Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (278 Records)
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)
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...
Integrating Isotopic Data across Ancient Anatolia for Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The increased availability of stable isotope data has made it possible to carry out comparative studies across space and time. In this paper, we review published and unpublished stable oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen isotope data derived from zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical, and bioarchaeological remains across...
Inter-site Relationships on the Madaba Plain: Surveys Around the Ancient Town of Nebo (Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Jordan) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Khirbat al-Mukhayyat is located approximately 6 km northwest of the city of Madaba and has long been associated with the ancient town of Nebo. The Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project (KMAP) was established to investigate the economic and ritual importance of the site across multiple periods and its connection to contemporary sites in the region....
Investigating Geological Sources and Sociotechnical Dimensions of Mica Pottery Inclusions from Late Bronze Age (LBA, 1500–1100 BC) Fortresses in Northern Armenia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For 25 years, the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies project (Project ArAGATS) has focused on the origins, regional-scale organization, and sociopolitical dynamics among LBA hillforts in northern Armenia. This paper presents preliminary results from a pilot study of mica...
An Isotopic and Proteomic Investigation of Uruk Period Faunal Remains from Tepe Farukhabad, Iran (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in southwest Iran and occupied since the fourth millennium BCE, Tepe Farukhabad is a prime example of an Early Uruk town. Numerous faunal remains were recovered from excavations in the 1960s, including those from wild animals, such as gazelle and horses, as well as from domesticated sheep, goats, and cows. Interestingly, between the...
An Israeli (real COOL) Dolmen (2018)
Excavation in the Shamir Dolmen Field (comprising over 400 dolmens), on the northern Israeli basaltic terrains, was carried out following the discovery of enigmatic rock art engravings on the ceiling of one of the largest dolmens ever recorded in the Levant. Excavation of this dolmen, covered by a basalt capstone weighing some 50 tons, revealed a secondary multi-burial (of both adults and children) rarely described in a dolmen context in Israel. Engraved into the rock ceiling above the...
Keeping the Dead Close (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the use of anatomical body parts—namely, skulls and crania—in the Neolithic of southwest Asia. It is clear that for many, the dead were kept close to the living, with their remains physically used by the...
Kura-Araxes Herding Practices in Early Bronze Age Armenia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I present an analysis of Early Bronze Age (EBA) faunal remains from field investigations conducted between 1998 and 2018 in the Tsaghkahovit plain of northern Armenia by the joint Armenian-American Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies (Project ArAGATS). The vast majority of Project ArAGATS’s EBA fauna...
Lamenting the Dead: The Acoustic Element in Bronze Age Funerary Rituals in Syro-Mesopotamia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will employ GIS in exploring the experiential aspects of the burial process in Early Bronze Age North Mesopotamia, with a particular attention to funerary soundscapes. To investigate the potential impact of vocal and musical sound, a 10 m resolution digital elevation model (DEM) was developed, and the "System for...
Landscape and Super-Regional Scale Interaction within the Aceramic Neolithic of Cyprus (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of Dr. Alan Simmons’ career, his work has challenged us to reconsider the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) time and time again. His early work on subsistence among the PPNB peoples of the Negev helped researchers to consider a PPNB without farming or...
Landscape Scale Ground Penetrating Radar and Magnetometry at Tel Shimron, Jezreel Valley, Israel (2018)
Situated in Israel’s Jezreel Valley, Tel Shimron holds the remains of occupations from the Early Bronze Age through to the 20th century. It is one of the largest tels in the region, but had not been excavated before this summer. The Tel Shimron Excavation project aims to investigate tel stratigraphy and better understand regional dynamics with the Galilean Hills and the Mediterranean agricultural economy. We began in 2016 by conducting geophysical surveys over much of the tel to investigate the...
The Late Acheulean of the Azraq Basin, Jordan, and Its Implications for Hominin Dispersals into the Levant (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azraq Basin is an important physiogeographic feature and hydrological catchment area in the eastern desert of Jordan. At its heart are the Azraq wetlands, an ecologically fragile oasis complex characterized by the spring-fed historic Druze Marsh and rehabilitated Shishan Marsh. Archaeological investigation over the past 70 years has discovered multiple...
The Late Neolithic Expansion in the Black Desert, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanning the early–mid-Holocene and the global climate event at 8200 BP (“8.2 event”), the Late Neolithic (ca. 7000–5000 BCE) is a crucial time for understanding cultural trajectories in southwest Asia. In hyperarid deserts such as that in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan, questions remain about the...
