Coastal and Island Archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-25 (366 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In May 1817, French privateer Louis-Michel Aury was at a crossroads. After disembarking filibusters on the northern coast of New Spain and reconnoitering a new camp location in Matagorda Bay, he returned to Galveston Island only to learn it had been usurped by the famed pirate Jean Lafitte. Aury retreated to Matagorda Bay with more than a dozen vessels and...
About Islands and Islanders: Mobility, Connectivity, and Identity in the Balearic Islands (Mediterranean Sea) during the Bronze Age (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Bronze Age, the archaeological record of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea reveals a conspicuous prevalence of similarities across all the islands within the archipelago. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying this convergence phenomenon within the archaeological record, we developed a study centered on the analysis of mobility and...
Adorning Localities: An Investigation of Shell Beads in Holocene Southwestern Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In African and Indo-Pacific contexts, beads play a significant role in the maintenance of social and economic networks across long distances. In modern continental African contexts, these networks are argued to represent delayed reciprocity, with beads acting as a currency to secure the relationship between distant gifting partners. However, archaeological...
Afro-Caribbean Ceramics of St. Croix: The Intersection of Clay Sourcing Analyses and Afro-Crucian Heritage (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2016 to 2019, excavations at Christiansted National Historic Site on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands associated with the Slave Wrecks Project, have resulted in the collection of thousands of artifacts associated with the Danish West India and Guinea Warehouse Complex (AD 1749 to circa AD 1854). This assemblage contains hundreds of Afro-Caribbean...
Agriculture Is Not Inevitable: Lessons in Foodways from Precolumbian South Florida (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Hope for the Future: A Message of Resiliency from Archaeological Sites in South Florida" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some scholars have argued that the adoption of agriculture is inevitable and that Holocene climate changes forced complex societies around the world to domesticate plants and animals. But the complex cultures of precolumbian south Florida provide a rare example of persistent reliance on wild...
Agua dulce, Agua salada. Diferenciación de actividades pesqueras en el sistema portuario de la costa este de Los Tuxtlas (2018)
El corredor costero al este de Los Tuxtlas delimitado por las lagunas de Sontecomapan, y del Ostión, los volcanes de Santa Marta y San Martín Pajapan y el mar del Golfo de México, fue el escenario prehispánico de una alta densidad poblacional que entre su desarrollo contó con el emplazamiento de un complejo sistema portuario. Los recursos naturales que ofrecen los cuerpos de agua en esta zona sin duda fueron explotados para su consumo y comercio desde el Formativo Medio hasta el Clásico Tardío....
Analysis of Sturgeon Fishing Encampments from Block Island, Rhode Island (2018)
Several archaeological deposits along the shores of Block Island, RI were exposed by the destructive wave action of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Once exposed, these deposits were threatened by continual coastal erosion and excavated by the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center as part of the 2013 Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Grant (P13AF00176); several of the excavated sites contained significant faunal assemblages. Faunal analyses of these sites included relative abundance and Number of...
Ancient Herring DNA from the Burton Acres Shell Midden (45KI437) and Pacific Herring Population Dynamics in the South Salish Sea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) is an important forage fish and staple food of many Northwest Coast indigenous peoples. Archaeological evidence throughout the south Salish Sea extends this ecological relationship back at least several millennia, but the presence of herring in archaeological deposits is often considered...
Applied Systems Engineering Can Help See Into Non-Contiguous Debris Zones With New Eyes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Finding the lost ships of Tristan de Luna’s fleet is a high-priority historical challenge. Florida archaeologists discovered three of the lost ships in Pensacola Bay. Applied systems engineering can help see into non-contiguous debris zones with new eyes. A 1559 hurricane destroyed ships associated with Pensacola’s first settlement. Three ships were found...
Aquaculture in the Ancient World: Ecosystem Engineering, Domesticated Landscapes, and the first Blue Revolution (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food sector and accounts for more than 50% of the world’s fish food supply. The significant growth in global aquaculture since the middle of the 20th century has been dubbed the Blue Revolution. However, it is not the first Blue Revolution to take place in human history. While historically classified as...
Aquatic Neanderthals and Paleolithic Seafaring: Myth or Reality? Examples from the Mediterranean (2018)
It long has been assumed that most of the world’s islands, especially remote ones, were first visited or colonized by fully modern humans. With few exceptions, these events occurred late, during the Neolithic or later, with an implied assumption that most islands could not support hunters and gatherers. We know that this scenario is no longer viable, with examples from Australia and southeastern Asia, such as Flores and Sulawesi, suggesting considerable antiquity extending prior to the...
Archaeobotany of Ka'ūpūlehu (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thousands of charcoal specimens from 23 traditional Hawaiian sites throughout Ka’ūpūlehu Ahupua’a in north Kona were analyzed to see how kama’aina (“people of the land”) interacted with their environment. Fifty-one plant taxa, including 36 plants of Hawaiian origin and six Polynesian introductions, were identified. Combining charcoal identification and...
