Meredith Chesson | University of Notre Dame (original) (raw)

Papers by Meredith Chesson

Ten Thousand Years of Inequality

Gender and Material Culture in Archaeological Perspective, 2000

... Smith, AL (1972) Excavations at Altar de Sacrificios: Architecture, settlement, burials, and ... more ... Smith, AL (1972) Excavations at Altar de Sacrificios: Architecture, settlement, burials, and caches (Cambridge, Mass.). ... 264 Diet and Gender Relationships White, CD and HP Schwarcz (1989)'Ancient Maya Diet: As inferred from isotopic and elemental analysis of human bone ...

Levant, 2003

Page 1. Published by Maney Publishing (c) The Council for British Research in the Levant Introduc... more Page 1. Published by Maney Publishing (c) The Council for British Research in the Levant Introduction The prehistoric site of Dhrac lies near the south end of the Dead Sea, on the road from Mazra to Karak, five metres below ...

Society for Historical Archaeology, 2018

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 2015

Traditionally, the Early Bronze Age (EBA) has been described as the first urban society in the so... more Traditionally, the Early Bronze Age (EBA) has been described as the first urban society in the southern Levant. In comparison to many other regions of the world, such as ancient Mesoamerica, North America, Europe, East Asia, and Mesopotamia, EBA society does not pass the ‘urban litmus test’. In this paper I argue that ultimately the EBA evidence does not fit standard definitions of urbanism because it lacks three key elements: scale of differentiation, increased localized diversity and coherence of identity, and a rural and urban dichotomy in lifeways. Instead, I suggest that we need to analyze and reconstruct EBA society in terms of its own regional, economic, political, and social context, and work to build new ways of understanding EBA society. From the standpoint of an anthropological archaeologist, I believe that people in the EBA were working towards a societal project, a cultural endeavor, that involved population aggregation, the founding of fortified communities, intensific...

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2014

Abstract One of the critical questions related to population aggregation and the development of u... more Abstract One of the critical questions related to population aggregation and the development of urbanism centers on how and why people came together to form and maintain large settlements, overcoming challenges of feeding, organizing, and governing large populations. As one key component of life in large communities, storage practices represent a crucial building block and one of, if not the, most important economic and social foundations for population aggregation and urbanism in all areas of the world. Archaeologists have assumed that small-scale urbanism required enhanced social, economic, and political complexity, often reflected in non-residential storage practices. Focusing on the Near Eastern Bronze Age, this paper offers a detailed assessment of residential storage practices at Numayra, a fortified settlement inhabited from c. 2850–2550 Cal. BC during the southern Levantine Early Bronze Age III. The southern Levantine Early Bronze Age was a small-scale urban society that emerged with population aggregation, some civic administration, and varying degrees of political and economic inequality. Drawing upon detailed evidence for residential storage at the site, we evaluate arguments for social, political and economic inequality at the site and more broadly in the region. This paper examines residential storage practices at Numayra, where 192 storage features and well-preserved artifactual materials suggest that people might have used storage practices simultaneously as both leveling and competitive mechanisms. Numayra’s storage evidence demonstrates that the ways in which people stored and shared food and other storable goods changed over the course of the settlement’s history, providing a nuanced and localized micro-history of storage behaviors in a small, fortified community. This research contributes a detailed understanding of the dynamic relationship between population aggregation and socioeconomic inequality, and explores how we can understand the pathways to and mechanics of population aggregation and urban lifeways at any scale.

Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 1998

Les trois saisons (1993, 1994 et 1996) de fouille organisees sur le site urbain de l'Age du B... more Les trois saisons (1993, 1994 et 1996) de fouille organisees sur le site urbain de l'Age du Bronze Ancien de Tell el-Handaquq Sud avaient pour principal objectif d'identifier et de mettre au jour les structures d'architecture domestique afin d'obtenir des informations sur la vie sociale et economique des habitats fortifies de cette periode. La ceramique recoltee couvre la periode du Bronze Ancien I-IV, mais le materiel du Bronze Ancien II-III domine l'assemblage. Les resultats de la collecte de surface suggerent une occupation du site durant tout le Bronze ancien, cependant concentree aux periodes II et III

Paléorient, 1995

Hors de la Vallée du Jourdain, les recherches approfondies en Jordanie septentrionale sur le Bron... more Hors de la Vallée du Jourdain, les recherches approfondies en Jordanie septentrionale sur le Bronze Ancien II sont encore rares; les prospections au Nord de la Jordanie ont toutefois permis d'identifier dans toute la région des gisements de cette période. Prospections, ...

Performing death: Social analyses of funerary traditions …, 2007

... In a 2005 presentation on houses in the European Neolithic, Dusan Boric (in press) stated tha... more ... In a 2005 presentation on houses in the European Neolithic, Dusan Boric (in press) stated that in his research area, the dead were the ... In thinking about the experience of living and dying in a body, one interesting question for lived experience of the dead and living is this ...