Life within Death: Contextualizing Burial Practice at Kenan Tepe, Turkey, from the Ubaid Period to the Early Bronze Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kenan Tepe, Turkey, is a multi-period archaeological site that was occupied during the Ubaid period (5000–4000 BCE), the Late Chalcolithic (3360–3020 BCE), and early Bronze Age (3000–2800 BCE) (Parker and Cobb 2012). During each of these periods residents of Kenan Tepe conducted distinct burial practices. These burials included the remains of individuals...
Lithic Procurement at a Levantine Desert Refugium during the Middle Pleistocene (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq Basin, Jordan have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date to the late Middle Pleistocene (300-220kya; 130-120kya). A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly arid and warm conditions in the region, similar to those of the present. Hominins living under these...
Lithics and Learning: Communities of Practice at Kharaneh IV (2018)
Flintknappers during the Levantine Epipaleolithic were proficient at microlith production, these skills were learned and passed down from one flintknapping generation to another as no one is born with the innate ability to flintknap. By utilizing practice theory and a chaîne opératoire approach to the Epipaleolithic chipped stone tool reduction sequences of narrow-nosed cores at Kharaneh IV, I strive to identify how individuals learned to flintknap, from raw material acquisition to the...
Lived Space of Displaced People: A Comparative Approach to Contested Spaces in Iron Age Northern Mesopotamia and Modern Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology grapples with the materiality of past subjects’ perception and organization of space, as drawn from objects, landscapes, architecture, and pictorial or textual representations. Generally what emerges from these data is a dominant or normative conceptualization of space. However, space is not merely the...
Living with the Dead: Burial Practice at Kenan Tepe, Turkey, During the Ubaid Period (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. Due to the generosity of Dr. Bradley Parker I had the opportunity to analyse the Ubaid Period burials from Kenan Tepe, Turkey. These burials provide a glimpse into the social dynamics and ritual practice of Kenan Tepe’s Ubaid Period community. The burials are divided into two groups: infants buried in courtyards...
Local Organization in Imperial Settings: Evidence from Late Antique and Middle Islamic Dhiban, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the many intellectual legacies of Richard Redding’s work is his exploration of how local communities made provisioning decisions to meet both their own local needs and demands by political authorities. This paper examines these themes among inhabitants of ancient Dhiban, Jordan during the Late...
Long-Term Climate Change: A Case Study on Climate Records from the Middle East in Relation to the Neo-Assyrian Empire Agriculture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Neo-Assyrian Empire as one of the major empires in the Ancient Near East emerged soon after late Bronze Age collapses. It ruled Mesopotamia from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to western parts of Iran and to Persian Gulf during the first millennium B.C. in a cold period in theHolocene Epoch. For my thesis, I am focusing on their plant cultivation,...
Marshlands and Early Mesopotamian Urban Form (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The marshlands of the Tigris-Euphrates delta were for millennia among the largest wetland systems in Eurasia. The Gulf coast, the river delta, and marshes extended further north ca. 8000–2000 BCE than they do today. As a result, the world’s earliest cities in southern Mesopotamia may have emerged 6,000–5,000 years ago within or on the edge of wetland and...
Material Geographies of Multi-Family Neolithic Households (2018)
This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were potentially connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. As seen from ethnographic cases, in some cases residential buildings of House Societies had a range of functions including as dwelling locations, origin-places, council houses, or meeting-houses. Echoing other research this paper decouples the social unit of the House from a...
Measurement Variability in a Collection of Modern Gazelle (Gazella gazella) Skeletons and its Archaeological Implications (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Linear skeletal measurements have long been harnessed by zooarchaeologists to differentiate animals by taxon, breed, age, and sex, to investigate domestication and animal management strategies and the impact of factors such as climate change and anthropogenic activity. However, due to equifinality, interpreting archaeological body size data remains...
Meat on the Hoof: Isotopic Evidence of Administrative Herd Management at Khirbet Summeily, Israel (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Khirbet Summeily is an Iron Age II site located northwest of Tell el-Hesi in Southern Israel. Excavations have revealed a large, singular structure with an adjoining ritual space dated to the Iron Age IIA (ca. 1000–870 BCE). Recent interpretations suggest the site was integrated into a regional economic and political system and functioned as a potential...