Coastal and Island Archaeology (Other Keyword)
51-75 (277 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal change can have major impacts on human livelihood security, in the past as well as the present. Sediment cores from coastal wetlands can be used as archives to reconstruct ancient landscapes and coastal environments as well as to understand the impact of ancient sea level inundation and intense atmospheric events. This study presents the preliminary...
Coastal Continuity on the Wampanoag Landscape: Recent Analyses of the Woodland Period Occupation at the Cole’s Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984) in Plymouth, Massachusetts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations in 2021 recovered important new information about the Coles Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984), a Wampanoag site overlooking the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Despite the location on a heavily developed urban lot, a preserved portion of the site featured intact stratigraphy yielding in situ cultural features, pottery...
Coastal Erosion and Extreme Atmospheric Events: Climate Change and Coastal Cultural Heritage in Puerto Rico (2018)
Islands and coastal zones preserve the cultural heritage of maritime traditions and livelihoods. The expected environmental impacts linked to climate change present a severe threat to their preservation, placing heritage at risk of being completely lost, possibly in an instant. Coastal cultural heritage in Puerto Rico has been the focus of research for the last two years, starting with a risk assessment, and continuing with plans for monitoring, documentation and possible intervention. However,...
Coastal Erosion Management in Archaeology: Turning Challenges into Opportunities (2018)
Coastal erosion is a known problem in cultural heritage management, particularly in the Mediterranean, which lends itself exceptionally well to studies of maritime trade and connectivity. The loss of coastal land to erosion presents a serious obstacle to our understanding of the archaeological coastscape, due to the unpredictable rate in which it exposes and damages archaeological features. The exposure and subsequent disappearance of material culture is seldom accompanied by systematic...
Coastal Geocatastrophes as Agents of Change on Multiple Time Scales: A Case Study from the Shetland Islands, UK (2018)
The coasts of northernmost Britain and neighboring North Sea countries offer numerous examples of sand environments that have been both settled and completely abandoned by humans at various times. These areas' rich archaeological records reveal many examples of once-thriving human settlements that were challenged and eventually terminated by burial in aeolian sand over periods ranging from days to decades. The origins and socio-ecological dynamics of these geocatastrophes may reflect important...
Coastal Louisiana’s Vanishing Archaeological Record: The Last Investigations at the Adams Bay Mounds Site (16PL8) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sea level rise coupled with coastal erosion and subsidence has created an unprecedented land loss crisis for coastal Louisiana. This presentation provides an overview of the effects of land loss to coastal Louisiana’s archaeological record observed at different scales (coast-wide, regional, and the individual archaeological site) and highlights the 2018 summer...
Coastal Occupation and Foraging During the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene at Waterfall Bluff, Eastern Pondoland, South Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The P5 Project is an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers studying hunter-gatherer adaptations in persistent coastal contexts in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Since 2015, excavations at the site of Waterfall Bluff (A2SE-1) have revealed stratified and well-preserved remains of coastal...
Coastal Resource Use During the Prehistoric Times in the Amami and Okinawa Archipelagos, Japan (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. The Ryukyu archipelago, Japan, is located between Kyushu and Taiwan islands, stretching approximately 1200 km. The Amami and Okinawa archipelagos occupy the central part of the Ryukyu archipelago. Astonishingly, Homo sapiens settled these islands as early as ca. 30,000 years ago. Based...
Colonizing the Edge: The Maritime Archaic Settlement and Occupation of Eastern Newfoundland (2018)
This paper presents evidence from a new Maritime Archaic habitation site located on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Unlike the adjacent mainland of Labrador, very few Archaic habitation sites are known from the island, which makes this work critical to understanding Archaic settlement and social organization across the broader region. Excavations have produced hundreds of lithic artifacts and geomorphological data suggesting that a variety of subsistence and domestic activities occurred at...
Comparative Evidence of Maritime Activity in the Early Swahili Harbours of Zanzibar (2018)
The Swahili of East Africa are regarded historically as a maritime culture, whose coastal sailing networks and prosperous Indian Ocean trade connections can be dated back to at least the 7th century CE. Archaeological investigations have demonstrated that maritime elements were deliberately embedded in the architecture of the famous second millennium Swahili stonetowns, but a focus on urban areas has sometimes been at the expense of areas of potential maritime infrastructure within settlements,...
Comparing Population Dynamics in the Inland and the Coastal Regions during the Chulmun Period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines the population dynamics during the Chulmun period (10,000–3500 cal BP) in Korea by analyzing paleoenvironmental proxies and 14C dates. It specifically focuses on the differences between the inland and the coastal regions concerning the period’s population decline phase in the context of changing...
Considering Seascapes, Waterscapes and the Relational (2018)
This paper introduces some key themes for this session, and considers how seascapes and waterscapes relate to the many and varied people, things, and places with which humans live. While many aspects of the archaeological record can be interpreted as referencing the watery realm through association (e.g. shell middens) or visual cues (e.g. rock art), our goal with this session is not to focus on simply identifying these connections, but to interrogate the nature of these relationships – to...
