{"title":"Wool they, won’t they: Zooarchaeological perspectives on the political and subsistence economies of wool in northern Mesopotamia","authors":"Max D. Price , Jesse Wolfhagen","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101590","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>An important facet in the study of complex societies involves documenting how the extraction of resources to support political structures (the political economy) impacted the subsistence economy of everyday life. Caprine production was a central feature of ancient Mesopotamian subsistence, while ancient texts reveal that wool was centrally important to the region’s political economies. It has long been thought that at some point in the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age (c. 4500–1500 BC) caprine husbandry was reorganized at the regional level to support the wool industry that was so dear to state finance and elite wealth. Here, we use kill-off patterns and biometrics to test whether caprine husbandry patterns across northern Mesopotamia underwent a regionwide transformation. We synthesize existing data and use Bayesian modeling to estimate average sheep size, male–female ratio, and harvesting patterns targeting older sheep. We confirm previous assessments that document an increase in sheep size in the 4th millennium BC. We find no pattern in male–female ratios. Diachronic kill-off data from across the region show subtle and local shifts in the slaughter of older caprines. While ambiguities in the data persist, there is no evidence of a dramatic shift toward intensive wool production at the regional level.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101590"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000217/pdfft?md5=35902e5833b8c3a102d16871241167f8&pid=1-s2.0-S0278416524000217-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140816426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tatiana Nomokonova , Robert J. Losey , Andrei V. Gusev , Grace Kohut , Stella Razdymakha , Lubov Vozelova , Andrei V. Plekhanov
{"title":"The one-eyed Elder woman stitches an ornament: Needles, needle cases, and women from the Iamal-Nenets region of Arctic Siberia","authors":"Tatiana Nomokonova , Robert J. Losey , Andrei V. Gusev , Grace Kohut , Stella Razdymakha , Lubov Vozelova , Andrei V. Plekhanov","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101589","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Iamal-Nenets region of Siberia is one of many Arctic areas where women’s sewing skills were and are crucial to daily existence. Our article explores archaeological needles and needle cases that were made and used by ancestors of the current Indigenous peoples of this region. We frame our examination of these materials through a discussion of women’s sewing bags, which are a symbolic representation of every stitch made by a woman’s hands in creating dwelling covers, bedding sets, storage bags, and every piece of clothing, all of which are crucial to the survival and well-being of her family. These particular bags are not merely containers for essential sewing supplies such as needles and needle cases. They embody layers of multigenerational skill, ancestral knowledge, and identity that are passed by women to their daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. We summarize archaeological needle and needle cases from Iamal to stitch together the meanings and importance of the materials both in the past and present. In doing so, we highlight and acknowledge the complex history of Indigenous women and their incredible sewing skills, which have allowed families to survive and flourish in the Siberian Arctic for hundreds of generations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101589"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000205/pdfft?md5=73009042415d56dc3273503428e75aa3&pid=1-s2.0-S0278416524000205-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140349880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How many people lived in the world’s earliest villages? Reconsidering community size and population pressure at Neolithic Çatalhöyük","authors":"Ian Kuijt , Arkadiusz Marciniak","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101573","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Adopting a building and village biography approach combining archaeology and ethnography, we critically reevaluate the historical argument that Neolithic villages were occupied by many thousands of people. Focusing on the settlement at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, where it has been argued that 3,500 and 10,000 people lived in the village, we argue that this is a significant overestimate of the number of people that occupied this settlement. Drawing upon revised distribution of residential buildings across the mound, and employing archaeological and ethnographic data exploring building life-history, we estimate that between 600 and 800 people would have lived at Çatalhöyük East during an average year during the Middle (6700–6500 cal BC) phase. This research highlights the need to critically revaluate historical population estimates for Neolithic villages, the importance of developing explicit population modeling methods in archaeology, and to reconsider population-driven evolutionary models linking the Near Eastern Neolithic to urbanism.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101573"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140330951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David E. Friesem , Noa Lavi , Sheina Lew-Levy , Adam H. Boyette
{"title":"Mobility, site maintenance and archaeological formation processes: An ethnoarchaeological perspective","authors":"David E. Friesem , Noa Lavi , Sheina Lew-Levy , Adam H. Boyette","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101588","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Mobility is considered to play an important role in the way people use their habitual space. Highly mobile societies present a particular challenge to archaeologists as a direct relation is assumed between the duration of occupation and the intensity of its archaeological signature. Here, we present a cross-cultural, ethnoarchaeological study carried out among three contemporary societies that, while showing different patterns of mobility, all live in humid tropical forests—in Thailand, the Congo Basin, and India—and share many social notions and values. The aim of this study was to observe how differences in patterns of mobility affect the formation of archaeological signatures. Our study demonstrates that when a site is occupied for only a few days to a couple of weeks, activity residues tend to be deposited <em>in situ</em>. This could potentially preserve the original spatial pattern of material distribution that directly reflects the activity areas and people’s use of space. However, when a site is occupied for more than a week or two, maintenance practices such as sweeping begin to take place, which result in almost complete removal of activity residues from their primary location and the formation of waste areas at the edge of the dwelling sites.