Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (208 Records)
The UNESCO world heritage sites of Shuwaymis and Jubbah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, are extremely rich in early Holocene rock art. Hunting scenes illustrate dog-assisted hunting strategies from the 7th and possibly the 8th millennium BC, predating the spread of pastoralism. The engravings represent the earliest evidence for dogs on the Arabian Peninsula. Though the depicted dogs are reminiscent of the modern Canaan dog, it is unclear if they were brought to the Arabian Peninsula from the...
Dress Pins, Textile Production, and Women’s Economic Agency across Early Second Millennium Anatolia (2018)
Nearly seventy years of excavations at Kültepe have yielded a remarkable assemblage of material reflecting the rich and fluid daily lives of the Anatolians, Assyrians, and others who inhabited such a dynamic and cosmopolitan city. A diverse category of objects, metal dress pins, has been recovered from burials at Kültepe and other Middle Bronze Age Anatolian sites, providing tangible connections to the ancient people who wore them. Previous scholarship has focused on the style and origin of...
Droning on: UAV Survey in the Black Desert of Jordan (2018)
In this paper we discuss preliminary results of UAV-survey in one area (c. 32 sq. km.) along the Wadi al-Qattafi, Jordan as part of the larger Eastern Badia Archaeological Project. Excavation and survey in this area of the Black Desert revealed hundreds, or possibly thousands, of unmapped and unrecorded structures that required a new approach to their accurate identification and documentation. With the exception of the large desert ‘kites’ (hunting traps), most stone structures are too small to...
Dugongs, Dromedaries, and Domesticates: Disentangling Diverse Diets in Bronze Age Southeast Arabia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age (ca. 3100 – 1250 BCE) in southeast Arabia is a period of major social and economic changes. In general, several aspects of the southeastern Arabian Bronze Age diverge from patterns occurring in neighboring areas, making it an interesting focal point of study. In terms of subsistence strategies,...
Early Bronze Age Economies along the Dead Sea, Jordan: Reconstructing Agricultural Practices through Integrated Stable Isotope Analysis and Macrobotanical Study (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists such as Chesson (2019) have suggested the need for a more nuanced characterization of Early Bronze Age urbanism in the Southern Levant, one that embraces local variations as part of a regional EBA ideological package. Local agricultural economies would...
Early Iron Metallurgy in the Caucasus: Filling in a Technological "Missing Link" (2018)
In the study of technological transformations, there is often much discussion of how innovations are conditioned by earlier systems of technical knowledge. Identification of transitional features is often challenging, however, particularly for questions about the origins of iron smelting and its relationship with copper-base metallurgy. This paper discusses some unusual technological features in iron metallurgical debris (circa 8th-6th c. BC) from a fortified hilltop site in the Caucasus,...
Early Mesopotamian Urbanism and Social Stress: Violent Conflict at Fourth Millennium BCE Tell Brak, NE Syria (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past urbanism is usually reconstructed as a positive development, with cities presented as locations of economic efficiency, technological innovation, and productive social networks. But past cities also presented challenges, as sources of disease, inequalities, and high mortality. At Tell Brak (NE Syria/northern Mesopotamia), urban growth...
Early Pleistocene Hominin Expansion and Landscape Evolution in the Armenian Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the chronology and environmental context of the earliest hominin expansions into Eurasia is of considerable interest in paleoanthropology. Several Early Pleistocene archaeological sites in the Armenian Highlands and wider Caucasus region have demonstrated the importance of the region for understanding...
Early Steps into the Paleolithic Research of the Armenian Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This session about the current state of affairs into the research of the Paleolithic of the Armenian Highlands (Armenia and Georgia) will be opened with an overview of the research history of the area, providing a framework for the following presentations. The focus of this presentation is on the historical...
The Early–Middle Pleistocene Settlement of Northern Armenia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Northern Armenia and southern Georgia, divided in the Haghtanak-Bagratashen area by the Debed River, witnessed considerable volcanic activity between ~2.1 and 1.6 Ma, toward the end of which the earliest evidence of Homo outside Africa is found at Dmanisi. The rich assemblages of lithic, faunal, and human fossil...
Elite Stronghold or Communal Defense? Investigating a Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Cyclopean Fortress in Kvemo Kartli, Southern Georgia (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. Emerging after a Middle Bronze Age, which is defined by massive kurgan burials and a lack of permanent settlements, cyclopean fortresses of the South Caucasus represent the product of a significant amount of coordinated labor. However, much is unclear about the...
Enhancing Access to Arabian Rock Art Archives (2018)
Petroglyphs and inscriptions have been investigated in the Arabian Peninsula at least since 1879, when Lady Anne and Wilfrid Blunt crossed the An Nafud desert and stopped at the now famous site of Jubbah in northern Saudi Arabia. Since that time explorers from England, Belgium, Germany, the US, and the Saudi Department of Antiquities, have recorded images from north to south. Archival materials, including field notes, photographs and letters are available at various institutions, but there is no...
Entangled Biodiverse Landscapes: Human and Environmental Dynamics in the Mountain Steppes of Armenia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we investigate the entanglement of agro-pastoral and ecological processes on the creation and maintenance of vegetation biodiversity in the mountain steppe of Armenia, an area that has been a steppe for the entire Holocene (Cromartie et al. 2020). Focusing on the Bronze and Iron Age we discuss how...
