Iron Age (Other Keyword)
151-175 (231 Records)
Wessex, a region of southern England, has been the subject of more study than almost any other region of the UK. While much excavation has focused on the Iron Age little work has focused on the role of warfare at that time. Discussions of warfare have led to antithetical conclusions by researchers utilizing the same material with much of the disagreement stemming from fundamentally different interpretations of equivocal evidence and assumptions about life in the period. Some of this is...
Niche Construction and Iron Smelting Technology: Some Thoughts on the Development of Regional Metallurgical Economies (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. Linking the evolution of smelting technology to the development of regional economies remains one of the greatest challenges for archaeometallurgy. It is neither possible to explain technological evolution without reference to its costs and benefits in a given...
Niche Construction of Coastal Farming: Archaeobotanical Approach at the Gungokri Site (150 BCE–400 CE) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines niche construction and traditional ecological knowledge that was sustained over 550 years along the southern coast in Korea with an example from the Gungokri site. Traditional subsistence method along the coast and islands in Korea was based on a combination of farming and fishery, and we found this...
Objects of Action and the Practice of Empire in Xiongnu Inner Asia (2018)
Material remains of communities and peoples enmeshed in imperial regimes are most often assessed as representations of incorporation into empires. Yet many of the objects in consideration were not so much passive material declarations as they were tools for active demonstrations. Authority, regional and local, derived from membership in exclusive imperial echelons; membership that required more than mere badges of identity but performances of imperially-derived authority. This paper addresses...
Old Data, New Ideas: Analyzing Legacy Survey Data at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Jordan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2000–2001, the Tall Madaba Archaeological Project of the University of Toronto conducted an archaeological survey of the site of Khirbat al-Mukhayyat (Jordan) in anticipation of future archaeological excavation, though ultimately, no excavation of the site was conducted. With the formation of the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project in 2014, an...
ood, Agricultural, and Environmental Risk Management during the Holocene in Mesopotamia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using new microbotanical phytolith evidence, this article discusses what strategies were implemented to manage factors affecting agricultural strategies and staple food during the Late Holocene in a dry climatic condition in the Late Holocene at the Neo-Assyrian large site of Peshdar Plain located in Kurdistan, Iraq, Northern Mesopotamia. Located in the...
"Our Past is Not the Other"—Anthropological Archaeology and Academic Peripheries in Central Europe (2018)
As an archaeologist who practices and teaches holistic anthropology and has long been fascinated by the rich prehistory of Central Europe, I am shy about sharing my anthropological tendencies with German colleagues. When I do, I am often greeted with surprise, confusion, and a polite suggestion that I should be in Papua New Guinea or other places where German anthropologists engage with people who are perceived as different from contemporary Europeans. In Central Europe, archaeology is...
Paleodietary Analysis of Xiongnu Individuals in Zuunkhangai, Mongolia (2018)
The archaeology of the Xiongnu period has grown considerably over the last decade, yet debate still surrounds Xiongnu subsistence practices and the timing for the rise, expansion, and ‘collapse’ of the Xiongnu polity. The problem, in part, has to do with discrepancies between dates that come from the same sites. Some dates have been reported to be earlier when the samples came from human remains. These discrepancies have been attributed to the ‘reservoir effect’. In order to investigate this, we...
Paleoecological and Archaeological Evidence for Iron Age Economic and Ecological Transformation in the Highlands of Western Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Until recently, chronologies of food and iron production activities have been poorly resolved in the western Kenyan highlands, and have been informed largely by historical linguistics and only a handful of radiocarbon dates. New archaeological and microbotanical data are presented that allows reexamination of earlier cultural history models for this region,...
Passing the Paleo Drug Test: Testing for Medicinal Plant Use in the Paleoethnobotanical Record (2018)
For decades, paleoethnobotanical research almost exclusively concentrated on reconstructing past subsistence economies. At 2011’s SAA conference, I presented a paper entitled, Toward A Paleoethnomedicine. I suggested that paleoethnobotanical research should take inspiration from ethnomedicine (a subfield of ethnobotany) and concentrate on analyzing past people’s healing practices and performances. This paper presents a method to operationalize this concept, a technique for analyzing...
The Past and Present Social Role of Viking Age Mounds (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jellhaug, Norway, is Scandinavia’s second largest prehistoric mound. Dating from the (pre)Viking period, it has a long history of human interaction and interpretation. Built in phases with distinct, selected, and transformed earthly materials, the mound compares with contemporary mounds in that both the...
Pastoral Societies, Holocene Climate and Technology: Perspectives from Iron Age Southern Jordan (Session 4400) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did pastoral societies evolve into more complex social organizations in what is today a hyper-arid desert zone? This paper examines the Iron Age (ca 1200 - 500 BC) data from southern Jordan that indicates relatively little climate change from today, yet the rise of complex pastoral nomadic societies.
Peaks Above, Plains Below: The Deeper Context of Settlement Patterning in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Crete (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents an analysis of the long-term dynamics of settlement patterning on the Greek island of Crete, with a particular focus on the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. Alongside - or in the absence of - other forms of archaeological data, changes in settlement patterning have been central to debates around political and economic change on the...
