Europe: Eastern Europe (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (112 Records)
Transhumance is a typical Mediterranean adaptation for securing adequate forage and water for domesticates by seasonally bringing animals to new pasture. However the antiquity of this adaptation is unclear. We present new oxygen isotope data from the Dalmatian coast, Croatia, to test the hypothesis that Neolithic herds were seasonally transhumant. Incremental sampling of ancient animal teeth produced data that are compared with modern isotope data of water showing altitudinal variation to assess...
Illuminating Complex Mortuary Rituals in a Cemetery from 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...
Integrating Research Methods with Local Regulations: Designing the Excavation and Proveniencing System for the Middle Paleolithic Excavations 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. Theoretically informed research methods are only as good as the ability of the research team to put the methods into action. Between the well-intentioned plans of the PIs and the successful elucidation of fascinating anthropological questions lie the practicalities of...
The Integrity of Biomolecules across the Oral Matrix from Histria, Romania (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Archaic period (seventh century–sixth century BCE), Greek colonists from Miletus founded the city of Histria. Located near the mouth of the Danube, this urban center experienced 13 centuries of environmental and demographic changes. Archaeological investigations over the past century have yielded a rich skeletal collection that is housed in the Fr....
Interconnectivity between Seclusive Iron Age Communities and Burgeoning Greek Colonies in the Eastern Adriatic Illustrated through Analysis of Ceramic Material Culture (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Eastern Adriatic region is historically an ingress into the Mediterranean and its wider cultural sphere, serving as a crossroads of cultural exchange and influence. Many seclusive communities have made their homes here since the Neolithic Age, though the Iron Age saw the arrival of numerous Greek settlements as many city-states sought to...
Issues of the Davit Gareji Monasteries’ Structure on the Background of the Early Byzantine Monasticism (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the south of the Kakheti region (Georgia), on the uninhabited vast territory, there is a monastic area known as Davit Gareji, which includes about 20 independent monastic complexes. According to the historical sources, the first Cristian monasteries were found here in the 6th century by the desert Fathers emerged from movement of the Syrian monasticism....
The Körös Regional Archaeological Project, 20 Years of (Mostly Successful) Collaboration (2018)
The Körös Regional Archaeological Project was established in 1998 as a collaborative, multidisciplinary, research project focused on the later prehistory of the Körös region on the Great Hungarian Plain in the Carpathian Basin. Over the last two decades, the project has attempted to build upon the success of previous ambitious projects in the region by emphasizing not only the collaborative nature of the research endeavor but also by incorporating a robust training component into the project. In...
Landscape Learning during the Early Upper Paleolithic of Southeastern Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial settlement of western Eurasia by anatomically modern humans is thought to have taken place in discrete dispersal phases ca. 50–40 ka ago. Here, lithic toolkits are thought to be linked to founding phases indicative of discrete, rapid, westward movements into and across Europe triggered by climate amelioration...
Landscapes of the Dead: Using GIS to Model Social Relationships in a Large Bronze Age Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is an important tool for examining social relationships in large horizontally stratified cemeteries. This study applies GIS-based cluster analysis to identify multiscalar patterning at the Middle Bronze Age Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia. Three successive scalar clusters were identified: (i) primary...
The Lengyel Interaction Sphere in East-Central Europe during the Fifth Millennium BC (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sites of the Lengyel Culture are found from the Drava River in Croatia to the lowlands of northern Poland during the fifth millennium BC. While the Lengyel Culture is clearly in the great "Danubian" tradition as a successor to the first farmers of this area several centuries...
Lithic Analysis of Paleolithic Surface Scatters from Pleistocene River Terraces in the Republic of Serbia (2018)
During the past two decades Paleolithic research in Serbia has rapidly expanded with numerous cave sites currently under excavation. However, this focus on caves in largely upland terrain may create a biased understanding of the Paleolithic record. Typically, open-air sites are integrated into research projects to correct for this bias. Unfortunately, Serbia has very few open-air sites, requiring us to use other sources of evidence as proxies for understanding the Paleolithic record in lowland...
Macedonian presence on the Crnobuki Gradiste Riches to Rags: Year 1 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cal Poly Humboldt and the Museum Bitola initiated a long term research project in the Pelagonia region of North Macedonia, this paper presents the results of the initial field season. Our expectations were that the site was the location of a remote Macedonian garrison defending against Roman incursions. We conducted excavations, remote sensing and in...
The Meaning of a Sample of Teeth Pendants from the Paleolithic Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria (Exc. 1971–1975) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone artifacts from the past are indicators of increased diversity in human behavior and culture. Determining the bone tool type can provide information about past technology, cultural provenience, symbolic expressions, and the type of exploited fauna that inhabited different geographical regions....
