Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
426-450 (713 Records)
Recent research has confirmed that the some of the oldest ceramics of the Americas are associated with Amazonian shellmounds. Excavations at Monte Castelo site produced a representative assemblage of these early technologies, and has also demonstrated a long history of ceramic production and use, with significant changes during the Middle Holocene that accompany the intensification of landscape management and the emergence of several other cultural innovations in that period. In this...
Monte Verde, South-Central Chile: Stratigraphy, Climate Change, and Human Settlement (1988)
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Monumental Construction at Cahokia, a geoarchaeological perspective (2016)
Monumental Construction at Cahokia, a geoarchaeological perspective Amber Laubach and Sarah E. Baires Examining Pre-Columbian earthen mounds from both a macro and micro-scale lens can reveal geotechnical knowledge of construction as well as the cultural significance of this pervasive past practice in the Eastern Woodlands. Micromorphology soil samples provide a rich volume of data to examine fine-grained construction fill composition, pedogenic activity and the relative rate of monumental...
Monumentality and Cultural Resilience in Coastal Louisiana (2016)
Resilience is the ability of complex systems to adapt to change in the wake of disturbance. Here, we describe the relationship of natural deltaic land evolution and anthropogenic monument construction using a case study of Ellesly Mound, an earthen monument located in the Lafourche subdelta of the Mississippi Delta. Borehole and LIDAR data show that Ellesly mound is situated above naturally deposited crevasse sediments underlain by organic-rich facies indicating a relatively low-lying vegetated...
Monumentality and Social Complexity in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon: Mound Builders in the Upano Valley, Ecuador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Upper amazon frequently was conceived as a transitional area where social development was limited for the scarce resources and the harsh environmental conditions. In the last decades studies in the ceja de selva, pie de monte and the upper amazon reveal that this region hosted an intense cultural development. Wide discussions in the academic forums...
Mound-building, Site Structure, and Land Use Patterns in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (2017)
Mound sites are a notable characteristic of mid- to late-Holocene occupation throughout the Central California. Most recent archaeological research on the region’s mounds has focused on the their dense clustering along the San Francisco Bay margins; in contrast, much less attention has been focused on the mounds of the adjacent Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Although often grouped together, few systematic studies have been undertaken to evaluate differing site patterning, the structure of...
Multi-Millennial Fire Histories from Sedimentary Archives: Human and Climate Impacts (2015)
Sedimentary archives offer the opportunity to build millennial length fire history reconstructions with which to evaluate hypotheses of anthropogenic and climatic impacts on fire prone forests. Particularly when calibrated with centennial length fire history records from tree-rings, sedimentary paleofire proxies can be used to build spatially explicit records of fire regime changes. As part of the Jemez Fire & Humans in Resilient Ecosystems Project, this paper presents the results of multiple,...
A multi-proxy site formation analysis of a late Middle Pleistocene occupation in the Azraq wetlands of northeastern Jordan (2017)
The Azraq Marshes Archaeological and Paleoecological Project (AMAPP) aims to understand and evaluate the importance of the Azraq wetlands for Pleistocene hominin populations. Ongoing research since 2009 indicates that the northern wetland, the Druze Marsh, acted as a desert refugium for hominins throughout the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Excavations in the southern marsh—known as the Shishan Marsh—began in 2013 and uncovered a rich assemblage of bifaces, small tools, and flakes, along with...
A Multicomponent Archaeological Site at Spring Lake, San Marcos, Texas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1970s, researchers recovered fluted points that appeared diagnostic of Clovis technology in Spring Lake, the spring-fed headwaters of the San Marcos River located along the Balcones Escarpment in Central Texas. Although recovered in mixed stratigraphic contexts, this evidence suggests that Ancestral Peoples may have visited the site for over 13,000...
Multimodal Mapping at Cerro San Isidro, Nepeña Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the preliminary results of multimodal mapping efforts at Cerro San Isidro, a multicomponent archaeological complex located in the Moro region of the middle Nepeña Valley, north-central coast of Peru. Based on its size and strategic location on a natural promontory overlooking the confluence of the Loco and Nepeña rivers, the site is...
Multiproxy and LiDAR Evidence for Intensive Maya Wetland Agriculture Along the Rio Bravo River (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present preliminary results from a newly discovered Maya wetland canal and raised field system found along the Rio Bravo River in Northwest Belize using airborne LiDAR. The LiDAR data reveals canals and raised fields in a very rectilinear pattern that suggest planning and organization for many kilometers down the floodplain near...
A Multiproxy Approach to Refining a Sediment Core Chronology with Data from Multiple Sites in the Western Lake Bonnevilel Basin, USA (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a novel approach to developing a unified radiocarbon-based chronology for multiple sediment cores from a location where radiocarbon dating is challenging. We used 36 radiocarbon ages from eight terminal Pleistocene and Holocene sediment cores with correlated stratigraphies. Stratigraphic correlation was accomplished using a combination of...
