West Asia (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (292 Records)
Homosexuality’s place within the church has been a topic of considerable debate among modern theologians. However, most theologians have only focused on homosexuality, disregarding the presence of all other alternative sexual identities and have used only Biblical textual evidence to justify their views on homosexuality. This text contributes a broader scope to the sexuality debate. It considers all queer sexualities, archaeological artifacts, and uses a queer theoretical lens to deconstruct the...
Calibrating pXRF instruments for chert provenance: A how-to from the Anatolian Plateau (2015)
In the past decade, a tremendous increase in the use of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments in archaeological provenance research has warranted several critical reflections on the analytical protocols which underpin their application in various material and regional contexts. This paper approaches the use of pXRF analysis for determining chert provenance with particular emphasis placed on tailoring empirical calibrations to best suit the dynamic properties of chert materials. In so...
CAMOTECCER: Beyond the shard. Modeling and simulating variability in Central Asian pottery technology (2015)
Pottery technology is a well-studied field of archaeological research. However, particular contributions are often limited to a partial characterization, due to the technical and theoretical backgrounds of the researchers involved. Pottery samples are interrogated separately through chemical analyses, petrographic characterization and the assignation to both decorative and functional classes. In most cases, the results of such myriad of studies remain relatively unconnected up to a general...
Changes on the Land: Gordion in the 1st mill BCE (2017)
Throughout the 1st mill BCE, the inhabitants of Gordion engaged with multiple changes in political power and agricultural strategies, within a diverse landscape with shifting climate regimes. Over most of this period, the city, its industries, and its hinterland population thrived. Using multiple lines of evidence, both material and environmental, this paper explores what we know about changes in the organization of different production spheres at Gordion in order to understand how changing...
Chronology of Ahmarian and Levantine Aurignacian occupations of Manot Cave, Israel (2015)
Recent excavations of Manot Cave, in the Western Galilee, Israel, have revealed abundant Upper Paleolithic finds, including modern human fossils, in situ hearths, shell beads, bone and stone tools, and faunal remains. The two major Early Upper Paleolithic traditions of the Levant—the Ahmarian and the Levantine Aurignacian—are well represented at Manot Cave. The Ahmarian is thought to have developed from local Initial Upper Paleolithic traditions, while the Levantine Aurignacian may represent a...
Climate Change and Out of Africa Dispersals (2016)
International, interdisciplinary fieldwork is at the core of Lawrence Straus' long-term archaeological research. Inspired by such an approach since my involvement with Straus' excavations at the Abri Dufaure in southwest France, I have been conducting field work in the Arabian peninsula, which aims to understand the relationship between climate change and human demography across the Pleistocene. Satellite images and GIS studies have effectively demonstrated that there were wet phases in this...
Climate instability and the origin of farming in Southwest Asia (2015)
Prevailing theories concerning the role of climate change in the transition from foraging to farming in SW Asia view socioeconomic change as a response to climate deterioration (push theories) or improvement (pull theories) which caused resource depression or abundance respectively. With this paper I propose that periods of socioeconomic and cultural innovation correlate with periods of climatic instability, which occurred at the timescales of direct human experience of the landscape (i.e., at...
Closely Observed Layers: Small Stories and the Heart (2017)
When I tell people I'm an archaeologist, their eyes light up with a wistful look and they say "I've always wanted to be an archaeologist". I could describe one reality, that it is not as glamorous as they think, work is slow and repetitive, and that leaves them disappointed. But usually I describe another reality: what I love about what I do - and they are delighted. However, I have never articulated it in a professional presentation or publication: I excavate layers of dead people’s residential...
Community and Agency in the early Neolithic of SW Asia (2015)
The accepted Neolithic narrative involves increasingly sedentary behavior within a context of villages composed of houses. Yet, although the novel way of life represented is given centre stage, there is little discussion of the nature of the communities that were developing, other than passing references to nuclear families, ancestor cults and the emergence of lineages and households. There is still less reference to human agency, with Neolithic people being buffeted around by a number of big...
