Neolithic (Other Keyword)
51-75 (386 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey generated two complementary datasets that provide evidence of the distribution of archaeological material across the survey region: surface survey data and coring data. These datasets are combined to create “Activity Areas,” archaeological constructs that we argue...
Chronological Modeling of Early Settlement on Yap, Western Micronesia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial human settlement of Yap, a group of four small islands in western Micronesia, is one of the least understood colonization events in Remote Oceania. Unlike Polynesia, where multiple lines of evidence such as linguistics, genetics, and material culture analyses coalesce around a coherent narrative of initial...
Chronological Perspectives on the Spread of Agriculture in Southeastern Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic studies in Europe have recently seen the impact of two very different sets of approaches to building chronological frameworks using radiocarbon dating. On the one hand, archaeologists have used radiocarbon dates as proxies for levels of human activity on past landscapes by employing summed probability distributions of...
Circles and Circuits: A Computational Social Science Approach to Neolithic Circular Enclosures (2017)
Through the combination of Social Network Analysis (SNA), Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper will examine the relationship between physical and social networks in the Middle Neolithic of Central Europe. This Computational Social Science approach will provide insight into social aspects of the archaeological phenomenon of circular enclosures.
Clay from the Coast: Petrographic Investigations of Xiajiaoshan's Coastal Hunter-Gatherer Pottery Production in Southern China (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive research on ceramic production in agricultural societies, ceramic traditions of coastal hunter-fisher-gatherer groups in southern China have been comparatively overlooked. The middle Neolithic site Xiajiaoshan, said to belong to the Xiantouling Culture (dated to 7,000 BP), excavated in recent years has yielded abundant intact pottery...
Climate Change and Social Sustainability: The Case of the 8.2-kyBP Climate Event and the Demise of the Neolithic Community at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (2024)
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....
Climate instability and the origin of farming in Southwest Asia (2015)
Prevailing theories concerning the role of climate change in the transition from foraging to farming in SW Asia view socioeconomic change as a response to climate deterioration (push theories) or improvement (pull theories) which caused resource depression or abundance respectively. With this paper I propose that periods of socioeconomic and cultural innovation correlate with periods of climatic instability, which occurred at the timescales of direct human experience of the landscape (i.e., at...
Collagen Fingerprinting on Neolithic Fish from Lithuania (2018)
Archaeological fish remains are more taphonomically sensitive than those of other vertebrates as they are typically smaller and less biomineralised. Therefore, it is essential to retrieve as much information as possible from assemblages that favour their preservation. One of the most time- and cost-efficient methods of objectively achieving faunal identity in ancient bone is collagen fingerprinting technique ‘ZooMS’ (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry). ZooMS harnesses the potential of...
The Color of Personal Ornaments in Prehistoric Periods of the Levant (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. 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...
Combining Proteomic Sex Determination of Archaeological Remains with Isotopic Analyses for Understanding the Development of Animal Husbandry (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. Proteomic techniques are being increasingly used in bioarchaeological applications to improve understanding of the human past. However, few studies have focused on the study of tooth enamel for sexing in archaeofaunal remains despite initial studies over a decade ago looking at human teeth. Here we use of...
The Communalities of Pastoralist Life: Perspectives on Household Organization at the Pastoral Neolithic site of Luxmanda, Tanzania (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household organization has been a topic of relatively little archaeological discussion in the Pastoral Neolithic (PN) literature for eastern Africa, in part because domestic architecture has rarely been found. Scholarly literature has therefore focused on pastoralists’ putative mobility, rather than on their settlements. However,...
Communities of Archaeological Inquiry: Documenting a German Neolithic Landscape in Cooperation with Avocational Archaeologists (2015)
This poster explores the history, methods, motivations, and contributions of three avocational archaeologists whose lifelong legacies helped to shape an international research project on the Neolithic settlement of the southeastern Swabian Alb in Germany. Their efforts to document site locations and build significant private collections span three generations, from the 1920s to today, and led to the discovery of a rich archaeological landscape previously unrecognized by professional...
Communities, Violence and Fortification: A Study of Longshan Landscapes (2018)
The Late Neolithic period in Central China, known as the Longshan period, has long been associated with violence and warfare. There have been several theories as to what are the catalysts for for this period of increased violence. This paper will review the evidence of warfare and violence during this period. Using disparate spatial data this paper will investigate the implications of warfare and violence on the settlement patterning of the Central Plains of China. Through this investigation we...
Community and Agency in the early Neolithic of SW Asia (2015)
The accepted Neolithic narrative involves increasingly sedentary behavior within a context of villages composed of houses. Yet, although the novel way of life represented is given centre stage, there is little discussion of the nature of the communities that were developing, other than passing references to nuclear families, ancestor cults and the emergence of lineages and households. There is still less reference to human agency, with Neolithic people being buffeted around by a number of big...
