Bronze Age (Other Keyword)
176-200 (333 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2013 – 2015, the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH) conducted a regional surface survey and targeted excavation at several settlement and tumulus sites in the Shkodër province of northern Albania. Two of these settlement sites, Gajtan and Zagorës, are fortified hilltop sites that preserved intact deposits with well-preserved macrobotanical remains...
The Landscape of China’s Participation in the Bronze Age Eurasian Network (2018)
In the last decade, much has been learned about the network of interactions in Bronze Age Eurasia, and the importance of the steppe pastoralists in the creation of this network. However, the mechanisms that enabled societies in ancient China (both those bordering on and distant from the steppe) to participate in the Bronze Age Eurasian arena are still poorly understood. Based on the latest archaeological discoveries in China, this article focuses on the participation of four regions of ancient...
Landscapes of the Dead: Using GIS to Model Social Relationships in a Large Bronze Age Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is an important tool for examining social relationships in large horizontally stratified cemeteries. This study applies GIS-based cluster analysis to identify multiscalar patterning at the Middle Bronze Age Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia. Three successive scalar clusters were identified: (i) primary...
Late Bronze Age in the North Caucasus – Shaping a new culture for a new millennium (2017)
After more than one millennium of mobile pastoral lifeways, the mid-2nd millennium BC witnessed the reappearance of village-based life in an area stretching from the Black Sea, across Caucasia to Anatolia and North Western Iran. Its manifestation is the emergence of stone-built dwellings clustered in small or middle-sized settlements. Concurrently, the transformation of the 3rd millennium BC mobile pastoralism into combined mountain agriculture allowed retaining a pastoral economy in spite of a...
The Late Introduction of Metals in Southern Italy: Studies from Sicily and Calabria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Metallurgy arrived quite late in Calabria, Sicily and Malta compared other regions, including the same Italian peninsula. Current hypotheses include an allogenous origin of metallurgy, brought by Aegean merchants, and an indigenous origin due to the presence of mines. The delicate state of many metals has prevented destructive analyses, but it has been...
Least Cost Path Analysis of Maritime Routes in the Ancient Aegean (2018)
The Least Cost Path analysis in ArcGIS has been a critical tool in archaeological reconstructions of movement and connectivity, but until recently these analyses have been limited to land travel. From the Neolithic onwards, sea travel was an equally important mode of transportation in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean. In this study, I utilized the Least Cost Path tool in ArcGIS to model sea travel in the Aegean. Bathymetric data and speed and direction of local wind and currents were inputs in...
Legacy Data and Ceramic Chronologies: The Case of the Gorgan Plain, Northeastern Iran (2018)
After the passage of the Iranian Antiquities Law of 1930, the Gorgan Plain in northeastern Iran was seen as one of the most promising regions in the Old World for archaeological research. Despite decades of pioneering field and laboratory research, northeastern Iran still lacks a regionally integrated ceramic chronology for significant stretches of its archaeological history, particularly the 3rd millennium BCE. While individual sequences from important sites such as Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe...
Like a Lion, as a Man: Seals and Poetry in Minoan Crete (2018)
This paper investigates how parallels were drawn between lions and human in Bronze Age Crete, and how this parallelism potentially developed concurrently through material culture worn on the human body and oral narrative. I argue that the unique qualities of seal stones, namely their close association with human identity and their physical location on the human body, positioned them to be potent venues for asserting parallels between man and beast. I begin in the late Early Bronze Age, with a...
Little Bronze Things: What They Do and How They Do It in the Early Bronze Age in NW China (2018)
Small bronze objects, some tools, others ornaments, and yet others of undetermined function, are the earliest known Bronze objects in China. Many of these objects are found in sites from Northwest China that date to the early part of the second millennium BC. Their manufacture seems to have been conducted locally on a small scale in this region, and yet the transformation of matter that their production entailed played a role in large scale transformations of society – ultimately culminating...
Local Actions and Long-Distance Interactions: Challenging the Paradigm for the Emergence of Social Complexity on Cyprus during the Bronze Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Complex social networks or social complexity emerges from the actions and interactions of people as they pass information, goods and services. During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, particularly on the island of Cyprus, it has been hypothesized that two actions and interactions are particularly important for...
Local and Regional Economics in Northeast China (2015)
Food production and other forms of economic activity manifest at both local and regional scales. In some instances population density within one community may lead to stress at the local scale. The region can, however, mitigate local stresses through regional exchange between small polities. In the same way that household exchange mitigates the risk of a single community, inter-community exchange mitigates risk for many communities regionally. This paper will explore both regional and local...
Local Communities in the Northeastern Frontier of the Central Plain during the late second and early first millennium BC (2015)
This paper will discuss how local communities in the northeastern frontier of China used metal artifacts and mortuary practice to articulate identity and delineate their cultural and political affiliations among themselves in the region and with polities in the Central Plain during the late second and early first millennium BC, which was a period that witnessed the rise and expansion of state powers in the Central Plain, namely, the Shang and Zhou. Previous studies examined material culture from...
Looking for Light in Ancient Egyptian Nocturnal Rituals (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the modern abundance of artificial light, it is often assumed that ancient cultures had the means and desire to illuminate the night. The paucity of artificial lighting devices from ancient Egypt challenges this assumption and has led scholars to conclude that the evidence must be there, but earlier...