Community archaeology and emergency responses to heritage in crisis (2015)
How are we to respond to the current intentional destruction of heritage occurring in Syria and Iraq? The international regime of heritage protection rests upon the consensus of actors within the modern system of nation-states. But in the present crisis, one actor, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, rejects that system. Furthermore, in the case of Syria, UNESCO and other international preservation organizations find themselves locked into a structural situation where they are obliged to...
Comparative Water Histories: An Outline of Contrastive Juxtaposition as Method in Anthropological Archaeology (2016)
Anthropology has long been marked by tension between emphasis on commonalities among histories and cultures on one hand, alongside emphasis on histories and cultures as unique, contingent, and exceptional on the other. Vernon Scarborough is one of few who have pioneered new understanding of water among ancient societies through both focused study of particular regions, as well as broad, synthetic comparison of water among ancient societies worldwide. In an era marked by a daily increasing...
Comparing bone structure and domestic sheep management strategies using microcomputed tomography (microCT) (2017)
Bone structure is known to reflect behavioral differences related to locomotion, diet, and activity patterns. We present new data using microcomputed tomography (microCT) to analyze cortical and trabecular bone structure on samples of modern domestic sheep bones from individuals with known biogeographies and life histories. Indicators of skeletal robusticity, such as thicker cortical bone, higher trabecular bone volume fraction, and thicker trabeculae, reflect consistently higher bone strain and...
Comparing Methodologies for Documenting Commingled and Fragmentary Human Remains (2016)
Commingled and fragmentary human remains are a common occurrence in archaeological and forensic contexts, but only a few methods have been developed to record these complex assemblages. Conventional inventory methods, such as the Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains, document the presence and completeness of specific portions of skeletal elements and the minimum number of individuals (MNI) represented by each bone portion. This rather subjective method for MNI calculation...
A Comparison of Elemental Analysis Methods for Sediment Geochemistry (2017)
This poster will present preliminary interpretations from a study comparing different techniques of elemental analysis for sediment geochemistry, the goal of which is to determine the "best" technique to answer the questions at hand. "Sediment geochemistry" here refers to the collection of sediment samples and the elemental analysis of these samples in order to map activity areas across archaeological sites. This study used sediment samples collected from a modern, abandoned village called Eski...
Complete vs. broken:exploring assemblage variation in two Natufian sites from Jordan (2017)
Archaeological sampling of lithic assemblages is an important process for characterizing the make-up and range of variability of these materials. These characterizations often focus on complete pieces due to the greater number of variables that can be recorded and the uncertain utility of incomplete data. But do complete pieces adequately characterize assemblage variability? Are these samples capturing the same range of variation found in broken pieces (e.g., proximal pieces)? This paper...
Complex but Equal: Developing an Archaeological Inequality Index to Investigate Social Inequality at the Bronze Age III site of Numayra, Jordan (2016)
The origins, evolution, and variation of inequality comprise a central overarching theme within anthropological archaeology. Various ideas, including hierarchy and heterarchy and their material correlates, have been proffered to explain the origins and impact of inequality on past social, economic, and political organization. Within Economics and Development Studies, various indices and measures, e.g., Gini coefficient, Theil Index, HDI and GDP, and the Consumption Approach have been offered as...
Confirmation of an osteological feature, diploic veins, via three imaging modalities (2017)
Skeletons from site Tell el-Hesi (ca. 1400-1800CE; located in the southern Levant) have been undergoing renewed paleopathological analysis with the use of non-destructive imaging techniques. Upon assessing for pathology a computed radiograph image revealed multiple thin radiolucent structures within the cranial fragments of an individual that were not observed on the surface of the bone. These canal-like structures, thought to be some type of nutrient vessel, required further analysis to...
