Coastal and Island Archaeology (Other Keyword)
126-150 (366 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The effect of cooling climate during the Neoglacial period (3000-5000 BP) on societies in the Eastern Aleutian Islands is contested. Some archaeologists have argued that the appearance of toggling harpoon heads by 3000 BP indicate an adaptation to hunting marine mammals in an icy environment. This conclusion is problematic because toggling harpoons were...
Following in El Maestro’s Footsteps: Historical Ecology and Panamanian Capacity Building in Darién (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2012, Richard Cooke described the study of so-called Gran Darién as one of the most urgent concerns in Panamanian archaeology. Years later, that mandate resonated with us, and in 2019 we joined efforts beginning to fill in one of the greatest gaps in...
Food for thought: Exploring the Cultural and Ecological Significance of Greater Antillean Fisheries (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Greater Antilles is an archipelago of islands in the Northern Caribbean (e.g., Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). These islands are host to a melting pot of unique cultural identities and ecological biodiversity. It is well known that the long-term harvest of marine fishes greatly shaped human cultures and marine...
Foragers, Herders and Harvesters: Modeling Shifts in Late Holocene Subsistence Strategies on South Africa’s West Coast (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 Western Cape coastline of South Africa has been inhabited by hunter-gatherers for over 120,000 years, making it an excellent place to test models of human behavioural ecology. Of particular interest is the transition at 2000 years ago from a sedentary maritime strategy focused on...
A Forensic investigation of the Ralph Glidden Human Remains Collection of the Catalina Island Museum (2018)
Members of the Gabrielino/Tongva community always felt that the Ralph Glidden Collection within the Catalina Island museum required a forensic style of investigation. Although they may have been discussing the entire collection, it is definitely applies to the human remains collections. The Catalina Island Museum human remains collection that was recently repatriated had received limited analysis. A few scholars incorporated the collection into larger discussions about the Gabrielino and Chumash...
Fostering Preservation and Public Engagement of a Colonial-Era Site on Barbuda with Photogrammetry (2024)
This is an abstract from the "At the Frontier of Big Climate, Disaster Capitalism, and Endangered Cultural Heritage in Barbuda, Lesser Antilles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The threats to cultural heritage on the Caribbean island of Barbuda are multifaceted, stemming from natural disasters, rising sea levels, political and economic policies, and infrastructure development. While such threats are not new, their increasing and combined...
Fowling and Food Security in the Faroe Islands (2018)
Seabird fowling has long played an important role in the traditional domestic economy of the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago. Direct evidence for seabird exploitation in the earliest period of Faroese prehistory has been lacking, however. In this paper, I present new archaeofaunal evidence for substantial and sustained seabird exploitation in the Faroe Islands from the 9th through 13th centuries CE. The data suggest that seabirds represented a significant resource in the...
From Dune Stratigraphy to a Model-Based Cultural Sequence for the Marquesas Islands of East Polynesia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Marquesas Islands comprise part of East Polynesia, a culture area that also includes Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Tahiti. Calcareous sand dunes are rare in the Marquesas but play an outsized role in Polynesian archaeology. Dune sites yield remarkably rich evidence of human settlement and the preservation of organic remains is...
From Frog to Bat: The Extraordinary Bestiary of the Pre-Columbians from the Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeological studies bring information on the history of the vertebrate faunas during the last 30000 years and especially on their relationships with human activities since 5000 years in the Lesser Antilles. In such an oceanic island environment, the Pre-Columbians have mainly exploited animals from the...
From Shore to Mountain: Insights into Resource Selection and Processing along the Central California Coast (2018)
Salvage excavations conducted in the 1970s at the Red, White, and Blue Beach site (CA-SCR-35), located in northern Santa Cruz County on the central California coast on Monterey Bay, recovered a large and diverse vertebrate faunal assemblage with a well-defined Middle Period (2800–900 cal BP) component. Few faunal assemblages from this area of the Central Coast have been thoroughly analyzed and little is known about resource selection and processing during this time. I use archaeofaunal data from...
From Staple to Shameful (and Back Again?): The Changing Fortunes of Seaweeds in the North Atlantic (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Seaweeds are in vogue: new initiatives tout seaweed farming as a solution to global problems of food insecurity that can simultaneously combat climate change through carbon sequestration and regenerate damaged marine environments....
Front-Loading Backfilling: Site Stabilization of a Cliffside Shell Midden at l’akayamu (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the design of a sampling project at one of the three archaeological sites composing the Late/Historic village of l’akayamu on limuw (Santa Cruz Island, California). We developed our methods with two goals: first, to support effective site stabilization post-excavation; second, to recover fragile artifacts eroding from a sea cliff while...