Archaeological Salvage at Pockoy, a Late Archaic Period Shell Ring Site on the Botany Bay Heritage Preserve, Charleston County, South Carolina (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal property owners and managers face a range of ever-growing threats, from frequent flooding to wholesale land loss, as the effects of anthropogenically induced climate change come home to roost. The problem is particularly acute for land managers of archaeological sites already at or near sea level. Pockoy (38CH2533), a late Archaic period shell ring...
Archaeology and Ethnography on Old Providence and Santa Catalina Islands (Colombia) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Afro-Latin American Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. English settlers colonized Old Providence and Santa Catalina islands in 1629—arriving on the Seaflower, sister ship to the Mayflower—one year after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in what was to become the United States, but the two colonies had very different historical trajectories. From 1629 to 1630, colonists, under the direction of the...
Archaeology in the Unfolding Aftermath: Creative Mitigation of Anthropogenic Disasters in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Equity in the Archaeology of Disaster, Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Louisiana has been called a state of disaster. The flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 drew national attention to the effects of social inequalities, unpreparedness, and key vulnerabilities. Five years later, a catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig produced the largest...
Archaeology of Luatele Crater: Ritual and Prestige of the Tuimanu'a, Ta'u Island, American Samoa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An archaeological survey covering 50 acres was conducted in and around Luatele or Judds Crater, an extinct volcano, on Taʻu Island, Manuʻa District, American Samoa. The project identified 24 precontact sites comprising 101 archaeological features and a 142 m cave associated with the Samoan legend of Vaatausili. These features include star mounds, oval boulder...
The Archaeology of Shuká Káa Cave: Final Report (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shuká Káa Cave, is located on an island in the homeland of the Tlingit and Haida people of Southeast Alaska, and records seven episodes of human activity dating between 12,170 and 1200 cal BP. Three periods of occupation (10,600–10,150, 9930–9450, and 8360–7929 cal BP) contain microblades, bifaces, and expedient tools. The discovery of 10,500 cal BP human...
Archaic Age Bahamas? New perspectives from Long Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It has long been assumed that the Bahamas were colonized by Ceramic Age peoples who began their expansion into the Caribbean islands from northeastern South America about 500 BC. The widespread occurrence of pottery in the Bahamas (Palmetto Ware), and the timing of initial ‘Lucayan" settlement in the Bahamas is dated to AD 700-800 ...
Archaic Period Lifeways on the South Pacific Coast of Mexico (2018)
Insights concerning human lifeways during the Archaic Period on the South Pacific coast come principally from archaeological investigations in Chiapas and Guerrero. These data are supplemented by coring programs that permit independent reconstructions of human-plant interactions. We present an overview of what we know and what compelling questions remain.
Are the Calusa Unique? Environmental Stewardship and Historical Contingency in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal societies of the northern Pacific and southwestern Florida were once thought anomalous because they achieved sociopolitical complexity without agriculture. The Calusa are often cited as especially unusual, or as the "pinnacle" of complexity among fisher-gatherer-hunters because they achieved a tributary, state-like political...
Are We Living in a Simulation? Digital Reconstructions of Early Sites in Coastal Peru (2018)
Rapidly evolving modern technology has resulted in powerful tools for preserving and visualizing archaeological materials. Extensively recording a site with digital technologies enables new explorations of site discovery and recovery processes while concurrently providing a permanent, detailed record of the material. Here, Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene maritime sites in coastal Peru are reconstructed at various scales. Drone photography and GIS are utilized to collect high-resolution...
"…As the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore": Site Formation Processes on Drowned Coastal Sites and Implications for Preservation, Discovery, and Interpretation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Submerged prehistoric sites left behind by coastal groups have the potential to answer multiple critical questions concerning human activities, but locating, excavating, and interpreting such sites brings with it challenges unlike those encountered in coastal settings that remain (for now) terrestrial....
Assessing Impacts of European Contact on Beothuk Projectile Point Technology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lithic technology of the Beothuk has seldom been the focus of diachronic or regional comparative studies. Recently excavated Beothuk materials from Stock Cove, a site located in southeastern Newfoundland that has significant time depth, provide an excellent dataset to assess change through time and regional technological variation. The research presented...
Assessing Shellfish Discard for Discerning between Field Processing or Residential Relocation in the Subtropical Pacific Coast of South America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Variability in site structure and shellfish assemblages from hunter-gatherer sites in the Pacific coast of Los Vilos (31°50 ’S, South America) has been attributed to changes in field processing decisions across the Holocene. However, these changes have not been evaluated considering...
Assessing the Potential for a Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Occupation at the Tahkenitch Landing Site (35DO130), Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeologists hypothesize that early peoples initially migrated into the Americas along the Pacific coast, environmental changes associated with postglacial sea-level rise may have destroyed or obscured such early sites. In coastal areas currently above sea level, early sites are difficult to find due to terrestrial processes of landscape...