Chalcolithic Archaeology

Slouching toward Beersheva: Chalcolithic Mortuary Practices in Local and Regional Context, in The Near East in The Southwest, Essays in Honor of William G. Dever, (B. Alpert-Nakhai, ed.), pp. 45-67. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 58. American Schools of Oriental Research. (2003)

by Alex Joffe

The Gilat Woman: Female Iconography, Chalcolithic Cult, and the End of Southern Levantine Prehistory. With J.P. Dessel and R. Hallote. Near Eastern Archaeology 61/1-2:8-23 (2001)

by Alex Joffe

Redefining Chronology and Terminology for the Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant. With J.P. Dessel. Current Anthropology 36/3:507-518 (1995)

by Alex Joffe

Estudio preliminar de los quelonios del yacimiento calcolítico (Holoceno) de Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, España) / Preliminary study of the chelonians from the chalcolithic site (Holocene) of Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, Spain)

by Arantxa Daza Perea

Pérez-García, A., Murelaga, X., Liesau, C., Morales, A., Llorente, L. y Daza, A. (2011).
Geogaceta, 50 (2),189-192

RESUMEN
El objetivo de este artículo es determinar los taxones de quelonios presentes en el yacimiento holoceno... more RESUMEN
El objetivo de este artículo es determinar los taxones de quelonios presentes en el yacimiento holoceno de Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, España). Debido a la abundancia de especímenes allí hallados, es posible identificar la presencia de un representante de Emydidae (Emys) y de un miembro de Geoemydinei (Mauremys). Este es el primer yacimiento madrileño donde se reconoce la presencia de ambos taxones.

Palabras clave: Chelonii, Mauremys, Emys, Calcolítico, Holoceno.


ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to determine the turtle taxa present in the Holocene site of Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, Spain). Due to the abundance of specimens, it is possible to identify the presence of a representative of Emydidae (Emys) and one of Geoemydinei (Mauremys). This is the first site of Madrid where the presence of both taxa is recognized.

Key-words: Chelonii, Mauremys, Emys, Calcolithic, Holocene.

Excavaciones en la Rambla de la Alquería (Jumilla, Murcia)

by Francisco Gil González

Verdolay, 7, 1995. Murcia.
Emiliano Hernández Carrión, Francisco Gil González

Rambla de la Alquería is a multiple burial of the Late Chalcolithic.
It contained items of the Bell Beaker... more Rambla de la Alquería is a multiple burial of the Late Chalcolithic.
It contained items of the Bell Beaker “package” such as cupper arrowheads of Palmela type and a piramidal V-perforated button, but not Bell Beaker pottery.

Rambla de la Alquería (Jumilla, Murcia, Spain) es un enterramiento múltiple del Calcolítico Final. Contenía elementos del “Ajuar campaniforme”, como puntas de tipo Palmela y un botón piramidal con perforación en V, pero no cerámica campaniforme.

Memoria de las excavaciones de urgencia en la Rambla de la Alquería (Jumilla, Murcia).

by Francisco Gil González

Memorias de Arqueología, 10, 1995. Murcia.
Emiliano Hernández Carrión, Francisco Gil González

Rambla de la Alquería is a multiple burial of the Late Chalcolithic.
It contained items of the Bell Beaker... more Rambla de la Alquería is a multiple burial of the Late Chalcolithic.
It contained items of the Bell Beaker “package” such as cupper arrowheads of Palmela type and a piramidal V-perforated button, but not Bell Beaker pottery.

Rambla de la Alquería (Jumilla, Murcia, Spain) es un enterramiento múltiple del Calcolítico Final. Contenía elementos del “Ajuar campaniforme”, como puntas de tipo Palmela y un botón piramidal con perforación en V, pero no cerámica campaniforme.

The Chalcolithic of Southeast Anatolia

by Rana Özbal

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia 10,000-323 BC, edited by: Sharon Steadman and Gregory McMahon, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 174-204

The Chalcolithic Period in southwest Asia covers over 3,000 years, from the beginning of the sixth to the end of the... more The Chalcolithic Period in southwest Asia covers over 3,000 years, from the beginning of the sixth to the end of the fourth millennium cal b.c.e . In comparison with the well-researched Neolithic and the Urban Revolutions between which it is sandwiched, the Chalcolithic has received considerably less attention. Because it is geographically part of the Fertile Crescent, the archaeological styles, cultural elements, and developments in southeast Anatolia were closely connected to those in northern Mesopotamia. Trade and economic relations continuing over the millennia and analogous social and political trajectories have contributed to a high degree of regional interdependence. Moreover, the lack of well-defi ned local southeast Anatolian ceramic sequences (excluding perhaps the Amuq region), has resulted in a threefold division of the cultural chronology based on the better defined northern Mesopotamian Halaf, Ubaid, and Uruk or Late Chalcolithic Phases.

A. Depalmas, La Cultura di Monte Claro

by Anna Depalmas

Lo studio opera una classificazione tipologica dei materiali ceramici noti per l'aspetto culturale Monte Claro. Lo studio opera una classificazione tipologica dei materiali ceramici noti per l'aspetto culturale Monte Claro.