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101588"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140122282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jesper L. Boldsen , Dorthe Dangvard Pedersen , George R. Milner , Vicki R.L. Kristensen , Lilian Skytte , Stig Bergmann Møller , Torben Birk Sarauw , Charlotte Boje Hilligsø Andersen , Lars Agersnap Larsen , Inger Marie Hyldgaard , Mette Klingenberg , Lars Krants Larsen , Lene Mollerup , Lone Seberg , Lars Christian Bentsen , Morten Søvsø , Tenna Kristensen , Jakob Tue Christensen , Poul Baltzer Heide , Lone C. Nørgaard , Kaare Lund Rasmussen
{"title":"Variation in bioavailable lead, copper, and strontium concentrations in human skeletons from medieval to early modern Denmark","authors":"Jesper L. Boldsen , Dorthe Dangvard Pedersen , George R. Milner , Vicki R.L. Kristensen , Lilian Skytte , Stig Bergmann Møller , Torben Birk Sarauw , Charlotte Boje Hilligsø Andersen , Lars Agersnap Larsen , Inger Marie Hyldgaard , Mette Klingenberg , Lars Krants Larsen , Lene Mollerup , Lone Seberg , Lars Christian Bentsen , Morten Søvsø , Tenna Kristensen , Jakob Tue Christensen , Poul Baltzer Heide , Lone C. Nørgaard , Kaare Lund Rasmussen","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101587","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Three trace elements in human bones permit the delineation of temporal and social variability among medieval to early modern Danes in what they ate (strontium, Sr) and whether they lived in an urban or non-urban setting (lead, Pb; copper, Cu). The chemical composition of bones from 332 children (5 to 12 years old) buried in 51 Danish cemeteries was estimated through Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Children provide a local chemical signal because they were less likely than adults to have moved from one place to another. There was no age effect on trace element concentrations. Geographical variability in trace element concentrations was highly localized, so the three elements, individually or collectively, cannot be used to identify where in Denmark people originated. Diets and exposure to sources of Pb and Cu, however, did not remain constant over time. Trace element concentrations show that the life experiences of people from towns differed from their rural counterparts. While most apparent with Pb and Cu, it is also true of Sr until urban and rural diets converged in the early modern period.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101587"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000187/pdfft?md5=b9db1be80f6024e23fa5b42408fb13e6&pid=1-s2.0-S0278416524000187-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139993164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modeling Archaic land use and mobility in north-central Belize","authors":"Marieka Brouwer Burg , Eleanor Harrison-Buck","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101583","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Archaic period has not been as widely studied in Mesoamerica as it has been in other parts of the Americas. This problem stems from intractable issues such as low archaeological visibility and high post-depositional disturbance. And, while existing Archaic data from northern Belize indicates that foraging groups practiced diverse adaptations, little theoretical effort has been dedicated toward developing frames of reference for understanding the coupled human-landscape interactions ongoing during this period. Here, we outline a multi-method approach for situating hunter-gatherer-fisher-emergent horticultural land use behaviors, including comparative ethnographic data, extant archaeological information, and geospatial modeling. We set out a series of assumptions and expected material correlates for the archaeological record and develop a site suitability model for heuristically exploring existing data, as well as for predicting areas of high archaeological potential for future work. In this way, we are answering the call for more intensive, regional studies that take a holistic approach to understanding foraging practices at multiple scales. The site suitability model described here can be used as an effective way to conduct research remotely during times of travel restrictions and is widely applicable to a range of study areas both in and outside of Mesoamerica.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101583"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027841652400014X/pdfft?md5=000dbd9be4dc52adc4135cab64a5d915&pid=1-s2.0-S027841652400014X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139986049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sebastian Fajardo , Jelte Zeekaf , Tinde van Andel , Christabel Maombe , Terry Nyambe , George Mudenda , Alessandro Aleo , Martha Nchimunya Kayuni , Geeske H.J. Langejans
{"title":"Traditional adhesive production systems in Zambia and their archaeological implications","authors":"Sebastian Fajardo , Jelte Zeekaf , Tinde van Andel , Christabel Maombe , Terry Nyambe , George Mudenda , Alessandro Aleo , Martha Nchimunya Kayuni , Geeske H.J. Langejans","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101586","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study explores traditional adhesives using an ethnobiological approach within a multisocioecological context in Zambia. Through semi-structured interviews, videotaped demonstrations, and herbarium collections, we investigated the traditional adhesives people know and use, the flexibility of production processes, resource usage, and knowledge transmission in adhesive production. Our findings reveal flexibility in adhesive production systems. People use a wide range of organic and inorganic materials in their adhesive recipes. Recipes are flexible, demonstrating the ability to adapt to changes and substitute materials as needed to achieve the desired end product. Additionally, our study reveals a variety of redundant pathways for knowledge transmission typically confined within individual population groups. These include same-sex vertical transmission and distinct learning spaces and processes. Also, we identified material procurement zones showing that people are prepared to travel 70 km for ingredients. We use our findings to review the archaeology and we discuss the identification of archaeological adhesives, the functional roles of adhesive materials, adhesive storage, and the sustained human interaction with species from families such as Euphorbiaceae and Apiade. Our findings underscore the diversity and adaptability of traditional adhesive production and suggest that further research on adhesives would reveal similar diversity within the archaeological record.