historical ecology (Other Keyword)

76-100 (989 Records)

Historical Marine Ecology in Northwestern Greenland: Insight from Stable Isotope Analysis (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Szpak. Christyann Darwent. John Darwent.

This study presents stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions for zooarchaeological specimens from three sites in Inglefield Land (northwestern Greenland) representing approximately the last 1,000 years. Isotopic compositions for planktivorous seabirds (little auks, Alle alle) reveal general stability in biogeochemical cycling at the base of the food web since the end of the Medieval Warm Period. On the other hand, marine mammals (ringed seal, bearded seal, walrus) exhibit variable...


A Historical Perspective on the Nature of Precolonial Settlements in the Middle Xingu River Basin (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Renato Kipnis. Solange B. Caldarelli. Letícia M. Muller. Andrey M. Castro. Aguinaldo J. M. Castro.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to understand the processes that generated the rich, complex, and diverse cultural and environmental history present in Amazonia, and specifically along the Xingu River basin, it is crucial that we generate information on when, where, and how small-scale foraging societies...


Human Ecodynamics in Central East Polynesia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Melinda Allen.

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of Pacific paleoenvironments, how they changed with human arrival, and further transformations in the post-settlement period owes much to the research and insights of Steve Athens. This paper considers palaeoenvironmental records from central East Polynesian islands in relation to...


Human-Environmental Dynamics of the Georgia Coast (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Victor Thompson. John Turck.

This paper synthesizes and evaluates settlement and subsistence patterns in relation to landscape change for the entire prehistoric period on the Georgia coast. The dynamic coastal processes of the region have altered the topography and distribution of resources, including those important to humans. These processes were neither uniform in space nor time, with variations leading to the creation of micro-habitats. We assess these habitats individually and as part of a complex whole, to better...


The Hydrologic and Geologic Dynamics of the Las Peñas Spring (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan LeBlanc.

This presentation addresses the hydrology of agricultural terraces and a spring associated with the Late Intermediate Period (post AD 1200) site of Las Peñas located in the Moquegua Valley of Peru. Positioned 150 meters northwest of Las Peñas, the spring is located at roughly 2,700 meters in elevation and sits at the base of several agricultural terraces. This field system was presumably in production at the time Las Peñas was occupied and is still in use today. Using coring techniques, sediment...


Icelandic Agricultural Heritage and Environmental Adaptation: Osteometrical and Genetic Markers of Livestock Improvement (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbons.

In the early settlement of Iceland, Scandinavian pioneers brought their social knowledge alongside herds of livestock to the untamed island and in turn initiated a millennium-long tradition of livestock husbandry and survivorship in a harsh and unpredictable environment. Decades of integrated historical ecological research across Iceland allows for an exploration of the complex human ecodynamics of this marginal European outpost in the North Atlantic. Comparative osteometrical data from multiple...


Identifying Past Vegetation Dynamics in Xingu Indigenous Territory Using Soil Phytolith Analysis (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Watling. Morgab Schmidt.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary hypotheses of a soil sampling programme aimed at mapping precolumbian and historic vegetation dynamics in the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX), Brazil. Research carried out with the Kuikuro during the last three decades has resulted in the archaeology...


Imagined Forests: Woodlands and Wood Resources in Medieval Icelandic Literary, Documentary and Archaeological Sources (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Elise Mooney.

This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval literary sources describe the Icelandic landscape when the first settlers arrived as ‘forested from the mountains to the shores’. It had previously been thought that the island was rapidly deforested after settlement, but recent research gives a much more nuanced picture of woodland history. It...


Imperial Space Appropriation and Colonialism during the 16th Century in the Ecuadorian Andes (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Josefina Vasquez Pazmino.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Inka Empire began its process of conquest and colonialism in 1420 in ancient Ecuador. The inkas reproduced their own social spaces for the public, the sacred, and the economic over local spaces. However, such Inka layers of transformation were suddenly truncated by the Spanish arrival at around 1530, which again brought different kinds of populations that...


Investigating the Reforestation of Anthropogenic Landscapes through Remote Sensing (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Plekhov.

While New England is today a mostly forested landscape, up to 80% of this region was deforested during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for agricultural land-use. As the rural economy of New England shifted to a more urban and industrial one, much of this agricultural land was abandoned and subsequently reforested. The vestiges of this once rural landscape can now best be seen in LiDAR imagery, in which features such as stonewalls are particularly well discernible. Though the spatial and...


Investigating the Sex Selectivity of Middle Iroquoian Salmonid Fisheries through Ancient DNA Analysis (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Royle. Eric Guiry. Trevor Orchard. Dongya Yang.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lake Ontario once supported large populations of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush). However, by the mid-19th century populations of these salmonid species had collapsed as a result of overharvesting and habitat alteration by European settlers. Prior to this collapse, it has been hypothesized Indigenous peoples were able to...


Isotopic analyses of predatory pelagic fishes show significant environmental change in Lake Ontario following European settlement (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Guiry. Suzanne Needs-Howarth. Paul Szpak. Michale Richards.

Isotopic analyses of archaeological faunal remains can add significant temporal depth to modern and historical baseline data, which play an important role in understanding present and future environmental change. In this paper, we use stable nitrogen isotope analyses of archaeological (A.D. 1000-1900) bone collagen of pelagic predators, such as lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and whitefishes (Coregonus sp.), as a proxy measure for environmental changes in Lake Ontario over time. Results show...


Jomon Landscape Practice and Ecological Resilience in Prehistoric Japan (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Junko Habu.

