Chalcolithic (Other Keyword)
1-25 (44 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Burren, a karstic region located in Western Ireland, has seen intensive farming practices since the Neolithic. Local proxies throughout the west coast of Ireland have indicated periods where the environment shifted to colder and wetter conditions in two key phases during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC. A comparison of the archaeological record at...
Analyzing Urban and Industrial Threats to Heritage in Turkey Using Remote Sensing and GIS (2018)
In Akçalar, Turkey, the location of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Aktopraklık site, urban and industrial development present shocking social, cultural, and economic changes to the community. The local landscape is transforming as towering apartment complexes are quickly expanding into areas previously occupied by sprawling fields of crops. As documented ethnographically, these processes have heightened local awareness of the decline of community heritage values, like neighborliness, agricultural...
Animal Exploitation Choices in Worked Bones at a Portuguese Chalcolithic Village (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Both hunting and agropastoralism were important to the Iberian Peninsular Chalcolithic subsistence economy. However, questions remain about the relative exploitation of wild and domestic fauna. Vila Nova de São Pedro (VNSP) is a Portuguese Chalcolithic village site, first excavated by Eugénio Jalhay and Afonso do Paço from 1936 to 1967 and by the VNSP3000...
Animal Husbandry at Late Chalcolithic Tell Surezha (Iraqi Kurdistan) (2017)
The Late Chalcolithic (4th millennium BC) in northern Mesopotamia was a period defined by an increase in social complexity and inequality. The Oriental Insitute of the University of Chicago's excavations at the site of Tell Surezha on the Erbil Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan have brought to light new information regarding the settlement of the region during this crucial period. This region is not well understood, especially when compared to adjacent regions, such as SE Anatolia and the Jezireh....
Ban Qala, a Late Chalcolithic Site in the Mountain Region of Kurdistan, Iraq: A Report from the 2017 Excavation Season (2018)
Ban Qala, a site located in the mountainous valley of Qara Dagh, was first identified by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1940s. In 2015, a survey performed by the Qara Dagh Regional Archaeological Project determined the archaeological relevance of the site, which was then chosen as subject of an archaeological investigation. A step trench on the southern slope of the site verified the presence of LC 1-2 (4800/4500-3850 B.C.E.) and LC 3-5 (3850-3100 B.C.E.) occupation levels. This paper will discuss...
Ceramic Technological and Stylistic Boundaries on the Indus Frontier of Gujarat (2018)
Rita Wright’s pioneering work on the ceramic stylistic and technological traditions of the Indo-Iranian borderlands highlighted the potential of new theoretical approaches to our understanding of cultural boundaries within South Asia. This work highlighted the complex nature of technology and style boundaries within specific contexts of cultural interaction. This paper takes inspiration from Dr. Wright’s work and applies this framework to another frontier of the Indus: the northwestern state of...
Come for the Harvest, Stay for the Beer: Alcohol Production in an Ubaid Household in Upper Mesopotamia (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 New Perspectives on Household Archaeology, Bradley Parker and Catherine Foster urged archaeologists to approach households as a dynamic location of repetitive actions and gestures that shaped the formation of the personal, economic, social, political and ideological trajectories of the community. In his...
Comparision of Fish Habit and Exploitation—A Comparison of Two Third-Millennium BCE Sites in the Arabian Gulf Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the third millennium BCE, one of the earliest civilizations emerged in South Asia, the Indus Valley Tradition/Civilization. It had a trade network that spread throughout the Persian and Arabian Gulf, including sites on the Omani coast. This paper will compare two sites, Balakot on the Makran coast of Pakistan associated with the Indus Valley...
Connecting Survey and Fieldwork: Archaeology of the Core (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Based on a PhD research case study in the Croatian Adriatic, the paper demonstrates a step further into investigating coastal and submerged archaeology. Seabed mapping methods adopted from marine geology, such as side-scan and multi-beam sonar surveys and shallow water sub-bottom profiling are now...
The Copper Age in Apennine Central Italy and the San Martino Site at Torano di Borgorose (Rieti, Italy) (2018)
Excavations at the San Martino site (Torano di Borgorose, Rieti, Italy) have uncovered the remains of a Copper Age settlement, with evidence of a daub structure and possible hearth. The present contribution reports the results of investigations here and situates these results within the broader context of the mountainous interior areas of central Italy, including parts of the Lazio region and especially neighboring Abruzzo. The quantity of data available from Copper Age sites in this...
Cuisine on the Harappan Frontier: Regional Cooking Vessels in Harappan Gujarat (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 3rd and 2nd millennium BCE, the western Indian state of Gujarat was home to a regional expression of Harappan culture known as the Sorath Harappans. This cultural group was composed of a network of farmers, herders, and craftsmen that subsided on an economy based on cattle herding and the farming of summer...
Demography and Social Organization of the Cucuteni-Tripolye Populations: An Evolutionary Perspective (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. This paper addresses the broad issue of population estimates as proxies and drivers of the evolution of social structures taking the example of the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex (CTCC) covering a territory from the Eastern Carpathians to the Dnieper region...
