Çatalhöyük is a tell of a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia,which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 6400 BC and flourished around 7000 BC. In July 2012,it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Post-processual archaeology,which is sometimes alternatively referred to as the interpretative archaeologies by its adherents,is a movement in archaeological theory that emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. Despite having a vague series of similarities,post-processualism consists of "very diverse strands of thought coalesced into a loose cluster of traditions". Within the post-processualist movement,a wide variety of theoretical viewpoints have been embraced,including structuralism and Neo-Marxism,as have a variety of different archaeological techniques,such as phenomenology.
James Mellaart FBA was an English archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was expelled from Turkey when he was suspected of involvement with the antiquities black market. He was also involved in a string of controversies,including the so-called mother goddess controversy in Anatolia,which eventually led to his being banned from excavations in Turkey in the 1960s. After his death,it was discovered that Mellaart had forged many of his "finds",including murals and inscriptions used to discover the Çatalhöyük site.
The Vinča symbols are a set of undeciphered symbols found on artifacts from the Neolithic Vinča culture and other "Old European" cultures of Central and Southeast Europe. Many scholars agree that the "writing" itself is not based on any language whatsoever and it's mostly symbolic They have sometimes been described as an example of proto-writing. The symbols went out of use around 3500 BC.
The Vinča culture,also known as Turdașculture,Turdaș–Vinča culture or Vinča-Turdașculture,is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southeast Europe,dated to the period 5400–4500 BC. It is named for its type site,Vinča-Belo Brdo,a large tell settlement discovered by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasićin 1908. As with other cultures,it is mainly distinguished by its settlement pattern and ritual behaviour. It was particularly noted for its distinctive dark-burnished pottery.
Ian Richard Hodder is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980 and 1990. At this time he had such students as Henrietta Moore,Ajay Pratap,Nandini Rao,Mike Parker Pearson,Paul Lane,John Muke,Sheena Crawford,Nick Merriman,Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. As of 2002,he is Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University in the United States.
Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age culture or civilisation in Southeast Europe,centred in the Lower Danube Valley. Old Europe is also referred to in some literature as the Danube civilisation.
Gender archaeology is a method of studying past societies through their material culture by closely examining the social construction of gender identities and relations.
Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender,but also considers gender in tandem with other factors,such as sexuality,race,or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the uncritical application of modern,Western norms and values to past societies. It is additionally concerned with increasing the representation of women in the discipline of archaeology,and reducing androcentric bias within the field.
Sesklo is a village in Greece that is located near Volos,a city located within the municipality of Aisonia. The municipality is located within the regional unit of Magnesia that is located within the administrative region of Thessaly. During the prehistory of Southeastern Europe,Sesklo was a significant settlement of Neolithic Greece,before the advent of the Bronze Age and millennia before the Mycenaean period.
Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1940.
Margaret W. Conkey is an American archaeologist and academic,who specializes in the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic in the French Pyrénées. Her research focuses on cave art produced during this period. Conkey is noted as one of the first archaeologists to explore the issues of gender and feminist perspectives in archaeology and in past human societies,using feminist theory to reinterpret images and objects from the Paleolithic Era or the late Ice Age. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California,Berkeley. She was named by Discover magazine in their 2002 article,"The 50 Most Important Women in Science".
Vinča-Belo Brdo is an archaeological site in Vinča,a suburb of Belgrade,Serbia. The tell of Belo Brdo is almost entirely made up of the remains of human settlement,and was occupied several times from the Early Neolithic through to the Middle Ages. The most substantial archaeological deposits are from the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Vinča culture,of which Vinča-Belo Brdo is the type site.
Sarah Milledge Nelson was an American archaeologist and Distinguished Professor Emerita from the Department of Anthropology,University of Denver,United States.
Prehistory,also called pre-literary history,is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols,marks,and images appears very early among humans,but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,200 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted,with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places,and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Medvednjak is an archaeological site in central Serbia,in Šumadija region,3 km (1.9 mi) from center of Smederevska Palanka.
In the archaeology of Neolithic Europe,the burned house horizon is the geographical extent of the phenomenon of presumably intentionally burned settlements.
The Starčevo–Karanovo I-II–Körös culture or Starčevo–Körös–Crișculture is a grouping of two related Neolithic archaeological cultures in Southeastern Europe:the Starčevo culture and the Körös or Crișculture.
Joan Margaret Gero was an American archaeologist and pioneer of feminist archaeology. Her research focused on gender and power issues in prehistory,particularly in the Andean regions of Argentina and Peru.
Christine Hastorf is an archaeologist and is currently Professor in the Anthropology department at the University of California,Berkeley. Her research focuses on agriculture,political complexity,gender,archaeobotany,and the archaeology of the Andes.
