K C Twi
Biographic Data
| ID | 9741 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K C Twi |
| GIVEN NAMES | K C |
| FAMILY NAME | Twi |
| SIGNATURE | TWI K C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stony Brook University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7609-853X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 354 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Strontium Varied Across the City
Strontium Isotope Analysis and the Southern Mesopotamian City
A Coupled Humanitarian and Biodiversity Crisis in Western Madagascar
No gentry but grave-makers
Archaeologists have adopted the Gini coefficient to evaluate unequal accumulations of material, supporting narratives modelled on modern inequality discourse. Proxies are defined for wealth and the household, to render 21st century-style economic tensions perceptible in the past. This ‘property paradigm’ treats material culture as a generic rather than substantive factor in unequal pasts. We question this framing while suggesting that the Gini co…
Animals of the Sealands
The Sealand Dynasty ruled in southern Mesopotamia ca. 1740–1460(?) b.c.e., but Sealand archaeological deposits are extraordinarily rare, and the dynasty itself is known almost entirely from a limited number of texts. Sealand Dynasty social and ecological practices remain mysterious, and ceremonial activities are at best poorly understood. Faunal remains from the small site of Tell Sakhariya in southern Iraq provide our first glimpse into the Seal…
Horses, Hemiones, Hydruntines? Assessing the Reliability of Dental Criteria for Assigning Species to Southwest Asian Equid Remains
Many faunal assemblages across southwest Asia contain the remains of multiple wild equid species, which may reflect individual prehistoric human populations' use of different hunting and/or landscape exploitation strategies. Accurate equid species assignments are therefore important. This paper tests the extent to which zooarchaeologists agree on equid species assignments made using commonly used zooarchaeological dental identification criteria. …
Methodological and Definitional Issues in the Archaeology of Food
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis at Neolithic Çatalhöyük
Data Sharing Reveals Complexity in the Westward Spread of Domestic Animals across Neolithic Turkey
This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward …
Locating Land Use at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, T urkey
We evaluate local versus distant land‐use models at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, central Anatolia, using strontium isotope analysis of sheep tooth enamel and charred plant remains. Interpretation of strontium in sheep tooth sequences is constrained by previous oxygen isotope work, which largely excludes summer movement to the mountains but cannot distinguish between herding on the plain and the closest upland‐zone, N eogene limestone terraces. We esta…
The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity
Taking the Bull by the Horns
Animal symbolism is a ubiquitous and powerful component of human ideology. Cattle were clearly the preeminent symbolic taxon in the Southwest Asian Neolithic, and archaeologists have argued that not just cattle, but specifi cally bulls, were key symbols. However, the biological attributes, including the sex, of the cattle used in Neolithic symbolic contexts remain largely unestablished. Furthermore, most of the cattle representations on which the…
Building memories
Russell N., Martin L. & Twiss K.C. 2009. — Building memories: commemorative deposits at Çatalhöyük. Anthropozoologica 44(1): 103-128.Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey, is well known for its incorporation of animal parts into architecture: bucrania, horns in benches, etc. We examine the less visible placement of items in pits or built into remodeling inside houses to commemorate particular events. Animal parts feature prominently in these deposits, typ…
Private pantries and celebrated surplus
In the Neolithic megasite at Çatalhöyük families lived side by side in conjoined dwellings, like a pueblo. It can be assumed that people were always in and out of each others' houses - in this case via the roof. Social mechanisms were needed to make all this run smoothly, and in a tour-de-force of botanical, faunal and spatial analysis the authors show how it worked. Families stored their own produce of grain, fruit, nuts and condiments in specia…
Plants and Animals Together
This paper explores plant and animal distributions inside a Neolithic burned house in order to investigate domestic organization in an early farming society. We use GIS to analyze the spatial distributions of plant and animal remains found inside Building 52 at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. We examine how plant and animal stores, food and nonfood materials, and wild and domestic taxa were configured spatially. Results shed light on the logistic…
Transformations in an early agricultural society
[Foragers and Farmers in the Japanese Islands] Problems of Cultural Change in the Late and Final Jomon