Chapple, R. M. 2011 'Irish Copper Age houses in a radiocarbon landscape: a reply to Dr Charles Mount' Blogspot post

by Robert M Chapple

2012 (Gil J. Stein) “Food Preparation, Social Context, and Ethnicity in a Prehistoric Mesopotamian Colony” Pp 47-63 in: The Menial Art of Cooking: Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation, edited by Sarah R. Graff and Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria. University Press of Colorado, Boulder, CO.

by Gil Stein

This chapter uses food preparation and consumption as a way to examine ethnicity and inter-cultural power relations in... more This chapter uses food preparation and consumption as a way to examine ethnicity and inter-cultural power relations in the worlds earliest known colonial network – that established by Mesopotamia in its surrounding regions during the Uruk period (ca. 3700-3100 BC). Food preparation and consumption often occur in different social contexts, roughly corresponding to the contrast between the domestic and more public or socially inclusive spheres. For this reason, these two activities can reflect different context-dependent assertions of social identity (gender, class, ethnicity) and different degrees of consciousness in practice (habitus vs. intentional symbolic statements). As recent analyses by New World historical archaeologists have shown, these contrasts can be especially marked in multi-ethnic culture contact situations, especially those involving cross-cultural marriage in colonial encounters.

Excavations at the site of Hacınebi along the Euphrates valley trade route in southeast Turkey. Excavations indicate that in the mid fourth millennium BC, the earliest state societies of the Uruk culture in southern Mesopotamia established a trading enclave in the midst of this local Anatolian settlement. The Uruk enclave at Hacnebi forms part of the broader phenomenon called the “Uruk expansion” – the world’s earliest known colonial network. The organization of economic, social, and political relations between Uruk settlements and local communities in the Uruk expansion remains a hotly debated topic. Evidence for long term peaceful co-existence of Mesopotamians and Anatolians at Hacınebi suggests that social and economic relations were based on strategies of alliance rather than colonialist domination. In this paper I compare several aspects of food preparation (food choice, butchery, cooking practices and cooking vessels) with the social context of food consumption. Artifacts from the more domestic social context of food preparation are strongly Anatolian in style, while those from more public contexts of consumption are predominantly of Uruk Mesopotamian styles. Significantly, local Anatolian cooking pot styles predominate even in archaeological contexts that are otherwise overwhelmingly Uruk Mesopotamian in character. The evidence is consistent with the interpretation of gendered ethnic differences between the social arenas of food preparation and consumption. I suggest that the Mesopotamian colonists at Hacınebi forged marriage alliances with local elites, forming multi-cultural households composed of Uruk males and Anatolian females.

2001 (Gil J. Stein) “ Indigenous Social Complexity at Hacınebi (Turkey) and the Organization of Colonial Contact in the Uruk Expansion” pp. 265-305 in Mitchell Rothman (ed.) Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors: Cross-cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation.. SAR Press, Santa Fe.

by Gil Stein

Палагута И.В. Системы расселения ранних земледельцев Карпато-Поднепровья: опыт изучения микрогрупп памятников культуры Триполье-Кукутени // Археологические вести, 7. Санкт-Петербург, 2000. С. 53–62

by Ilya Palaguta

Palaguta I.V. SETTLEMENT SYSTEMS OF EARLY AGRICULTURISTS IN CARPATO-DNIEPER REGION: A STUDY EXPERIENCE OF... more Palaguta I.V. SETTLEMENT SYSTEMS OF EARLY AGRICULTURISTS IN CARPATO-DNIEPER REGION: A STUDY EXPERIENCE OF TRIPOLYE-CUCUTENI SITES MICROGROUPS.
The study of settlement systems is one of the perspective directions in current archaeology and this theme isn't sufficiently devised for Tripolye-Cucuteni culture. The location of Tripolye sites in groups was explained as the result of hierarchic or mobile settling models. Both of the models might be proved by the analysis of ceramic assemblages of neighboring sites which can reflect the chronological differences.
A settlement group of Tripolye BI/2 — Cucuteni A4 period near Chiugur river valley in Northern Moldavia is the most explored at present. It includes six sites: Drutsa I, Drutsa VI, Duruitorea Noua I, Duruitorea Vechi, Varatic VI, Varatic XII. The distance between neighbouring sites is not more than 2-3 km. Three sites were excavated.
The ceramic assemblages of excavated sites reflect the typological changes of basic pottery group with relief decorations. These changes are: 1) the statistically fixable transformations of the incised to fluted and than to bichrome painted decoration and 2) the deconstruction of some ornamental compositions.
The minimal chronological distance between settlements is confirmed by the coexistence of different types in the same assemblages. The following sequence of settlements were retraced in this group: Drutsa I (with the most archaic features), Duruitorea Noua I (Varatic XII, Varatic VI), Duruitorea Vechi (transitional to Cucuteni A-B period).
The similar chronological difference between neighboring sites were also retraced in the settlement group of Tripolye BI-BII — Cucuteni A-B period in Solonets river valley in Central Moldavia.
Such investigations permit to reconstruct the formation of settlement groups as the result of the mobility of population. Every settlement usually has only one stratigraphic horizon which existed during 50-75 years. It gives the possibilities to reconstruct the duration of phases of Tripolye-Cucuteni culture.

