Neolithic (Other Keyword)
301-325 (386 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project (TAP) has focused on the Khao Wong Prachan Valley, central Thailand in efforts to better understand the origins of metallurgy in Southeast Asia. TAP has excavated three culturally and technologically related copper production and habitation sites in this valley: Non Pa Wai...
Rhythms of Stability and Change in the Central Mediterranean (2017)
This paper explores changing patterns of isolation in prehistoric island societies, and their ongoing connections with the wider world. The case study is the expansion of agriculture in Southern Europe in the 6th millennium BC, and subsequent landscape and cultural evolution in the Maltese archipelago. This was a series of maritime events, establishing connectivity between Mediterranean islands whose inhabitants’ ‘Neolithic package’ lifeway permitted high-density settlements in small islands. In...
Risky Research (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. Sebastian Payne made a lasting impact on zooarchaeology, especially in the Old World, with his 1973 paper outlining age and sex mortality profiles that characterize the prioritization of meat, milk, or wool. Richard Redding was the first scholar not only to suggest that these optimizing models might not...
The Road More Traveled: ‘Ain Ghazal and the Peopling of the Black Desert (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 late Pleistocene and early Holocene Neolithic connections over the maritime routes from the eastern Mediterranean shores to Cyprus have been fruitfully investigated, and those links clearly involved more than the simple movement of ideas. Another development in the...
A Rock Art Depiction of a Desert Kite Hunting Drive Trap (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recently discovered petroglyph panel in the Har Tzuriaz region of the southern Negev, Israel, depicts a typical desert kite, a form of drive trap used for millennia to hunt gazelle. The depiction closely approximates an actual desert kite located less than a kilometer away, but not in direct line of sight....
The Rock Art of Bangudae in Southern Korea: Focused on the Problems of Whale Hunting (2018)
Many aquatic animals, such as whales, sea lions and turtles, and terrestrial animals, such as tigers, wild cats, deer, boars, and weasels, were identified on the rock art of Bangudae, located in the southeastern part of Korean peninsula. Scenes of human figures, whale hunting, boats, and net and fence hunting are also present. Some western archaeologists are suspicious about whale hunting conducted by prehistoric Korean people. They argue that there are not clear depictions at Bangudae of the...
Sacrificial Rituals and Dietary Complexity on the Eve of State Formation: New Insights from Dental Calculus Microbotanical Analysis at the Kangjia Site in China (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 Late Neolithic Longshan culture in China witnessed profound social and political transformations, characterized by the emergence of increasing social competition, long-distance trade, and inter-polity warfare. These developments eventually culminated in the formation of the first state-level societies in the Central...
Schismogenesis on the Scandinavian Peninsula during the Late Neolithic Transition (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Defense of Everything! Constructive Engagements with Graeber and Wengrow’s Provocative Contribution" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A pungent statement in *The Dawn of Everything* is that the enormous diversity in hunter-gatherer societies makes it impossible to talk about one transition to agriculture. There are several consequences to this statement. One is that hunter-gatherers did not wait for an inevitable...
Secrets in the Stones: Stones with Inclusions in the Passage Tomb Tradition (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The passage tombs of Atlantic Europe are a lasting memorial to a society with a knowledge system encompassing aspects of engineering, astronomy, and stone-working. The stones used to build these monuments have been explored from a range of perspectives. It seems likely that stones were chosen based on criteria such as color, source, and texture, and some...
Sediment Environmental DNA (eDNA) Analysis of Lake Ochaul (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Detailed reconstruction of paleo-ecosystems is the key for understanding the interactions of climate changes, ecological variation, and human activities. In this study, we applied novel environmental DNA (eDNA) shotgun metagenomics methods on the ancient eDNA isolated from the lake...
The Sense of Order: Contextual Analysis of the Habitus and Social Spaces in Baiyinchanghan Neolithic Site, 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. The Baiyinchanghan site is one of the most important sites of the Xinglongwa Culture (7,500-6,500 B.P.) in NE China. By employing Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus theory, this research explores social relations and cultural ideas by studying occupants’ habitus and social spaces. The habitus and social spaces in this site are demonstrated clearly through its...
Serving Alcoholic Beverages to the Ancestors in Neolithic China (2023)
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. China has a long history of alcoholic production and consumption, and the earliest evidence of fermented beverages has been recovered from pottery vessels about 9,000 years ago. Many drinking vessels have been found in mortuary contexts, suggesting that alcohol was closely related to ancestral worship ritual. In this talk I...
Settlement Patterns, Water Accessibility, and Circulation in the Azraq Watershed during the Neolithic Colonization (Seventh–Sixth Millennium BCE) (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. The end of the neolithization process (seventh–sixth millennium cal BCE) was a period of settlement peak in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent. In northeastern Jordan, the combination of a long sequence of Neolithic occupation and several decades of field investigation provide the opportunity of...
