Subsistence and Foodways: Domestication (Other Keyword)
51-75 (99 Records)
Extensive research has illuminated many aspects of the emergence of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, yet gaps remain surrounding the origin and spread of these early domesticated plants. The long-term goal of our research is to create a comprehensive, online database of accurately dated EAC plant samples similar to the Ancient Maize Map project (Laboratory of Archaeology, University of British Columbia). Compiling this chronology will contribute to our understanding of the social, economic, and...
Insights from Commensal Pathways into Domestication Origins (2018)
Research on the origins of animal domestication has relied heavily on the use of morphometric characteristics of skeletal remains as diagnostic markers for important shape and size changes, which supposedly signaled the beginnings of domestication processes. However, the utility of this approach for pinpointing the timing and geographic and cultural context of initial domestication has been recently questioned. This approach has been undermined by empirical findings from geometric morphometric...
Integrating Grapevine Palaeogenomics with Archaeobotanical Methods to Explore the History of Winemaking (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genomic analyses of archaeological seeds and other plant remains are playing an increasingly important role in unravelling domestication histories. In some cases, these findings are revising longstanding interpretations developed from archaeobotanical methods, and questions remain on how archaeological and genomic methods...
Introducing Paleoethnobotany to Machine Learning: A Case Study in the Genus *Capsicum (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chili peppers (*Capsicum spp.) are an incredibly diverse and abundant crop across the Americas whose domestication began around 10,000 BP as a complex co-evolutionary process between humans and these plants. This genus has served many culinary, medicinal, and ritualistic uses throughout its evolution and diversification. With an interest in tracking the...
Investigating the Principles of “Good Farming”: A Comparison of Traditional Agrarianism and Indigenous Land Use and Cultivation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his long career as an agrarian writer, Wendell Berry has documented and endorsed the precepts of “good farming” as those that require care, knowledge, self-mastery, good sense, cultural memory, and fundamental decency. This carefully crafted set of practices stands in stark opposition to the aggressive colonial...
Investigating Turkey Husbandry on the Chacoan Frontier: Stable Isotope Results from Three Pueblo II Great House Communities in West Central New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing research in animal domestication in the prehistoric western hemisphere has revealed a complex relationship between humans and the only originally domesticated animal in North America, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Research suggests reasons for turkey...
Iron Age Agriculture at the Multi-Component Site of Kakapel Rockshelter, Western Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The domestication of African cereals and origins and spread of plant agriculture in eastern Africa remain poorly understood. Questions about the timing of farming, crop packages, and correlations with migration events, endure largely due to a lack of paleobotanical recovery and high-resolution dating on inland eastern African sites. In this...
An Isotopic and Proteomic Investigation of Uruk Period Faunal Remains from Tepe Farukhabad, Iran (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in southwest Iran and occupied since the fourth millennium BCE, Tepe Farukhabad is a prime example of an Early Uruk town. Numerous faunal remains were recovered from excavations in the 1960s, including those from wild animals, such as gazelle and horses, as well as from domesticated sheep, goats, and cows. Interestingly, between the...
Late Archaic Maize in the Trans-Pecos of West Texas: Implications and Future Research (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recovery of Late Archaic maize from the Trans-Pecos, peripheral to the American Southwest, adds to an expanding list of primary crop acquisition by foragers that occupied the arid region. The region, however, lacks clear demographic and settlement patterns diagnostic of this period from adjacent regions. Lacking key similarities, local...
Making Plant Foods in the Early Neolithic: Microbotanical Evidence from Shangshan Pottery (2018)
The Lower Yangtze Valley of China is renowned for the origin of rice agriculture. Previous research based on archaeobotanical analysis and genetic data indicates that the evolution from wild rice to domestic rice was a continuous process that occurred between 11,000 - 6,000 BP. The Shangshan culture (11,400 BP – 86,00) has revealed the earliest evidence of rice cultivation in the region and abundant pottery vessels. These vessels are diverse in form but their functions still remain unclear. By...
Morphological and Chemical Signatures of Chenopodium: Application of Optical and Electron Microscopy to Seeds from Experimental and Archaeological Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans are considered natural seed dispersing agents through the social acts of seed saving and seed sowing. The intentional and unintentional results of these human-plant relationships can lead to the development of genotypic and phenotypic traits that are beneficial to both the plant and to their human influencers. Anthropogenic seed dispersal of wild...
Neolithic Pigs and People along China's Fertile Arc: Regional Expression and Domestication (2018)
The foothills of mountain chains along river catchments, or "Hilly Flanks", have repeatedly been shown to be key to understanding the origins of agriculture throughout Eurasia. During the Neolithic, sites in the northern part of China’s Fertile Arc (see Ren et al. 2016)—showing the the earliest evidence of the cultivation of Chinese Millets—are situated along China's own "Hilly Flanks". In contrast, southern sites along the Arc cultivating rice, are located in a diverse array of landforms...
