Bronze Age (Other Keyword)
151-175 (413 Records)
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...
Four Thousand Years of Disaster, Vulnerability, and Resilience in the Lower Yellow River, China (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Equity in the Archaeology of Disaster, Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the past 4,000 years, humans have assaulted the environments of the lower Yellow River Valley. For millennia this region has been an entirely cultivated and (mis)managed anthropogenic landscape. Indeed, the lower Yellow River is called the “river of sorrow” and flows through a land of famine. At the same time, though,...
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...
From Mounds and Museums: Building a Bioarchaeology of the Early Bronze Age in the Apuseni Region of Transylvania (2018)
The Apuseni Mountains of southwest Transylvania, Romania, are amongst the richest gold and copper procurement zones in the world. Metals from this region helped fuel the rise of inequality across Europe during Late Prehistory, and the area is also home to a rich mortuary record, with archaeological survey identifying over one hundred mounded tomb cemeteries belonging to Bronze Age communities. However, none of these cemeteries have been fully excavated and only a small sample of skeletons has...
From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Trans-Regional Movements of Artifacts, Cereal Crops and Animals (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. Scholarly interest has been growing in an episode of trans-Eurasian exchange of agricultural systems and tangible material goods in late prehistory. The trans-regional movement of a number of artifacts, cereal crops and animals occurred within a series of transformative process that...
“From the Field to the Museum”: A New Educational Outreach Program at Vedi Fortress, Armenia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This field report recounts our newly realized collaborative children’s educational workshop at the Vedi Fortress in Armenia. In June 2022, the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project (APSAP) partnered with the National Gallery of Armenia and the Armenian Heritage Development Fund to run our first “From the Field to the Museum” Summer School. Children...
Frontiers and Borderlands Phenomena, what would Bradley say?: Comparative Case Studies from the Levant and Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we seek to emulate two different aspects of Bradley J. Parker’s career: his transition from the Near East to the Andes and his interest in the theoretical underpinnings of frontier communities. We are inspired by his work on frontiers and borderlands in our own work in these regions and use his...
Funerary Transitions in the Chu State during the Warring States Period (480-221 BC) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Warring States Period has been regarded as an essential period in terms of the transition of political structure. This transition leaves its influence on the forms of burials and tombs. This study aims to provide a new perspective on the political transition by studying the changes of remains of the elite tombs of Chu State during the Warring State Period....
Gendered Trouble: Reconsidering the Role of Females in the Masculinized Spaces of Violence in an Early Bronze Age Population (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mierzanowice Culture (~2400–1600 BCE) communities in the Central European Early Bronze Age buried their dead in a formalized and gendered manner, in which males and females typically assumed mirror-opposite orientations in their respective graves. Furthermore, the archetypal "warrior" grave—whether simply an...
The Genomic Formation of Central and South Asia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper serves as an example of how ancient DNA (aDNA) data can provide new insight into large-scale population transformations of archaeological cultures. The details of population transformation through time in Central and South Asia have been unclear due to the lack of aDNA. To address this gap, we generated genome-wide data from 500 ancient...
Geoarchaeology of Terraces and Building XVI at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus: Evidence for Site Formation and Settlement Activity (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoarchaeological research conducted in 2019-2020 as part of the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments (KAMBE) project focused on collecting multiscalar and high-resolution geoarchaeological data from the Late Bronze Age city of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios in south-central Cyprus. The aim of the geoarchaeological project is to determine the uses of space in...
Geographical Margins as Key to Understanding Crop Dispersal Mechanisms in Prehistory: Case Study for Kyrgyzstan (2018)
More than 8000 years ago, a variety of crop species began to spread across Eurasia, reaching its edges approximately 4000 years later. The chain of mountains that stretches across Central Asia constituted a geographical obstacle that slowed down the dispersal process. Special high altitude adaptive strategies were required not only by humans, but also by plants due to changes in the length of the growing season, climatic conditions, UV intensity, among other factors. Therefore, the mountain...
