Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)

76-100 (208 Records)

The First Paleoecological Analysis Derived from a Small Vertebrate Assemblage from the Byzantine Galilee and the Implications for Settlement Patterns (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Belmaker. Ron Hull.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The flourishing of settlements in the Levant during the Roman-Byzantine period has been attributed to an increase in humid conditions between 300 –700 CE with a concomitant increase in tree cultivation. Small vertebrates which provide high-resolution paleoecological proxy are rare in the Byzantine period overall and totally absent from Galilean sites. This...


Food Futures: Culinary Archaeology and Anticipating the Future (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Graff.

This is an abstract from the "Culinary Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Imagining what a culinary archaeology might look like involves anticipating the future. In fact, all archaeological practice is concerned with the future even if it is not stated explicitly and archaeologists working on food preparation practices are no exception. As climate change continues to impact (at an alarming rate) sites, travel, collections, data...


Forced Migration in the Assyrian Empire, on the Periphery and in the Heartland (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Ur.

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. Premodern states could and did reorganize the spatial demography of their domains. In the ancient Near East, the kings of the Assyrian Empire (ca. 900-600 BC) made grandiose claims in propagandistic inscriptions to have relocated entire kingdoms, and many thousands of persons, with their realm. The research of...


From Homes to Ruins: Ethnoarchaeology and Small-Scale Village Dynamics at Post-19th Century Kızılkaya, Central Turkey (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ayse Bursali. Ian Kuijt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on interviews with former residents of the abandoned Turkish village of Kızılkaya, as well as photogrammetry and other visual research, in this poster we consider how this post-1800 rural village was organized around the household, the mosque, access to the river, and raising and caring for animals. The rural village of Kızılkaya, located in the...


“From the Field to the Museum”: A New Educational Outreach Program at Vedi Fortress, Armenia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Curtis. Peter Cobb. Ani Avagyan. Gohar Hovakimyan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This field report recounts our newly realized collaborative children’s educational workshop at the Vedi Fortress in Armenia. In June 2022, the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project (APSAP) partnered with the National Gallery of Armenia and the Armenian Heritage Development Fund to run our first “From the Field to the Museum” Summer School. Children...


Gender-based Violence and Discrimination in Middle Eastern and North African Fieldwork (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Beth Alpert Nakhai.

In 2014, inspired by the work on gender-based violence in field settings done by anthropologists Clancy, Nelson, Rutherford, and Hinde, I began investigating field safety for archaeologists working in the Middle East and North Africa, the region in which I work. At that time, I was a trustee of the American Schools of Oriental Research – and I chair its Initiative on the Status of Women. I began by quantifying problems (Survey on Field Safety: Middle East, North Africa, and The Mediterranean...


Geospatial Analysis of Tumuli in the North Central Anatolian Plateau (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Paulsen.

The tumulus fields – landscapes heavily modified by monumental burial mounds – of Central Anatolia provide an opening to investigate how the tumuli reflect and create places of collective memory, territorial identity, and the social order. This project takes the Iron Age tumuli of the Kanak Su Basin in Yozgat, Turkey as a case study and uses a GIS approach based on available evidence: their location from archaeological surveys, and a small number of excavated mounds. This paper investigates the...


GIS Investigations on Stone-Circle Structures in the North of Saudi Arabia (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mesfer Alqahtani.

The theme of the poster will address archaeological phenomena in the north of Saudi Arabia. The archaeological phenomena are stone-built structures that can be seen by satellite images. These stone-built structures have various types, and one of them is the circle type. The poster will show the method of creating predictive models of stone circles by using the Geographic Information System (GIS). To create these models, two zones from the north of Saudi Arabia should be selected: study zone and...


Glass Bangles from Saudi Arabia in the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Tayla Hanson. Emma Kissel. Charlotte Nash.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents research on glass bangle fragments believed to be from the Al Hasa oasis in Saudi Arabia, donated to the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). Glass bangles were manufactured and widely traded across the Middle East and South Asia, but there has not yet been a comprehensive...


Glass Beads from Saudi Arabia in the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Jefferys.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present information on a subsection of glass beads from a diverse collection of artifacts that are presumed to be from the Al Hasa Oasis region in Saudi Arabia and donated to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH). Although glass beads and objects are a commonly studied artifact in...


Grasses Are Always Greener: The Technology of Herding and Mobility among Neolithic Pastoralists in South Arabia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Buffington.

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 development of pastoralism still features a number of gaps in the archaeological record. Principally, herders invest in the maintenance of a resource base capable of supporting their herds. While pursuing these resources through both intensive and extensive land management strategies, they impact vegetation...


Guardians in Life and Death: Dogs at Neolithic Çatalhöyük and Beyond (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

Dogs often occupy a spiritually ambiguous position in human-animal relations. Domestic but not livestock, they typically share human space and diet more than most herd animals. They are more likely to be considered persons, with souls – a trait they share with wild animals. Here I examine the spiritual status of dogs in early Near Eastern herding societies, as livestock-keeping spread through the region and it became possible to situate dogs in relation to other domestic animals as well as wild...