Peering into the Glass and What Can It Tell about the Iron Age and the Romans in Northwest Portugal (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous analyses of glass sherds from the Cividade de Bagunte, Vila do Conde, Portugal, indicate those glass fragments might have been produced in the Syro-Palestinian region. This paper discusses the results of glass samples from several hillfort settlements and sites connected with the Roman town of Bracara Augusta, Braga, Portugal, analyzed using...
The Penumbra of Castro Archaeology: Evidence and Questions (2018)
The archaeology and socio-cultural practices of Iron Age hilltop fortified settlements (castros) in Northwest Portugal and Galicia present usual and unusual specific problems. From the recognition of the uniqueness of castro cultural practices in the late nineteenth century to the last decades of the twentieth century, castro archaeology has suffered from the inadequate methodologies of earlier excavations, poor temporal controls, a parochial stance toward entertaining unanswered questions, and...
Peopling the Landscape: The Pollen Record and Nomadic Pastoralism in Iron Age Ireland (2018)
The people of the Irish Iron Age are often referred to as ‘invisible’ due to their seeming absence from the archaeological record. Ceramics, so often associated with domestic activities, are not a part of the Iron Age material culture. Burials and domestic settlements dating to the Iron Age exist, but they are the exception to the generally sparse archaeological record. In the absence of sufficient material culture and settlement patterns, other means of studying the people of the Iron Age must...
Performing Feasts and the Use of Animals in Ritual Contexts in Iron Age Ireland (2018)
Activities at large ceremonial complexes are interpreted as regional community endeavors that form group identities and reify social and political structures. Imposing monuments such as Dún Ailinne, Navan Fort, and Rathcrogan have provided tantalizing glimpses into ritual and ceremonial performances of the Irish Iron Age (500 BC-AD 500). Communal feasting has been suggested to be a key practice at these sites during the later periods of use. At feasts, social structure and identity are...
Phoenician Iron Smithing and Cult at Tel Akko, Israel (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations (2010 - 2018) directed by A. E. Killebrew and M. Artzy at Tel Akko, a major eastern Mediterranean Phoenician maritime center and emporium, have uncovered an unprecedented quantity of iron smithing slags, hearths and cultic artifacts, all dating to the sixth - fourth centuries BCE. This assemblage includes fragments of figurines and masks, a...
Phoenician Settlements: A Story of Integration and Cultural Assimilation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the second millennium BCE, the Phoenicians linked east and west through their established trade networks across the Mediterranean. We investigate the extent of Phoenician integration with the communities they settled across the western Mediterranean. Skeletal samples from Phoenician burial sites in Lebanon, Italy, Spain, and Tunisia were collected. We...
Phrygian Cuisine at Kerkenes: a synthesis of ceramic and botanical evidence for food storage and cooking (2017)
At the Iron Age site of Kerkenes in Central Turkey, researchers are using different analytical methods to study cooking and food preparation. Evidence for cooking pots and other ceramic containers used for preparing, storing, and cooking food are found together with a variety of botanical remains. A new project at the site initiated the complementary analysis of ceramic container production and use with plant preparation, storage, and consumption. Situating these data in context, taking...
Pit-House Complexes: A New Form of Rural Domestic Architecture in Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic Central Asia (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. To date studies of ancient Central Asian rural architecture are marked by an imbalance with much attention focused on the estates of elite landowners and less effective nods to non-elite pithouse structures. Recent excavations at Bashtepa in the Bukhara Oasis of Uzbekistan (2021) have revealed an intermediary form of domestic...
Political Change and the Social Power of Potters at Idalion, Cyprus during the First Millennium BCE (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. On Iron Age Cyprus, the polities are described as "city-kingdoms" that are autonomous, independent, and led by kings. Idalion is one such polity located in the south central region of Cyprus. Using petrographic analysis, I investigated the way craft production was impacted by economic, social, and political power...
Post-Charring Bacterial Degradation of Archaeological Lentils by Bacterial Degradation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to common knowledge, the preservation of stable isotope values in archaeological seeds requires that they be charred at low temperatures, because charring reorganizes sugar and protein polypeptides into stable Maillard reaction products. Charred seeds are understood to be resistant to diagenetic...
Prehistoric Pointillism: Rock Art near ‘Amlah, Oman (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art is one of the most ubiquitous archaeological features in southeastern Arabia, yet it remains one of the most poorly understood aspects of the region’s prehistory. Re-occurring motifs of people, weapons, camels, horses, and other animal figures appear in similar forms across the UAE and Oman, and many were produced...
Probable Pathological Evidence of Adult Scurvy, Dating Back to about 200 B.C. in Yuci, Shanxi, China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scurvy is a disease resulting from inadequate intake of vitamin C. This can happen to all age groups but has a relatively high prevalence in children and subadults. Subadult scurvy has been studied thoroughly over the past decades; however, little research has been done on adult scurvy. This is because scurvy presents ambiguously in adults; in addition, scurvy...