The Continuing Archaeological Investigations on the Northeast Coast of San Salvador Island, Bahamas (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. Youngstown State University archaeologists have conducted research on San Salvador Island since 1995, initially under the direction of Gary Fry and, later, of Thomas Delvaux and Matt O’Mansky. This research has focused on three sites on the east side of the island: the North Storr’s Lake site (SS-4), the Fresh Lake site (SS-7), and...
Contributions of Experimental Archaeology and Use-Wear Analysis to the Study of Limpets (Patella Sp.) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shells have great potentials to inform about the past both from cultural and environmental perspectives. However, despite their importance for ancient people and vast occurrence in prehistoric archaeological sites, Pleistocene shells have gotten less attention. Limpets (Patella sp.) rarely occur in Mediterranean Pleistocene and Holocene assemblages,...
Cooperation and Coercion: Geography, Ecology, Climate, and Surplus Production in the Rise of the Calusa Kingdom (2018)
The Calusa of southwest Florida were the most complex and powerful society in Florida during the sixteenth century AD. They relied for protein not on agriculture, but on aquatic resources harvested from shallow-water estuaries. Our interdisciplinary team is exploring the evidence for surplus production and intensification against a background of environmental challenges and opportunities. We focus on Mound Key and Pineland, the two largest Calusa towns. We think that cooperative heterarchical...
Creating a Fisher’s Body: Using Ethnobioarchaeology to Reveal the Caballito de Totora-Body-Fish-Sea Assemblage in Ancient Huanchaco, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the North Coast of Peru, archaeological evidence suggests artisanal fishers have used caballito de totora (reed) boats for over 3,000 years. In the modern-day fishing and surfing town of Huanchaco in the Moche Valley, these crescent-shaped boats are still used daily for gathering...
Cuban-Canadian Collaboration at the Sites in the Canímar River Basin and in the Cauto Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cuban-Canadian research project was developed during the last 10 years between scholars from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Havana, the University of Matanzas and The Cuban Institute for Anthropology in order to investigate problems and help build a more complex picture of migration and exchange within the Greater Antilles and between...
Cultural and Ecological Relationships between the Unangax̂ and Seabirds on Sanak Island, AK (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Seabirds were, and continue to be, an important resource for the Unangax̂ living in the Aleutian Archipelago, AK. In addition to food, birds were used as raw material for everyday and ceremonial clothing, tools, and objects. They also play an important role in Unangan ontologies, appearing in transformative processes. Sanak Island, the easternmost island...
Cultural Heritage Landscapes Post-disaster in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles (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. In this presentation, we will examine Barbuda’s landscape from a diachronic perspective. The ongoing tension between multiple man-made and natural disasters and a resilient people have successively modified Barbuda’s environment from the earliest peopling at 5000 BP extending to the present day. Big weather events,...
Cut-Marked Bone of Drought-Tolerant Extinct Megafauna Deposited with Traces of Fire, Human Foraging, and Introduced Animals in SW Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People could have hunted Madagascar’s megafauna to extinction, particularly when introduced taxa and drought exacerbated the effects of predation. However, such explanations are difficult to test due to the scarcity of individual sites with unambiguous traces of humans, introduced taxa, and endemic megaherbivores. We excavated three coastal ponds in arid...
Death, Remembrance, and Cultural Change at the Ceremonial Center of Tibes, Puerto Rico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For a long time, the Ceremonial Center of Tibes has been considered by many of us as evidence of incipient social stratification and monopolization of power in the Caribbean. However, a long-term project at this site has failed to find clear evidence of strong social differentiation and has forced us to begin explaining either the presence of social...
Dental Health and Activity Indicators in the Burials from the Godet Cemetery (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sint Eustatius (Statia) is a Dutch Caribbean island with historical evidence of three main cultural groups: native people, people of African descent and people of European descent. As a hub of 18th century trade for various colonial...
Dental Morphology of the Prehistoric Chamorro, Guam (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental morphology has a long history of use in understanding the biological distance and migrations of past populations. Though distribution of the frequencies of morphological traits of teeth have been documented around the world, variation within Micronesia is the least studied among the peoples of the Pacific, leaving peopling of the region the least...
A Deposit is More Than the Sum of It's Artifacts: A Case Study from Centro Ceremonial Indigena de Tibes, Puerto Rico (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. Constructing the depositional history of an archaeological deposit requires identifying and describing the physical attributes of the sediment particles, including artifacts. Observable changes in the physical properties is the basis for distinguishing one archaeological deposit from another. The Ceremonial Center of Tibes,...
Determining the Chronology of Reef Island Development for Constraining Initial Human Colonization of Pacific Atolls (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As recent worldwide news coverage has aptly reported, Pacific coral atolls are the most precarious landscapes for human settlement, yet many of them evidence continuous occupation for 2,000 years. Coral atolls are unique in their small size, low elevation, limited diversity of terrestrial flora and fauna, poorly...