Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
51-75 (353 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic Maya polities of the Upper Belize River Valley were situated in an especially rich alluvial environment, which may have served as a breadbasket for surrounding regions. The region was also one of the most densely settled regions of the Maya lowlands, showing evidence of...
Climate Change Adaptation: Implementing Indigenous and Local Knowledge to Increase Community Resilience (2018)
Community resilience can be enhanced by engaging local and indigenous groups in the management of their cultural resources, both intangible and tangible. Many communities in developing nations were formally subjected to colonial governance, which imposed foreign architectural designs, irrigation agriculture and economic crops—and these systems vastly changed the social-cultural dynamics of these communities, often destabilizing systems that had been in place for generations. After colonial...
Climate Change and Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This contribution will discuss the relationship between climate change research in archaeology and its application in the heritage management sector, museums, education, and policies. We will do so within a global framework of past climate change action in intergovernmental panels,...
Climate Change and the Foraging-Farming Transition on the Great Plains (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The foraging lifestyle persisted as the major human subsistence strategy worldwide for most of the human career. With notable exceptions, this way of life was eventually replaced by a subsistence base complemented and often dominated by cultivated foods. Archaeologists have proposed several hypotheses to explain this...
Climate Change and the Rapid Loss of Organic Deposits in West Greenland (2018)
The REMAINS (REsearch and Management of Archaeological sites IN a changing environment and Society) of Greenland project has explored a number of factors that currently threaten Greenland’s archaeological landscape in the coming decades. This paper reviews recent work as well as the problems and threats to coastal and inland middens along the country’s West coast and adjacent inner fjord systems. Information gathered in recent years provides a baseline for "ground-truthing" predictive models of...
Climate Change Has a History and Landscape Learning Is One of Its Storytellers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Development of the landscape learning model began more than 20 years ago as part of my work to find ways to use the past to help address modern environmental problems. Combining initial work with nineteenth-century gold rush miners in Wyoming with models of Paleoindian colonization and assemblages led to the hypothesis that...
Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Sites of the Middle Atlantic Uplands (U.S.) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At first glance, the archaeological resources of the uplands of the North American Middle Atlantic region are much less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than are tidal or coastal sites. However, as the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, archaeological sites of...
Climate Change Intensifies Violence in the South Central Andean Highlands, 1.5–0.5 ka (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of the pre-Columbian Andes provides an ideal study of the range of human responses to climate change given the region’s extreme climatic variability, excellent archaeological preservation, and robust paleoclimate records. We evaluate the effects of climate change on the frequency of interpersonal violence in the south central Andes from 470...
Climate Change or Muslims? Collapse of the Late Antique Sasanian Settlements, Mughan Steppe, Iranian Azerbaijan (2018)
Recent research in the borderlands has increased our knowledge on the irrigation systems and urbanization plans of the Sasanian Empire in the late antiquity. In particular, surveys and excavations in the Mughan Steppe indicate that irrigation canals connected nearly all Sasanian settlements. Evidence suggests that after the 7th century AD most of the elaborate settlement system was abandoned and its irrigation infrastructure went out of use. While the exact date of this abandonment is unclear,...
Climate Change, Population Migration, and Ritual Continuity in the Lower Mississippi Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tree-ring reconstructions of cool- and warm-season moisture reveal several multi-decadal droughts that impacted the northern Lower Mississippi Valley between AD 1250 and 1450. These chronic droughts contributed to the regional abandonments and population migrations southward out of the Cairo Lowland and adjacent areas...
Climate Change, Sustainability, and the Ancient City of Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The societal impact of climate change in Central Mexico during the Postclassic Period is an important question in Mesoamerican archaeology. Here, using archaeological evidence from the ancient city of Angamuco, including LiDAR analysis, I argue that an engineered environment buffered the environment from reduced rainfall...
Climate Stability and Societal Decline on the Margins of the Byzantine Empire in the Negev Desert (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the absence of a high-resolution climate archive in Negev Desert, southern Israel, it has been challenging to understand why the Byzantine Empire built large towns in this arid region in the fourth century CE—and why it abandoned them three centuries later. In this study, we use dietary and mobility patterns of animals recovered from three Byzantine Negev...
The Climates of Pueblo Emergence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we explore the emergence of the first Pueblo Canon — how the period of initial Pueblo exploration in the northern upland Southwest coalesced into the suite of material and social patterns archaeologists readily identify as Basketmaker III. Steadfast development of temperate maize...
