Bronze Age (Other Keyword)
51-75 (333 Records)
In the last two decades, climatic narratives have returned as a central issue in archaeological discourse. The field has been flooded with publications on paleoclimatic reconstructions and we believe it is time for a critical evaluation – both as means of seeking better science, and for building better archaeological narratives. Climate history is composed by an overlapping meshwork of long-standing trends, punctuated events and short-term phases, with impacts ranging from the local to the...
Coastal Erosion Management in Archaeology: Turning Challenges into Opportunities (2018)
Coastal erosion is a known problem in cultural heritage management, particularly in the Mediterranean, which lends itself exceptionally well to studies of maritime trade and connectivity. The loss of coastal land to erosion presents a serious obstacle to our understanding of the archaeological coastscape, due to the unpredictable rate in which it exposes and damages archaeological features. The exposure and subsequent disappearance of material culture is seldom accompanied by systematic...
Collective Memory and the Mycenaeans: The Argolid, Messenia, and the Mani Compared (2016)
The concept of collective memory has received some attention in archaeology, but has not been systematically applied to processes of state formation and sociopolitical change. In this paper I model the evolution of collective memory systems in Greece from the Neolithic to Iron Age, with a focus on Mycenaean regions. The Argolid, Messenia, and the Mani – using The Diros Project’s excavations of a Mycenaean “ossuary” at Ksagounaki as a primary example – vary in terms of how collective memories...
A Computational Approach to Bone Histology Analysis in Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Bronze Age in Transylvania exhibits two different mortuary traditions, one associated with the Yamnaya migration in the lowlands and the other associated with the local Transylvanian groups in the highlands. A key question for archaeologists has been how these traditions differ in respect to primary and secondary inhumation. The tempo of funerary...
Conceptualizing Eurasian Steppe Space, Place and Movement (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. The scholarly contributions by David Anthony have added significantly to current understandings of prehistory in the Eurasian steppes. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence, ranging from historical sources, archaeological data, genetics and linguistics, he has developed...
The Consequences of Cultural Encounters on Late Bronze Age Transylvania Cuisine and Subsistence Economies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to the Late Bronze Age in Transylvania around 1500 BCE coincided with the arrival of the Noua cultural group from the Eurasian Steppe. These new migrant communities arrived in a Transylvanian landscape that had been occupied by the Wietenberg cultural group for over 500 years. For nearly 150 years, communities with both the Noua and Wietenberg...
Constructing Collapse: A Technological Analysis of Early-Middle Bronze Age Domestic Architecture in Mainland Greece and its Social Implications (2016)
In this paper, I present a technological analysis of stone-built, domestic architecture from the transition of the Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2200-1800 BCE) in mainland Greece. Specifically, I analyze the degree of correspondence of 180 unique aspects of architectural construction and spatial organization between contemporary structures. Because domestic architecture was most likely built by the local inhabitants and used for their daily activities, the network of correspondence...
Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: The Ritualistic Aspect of Eurasian Foodways (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigation has shown that between 5000 and 1500 cal BC, the Eurasian and African landmass underpinned a continental-scale process of “globalization” of food and foodways. By 1500 cal BC, the trans-Eurasian exchange of cereal crops brought together previously...
Copper Smelting in the Early Bronze Age Aegean (2018)
Our understanding of Early Bronze Age copper smelting in the Southern Aegean has improved dramatically in the last two decades through a combination of fieldwork, laboratory analyses and experimental reconstructions (Betancourt 2006, Bassiakos, 2007, Pryce 2007). The currently accepted model for primary copper production has been largely based on the outcome of an experimental campaign (Pryce et al. 2007). While this study accepts the value of experimental archaeology it challenges the current...
Corroded but Enduring: on the Perpetuation of a Scholarly Iron Curtain in Western Archaeological Thought and Practice (2018)
Archaeological schools of thought vary between countries, with the discipline growing along disparate theoretical trajectories dependent on the historical particulars of a nation’s academic traditions. Often distance between such diverging theoretical trajectories is mitigated by communication and collaboration across borders between scholars. However, the Cold War that divided Western and Soviet nations geographically, politically, and culturally also applied to archaeological research, as the...
Crafting Labor and Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper revisits how landscape and mineral extraction have been contextualized in the third millennium BCE, Ganeshwar Jodhpura Cultural Complex (GJCC), Rajasthan, India. The GJCC has very specific formations of sites around resource-high regions particular to this landscape and time period that demonstrate a focus on copper production...
Crisis in Geoarchaeological Context: Reassessing Bronze Age ‘Collapse’ at Palaikastro, Crete, Greece (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on social change and ‘crisis’ demonstrates that both phenomena require analyses of longer-term processes and discrete local processes that need to be evaluated on site-by-site bases (Vigh, 2008; Visacovsky, 2017). The multi-scalar attention required to study crisis and change at individual Bronze Age settlement sites on Crete, Greece, has been...