Narrowing the Search for Late Pleistocene-Aged Submerged Sites on Oregon's Continental Shelf (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Re-Visualizing Submerged Landscapes", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Geographic information systems-based modeling of submerged paleolandscapes along the central coast of Oregon, USA combined with offshore geophysical and marine coring studies led to the discovery of multiple submerged and buried alluvial drainage systems dating to the late Pleistocene period. These discoveries highlight the preservation of...
Natural-Cultural Contexts of the First Inhabited Seashores of Remote Pacific Oceania: 1500–1100 BC in the Mariana Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People first migrated to the remote-distance Pacific Islands around 1500 BC, and their ancient sites have provided insights into the physical and cultural world that these people had inhabited. Geoarchaeological investigations have clarified the composition of the coastal landforms and ecosystems, availability of...
The Neolithic Bird Hunters of the Mongolian Gobi Desert (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological surveys in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia have begun to reveal new information about the landscape distribution and seasonal movements of mobile populations in this semi-arid steppe environment on the eve of the late Holocene adoption of pastoralism. However, until recently we’ve had little information about...
New Dates for Bonfire Shelter, a Multicomponent Rockshelter in West Texas (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. Bonfire Shelter is a well-known but imperfectly understood multicomponent rockshelter site located in a short tributary canyon of the Rio Grande in West Texas. The site is particularly known for three “bone beds” deposited between about 14,000 and 2,500 BP, two of which appear to represent mass bison kills. Three years of renewed investigation...
New Evidence on the Early Occupation of the Lakes Basin of Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence for early sedentary villagers is perplexingly difficult to identify in Pacific Nicaragua. Wolfgang Haberland thought he found Early Formative remains, which he named the Dinarte phase, on Ometepe Island, but our own efforts to resample those putative early deposits did not meet with...
New Excavations at Border Cave: Preliminary Reflections on Stratigraphy and Site Formation Processes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Border Cave rock shelter, formed in Early Jurassic fragmental rocks of the Jozini Formation on the western scarp of the Lebombo Mountains, KwaZulu-Natal, has a long history of archaeological investigation starting with Raymond Dart in 1934. Phases of informal and formal excavations have yielded remarkable archaeological assemblages including five hominin...
New Excavations at Fell Cave, South Patagonia, Chile (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The work of Junius Bird at Fell Cave played a crucial role in the acceptance of the association between early human populations and megafauna in South America. The evidence for behavioral association of cut-marked bones of american horse, camelids and ground sloth with hearths, stone and bone tools is still considered among the stronger proofs of Late...
New Investigations at Bonfire Shelter: A Consideration of Bison Jumps and Their Implications for Paleoindian Social Organization (2018)
Bonfire Shelter (41VV218) is a nationally significant site in the Lower Pecos region of the West Texas borderlands that preserves evidence of what may be the oldest and southernmost "bison jump" in North America. At least two major episodes of bison hunting are evident at Bonfire Shelter, one associated with Paleoindian Plainview and Folsom projectile points, and another associated with Late Archaic Castroville and Montell points. The approximately 12,000-year-old layers comprising Bonebed 2...
New Investigations at Russell Cave, Alabama (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Russell Cave (1Ja181), located in Jackson County, Alabama, contains one of the longest prehistoric occupational sequences known in the southeastern U.S., spanning approximately 9,000 years. Excavations were conducted by the Chattanooga Chapter of the Tennessee Archaeological Society (1953-1955) the Smithsonian Institute in conjunction with the National...
New Investigations of Bone Bed 1, Bonfire Shelter: A High-Resolution Analysis of Late Pleistocene Deposits (2018)
This paper reports the results of new excavations of Late Pleistocene deposits at Bonfire Shelter, a stratified rockshelter in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Val Verde County, Texas. Previous excavations identified three bone deposits. Bone Bed 1, the oldest deposit, yielded a single uncalibrated radiocarbon date of 12,460 +/- 490 BP. Investigators in the 1960s and 1980s argued that the patterned distribution of megafaunal elements associated with large limestone cobbles in Bone Bed 1 suggests...
New Kid on the Block: El Niño-Modoki in Peru—Past, Present, and Future (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the climatological phenomenon referred to as El Nino Modoki, warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the central Pacific are flanked on the east and west by cooler SSTs. Over the last century, El Niño-Modoki has increased in frequency, but a long-term sequence has yet to be established prior to the last four centuries. At least on the north coast of...
New Perspectives in the Geoarcheological Context of Hunter-Gatherer Sites from the Beginning of the Holocene, Serranópolis, Brazil (2018)
The GO-JA-01 and GO-JA-02 archaeological sites, located in sand stone shelters of Serranopolis excavated from the 1970s to 1990s and earliest at 10.400 years B. P., were occupied by hunter-gatherer and agricultural-ceramist groups. Recent studies have raised hypotheses regarding the appropriation and construction of the landscape by hunter-gatherer groups, based on evidences related to the paleoenvironment and the archeological site formation process in the Rio Verde river alluvial plain. The...
New Perspectives on Bonfire Shelter, Texas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonfire Shelter contains an extensive stratified record of human prehistory in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Southwest Texas, and a correspondingly long history of competing interpretations of that record. The initial investigations of the site in the 1960s led to the announcement of the earliest...