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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Trade And Transport In Late Roman Syria, Christopher Wade Fletcher
Trade And Transport In Late Roman Syria, Christopher Wade Fletcher
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Despite the relative notoriety and miraculous level of preservation of the Dead Cities of Syria, fundamental questions of economic and subsistence viability remain unanswered. In the 1950s Georges Tchalenko theorized that these sites relied on intensive olive monoculture to mass export olive oil to urban centers. Later excavations discovered widespread cultivation of grains, fruit, and beans which directly contradicted Tchalenko’s assertion of sole reliance on oleoculture. However, innumerable olive presses in and around the Dead Cities still speak to a strong tradition of olive production. This thesis tests the logistical viability of olive oil transportation from the Dead Cities to …
Geoarchaeology Of The Orontes River Floodplain Surrounding Tell Qarqur, Syria, Anna Flora Wieser
Geoarchaeology Of The Orontes River Floodplain Surrounding Tell Qarqur, Syria, Anna Flora Wieser
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This project combines geoarchaeological soil description and GIS analysis of archaeological site distribution to investigate the history of marsh formation in the northern Ghab Basin, located within the Orontes River Valley of western Syria. Tell Qarqur, the archaeological site around which this project is focused, has a continuous occupational sequence throughout the Holocene. Annual inundation of the site by seasonal marshlands suggests that the marsh was either smaller or non-existent in the past, but its history remains unknown. The objectives of this investigation are to interpret the nature of depositional environments, particularly fluvial action, in the vicinity of Tell Qarqur, …
Reappraising The Land Behind Baghdad: Using Corona Satellite Imagery To Reassess The Archaeological Landscape Of The Diyala Plain, Iraq, James Henry Wesolowski
Reappraising The Land Behind Baghdad: Using Corona Satellite Imagery To Reassess The Archaeological Landscape Of The Diyala Plain, Iraq, James Henry Wesolowski
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
High-resolution low-cost declassified CORONA spy satellite imagery is used to detect archaeological sites and relict canals in the Diyala Plain to the east of Baghdad, Iraq. This project seeks to improve upon the ground survey conducted there in the 1950s by providing better geographic control and discovering sites and canals that were not included in the original survey. CORONA imagery provides a sub-2-meter spatial resolution and was acquired shortly after the original ground survey was conducted, providing an excellent medium for comparison. CORONA imagery is subject to significant spatial distortions because of its camera technology and the LPS package for …
Dental Microwear Texture Analysis Of Pliocene Bovids From Four Early Hominin Sites In Eastern Africa: Implications For Paleoenvironmental Dynamics And Human Evolution, Jessica Renee Scott
Dental Microwear Texture Analysis Of Pliocene Bovids From Four Early Hominin Sites In Eastern Africa: Implications For Paleoenvironmental Dynamics And Human Evolution, Jessica Renee Scott
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Many researchers have suggested that Plio-Pleistocene climate change was a motive force for human evolution. The basic idea was that a shift toward drier, more open settings, led to adaptations for bipedality and the consumption of savanna resources, including large grazing mammals. However, more recent paleoenvironmental reconstructions suggest that Pliocene hominins occupied variable or mosaic habitats including both open and closed settings. Many techniques have been used to refine our understanding of the paleoenvironments of eastern Africa; however these have not led to consensus reconstructions. At Kanapoi, ecological diversity analysis indicates that at least part of the site was composed …