Arson or Accident? The Burning of a Neolithic House at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary research on the recently excavated Building 52 at the Anatolian Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. This building provides the richest combination of faunal, botanical, and lithic assemblages of all those uncovered since work at the site was renewed in 1995. Occupation of the building ended with a high-temperature fire, after which a portion of it was emptied and reoccupied.Our research synthesizes n…
An assessment of the archaeological applicability of faunal ageing methods based on dental wear
Mortality profiles are central to our reconstructions of past animal hunting and herding strategies. This article considers five different ageing methods based on the progressive wear of hypsodont herbivore teeth. The Quadratic Crown Height Method and the Linear Crown Height Method are based on tooth crown height. The Grant and both Payne methods are based on occlusal wear patterns. Statistical correlations and mortality profiles constructed usin…
The Neolithic of the southern Levant
The Neolithic period of the southern Levant was an era of tremendous change. Over the course of the Neolithic, the gradual transition from foraging to agriculture involved not merely economic innovations, but also profound shifts in population size, social organization, and technology. This represents possibly the earliest, and certainly one of the earliest, instances of the transition to agriculture. The advent of farming altered human demograph…
New light on early caprine herding strategies from isotope analysis
The Zooarchaeology of Tel Tif’dan (Wadi Fidan 001), Southern Jordan
The southern Levantine Late PPNB (LPPNB) represents a critical era in the long transition to agriculture, as it was during the LPPNB that regional farming populations consolidated their dependence on domestic animals. However, LPPNB animal economic strategies are known from relatively few village sites in the southern Levant, severely limiting consideration of the relative effects of local environmental variation and cultural practices. This pape…
A Modified Boar Skull from Çatalhöyük
A boar skull with unusual modifications was discovered in 2004 at the famous Anatolian Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. The cranium and the mandible were both present and in articulation. Most of the mandibular cheek teeth had been deliberately removed. The anterior of the cranium was absent as well, but the upper canine teeth were found in approximately correct anatomical position. Wheat and barley phytoliths were found in the back of the mouth. Th…
Neolithic Revolution
Shaʾar Hagolan 1
The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity
New light on early caprine herding strategies from isotope analysis
Private pantries and celebrated surplus
In the Neolithic megasite at Çatalhöyük families lived side by side in conjoined dwellings, like a pueblo. It can be assumed that people were always in and out of each others' houses - in this case via the roof. Social mechanisms were needed to make all this run smoothly, and in a tour-de-force of botanical, faunal and spatial analysis the authors show how it worked. Families stored their own produce of grain, fruit, nuts and condiments in specia…
Building memories
Russell N., Martin L. & Twiss K.C. 2009. — Building memories: commemorative deposits at Çatalhöyük. Anthropozoologica 44(1): 103-128.Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey, is well known for its incorporation of animal parts into architecture: bucrania, horns in benches, etc. We examine the less visible placement of items in pits or built into remodeling inside houses to commemorate particular events. Animal parts feature prominently in these deposits, typ…
Taking the Bull by the Horns
Animal symbolism is a ubiquitous and powerful component of human ideology. Cattle were clearly the preeminent symbolic taxon in the Southwest Asian Neolithic, and archaeologists have argued that not just cattle, but specifi cally bulls, were key symbols. However, the biological attributes, including the sex, of the cattle used in Neolithic symbolic contexts remain largely unestablished. Furthermore, most of the cattle representations on which the…
Arson or Accident? The Burning of a Neolithic House at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary research on the recently excavated Building 52 at the Anatolian Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. This building provides the richest combination of faunal, botanical, and lithic assemblages of all those uncovered since work at the site was renewed in 1995. Occupation of the building ended with a high-temperature fire, after which a portion of it was emptied and reoccupied.Our research synthesizes n…
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis at Neolithic Çatalhöyük
Locating Land Use at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, T urkey
We evaluate local versus distant land‐use models at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, central Anatolia, using strontium isotope analysis of sheep tooth enamel and charred plant remains. Interpretation of strontium in sheep tooth sequences is constrained by previous oxygen isotope work, which largely excludes summer movement to the mountains but cannot distinguish between herding on the plain and the closest upland‐zone, N eogene limestone terraces. We esta…
