ADVANCED SEARCH +

Aegeus Society For Aegean Prehistory

ARTICLES | 2024

Dendrochemical analysis of a tree-ring growth anomaly associated with the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera

Journal of Archaeological Science 36.6 (June 2009): 1206-1214.

The most marked tree-ring growth anomaly in the Aegean dendrochronological record over the last 9000 years occurs in the mid 17th century BC, and has been speculatively correlated with the impact of the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera (Santorini). If such a connection could be proved it would be of major interdisciplinary significance.

Integrated geological, petrologic and geochemical approach to establish source material and technology of Late Cypriot Bronze Age Plain White ware ceramics

Journal of Archaeological Science 36.5 (May 2009): 1103-1114.

Late Cypriot Bronze Age Plain White Wheelmade ware samples from several Cypriot excavation sites and the northern Canaanite coast were studied to ascertain their production centres and details of their manufacturing processes and post-depositional alteration. The investigation of the ceramics, using combined geoscientific analytical techniques (XRF, ICP-MS, XRD and EPMA) allowed four groups of pottery to be distinguished based on their common raw-material sources and/or technological analogies.

Building a tephrostratigraphic framework for the Paleolithic of Central Anatolia, Turkey

Journal of Archaeological Science 36.3 (March 2009): 637-652.

The Central Anatolian Volcanic Province (CAVP) in Turkey preserves widespread deposits of Quaternary tephra, presently associated with a small but growing number of Paleolithic archaeological sites. We use multivariate analyses of the abundances of a suite of nine major and minor element oxides determined by electron probe microanalysis.

Remodeled human skulls in Köşk Höyük (Neolithic age, Anatolia): a new appraisal in view of recent discoveries

Journal of Archaeological Science 36.2 (February 2009): 379-386.

Between 1985 and 2007 overall nineteen human skulls dating to the Late Neolithic period were recovered at Köşk Höyük, which lies within the borders of Bor, a district of the Niğde Province in Central Anatolia. One of these skulls belongs to a child and the remainder to adult males and females.

The Lower Pleistocene lithic assemblage from Dursunlu (Konya), central Anatolia, Turkey

Antiquity 83 (March 2009): 11-22.

Homo erectus leaving Africa a million years ago ought to have passed through the area that is now Turkey, and the authors report a first certain sighting of human activity of this date in a lignite quarry near Konya. The remains of rhino, hippo and horse were found with 135 modified quartz implements in layers dated by palaeomagnetic reversal to between 0.78 and 0.99 million years ago.

Körtik Tepe, a new Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in south-eastern Anatolia

Antiquity 83 (June 2009): online article.

The Upper Tigris Valley, in the Anatolian part of the Fertile Crescent, has indisputable significance for the early Neolithic in terms of the opportunities it provided for the permanent settlement of human communities. One of these settlements is Körtik Tepe, located in the province of Diyarbakir, near Pinarbasi, at the hamlet of the village called Agil, close to where the Batman Creek joins the Tigris.

‘We don’t talk about Çatalhöyük, we live it’: sustainable archaeological practice through community-based participatory research

World Archaeology 42.3 (2010): 418-429.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) provides a methodology for engaging descendent and local communities as partners in archaeological research. This article, based on a five-year comparative research project that examines CBPR’s application to archaeology, demonstrates a collaborative model that involves reciprocity, is action based and aims to build community capacity while engaging communities in the process of archaeological research and heritage management.

The Minoan lion: Presence and absence on Bronze Age Crete

World Archaeology 42.2 (2010): 273-289.

Animal depictions are frequently treated by archaeologists either as direct reflections of human-animal relations or as symbolic of social realities. This paper offers a different way of conceptualizing animal depictions, as objects which mediate between society and human relationships with non-human animals.

Caves, palimpsests and dwelling spaces: examples from the Upper Palaeolithic of south-east Europe

World Archaeology 41.2 (2009): 215-241.

Deposits in caves and rock-shelters typically occur in the form of low-resolution palimpsests or time-averaged deposits, resulting from the superimposition of repeated and variable episodes of occupation, low rates of sedimentation and mixing by natural and anthropogenic processes. Despite the development of an impressive array of analytical techniques to disentangle these palimpsests into their constituent episodes of occupation, high resolution chronologies and detailed snapshots of activity areas and spatial organization have proved elusive.

Post-collapse: The re-emergence of polity in Iron Age Boğazköy, central Anatolia

Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28.3 (August 2009): 275–300.

How communities reorganize after collapse is drawing increasing attention across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Iron Age Boğazköy provides an archaeological case study of urban and political regeneration after the widespread collapse of eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age empires in the early twelfth century BC.

Domesticity by default. Ritual, Ritualization and cave-use in the Neolithic Aegean

Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28.2 (May 2009): 125–153.

Neolithic caves in the Aegean are conventionally understood in domestic terms, principally as temporary homes for farmers or pastoralists. This paper challenges the theoretical and empirical foundations of this orthodoxy and develops an alternative model grounded in an understanding of Neolithic ritual and how through ritualization the everyday is referenced and transformed.

Contrasting subsistence strategies in the Early Iron Age? – New results from the Alföld plain, Hungary, and the Thracian plain, Bulgaria

Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28.2 (May 2009): 155-187.

What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement practices of populations who leave little or no artefactual discard as a testament to their lifeways? The traditional answer, especially in Eastern Europe, is to invoke often exogenous nomadic pastoralists whose dwelling in perpetuo mobile was based on yurts, minimal local ceramic production and high curation levels of wooden and metal containers.

The Minoan fallacy: Cultural diversity and mortuary behaviour on Crete at the beginning of the Bronze Age

Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28.1 (February 2009): 29-57.

We are becoming increasingly aware of regional data patterning in the archaeological record of Prepalatial Crete, yet a theoretically informed and methodologically systematic study assessing the significance of such differences is still lacking. This article investigates variation through the rich mortuary record of the period and explores the significance of such diversity for our understanding of Prepalatial Crete.

Beyond ethnicity: The overlooked diversity of group identities

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22.1 (2009): 101-126.

This article challenges the current tendency in archaeology to assume an ethnic basis for group identity. Archaeology has rehabilitated the concept of ethnicity over the last decade, embracing a theoretically sensitive model of it as both socially constructed and socially constructing, as flexible, embodied and hybridised. The success of this model has been such that group identities are often assumed to be ethnic without investigation.