Consumption Preferences at the Collapse of Empire: The Case of New Kingdom Jaffa (2017)
The site of Tel Yafo (modern Jaffa, Israel) provides unique insight into the tenure of the Egyptian New Kingdom empire in the Levant (ca. 16th - 11th centuries BCE). As attested to in both ancient documents and by the presence of Egyptian monumental architecture, Jaffa functioned as an important imperial center. As the empire waned, Jaffa persisted as one of the last Egyptian holdings in the region. Recent excavations by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) have opened this final period to...
Cooperation and Feasting at Late Neolithic Domuztepe: Assessing Emergent Political Complexity through Faunal Remains (2015)
Cooperation occurs at all scales of social life: among individuals, among households, and among groups that supersede the household level. In some cases, such cooperation precipitates the formation of complex social structures and institutions and perpetuates their endurance. The variability of forms such cooperation can take at all scales of social complexity is broad, but an increasing degree of scalar cooperation correlates with increasing social complexity. This study uses zooarchaeological...
Cooperation, craft economy, and metal technology during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Central Anatolia (2016)
The role of copper and bronze in the context of the emergence of Bronze and Iron Age states in the Near East is poorly understood due to a relative lack of comprehensive analysis of diachronic archaeometallurgical data. Excavations from Boğazköy and Kerkenes Dağ in central Anatolia have recovered one of the largest, diverse, and stratified corpora of copper objects and metal production debris, spanning the period from the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2300 BC, until the Late Iron Age, mid-5th century...
Coursework in disaster preparedness and emergency response in Iraq: Meeting immediate training needs at the Iraqi Institute (2015)
Decades of regime rule, war and economic sanctions resulted in reductions in professional staff, isolation from the international community, and ultimately; neglect and deterioration of Iraqi cultural heritage. During a period of relative stability, the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage (established through US funding in 2008) began offering academic programs in architectural conservation, artifact / object conservation, and archaeological site preservation to...
Cracking concretions: methods for removing carbonate encrustations from faunal remains (2016)
Calcium carbonate encrustations of faunal materials are a problem that limits analysis of faunal materials from a wide variety of regions and time periods. In many locations they are associated with climates with persistent or increased precipitation. This precipitation percolates through the sediments of the stratigraphic column, mixing with calcium carbonate. This mixture is then gradually deposited throughout the stratigraphic column, encasing archaeological materials in hardened carbonate...
Craft Production and Specialization in the Transcaucasian Early Bronze Age: A View from Köhne Shahar, NW Iran (2015)
A common image of the Kura Araxes Cultural Community (KACC) of Transcaucasia is one of egalitarian and mobile groups of pastoralists. While mobility and pastoralism are important aspects of KACC, this generalization dampens what in reality is a more complicated picture of the Early Bronze Age of Transcaucasia. Recent investigations in Transcaucasia, including the site of Köhne Shahar (KSH) in northwestern Iran, present a much more nuanced image of social and economic interactions in this time...
The Cultural Landscape of the Region of Koi-Sanjay (Koya) (2016)
The dynamics of the expansion of Assyria involved the creation of a network of infrastructures which enabled the movement not only of goods and people, but also of technologies and ideas. Excavations at Satu Qala (Iraqi Kurdistan), the Assyrian provincial capital of Idu has highlighted the role of its region within the network. This area, located along the valley of the Lower Zab, served as a multicultural borderland both between southern and northern Iraq and between the valley of the Tigris...
Cyber-Archaeology, Scientific Story-telling and the GIS Nexus (2017)
Since 1999, UC San Diego Levantine Archaeology Laboratory excavations have been ‘paperless’ with the aim of developing digital data acquisition, curation, and 2D and 3D dissemination tools for archaeological and cultural heritage data. GIS provides the nexus for our data flow because all archaeological data collected in the field has a geospatial footprint. The X, Y and Z coordinates of the archaeological data provides the organizational and visualization principle of the archaeological...