Plants and Animals Together
This paper explores plant and animal distributions inside a Neolithic burned house in order to investigate domestic organization in an early farming society. We use GIS to analyze the spatial distributions of plant and animal remains found inside Building 52 at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. We examine how plant and animal stores, food and nonfood materials, and wild and domestic taxa were configured spatially. Results shed light on the logistic…
The Zooarchaeology of Tel Tif’dan (Wadi Fidan 001), Southern Jordan
The southern Levantine Late PPNB (LPPNB) represents a critical era in the long transition to agriculture, as it was during the LPPNB that regional farming populations consolidated their dependence on domestic animals. However, LPPNB animal economic strategies are known from relatively few village sites in the southern Levant, severely limiting consideration of the relative effects of local environmental variation and cultural practices. This pape…
An assessment of the archaeological applicability of faunal ageing methods based on dental wear
Mortality profiles are central to our reconstructions of past animal hunting and herding strategies. This article considers five different ageing methods based on the progressive wear of hypsodont herbivore teeth. The Quadratic Crown Height Method and the Linear Crown Height Method are based on tooth crown height. The Grant and both Payne methods are based on occlusal wear patterns. Statistical correlations and mortality profiles constructed usin…
Horses, Hemiones, Hydruntines? Assessing the Reliability of Dental Criteria for Assigning Species to Southwest Asian Equid Remains
Many faunal assemblages across southwest Asia contain the remains of multiple wild equid species, which may reflect individual prehistoric human populations' use of different hunting and/or landscape exploitation strategies. Accurate equid species assignments are therefore important. This paper tests the extent to which zooarchaeologists agree on equid species assignments made using commonly used zooarchaeological dental identification criteria. …
Archaeology of Food and Identity
No gentry but grave-makers
Archaeologists have adopted the Gini coefficient to evaluate unequal accumulations of material, supporting narratives modelled on modern inequality discourse. Proxies are defined for wealth and the household, to render 21st century-style economic tensions perceptible in the past. This ‘property paradigm’ treats material culture as a generic rather than substantive factor in unequal pasts. We question this framing while suggesting that the Gini co…
Archaeology of Food and Identity
Shaʾar Hagolan 1
Neolithic Revolution
A Modified Boar Skull from Çatalhöyük
A boar skull with unusual modifications was discovered in 2004 at the famous Anatolian Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. The cranium and the mandible were both present and in articulation. Most of the mandibular cheek teeth had been deliberately removed. The anterior of the cranium was absent as well, but the upper canine teeth were found in approximately correct anatomical position. Wheat and barley phytoliths were found in the back of the mouth. Th…
The Neolithic of the southern Levant
The Neolithic period of the southern Levant was an era of tremendous change. Over the course of the Neolithic, the gradual transition from foraging to agriculture involved not merely economic innovations, but also profound shifts in population size, social organization, and technology. This represents possibly the earliest, and certainly one of the earliest, instances of the transition to agriculture. The advent of farming altered human demograph…
New light on early caprine herding strategies from isotope analysis
The Zooarchaeology of Tel Tif’dan (Wadi Fidan 001), Southern Jordan
The southern Levantine Late PPNB (LPPNB) represents a critical era in the long transition to agriculture, as it was during the LPPNB that regional farming populations consolidated their dependence on domestic animals. However, LPPNB animal economic strategies are known from relatively few village sites in the southern Levant, severely limiting consideration of the relative effects of local environmental variation and cultural practices. This pape…
Transformations in an early agricultural society
[Foragers and Farmers in the Japanese Islands] Problems of Cultural Change in the Late and Final Jomon
Arson or Accident? The Burning of a Neolithic House at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary research on the recently excavated Building 52 at the Anatolian Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. This building provides the richest combination of faunal, botanical, and lithic assemblages of all those uncovered since work at the site was renewed in 1995. Occupation of the building ended with a high-temperature fire, after which a portion of it was emptied and reoccupied.Our research synthesizes n…
An assessment of the archaeological applicability of faunal ageing methods based on dental wear
