Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
201-225 (436 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Peninsular Southern Europe Refugia during the Middle Paleolithic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neanderthal and AMH from the Early Upper Palaeolithic have a really good knowledge of their environment and its potential resources. The local landscape and its changes should influence their behavior and the availability of resources. In this sense, the faunal remains have been better documented than flora. But our team...
Human Behavior and Environment: A Preliminary Zooarchaeological Investigation at the Alm Shelter Wyoming (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Alm Shelter in Wyoming lies in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, and its repeated use for 12,000 years provides a snapshot into human life throughout the Holocene. Moisture is a controlling factor in this (semi)arid environment. Mountains provided refuge and increased moisture access for humans, animals, and plants. This aridity also leads to...
Human Land Use Strategies and Responses to Risk during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition in Eastern Beringia (2018)
Recent investigations in central Alaska at multiple scales (macro-regional, watershed, site cluster, intrasite) have revealed robust patterning among technological, faunal, and feature datasets. These responses are explored in the context of both regional environmental change associated with climatic oscillations between the Bolling-Allerod, Younger Dryas, and early Holocene chronozones as well as systemic change incorporating more logistical organization, shifts in diet breadth, and changes in...
Human Occupation of the Central Balkans during the Last Glacial Maximum: Recent Results from Serbia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), or Marine Isotope Stage 2, produced some of the most extraordinary environmental challenges faced by Homo sapiens during the Pleistocene. Large parts of temperate and subarctic Eurasia were depopulated, as humans retreated to areas with relatively favorable conditions. Although the Balkans...
The Human-Chicken-Environment Nexus (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The chicken is a relatively recent addition to global cuisine. Unlike cattle, sheep and pigs, which were domesticated 10,000-12,000 years ago, convincing evidence for the domestication of Red Junglefowl, native to Southeast Asia, does not emerge until at 5,000 years ago, at the earliest. Furthermore, multiple strands of evidence suggest that chickens were not...
Human-Environment Dynamics at the Arid Margin of the Levant: Fluctuating Freshwater Resources between 400,000 and 40,000 Years Ago in the Greater Azraq Oasis Area, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azraq Basin is a 12,000 km2 internal drainage system at the eastern margin of the Levant. The center of the basin, which we refer to as the Greater Azraq Oasis Area (GAOA), is characterized by a mudflat flanked by two historical wetlands. Desiccation of these wetlands in the early 1990s and...
Humans strategy and paleoclimate in the Andean: variation in intensity occupation in the Laguna del Diamante (ca. 2000-500 años aP) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Laguna del Diamante (34°S) is a high-altitude wetland (3,000 m asl) with resources that have been attractive to human societies for the last 2,000 years. This article evaluates the variable intensity of its occupation in five temporal segments between 2030 and 440 cal BP, according to a chronology modeled from 14 radiocarbon dates excavated in stone...
Hunting Varmints, or Tasty Morsels?: An Isotopic Survey of Iroquoian Garden Hunting (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We use stable carbon and nitrogen analyses of over 500 archaeological animal bones to explore the relationship between ancient farming practices and local wild fauna in the context of Iroquoian horticulture in Southern Ontario (AD 1000-1600). By creating openings in the forest and introducing non-local plants, Iroquoian farming served to increase habitat...
Hurricanes as Agents of Cultural Change: Integrating Paleotempestology and the Archaeological Record (2018)
Hurricanes are major climatological events with significant impacts in tropical and extra-tropical regions worldwide. Despite this, little research has been undertaken on the effects of hurricanes and other intense storms on prehistoric societies. New evidence from the field of paleotempestology—the study of past hurricane activity using geological proxy techniques, such as lagoon sediments and speleothems—is shedding light on how hurricanes varied over the Holocene in terms of frequency,...
Hydro-Social Transformations and Economic Realities at Aventura, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Past, Present, and Future of Water Supplies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents legacies of water supplies at the Maya site of Aventura, in northern Belize. During its ancient occupation, Aventura was a city with ample water resources integrated into its settlement. Access to this water was not restricted by economic status as local political ecology was organized heterarchically. In 1848, refugees...
The Impact of Temperature on the Transition to Maize Agriculture in the Northern Upland United States Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) spread rapidly across most of Europe (~600 years) after the first introduction of domesticated plants, the NDT is much more gradual in the southwestern United States (1600–2600 years) following the first appearance of maize (ca. 2260–1990 BC). Climate had a...
The Impact on Mobility of Regional Variability in Rates of Environmental Change: An Agent-Based Simulation Approach (2018)
I use agent-based computer simulation to evaluate the impact of regional scale variability in rates of environmental change on residential and logistical mobility. Previous regional case studies and simulation work suggest that high variability in regional rates of environmental change (in shoreline displacement, for example) should favour settlement strategies that reduce residential mobility and rely on logistical mobility. Those strategies should select longer-term residential sites that are...
