Bronze Age (Other Keyword)
101-125 (333 Records)
In well-preserved osteoarchaeological samples, numerous anthropological methods are employed to determine age at death, biological sex, diet, and pathologies. However, with cremated human bone (cremains), determining demographic information is complicated by fragmentation and post-depositional damage. A simple way to assess variability in demographics, taphonomy, and burial treatment in cremains is to measure total bone weight and volume, which can then be examined in light of sex, age-at-death,...
Evidence for Close Management of Sheep in Ancient Central Asia: Foddering Techniques and Transhumance in the Final Bronze Age (2018)
Ancient animal management strategies have important implications for debates on modern pastoral landscape use in Eurasia. As livestock production intensifies in in semi-arid regions there is a need to identify the diverse set of strategies employed by pastoralists. Sequential carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotope analysis of teeth from domesticated sheep at Bronze Age sites in Kazakhstan exhibit varied isotopic sequences. Sheep from Kent exhibit an inverse relationship where low δ18O values...
An examination of changing Copper and Bronze Age trade networks in the Körös River Valley, Southeast Hungary (2017)
Metal is a unique raw material which societies in some parts of southeastern Europe have been exploiting since the Middle Neolithic (5500/5400-5000/4900 BCE). As previous studies in various parts of the world suggest, the acquisition and circulation of metal objects, as well as the ability to work metal have been important in the development of prehistoric societies. In our study, we compared the distribution of metal artifacts during the Hungarian Copper Age (4500/4400-2800/2700 BCE) and Bronze...
Examining Bronze Age Kinship and Community Patterning in the Southern Urals, Russian Federation, through aDNA Study (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. Ancient DNA studies have increased exponentially in recent years and have had tremendous impact on our understanding of early genomic patterning in many regions of the world. The vast Eurasian steppe zone has not been overlooked in these important breakthroughs. Several recent studies...
Examining Recent Archaeological Findings at the Bronze Age Korean Settlement of Jungdo Using an Economic Perspective (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Evidence, Methods, Theories, and Challenges to Understanding Prehistoric Economies in Korea" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological excavations at the Jungdo site, Chuncheon, Korea have revealed a rare ditch-enclosed Bronze Age settlement in which more than 1,000 pit houses and 100 dolmens were found. As a large-scale complex settlement with evidence of spatial demarcation that divides the site into...
Experimental Archaeological Research on Reconstructing Shang-Zhou Clay Molds (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 reconstructed manufacturing technologies of Chinese bronze artifacts by performing a "contrastive manufacturing experiment." This approach called for creating identical casting figures using several manufacturing processes and conditions. One factor contributing to the appearance and development of Shang-Zhou...
Experimental Archaeology as a Tool for Understanding Microbotanical Taphonomy (2018)
Microbotanical residue analysis, particularly starch grain and phytolith analysis, of ground stone artifacts has become a well-established method for investigating subsistence practices, plant processing patterns, and tool use at prehistoric sites around the world. Within the Aegean, however, where wheat and barley are the primary staple grains, microbotanical analysis of stone tools has only recently been incorporated into on-going research. A collaboration between PlantCult, a European...
Experimental Study of Bronze Casting Molds for Reproduction of the Ancient Chinese Bronze (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. To understand ancient casting technology in China, the non-destructive SEM-EDS technique was applied to casting molds from Anyang. Their grain sizes were various but some of the molds showed a layered structure with fine decorations. The finest layers composed of very fine mineral particles which is comparable to the loess...
Explaining Prehistoric Thailand’s 2000 Year Resilient Growth Economy and Peaceful Society: a Bottom-up Approach (2019)
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. After decades of archaeologists interpreting Thailand’s metal age development using top down approaches drawn from 1980s archaeological theory, it has become evident they do not work for this region. During the course of interpreting metal assemblages from Ban Chiang and related sites in northeast Thailand,...
Explanatory Frameworks in Zooarchaeological Research: Are Dichotomies Necessary and Meaningful? (2018)
Zooarchaeologists have often employed binary oppositions such as "urban consumers" and "rural producers" and distinguished between centralized/regulated and decentralized/unregulated animal economies with direct/indirect food provisioning systems to elucidate pastoral economies of early complex societies. As zooarchaeologists, we are tasked with bridging more abstract and ideational anthropological variables with the archaeological hard evidence as well as with a narrower set of more explicit...
Exploring Long-Term Trends in Wealth Inequality in Ancient Southwest Asia (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. Investigating how different forms of inequality arose and were sustained is key to understanding the emergence of complex social systems, and archaeology has much to contribute to this discussion. In this paper we investigate inequality in ancient Southwest Asia using a variety of proxies...
Exploring Production Methods of Casting Molds and the Artisans who Made Them (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. The production of Shang dynasty bronze vessels is based on the artisans’ mastery of loess material and how they manipulated them to produce the casting molds. From the beginning stage of raw material procurement to the firing of the molds, these steps all left marks in the molds’ microstructure and physical build up. The...