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation argues that the resilience of the food systems during and after the Jomon period (ca. 16,000–2500 cal BP) in prehistoric Japan must have been closely related to the diversity of staple foods, settlement locations, and methods of landscape management including the use of fire. Despite an abundance...


Land Snails and Archaeology on the California Channel Islands (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Morales. Lauren M. Mirasol. Amira F. Ainis. René L. Vellanoweth.

Land snails have the potential to address a variety of archaeological concerns, including the identification of paleolandscapes and paleoclimatic conditions. Such studies demonstrate how non-marine mollusks can be employed to infer changes such as seasonal and long-term precipitation rates and anthropogenic landscape alterations. Although land snails are abundant in Channel Island sites, they are often ignored. In this paper, we utilize land snail remains from three archaeological sites on San...


Land use and Field Ecologies in Southwest China (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Yao.

This paper complements prevailing studies on prehistoric domestication and agriculture with an eye toward the interrelated problem of land use and food security in south China. In ecologies characterized by monsoonal variability, rugged terrain, and dense vegetation, what are the conditions that challenge or enable the cultivation of a range of staples? Using archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data, I examine how extensification of field practices enabled the cultivation of...


The Landscape Legacies of Plantation Agriculture in the Caribbean: An Historical-Ecological Perspective from Betty’s Hope, Antigua (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Christian Wells. Georgia L. Fox. Peter E. Siegel. Nicholas P. Dunning. Reginald Murphy.

This paper examines physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils and sediments from landforms in eastern Antigua, West Indies, to better understand the long-term consequences of plantation agriculture. Plantation farming played a central role in the history of Caribbean societies, economies, and environments since the 17th century. In Antigua, the entire island was variably dedicated to agricultural pursuits, including sugarcane and cotton, from the mid-1600s until independence from...


The Landscape Materialized in Late Medieval Houses (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Breiter.

This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social and political ideologies are entangled in the management and control of the ecological landscape. When relations between social institutions shift, it impacts how people interact with their local environment. In this paper, I explore how these relationships are visible within the fabric of a building. During the...


Landscape with Bees: Apiculture in Yucatán after the Spanish Invasion (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez. Mario Zimmermann. Rani Alexander.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we examine how European colonization and the shift to industrial capitalism altered beekeeping in Yucatán from AD1600 to the present. Honey and wax produced from stingless bees were circulated throughout the Mesoamerican world system during the Postclassic period. In the wake of the European...


Large changes environmental changes following commercial whaling in the Eastern Canadian Arctic (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Szpak.

Stable isotope records from dovekie (Alle alle), ringed seal (Pusa hispida) and bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) bones recovered from archaeological sites in eastern North American High Arctic (northwestern Greenland and eastern Canadian Arctic) reveal little auks declined an entire trophic level in the 20th century, following stability between the 12th and early 20th centuries. Conversely, bowhead whale trophic level remained stable and ringed seal trophic level slightly increased across the...


Long-Term Puna Landscape Use in the Chanka Heartland of Andahuaylas, Southern Peru (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Kellett. Alcides Berrocal Gonzales. Patricia Allcca Osorio. Jacob Legere. Jhoan Romero Escobar.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster examines the enduring role that puna landscapes played across time and space in the Andahuaylas region of southern highland Peru. Results from a recent archaeological landscape survey, entitled the Andahuaylas Puna Project, confirms that the expansive puna to the south of the main Chumbao Valley was intensively used and intermittently occupied for...


Mapping Agricultural Terraces on the Copacabana Peninsula, Bolivia, Tsing Multispectral Satellite Imagery (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Kennedy. Sergio Chavez. Stanislava Chavez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copacabana Peninsula of Lake Titicaca, in modern Bolivia and Peru, is a landscape that has been heavily modified through the construction of stone terraces on the slopes facing the shores of Lake Titicaca and the intermontane valley systems. Previous research by the Yaya-Mama Archaeological Project has demonstrated that terrace construction began...


Marine Fish Zooarchaeological Data from Iceland and the Central North Atlantic Marine Historical Ecology Project (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only George Hambrecht. Nicole Misarti. Arni Daniel Juliosson. Francis Feeley.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss a new NSF-funded project, the Central North Atlantic Marine Historical Ecology Project (CAMHEP), as well as provide an overview of the current overall state of marine fish zooarchaeological data from Iceland. CAMHEP will utilize marine zooarchaeological data from Icelandic archaeological sites dating from the first settlement of...


Marine Mammal Hunting in the Kuril Islands: Zooarchaeological and Genetic Insights (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Hope Loiselle. Logan Kistler. Michael McGowen. Mike Etnier. Ben Fitzhugh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People have inhabited the NW Pacific Kuril Islands for millennia, supported by the productive marine and coastal environments. Here, we build upon previous faunal analyses that examined biogeographical patterns in faunal exploitation by conducting a chronological analysis, grouped by cultural period (Epi-Jomon, Okhotsk, Ainu and Historic). Specifically, we...


The Maritime Fur Trade before the Maritime Fur Trade on the Pacific Coast of North America (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Iain McKechnie.

The maritime fur trade on the Northwest Coast of North America (ca. AD 1778-1850) was a historically consequential process that unfolded throughout the Indigenous territories of the Pacific Coast. Tens of thousands of astronomically valuable sea otter pelts were traded by Indigenous chiefs with visiting ship captains, who then transported these pelts across the Pacific and sent profits home. The massive wealth generated by this colonial trade encircled the globe but also amplified existing...


Monumentality and Social Complexity in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon: Mound Builders in the Upano Valley, Ecuador (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Janny Velasco Alban. Estanislao Pazmiño Tamayo.

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...