Environment and Climate  (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrés Mejía Ramón. Christian John. Jessica Munson. Christopher Morehart.

With the rise of structure from motion (SfM), affordable unmanned aerial vehicles, and other advances in remote sensing, landscape archaeology is at a watershed moment. These new tools allow for the mapping and digital reconstruction of large swaths of land rapidly enough to be reviewed in the field at a spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution that rivals any previous technology. Away from the field, these reconstructions are invaluable datasets that can be used to analyze the landscape at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carpenter. Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent interdisciplinary investigations have revealed that the Sonoran Desert region is not only one of the earliest regions occupied in the Americas, but also demonstrates one of the longest continuous occupation records. The earliest Sonorans were proboscidean hunters...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Markham.

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. Climate change is the fastest growing threat to World Heritage properties, including archaeological sites, worldwide. Warming temperatures, sea level rise, coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, drought, worsening wildfires and more intense rainstorms, hurricanes and typhoons are putting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Puckett.

Over the last 15,000 years, Walker Lake, NV has ranged in size from the southernmost branch of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan to a small alkali wetland. These conditions have provided valuable, but varied resources for local populations throughout human occupation. Sites identified during summer 2015 and 2016 illustrate the preservation of sites in environments where both submersion and drying have occurred. Investigations during summer 2017 revealed the presence of numerous landforms under the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Taieb. Claire Alix. Glenn P. Juday. Owen K. Mason. Christophe Petit.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first and only millennial tree-ring chronology (AD 978–1941) in northwest Alaska was developed in the 1940s by archaeologist and dendrochronology pioneer J. L. Giddings. Constructed from living trees and archaeological samples from the Kobuk River valley, Giddings’s sequence established the chronology of the “Arctic Woodland Culture.” As Alaskan...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Sánchez-Morales. Timothy Beach.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I present an interpretation of a 5 m sedimentary sequence from Laguna Tortuguero, Puerto Rico, based on new radiocarbon dates, X-ray diffraction, magnetic susceptibility, and carbon isotope data. I also highlight the merits of revisiting old but significant paleoenvironmental records to understand past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Mohammadi. Stefan Woehlke. Olivia Meoni.

This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. North Brentwood is a historic Black community on the outskirts of Washington, DC. It is the second Black town incorporated in Maryland, and the first suburban one in the state. Its founding is steeped in the exploitation of social and environmental infrastructures to turn a profit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eduardo Neves.

The archaeological record of the Middle Holocene is lacking in many areas of lowland South America. The reasons for such hiatuses are yet not clear, but there is an emerging pattern showing that the areas where one finds complete records of human occupation that span most of the Holocene are typically located on estuaries, extensive floodplains or other wetlands normally placed at ecotones. On the other hand, mounting paleoeocological data shows that the climatic conditions of the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Solleiro-Rebolledo. Georgina Ibarra. Sergey Sedov.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of the paleoenvironmental information for the Basin of Mexico for the basin comes from sedimentary proxies, which unfortunately are incomplete for the terminal Pleistocene and the Holocene. In this paper, we present a temporal and spatial reconstruction of past soil cover in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Vance.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project broadly examines shell ring growth patterns in the Pacific bivalve S. crassisquama (princeps). Spondylus shells were incorporated into pre-Columbian Inca (and greater Andean) ceremonial and ritualistic practices consistently until Spanish colonization. Existing paleoecological and archaeomalacology approaches have relied on oxygen isotopic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garry Running.

In this paper I link ongoing research along the eastern shore of Glacial Lake Agassiz (GLA) to Doc Holliday, the person who made it possible. Doc instilled in his students an interdisciplinary mind-set, and taught them to emphasize archaeological questions first and to consider past human groups as active agents of paleoenvironmental change as well as sophisticated responders to it. My research up North began where the ancestral Sheyenne River entered GLA from the west. After patient mentoring...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ayers-Rigsby. Rachael Kangas.