Geophysical and Geochemical Spatial Approaches to Early Copper Metal Production among Bronze Age Communities in the Southern Urals, Russia (2017)
The combination of social, economic, and political variables that led to greater levels of sedentism and demographic growth in human societies has long been a key topic within the study of world prehistory. Indeed, the comparative study of such dynamics has been at the very core of anthropological archaeology with numerous classic case studies stemming from fieldwork in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Near East, and China. The Eurasian steppes, a vast region stretching half way around the...
Geophysical investigations at the Bronze Age site of Békés 103 in Eastern Hungary (2016)
In archaeological research both non-invasive and weakly invasive methods are often employed without, or prior to, excavation. Surface collection, geophysical survey and shovel testing are the methods that have been employed at the site of Békés 103. Despite the difficulty imposed by the soil conditions and the nature of the targets themselves (cremation graves), geophysical measurements employing a variety of techniques (gradiometry, soil resistivity and electromagnetics) were applied in tandem...
Geophysical Survey Results from the Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey (2023)
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. This poster presents a sample of the results of geophysical investigations conducted as part of the Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey. Magnetometer surveys were undertaken at more than 20 locations to augment the results of surface collection survey and augering, helping to locate buried features as...
Giants in the Hand: Scale, Materiality and the Unique Social Lives of Seal Stones (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Very small things, especially ones worn on the body, have unique positions within persons’ lives and across them. They possess their own type of temporal and material persistence, arising not from being large and formidably unmovable, but from an ability to discreetly carry on from one moment and space to another. Given their substance, significations, or...
Gone to Pot: Stylistic Breaks in a Radiocarbon-based Ceramic Chronology for the Eastern Hungarian Bronze Age (2017)
The Great Hungarian Plain is densely populated with fortified tell sites dating to the second millennium BC. At the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c.1400 BC), however, these settlements were abandoned. Traditionally, archaeologists argued that locals were run off by invading Tumulus culture groups or suffered an environmental disaster. The lack of non-tell contexts and radiocarbon dates bridging this transition precluded an understanding of what changed after the tells were abandoned, and what...
Gone with the Wind: The Modelling of the Wind Conditions of the Prehistoric and Historic Communities around the World (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climatic conditions determine the ways in which local communities live to a great extent. The wind is responsible for the everyday life experience by bringing precipitation, moving dust and fire. The general assumption of the current research is that in the past people chose to live in relatively calm spots of the local landscapes to prevent themselves from...
Grain Size Variation and Culinary Traditions: Insights into Prehistoric Food Globalization in Eurasia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 15 years, research into prehistoric food globalization has shed light on the timelines, routes, and tempos of crop diffusion across the Old World. This diffusion not only involved the spread of plants but also the reproduction and transformation of cultures, technologies, and ideologies associated...
Grounding an underground survey: Paddy fields and monumental Bronze Age shell-scapes in the Dian Basin, Yunnan, China (2015)
Regions under paddy cultivation often present limits on site detection. In addition to deep plowing and continuous flooding of the fields, which intensify erosion and weathering of cultural remains, paddy fields are constructed and managed through field leveling and canal dredging. These processes raze and displace sites, leaving behind a fragmentary settlement record consisting primarily of sites defined by raised mounds and/or standing architecture. Oft used survey techniques that seek to...
Harappan Necropolis of Rakhigarhi, India: Archaeology and Bioanthropology (2018)
The number of Harappan cemeteries so far systematically surveyed is far less than that of contemporary settlements. Necropolis site at Rakhigarhi (India) was reported earlier but in small scale investigation. Our investigation for the last three seasons (2013 to 2016) was thus designed for improving this lacuna. We first classified each burial and analyzed statistically. The Harappan people practiced rather humble burial custom, but few were found differently and these burials look more...
Health and Mortuary Treatment in Early Bronze Age Transylvania (2018)
Copper and gold resources from Southwestern Transylvania played a critical role in the emergence of inequality in European Late Prehistory. Communities in this metal-rich landscape, however, remain poorly understood. Though the highly visible tombs in the Apuseni Mountains where these communities buried some of their dead have been known to local archaeologists for decades, very little is known about the backdrop of health and disease in the region. Here, we present one of the first...