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2008

The Archaeology of Anxiety, 2016

During the Early Bronze Age I, on the eve of establishing fortified towns on the southeastern Dea... more During the Early Bronze Age I, on the eve of establishing fortified towns on the southeastern Dead Sea Plain, people buried their dead in secondary mortuary rituals in cemeteries at Bab adh-Dhra‵, Fifa, and an-Naqa/es-Safi. While we know nothing of the living communities or their primary mortuary practices, we know the EBA people carefully collected even the smallest bones of their dead and transported them down to this area for burial in shaft or cist tombs. Drawing on ethnographic analogies and recently published skeletal analyses from Bab adh-Dhra‵, I explore potential anxieties attached to the living and dying in these communities.

Paléorient, 2018

The Early Bronze Age (EBA) in the Southern Levant saw the emergence of socioeconomic inequality, ... more The Early Bronze Age (EBA) in the Southern Levant saw the emergence of socioeconomic inequality, fortified towns, and craft specialization. Livestock production was key to facilitating these socioeconomic changes, but the precise forms of animal husbandry and the economic contributions of domestic animal herding to EBA economies in the Southern Levant remain underexplored. Here, we investigate faunal remains recovered from Tall al-Handaquq South (THS), a walled Early Bronze III settlement located in the northern Jordan Valley. Zooarchaeological analyses indicate that small-stock (sheep and goat) herding formed the basis of subsistence and surplus production, while cattle husbandry provided much needed labour for intensive cereal production. The high relative abundance of cattle and the preference for goats, which thrive on low quality forage typical for more marginal landscapes beyond the valley floor, over sheep may indicate use of a more extensive herding strategy that kept herds off of agricultural fields while maintaining animal production. Notably, caprine management systems shifted throughout the EB III at THS from strategies emphasizing the optimal production of meat obtained from prime-aged sheep and goats to one focused on the exploitation of older animals, perhaps for fiber production. During this time, however, goats continued to outnumber sheep, possibly reflecting the longterm importance of grain production, which is expected to be reflected in the faunal record by high proportions of goats and cattle. Comparing the data from THS to other sites in the Southern Levant, the data indicate an evolution towards a greater focus on agricultural and livestock commodity production, factors that may have contributed to the abandonment of THS and, perhaps, other walled sites in the region.L’âge du Bronze ancien (BA) au Levant Sud est marqué par le développement des inégalités socioéconomiques et l’émergence de villes fortifiées et de productions spécialisées. La production de bétail, en particulier de ruminants, est un élément clé qui a favorisé ces changements, mais les formes précises de l’élevage et leurs contributions aux économies du BA dans le Sud du Levant restent encore mal comprises. Nous présentons ici une analyse des restes fauniques trouvés à Tall al-Handaquq Sud (THS), un village fortifié datant du début du Bronze ancien III, situé dans le nord de la vallée du Jourdain. Les analyses archéozoologiques indiquent que l’élevage des petits ruminants (ovins et caprins) constituait la base de la production de subsistance et de surplus, tandis que l’élevage bovin a permis la production intensive de céréales. L’abondance relativement élevée des bovins et l’exploitation préférentielle des chèvres qui peuvent se nourrir de végétaux de plus faible qualité au-dessus des fonds de vallée, par rapport aux moutons, suggèrent un élevage plus extensif qui maintient les troupeaux hors des champs agricoles tout en assurant la production animale. Ainsi, les systèmes de gestion des caprinés ont évolué au cours du Bronze ancien III, passant de stratégies ciblant la production optimale de viande de moutons et de chèvres en pleine force de l’âge à un élevage orienté sur l’exploitation d’animaux plus âgés, peut-être pour la production intensive de fibres (toison). À la même période, cependant, les chèvres continuent à être plus abondantes que les moutons, ce qui pourrait refléter l’importance de la production de céréales. Dans l’ensemble, les données indiquent une évolution vers une plus grande attention portée sur la production agricole et animale, facteurs qui peuvent avoir contribué à l’abandon de THS et, peut-être, d’autres sites fortifiés dans la région.Price Max D., Makarewicz Cheryl A., Chesson Meredith S. Domestic animal production and consumption at Tall al-Handaquq South (Jordan) in the Early Bronze III. In: Paléorient, 2018, vol. 44, n°1. pp. 75-91

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2020

The high mountains of the Mediterranean are often considered as refuges of ancient traditions, pa... more The high mountains of the Mediterranean are often considered as refuges of ancient traditions, particularly of pastoralism and brigandage. Is this image true? This paper reports the first systematic archaeological research on Aspromonte, Southern Calabria. Archaeological, cartographic and air photo evidence suggests that people used the high mountains in all periods from the Neolithic onwards. However, early usage was low-intensity and probably for special purposes such as iron-smelting, charcoal-burning and logging; only in the Classical Greek period was there sustained effort at inhabiting higher areas. The real development of the mountains came in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the 1920s onwards, there were large-scale, state-fostered projects for economic exploitation of forests, political control of territory, and creation of a recreational landscape. These endeavors tied into modernist ideas of the state, as well as period concepts such as Alpinism and healt...