Europe: Eastern Europe (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (112 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The materials discovered at the Grakliani settlement and necropolis (Eastern Georgia) date from different periods and cover the stratigraphy presented below: 1. The Paleolithic Age with an upper Pleistocene paleontological site; 2. Neolithic; 3. Chalcolithic; 4....
Active Forgetting: Cemetery Abandonment and Mortuary Politics in Bronze Age Transylvania (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The abandonment of mortuary spaces is an intentional social process. As a political act, the choice to abandon a cemetery is a moment in which communities manipulate memory. Most mortuary studies, however, often overlook the social processes that led to cemetery abandonment. This poster presents the results of Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates from...
Amber Runs through It: The Centralization of Wealth and Power in Late Prehistoric Lika, Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric cultural and sociopolitical development in the mountainous region of Lika, Croatia is still poorly understood despite over a century of archaeological excavations. Traditional cultural-historical narratives based on grave good typologies suggest that a unified regional culture, the Iapodians, emerged at the end of the...
Analysis of Entheses Development and Implications on Labor in Late Medieval Poland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of human behavior and habitual muscle use through analysis of entheses, or muscle insertion sites on the skeleton, continue to be an important way of examining labor among people in the past. In this study, we analyze entheses development on the skeletons of individuals from the recently discovered and excavated late medieval site of Gać in...
Analysis of Settlement Patterns in Albania from the Iron Age through Greek and Roman Colonization and Integration (1100 BCE–395 CE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Illyrians were an Indo-European group of people who inhabited a large expanse of the Balkans. As interactions with the Greeks and, later, the Romans increased, the sociopolitical organization of the Illyrians was undoubtedly affected. In this presentation, I present the results of my thesis research, the goal of which is to better understand how Greek...
Animal Economies and Emergent Complexity in the European Bronze Age (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age is marked by dramatic social changes throughout much of the Old World. In Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, we see the emergence of regional hierarchies characterized by political and economic centralization and heightened status differentiation. While focus traditionally has been placed on the manufacture and exchange of metals, significant...
Archaeology as Activism: Cultural Heritage, Identity, and Sustainability in Transylvanian Mining Communities (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Activism through ethical community engagement is now a requirement, rather than an elective, of all scholars. Archaeologists have a responsibility to mobilize our understanding of the past, especially to achieve mutual goals we have with modern community partners with whom we work. As an example, we present a case study...
Archaeomtric Analysis of Ceramics from Iron Age Thrace, Bulgaria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In American archaeology the use of archaeometric testing such as neutron activation analysis and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry have become increasingly utilized since the 1960s. These techniques, adopted from parallel disciplines including geology, continue to be relatively underrepresented approaches out of Western European and American...
Avifaunal Remains from Crvena Stijena (Petrovići, Montenegro, Eastern Europe) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Avian remains from the Paleolithic site of Crvena Stijena, located near the village Petrovići, Eastern Montenegro, have been studied. The inspected material comes from the samples collected in the field during the previous three years of research (2018, 2019, and 2021)....
A Bioarchaeological Approach to Contested Mountain Landscapes in Transylvania’s Golden Quadrangle (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we introduce the agenda for the session Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes. Mountains and high altitude areas are ideal spaces where archaeologists can examine the relationship between social action and the environment. As this session will show, the study of human remains must be situated with a...
Biocultural Analysis of Atypical Mortuary Pattern Symbolism in Three Medieval Transylvanian Millstone Burials (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unusual treatments of the dead frequently merit extensive archaeological attention as they provide windows on a society’s concepts of personhood, use and manipulation of symbolic representations, and cosmology. In this work, we examine the use of millstones placed atop funerary contexts at the Papdomb site located in Văleni, Romania (A.D. 1100-1800). The site...
Blending Traditions: A History of Collaborative Prehistoric Research in the Carpathian Basin (2018)
The past two decades have seen a remarkable increase in the number of joint prehistoric archaeological research programs of US and local scholars in Eastern Europe. These collaborative projects are featured by the innovative blend of profoundly different theoretical and methodological traditions. In our introductory paper to the session, with a focus on the Carpathian Basin, we illustrate similarities and differences in North American and Eastern European perspectives and approaches to explore...
Bone Color as a Tool to Interpret Differing Cremation Patterns in Bronze Age Eastern Hungary (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age Körös Off-Tell Archaeology Project (BAKOTA) has excavated 84 burials from a Bronze Age cemetery (Békés 103) located in the Lower Körös Basin in Eastern Hungary. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the cemetery was used for several hundred years, with the most active phase between 1600 and 1280 cal BC, a time that has been associated with the...