Dogs of Death: An Evaluation of Canid Remains from a Mortuary Eneolithic Cave Site in Ukraine (2018)
Burials of dog skulls and full dog skeletons have been uncovered at several Eneolithic Tripolye (5100-2900 cal BC) sites suggesting that dogs held a special symbolic role for the Tripolye compared to other domestic fauna. To evaluate human-dog relationships in Tripolye culture and funerary context, we examined dogs from a single mortuary site (Site 17) located in Verteba Cave (3951-2620 cal BC), Ternopil Oblast, Western Ukraine. Symbolic representations of canids have been observed on some...
Drawing the Line: Recent Approaches to the Recording of Galician Petroglyphs (NW Spain) (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. Research on the open-air rock art of Galicia has been going on for more than a century. During this time, one aspect that has experienced much change is the recording of the carved panels, starting with techniques that involved direct contact with the rock’s surface and resulted in a more or less adequate rendering of the...
Droning on: UAV Survey in the Black Desert of Jordan (2018)
In this paper we discuss preliminary results of UAV-survey in one area (c. 32 sq. km.) along the Wadi al-Qattafi, Jordan as part of the larger Eastern Badia Archaeological Project. Excavation and survey in this area of the Black Desert revealed hundreds, or possibly thousands, of unmapped and unrecorded structures that required a new approach to their accurate identification and documentation. With the exception of the large desert ‘kites’ (hunting traps), most stone structures are too small to...
Early Mesopotamian Urbanism and Social Stress: Violent Conflict at Fourth Millennium BCE Tell Brak, NE Syria (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past urbanism is usually reconstructed as a positive development, with cities presented as locations of economic efficiency, technological innovation, and productive social networks. But past cities also presented challenges, as sources of disease, inequalities, and high mortality. At Tell Brak (NE Syria/northern Mesopotamia), urban growth...
Every Year Is Getting Shorter, Never Seem to Find the Time: Evidence for a Fourth-Millennium Gap in Southeastern Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to the surge in radiocarbon dating over the last 15 years, the culture chronologies of Southeastern Europe were organized neatly in sequential centuries-long blocks for the fifth and fourth millennia. Recent research, however, has completely upended the traditional chronologies. With increased research and scholarship on the Copper Age / Chalcolithic...
Exploring the Function of Ceramic Crescents from the Copper Age of Southwestern Iberia (Third Millennium BCE) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lightweight crescent-shaped ceramics with perforations on each end are fairly common finds at Copper Age settlements in southwestern Iberia. These objects are usually assumed to be related to textile production, however, the actual function of these objects is often debated. Were these ceramic crescents, often weighing less than 100 g, heavy enough to function...
Fanning the Flames of Complexity: Archaeobotanical Approaches to the Study of Fuel Economies at Late Chalcolithic Sites in Northern Mesopotamia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The burning of fuel resources for the heating and lighting homes, preparing food and craft goods, and eliminating waste is an essential daily domestic practice on par with the acquisition of food and shelter. With the emergence of socioeconomically complex societies in Northern Mesopotamia during the Late Chalcolithic, ever greater resources would have been...
Feeding the Household and the Spirit During the Ubaid Period at Kenan Tepe, Turkey (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. During the Ubaid Period, a small village overlooked the Tigris River at the site we now call Kenan Tepe. Here, household members carried out activities both inside and around their houses, as well as utilizing roof-top spaces. During its habitation one of the structures burned and collapsed, preserving evidence...
From Topography to Temporality at the Valencina Copper Age Mega-site (Spain): Low-Density Settlement, Gathering Place, or Both? (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last two decades, mega-sites have become a defining feature in the research of Copper Age Iberia, opening up completely new avenues for the analysis of early social complexity in this region. One of the most fascinating cases is the Valencina de la...
The House Next Door (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. The attention devoted to households and houses in archaeology over the last few decades has brought with it a welcome emphasis on small-scale domestic practices and the rhythms of daily life. But houses are not only constructed and lived in – they are also abandoned and reused in various ways. I will focus on...
I Would Walk 500 Miles: Survey of Copper Age Settlements in Eastern Hungary (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copper Age (c. 4500-2800) of the Great Hungarian Plain was a period in which the widespread adoption of metallurgy and a series of large-scale population shifts substantially transformed the social landscape. However, research has primarily focused on the large cemeteries (e.g. Tiszapolgár-Basatanya), while the settlements and social structure of the...
An Isotopic and Proteomic Investigation of Uruk Period Faunal Remains from Tepe Farukhabad, Iran (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in southwest Iran and occupied since the fourth millennium BCE, Tepe Farukhabad is a prime example of an Early Uruk town. Numerous faunal remains were recovered from excavations in the 1960s, including those from wild animals, such as gazelle and horses, as well as from domesticated sheep, goats, and cows. Interestingly, between the...
The Labor of Building a Community: Collective Organization and Mortuary Practices in Copper Age Iberia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Iberian Copper Age (c.3200-2250 BC) witnesses a suite of interrelated changes, including expansion of exchange networks, intensification of agriculture, increases in population density, and greater investment in site infrastructure. Accordingly, it is noteworthy that third millennium collective mortuary practices hark back...