historical ecology (Other Keyword)
101-125 (1,017 Records)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Life in the Ruins: Historical Ecology in Settler Colonial and Industrial Landscapes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the western hemisphere, historical ecologists working with Indigenous experts have made profound discoveries about the ways in which seemingly pristine ecosystems were shaped by Indigenous knowledge and practice over the course of thousands of years. Key methodologies include surveys of biodiversity and ecosystem structure...
Long-Term Geomorphological History and the Farming Landscape of Pañamarca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we discuss the results of the geomorphological survey carried out parallel to the archaeological fieldwork in 2018 and 2019. The analysis of geological profiles at alluvial terraces, satellite imagery, and radiocarbon dating produced a 9,000-year sequence showing the high dynamism of the...
Long-Term Puna Landscape Use in the Chanka Heartland of Andahuaylas, Southern Peru (2019)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Modeling White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) Responses to Human Population Change and Ecosystem Engineering in Precolonial and Colonial Eastern North America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. White-tailed deer were an important resource for both Native peoples and European colonists in precolonial and early colonial North America. Yet, evidence for possible overexploitation of deer prior to European colonization remains inconclusive. Some have argued that the species was resilient to human predation due in part to anthropogenic fire, which...
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...
Moov’in Around: 19th Century Cattle Ranching at Blue Oaks Ranch Reserve, California (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Life and Death in the San Francisco Bay: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Historic Lifeways", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Rancho Cañada de Pala was a 15,000-acre Mexican Land Grant established in 1839. A small section of this original ranch forms Blue Oaks Ranch Reserve in Santa Clara County. When California became a US state in 1850, the ranch was slowly subdivided into smaller segments with various...
Mountaintops of Chilla, El Oro (Ecuador) (2023)
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. The oral tradition of the Chilla landscape distinguishes two main stories: the first one portrays the apparition of the Virgin Mary, and the second one narrates the Mayan origins of its inhabitants. However, Chilla is in El Oro province, where a monumental pyramid and other neighboring sites correspond to the...
A Movement at the Margins: An Icelandic Rural Transformation at the Edge of the 19th Century Atlantic World (2018)
In the early modern Atlantic World, core/periphery mercantile economics ascribed a marginal place for Iceland. The island's role in trade involved the production of low-cost bulk goods destined for markets mostly via Denmark into the 19th century. The focal area of this paper, the rural and upland Mývatn region, was in some ways socially and ecologically marginal even within Iceland. The growing environment was affected by unpredictable cold weather while volatile erosion zones hemmed local...
NABO Artifacts
Project for artifact data from Norse sites across the North Atlantic islands, including Iceland, Greenland, and Shetland.
A Natural and Unnatural History of Faunal Change in Southwestern New Mexico since AD 500 (2017)
An important intersection between archaeology and the study of natural history lies in understanding the long-term processes of human-environment interaction that affected local biotas in the past and have shaped contemporary landscapes. This study integrates information from archaeological faunal assemblages and historic and modern data from the major watersheds of southwestern New Mexico—specifically, the upper Gila-San Francisco and Mimbres drainages—to examine changes in the status and...
The Nazi Hideout of South America: Studies on the Teyu Cuare 1945 Neighborhoods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery of the Nazi refuge on the border of Argentina and Paraguay during 2015, built around the year 1945 and abandoned shortly after, led to work inside it first to demonstrate the hypothesis of use and chronology. Last year, the mapping of the area and the survey of the surroundings intensified, finding new structures and groups strategically located...
A New Hypothetical Framework of Understanding the Evolution of Agriculture in the Lower Yangzi Region (2018)
Although a number of studies in recent years have contributed fresh knowledge to our understanding of the origins and development of agriculture in the Lower Yangzi, updated data have made this issue even more complicated. The empirical evidence shows very little information about any hunter-gatherers who might have lived in this area and indicates that, 10,000 years ago, humans first appeared here as successful resource managers or niche constructors. The human ecosystem characterized by...