHOSI) Project, which are aimed at both alleviating human suffering and protecting heritage...
Provisioning and Agricultural Economy at Roman Gordion: Integrating Archaeobotany and Zooarchaeology (2017)
Naomi Miller conducted extensive archaeobotanical research at the urban center of Gordion, in central Turkey, where she worked closely with zooarchaeologist Melinda Zeder to publish an integrated study of diachronic change in agricultural economies and land use. One period, however, was not included in this study: Roman Gordion, when the once-large city became a small military encampment. Drawing on the foundational effort of Miller and Zeder, we couple archaeobotanical data with new...
The Qara Dagh Archaeological Landscape: The Relation Between Settlement Patterns and Environmental Contexts (2016)
The Qara Dagh Valley, located 41 km south from the city of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, is the subject of study of the Qara Dagh Regional Archaeological Project (QDRAP). This project aims to investigate the Qara Dagh Valley’s archaeological history. The valley is generally known for the presence of the Darban-i-Graw relief, which represents a late third millennium king subduing his enemies. Indeed, textual and visual evidence suggest that this region was exposed to frequent...
Questioning Technological and Economic "Decline" in the Medieval Rural Levant (2015)
This paper argues against a common view of medieval Levantine villages as isolated from larger regional centers by examining a group of hand-made ceramics — commonly called Hand-Made Geometrically Painted Wares (HMGPW), and formerly "pseudo-prehistoric" wares — prevalent across the Levant from the 12th-17th centuries AD. They are generally seen as the products of non-specialist village potters and, as the older name suggests, an example of technological decline. That view, though, is based...
Radical Neolithic? (2015)
Continuity Phenomenon that lasted for thousands of years in Central Anatolia could be one of the reasons of a distinctive or local process of neolithization in Central Anatolia when compared to the Core Area or the PPN world.The rapid changes, the fast innovations in PPNB, defining discontinuity, have brought a development momentum to the region, however all these PPN began to loose power in their most glorious period. Aşıklı never became part of this system, the people found solutions within...
Raise a Glass: The Late Hellenistic Origins of Domestic Glass Tableware (2015)
For over three millennia after its discovery in the early Bronze Age, glass in the Near East was used almost exclusively in palatial, religious, and funerary contexts, ascribed with high status reflecting the intrinsic or perceived value of the material. But during the last few centuries BCE this pattern changed, as glass cups and bowls began to appear in domestic and other urban areas in greater quantities. This transition occurs before the discovery and diffusion of glass blowing in the first...
Raw material characterization and lithic procurement in the Azraq Basin, Jordan, during the Middle Pleistocene: Preliminary results. (2017)
Recent excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq Basin, Jordan, have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date to the Middle Pleistocene. A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly warm and dry conditions in the region, similar to those of the present. Hominins living under these harsh conditions were forced to contract around a receding spring- and wadi-fed water source for subsistence. In this way, the distances they could venture to acquire...
(Re)Constructing and Using Space in the Epipalaeolithic: Exploring Technologies, Domestic Activities and Communal Living in Eastern Jordan (2015)
In the 10,000 or so years that make up the Epipalaeolithic period, we witness several dramatic social, economic and technological changes documented in the archaeological record, including the appearance of aggregation sites and sedentary villages, intensified use of particular plants and animals, and the movements of people and objects over long distances. While it is easy to track these changes over this large time span, we rarely catch a glimpse of the daily activities and day-to-day...
(Re)new(ed) Perspectives on Mortuary Practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (2017)
At Çatalhöyük, as elsewhere in the Neolithic Near East, there is an emphasis on the manipulation and redistribution of human body parts, with particular attention paid to the skull. Evidence for this practice occurs with the observation of ‘headless’ primary burials and the secondary re-deposition of disarticulated crania and mandibles within primary and secondary burial contexts. The manner in which these practices were carried out and the motivations for such behaviour have been the subject of...
Re-contextualizing the Dead: A Geospatial Approach to Synthesizing Bioarchaeological Data at Çatalhöyük (2017)
Two decades of excavation at Çatalhöyük have produced a skeletal assemblage of approximately 555 individuals from primary, secondary, and primary-disturbed Neolithic (7100-6000 cal. BCE) deposition contexts. As personnel and digital technology have changed, integration of the large body of legacy bioarchaeological data with current research has posed many challenges. Often, analyses of osteological data patterns have relied on broad comparisons of temporal and spatial categories drawn from...
Reconstructing Agricultural Decision Making from Paleoethnobotanical Remains (2015)
Paleoethnobotany has long been associated with the identification of crop plants and has led to important insights into domestication and the adoption of farming systems. New methods for the quantitative analysis of botanical remains, together with multiple allied datasets on human diet and environmental change, now allow paleoethnobotanists to generate empirical data on agricultural decision making in the archaeological record. The breadth of data now available to paleoethnobotanists includes...
Reconstructing land-use and agropastoral production during the Middle Bronze Age of the Southern Caucasus: Preliminary results from Qızqala, Autonomous Republic of Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan. (2016)
Inhabitants of the Middle Bronze Age in the Southern Caucasus (c. 2400–1500 BC ) are thought to be highly mobile communities, heavily reliant on pastoral resources. Few settlements have been recovered archaeologically, and fewer still excavated. New work from the Middle Bronze Age settlements and kurgans at Qızqala on the Şerur Plain in the Autonomous Republic of Naxçıvan, Azerbaijan therefore fills an important lacuna in our understanding of the lifeways of Middle Bronze Age peoples. We report...