The Heat Treatment of Flint in the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic Site of Yiftahel (Lower Galilee, Israel) and Its Social Interpretation (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitry Yegorov. Steven Rosen. Ofer Marder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent examination of the lithic collection from the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB) site of Yiftahel (10,100-9,250 BP cal.) has revealed a relatively large number of flint artifacts showing traces of intentional heating. Heat treatment of siliceous stones is a worldwide phenomenon that was mainly used during the initial stages of chaîne opértoire for...


Heritable Nonmetric Traits: A Study of a Bronze Age Tomb at Tell Abraq, UAE (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Taylor. Cheryl Anderson. Debra Martin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research investigates the use of heritable nonmetric traits as a means for assessing population variation and biological relatedness within an archaeological sample using the human skeletal tomb assemblage from the Bronze Age site of Tell Abraq (2100-2000BC). A total of 410 individuals representing all ages and both sexes were interred in the tomb. An...


High-Density Urban Living at Middle Bronze Age Kurd Qaburstan, Iraq (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Creekmore.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Upper Mesopotamia the Middle Bronze Age (2000 – 1600 B.C.E.) marked the regrowth of cities following the decline or collapse of cities at the end of the Early Bronze Age. Researchers question the degree of continuity in urban space across these periods and some have suggested that Middle Bronze Age cities were "hollow," containing relatively small built-up...


Home Economics at Pre-pottery Neolithic B Al-Khayran? Reconstructing Residential Unit Economic Behavior through Knapped Stone Analysis at a Small Site in West-Central Jordan (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Kroot.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The shift from primarily foraging to predominantly farming economies that occurs during the early Neolithic of southwest Asia is commonly seen as a transition not merely in subsistence practices but economic relations as well. Many researchers argue that new forms of households emerge by the end of this time period, which serve as both residential and...


How Many People Lived in Early Villages? Reconsidering Neolithic Demography at Çatalhöyük (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kuijt. Arkadiusz Marciniak.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have divergent options as to how many people lived at different Neolithic villages. Near Eastern Neolithic settlements have been historically interpreted as being occupied by thousands of people. This interpretation is founded on several observations: that excavations at settlements often reveal the remains of the densely packed mud-brick...


How Many People Lived in the World’s Earliest Villages? Reconsidering Community Size and Population Pressure at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kuijt. Arkadiusz Marciniak.

This is an abstract from the "Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some researchers hold that Near East Neolithic agricultural villages were composed of thousands of people and that these villages existed as an evolutionary starting point on the path to rapid population growth and urbanism. Revaluating the settlement of...


Howdy Neighbour – Transgressing Borders and Peering over the Fence to Examine the Application of Isotopic Analyses to Bioarchaeology in Anatolia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Irvine.

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. Stable isotope analyses contributing to archaeological research in Anatolia was a relatively late bloomer, beginning in the early 2000s and only gathering pace in the last 5-10 years. Currently research into dietary habits, subsistence practices, and mobility has...


Hunted Deer and Buried Foxes: Fauna from the Middle Epipaleolithic Site of ‘Uyun al-Hammam (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Everhart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Levantine Epipaleolithic (ca. 23,000—11,500 cal BP) saw an explosion of behavioral innovation and diversification in hunter-gatherer groups. One of these new behaviors was the development and spread of repetitively used and reused burial grounds or cemeteries. The Middle Epipaleolithic site of ‘Uyun al-Hammam in the Wadi Ziqlab area of Northern Jordan...


The Ideal Free Distribution, Population Packing, and the Forager to Producer Transition in the Southern Levant (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Munro. Elic Weitzel.

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using predictions derived from the ideal free distribution, we test the hypothesis that the forager to farmer transition in the southern Levant emerged from a context of increased population packing. By constructing population size estimates derived from radiocarbon date frequencies and modeling...


Importance of U-2 Aerial Imagery of Iron Age Cities in the Middle East (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only John High. Jesse Casana.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With this research, I hope to digitally reproduce the high-resolution U-2 photographs by specially processing my photographs of the imagery using photogrammetic methods, such as Agisoft Metashape to produce 3D surface models. With these models, I will deduce what implications the structures and features visible in the imagery and models have in association...


In the Reed Buckets There Is Sweet Beer: An Archaeology of Beer, Brewing, and Women in Mesopotamia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Hopwood.

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. “Like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates,” the filtered beer pours into collection vats and from there into serving jars and beakers for the happy drinkers. Or so the Hymn to Ninkasi suggests. By the time the poet impressed those words into clay, beer had been brewed for generations with the practiced gestures and...


Inferences about Class Structure from Burial Form and Mitochondrial DNA Relationships at Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad, Syria (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kennedy. D. Andrew Merriwether.

The Roman/Parthian period (200 BCE - 300 CE) at the site of Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad, Syria existed during a period in the region characterized by political instability and military movement. This "borderland," existing at the extremities of both empires, created a unique sphere of potential interactions both on the individual level and broader scale. A cemetery from this period shows four distinct burial forms (mud-brick graves, earthen graves, amphora graves and clay sarcophagi). In an effort to better...


Integrating Digital Datasets into Public Engagement through ArcGIS StoryMaps (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Howland. Brady Liss. Mohammad Najjar. Thomas Levy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research should not only be published in academic journals but also shared with the public and stakeholding communities. Ideally, the public should have opportunities to interact with cultural heritage and interpret it on their own terms. In today’s digital environment, hypermedia and deep mapping are ways of increasing the accessibility of...