Mesolithic (Other Keyword)
26-47 (47 Records)
This paper seeks to situate the phenomena of ‘loose’ human bones in the Mesolithic of north-west Europe within a wider understanding of the role of post-mortem manipulation of the body in the mortuary practices of these Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Whilst originally interpreted as the remains of disturbed burials, assemblages of disarticulated human remains have begun to be accepted as evidence for alternative mortuary practices, though their specific nature has so far received little critical...
Mesolithic Stone Tools and the Organization of Technology at Kenure, Ireland (2016)
During the late 1950s, the avocational archaeologist Gwendoline Stacpoole collected a sizable assemblage of stone tools from farm fields along Ireland's east coast near the town of Kenure, Rush, County Dublin. Stacpoole worked in collaboration with G.F. Mitchell at Trinity College, Dublin, and the assemblage from Kenure was ultimately donated to the National Museum of Ireland. In the summer of 2014, I analyzed a considerable sample of Stacpoole's collection from Kenure and this paper presents...
Microblade Industries of Northeastern Asia During the Holocene: Case Study of the Ust’-Khaita site in Eastern Siberia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Microblade industries emerge around 20,000 BP and spread rapidly throughout Northeast Asia and Beringia. However, at the turn of the Pleistocene-Holocene, microblade industries disappear in some areas while persisting in other regions until the late Holocene. The reasons behind the uneven disappearance of microblade industries are not clear, and to...
Microstratigraphic and Biomolecular Identification of Seaweeds in the Mesolithic of Atlantic Iberia, SW Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mesolithic shell mounds are prominent testaments of the prehistoric coastal adaptations along the Atlantic shores of Europe. In the Iberian Peninsula, postglacial hunter-gatherers largely turned to coastal regions and lived...
Microwear and the Resolution of Post-Depositional Modification of Danish Underwater Mesolithic Deposits (2016)
It has been shown that the amount of rounding of a dorsal ridge of an unused flake is a good proxy measure for the amount of post-depositional modification by sediment movement. The technique has been applied often by the Lithic Microwear Research Laboratory to assess the suitability of an assemblage for study of tool use. Here, we report on the application of the technique to a unique problem. Orehoved is a port located in southern Denmark. The repositioning of a bridge carrying traffic between...
Mortuary Practices of Later Stone Age Hunter-Gatherers in Northern Malawi (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Later Stone Age (LSA) hunter-gatherer mortuary practices are poorly understood in south-central Africa. Tropical climate and acidic soils hinder preservation, bioturbation is prevalent, and research coverage is sparse. The site of Hora 1, in the Mzimba District of Malawi, provides a rare opportunity to examine...
Muge Portal: A New Digital Platform for the Last Hunter-Gatherers of the Tagus Valley, Portugal (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This work presents "The Muge Shellmiddens Project: a new portal for the last hunter-gatherers of the Tagus Valley, Portugal" that focuses on the requalification and valorization of the archaeological and paleoanthropological heritage of the Mesolithic complex of Muge (Tagus Valley, Portugal), classified as Portuguese National Monument since 2011. It is a new...
New research on the Mesolithic ‘skull nests’ of Ofnet cave, SW Germany (2016)
Since their discovery in the early twentieth century, there has been controversy over the chronology of the two ‘skull nests’ found within Ofnet cave in southwest Germany. Initially the focus was on whether they dated to the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic or Neolithic. The first radiocarbon dates at least resolved this issue in favour of the Mesolithic, but the considerable range obtained fueled a second debate: were the skulls deposited in a single event, which, together with the peri-mortem injuries...
On the ritual display and deposition of human skulls at Kanaljorden, Motala, Sweden, 8000 cal BP (2016)
This paper discuss the ritual display and deposition of human skulls among hunter-gatherers in Scandinavia during the Mesolithic. The discussion focus on the recently excavated site Kanaljorden, at Motala, Sweden, where select human bones – mostly skulls – from a dozen individuals have been deposited on a stone-packing on the bottom of a small lake. Two of the skulls were mounted on wooden stakes still embedded in the crania. Beside human bones, the finds also include artefacts of bone, antler,...
One Person’s Waste Is an Archaeologist’s Treasure: Using Techno-Typological Analysis of Debitage for Epipaleolithic Assemblages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone tools have long been used by archaeologists as markers of cultural affiliation in prehistoric cultures. The Epipaleolithic (EP) of Southwest Asia (approx. 23,000–11,500 yrs BP) is no different; here microlith types are regularly used as signifiers of geographically and chronologically bounded cultural groups, social...