Crops, Gender, and Food Choices: Investigating the Formation of Chinese Staple Cuisines via Stable Isotope Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The modern Chinese food system was formed over thousands of years from a diverse set of regional agricultures and cuisines. Isotopic analysis of archaeological skeletons can be used to investigate the importance of different food resources to past diets. This approach has been extensively...
Cypriot Clay Bodies: Contact, Corporeality, and Figurine Use in the Cypriot Late 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. The clay "Astarte" figurines of Cyprus’ Late Bronze Age are enigmatic and well-known, and their emphasis on female reproductive organs lead most scholars to argue for fertilic functions. Yet how were these figurines actually used? And how do they fit within the much larger repertoire of Late Bronze Age figurines...
Deer Stones and the Bronze to Iron Age Transition in Mongolia (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. The Late Bronze Age Mongolian culture known for its memorial deer stones and khirigsuur burials (DSK complex), dating to 1300–700 BCE, persists over several hundred years with little change in ritual art and architecture. Deer stones are memorials to deceased leaders that display...
Defining and Exploring Local Production in the Indus Civilization: A Focus on Gradation and Value (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Indus Civilization of Bronze Age Pakistan and Northwest India (c. 3800-1900 BCE) had a complex system of productions, consumption, and exchange at local, regional, and interregional scales. I join my recent research of intra-site production patterns and regional GIS analysis...
The Delgerkhaan uul Survey: Preliminary Results (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. The paper reports on a full coverage intensive survey of a water rich region in the Southeast Gobi desert, Mongolia, which with the support of many excavations provide a robust chronological framework from the mid-Holocene to the historic Manchu period. Archaeological survey recorded...
Demographic Modeling Using the Mortuary Record (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Peopling the Past: Critically Evaluating Settlement and Regional Population Estimates with New Methods and Demographic Modeling" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human remains are the most direct line of archaeological evidence of people in the past. The mortuary record, however, is the product of the complex interplay between social practices and taphonomic processes. To understand its formation and consequences for...
Deposition, Disturbance, and Dumping: The Application of Archaeobotanical Measures to Taphonomic Questions (2018)
This study assesses the utility of archaeobotanical measures to recognize differential site formation processes, drawing on the Bronze and Iron Age hill fort site of Zagorë, in northern Albania, as a case study. The blanket sampling strategy for collection of flotation samples applied by the Projeki Arkeologjik I Shkodres (PASH) (2010-2014) during the site’s excavation provides a complete record of archaeobotanical changes across the depth of each excavation unit. The use of small mesh sizes for...
Development of Pastoralism in Prehistoric Central Asia: A Case Study at Koken, East Kazakhstan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tradition of practicing mobile pastoralism in Central Asia’s steppe, forest-steppe, and foothill regions stretches back to at least the Bronze Age period (ca. 3500–800 BC). This preliminary study explores environmental biases and related human choices in livestock management during the period of early emergence and...
The Development of Plain and Monochrome Wares in Protohistoric Bronze Age Cyprus (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. This paper will explore the development of the locally produced Plain and Monochrome ware pottery at the Protohistoric Bronze Age (1700-1200 BC) sites of Episkopi-Phaneromeni and Episkopi-Bamboula in Southwestern Cyprus. The Protohistoric Bronze Age is a dynamic time for pottery production on Cyprus. It is...
Did You Sleep Well? – The Body, the Senses and the Ancient Egyptian Headrest (2018)
This paper explores the possibility to extract information about sensory experiences inherent in the material culture of ancient Egypt which are often overlooked due to the difficulty to track them in the material. By implementing new intellectual frameworks like New Materialism and the consequent application of methodologies from archaeology and anthropology we gain insight in the actions of ancient bodies. Taking inspiration from Latour’s actants (2005), Barad’s agential realism (2007) and...
Dietary Histories in Early China: Gender and Food in Urban and Rural Eastern Zhou Communities (771–221 BCE, Ancient Zhenghan City, China) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of human skeletal samples allows bioarchaeologists to study human diet from discrete periods of life and can provide fine-grained dietary histories of individuals. Previous research on the Eastern Zhou Dynasty identified dietary differences between adult females and males, and a study of childhood diet for two urban Eastern Zhou...
A (Different) Pot for Every Grave: Multiscalar Burial Analysis of a Bronze Age Cemetery in Eastern Kazakhstan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prehistoric site of Koken, located in the semiarid foothills of eastern Kazakhstan, records a deep history of human occupation spanning the Mesolithic to historical periods. Our research at Koken since 2019 has focused on an integrated habitation, rock art, and cemetery complex dating to the Bronze Age. We will present...
Diffusion, Migration, and "Culture" in the Eurasian Bronze Age (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. The past 25 years has led to a completely new understanding of Eurasian Prehistory. Archaeometric analysis, landscape archaeology, and aDNA have allowed longstanding debates to be silenced, and fundamental principles underpinning key concepts such as social interaction,...