Paquimé in Perspective: A Meta-Analysis of Turkey Remains from the US Southwest and Northern Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the site of Paquimé in Northern Mexico, uncovered the interred remains of hundreds of common turkeys. Given both the size and unusual nature of this assemblage, studies of the Paquimé turkeys seem well suited to furthering our understanding of...
The Past (and Future?) of Our Crop Plants in Changing Global Environments (2018)
The development of agricultural societies, one of the most transformative events in human and ecological history, began independently in a number of world regions including the American tropics during a period of profound environmental change at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Plant domestication is at its core an evolutionary process involving both natural and human selection for traits favorable for harvesting and consumption. Scientists from a number of disciplines have long sought to...
Pathways to Plant Domestication: Categories of Cultivation Practice and Convergent Evolution (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Taking inspiration from Zeder’s notion of pathways to animal domestication (commensal, prey, directed), this presentation will outline equivalent pathways of plant domestication types, and suggest a range of species that can be grouped by these pathways. These pathways are united by issues of habit (annual, perennial),...
A Pawsitively Interesting Prehistory of Dogs: New Stable Isotope and Morphometric Analyses from Croatia (2018)
Though dogs are recognized as important points of comparison for archaeologists seeking to reconstruct prehistoric human diet and lifestyles (e.g., canine surrogacy approach), less attention has focused on understanding the cultural and ecological significance of dogs themselves in these same contexts. We report new morphometric and stable isotope results from prehistoric (Neolithic-Iron Age) sites from Croatia that represent different cultural and environmental contexts that potentially...
People-Plant Relationships in Long-Generation Arboreal Fruit Cultivation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of human-plant relationships in archaeology is rich and varied, including gathering, cultivation of wild species, domestication, intensive agriculture, and nonfood uses of plants. People-plant relationships in agricultural entanglements, however, have primarily focused on...
Peppers and People in Mesoamerica: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Tracing the Origin and Domestication of Chiles (Capsicum annuum var. annuum L.) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dolores Piperno’s career has been defined by pioneering work in multidisciplinary and collaborative plant research. Following in her footsteps, this interdisciplinary team comprised of archaeologists/archaeobotanists, an ethnobotanist, and a biogeographer assembled to investigate the origins and domestication of Capsicum annuum var. annuum...
Persistence in Turkey Husbandry Practices in the Southwest and Four Corners Region: The isotopic and ethnohistorical evidence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. aDNA analysis reveals an independent domestication event of Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) occurred in the Southwestern United States between 200 BC—AD 500. While this event was distinct from the domestication of turkey within the Mesoamerican world approximately 2000 years...
Phytolith Analysis of Experimental Fires: Insights into the Prehistory of Fire (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cooking Hypothesis suggests the morphological changes in the Homo lineage, including larger brains, were due to incorporating controlled combustion to cook food. Most archaeological evidence for fire comes from cave sites, which are less likely to be exposed to post-depositional processes (e.g. wind and water) that can destroy combustion evidence. Yet the...
Pig Management in Neolithic North China: Foddering and Social Change in the Western Liao River Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent models for pig domestication in China have suggested that initial domestication was contingent upon millet cultivation, which allowed for foddering through agricultural surplus. For this study, a combination of bulk collagen carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis and compound...
Pigs by Sea: The Establishment of Pig Husbandry on Wallacean Islands during the Late Holocene (2018)
Domestic pigs play a crucial role in the socioeconomic systems of Island Southeast Asian cultures today. However, the timing of their introduction into the region during the late Holocene and details of their use by prehistoric inhabitants is not entirely clear. The introduction of domestic pigs by maritime Neolithic horticulturalists to the Wallacean island region of eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste, which has never been connected to a major landmass, appears to have been an advantageous...
Prehistoric Dogs in the Uruguay Lowlands (2018)
This paper presents archaeological information about domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) recovered in prehistoric sites in the southeastern lowlands of Uruguay. The presence of dog in the archaeological record is associated to horticultural activities of hunter-gatherers adapted to the very dynamic conditions of this flood ecosystem during the Holocene. Dog findings in mounds have a recurrent and unique association with burials. This context allows a starting discussion on the economic,...
Preliminary Insights into the Biocultural Trajectory of Maize in Southwestern Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mounting archaeobotanical and archaeogenetic data show that the southwestern Amazon region had an important role to play in the history of South American maize dispersal, acting as a “secondary improvement center” for primitive lineages that arrived in the region during the Middle Holocene (>6500 BP). How these...
A Proteomic Approach to Determine Sex in Zooarchaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sex determination from animal skeletal remains can be challenging as it relies on sex specific bones or osteometrics. Determining sex is beneficial in understanding animal husbandry practices, as well as human-animal interactions. Building on previous work with humans, here we present a proteomic approach for determining sex from tooth enamel in nonhuman...