Paleotemperature Adjustments for Obsidian Hydration Dating (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) is a method for estimating age of an obsidian artifact based on time-dependent absorption of water. The process is temperature-sensitive, and its application to archaeological dating currently requires assuming that current temperature parameters are a reasonable approximation to ancient temperatures....
Re-documenting the Pleistocene–Holocene Occupations of Arma dello Stefanin in Liguria, Italy (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, our team started work at the Arma dello Stefanin to document the stratigraphy that had been unearthed in the 1960s and 1980s. In this presentation, we will summarize the results of our attempts to date the stratigraphy of the site to place it within its proper temporal context. This is the second conference...
Rythm of Youth: Childhood in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Liguria (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a synthesis of recent research that illuminates the reality of forager childhoods at several sites dated to the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene in the region of Liguria (NW Italy). Indeed, recently published data from the sites of Arma di...
Settlement and rituals. The red deer at Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement sites in SW Norway (2017)
The red deer is one of the most common motifs at several Late Mesolithic rock carving sites along the coast of southern Norway. It is assumed that this animal was both an important food resource as well as an object of rituals and religious beliefs during this period. The focus of this paper will be to examine how the red deer appears in different contexts at settlement sites during the Stone Age, and to explore how these contexts reflect diverse activities, including rituals and ceremonies. Our...
Southern Alpine Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic landscapes (2018)
Thanks to the intense fieldwork carried out by different institutions since the 1970s, the south-eastern Alps represent one of the most detailed case-studies in Europe documenting the occupation of mountain areas by foraging groups. The known sites and find-spots attesting the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic occupation of this area amount to several hundred. This evidence shows that foraging groups settled in the Southern Alpine region following the melting of glaciers and the re-colonization of...
A Space for Living and Dying: The Life-History of Kharaneh IV Structures (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The built environment delineates space for daily actions and important moments. Separating the occupants from the external world, walls can create barriers between the outside or can build communities within them. Recent excavations of two structures at Kharaneh IV, an Epipalaeolithic site in Eastern...
SPD Analysis Sheds Light on North Spanish Mesolithic Demography (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates (SPD curves) have become an increasingly popular tool with which to reconstruct prehistoric population dynamics. They are used here to test models of demographic change using Mesolithic data from Cantabria and the middle Ebro valley. Local, regional, and global...
The SPLASHCOS Viewer: The First Online Atlas of Submerged Prehistoric Sites in Maritime Europe and the Mesolithic Site of Strande, Kiel Bay (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The EU-funded SPLASHCOS network promoted the fledgling discipline of "Continental Shelf Prehistoric Research." This discipline is based on an interdisciplinary research approach combining archaeological, geophysical, geological, oceanographic, and biological methods. Investigations so far have already enormously expanded the...
Taken Too Soon: The Context of Two Child Burials at the Mesolithic Shell Midden of Cabeço da Amoreira (Muge, Portugal) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Close to 160 years of investigation at the Muge shell middens (Central Portugal) have revealed more than 300 Mesolithic human skeletons. Most of these burials were identified during the earliest excavations, and thus most of them have insoluble problems of associated materials, provenance, stratigraphy, and chronology. Since 2008 our team has been...
Taking the Bull by the Horns: Why Hunt Aurochs Using Light Arrows with Microlithic Points? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late Glacial hunters in northern Europe made heavy flint arrow armatures that resemble modern broadhead hunting arrows. These were used for hunting reindeer, as a number of instances of such arrows lodged in reindeer bones testify. With the spread of forests new animals appeared, among them aurochs. In several instances auroch skeletons have been...
Understanding the Short-term Occupations of the Lateglacial and Early Mesolithic Groups in Western Europe (2017)
Prehistoric archaeology is now focusing on past hunter-gatherers societies behaviors and relationships with their environments. In Western France, the Late glacial and the Early Holocene were the stage of an important research dynamic. The chrono-cultural organization has been revised relying in particular on the excavation of new key sites. This research shed greater light on the human territories and paleo-economic behaviors. Understanding human mobility depends on our control of time linked...
Using Compound Specific Isotope Analysis of Amino Acids to Distinguish Aquatic and Terrestrial Diets of Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Sweden (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we present the results of compound specific carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on amino acids from bone collagen of Early Holocene humans and contemporaneous terrestrial and marine fauna recovered from multiple sites in southern Sweden. These analyses were aimed at individuals spanning the Early Mesolithic to the Middle Neolithic Pitted...