Comparative Techniques to Uncover Networks of Ceramic Technology in Southern Vietnam (2017)
The analysis of ceramics in Southeast Asia has evolved from typologies and broad comparative discussions of vessel forms and surface treatments. Like other material culture, studies on ceramics from mainland Southeast Asian prehistoric sites that employ archaeometric techniques have escalated in recent years. The appearance of fine, incised and impressed ceramics in southern Vietnam dating to the Neolithic period (4500-3000 BP) is closely associated with sedentary settlements, cereal...
Comparing Population Dynamics in the Inland and the Coastal Regions during the Chulmun Period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines the population dynamics during the Chulmun period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea by analyzing paleoenvironmental proxies and 14C dates. It specifically focuses on the differences between the inland and the coastal regions concerning the period’s population decline phase in the context of changing...
Comparing Technological Choices for Grain Processing at Aşıklı Höyük, an Early Neolithic Village in Turkey: Experimental Removal of Chaff from Barley (*Hordeum vulgare) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Experimental studies can make significant contributions to understanding the function of grinding stones found in archaeological contexts. Milling technology at the early Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük in Turkey is dominated by querns or grinding slabs, but mortars and pestles are not uncommon. Most of the...
A Computational Approach to Initial Social Complexity: Göbekli Tepe and Neolithic Polities in Urfa Region, Upper Mesopotamia, Tenth Millennium BC (2018)
Extensive archaeological field work and multidisciplinary research in recent decades shows that communities of sedentary hunter-gatherers during the tenth millenium BC built the earliest presently known monumental structures during the PPNA (ca. 9600–8800 BC) at the ceremonial site of Göbekli Tepe and nearby PPNB settlement sites in present-day Urfa province, southeastern Turkey. However, the earliest evidence of agriculture dates to a later period (early PPNB, ca. 8750 BC, terminus post quem)...
Concealed Archaeology of Kazakhstan: An Early Neolithic Burial from Koken (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The period prior to the emergence of agriculture and pastoralism is one of the most understudied and least deciphered time periods in Eurasian steppe archaeology. A shortage of stratified or well-preserved early Holocene campsites means that our knowledge of this period heavily relies on lithic assemblages not always with...
Continuity and Change on the Gobi Frontier: Geoarchaeology of Human Adaptations to Desertification in Southern Mongolia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Northgrippian climatic stage of the mid-Holocene epoch in East Asia was marked by a period of pronounced warm/moist climatic conditions. This had a profound impact on the hydrology and vegetation in the northernmost region of the Gobi Desert located in southern Mongolia. Our geoarchaeological and archaeological...
Cooperation and Feasting at Late Neolithic Domuztepe: Assessing Emergent Political Complexity through Faunal Remains (2015)
Cooperation occurs at all scales of social life: among individuals, among households, and among groups that supersede the household level. In some cases, such cooperation precipitates the formation of complex social structures and institutions and perpetuates their endurance. The variability of forms such cooperation can take at all scales of social complexity is broad, but an increasing degree of scalar cooperation correlates with increasing social complexity. This study uses zooarchaeological...
The COREX Project: Explaining Patterns of Genetic and Cultural Diversity in Prehistoric Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This six-year international interdisciplinary project funded by the European Research Council (2021–2027) is bringing together the increasing quantity of genomic data available for prehistoric Europe and related macroscale archaeological data with the aim of exploring how small-scale processes generate large-scale patterns in...
Cutting Through the Networks: An Assessment of the Circulation of Singular Artifacts in Prehistoric Iberia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we aim to analyze a collection of singular artifacts recovered from various sites in the Iberian Peninsula, spanning from the Early Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (approximately 5600–1800 BCE). Our primary focus will be on investigating the patterns of circulation and exchange of polished axes and...
Decision-Making in Subsistence Herding: A View from Mediterranean Europe (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. Richard Redding’s body of research pushed zooarchaeologists to think more deeply and creatively about human-animal interactions. His 1981 dissertation “Decision-making in Subsistence Herding of Sheep and Goats in the Middle East” set the stage for his impactful career, bringing together multiple...
The Demise of the European Neolithic Mode of Animal Husbandry: A Combined Effect of Milk Consumption, Zoonotic Diseases, and Genetic Changes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new form of husbandry developed by the Neolithic settlers of Europe provided solid foundations for their unprecedented growth and sustainability. Its constituting elements comprised the secondary product’s mode of exploitation, the effective adaptation of major domesticates to different environmental and ecological zones, and changes in their genomes....