Making the Exotic from the Familiar: The Source and Production of Carnelian Beads during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Mongolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Mongolia, communities across the region adopted mobile pastoralism and horse-riding technology. In conjunction with these changes in subsistence and mobility patterns, innovative funerary practices emerged that incorporated monumental construction and new mortuary offerings. Included in these grave...
Many Communities, Many Foods: The Economic and Political Implications of Diversified Cropping Strategies before, during, and after Urbanism in Northwest India ca. 3200–1500 BC (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate crises are raising questions about how we feed everyone in our highly urbanized modern society. Anthropological research has demonstrated that economic, political, and environmental landscapes are intricately interwoven and intersect with the diverse choices of people across all scales of society. Nowhere is this...
The Maritime Mode of Production: The Role of Seafaring in Bronze Age Societies (2018)
As exemplified by Viking and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, we model the political dynamics of raiding, trading, and slaving as a maritime mode of production (MMP). It includes political strategies to control trade by owning boats and financing excursions, thus permitting chiefs to channel wealth flows and establish decentralized, expansive political networks. Such political institutions often form at edges of world systems, where chieftains support mobile warriors, who were...
Material Assemblage and Social Changes in Central Tibet, the Second and the First Millennium B.C. (2018)
Compared to the relatively well-researched area of Eastern Tibet Plateau, the archaeology of Central Tibet has long been neglected. This paper offers a review of academic debates concerning the site of Qugong and analyzed the newly found materials in Bangga and Changguogou site. Based on the available materials and 14C dating data, I here propose a primary chronological framework in Central Tibet and revealed the cultural affiliations of Central Tibet with Central Asia, as well as the cultural...
Material Properties, Sensory Experience, and Production Techniques in Early Chinese Bronze Casting (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 extraordinary bronze ritual vessels of Shang- and Zhou-period China were produced by casting in multi-part ceramic molds. Laboratory analysis of casting-mold fragments has found that these molds were made from an unusual ceramic material—a paste that was quartz-rich, clay-poor, highly porous, and therefore quite unlike...
Meat or Grains: Compound Specific Carbon Isotope Analysis along the Northern Edge of the Tibetan Plateau (2018)
Various foothills, oases and valleys along the north edge of the Tibetan Plateau played important roles in the process of food globalization in prehistory. These are the key corridors that brought southwest Asian animals along with the western grains into China and Chinese cereals to the West. Recent research demonstrates that broomcorn and foxtail millet (both C4 plants) were the key staple food in this region during the third and second millennium BC, but it remains unclear to what degree...
Mental topographies of ancient Mesopotamia: textual perspectives on learned and lived highland-lowland interactions (2015)
Textual sources from southern Iraq’s early historical periods constitute a surprisingly rich body of material for exploring highland-lowland interactions in ancient southwest Asia. Cuneiform inscriptions typically convey only one perspective on these interactions, namely, that of the elite inhabitants of city-states and territorial polities of the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. However, these decidedly one-sided representations were hardly monolithic, and in this paper I explore the various...
Metal and vitreous production technologies at the Early Bronze Age Resuloğlu (Central Anatolia, Turkey) (2018)
Modern day Çorum is the homeland of the Hatti people, the culture that later formed the Hittite Empire. Resuloğlu, dated to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2500–2100 BC), is one of the few Hatti sites being systematically excavated. The site, located on a hilltop near the Delice River, consists of a cemetery area and settlement that spreads over two opposing–once connected–ridges with numerous extraordinary metal and vitreous artifacts. The settlement exemplifies well the self-sustaining pre-Hittite...
Metallic Motivations? Using GIS to Determine the Role of Metal and Mineral Resources in Changing Settlement Location Preferences between the Bronze and Iron Ages in Evora, Portugal (2200 BCE–400 CE) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bronze Age settlements in the Evora district of Portugal are typically located in rocky terrain with an apparent preference for locations in the highlands. During the Iron Age we see a shift of this settlement pattern, as highland sites are abandoned and new settlements appear at lower altitudes. Was the initial selection of highland sites influenced by the...
The Metallurgical Cycle and Human Responses to Material Fatigue (2018)
Innovations in metallurgy had and continue to have significant and transformative effects on society. From mineral exploration and mining to primary metal production, manufacturing, and consumption across a range of social contexts, metallurgy influenced a wide range of distinctly human conditions. However, while metals are particularly transmutable, they also rapidly corrode back into increasingly stable mineral compounds in processes that people tried to mitigate and often unsuccessfully...
A Metallurgical Study of Early Bronzes from Northern Vietnam: Some Thoughts on Methodology, Local Practices and Inter-regional Interaction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the metallurgical analysis of 43 fragments of bronze artifacts recovered from Bronze Age sites in northern Vietnam. It represents the largest systematic study undertaken so far of early north Vietnamese bronzes using a range of archeo-metallurgical techniques. The artifacts, which are...
Microstratigraphic and Geochemical Contributions to the Study of the Burial Practices and Taphonomy of the Mycenaean Shaft Grave of the ‘Griffin Warrior’, Pylos, Greece (2018)
Results of a microstratigraphic and geochemical approach are presented here in reference to study of the Mycenaean ‘Griffin Warrior’ shaft grave at ancient Pylos. Soil and sediment micromorphology are used to address questions concerning the preparation of the tomb, the mode of corpse deposition, and taphonomy of the burial. Processes and activities such as the preparation and configuration of the floor and other earthen constructions inside the tomb are considered, as well as the rapidity of...