Medieval Transylvanian Church Burial Patterns and Demographics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Papdomb archaeological site is located immediately outside the village of Văleni (Hungarian: Patakfalva), Romania in the historic region of Transylvania. Papdomb comprises the ruins of a medieval Székely church and its associated cemetery. Human interment within the walls of the church started in the second half of the 12th century and extended to the...
Middle Age Childhood: Bioarchaeology and Health of Children from a Medieval Cemetery Site (Gz10) in Giecz, 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. The medieval cemetery in Giecz (site 10) is part of a complex of the early Piast state stronghold (Giecz, Greater Poland voivodeship, Poland). The cemetery is dated to the eleventh–twelfth centuries. The site has been excavated since 2014 as Slavia Field School in Mortuary Archaeology. During the seasons 2014–2021, over 150 graves have been discovered....
The (Missing) Archaeology of the Early Medieval Nomads (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 goal of this paper is to take a fresh, critical look at the work done on medieval nomads, especially in Eastern Europe, over the last three decades or so. It will focus on three crucial aspects. First, the relation between pastoralism (a separate problem for medieval archaeology) and nomadism, and the...
Mortuary Practices of the Vanished Medieval Village of Gać in 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. This paper is focused on the results of three seasons of archeological excavation in the vanished village of Gać, located in the central part of Greater Poland. More than 300m2 of the medieval cemetery were examined, revealing 159 burials. The vast majority of the dead were buried according to the Catholic rite. However, a few deviated significantly...
A Moving Taskscape in the Late Bronze Age Argolid, Greece (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In past pre-industrial societies featuring large-scale building projects, extensive manual labour was invested during the entire chaîne opératoire of construction. This report focuses instead on the cost of multiple labour activities during the 13th century BCE in the Aegean Late Bronze Age. It aims to move “beyond the calculation of average and peak...
A New Excavation In Southeast Turkey: Kece Cave (2018)
Kece Cave is located in Kahramanmaras - Elbistan Province in Turkey. The first excavation was carried out in 2015 and since that year, it has been continued by excavation team that includes different university experts. According to preliminary reports, first excavations were realized on terraces in front of the cave and inside. Preliminary findings have been remarkable. Although during the last season excavation, most amazing findings than before were obtained in the terrace excavation area and...
New Identities and Changing Funerary Practices in the Mid–Late 2nd Millennium BC in the Carpathian Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 – 1300 BC) in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. While the narratives have somewhat shifted from the traditional model that primarily associated these changes with the arrival of the Tumulus culture population, and...
New Insights on Neanderthal Subsistence Strategies in Central Europe Using Faunal and ZooMS Analyses at Crvena Stijena (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. While considerable research on Middle and Late Pleistocene subsistence has been conducted in Western Europe, little is known about variation in the hunting abilities and dietary behavior of Neanderthal populations in Central Europe. Here, we present new faunal results from...
A New Method for Monitoring Socio-Economic Changes through Settlement Placement (2018)
There is a recursive relationship between socio-economic institutions and the environment. Decisions about where to place settlements in a landscape were informed by existing economic institutions, but placement of sites in turn effected how social and economic institutions were organized. In this paper, I present a new GIS-based method for quantifying socio-economic organization and change in prehistoric societies. Catchment analyses, as employed in this study, define the availability of...
New Solutions to Old Challenges: Methods and Results from Project ArAGATS’ Kasakh Valley Archaeological Survey (KVAS) Project, Northwestern Armenia (2015-17) (2019)
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 South Caucasus witnessed multiple long-term shifts in settlement systems, social organization, and sociopolitics from the Paleolithic and the close of the Bronze Age. Throughout this long history, local environments and human landscapes served as important...
A North American Plains Perspective on the East European Paleolithic (2018)
For historical reasons, the Middle and Upper Paleolithic record of Europe has been viewed largely through the prism of rockshelters in the southwestern corner of the continent. Europe is dominated geographically, however, by an immense plain that stretches from the Carpathians to the Ural Mountains, much of which is devoid of natural shelters. Vance Holliday has made a significant contribution to the study of soils, stratigraphy, and site-formation process in open-air Middle and Upper...
Paleodemography of a Late Medieval Cemetery in 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. Paleodemography is useful way of learning about the lives of people in the past, while gaining insight into their cultural and environmental conditions. The Late Middle Ages in Poland saw several cultural and climatic changes. Historical documents provide context for the elites during this period throughout the realm, but information regarding...