Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (208 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many early states were deeply invested in alcoholic beverages. In focusing on the political instrumentality of these beverages, however, archaeologists have often lost sight of what makes them such an effective tool of statecraft. People seek out alcoholic beverages because of their affective power, their ability to...
Between Archaeology and Texts: Early Jewish Ritual Law as a Test Case (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late Hellenistic and Roman periods were formative for the development of halakhah—Jewish ritual law. Whereas texts have traditionally served as the primary basis for tracing the evolution of early halakhah, archaeology provides evidence on aspects of this history which are entirely unobtainable from the textual record....
Broken Minarets and Lamassu: The Propogandization of Heritage on the Front Line of the War in Northern Iraq (2018)
The armed conflict in Iraq has produced a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, beginning with the take-over of Mosul by the Islamic State (ISIS) in June 2014 followed by their subsequent gains in its northern governorates. Since then millions have become internally displaced or left the country as refugees. These war-wearied Iraqis are struggling with a loss of identity and a lack of control over their lives, and these feelings are further compounded by the destruction of their as a result of the...
Built Environments of Epipalaeolithic Southwest Asia: A Life History of Place (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A place is structured and given meaning through human experiences at both individual and group levels. Places are created through repeated human action and made tangible in the landscape by material culture. These places become part of a built environment, marked by daily routines or habitus. At the...
Cause and Effect: Human-Animal Relationships and Zoonotic Brucellosis in Long Term Perspective (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zoonotic diseases remain a persistent global challenge, with some 60% of human pathogens of zoonotic origin. They disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable populations, particularly those living in close proximity with their animals and who have less access to health information and care. Archaeology’s cultural and biological datasets have the potential to...
Change and Adaptation in Stone Tool Technology in Jordan ca. 1000 BCE (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The decline and replacement of stone tools with their metal counterparts in regions with traditions of metallurgy has been shown to have been a slow and variable process that involved specific types of tools marking the metallurgic transition at different times and in specific contexts. For example, in the region of the southern Levant (Jordan, Palestine,...
Change and Continuity in Agricultural Production in Iraqi Kurdistan, ca. 4000 BCE–1000 CE (2018)
The archaeological site of Kani Shaie is a small (<3ha) tell site located in Iraqi Kurdistan not far from contemporary Sulaymaniyah. Archaeological evidence as well as radiocarbon dates procured from excavations at the site indicate in-habitation from at least 3500 BCE until the Middle Islamic period, ca. 1400 CE. Excavations in 2015 and especially 2016 included a substantial archaeobotanical sampling component, which entailed the sampling of every archaeological deposit and the subsequent...
Climate Change or Muslims? Collapse of the Late Antique Sasanian Settlements, Mughan Steppe, Iranian Azerbaijan (2018)
Recent research in the borderlands has increased our knowledge on the irrigation systems and urbanization plans of the Sasanian Empire in the late antiquity. In particular, surveys and excavations in the Mughan Steppe indicate that irrigation canals connected nearly all Sasanian settlements. Evidence suggests that after the 7th century AD most of the elaborate settlement system was abandoned and its irrigation infrastructure went out of use. While the exact date of this abandonment is unclear,...
Climate Stability and Societal Decline on the Margins of the Byzantine Empire in the Negev Desert (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the absence of a high-resolution climate archive in Negev Desert, southern Israel, it has been challenging to understand why the Byzantine Empire built large towns in this arid region in the fourth century CE—and why it abandoned them three centuries later. In this study, we use dietary and mobility patterns of animals recovered from three Byzantine Negev...
The Color of Personal Ornaments in Prehistoric Periods of the Levant (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shell beads appear first in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Levant. Their use as personal ornaments is evidence for cognitive abilities and symbolic expressions, however, their colors are limited to white, red and black. Humans’ transition from a foraging economy to agriculture in the Neolithic of the Levant brought...
Come for the Harvest, Stay for the Beer: Alcohol Production in an Ubaid Household in Upper Mesopotamia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In New Perspectives on Household Archaeology, Bradley Parker and Catherine Foster urged archaeologists to approach households as a dynamic location of repetitive actions and gestures that shaped the formation of the personal, economic, social, political and ideological trajectories of the community. In his...
A Comparative Analysis of Mortuary and Domestic Artifacts from Petra’s North Ridge (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interpreting the use of material culture in mortuary contexts provides an intimate view of social identity of both the deceased and mourners in ancient societies. However, the material remains of mortuary practices throughout the Nabataean Kingdom in Jordan have not been systematically investigated. Comparing the material culture between contemporary...
Comparision of Fish Habit and Exploitation—A Comparison of Two Third-Millennium BCE Sites in the Arabian Gulf Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the third millennium BCE, one of the earliest civilizations emerged in South Asia, the Indus Valley Tradition/Civilization. It had a trade network that spread throughout the Persian and Arabian Gulf, including sites on the Omani coast. This paper will compare two sites, Balakot on the Makran coast of Pakistan associated with the Indus Valley...