First Direct Evidence of Chalcolithic Footwear from the Near Eastern Highlands

by Ron Pinhasi

Areni-1 Cave, Armenia: A Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age settlement and ritual site in the southern Caucasus

by Ron Pinhasi

The beginning of the Bronze Age in the southern Caucasus has been thought to coincide with the
appearance of the... more The beginning of the Bronze Age in the southern Caucasus has been thought to coincide with the
appearance of the Kura Araxes (KA) culture around 3500 CAL B.C. KA artifacts are known not only from the
southern Caucasus but also from sites in Anatolia, Iran, and the Levant. Recent discoveries from Areni-1
Cave in the Vayots Dzor region of Armenia demonstrate that the origin of the distinctive KA artifact
assemblage lies in the Late Chalcolithic of the late 5th to early 4th millennia B.C. The cave contains rich
assemblages of desiccated botanical remains that allow the site to be precisely dated and that
demonstrate that its inhabitants exploited a wide variety of domesticated and wild plants. It would appear
that from 4000 CAL B.C. onwards, people used Areni-1 Cave for habitation and for keeping goats, storing
plant foods, and ritual purposes; unusual for this time period are ceramic vessels containing the skulls of
children.

L'Énéolithique en Italie

by Daniel Steiniger

Camino de las Yeseras' ivory collection:advances in analysis technology used inidentifying raw material

by Corina Liesau von Lettow-Vorbeck

C. Liesau, A. Banerjee & J.-O. Schwarz: In C. Blasco, C. Liesau, P. Ríos (Eds.) (2011): Yacimientos calcolíticos con campaniforme de la región de Madrid. Patrimonio Arqueológico/6 Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: 381-386.

The aim of this contribution is to reveal the possibilities applied to identify bone artifacts recovered from two Bell... more The aim of this contribution is to reveal the possibilities applied to identify bone artifacts recovered from two Bell Beaker tombs. Teh great variety in mammal teeth resources so called "ivories" as proboscideans, narwhal, sperm whale, walrus, hippopotamus, needs the combination o several techniques to assure the identification. In this case we applied the FTIR and micro-TC to observe the raw material characters.

SUBARTU: The Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Preliminary Report of the 2011 Season.

by Konstantinos Kopanias

Submitted for publication in "Subartu Journal, Archaeology, Assyriology, Heritage of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia" (April 2012).

Co-authored with Claudia BEUGER, Tristan CARTER, Sherry FOX,
Angelos HADJIKOUMIS, Georgia KOURTESSI-PHILIPPAKIS,
Alexandra LIVARDA, John MACGINNIS

Preliminary Report of the Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Season 2011 Preliminary Report of the Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Season 2011

VI. Estudios arqueofaunísticos en Camino de las Yeseras. 1. La Arqueozoología, un elemento clave en la concepción espacial de Camino de las Yeseras. 2. Los restos de mamíferos del ámbito doméstico y funerario

by Corina Liesau von Lettow-Vorbeck

In C. Blasco, C. Liesau, P. Ríos (Eds.) (2011): Yacimientos calcolíticos con campaniforme de la región de Madrid. Patrimonio Arqueológico/6 Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: 167-198.

From the faunal sample recovered in different Chalcolithic features, it is striking the high ratio of consumed... more From the faunal sample recovered in different Chalcolithic features, it is striking the high ratio of consumed domestic animals over the hunted species. At present, the apparent scarcity of bird, reptile, fish, mollusk and mite remains appear in punctual contexts, and their main interest as environmental indicators indeed is.
Although a comprehensive evaluation of the role played by fauna - from both spatial and chronological perspectives - remains to be assessed, during the Chalcolithic occupation cattle exploitation from porcine, sheep and goat is enhanced. The distribution from the different structures varies, but we must point out that porcine has a similar to the ovicaprine.
In livestock management, the inhabitants from Camino de las Yeseras take advantage of the young animals (tender meat) and the adults are primarily exploited for secondary products (milk derivatives and their active strength). The senile animals are rarely found, providing additional evidence for the wealth of their stock.
In some cases, faunal remains also appear in funerary contexts, as offerings deposited near the burial, or as possible evidence of feasting practices with a different spatial distribution depending on the anatomic part, uniquely observed in a Bell Beakers tomb. In other cases, we find ritual deposits of aurochs crania and of dogs, some of them located in strategic spatial distribution.

Une représentation de bâtiment découverte dans le tell de Luncaviţa, point Cetăţuia

by Florian Mihail

Landscape change and archaeological settlements in the lower Danube valley and delta from early Neolithic to Chalcolithic time: A review

by Florian Mihail