Mortality profiles are central to our reconstructions of past animal hunting and herding strategies. This article considers five different ageing methods based on the progressive wear of hypsodont herbivore teeth. The Quadratic Crown Height Method and the Linear Crown Height Method are based on tooth crown height. The Grant and both Payne methods are based on occlusal wear patterns. Statistical correlations and mortality profiles constructed usin…
Taking the Bull by the Horns
Animal symbolism is a ubiquitous and powerful component of human ideology. Cattle were clearly the preeminent symbolic taxon in the Southwest Asian Neolithic, and archaeologists have argued that not just cattle, but specifi cally bulls, were key symbols. However, the biological attributes, including the sex, of the cattle used in Neolithic symbolic contexts remain largely unestablished. Furthermore, most of the cattle representations on which the…
Building memories
Russell N., Martin L. & Twiss K.C. 2009. — Building memories: commemorative deposits at Çatalhöyük. Anthropozoologica 44(1): 103-128.Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey, is well known for its incorporation of animal parts into architecture: bucrania, horns in benches, etc. We examine the less visible placement of items in pits or built into remodeling inside houses to commemorate particular events. Animal parts feature prominently in these deposits, typ…
Private pantries and celebrated surplus
In the Neolithic megasite at Çatalhöyük families lived side by side in conjoined dwellings, like a pueblo. It can be assumed that people were always in and out of each others' houses - in this case via the roof. Social mechanisms were needed to make all this run smoothly, and in a tour-de-force of botanical, faunal and spatial analysis the authors show how it worked. Families stored their own produce of grain, fruit, nuts and condiments in specia…
Plants and Animals Together
This paper explores plant and animal distributions inside a Neolithic burned house in order to investigate domestic organization in an early farming society. We use GIS to analyze the spatial distributions of plant and animal remains found inside Building 52 at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. We examine how plant and animal stores, food and nonfood materials, and wild and domestic taxa were configured spatially. Results shed light on the logistic…
The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity
Data Sharing Reveals Complexity in the Westward Spread of Domestic Animals across Neolithic Turkey
This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward …
Locating Land Use at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, T urkey
We evaluate local versus distant land‐use models at N eolithic Ç atalhöyük, central Anatolia, using strontium isotope analysis of sheep tooth enamel and charred plant remains. Interpretation of strontium in sheep tooth sequences is constrained by previous oxygen isotope work, which largely excludes summer movement to the mountains but cannot distinguish between herding on the plain and the closest upland‐zone, N eogene limestone terraces. We esta…
Methodological and Definitional Issues in the Archaeology of Food
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis at Neolithic Çatalhöyük
Animals of the Sealands
The Sealand Dynasty ruled in southern Mesopotamia ca. 1740–1460(?) b.c.e., but Sealand archaeological deposits are extraordinarily rare, and the dynasty itself is known almost entirely from a limited number of texts. Sealand Dynasty social and ecological practices remain mysterious, and ceremonial activities are at best poorly understood. Faunal remains from the small site of Tell Sakhariya in southern Iraq provide our first glimpse into the Seal…
Horses, Hemiones, Hydruntines? Assessing the Reliability of Dental Criteria for Assigning Species to Southwest Asian Equid Remains
Many faunal assemblages across southwest Asia contain the remains of multiple wild equid species, which may reflect individual prehistoric human populations' use of different hunting and/or landscape exploitation strategies. Accurate equid species assignments are therefore important. This paper tests the extent to which zooarchaeologists agree on equid species assignments made using commonly used zooarchaeological dental identification criteria. …
No gentry but grave-makers
Archaeologists have adopted the Gini coefficient to evaluate unequal accumulations of material, supporting narratives modelled on modern inequality discourse. Proxies are defined for wealth and the household, to render 21st century-style economic tensions perceptible in the past. This ‘property paradigm’ treats material culture as a generic rather than substantive factor in unequal pasts. We question this framing while suggesting that the Gini co…
A Coupled Humanitarian and Biodiversity Crisis in Western Madagascar
Strontium Isotope Analysis and the Southern Mesopotamian City
Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (20 works) · Archaeology (19 works) · Geography (19 works) · Biology (11 works) · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (9 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · Ecology (7 works) · Ancient Near East History (6 works)