Near East (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
Commingled and fragmentary human remains are a common occurrence in archaeological and forensic contexts, but only a few methods have been developed to record these complex assemblages. Conventional inventory methods, such as the Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains, document the presence and completeness of specific portions of skeletal elements and the minimum number of individuals (MNI) represented by each bone portion. This rather subjective method for MNI calculation...
Complete vs. broken:exploring assemblage variation in two Natufian sites from Jordan (2017)
Archaeological sampling of lithic assemblages is an important process for characterizing the make-up and range of variability of these materials. These characterizations often focus on complete pieces due to the greater number of variables that can be recorded and the uncertain utility of incomplete data. But do complete pieces adequately characterize assemblage variability? Are these samples capturing the same range of variation found in broken pieces (e.g., proximal pieces)? This paper...
De-centering the Fertile Crescent: Multiple Pathways to Food Production (2015)
Southwest Asia is one of the earliest and most documented centres of agricultural origins. With the expansion of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological datasets within this region it is now more possible to unravel the evidence on a broader regional scale revealing a more complex picture with multiple centers and pathways of plant and animal domestication. Through a comparison of recent evidence this paper examines the multiple pathways towards domestication and the transition to agricultural...
Ecology, ceremony, and animal bones from southern Mesopotamia (2015)
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez has written numerous zooarchaeological papers that wonderfully balance attention to both the ecosystemic and the cultural influences that shape how humans interact with animals. In a 2008 essay exploring zooarchaeology’s potential contributions to the study of daily life, she wrote that pastoralists’ herd management strategies are constructed in the contexts not only of regional ecosystems and animal biologies, but also of human economies, ideologies and politics. At the...
Empire and Rebellion: Egyptian Imperialism and Insurgency in the Late Bronze Age Levant (2016)
The wide-ranging research focused on the turbulence of the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean and the Levant has not yet yielded a unified narrative of how this period was experienced across the region. While some sites exhibit no sign of the infamous collapse or ‘crisis,’ many others exhibit rapid abandonment or destruction layers. The narrative surrounding these destructions tends to be viewed as relating to either the imperial Egyptian invasion, Israel’s rising kingdom, or all manner of...
Evidence of Destruction at the end of the Early Bronze Age III Period at Khirbet Iskander, Jordan:an archaeobotanical perspective (2017)
The Early Bronze Age site of Khirbet Iskander is located on the central plateau, south of Madaba, Jordan. Excavations at the site have focused primarily on the fortified Early Bronze Age III (EBIII) city remains and the transition to the Early Bronze Age IV (EBIV) agricultural settlement. The well-known and much debated collapse or abandonment of the early cities at the end of the EBIII has been documented at many sites in the Levant and is evident at Khirbet Iskander as well. Excavations of...
Fox Overabundance and Human Response in the Earliest Villages of the Near East (2017)
Ethological and ecological studies point to the proliferation of small mammalian carnivores, most notably red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in human-modified environments. Foxes prey on human trash and consequently their populations in and around settlements are denser, their survival rate is improved and their foraging territories contract, centering on refuse dumps. This carnivore overabundance leads to a series of effects on the local ecosystems. The foxes’ strong commensal relationship with humans...
Human-Animal Iteractions in Early Sedentary Societies in the Near East and Northern Africa: The MICROARCHAEODUNG Project (2017)
The MICROARCHAEODUNG project aims to develop, standardize and integrate much-needed holistic interdisciplinary sampling protocols and analytical strategies for multi-proxy studies of livestock dung as an important archaeological material that is routinely overlooked or missed using conventional excavation procedures. MICROARCHAEODUNG integrates state-of-the-art analytical techniques in geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology and biochemistry to enable a robust identification and interpretation of ancient...
"Off with their heads": skull removal in the prehistoric Near East (2016)
While there is a huge difference in every aspect of existence between simple human societies, i.e. hunter-gatherers and complex ones, i.e. industrial groups, the head is always considered as the residing place of the essential part of what defines ‘us’ as rational human beings at the individual level. One may thus assume that this was the case also in prehistoric times, which at least partially explains the special treatment of heads that one can observe through millennia, from the...
Reflections on the origins of the Neolithic "House" in the Near East (2015)
Large-scale durable architecture appears quite suddenly with the emergence of the semi-sedentary Natufian (ca. 15,000 calBC) in the Near East. Subsequently, during the course of the Natufian, structure sizes diminish; they were commonly semi-subterranean, constructed with wooden posts, stones and puddled mud. These traditions continued during the PPNA (ca. 10,000-8,500 calBC), albeit with the innovation of mud-brick superstructures. An important distinction between the Natufian and the PPNA is...
Strontium and oxygen isotopic evidence of the origins of homicide victims from Middle Islamic Period Qasr Hallabat (2015)
Qasr Hallabat, a luxurious Umayyad (7th – 8th century A.D.) desert retreat in Jordan, declined after the mid-8th century due to political destabilization and earthquakes. Despite official abandonment, the qasr’s extensive hydraulic resources were utilized by local groups. Excavation and restoration of the qasr by the Spanish Archaeological Mission discovered the remains of six individuals at the bottom of an internal cistern, a precious regional water source. These individuals, who perished...
Where we sleep: Ethnoarchaeological perspectives on the Near Eastern Neolithic House and Households (2015)
How many people lived in individual buildings within early food producing communities? Be it as an explicit driver or as an implicit background landscape, all modeling of small-scale household life, developing Neolithic villages, and the evolutionary trajectory towards the full-blown domestication is linked on some level to demography and the increasing scale of human communities through time. The reconstruction of the scale of Neolithic house, including our engagement with what may represent...
The wild side of Cyprus: an integration of archaeobotany and zooarchaeology (2016)
Recent research from both the island and the mainland Near East have changed what we know of the timing and dynamics of the spread of agriculture to Cyprus. The timing of the arrival of the initial explorers and colonists by late Pre-Pottery Neolithic A cultures of the mainland Levant, and the dynamics of cultural developments in subsequent cultural phases is providing further support for the unique Cypriot prehistoric culture. One aspect that has long characterised Cyprus in prehistory is the...