Zooarchaeology (Other Keyword)
201-225 (1,173 Records)
How can archaeologists and indigenous communities work together to transform an understanding of prehistory into something that serves the community’s goals? Since the 1990’s archaeologists have become increasingly dedicated to developing new ways to directly and meaningfully engage descendant communities. This paper presents a case study of collaborative and applied archaeology from the Pacific Northwest Coast. In it, we describe our ongoing efforts to collaboratively define the questions,...
Collagen Fingerprinting (ZooMS) and Caribbean Archaeological Fish Assemblages: Methodological Implications for Historical Fisheries Baselines and Conservation Applications (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caribbean Sea is the most species-rich sea bordering the Atlantic. However, its high biodiversity and endemism face unprecedented anthropogenic threats. Although zooarchaeological data broadly indicate regionally variable Indigenous human impacts on fisheries in the past, elucidating outcomes of human impacts beyond class (e.g., Actinopterygii) is...
Collagen Fingerprinting on Neolithic Fish from Lithuania (2018)
Archaeological fish remains are more taphonomically sensitive than those of other vertebrates as they are typically smaller and less biomineralised. Therefore, it is essential to retrieve as much information as possible from assemblages that favour their preservation. One of the most time- and cost-efficient methods of objectively achieving faunal identity in ancient bone is collagen fingerprinting technique ‘ZooMS’ (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry). ZooMS harnesses the potential of...
Colonial Foodways in Barbados: A Diachronic Study of Faunal Remains and Stable Isotopes from Trent’s Plantation, 17th-19th centuries (2018)
The origins of modern cuisine in the Caribbean lie in the complex interactions that occurred during the colonial period. Studying foodways on plantations offers insight into the social relationships, power structures, economic practices and cultural transformations during this time. Here, we integrate and compare the results from zooarchaeological analysis with stable isotope (δ18O, δ13C, δ15N, δ88Sr) analysis of human and faunal remains from Trent’s Plantation in Barbados. Trent’s Plantation...
The Columbian Exchange in Mesoamerica: Early Colonial Documents and Zooarchaeology in Guatemala (2017)
At the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, the massive introduction of new animal species in the Americas put an unprecedented stress on both the environment and Native American societies. Although archaeological animal remains are often used to inform discussions on American-European transculturation in other areas, few such studies have been done in southern Mesoamerica. This talk will use historical sources and published zooarchaeological data to provide a first overview of...
A Combined Bayesian and Zooarchaeological Approach to Understanding Local Histories of Socio-Ecological Adaptation in Southwestern Florida, USA (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present current research at the Pineland Site Complex (8LL33, etc.), a large shell midden-mound site in southwestern Florida occupied by the Calusa from around AD 50 up to historic contact. This well-preserved and well-studied archaeological site provides new insights into the relationship between subsistence practices of...
A Commensal-Prey Relationship in Early Mainland Southeast Asia? The Case of the Burmese Hare (Lepus peguensis) (2018)
Rabbits and hares are often a central part of human subsistence strategies in both the past and the present. However, the Burmese hare (Lepus peguensis) – the sole member of the family Leporidae indigenous to mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) – is rarely eaten today, and its status in the past is unclear. Although this taxon is currently abundant across a wide geographic range, it has a poor zooarchaeological record during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Identified specimens occur sporadically in...
Commodification and Resource Depression of White-Tailed Deer in Seventeenth-Century New England (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While white-tailed deer were hunted by Native peoples in eastern North America for thousands of years, historical evidence suggests that deer populations declined dramatically following European colonization. Yet questions remain about the exact timing and causes of this decline. To address these questions, I analyzed zooarchaeological data from...
Communal Hunting and Teasing Out Signs of Cooperation in the Past (2017)
Communal hunting represents an intensification on particular prey species requiring significant cooperation and coordination, but identifying the social organization of this extinct mode of terrestrial hunting in North America leaves inquiries relegated to evidence derived from archaeology and ethnohistory. One tangible line of evidence used to identify social interaction between participants in hunting activity has been meat sharing. Yet observing meat sharing in the archaeological record has...
The Community at the Crossroads: Insights into Connectivity from the Tijeras Pueblo Fauna (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tijeras Pueblo lies at a crossroads. It sits at the junction of two canyons, one north-south and one east-west, and occupies a boundary between two distinct culture areas—the Pueblos to the west and the Plains to the east. This position on the landscape may have created both challenges and opportunities...
A Comparative Archaeological Exploration of Question-Oriented Sampling Strategies to Integrate ZooMS into Zooarchaeological Methods (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) collagen fingerprinting is increasingly applied to prehistoric faunal collections—especially highly fragmented and/or altered ones—to tackle questions regarding diet, subsistence, and hunting strategies. When mass sampling archaeological bones (i.e., hundreds of bone fragments), ZooMS is a powerful...
A Comparative Examination of the Dietary Practices of British and French Occupants of New France. (2016)
The examination of faunal remains from archaeological sites provides a wealth of information pertaining to the diets of past peoples and comparative analyses allow for an in-depth understanding of similarities and differences that occur amongst sites. This research focuses on the comparative analysis of faunal data from a variety of sites located in and around Québec City. Data from a privy associated with the French (1720s-1760) and English (1760-1775) occupations of the second Intendant’s...