The Function of Woodland Period Shell Rings as Seen at the Mound Field Site (8WA8) (2018)
What purpose did Woodland period shell rings along the Gulf Coast of Florida hold? These unique architectural features have been explained as specific patterns of trash disposal, protection against flooding events, and as barriers from intruders, among other things, but no answers have stood to truly explain their proliferation and significance during the Woodland period. Recent excavations in 2015 by Dr. Mike Russo (National Park Service) and in 2016 by Dr. Tanya Peres (Florida State...
Gardens in the Aleutian Islands: Landscape Management by Unangan/Unangas Ancestors (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric large village midden sites in the Aleutian Islands provide soil chemistry and drainage environments optimal for the growth of plants that feature prominently in Unangan/Unangas traditional subsistence. Previous interpretations view this as fortuitous and non-deliberate. We argue that evidence suggests instead that plants useful in subsistence and...
Genetic and ZooMS Identification of Marine Mammal Bone from Norse Sites in Iceland and Greenland: Insights into Historic Ecology and Norse Economies (2018)
Evidence from Arctic and North Atlantic archaeological sites shows marine mammals were frequently used by Norse settlers in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Archaeofaunal assemblages often yield a wealth of complete bones, however, species-level identification is not possible for heavily fragmented specimens. Therefore, specific details about marine mammal utilization are often unquantified and marine species identification largely remains unverified. This paper reveals utility of ZooMS...
Genomic Contributions to Understanding Early Caribbean Settlement (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Caribbean, archaeological and linguistic research have contributed a wealth of knowledge to our understanding of human settlement, yet many issues surrounding dispersal trajectories, adaptation to island environments, and population dynamics over time are still...
Geoarchaeological Insights from a Late Pleistocene–Terminal Holocene Site on Isla Cedros, Baja California (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Current geoarchaeological investigations of the Cerro Pedrogoso (Rocky Hill) site on Isla Cedros, Baja California, seek to provide a context for a Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation along the Pacific coast. Here, a rich assemblage of artifacts signals the presence of maritime coastal adaptations from at...
Geoarchaeological Prospection for Late Pleistocene Deposits in the Paleo-Tahkenitch River Valley, Oregon Coast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record of the paleo-Tahkenitch River valley, situated on the Oregon coast, spans the early to late Holocene. Previous work at the Tahkenitch Landing site (35CS43) has demonstrated human response to postglacial marine transgression, transitioning from an inland river valley to a productive estuary in the early Holocene to a...
Geomorphological Development and Implications for Human Settlement of Southern Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human population dispersals across Remote Oceania were some of the most remarkable long-distance voyages in history. Recent collaborative research focused on the timing, drivers, and complexities of these voyages has led to an increased understanding of these movements, but many questions still remain unanswered. This is especially true for Yap, a group of...
Geophysical and Archaeological Explorations of the Center of the Creighton Island Shell Ring (9MC87), Georgia, USA (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Creighton Island Shell Ring (9MC87) is one of several Late Archaic shell rings, circular or “U”- shaped deposits of shell and soil, in coastal Georgia. Radiocarbon dates suggest the shell ring was constructed in at least two phases: constructed initially around 2000–1810 BC, and ceasing around 1920-1730 BC, indicating rapid construction and slightly...
Geophysical Investigations of Submerged Landscapes: Results from the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Submerged Paleolandscape Investigations in the Gulf of Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The authors acquired parametric subbottom and conventional chirp subbottom data over potential submerged and buried landscapes features in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of the study was two-fold: to map out potential preserved features for geotechnical sampling and also to directly compare the efficacy of the...
Getting to the root (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Estuarine root gardens are poorly understood and under-researched sites of Indigenous plant cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. Combining archaeology, ecology and pedology, and drawing from research conducted on 'Namgis and Ahousaht First Nations territories in British Columbia, Canada, this research proposes a novel method to aid in the...
GIS Approaches to Modeling the Shifting Andean Coastline through the Holocene (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The long-term study of changing social and ecological patterns along the Andean coastal strip throughout the Holocene requires the identification of archaeological sites and their data of various ages. The presence of a broad continental shelf offshore of much of the Peruvian Andes has meant that early sites on this shelf have been inundated by early Holocene...
The Greater Chiriquí Fringes: A Perspective from the Coiba National Park Islands on the Pacific Coast of Panama (2018)
The islands of the Coiba National Park (CNP) are located on the continental platform of Panama and the southeastern fringes of the Greater Chiriquí cultural region. During the period of the earliest human migrations to the isthmus (ca. 13,000 - 10,000 a.P.) these islands were connected to the mainland, although the current state of research cannot provide evidence of being inhabited earlier than ca. 1800 B.P. Multidisciplinary research aimed to study the long-term impacts of human on the insular...
High-Resolution Geophysical Characterization of Geology and Acoustic Water Column Signatures in Willamette Valley Reservoirs, Oregon, USA (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inland flood-control reservoirs represent a novel analog for studying submerged terrestrial landscapes. The same scale and time-independent processes that impact coastal environments through sea-level changes are also produced through a reservoir’s annual draft and fill cycles. Within these...