A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Göbekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC (2018)
Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB settlement sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem)...
Constructing the Herd: Critically Considering the Temporality of Human-Animal Relations in Archaeological Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of the herd is often deployed when discussing systems of animal management in the ancient past, sometimes explicitly but most often implicitly. Due to the nature of the archaeological record, zooarchaeological assemblages often compress multiple generations of livestock into a single dataset....
Contextual Taphonomy in Zooarchaeology: From Refuse Behavior to Site-Occupation Intensity in Levantine Epipaleolithic Camps (2018)
In zooarchaeology, Contextual Taphonomy means the integration of the stratigraphic and contextual data with zooarchaeological and taphonomic data, to clarify the 'life history' of a faunal sub-assemblage in a given context. The approach uses animal remains to explain variability among site features by looking into the differential taphonomic histories of the bones, most importantly in the post-discard stage. Archaeofaunal remains are normally ubiquitous in foragers’ camps and their histories are...
Contextualizing Conflict: Social Theory in the Bioarchaeology of Central Anatolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout her career Debra Martin has utilized an innovative, multidisciplinary, and theoretical approach to bioarchaeology. One of her most significant contributions to archaeology has been her pioneering work on violence, utilizing social theory and current methodologies in order to interpret the skeletal evidence. Her...
Crystal Bennett and the 1965 American Embassy Medain Saleh Expedition in Saudi Arabia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. British archaeologist Crystal Bennett (1918–1987) is considered one of the formidable British female archaeologists of the Middle East, conducting investigations across Jordan and beyond from 1957 to 1983. As Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s student at the University of London in the early...
Cultural Diversity in the Zagros Mountains and the Expansion of Modern Humans into the Iranian Plateau (2018)
Located in western Eurasia, at the crossroads of human migrations out of Africa during the Pleistocene, the Iranian Plateau stands at the centre of models of anatomically modern human dispersals out of Africa. This paper aims to understand the cultural diversity among the first modern human populations in the area, and the implications of this diversity to evolutionary and ecological models of human dispersal through the Iranian Plateau, by re-examining four key UP lithic assemblages from the...
Cultural Factors of Metabolic Disease in Infants and Young Children from Late Ottoman-Era Jordan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Tell Hisban in Jordan was seasonally occupied by nomadic agropastoral tribes for over a thousand years. In the latter half of the 1800s, the Ottoman Empire instituted the Tanzimat, a series of reforms intended to solidify control over the region, including a new system of private land ownership. This new land law conflicted with traditional...
Cultural Genocide and Usurpation of Armenian Places by Azerbaijani Authorities in Disputed Territories (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azerbaijan government committed Cultural Genocide against Armenian sites in disputed territories before their most recent 2020 dispute. To fit the nationalistic narrative, Azerbaijan has been destroying or usurping important sites and churches and reshaping the landscape to erase any memory of Armenians. With the use of Armenian and Azerbaijani data,...
Death and Taxes in the Ancient Assyrian Empire: Pictures of Wealth Inequality in Provincial Settlements (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of mortuary material in archaeology has always related to subjects of identity, beliefs, and resources. Furthermore, it is one of our prime resources for understanding non-elite individuals in the premodern world, especially in societies where historical sources revolve around the ruling elites. This is certainly the case in the ancient Assyrian...
Deh Luran Archaeological Landscape: A Reassessment (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Deh Luran archaeological landscape was home to some of the earliest prehistoric investigations and ethnoarchaeological observations in the broader region of the Zagros Mountains and Mesopotamian plains during the 1960s. Early archaeological surveys and excavations resulted in significant discoveries of settlement spanning from approximately 8th millennium B.C....
Digital Technology, Digital Practices: Incorporating Digital Techniques into Archaeological Excavation and Interpretation (2018)
Digital methods in archaeology have led to new ways of recording, analyzing, and presenting archaeological sites and materials, but these new methods are adopted within the context of previously existing practices of archaeological work. Some digital recording methods in excavation build upon and sometimes displace long-standing analog methods with proven results. Digital representations of cultural materials present novel interpretive affordances compared to analog representations that, while...
The Doctrine for Management of Archaeological World Heritage Sites, the Case of Some Selected Sites in Lebanon (2018)
The Salalah Doctrine regarding the management of archaeological world heritage sites seeks to recognize the differences between archaeological sites, standing monuments and landscapes. Consequently, new and adapted management approaches to the Archaeological sites that present distinct management challenges are needed. The ICAHM doctrine proposed strategies for sustainable conservation and preservation still need to be addressed critically and contextually to ascertain their applicability. ...