Settlement archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-14 (14 Records)
This paper focuses on issues and methodological approaches to the comparison of archaeological sites, scaling from a regional to a global perspective, with a specific focus on settlement archaeology. The key issue appears to be the logical difficulty of contextualizing regional culture historical data within theories of global settlement patterns. A secondary problematic issue related to the one aforementioned is in the comparison of data sets with highly variable integrity at both these scales,...
The Environmental History of Settlement at Co Loa, Vietnam: A Preliminary Pollen Sequence (2015)
Co Loa is a 600ha Iron Age settlement located in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. Recent excavations of the three earthen ramparts at Co Loa are illuminating the processes of site construction begun during the Dongson cultural period (600 BC-AD 200). The scale and organization of these efforts reflect a highly centralized and institutionalized authority; however, little is known about the nature of settlement and urban form. Using preliminary palynological data from cores and...
Environmental Preconditions and Human Response: Subsistence Practices at Prehistoric Settlement Sites in the Liangshan Area, Southwest China (2015)
The Liangshan Area in Southwest Sichuan is known for its great diversity both in geographic layout and ethnic composition. It is furthermore characterized by a highly diverse archaeological assemblage, whose date and cultural affiliation is in large parts still unclear. To solve this problem, in recent years archaeological fieldwork has focused on settlement sites, whose stratigraphy promises to aid in establishing a local chronology and furthermore provides insight into the daily life of past...
Hierarchy and Human Securities in Norse Vatnahverfi, South Greenland - A Case Study (2015)
Greenland was settled by Norse hunter-farmers in the decades around AD 1000. Two fjord systems were populated: South Greenland formed the largest settlement area that lasted until c. AD 1450, the smaller Norse settlement area in present day Nuuk fjord being abandoned c. 100 years earlier. New detailed archaeological settlement evidence from the Vatnahverfi-a core settlement area in the Norse Eastern Settlement-is explored in terms of environmental- and food securities relating to community level...
Karanis and Qara el-Hamra: spatial organization of settlements in the ancient Fayum, Egypt (2016)
The Fayum region of Egypt was transformed by extensive agricultural development in the second century BCE; irrigation projects increased arable land, and many new towns and villages were founded in order to accommodate a growing population. These settlements were originally designed according to the Greek tradition of orthogonal grid planning, creating orderly "blocks" of buildings between intersecting streets. However, over time, layers of both civic and private domestic construction began to...
Keep your Boots on: LiDAR as a Reconnaissance and Survey Tool on the Vaca Plateau, Belize (2015)
Recent studies have demonstrated the revolutionary potential of LiDAR as a means of mapping archaeological features within densely forested and/or inaccessible landscapes. In a matter of days, aerial LiDAR scans can survey swaths of forest which would take decades to map on foot. However, in order to effectively exploit the analytical potential of LiDAR datasets, we must understand how the spatial information captured by these systems compare with those produced by traditional ground survey. To...
Maya Archaeology: Research & Interpretations with Dr. Scarborough (2016)
More than 25 years of collaborative research with Dr. Scarborough has provided for interesting ups & downs in understanding prehistoric Maya activities. Beginning at Cerros, intervening distant research, rejoining at Kinal (Guatemala), and culminating in NW Belize (for now) has allowed for a fascinating journey of archaeological investigations. Presented here are both scientific endeavors as well as events from field activities during nearly three decades of mutual research interests from...
Multiscalar Community Histories: A Tale of Migration, Aggregation, and Integration in the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley (2016)
Mississippian archaeology has benefited from historicized approaches which situate communities and their constituent parts within larger socio-political landscapes, rather than treating them as bounded or normative entities. In this paper, we explore historical and socio-political dynamics within the community centered upon Singer-Moye, a large (30+ ha) mound center located in the lower Chattahoochee River valley. Our analyses combine archaeological and geophysical data from mound and off-mound...
Near-Surface Geophysical Survey of a 17th/18th century trading factory at LaSoye, Dominica. (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2017, storm surges exposed archaeological deposits near LaSoye Point located on the north-eastern coast of Dominica. A year later, a small-scale excavation—focusing on the exposed coastal features of the site—revealed remnants of a structure, an extramural activity area, and a wide range of...
New Investigations on the Northeast Coast of Honduras (2017)
As part of the Central American Isthmus, Honduras adopted a special role in prehispanic America. Together with Nicaragua, the territory of modern Honduras functioned as a bridge between the culture areas of Mesoamerica and the Intermediate Area. In spite of that unique situation, archaeological investigations in Honduras have been focusing on the western, Mesoamerican part, especially on the Maya city of Copan. In contrast, cultural developments in the east remain largely unknown. With the goal...
On the Margins of the Marginal? Fringe Settlement and Land Use in Norse Greenland (2017)
Just before AD 1000 pioneer Norse hunter-farmers settled in Greenland and established what would be the extreme western outpost of Scandinavia and Europe for the next 450 years. The unexplained disappearance of this marginal medieval colony around AD 1450 has always puzzled researchers and has been proposed as a prime example of maladaptation to climatic and environmental deterioration at the onset of the ˈLittle Ice Ageˈ (LIA). As part of the Island Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic Project...
Reassessing Neolithic Settlement Patterning in Central Serbia through Geophysical and Geochemical Survey (2018)
This paper details the results of recent large scale pedestrian, geophysical and geochemical surveys on Late Neolithic Vinca culture sites in Central Serbia. New data relating to settlement patterning, household organization, and diachronic developments will be discussed through combining surface survey and analysis and remote sensing. Results from these studies are adding a new perspective to conventional models for the Neolithic transition and the emergence of early village societies in...
Results from the 2016 Excavation of a Qarah el-Hamra, a Graeco-Roman Village in Fayum, Egypt (2017)
This paper presents the results of the 2016 field season at the Graeco-Roman Village of Qarah el-Hamra. Located along the north shore of Lake Qaroun, the site was discovered in 2003 by the UCLA Fayum Project, and a magnetic survey in 2004 revealed the presence of an extensive settlement. Excavation that same year confirmed the existence of Greco-Roman remains, however the site remained otherwise unexplored until the start of this new field project in 2016. The new Qarah el-Hamra Excavation...
Settlement Archaeology and the Role of Persistent Places among Forager Societies in Eastern New York (2016)
The settlement system used by the prehistoric populations of Eastern New York is one in which forager societies often reoccupied the same landscape creating persistent places. Evidence of this can be seen in a variety of single and multi-component occupations that span the Late Archaic and Transitional (4,000-1,500 B.C.) and Early Woodland Periods (1,000 B.C.-A.D. 200). Artifact assemblages found at these sites suggest that the site’s occupants used a diverse array of tools manufactured from...