Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas E. Levy. Margie Burton.

Recent current events have dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of the world's material cultural heritage. Funded by a University of California (UC) Office of the President’s Research Catalyst grant beginning in 2016, the At-Risk Cultural Heritage and the Digital Humanities project catalyzes a collaborative research effort by four UC campuses (San Diego, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Merced) to use cyber-archaeology and computer graphics to document and safeguard virtually some of the most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mehrnoush Soroush. Alireza Mehrtash. Emad Khazraee.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a collaborative project that seeks to develop a deep learning model for automated detection of qanat shafts on CORONA Satellite Imagery. Increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and advances in computational science has created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Previous studies have applied machine learning algorithms for detection of archaeological sites and off-site features, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Belmaker. Omri Barzilai.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 'Ubeidiya, Central Jordan Valley, Israel, is one of the earliest prehistoric sites outside Africa. Extensive excavations in the second half of the twentieth century yielded important archaeological, paleontological, and geological data, which provided insights into early Pleistocene hominins’ expansion out of Africa. The primary geological descriptions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonietta Catanzariti.

Ban Qala, a site located in the mountainous valley of Qara Dagh, was first identified by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1940s. In 2015, a survey performed by the Qara Dagh Regional Archaeological Project determined the archaeological relevance of the site, which was then chosen as subject of an archaeological investigation. A step trench on the southern slope of the site verified the presence of LC 1-2 (4800/4500-3850 B.C.E.) and LC 3-5 (3850-3100 B.C.E.) occupation levels. This paper will discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curt Carbonell. Marie Hopwood. Laura Carbonell.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bappir (Sumerian: "beer bread") was a ubiquitous ingredient in ancient Mesopotamian beer brewing for millennia. However, little is known about exactly what bappir was or how it was used. Nevertheless, the scant evidence available from contemporary texts, such as the second-millennium BCE "Hymn to Ninkasi," have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aslan Gasimov.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The city of Barda was especially notable due to its political and economic position in the Caucasus in the Middle Ages. In addition to being the capital of the Albanian state, it was the center of the local administration of the Sassanid Empire and later of the Arab Caliphate. Middle Ages sources inform about Barda, calling it the mother of Arran and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Rosenzweig.

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 his 2001 monograph, The Mechanics of Empire, Bradley Parker methodically utilized archaeological survey data and historical texts to track the Neo-Assyrian empire’s growth through the agrarian settlement of deportees in newly conquered territories. Parker’s emphasis on agricultural colonization marked an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

Searching for the origin points of major cultural revolutions and transitions has long been a driver of archaeological research, yet led to research focused on perceived boundaries, rather than continuity. Research into the origins of so-called modern human behavior, the origins of social complexity, the earliest domesticates, among others, all focus on defining moments of change that may be undetectable in the archaeological record. Perhaps some of the most enduring archaeological questions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tate Paulette.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yonatan Adler.

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....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabina Cvecek.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While kinship studies based on ancient DNA (aDNA) data have been instrumental in reconstructing biological relationships in European prehistory, they often overlook the complex web of social interactions that shaped prehistoric communities. This interdisciplinary investigation delves into the rich tapestry of social dynamics that characterized European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Arbuckle.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although cross-cutting disciplinary boundaries from its inception, zooarchaeology has traditionally been most at home among the positivist sciences. As a result, interdisciplinary work has proceeded most easily with science and science-adjacent fields (stable isotopes, aDNA, ecology, etc.) with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Cuneo.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Kenoyer. Randall Law. Laure Dussubieux.

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carnelian beads from the site of Kish, Iraq, include a wide range of bead types, including locally produced short cylindrical beads and long biconical beads that are thought to have been produced in the Indus region of South Asia. Beads from different excavation contexts can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Bendrey. Guillaume Fournié.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoko Nishimura.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores a possible correlation between central planning and economic segregation in ancient urbanized cities. A pre-planned and constructed urban residential area may have fostered an aggregate of inhabitants who had similar traits, such as ethnicity, class, wealth, occupation and religion. Different clusters of people may be discerned between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelo Robledo. Alan Farahani. Bruce Routledge.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Farahani.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Banning.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The size and spatial organization of facilities for the storage of cereals and pulses provide important clues to the socioeconomic organization and degree of inequality of households and communities. In the context of late prehistory in the southern Levant in the Middle East, we might expect changes in storage to result from the growing importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arkadiusz Marciniak.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social strategy of imposed egalitarianism provided solid foundations for the unprecedented growth of the Neolithic community inhabiting the large settlement at Çatalhöyük for more than half a millennium. Its constituting elements comprised symmetry and balance among cross-cutting sodalities, as well as integration of domestic and ritual domains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karim Alizadeh.

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,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petra Vaiglova. Gideon Hartman. Guy Bar-Oz.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Kennedy.

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...