Exploring the Emergence of the Dian (Shizhaishan) Culture: a view from settlement study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Early Chinese Borderland Cultures and Archaeological Materials" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeological data from settlement sites of eastern Yunnan were largely absent until very recently, the Bronze Age culture in the area was interpreted through materials taken from burials around Lake Dian and nearby regions. These mortuary data provide a picture of socially stratified and materially...
Exploring the social structure of Kunming Yangfutou cemetery, Yunnan, Southwestern China (2015)
Dian is the most important polity from Warring States to Western Han period in the Dian Lake area of Yunnan, southwestern China. Except sparse records in Shiji, Hanshu and Huayangguozhi, our understanding of Dian all comes from archaeological discoveries, especially those large and complex cemeteries. Since 1950’, archaeologists excavated many important Dian cemeteries including Jinning Shizhaishan, Jiangchuan Lijiashan, Chenggong Tianzimiao, Qujing Batatai, Chengjiang Jinlianshan and Kunming...
Farmers and Late Holocene Climate Change on the Edge of the Qinghai Plateau (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late Holocene, a cooling and drying climate, greater intergroup contact, and increasing sociopolitical complexity prevailed across Eurasia. On the eastern edge of the Qinghai Plateau, at the edge of the East Asian summer monsoon zone, millet farming societies faced local, cyclical changes to moisture and vegetation between 3000...
Faunal Evidence for a Big Feast Event within a Bronze Age City Site in China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zhenghan Gucheng (郑韩故城) site is a well-preserved ancient capital city of Zheng and Han states during Eastern Zhou. It is located at the joining of River Shuangji (Ancient river Wei) and the Yellow River (Ancient river Qin), lying beneath modern Xinzheng city, Henan province, China. Within this city site, well-developed area division and function...
Feeding Vessels in Later European Prehistory (2018)
Small vessels with spouts, from which liquid can be poured, are known from settlements and graves of the European Bronze and Iron Ages. Sizes, shapes and decorations are highly variable, and although they generally fit the period-specific style, they represent a functional type. One explanation for this vessel form is libation – the act of pouring a liquid as a sacrifice to a deity. Recent discoveries, however, reinforce an association with children’s graves and suggest a function as feeding...
A Fingerprint Assemblage from a Late Bronze Age Canaanite Cultic Enclosure at Tel Burna in the Southern Levant: The Division of Labor According to Age and Sex (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The identity of producers is a perennial question in the anthropological and archaeological study of craft production. Who made the vessels and figurines used for ritual practice and feasting in the Canaanite cultic enclosure at Tel Burna? Our project attempts to answer this question by determining the age and sex of fingerprints preserved on a selection...
Fluid Borders: Personal Ornamentation and Waterways in Bronze Age Northwest Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "On the Periphery or the Leading Edge? Research in Prehistoric Ireland" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the role played by waterways in the social exchange characteristic of Bronze Age Europe. It uses personal ornamentation as a proxy for social groupings, based on strong theoretical arguments establishing the necessity of a common ‘grammar’ to the relay of information via physical adornment. This...
Food offerings and feasting in Bronze Age burial contexts from the Körös region, Hungary (2016)
While the collection and analysis of paleoethnobotanical material is increasingly common in settlement excavations, it still remains rare in burial contexts. Botanical material from cemeteries can provide important insights into mortuary practices and associative beliefs about the afterlife for investigated populations. Charred food remains may indicate food offerings or feasting around the burial site, as well as social inequality or aspects of the deceased’s personal identity. In the case of...
Formation of Early State in Highland Southwest China: Rethinking Yelang Culture (2018)
Recent archaeological discoveries in Guizhou, China have moved some scholars to describe and argue for the material existence of a legendary state, Yelang; roughly contemporary with Chinese powers from the late Eastern Zhou to the early Western Han dynasty. Except for precious objects reserved for high ranking people, traditionally-identified indicators of early urban civilizations are largely absent in Guizhou. If the appearance of luxury objects and their applications in well-regulated...
Fragmented Bodies: Early Bronze Age Cremation Burials in Kilmagadwood, Scotland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a clear dichotomy between the practice of inhumation and the rite of cremation. From an anthropological perspective, a community’s preference for one or another reflects changes in its beliefs system. Conceivably, this occurred during the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age when cremation became dominant. The symbolism that accompanies the...
From Agamemnon to the Animals: Zooarchaeological Research on Human-Animal Boundaries at Mycenae, Greece (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Late Bronze Age site Mycenae in Greece, animals have long been understood mainly in terms of records preserved on clay tablets and sealings, artistic depictions, and later references in Homeric epic echoed by Schliemann. The archaeological remains of animals record a more detailed record of complex...
From Bit Wear to Ancient DNA: Steppe-ing Out (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We found our first entry into steppe archaeology in 1989-1992 through a study of microwear caused by bits on horse teeth, which we hoped would identify bitted, and therefore ridden or driven, horses. From then through to the publication of the Samara Valley Project (2016) we...
From Local to Regional Technological Landscapes – The Mobility of Aeginetan Potters (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper stems from a project entitled TRACT (TRAvelling Ceramic Technologies as markers of human mobility in the Aegean), funded through Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which aims to demonstrate that the informed and interdisciplinary study of ancient pottery can shed...