Comparative Faunal Analysis of Four Early Thule House Features from Cape Espenberg, Alaska, and Inglefield Land, Greenland (2015)
The Thule expansion was the extremely swift colonization of the eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland by Thule Inuit moving east out of Alaska ca. AD 1000-1300. The rapid pace of the migration implies that it may have taken these pioneering Thule groups some time to "settle in" to their new environment. Poor familiarity with local conditions should be reflected in the zooarchaeological record as highly uneven, low-diversity faunal assemblages, with a heavy bias toward small phocids in the...
Comparision of Fish Habit and Exploitation—A Comparison of Two Third-Millennium BCE Sites in the Arabian Gulf Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the third millennium BCE, one of the earliest civilizations emerged in South Asia, the Indus Valley Tradition/Civilization. It had a trade network that spread throughout the Persian and Arabian Gulf, including sites on the Omani coast. This paper will compare two sites, Balakot on the Makran coast of Pakistan associated with the Indus Valley...
A Comparison of Dog Shoulder Height in European and Native American Contexts (2017)
Dogs are the only domestic animal to have existed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean prior to the Columbian Exchange. Historic documents indicate that European colonists to North America brought their own dogs and generally preferred large breeds capable of protecting livestock, hunting, defending settlements from both predators and Native American raids. As early as 1619 the Virginia Assembly banned colonists from trading European dogs to Native Americans, and these policies were quickly...
Competition for Resources: How Commensal Competition Informs Us of Past Human Activity (2018)
Humans have a dramatic impact on environments around them. They augment, manipulate and engineer local environments to their own benefit, often resulting in a concentration of easily available food and nest sites. These anthropogenic resources and environments are readily exploited by a myriad of other organisms. These organisms, in local and neighbouring environments, engage in a range of different relationships with humans, reflecting the level of interaction and dependence. Due to the...
Concept of Diversity: a Reductionist Approach (1984)
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Conch, Whelk, or Clam: Comparing Southern Florida’s Indigenous Shellfish Collection Patterns (2018)
The populations of southern Florida are an exemplary case of indigenous groups who organized into large political entities without the advantages of agriculture. This is due to the populations’ close proximity to vast amounts of marine resources. Among these resources, many shellfish (both gastropods and bivalves) were used not only for nutritional sustenance, but also made up an important proportion of the tool industry, and as trade goods between these local populations and those at a...
Confirming the Subtropical Paleoecology of Yahuai Cave in Guangxi, China, at 120 Kya through the Taphonomic Analysis of Rodent Remains (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main questions in human evolution concerns the dispersal of modern humans into Eurasia. Given the current tropical environment of South China, we may wonder whether early modern humans entering this region could penetrate the rainforest to forage for food, and indeed whether the environment in this area was...
The Consequences of Cultural Encounters on Late Bronze Age Transylvania Cuisine and Subsistence Economies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to the Late Bronze Age in Transylvania around 1500 BCE coincided with the arrival of the Noua cultural group from the Eurasian Steppe. These new migrant communities arrived in a Transylvanian landscape that had been occupied by the Wietenberg cultural group for over 500 years. For nearly 150 years, communities with both the Noua and Wietenberg...
Conservation Biology and Archaeology: Using faunal remains of Pacific cod from the Tse-whit-zen village (2015)
In 2010, the Salish Sea stock of Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) was listed as a species of concern, which resulted from declining commercial and recreational catches that have not increased despite harvest reductions. Fishery managers typically use historical data from the past 40 to 50 years to create baselines to manage reduced fisheries; archaeological data can extend these baselines much further back in time. The Tse-whit-zen village site, located on the southern shore of the Strait of...
Constituting the Divine: Coastal Cuisine and Public Places in the Formative-period Lower Río Verde Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food was central to the constitution of sacred public spaces during the Formative period in the lower Río Verde valley on Oaxaca’s Pacific coast. Public facilities at small sites and at the region’s largest precolumbian architectural complex, the Río Viejo acropolis, were the location not only of collective food consumption but also of food...
Constructed Spaces and Managed Species: Niche Construction Theory and "Wild" Turkey Management during the Mississippian Period in the Southeastern United States (2017)
Pre-Columbian peoples of the Southeastern United States systematically altered their environment through forest clearing, gardening, terraforming, and urban planning. The end result of these activities encouraged certain native animals like the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) to occupy these constructed and managed environments, especially forest-edges and agricultural fields. The sustained daily interactions between species resulted in a special and complex human-turkey...
Constructing the Herd: Critically Considering the Temporality of Human-Animal Relations in Archaeological Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of the herd is often deployed when discussing systems of animal management in the ancient past, sometimes explicitly but most often implicitly. Due to the nature of the archaeological record, zooarchaeological assemblages often compress multiple generations of livestock into a single dataset....
Construction of a Mule Deer General Utility Index (2016)
Optimal foraging models and faunal analysis to interpret diet require quantitative data to negate variables of results. With the collection and processing of eleven mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Sierra Blanca Region, New Mexico, a statistically significant database for analysis is constructed. Previous researchers collected a wide range of data with different methods. By synthesizing it into a solid and replicable method an index can be developed for subsequent species to enable...