historical ecology (Other Keyword)
976-989 (989 Records)
For over 12,000 years, hunter-gatherers of coastal California harvested abalone as an important subsistence and raw material resource. Archaeological evidence from the Northern Channel Islands suggests that human-induced reductions of local sea otter populations may have triggered a trophic cascade beginning 8000 years ago and released abalone and other shellfish from predation pressure, helping to sustain intensive human harvest for millennia. With the arrival of the Spanish in AD 1542 and the...
Twentieth century settlement patterns in the Basin of Mexico: In search of Pre-Colombian roots for regional demography and land use (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological settlement pattern surveys in the Basin of Mexico during the 1960s and 70s capitalized on cultural behavior that seemed to share important connections with the Pre-Columbian past. The labor-intensive agricultural economy that dominated the region throughout much of the...
Two Valleys Archaeology in an Environmental Humanities Context (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk discusses the challenges of connecting the currently ongoing Two Valleys Project in Iceland to various scales of research on human ecodynamics of the past and global challenges we face in our time. This interdisciplinary project expands on previous research into human-nature interactions within various marine and...
Una aproximación histórico-ecológica a los cambios en el paisaje del área costera de Sisal, Yucatán (1807-1990) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Esta presentación resume los resultados de una investigación sobre la historia del paisaje de la costa noroccidental de Yucatán. A pesar de la evidencia arqueológica prehispánica, la información sobre las...
Unique Ecologies of British Columbia (2017)
It is widely understood that humans have varying degrees of influence on a wide range of ecological patterns and processes. In British Columbia an array of landscape management practices have been documented among Indigenous communities resulting in novel ecosystems. Yet, little is known about the range and extent of these eco-human dynamics in pre-settler colonial contexts. We explore the concept of "unique ecologies" as a way of better understanding the untold past of ecological and cultural...
Upano, an Anthropized Valley in the Upper Amazon (2018)
Sangay, Ecuador, is probably the most prestigious and impressive site in Amazonia. It is indeed an immense establishment regrouping dozens complexes of artificial earthmounds and a network of endless paths dug along the edge of a terrace of the left bank the Upano. Many archaeological sites have been found in this narrow and straight Upano Valley has been modified over tens of kilometers in length by the pre-Columbian, but few of them have been excavated. Does this multitude of interconnected...
The Use of Ancient DNA to Investigate Change in Vole Populations during the Past 7,000 years: Implications for Past Land Management Practices (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The integration of genetic research on contemporary and ancient organisms into archaeological studies represents a novel approach in the analysis of long-term landscape management practices by small-scale societies. Our project employs methods in genetics (aDNA, phylogeographic research on...
Using the Present to Uncover the Past: Reconstructing the Ecology and Behaviour of Extinct Large Mammals on the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (South Coast, South Africa) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the ecological role of extinct large mammals is an ongoing challenging research problem. The use of species traits (physical and behavioral) to characterize functional communities is becoming common in ecological modelling and is key to understanding the ecological role that species would have filled under historic conditions. This...
Vegetation Change at Poverty Point, Louisiana (2018)
This paper presents pollen data as a proxy of past vegetation at Poverty Point, a large Archaic mound site in northeast Louisiana. The paleoecological focus of this presentation revolves around the rate and nature of change over time. Patterns and changes in taxonomic diversity are presented and discussed in light of environmental productivity. The rate of vegetation change is calculated and related to ecosystem stability. Additionally, changes in individual taxonomic representation are examined...
The Way the Wind Blows on the Steppe: The Historical Ecology of Mortuary Monuments in Mongolia (1500 BC-1400 AD) (2016)
Subject to continuous change, landscapes represent palimpsests of successive alterations over time. As such, landscapes have history. Following Carole Crumley’s major contributions to historical ecology, this paper charts diachronic change in mortuary landscapes in Mongolia against the backdrop of three major nomadic polities: the Xiongnu (200 BC-200 AD), The Turk Empire (550-850 AD), and the Mongol Empire (1200-1400 AD). The construction of impressive funerary stone monuments has been a...
What Ancient DNA Can Reveal about the Ubiquitous Fish of the Northwest Coast: Salmon, Herring, and Rockfish (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. Fisheries are of fundamental importance to Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America today and in the past. This presentation summarizes what ancient DNA has revealed/is revealing about Indigenous use of salmon, herring, and rockfish from different archaeological contexts along the Northwest Coast. In the...
Where was the forest in the Upper and Norwest Amazon before the arrival of the Europeans? (2016)
This paper presents evidence that suggests a very different environment than the observed landscape tropical forest of today. A comparison of two regions, the white waters system of the upper Amazon river (region of Iquitos, Peru) and the black water system of the Mesay river drainage (Chiribiquete National Park, Colombia), illustrates the strong possibility that these areas were grasslands in the past. This is considered to be a byproduct of (consider using anthopogenic activities) human action...
Whose Ancestors, les Gaulois? (2015)
Four decades ago this summer, newly arrived in a country where we barely spoke the language, our field crew began excavation of an Iron Age hill fort. First encounters quickly taught us that local identity was grounded in the tradition of the Iron Age Celts, not the later arriving Romans, Franks, or the region’s powerful medieval dukes. My intention was to see how indigenous peoples had fared before and after the Roman conquest; I planned a colonization framework. But the site was a surprise,...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of Vertebrate Remains from the Santa Cruz Coast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent indigenous, eco-archaeological, and low-impact field research on the Central California Coast resulted in the excavation of four sites that were inhabited from the mid-Holocene to the contact period. Vertebrate remains from these sites were sampled using fine-grained recovery methods...