The Implementation and Distribution of Thermoregulatory Technology in the Paleoindian Period (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thermoregulation was integral to the survival of the first and subsequent people who inhabited North America following the Last Glacial Maximum. Successive climate fluctuations necessitated the implementation of technologies that increased the probability of human survival. Previous research has examined the timing of thermoregulatory technologies in the...
Implementing the NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (2018)
As a park characterized by a man-made watercourse adjacent to a river, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park is uniquely situated to address the increasing impacts of climate-related flood events on cultural resources. This analysis presents a preliminary vulnerability matrix for cultural resources on the park, which include historic structures and features, historic and prehistoric archaeological sites, and canal infrastructure. We discuss how hazards posed by flooding affect...
Improving Integration of Archaeology into the Work of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): A Status Report (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern anthropogenic climate change has its roots in the Industrial Revolution and has developed further through social and economic processes that have grown into world dependence on fossil fuels. Archaeology has much to say about these developments and provides important cultural...
In the Face of the Flood: A County’s Efforts to Mitigate the Potential for a Massive Loss of Cultural Resources (2018)
Coastal erosion is impacting Anne Arundel County, Maryland in a way that is extreme and remarkable with a rate of sea level rise nearly twice the global average. Historic properties and archaeological sites are at risk of inundation on the County’s shorelines. Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation has received a cultural resources hazard mitigation grant through the National Park Service’s Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Fund (administered by the Maryland Historical Trust) and is partnering...
Indigenous Land Use and Cultural Burning in the Amazon Rainforest Ecotone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern Amazon Rainforest Ecotone is the transitional landscape between the tropical forest and seasonally flooded savannahs of the Bolivian Llanos de Moxos. These heterogeneous landscapes harbor high levels of biodiversity and some of the earliest records of human occupation and plant domestication in...
Indigenous Stewardship, Comanagement, and Knowledge Production: A Perspective from the California Coast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Resource management and academic disciplines focused on the study of cultural heritage and the environment have historically trained practitioners and hired for positions focused on either cultural or ecological aspects of the landscape. This dichotomy may be a...
Insights into Paleoenvironment and Cultural Resilience on the Ancient Georgia Coast and Implications for Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We discuss key insights into over 5,000 years of environmental change on the Georgia Coast derived from tree-ring analyses of a deposit of ancient bald cypress from the mouth of the Altamaha River, including changes in coastal forests through time. Human-environment interactions, such as the resilience of estuarine-based societies and ecosystems during periods...
Integrating Isotopic Data across Ancient Anatolia for Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The increased availability of stable isotope data has made it possible to carry out comparative studies across space and time. In this paper, we review published and unpublished stable oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen isotope data derived from zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical, and bioarchaeological remains across...
Interrelationships among Histories of Landscape Evolution, Environmental Change, and the Cultural Record in the Illinois River Valley and Beyond (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Village, the Region, and Beyond: Stuart Struever (1931–2022) and the Lower Illinois River Valley Research Program" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stuart Struever’s Foundation for Illinois Archeology (FIA) and subsequent Center for American Archeology (CAA) programs were incubators for interdisciplinary research including intensive geoarchaeological research. Following Struever’s vision, program geoarchaeologists...
Introduction to the Intersection of Sustainability and Climate Change in Tropical Social Systems (2018)
In 2015 world leaders adopted the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals detailed in The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recently, policy makers, archaeologists and other tropical scholars have been working with UNESCO Mexico, focusing on sustainability in tropical regions. One of the session discussants, Dr. Nuria Sanz, Director of UNESCO Mexico, has laid out the key aspects of particular important to tropical areas, resulting in the focus on five of the 17 goals: Goal...
Introduction: Wetlands, Cultural Heritage, and the Power of Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists are well poised to investigate the past, discover what cannot be seen today, and bring that knowledge to the present in meaningful and effective ways. One important field of archaeological study is that of human relationships with wetlands; many wetlands have already been destroyed worldwide, yet these ecosystems are both culturally and...
Is Traditional Pollen Analysis Obsolete? (2018)
For more than 100 years, palynologists have relied on the traditional method of pollen analysis to provide essential information on paleodiets, paleoenvironments, archaeology, and other research such as forensics. The past traditional method has focused on the of light and scanning electron microscopy and then used those results to obtain information and values which palynologists can use to interpret those. During the past decade, some scientists have turned to using other techniques such as...
Isotopic Evidence for Protohistoric Field Locations in Northeastern Illinois (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the western Great Lakes region of the USA, late prehistoric and early historic Indigenous fields are often difficult to investigate because their archaeological signatures are faint and easily destroyed. They have been identified largely via rare remnants of ridged fields and historical records. With the...