Every Block of Stone Has a Statue Inside: Epipalaeolithic Engraved Plaquettes and Art at Kharaneh IV (2018)
Artistic objects are thought to be one of the hallmarks of the Natufian period, marking a florescence of artistic behavior appearing prior to the origins of agriculture. However, with continuing research into Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic sites in the Levant, new discoveries of ‘symbolic’ artifacts are increasing our understanding of even earlier artistic and symbolic pursuits. In this paper we present an engraved plaquette from the Middle Epipalaeolithic context of Kharaneh IV, eastern...
An Examination of Gaza Gray Ware Infant Jar Burials at Tell el-Hesi, Israel (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of Gaza Gray Ware (GGW) represents an important opportunity for understanding lifeways in Ottoman-era Palestine. Chiefly produced in Gaza, this ceramic industry was present during the 400 years of Ottoman occupation in the Southern Levant, continuing to a lesser extent into modern times. Favored for their high quality, these vessels were...
Examining Sources of Glazed Ceramics In Mesopotamia in Late Antiquity (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Estimation of provenance in fine ceramics is a challenging task. Documenting the trade in glazed Sassanian and Islamic ceramics into southeast Asia and China has driven an interest in identifying the sources of these ceramics. We have defined three hypothetical provenance groups 1) Greater and Lesser Zab catchment (Arbil area),...
Examining the Concept of Hinterland in Antiquity in Arid Regions of the Levant Using Archaeobotanical Data and GIS Analysis (2018)
Studies concerning the size of agricultural hinterlands in antiquity have generally been conducted on sites with favorable climates and have become the standard comparative tool. However, little has been examined relating to the size of a settlements hinterland in arid environments even when excellent archaeological evidence for extensive agricultural production, as can be seen in southern Jordan and Israel during the Roman and Byzantine periods. Likewise, a disproportionate focus has been...
Explanatory Frameworks in Zooarchaeological Research: Are Dichotomies Necessary and Meaningful? (2018)
Zooarchaeologists have often employed binary oppositions such as "urban consumers" and "rural producers" and distinguished between centralized/regulated and decentralized/unregulated animal economies with direct/indirect food provisioning systems to elucidate pastoral economies of early complex societies. As zooarchaeologists, we are tasked with bridging more abstract and ideational anthropological variables with the archaeological hard evidence as well as with a narrower set of more explicit...
Exploring Long-Term Trends in Wealth Inequality in Ancient Southwest Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigating how different forms of inequality arose and were sustained is key to understanding the emergence of complex social systems, and archaeology has much to contribute to this discussion. In this paper we investigate inequality in ancient Southwest Asia using a variety of proxies...
Fanning the Flames of Complexity: Archaeobotanical Approaches to the Study of Fuel Economies at Late Chalcolithic Sites in Northern Mesopotamia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The burning of fuel resources for the heating and lighting homes, preparing food and craft goods, and eliminating waste is an essential daily domestic practice on par with the acquisition of food and shelter. With the emergence of socioeconomically complex societies in Northern Mesopotamia during the Late Chalcolithic, ever greater resources would have been...
Faunal Perspectives on Occupation Intensity and Use of Space at Neolithic Kfar HaHoresh (2018)
During the transition to agriculture in southwest Asia, patterns of settlement site use reflect a major shift in the use of space by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. Diverse types of sites were utilized by this time, including locales primarily for ritual activities. More studies of ritual site use are needed to clarify how space was organized and used during the Neolithic Transition. This paper presents evidence of animal selection and refuse management to investigate the intensity of site...
Fear Written Large: Systematic Warfare and the Ancient Empire of Urartu (2018)
This paper presents a Landscapes of Warfare case study, combining textual documentation, archeological data and GIS analysis to elucidate the effects of pervasive warfare on the development of Urartu, a highland empire that existed in the ancient Near East in the 1st Millennium BCE. Specifically, I argue that forts, fortresses and fortified settlements were strategically placed for both defensive communication as well as the systematic surveillance of roads. The paper contributes to scholarly...
Feeding the Household and the Spirit During the Ubaid Period at Kenan Tepe, Turkey (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. During the Ubaid Period, a small village overlooked the Tigris River at the site we now call Kenan Tepe. Here, household members carried out activities both inside and around their houses, as well as utilizing roof-top spaces. During its habitation one of the structures burned and collapsed, preserving evidence...
A Fingerprint Assemblage from a Late Bronze Age Canaanite Cultic Enclosure at Tel Burna in the Southern Levant: The Division of Labor According to Age and Sex (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The identity of producers is a perennial question in the anthropological and archaeological study of craft production. Who made the vessels and figurines used for ritual practice and feasting in the Canaanite cultic enclosure at Tel Burna? Our project attempts to answer this question by determining the age and sex of fingerprints preserved on a selection...
Fire Use in the Levantine Early Epipaleolithic: The Dibble and Colleagues Lithics Count Method (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using a count method of complete and proximal burnt lithics ≥2.5 cm, Dibble and colleagues recorded a pattern of fire use by southwestern France Neanderthals whereby fire use was more common in warmer rather than colder intervals of the late Pleistocene. Recent work by Abdolahzadeh and...