Zooarchaeology (Other Keyword)
251-275 (1,173 Records)
Archaeological evidence from Colonial period Native American sites in southeastern North America document dramatic changes in many aspects of Native American life. In contrast, studies of zooarchaeological remains from the Colonial period indicate that subsistence systems changed very little in spite of the introduction of domestic animals. However, few zooarchaeological assemblages from sites with both precolonial and colonial occupations have been studied. The pre-Creek and Creek site of...
The Curious Case of Bunnies: Human Behavioral Ecology Perspectives on Fauna from Homol’ovi I, Room 733 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) models are useful in linking the composition of faunal assemblages deposited in archaeological sites to environmental conditions at the time of their deposition, but questions remain about HBE’s utility in evaluating assemblages dominated by small fauna. In this...
Cut Mark Size Does Not Change during Butchery: Implications for Reconstructing Tool Use and Carcass Processing (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal carcass butchery occurs when technological factors (tool attributes) and butchery behavior (distinct actions like defleshing, disarticulation) intersect with animal anatomy (morphology of musculoskeletal tissues or regions), and potentially encodes information about these contexts via bone surface modifications. This study examines cut mark...
Cut-Marked Bone of Drought-Tolerant Extinct Megafauna Deposited with Traces of Fire, Human Foraging, and Introduced Animals in SW Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People could have hunted Madagascar’s megafauna to extinction, particularly when introduced taxa and drought exacerbated the effects of predation. However, such explanations are difficult to test due to the scarcity of individual sites with unambiguous traces of humans, introduced taxa, and endemic megaherbivores. We excavated three coastal ponds in arid...
Cutmarks on Prehistoric Alcidae Tibiotarsi in the Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska (2017)
The Rat Islands Research Project (2009-2014) examined pre-contact era Aleut/Unangan archaeological sites on Hawadax and Kiska Islands to test hypotheses about Aleut impacts on and intersections with the environment. The 2003 test excavations at RAT-081 on Hawadax Islands resulted in the recovery of more than 6,000 remarkably well-preserved faunal specimens, which date from 2500 to 250 years ago and include fish, sea mammal, and bird species. The 2104 test excavation at KIS-050 on Kiska Island...
Cyclical Regression Modeling of δ18O Isotopic Profiles on Sparse Samples with Bayesian Multilevel Modeling (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Profiles of stable oxygen isotopic values (δ18O) from archaeofaunal tooth enamel provide in-depth information about the past environments in which animals lived while their teeth mineralized. Cyclical regression models can fit a specimen’s isotopic profile to a particular sinusoidal curve to estimate aspects of past environments and...
Data Quality and Zooarchaeological Interpretation: Investigating Stability in the Human-Animal Relationship at Pottery Mound Pueblo (LA 416) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of existing collections respects the finite nature of the archaeological record while allowing us to address important concepts such as resilience and stability. However, variables such as analyst skill, access to comparative collections, and recovery methods can impact analytical results. How does variability in data quality impact the...
Data, Digital Databases, and Teaching Students Zooarchaeology in the 21st Century (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. As zooarchaeologists address digital data preservation, management, and access, and confront issues surrounding data standardization and integration, it is clear that most of our students have little understanding of the importance of digital data or of the issues surrounding its creation, preservation, and use. One outgrowth...
A Database Approach to Historic Military Provisioning (2016)
Planned military provisioning recorded in historic documents likely decreased variability in soldiers’ diets and resulted in widespread use of domestic livestock. However, faunal remains from Fort Shirley, a French and Indian War fortification in Western Pennsylvania, indicate a heavy reliance on wild resources, particularly deer. Comparisons with other fortifications examined archaeologically reveals a breadth of functional and dietary differences between sites. First, the term "fort" describes...
Database Column Descriptions (2015)
Description of the abbreviations used in the Taosi and Zhouijazhuang faunal databases
Date Precision and Faunal Distribution from Pleistocene Sites (Archaeological vs. Paleontological) in the American Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Precise dates are helpful in tracking changes in paleoenvironment and faunal distribution through the Pleistocene. The ages of Paleoindian archaeological sites in the American Southwest with faunal remains are often precise. They have a specific date with a margin of error. This precision allows for the distinction between warm and cold periods. However,...
"Dear, Honored Guest": Archaeological Models of Bear Ceremonialism in Minnesota (2017)
Archaeological expressions of bear ceremonialism in Minnesota include: ritual sites with dozens to hundreds of bear skulls, calcined fragments of burned bear paws, effigy earthworks, rock art and portable art. These were created by Siouan and Algonquian speaking peoples, including the Dakota and Ojibwe, who are still resident in the state. Some finds relate to the bear hunt, feast and funeral that are the focus of A. Irving Hallowell’s (1926) concept of bear ceremonialism. Others appear to...