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101586"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000175/pdfft?md5=d29101bc46e1b5a9a22fe4c00a5a54e3&pid=1-s2.0-S0278416524000175-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139985728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metaphoric veiled image-schema of kinship organization in ceremonial space: A south Andean case","authors":"Tom D. Dillehay","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101569","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study is an interdisciplinary approach to a veiled metaphoric design expressed in the present-day spatial layout of ecologically-derived patronyms of Mapuche lineages and families positioned in public ceremonial plazas. The perspective combines ethnoarchaeological, cognitive, iconographic, oral tradition, allegoric metaphor, and historical approaches to the organization and meaning of this design, taking into account the past and present dimensions of ritual media (e.g., political, ideological and sensorial) to render a concept publicly graspable. Shamans and other informants state that the design represents an ancient foundational schema established for intercommunity political solidarity during times of both peace and conflict in the Spanish colonial and Republican era of the south-central Andes of Chile. Shamans were asked to draw their mental image of the hidden design of the plaza to pictographically reveal its visual representation. By examining the iconography of patronyms depicting a loosely structured order of families hierarchically positioned in ceremonial space, the invisible nature of this pattern and its wider political and kinship meaning is considered. Viewed from an archaeological perspective, this schema is suggested to be associated with a “chiefdom” or intermediate, polity-level society, and may represent a type of mental imagery and template that served as a precursor to the visible iconography on wood, stone, adobe, ceramic, textile and other media of complex Pre-Colombian societies. Ultimately, this schema is a conceptual metaphor: mapping and structuring knowledge of a trophic hierarchy of elements in the natural world to evoke a political and public organizational principle through sensorial experiences and life concerns in the invisible and visible domains of an Andean-like ceremonial format.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101569"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416523000855/pdfft?md5=5cd4252f95a98835adf2ee38f4d801a9&pid=1-s2.0-S0278416523000855-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139936622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Translocal identity construction among Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in northwestern China","authors":"Andrew Womack","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101585","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Over the last century archaeologists have investigated late Neolithic and Bronze Age interaction networks spanning Eurasia, which in the east connected steppe pastoralists with farming communities in what is now northwestern China. While much attention has focused on the adoption and impact of technologies and domesticates from western Asia in eastern Asia, few models have been put forth to explain how these networks formed and functioned and why groups would want to participate in them in the first place. What research has been done on this topic has generally focused on analysis of ceramics and metal objects to suggest long-distance movement between broad geographic regions. Here I suggest that to understand long-distance interactions, we first need to understand the movements of people and goods at the site-specific level, which I theorize using the concept of translocality. I also question the idea that items being moved were primarily seen as commodities whose main purpose was for exchange. By rethinking the origins, function, and stability of networks on the microscale, I suggest that we can better understand participation in longer-distance interactions that eventually played a key role in the formation of state-level societies in eastern Asia.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101585"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139942282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jessica Munson , Matthew Looper , Jonathan Scholnick
{"title":"Ritual networks and the structure of moral communities in Classic Maya society","authors":"Jessica Munson , Matthew Looper , Jonathan Scholnick","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101584","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Ritual plays an important integrative function in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human society. The shared experience of ritual establishes strong bonds between individuals that defines their membership in certain social groups. However, rituals are not timeless traditions, nor do they simply restore social equilibrium. Rather, rituals are active and ongoing social processes that unite and divide across multiple social categories. This paper applies archaeological network methods to analyze the multiscalar structure of ritual traditions across Classic Maya (ca. 300–900 CE) society using hieroglyphic inscriptions from dated and provenienced monuments cataloged in the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (Looper and Macri 1991–2024). For the Classic Maya, public ritual and performance were highly charged political events where meaning and power could be negotiated, creating opportunities for identity formation and community integration. Such contexts helped establish strong moral bonds in Classic Maya society. However, we know relatively little about the specific forms and content of these ritual practices. In this study we construct ritual similarity networks from hieroglyphic inscriptions to analyze the structure and organization of these moral communities as well as the ritual relations that bound them together.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101584"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139898639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}