Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (278 Records)
Modern day Çorum is the homeland of the Hatti people, the culture that later formed the Hittite Empire. Resuloğlu, dated to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2500–2100 BC), is one of the few Hatti sites being systematically excavated. The site, located on a hilltop near the Delice River, consists of a cemetery area and settlement that spreads over two opposing–once connected–ridges with numerous extraordinary metal and vitreous artifacts. The settlement exemplifies well the self-sustaining pre-Hittite...
Middle Paleolithic Land Use and Behavior in the Armenian Highlands: A Preliminary Synthesis (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. Over the last two decades, international-Armenian projects have greatly expanded and refined the Middle Paleolithic (MP) record in the Armenian Highlands. Here, we preliminarily synthesize current chronometric, lithic, and faunal evidence. Our goal is to develop some hypotheses on hominin land use, subsistence, and...
Mix, Mold, Fire! An Exploration of the Chaine Operatoire through the Eyes of an Apprentice Potter (2018)
Pottery manufacturing in Early Bronze Age (EBA) Anatolia witnessed a host of technical innovations that transformed what had been a small-scale domestic activity into a specialist craft. At the proto-urban village of Seyitömer Höyük, dedicated pottery workshops appeared in the EBIII period (ca. 2250-2200 BCE), along with a suite of technical innovations, such as pottery molds, clay mixing pits, and clusters of pottery kilns. These advances allowed potters to manufacture more vessels with less...
Mix, Mold, Fire! Multimedia Educational Outreach inspired by Bronze Age Archaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While fascination with archaeology is commonplace among children, family media content often focuses on problematic narratives of treasure hunting. This presents a need for archaeologists to reach out to young audiences with a more balanced narrative - one that conveys the value of heritage resources and counteracts the damaging perception of archaeologists as...
Mleiha Archaeological Park: Management of a Future UNESCO World Heritage Site within Nature and Culture (2018)
Mleiha in the center of the Emirate of Sharjah (UAE) presents a long archaeological history in which the natural environment plays an important role. The management of this site is complex and serves as a good practice example for the Salalah Doctrine. Our presentation will develop the challenges of management of archaeological sites in their special natural context involving the management of water resources, game and agriculture in an environment situated between the desert and the high...
Modeling the Changes in the Surface Processes at Arslantepe (Malatya) during the Early Bronze Age-I (ca. 5000–4750 cal. BP) (2018)
Agent-based modeling of land use not only illustrates how ancient production mechanisms evolve, but such models also have the power to reconstruct changes in spatio-temporal changes in the dynamics of surface processes in relation with the changes in climatic conditions and varying type and intensity of human land use. Early Bronze Age-I at Arslantepe represents a time period when the paleoclimatic dynamics changed towards more arid conditions while the economy of the site shifted from intensive...
Modelling the Connectivity of Socioeconomic Networks of Copper Production in Ancient Northern Oman (2018)
With over 5000 years of production history, Oman was a major ancient source of copper, participating in a trade network that supplied a large part of the ancient world, the extent of which has yet to be fully mapped. As part of the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ArWHO) Project, we have been working since 2012 in the Ad-Dhahirah Governorate of Oman to clarify the structure of ancient copper production networks. Methodologically, our investigations employ satellite imagery analysis to map...
Mountain, Steppes, and Barley: GIS Modeling of Human Environmental Interactions In the Armenian Highlands during the Bronze and Iron Ages (2018)
This poster investigates how Bronze and Iron Age communities around Mount Aragats, in central Armenia, managed their grassland environment through their subsistence strategies. I suggest that these distinct social and political societies not only participated in constructing a landscape of domestic cereal grains, such as barley and wheat, but also were participants in the ecology of this open mountain steppe environment dominated by Poaceae, Chenopodiaceae, and Artemisia. I investigate how the...
Negotiating Empires: Village Dynamics in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan (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. Archaeological research on empires has focused on centers and periphery, with much less emphasis on the interstices of empires. During the first century of the common era, the polities of the Southern Caucasus were located between the competing empires of Arsacid...
Neolithic Group Sizes – Further Thoughts (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. The dominant paradigm concerning group size is frequently couched in terms of the "social brain hypothesis" (Dunbar 1998). On the other hand ethnographic evidence (Hill et al. 2014) posits much higher interaction rates amongst individuals than those based solely upon...
Neolithic Pastoralist Practices at Masis Blur, Armenia’s Ararat Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic settlements appeared across the Southern Caucasus in the early sixth millennium BCE. Ongoing excavations, along with zooarchaeological and isotopic research, are clarifying how these communities used the landscape and managed livestock in the context of mixed farming. In this paper we present new zooarchaeological data from recent...
The Neolithic Stone beads of Nahal Hemar Cave, Israel (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) site of Nahal Hemar Cave in the Judean Desert yielded, among others, many beads made of wood, plaster, shell and stone. The study of 35 stone beads recovered at the site highlights three main inter-related aspects: a broad range of raw materials used, the workmanship of bead production according to their types, and the...