Reconstructing the History of Archaeological Research at Tel Lachish (2016)
Reconstructing the history of archaeological research at Tel Lachish, an archaeological site in southern Israel, has proven to be a challenging task. The need to synthesize large volumes of data produced over decades of research has resulted in the creation of a spatial database using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. This paper touches on the data collection of the previous three expeditions to Tel Lachish, but primarily discusses current data collection methods, as well as...
Reflections on the origins of the Neolithic "House" in the Near East (2015)
Large-scale durable architecture appears quite suddenly with the emergence of the semi-sedentary Natufian (ca. 15,000 calBC) in the Near East. Subsequently, during the course of the Natufian, structure sizes diminish; they were commonly semi-subterranean, constructed with wooden posts, stones and puddled mud. These traditions continued during the PPNA (ca. 10,000-8,500 calBC), albeit with the innovation of mud-brick superstructures. An important distinction between the Natufian and the PPNA is...
Reflexive Conservation Research at Çatalhöyük (2017)
Çatalhöyük, like many earthen sites, is a complex exercise in preservation. Since it was first excavated in the 1960s there have been efforts to preserve the archaeological substrate. A significant part of this program was the application of aqueous polymer systems applied as a consolidant to the plaster and mud brick surfaces. This practice of attempting to strength walls by polymerization was reviewed by means of laboratory testing in the 1990s, and continued to some extent unchallenged for...
Regional Political Economies in the South Caucasus: Tracing Social Boundaries in a Eurasian Context (2017)
After more than a century of Russian Imperial and Soviet research dominated by the excavation of tumulus burials, researchers in the South Caucasus have now spent two decades investigating exactly how settlement archaeology sheds light on the inhabitants of the region's earliest polities (ca. 1500-1150 BC). Most of this data has emerged from the sites of the Tsaghkahovit Plain, which have served as a micro-regional laboratory for Bronze and Iron Age studies since 1998. But how exactly do these...
Reinterpreting the rise of the state in Mesopotamia as a self-organizing process engendered by the interaction of interpersonal behavior and religious eschatology (2015)
Anthropologists have long used "integration theory" to explain the rise of the state in Mesopotamia. This perspective, derived from functionalism, structural-functionalism, general systems, or cultural ecology, sees state emergence as a response to problems of population growth, ecological distress, competition, warfare, or the need to organize long distance trade. Integration theory is thus "top down." That is, it posits that state governance is imposed upon a population as a social solution...
The Relationships between Smallholders, their Textiles, and their Bone Tools: a Case Study at the Central Anatolian site of Kaman-Kalehӧyük (2016)
Textiles are rarely found in Near Eastern archaeological contexts due to the rarity of suitable environmental conditions for their preservation. Cuneiform texts and limited artifactual evidence have therefore often been the main sources informing archaeologists of the technological processes involved in textile production. Yet, scanty data exist specifically on textile-manufacturing tools made from bone, a readily available raw material, and the smallholders who crafted these tools. This paper...
Reshaping Identities Through the Destruction of Artifacts (2015)
Archaeological artifacts can be used to foster a powerful feeling of national pride, or they can be held up as a sign of previous degeneracy and destroyed to 'purify' a populace. For example, artifacts such as Egyptian pyramids, Mesopotamian Lammasu, Afghani Buddhas, and Malian Sufi Shrines represent cultures and conditions that do not fit the fundamentalist identity of Islamists groups. While modern states have often—and rightfully—raised these artifacts as evidence of equality with...
Residential Segregation at Köhne Shahar, an Early Bronze Age Settlement in Iranian Azerbaijan (2016)
There are some important differences between modern and ancient urban centers in terms of contextual variables and some social dynamics, however, theoretical frameworks derived from studies on social composition of modern urban centers can provide useful insights into the organizational dynamics of complex societies in the past. Hence, current understanding of the dynamics of residential segregations may enable us to address anthropological and archaeological questions. Our surveys and...
Rethinking The Cultural and Natural Dimensions of Landscape Pollution in the Faynan Valley, Southern Jordan (2015)
The human impact on marginal environments is an issue that has especially affected societies in the Middle East during the past 8,000 years, a time when some of the most significant political and economic developments in the history of human societies took place. Such development often permanently altered the character of these fragile ecosystems. Landscape degradation, especially heavy metal pollution, is a poignant example of the deleterious effects that humans can have on the environment. We...
The Rise of Fortification Systems in Anatolia at the Collapse of the Early Bronze Age (2016)
The end of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BCE) saw the collapse or the decline of a number of civilizations and settlements throughout the ancient Near East, and is an oft discussed topic in the study of the archaeology and history of the region. This paper takes a micro look at this phenomenon within Central and Southeastern Anatolia, using the creation, upkeep and collapse of complex fortification systems as a proxy for violence and the preparedness for violence in the region. Before the Early...
Ritual Consumption? Exploring the Staging of Ritual Acts through the Deposition of Ground Stone Tools in Building 77 at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (2015)
The destruction of buildings by fire, either deliberately as a ritual act or accidentally, is among the most interesting elements of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, in central Anatolia, not least for the patterns of deposition of material culture at the time of destruction. Burnt Building 77, a well-preserved structure excavated by the current project, stands out in many respects, but one of its intriguing features is the large number of clustered grinding tools and other stone objects that seem to have...