A Dearth of Dogs? The Archaeological Record of Canids in Wyoming (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence suggesting the Great Plains were teeming with canids during prehistory and the contact period, the archaeological record of canids (wolves, coyotes, dogs, and foxes) in Wyoming seems rather sparse. This presentation briefly describes the nature of the canid record in...
Deer Hunters: Star Carr Reconsidered (1981)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Deer, Drought, and Warfare: An Isotopic Investigation of Hunting Strategies from the Eleventh through the Fourteenth Centuries in the Central Illinois River Valley (CIRV) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study explores the relationship between garden hunting and food security in the Central Illinois River Valley, an area plagued by endemic warfare and drought during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Located ~100 km north of Cahokia, the largest precolumbian polity in North America, the CIRV was composed of smaller settlements that...
Deerskins and Domesticates: Creek Subsistence and Economic Strategies in the Historic Period (2007)
Previous research indicates that, following European colonization, animal husbandry did not replace hunting as the primary source of meat in the diet of southeastern Native Americans until the early nineteenth century. However, while the introduction of Eurasian domesticated animals had little immediate impact on the lives of indigenous peoples in the Southeast,the expansion of the European market economy had profound implications for the economic and subsistence strategies of Native Americans...
Degrees of Change: The Transition from Paleoindian to Archaic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition between the Paleoindian (13,000–8000) and Archaic (8000–1000) periods continues to elude North American archaeologists. It is inferred from archaeological evidence that human populations were nomadic hunter-gatherers during both periods. The creation of storage pits, however, provides...
Delayed-Return Hunter-Gatherers in the Horn of Africa? Faunal and Radiometric Data from the Guli Waabayo Rock Shelter in Southern Somalia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Environmental changes during the African Humid Period (~11,000-5,000 BP) are associated with the emergence of new social and economic strategies among some hunter-gatherers in northern and eastern Africa. In response to Early Holocene climatic amelioration, foragers in southwestern Libya and the Lake Victoria Basin decreased their mobility and...
The Demise of the European Neolithic Mode of Animal Husbandry: A Combined Effect of Milk Consumption, Zoonotic Diseases, and Genetic Changes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new form of husbandry developed by the Neolithic settlers of Europe provided solid foundations for their unprecedented growth and sustainability. Its constituting elements comprised the secondary product’s mode of exploitation, the effective adaptation of major domesticates to different environmental and ecological zones, and changes in their genomes....
Demographic Collapse and Deintensification in Protohistoric Alta California (2017)
Decreased human population densities associated with European exploration and colonialism in western North America may explain the historic observations of bountiful game that contrasts so drastically with the archaeological record on resource intensification. At Kathy’s Rockshelter in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills, California, there is a clear prehistoric trend towards resource depression of artiodactyls and increased dependence on small mammals, freshwater mussels, geophytes, and other...
A Descriptive Analysis of Animal Paleopathology from the Archaeological Site of Salmon Ruins (2016)
This thesis research is a small part of the greater potential study of the interactions between people in prehistory and the animals they relied upon for food and ritual items. Analysis will compare the prevalence of osteological changes and abnormalities in the remains of wild animals and domestic turkeys at Salmon Ruin, New Mexico. Domestic turkeys, being influenced by the hand of humans, are unique cases of paleopathology that could potentially provide insight into the domestication and care...
Developing Regional Isotopic Baselines to Trace Resource Acquisition Patterns in the Mesa Verde Area of the American Southwest (2018)
The analysis of strontium and oxygen isotopes in archaeological bone is commonly used to trace human mobility and migrations. We are using this isotopic approach to reconstruct changes in human access to large animal resources acquired through trading and hunting in the Mesa Verde area between 750-1280 AD. Current work is focused on determining the isotopic variability of the complex geology surrounding the primary study area. Isotopic analyses have been conducted on non-cultural archaeological...
Development of Pastoralism in Prehistoric Central Asia: A Case Study at Koken, East Kazakhstan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tradition of practicing mobile pastoralism in Central Asia’s steppe, forest-steppe, and foothill regions stretches back to at least the Bronze Age period (ca. 3500–800 BC). This preliminary study explores environmental biases and related human choices in livestock management during the period of early emergence and...
Deviant or Normal? Assessing Anomalies in Middle Stone Age Small Prey Exploitation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of forager economies in southern Africa have documented changes in subsistence strategies between the Middle and Later Stone Age. As evidenced by the disproportionate frequencies of faunal remains from large, gregarious grazers, the prevailing interpretation has been that MSA foragers...
Diachronic Patterns in Subsistence at Swan Point, Tanana Valley, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Approximately 1000 years ago, the archaeological record of Southcentral and interior Alaska shows a shift toward the increased use of fish caches, semi-subterranean houses, permanent year-round villages, and the appearance of ranked societies. Ultimately, the highly mobile big game hunter-gatherer way of life was supplanted by more intensive resource...