Comparative archaeology

The archaeological record of the American Eastern Woodlands has been the subject of research on the origins and organization of complex societies for decades. Much of this research, ultimately grounded in political-economic theories of accumulation, underscores how foraging, horticultural, and agricultural societies manifested complexity in different ways belying their similar signposts of complexity, including monumental architecture, long-distance exchange, and craft specialization. Here, we contend that aspects of these material practices, which span the Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, and Early Mississippian periods, are essential for sketching a historical ontology of social complexity in indigenous eastern North America. Drawing on political-economic theories developed in sub-Saharan Africa, we propose that the deep time ebb and flow of complex social formations in the Eastern Woodlands relied less on the quantitative accumulation of wealth in things and people and more on the qualitative composition of the diverse knowledge embedded in people and things. We discuss Poverty Point, Ohio Hopewell, and Cahokia from this vantage point in an effort to begin telling a "big history" of the Eastern Woodlands outside the frame of social evolution.

The paper analyzes the settlement locations of three archaeological societies of the Northern Hemisphere above 48°N in terms of their exposure to winter winds. In order to explain settlement decision-making, we apply computational models to three archaeological societies to test whether residence location and architecture was chosen with regard to the best heat preservation strategy. We conclude that the test societies represent a spectrum of strategies from the flexible adaptation to the combination of adaptation and niche construction. The flexible adaptation implied seasonal movements from the most to the least wind-exposed locations, while the niche construction combined with choosing the least-exposed location helped to maintain warmth while maintaining access to vital resources. This conclusion provides a possibility to explain the formation of social complexity in early complex societies as a result of cooperation rather than as a result of social conflict or aggrandizing behavior.

This paper presents preliminary results of research that models interactions between ancient humans and their raw material environments through satellite imagery mapping of copper in Oman and obsidian in Ethiopia. This research forms part of Dumitru's upcoming dissertation, which employs a multi-scalar and diachronic approach to examine the dynamics of social networks at varying spatial scales across multiple time periods. The case studies examined involve different resources, technologies, and patterns of social interaction. The focus on socio-technical developments clarifies the interaction of human (producers and consumers) and non-human (environments and technologies) elements to address economic geography. Most fundamentally, the investigations examine the role of economic networks in the development of ancient sociopolitical complexity and the rise of secondary state-level societies in Ethiopia and Oman, whose histories are less well-known but are nevertheless important to understanding state formation worldwide.

Introduction
Wind is a natural movement of air of any velocity on a large scale. In the global scale, it caused by the Sun's radiation that heats the atmosphere and the rotation of the Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere above 30°, the westerlies are the prevailing winds, blowing from the west. They play a crucial role in creating climate by carrying precipitation and warm air from the tropical zones and causing weather variation by convergence with cold and denser polar winds .
In the archaeological sense, the study of wind may help to understand better the motivation of the ancient settlers. Once a settlement is about to emerge, people would need to rationally choose a suitable spot considering many factors such as availability of freshwater, hunting or pasture grounds, arable lands,  etc. The wind is responsible for the everyday life experience and, thus, can be a considerable threat for a community. In the latitudes above 50°, wind chill is an additional factor in forming of everyday experience during the wintertime.

The most successful approach to study the organization of early complex societies is through diachronic, multidisciplinary, multiscalar projects aimed at the investigation of entire microregions. This approach enables the study of social phenomena in their wider context, with results that are inconceivable through projects focusing either on microscale archaeological patterns, or broad regions following tropes of early culture-historical narratives. The contextual variability resulting from the application of intensive comparative methods in various microregions could inform us about changing, conflicting ideas, identities and alternative articulations of social, political and economic processes. By revealing such multivocality and complexity of past societies systematic microregional studies expose social dynamics and facilitate new research questions to be
addressed. Following the collapse of the Iron Curtain a diversity of microregional archaeological approaches to Central and Eastern European Bronze Age societies have been developed articulating different elements of postprocessual archaeologies with national archaeological traditions. The objective of this introduction paper is to provide a theoretical framework for our session and to discuss the virtues of varied microregional approaches applied by Bronze Age archaeologists of Central and Eastern Europe.

For archaeological insights into daily life and health care, pharmacies, barbershops, orphanages, hospitals and public bathe prove to be instructive places and institutions. The building structures and rubbish pits as well as the cemeteries of monasteries and hospitals provide important finds.

This master's thesis is intended as a foundation for further development of methods for digital marine osteoarchaeology. The main purpose of this thesis was to examine and problematise the process of locating, documenting, and analyzing skeletal remains in marine archaeological, and other hard to reach sites. Three forms of osteological analysis' was performed and assessed: one based on analysis of physical skeletal remains, another based on 2D documented skeletal remains, and a third on analysis on 3D reconstructed skeletal remains. The secondary purpose of this thesis was to problematise the taphonomic effects on bodies, body parts, and bones in marine environments, necessary for the evaluation of the different methods. The analysis' has been conducted on source material provided by the research projects for the naval ships Mars and Gribshunden, the National Maritime Museum of Sweden, the Sandby Borg project, and the Çatalhöyük project. In addition, a test was carried out, with eight volunteer osteology students at Campus Gotland, Uppsala University, during a seminar exercise. The results collected through the osteological analysis' performed on the three different formats and the students osteology exercise could be used in order to highlight a variation of data available in the different formats. The results was then used in order to create a basis for future digital documentation methods that may be applied in the field. The secondary aim of this thesis was addressed through the use of the naval ships Mars and Gribshunden as case examples in order to address the limited amount of skeletal remains located so far at the marine archaeological sites.

The inhabited environment is crucial to global challenges. Although the humanities enrich our understanding of how human beings adapt their environment, they are underrepresented in global development debates. As the availability of digital data and technology rapidly grows, the opportunities to directly relate humanities research to the social and environmental sciences improves. Notably, in tropical archaeology, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is causing a 'revolution' by revealing huge swaths of urban landscapes. This new data source and the perspectives it affords, are changing the role and relevance of (historical) humanities knowledge in relation to global development. The Digital Humanities (DH) and Geohumanities are emergent fields with increasing resources. They invite exploration of how to harness and nurture interdisciplinary and comparative contributions. By embracing new digital data sources, acquisition, and manipulation techniques, Digital Humanities have the potential to contextualise and inform how current developmental practice is shaping socio-cultural inhabitation of the landscape.

Interactions between human societies and the environment that they inhabit have been a controversial topic in archaeology for at least the past fifty years. Currently, modern theoretical approaches take this subject as a key issue in their research agenda. This paper presents a review of the main outcomes of several archaeological and multidisciplinary South American projects related to this theme. The case-studies discussed here are all located within arid settings, and can be grouped into three broad geographic areas: Puna (or Altiplano) of northwestern Argentina, Cuyo (west-central Argentina), and southern Patagonia. These regions cover a wide latitudinal range extending from 22° to 52° S. They were selected for comparison due to environmental similarities, and a common record of past climate impacts mainly related to the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). Although the impacts of these climatic changes were locally heterogeneous in their intensity and the quality of the available information is regionally variable, they provide a base-line for comparison and supra-regional integration.The integration of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data on this broad supra-regional spatial scale allows us to identify interesting historical trajectories associated with particular time periods. As an example, there are some spatial rearrangements of large populations during the MCA, in the three areas. Additionally, there are variable patterns in the changes associated with the different social contexts that impose specific demographic and economic constraints. Finally, this study sets the basis for new questions and provides a guide to the methodological and theoretical issues that we need to address in order to answer them.