Asia: East Asia (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (276 Records)
The Shunshanji and Hanjing sites are located in the northern part of the middle reaches of the Huaihe River, in Sihong county, Jiangsu Province, China. The two sites date to 8500-7700BP, the middle Neolithic period of China, and the distance between them is about 5 kilometers. Charred rice was recovered during flotation at both sites, and domesticated rice spikelet bases were found in a unit of the Hanjing site. Meanwhile, we revealed some features related to cultivation activities. All the...
Ground Stones in Ritual Contexts in the Central China Neolithic: Use-wear Analysis and Residue Analysis of Artifacts in Burials (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burial practices provide important evidence for understanding the social and symbolic connections between the dead and the living. The presentation of artifacts in burials and their functions can provide crucial information of meanings in ritual practices. In this study, I apply use-wear analysis and residue analysis to a sample of grinding stones,...
Herding in Shifting Politics: A Preliminary Isotopic Study on Dian Lake Faunal Remains, Southwestern China (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper combines isotope analysis from collagen and hydroxyapatite patterns from the Bronze Age to imperial periods in the humid sub-tropical highlands of southwestern China. We sampled and analyzed 28 faunal bones and 4 teeth from two occupation sites in the Lake Dian basin that are associated with the Dian polity (ca. 700 – 100 BC) and span into the...
A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach for Estimating Gini Coefficients from House Floor Area: A Case Study from Prehistoric Japan (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. Robust quantitative measures of wealth inequality are pivotal for investigating long-term social and economic changes from a comparative perspective. Notwithstanding criticisms on its reliability as a proxy of wealth inequality, the application of Gini coefficients on house size data has...
Historical and Archaeological Investigations in the Mountain Forests of Okinawa, Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today the mountainous interior of the northern portion of Okinawa, covered by dense forests, remains sparsely populated or uninhabited. Archaeological surveys have found very little in the way of prehistoric or early historical remains, but widespread evidence of human use during the nineteenth and...
Historical Ecology and Archaeometallurgy on the 5th and 6th century Osaka Plain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extensive excavation records and legacy materials provide ample opportunities for novel research in Japan. This project seeks to open and demonstrate new avenues of inquiry using legacy data and previously excavated materials related to well-studied topics by linking environmental change to the...
Holocene Floodplain Development of Qujiang, Zhejiang, China in the Context of Early Human Occupation of Jinhua Basin (2018)
The Qujiang drains mountainous terrain in Zhejiang Province of east-central China. Shangshan cultures have been identified on floodplain terraces and earth mounds within the Qujiang valley. The choice of settlement in the area (10,000+ years BP) is constrained by several geographical factors, including topography, climate, access to water resources and human factors. The relationship between cultural occupation sites and river dynamics over the Holocene is poorly known in this region. Lateral...
Holocene Perspectives from the Gobi Desert: New Paleoethnobotanical and Geoarchaeological Analyses at Delger Khan Uul, Mongolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Delger Khan Uul is located in southeastern Mongolia near the eastern Gobi Desert. Today, the climate is semi-arid with cold winters and warm summers, but the region has experienced dramatic changes since the beginning of the Holocene with intervals of warm and cool periods. Utilizing lake cores we can gauge climatic trends for the...
Households in Middle Neolithic Northeastern China: A Study on Shangchaoyanggou Site Applying An Intensive Collection Method (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The remains of around 40 households within the Shangchaoyanggou site in northeastern China have been collected and analyzed in order to reconstruct the social and economic activities of different households during the middle Neolithic Hongshan period. In the Shangchaoyanggou site, as well as many other Hongshan sites, the original Neolithic cultural layers are...
How to Describe Mongol Period Urbanism on the Mongolian Plateau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Medieval Eurasian Steppe Urbanism" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paper will introduce and discuss a set of themes deemed crucial for the understanding of settlement practices on the Mongolian plateau during the time of the Mongol Empire. The past 20 years witnessed a burgeoning of research endeavors regarding Mongol period settlement sites. Mongolian, Japanese, Russian, German, and US...
How to Dig a Drinking Well: Watery Politics on China’s Han Frontier (2018)
Water plays an undeniable role in the constitution of politics and society, presenting an elemental force to be controlled for the expansion of agrarian economies. The political life line linked with water is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than with the Han Empire whose massive canalization and irrigation works were necessary to facilitate state expansion into deserts and tropics. The archaeological focus on water and agrarian infrastructure has however overlooked other capacities of water,...
How Was Iron Weaponry Obtained by Local Elite during Japan’s Kofun Period? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Kofun period of Japan, stretching from the mid-3rd century to the late-6th century AD, witnessed the formation of an almost archipelago-wide sociopolitical consolidation centered on the paramount elites of the Nara Basin. Considered by many scholars to have been an early state, this Yamato polity exercised unprecedented control over the production,...
