Europe: Eastern Europe (Geographic Keyword)
101-112 (112 Records)
To borrow Yuri Slezkine’s formulation, "the Soviet Union was an empire—in the sense of being very big, bad, asymmetrical, hierarchical, heterogeneous, and doomed". In this it differed little from the early empires that have long held archaeology’s attention. But unlike its precursors, the U.S.S.R. was guided by a political ideology premised vigorously on the relationship between humans and things—between labor, the non-human inputs of production, and property. Imperial sovereignty rested on...
Substances in Transition: Tell Construction in Chalcolithic Bulgaria (2018)
Tells are living places continuously constructed and transformed by their inhabitants through their actions on the matter and objects constituting these places. In effect, the accumulation of clay, rubble and refuse on which houses are built and lives lived reflects daily actions, cultural events happening on longer cycles as well as environmental considerations. Therefore, the blend of things and matter that transited from the riverbed to houses, pots, and aggregated rubble and rubbish requires...
A Synthesis of Archaeological, Genetic, and Spatial Data in Studying Medieval Families: An Example from the Vanished Village of Gać, Poland (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In our paper, we aim to demonstrate the use of spatial, genetic, and archaeological data in family studies by using a Medieval cemetery in Gać as our case study. An international team of archaeologists and anthropologists have partially recovered and examined a cemetery situated in the now-vanished village of Gać over three seasons, as part of a...
Százalombatta Archaeological Expedition (SAX). Hungary: A 20-year History of Theories, Methods, and Results of an International Project in Central Hungary (2018)
This paper documents the theories, methods, and results of SAX, an international, collaborative Bronze Age project in the Carpathian basin. Three topics are emphasized: First is the value added by international collaboration, which creates an intellectual openness to research objectives and theoretical discussion. Second are technological transfer and creative problem-solving approach to field and laboratory research. And third is an inherent comparative agenda, for which results are seem always...
Technology on the Move: The Influence of Mobility on Pottery Production on the Ancient Russian Steppe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the desert-steppe zone of southwestern Russia, mobile pastoralism served as the dominant mode of subsistence for much of its history. However, mobile pastoralism as a term refers to a diversity of practices, distinguished across multiple axes, the least of which is the mobile strategy itself. Pottery, as both an everyday object and a form of technology...
Tell Yunatsite, Southern Bulgaria: New Insights on the Fifth millennium BC in the Balkans (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prehistoric tell at Yunatsite in the Maritsa River valley (Southern Bulgaria) is among the biggest tell sites in the Balkans. During large-scale excavations a medieval cemetery, fortification from the Roman period, and layers from the Iron Аge, Early Bronze Age and Chalcolithic have been revealed. The studies in the last years have concentrated on the...
Temporalities of Middle Bronze Age Cemeteries in Transylvania (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Bronze Age in Transylvania was a time of rapid population growth and centralization, the emergence of shared regional identities mediated through mortuary practices, and the institutionalization of large-scale trade and exchange networks that moved metal and salt from this resource-rich area across the Carpathian Mountains and Basin. Communities...
Timing the Difference: New Radiocarbon Dates for Late Neolithic Sites across the Great Hungarian Plain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past six years, the Prehistoric Interactions on the Plain Project has worked to reconstruct multi-scalar patterns of engagement between Late Neolithic (5000-4500 BC) Tisza and Herpály cultural units on the Great Hungarian Plain. By conducting multiple types of analyses on ceramics and chipped-stone tools, it has been possible to model a strongly...
Trypillia Mega-site Networks: Understanding the Centrality of the Largest Settlement in Fourth-Millennium BC Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of the largest settlements in fourth-millennium BC Europe triggered a number of questions regarding their proto- or even "fully urban" nature. For a long time scholars have been debating on this matter, focusing attention on the intrasite features of Trypillia mega-sites, thus overseeing the implication of...
Using Avifaunal Trends to Evaluate Environmental Shifts on the Eurasian Forest-Steppe with the Expansion of Agropastoralism (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Expansion of agricultural communities during the Eneolithic in Europe likely had an impact on the environment due to a need for land, wood for building houses, and agricultural practices (e.g., slash-and-burn). We focus on the Trypillians (an Eneolithic, forest-steppe group) from Southeastern Europe, and how their agropastoral lifestyles impacted their...
Using Multiple Time Scales to Understand the Divergence of Prehistoric Social Trajectories in the Carpathian Basin (2018)
A variety of new groups emerged during the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin —some had powerful rulers holding feasts and controlling the trade in commodities, and some were egalitarian peoples leaving little evidence for social differentiation outside of age and gender. This paper uses a comparative and multi-scalar perspective to study two different social trajectories in the Carpathian Basin during the second millennium BC: the Lower Körös Basin in Eastern Hungary, and the Danube and its...
Working for the Dead: The Role of Gravediggers and Their Impact on Burial Practices as Evidence in Transylvanian, Hungarian-Szekler Communities (AD 1050–1800) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Parker-Pearson’s (1999) oft cited phrase, “the dead do not bury themselves,” has led to decades of broad investigation surrounding the created social perception of an individual in different contexts and at different scales (family, military, celebrity). However, little research exists on the last individual to physically place the dead. Gravediggers have...