Neolithic Tales from the Eastern Mediterranean Basin: A Graduate Student’s Experience under Dr. Alan H. Simmons at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in the 1990s (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. The Las Vegas Valley in southern Nevada experienced unprecedented growth in the 1990's. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) was not immune to this progress and as a result began to attract the attention of top researchers, professors, and graduate students out...
New Insights from a Reanalysis of the Flaked-Stone Assemblage from the Neolithic Site of Wadi Shu’eib, Jordan (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 ongoing research on the Neolithic of the Southern Levant, flaked-stone assemblages continue to play a key role in interpretations of social organization and interaction. Despite the prominence of research on lithic assemblages during the Neolithic, few comprehensive studies come from the large settlements with long, continuous occupation spans (2,000...
The Nitrogen Challenge at Çatalhöyük (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic values of archaeobotanical remains from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük have presented us with a series of challenges for interpreting ancient crop management systems in a complex environment. An exceptionally wide range of δ15N values (0 to 18‰) obtained...
Nor Geghi-1 and the Process of Late Middle Pleistocene Technological Evolution in the Armenia 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. Current data from Africa and Eurasia suggest that the intercontinental transition from bifacial to hierarchical core technology occurred independently within different geographically dispersed hominin populations already adept at a variety of complex knapping procedures inherent to the Acheulean. The episodic...
Old Data, New Ideas: Analyzing Legacy Survey Data at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Jordan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2000–2001, the Tall Madaba Archaeological Project of the University of Toronto conducted an archaeological survey of the site of Khirbat al-Mukhayyat (Jordan) in anticipation of future archaeological excavation, though ultimately, no excavation of the site was conducted. With the formation of the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project in 2014, an...
The Old Stone Age in the Shammakh-to-Ayl Archaeological Survey Area, west-central Jordan (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. Chipped stone artifacts are nearly ubiquitous throughout the Middle East, and Jordan is no exception. Virtually indestructible, they testify to a human presence that extends back as far as 1.5 million years. They are commonly found on the deflated uplands of the...
Olive Oil and Urbanism: Specialized Production in late 4th millennium South-West Asia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Early Bronze Age (3800 – 2000 BCE) southern Levantine agricultural infrastructure developed on a region-wide scale to facilitate the accumulation of surpluses in the newly emerging urban landscape. Olive oil grew to be an important staple and luxury product. This discussion focuses on an EB IB (3300-3050 BCE) olive oil production site in...
On the Right of Refusal: Decolonizing Archaeology and Equitable Praxis (2018)
Fore fronting that "decolonization is not a metaphor" (Tuck and Yang 2012), this paper demonstrates how decolonization is not just an historical process but rather an action that is political at its core. As global efforts to redefine archaeological practice are underway to ensure a more just and equitable practice, political historiographies of colonial archaeology in high income postcolonies, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), must also be investigated. Epistemic violence embedded...
One Person’s Waste Is an Archaeologist’s Treasure: Using Techno-Typological Analysis of Debitage for Epipaleolithic Assemblages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone tools have long been used by archaeologists as markers of cultural affiliation in prehistoric cultures. The Epipaleolithic (EP) of Southwest Asia (approx. 23,000–11,500 yrs BP) is no different; here microlith types are regularly used as signifiers of geographically and chronologically bounded cultural groups, social...
ood, Agricultural, and Environmental Risk Management during the Holocene in Mesopotamia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using new microbotanical phytolith evidence, this article discusses what strategies were implemented to manage factors affecting agricultural strategies and staple food during the Late Holocene in a dry climatic condition in the Late Holocene at the Neo-Assyrian large site of Peshdar Plain located in Kurdistan, Iraq, Northern Mesopotamia. Located in the...
Orbiting the Oasis: Protein Residue Analysis Illuminates Past Interspecies Interactions in 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. Lithic tools excavated at Shishan Marsh (SM-1) dating to approximately 250,000 years have provided insight into human adaptability to the factors of climate change, water shortage, and ecological stress. Shishan Marsh was likely a refuge due to being a wetland in the middle of a desert, the paleomarsh...
Ordinary or Extraordinary? Analytical Disjunctures between Production and Rituals in Pastoralist Societies (2018)
This paper considers the connection between the quotidian practices of pastoralism and the role of herd animals (and their material remains) in ritual practices in the Late Bronze Age in the South Caucasus. Zooarchaeological and isotopic analysis of faunal remains from Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 BCE) sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia have revealed new, if perplexing, evidence about everyday practices of production, distribution, and consumption of pastoralist products and the...
Organic Molecular Proxies for Fire in Archaeological Sediments (2018)
A number of different direct and indirect proxies are used to identify fire at archaeological sites. We propose a new organic molecular proxy for identification of anthropogenic fire in archaeological sediments, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These molecules are a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of organic biomass, and are preserved well on deep time scales. We applied this proxy to Lusakert Cave, a Middle Paleolithic site in the Hrazdan Gorge, Armenia. From these same samples,...