Burning the House: The Importance of Excavation Methods in the Study of Space and Place in the Neolithic Household. A Case Study from Neolithic Bulgaria (6500–600 BC) (2018)
The importance of understanding the use of space and the distribution of places in the household in the prehistoric setting has been recognized by the anthropological community. Unfortunately the archaeological context often does not always favor such inquiries, especially in the prehistoric setting. Thus, the extraction of information needed to make claims on how different societies distributed living areas in the house and in the greater village, can not always be examined in detail. For the...
Caprines in the Cattle Zone: Reconciling Faunal Data at Two Scales during the Early Neolithic in the Sofia Basin, Bulgaria (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal husbandry was a major adaptive mechanism facilitating the spread of farming communities throughout southeastern Europe. Recent big-data syntheses have contributed greatly to our understanding of the environmental and social processes of neolithization in the region. While faunal reports often form an integral component of these studies, issues of...
A Case for Islam: Bioarchaeological Research on the Ottoman Period in Southeast Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The introduction of Ottoman control and the arrival of Islam in Southeast Europe during the late medieval period greatly influenced both historical and modern populations. In spite of this impact, this cultural and religious influence remains a topic understudied in archaeology. With Christianity the dominant...
Chronological Perspectives on the Spread of Agriculture in Southeastern Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic studies in Europe have recently seen the impact of two very different sets of approaches to building chronological frameworks using radiocarbon dating. On the one hand, archaeologists have used radiocarbon dates as proxies for levels of human activity on past landscapes by employing summed probability distributions of...
Clues about Neanderthal Fire Technology and Climate from a Microstratrigraphic Study of Unit XXIV at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A trend in the past few decades of archaeological research is to apply different microstratigraphic techniques, which provide clues about behavioral and paleoenvironmental aspects of past societies. At Crvena Stijena (Montenegro), a Middle Paleolithic site under current...
Comparing Demographic Patterns of Archaeological and Modern Cemetery Data: A Novel Application of GPS Technology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeologists routinely generate demographic estimates of past populations from archaeological contexts across time and geography. Despite numerous ways that bioarchaeological data enhance demographic reconstructions of past populations, few contexts allow direct comparison between archaeological and modern demography of the same locale. This project...
A Computational Approach to Bone Histology Analysis in Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Bronze Age in Transylvania exhibits two different mortuary traditions, one associated with the Yamnaya migration in the lowlands and the other associated with the local Transylvanian groups in the highlands. A key question for archaeologists has been how these traditions differ in respect to primary and secondary inhumation. The tempo of funerary...
Concealed Evidence of Early Human-Environment Interactions in Sedimentary Archives of Small Rivers in the Forest-Steppe Belt of Eurasia (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 on-site archaeological investigations alone are not enough to reconstruct landscape histories, because they provide incomplete information on past environments. In contrast, off-site sedimentary archives can provide information on the interaction of natural and human processes that modify the landscape. Our initial research on the sedimentary...
Conclusion: Living within and with the Wetlands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wetlands are valuable ecosystems for many animal species, but they also present critical ecosystems for humans. By protecting against floods, erosion and improving water quality, wetlands present a valuable source for human food procurement and activities. In this paper, I exemplify the role of wetlands from the Southern Carpathian Basin by presenting...
The Consequences of Cultural Encounters on Late Bronze Age Transylvania Cuisine and Subsistence Economies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to the Late Bronze Age in Transylvania around 1500 BCE coincided with the arrival of the Noua cultural group from the Eurasian Steppe. These new migrant communities arrived in a Transylvanian landscape that had been occupied by the Wietenberg cultural group for over 500 years. For nearly 150 years, communities with both the Noua and Wietenberg...
Cooking in Clay: A Diachronic Study of Potting and Cooking Traditions in Bronze Age Toumba Thessaloniki, Northern Greece (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toumba Thessaloniki, situated on the coastal plain of the Thermaikos Gulf in Northern Greece, was one of the largest settlements in Central Macedonia during the Bronze Age. The prolonged occupation of the site spanning from the Middle Bronze Age through the Classical period resulted in the formation of an artificial mound of approximately 1 hectare. The...
Cooperation, Co-funding, and Confusion: EU Funding for Bulgarian Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the post-Brexit era, the impact of EU policies and funding on archaeological and cultural heritage projects has come under renewed scrutiny by those in both the public and private sectors. Academic and commercial institutions alike are now questioning the influence that membership in the EU, and its corresponding funding, has on the ways in which...