The Shangshan Culture and Agricultural Origins (2018)
The Shangshan Culture is among the first in China to be associated with at least one domesticated organism: rice (Oryza sativa). A decade of research on Shangshan is providing critical insight on events leading to Neolithic developments in the Lower Yangtze Valley. So far, some expectations are not yet confirmed: e.g., the Shangshan ancestors developed from a local Palaeolithic population, and the first farming developed in the rich lowlands. Collaborative research is documenting potential...
Shells at Death – The Use of Shells in Neolithic Mortuary Contexts (2019)
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. Shells constituted a cultural resource for human groups throughout history. As such, they were used and incorporated in different aspects of life – and death. In this study we examine the use of shells in mortuary contexts, focusing on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) cultic/mortuary site of Kfar HaHoresh....
Signs of Animal Masters and Associated Rituals in the ancient Near East (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What evidence is there for the existence of Animal Masters and their rituals in the ancient Near East? This paper ranges from Mesolithic/Epi-Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic times (ca. 15,000-4000 B.C.) and spans the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. It surveys the iconography and material...
Signs of Shared Identity: Neolithic Incised Stones in Cyprus and Beyond (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. Enigmatic incised stones dating to the Aceramic and early Ceramic Neolithic periods indicate an element of persistent shared material culture between Cyprus and the Levant in spite of cultural trajectories and material culture assemblages that were beginning to diverge...
The Sites and Dating of the Shangshan Culture (2018)
The Shangshan Culture is named after the site of Shangshan in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province, China. Multiple kinds of materials from multiple sites have been dated by several radiocarbon dating labs, indicating that the Shangshan Culture spans 10,000-8,400 BP. It can be divided into three phases: a 10,000-9,500 BP early phase, a 9,300-8,800 BP middle phase, and a 8,600-8,400 BP late phase. There are 18 sites belonging to Shangshan culture that have been uncovered so far. They are distributed...
Skull Removal and Mediation of Personhood over the Forager-Farmer Transition (2016)
The transition from forager-collectors to small-scale agricultural communities, in the case of southern Levant the Natufian to Pre-Pottery Neolithic periods, is widely viewed by researchers as a critical evolutionary threshold, one that both sees the development of new economic realities, and at the same time, long-term continuity in select ritual practices. Numerous studies have put forth functional and symbolic interpretations for the existence of skull removal in specific ethnographic,...
Social Dynamics and Archaeological Sciences at Neolithic Tells: Investigations on the Great Hungarian Plain by the Körös Regional Archaeological Project (2017)
Investigation of social dynamics at Neolithic tells, Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor, Hungary, included surface collection, geophysical and geochemical surveys, targeted excavations, micromorphology, stable isotope studies, compositional analysis, and contexual analyis of 14C dates, cultural materials, and burials. Both sites were established ca. 5200 B.C., cal., and they are located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River, seven km apart. However, they have different dimensions and...
Social Inequality in the Middle-Late Neolithic? Stable Isotope Analysis of the Individuals from Beli Manastir-Popova Zemlja (Slavonia, Croatia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beli Manastir (Slavonia, Croatia) is the largest Middle-Late Neolithic habitation site discovered in Croatia. A total of 37 individuals were found in different burial positions and different areas of this site, and sometimes within burial clusters, with only 3 individuals buried with abundant grave goods. The burials were, in most cases, placed between or...
Social Networks in the European Neolithic (2016)
This paper will examine applications of Social Network Analysis to cultures of the Middle Neolithic of Central Europe. Implications for this method to better understand circular enclosures will be explored.
Son of a Son of a Sailor: Island Life and the Colonization of Cyprus (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For years the Mediterranean islands were considered devoid of much Neolithic or earlier occupation. That no longer is the case, with Cyprus being one island where recent research has rewritten the prehistory of the Mediterranean. We now know that its colonization was not a one-time “Noah’s Ark” event, but rather that the sea was a highway instead of a...
The Source of the Hemudu Culture and Environmental Change during the Early-Middle Holocene: New Evidence from the Jingtoushan Site, Yuyao, East China (2018)
The source of the Hemudu Culture has remained a key issue for more than 40 years. Recently, the coring survey at the Jingtoushan site has provided a chance to promote our understanding of this issue. Its cultural deposits are deeper than those of any other prehistoric site along the coastline of East China. It is overlain by Late Holocene marine deposits of 6 meters deep. Twenty radiocarbon dates, along with the particular depth of midden deposits and pottery sherds, indicate that the site dates...
Sources and Distribution of Palmarola Obsidian in the Central Mediterranean during the Neolithic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tiny island of Palmarola, about 35 km south of Cape Circeo (between Rome and Naples, Italy), was an important source of obsidian during the Neolithic in the Central Mediterranean. While thought to have been a minor source, compared to Lipari and Sardinia, extensive artifact analyses in recent years of museum and other collections show that Palmarola...