How Were Stones Used in a Bronze Age Society? A Case in the Middle Yangtze River (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Resources and Society in Ancient China" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Numerous previous archaeological discoveries and studies have shown that rulers from the Central Plains during the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1050 BC) were motivated to systematically construct settlements and operate in the Jianghan Area of the Middle Yangtze River drainage at least in part in order to control metal resources in the middle and lower...
Human Behavior or Environmental Change: Zooarchaeological Research on Shell Midden Sites at Guanglu Island, China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The zooarchaeological research on Xiaozhushan, Menhou and Wujiacun shell midden sites, which are located in Guanglu island, provides empirical materials to understand the transformation of animal resources acquisition patterns from fishing-hunting economy to livestock way. This paper analyses the reasons for the appearance of...
Hunting Activities of Upper Paleolithic Humans in the Japanese Archipelago (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the Japanese archipelago is covered with layers of acidic loam originating from volcanic eruptions. For this reason, there are very few Paleolithic sites that contain well-preserved faunal remains. In fact, there are only six known sites on the four main islands of Japan (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu Islands) which have seen the excavation of...
Hunting vs. Herding: The Eastern and Central Tibetan Plateau’s Earliest Inhabitants (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of when and how humans settled high altitude (>3000 m.a.s.l.) regions of the Tibetan Plateau has been greatly extended in the past decade. In this paper, we shift the focus from plants to animal resources, and explore the diversity of animal-based subsistence strategies...
Identification of Adhesive on Bone-Handled Microblades from the Houtaomuga Site in Northeast China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the emergence and progress of composite tools in the Upper Paleolithic, the adhesive became one of the most widely used materials by early human societies. However, the precise composition identification of adhesive in archaeological remains is a real analytical challenge, because the adhesive mainly consists of organic materials that are susceptible to...
Identification of Turquoises from Different Mining Areas using Lead and Strontium Isotope Composition (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hekou Turquoise Mining Site in Shaanxi Province can provide significant clues to the provenance of turquoise in early China. In this study, we analyzed turquoise ore samples from other turquoise mines near Hekou Mining Site in eastern Qinling Mountains and established an origin...
Identifying Animal Management Strategies in Pre-domestication Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of domestication highlights a form of human intervention in animal reproduction that is at the extreme in a continuum of human-animal relations. Despite the extreme nature of this category of interaction, domestication remains difficult to distinguish archaeologically and...
Identifying the "Why" Of Ancient Engineering Choices: Materials Performance and the Production of Ceramic Bronze-Casting Molds in Zhou-Period China (2018)
Bronze ritual vessels from Shang- and Zhou-period China display a combination of features—complex, three-dimensional forms; exquisitely fine surface detail; and monumental size—that was achieved by casting in multi-part ceramic molds. The ceramic material used to form these casting molds is soft, powdery, and silica rich, making it altogether different from pottery clays in both its physical qualities and its production sequence. Why was such a material chosen? Which specific materials...
Identifying the Gaps: Prospects and Limitations of Using Pottery Collections As Archaeobotanical Data in Korea’s Neolithic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Neolithic (ca. 6000–1500 BCE) is a formative period of Korea’s prehistory that sees the beginning of plant cultivation. Although archaeobotanical research on Korea’s Neolithic began more than two decades ago, rapid development coupled with an almost total reliance on rushed rescue excavations has resulted in major...
Inscribing Behaviors on Oracle Turtle Plastrons: A New Method to Analyze Tributary Networks of Late Shang China (c. 1250 BCE–1046 BCE) (2018)
Processed from turtle shells and bovid scapulae, oracle bones were massively exploited by the ruling house of the late Shang Dynasty for divination. As opposed to traditional scholarship that holds primary interest in inscriptions engraved on these bones, I consider late Shang divination in entirety as a technological process that proceeds from the preparation and delivery of bone material via tributary networks all the way to bones’ after-use discard into pits. By switching the attention to the...
Inscriptions and Technology: Knowledge of the Artisans Who Created China’s Terracotta Army (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study offers a new perspective and combines multidisciplinary methods, with the aim of revealing knowledge and behaviour of the artisans in ancient China. It considers the inscriptions incised, painted, or stamped on the terracotta warriors and their accompanying weapons, and interprets the information they reveal...
Interpreting the Diffusion of Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China across Time Using the S-Shaped Curve (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The s-shaped curve in the social network context is a model proposed to reveal dynamic changes over time among members in a network when accepting a new idea/product. The s-shaped curve has been mainly used in social sciences to model the diffusion of objects or ideas using current empirical data. However, it is rarely applied to archaeology because such...
Interpreting the Relationship between Political Structure and Different Consuming Strategies of Imported Chinese Ceramics through Comparative Analysis: A Case Study of Eighth–Eleventh-Century Japan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the eighth–eleventh centuries CE, Chinese ceramics were imported to Japan and showed limited distribution in specific sites. Historical documents, along with their geographic distribution and both fine and coarse ceramic assemblages, suggest these sites shared political connections. Past studies on trade ceramics in China have typically directly applied...