Climatic Controls on Prehistoric Utah Populations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recognizing how climate variability altered the landscape in regards to nutrient availability is a key aspect in reconstructing how prehistoric peoples were able to thrive. Further, understanding how past climate and environmental change affected organisms is important for predicting the role of imminent future climate change on populations today. Previous...
Climatic Narratives across Eurasia: A Comparative Study of the 4.2k Event in Western and Eastern Asia (2018)
In the last two decades, climatic narratives have returned as a central issue in archaeological discourse. The field has been flooded with publications on paleoclimatic reconstructions and we believe it is time for a critical evaluation – both as means of seeking better science, and for building better archaeological narratives. Climate history is composed by an overlapping meshwork of long-standing trends, punctuated events and short-term phases, with impacts ranging from the local to the...
Coal Bed Village: Test excavations of a major Ancestral Pueblo site in Southeast Utah (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Research in Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coal Bed Village (42SA920), located at the confluence of Coal Bed and Montezuma Canyons, is one of the largest Ancestral Pueblo sites in the state of Utah. The site was first documented by William Henry Jackson in 1875, but has never been systematically investigated. Rubble mounds covering the top, slope, and alluvial...
Coastal Land Loss and the Future of Louisiana's Archaeological Record (2018)
This presentation examines the effects of land loss to the coastal archaeological record. Impacts observable at different scales (coast-wide, regional, and the individual archaeological site) demonstrate that our ability to understand Louisiana's past may be permanently altered. New directions for future research and community engagement are proposed.
Collagen and Apatite Stable Isotope Values from Bison Bone at the Hell Gap Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This work adds collagen δ15N and δ13C to the apatite δ13C and δ18O values previously presented by the author, as well as C:N ratios demonstrating the viability of many samples from Hell Gap. Bison bone can be found throughout Paleoindian deposits at the site, providing a possible proxy for regional climate change. Carbon ratios for collagen samples (n=23)...
A Combined Bayesian and Zooarchaeological Approach to Understanding Local Histories of Socio-Ecological Adaptation in Southwestern Florida, USA (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. We present current research at the Pineland Site Complex (8LL33, etc.), a large shell midden-mound site in southwestern Florida occupied by the Calusa from around AD 50 up to historic contact. This well-preserved and well-studied archaeological site provides new insights into the relationship between subsistence practices of...
Community, Co-design, and Climate: Case Studies in Designing Public Outreach for Arctic Archaeology (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. Archaeological visualization—the task of picturing the past in the present—exists at the intersections of data collection, interpretation, local perspectives, and artfully crafted storytelling. This type of science communication and public engagement work forms a core dimension of archaeology today, particularly for projects...
Competition for Resources: How Commensal Competition Informs Us of Past Human Activity (2018)
Humans have a dramatic impact on environments around them. They augment, manipulate and engineer local environments to their own benefit, often resulting in a concentration of easily available food and nest sites. These anthropogenic resources and environments are readily exploited by a myriad of other organisms. These organisms, in local and neighbouring environments, engage in a range of different relationships with humans, reflecting the level of interaction and dependence. Due to the...
Confirming the Subtropical Paleoecology of Yahuai Cave in Guangxi, China, at 120 Kya through the Taphonomic Analysis of Rodent Remains (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main questions in human evolution concerns the dispersal of modern humans into Eurasia. Given the current tropical environment of South China, we may wonder whether early modern humans entering this region could penetrate the rainforest to forage for food, and indeed whether the environment in this area was...
Connecting archaeology and ecology in northwest Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some archaeologists believe that a key to the success of ancient Maya civilization was sophisticated tailoring of agriculture and forestry to varied environments. Some archaeologists and ecologists also think that ancient forestry is reflected in the tree species composition of modern forests. Based on studies in northwest Belize we...
Connecting Survey and Fieldwork: Archaeology of the Core (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. Based on a PhD research case study in the Croatian Adriatic, the paper demonstrates a step further into investigating coastal and submerged archaeology. Seabed mapping methods adopted from marine geology, such as side-scan and multi-beam sonar surveys and shallow water sub-bottom profiling are now...
Contextualizing the Influence of Climate and Culture on Mollusk Collection: *Donax obesulus Malacology from the Jequetepeque and Nepeña Valleys, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The influences of climate and human activity on archaeomalacological assemblages can be difficult to disentangle. We compare Early Horizon (EH; 800–200 BC) and Middle Horizon (MH; AD 600–1000) *Donax obesulus size, age estimates, and paleoclimate data. *D. obesulus is a short-lived (<5 years) intertidal clam common in archaeological and modern contexts...