historical ecology (Other Keyword)
76-100 (1,017 Records)
This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late Holocene, large bison herds occurred in grass-dominated ecological zones across much of the North American mid-continent. However, in situ fossils and historic accounts illustrate the adaptability of bison to a broad ecological niche space, from grassy prairies and plains to eastern forests. Yet,...
Historic Native American Impacts on a Temperate Forested Ecosystem, Northeastern U.S.A. (2016)
We quantified the nature and extent of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) disturbance on the forests of the Finger Lakes region, west-central New York, U.S.A., through multivariate statistical analysis of witness trees and survey line vegetation descriptions derived from original late 18th century CE land survey records and historical documentation in conjunction with archaeological site distributions analyzed in a geographic information system (GIS). Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordinated the...
Historical Ecologies of Botanical Gardens: Archaeobotany at Bartram’s Garden (Philadelphia, PA) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The collection and transport of natural specimens during the long eighteenth century had political, intellectual, and ecological effects. Botanical gardens are key loci to examine the material histories of these processes. Bartram’s Garden, the most prominent botanical garden in North America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,...
Historical Ecology and Archaeology on the Galápagos Islands (2015)
The poster introduces an interdisciplinary project recently initiated on San Cristóbal Island, the easternmost island of the Galápagos archipelago. Initially focusing on the 19th century plantation of Manuel J. Cobos, the project explores the nature and temporal depths of human involvement in ecological transformation, as novel or ‘emerging’ ecosystems, defined by their novelty, cultural origin, and subsequent endurance in the absence of humans, were developed within the context of what was to...
Historical Ecology and Archaeometallurgy on the 5th and 6th century Osaka Plain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extensive excavation records and legacy materials provide ample opportunities for novel research in Japan. This project seeks to open and demonstrate new avenues of inquiry using legacy data and previously excavated materials related to well-studied topics by linking environmental change to the...
Historical Ecology and Planning for the Future: Mapping the Historical Trajectory of American Agriculture (2016)
Carole L. Crumley has long advocated broadly inclusive studies that reach across disciplines to bring together social and environmental data from multiple geographic and temporal scales in order to draw lessons from the past. This work reports the use of those approaches to map the changes in colonial American agriculture and on-going research into 19th century westward expansion. What is becoming clear is that U.S. has a long-term trajectory which continues to move away from the sustaining...
Historical Ecology in the Cold and Wet: Carole Crumley’s North Atlantic Legacy (2016)
In 1990 Carole Crumley organized a School of American Research (SAR) seminar that brought together a group of researchers from different areas with interests in a wide range of periods and topics in world archaeology and human ecology. This disparate group was united by Carole’s vision of a fresh approach to the interactions of environment and society through time- something beyond the increasingly stale processual/ post-processual debates of that period. Her vision of a dynamic interaction of...
Historical Ecology of Demographic and Economic Change in the Highlands of Western Kenya: Archaeobotanical and Mycological Evidence (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last several millennia of cultural history in the western Kenyan highlands have been marked both by punctuated periods of considerable demographic and economic change, and by continuous in-situ processes of genetic, linguistic, and economic interaction and admixture. Historical linguistic and archaeological models of the peopling of this region have, among...
The Historical Ecology of Dolphins and Porpoises off the Oregon and Pacific Northwest Coasts: Contributions from Zooarchaeology (2018)
Wide-scale excavations were undertaken in the middens at Seaside, Oregon in the 1960s and 1970s. However, due to the overwhelming amount of faunal material, much of it remains unanalyzed. This project focuses on the material from the Par-Tee midden (35CLT20). The only cetaceans analyzed from this midden are whales, leaving a knowledge gap about prehistoric human interaction with smaller cetaceans, such as dolphins and porpoises. Using the cetacean comparative and reference collection at the...
Historical ecology of landscape transformations and ceramic industries at the site of Cedro (Lower Tapajós) from pre-colonial to colonial times. (2016)
The presence of demographically dense indigenous societies in the Lower Tapajós River during AD 900-1600 is visible in the present day’s landscape through the existence of Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE), earthworks, and a distinctive ceramic industry. As demonstrated by recent archaeological surveys, landscape transformations and ceramic assemblages associated to the Tapajó chiefdom are widespread at the regional scale and attest to common cultural practices. Although these archaeological sites are...
The Historical Ecology of Laxgalts'ap – a Cultural Keystone Place of the Gitga’ata of Northern British Columbia (2017)
For many Indigenous Peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes’ geological features, the plant and animal communities, and associated archaeological and paleoecological records. Some of these landscapes, recently termed "Cultural Keystone Places" (CKPs), are iconic for these groups and have become symbols of the connections between the past and the future, and between...
The Historical Ecology of South Florida Shark Diversity and Indigenous Harvest (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sharks are among the world’s most endangered vertebrate taxa, including recent estimates of approximately 71% loss in abundance over the past 50 years due to human impacts. Zooarchaeological baselines of shark diversity, distribution, and exploitation hold great promise for contributing essential historical context in the assessment of contemporary patterns...
The Historical Ecology of the Postclassic Itza Maya in Lake Petén Itzá (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petén lakes region, Guatemala, has a rich and diverse ecology and abundant locally available resources including terrestrial, amphibious, and aquatic animals. The Postclassic (1100–1525 CE) sites in this region are mainly located on the lakeshore, suggesting that the Postclassic people were attracted to the lakeshore...
Historical Ecology: An Approach to the Investigation of Ancient Human-Environmental Interactions in the Horn of Africa (2017)
Recent archaeological survey, excavation, ethnoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted in northeastern Tigrai by the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) has produced new insights into the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE-CE 700). The principal ETAP excavations thus far include the Pre-Aksumite site of Mezber (1600 BCE-1CE) and Ona Adi (c. early 1st millennium CE) which was inhabited during the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Both sites were occupied...
Historical Ecology: Archaeology for a Sustainable Future (2016)
Historical Ecology is a research program that seeks to integrate diverse perspectives from human and natural sciences to improve our understanding on the relations between societies and their changing landscapes. Investigations in historical ecology draw from different corpus of data, including the participation of the public, not only to solve scientific problems, but also to provide answers to social and political situations. Archaeology has a major role in the production of knowledge on the...
Historical Marine Ecology in Northwestern Greenland: Insight from Stable Isotope Analysis (2015)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...