Miami is often presented as the poster child of sea level rise; while climate change is generally accepted as an observable fact in south Florida, elsewhere this issue is regarded as too politically charged for frequent discussion. This renders sensitive archaeological sites vulnerable to coastal erosion, storm surge, and other factors. The Florida Public Archaeology Network’s Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS) Florida program is designed to raise awareness of how these factors will impact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

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. A study commissioned in 2015 by the St. Mary’s County, Maryland Historic Preservation Commission sought to measure the impacts of residential and commercial development on the county’s archaeological resources. The study’s findings revealed minimal impact by development but a stunning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Foster. Heather McKillop. E. Cory Sills.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater Maya: Analytical Approaches for Interpreting Ancient Maya Activities at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in the spring and summer of 2022 were carried out at the underwater ancient Maya salt work of Ek Way Nal in Punta Ycacos Lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Ek Way Nal provided salt to the ancient Maya during the Late and Terminal Classic periods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

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. Sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and other climate-related hazards pose threats to coastlines around the world. Understanding these nuanced processes sheds light on the risks that local communities and heritage managers face, as well as on the longer-term impacts of human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Landazuri.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This thesis sets an initial foundation for an archaeo-ornithological approach to understanding past El Niño events on the coast of Peru and the use of avifaunal remains as proxies for ecological conditions. Here I examine the extent to which El Niño phenomena could influence avifaunal resources and the effect this would have had on the subsistence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yucheng Wang. Bianca De Sanctis. Ruairidh Macleod. Pavel Tarasov. Eske Willerslev.

This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Detailed reconstruction of paleo-ecosystems is the key for understanding the interactions of climate changes, ecological variation, and human activities. In this study, we applied novel environmental DNA (eDNA) shotgun metagenomics methods on the ancient eDNA isolated from the lake...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of mesowear on ungulate teeth is a useful tool for reconstructing environmental conditions. The method has seen several improvements over the past decade, resulting in its increased applicability to a greater number of species and dental elements as well as the development of fine-tuned digital measuring techniques. Recent mesowear studies have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Dillian. Katie Stringer Clary. Cheryl Cail. Harold Hatcher.

This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Waccamaw Indian People (WIP) are a close-knit community that shares knowledge of the relationships, culture, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of their ancestors. Working collaboratively, we have created an outdoor exhibit and interpretive trail that embraces TEK as a means for the public to learn about Indigenous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Usumacinta River and its tributaries played an integral role in the survival and growth of Maya communities in the southern lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Early human settlements relied on the river as a source of food and transportation. Examining the animal bones and shell remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Lewis-Sing. Oscar Moro Abadia. Julia Brenan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, archaeologists have been increasingly interested in ‘places of shame’, i.e. places related to past traumatic, painful, or regrettable human actions. In this paper we argue this concept can be expanded to incorporate sites with negative ecological impact. In particular, the interpretation of places of single-use plastic waste accumulation as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walls. Pauline Knudsen. Naotaka Hayashi. Pivinnguaq Mørch.

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. Archaeological sites in the Qaanaaq region of Northwest Greenland are under a variety of threats related to climate change. In addition to processes observed in other arctic contexts (increased coastal erosion and melting permafrost), the area has seen a dramatic surge in landslides...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Graf. Nathan Shelley. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ is located approximately 55 km southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, approximately 55 km northwest of the Broken Mammoth / Mead/Holzman / Swan Point complex of sites, and about 18 km northwest of Upward Sun River. Continuing excavations have provided tens of thousands of material remains, consisting mostly of lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy S. Commendador. Bruce Finney.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing the prehistoric environment is vital to our understanding of past human use and occupation of a landscape. While many reconstructions, typically based on chemical and biological signatures found in sediment and ice cores, are available, we currently lack suitable records for Idaho’s eastern Snake River Plain. This is mainly due to the scarcity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Kangas. Sara Ayers-Rigsby. Jeffrey Moates. Brenda Altmeier.

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. Underwater archaeological sites are often omitted from sea level rise and resiliency discussions, but these resources, which attract tourists and provide critical information about the past, are at risk. Lack of personnel, difficulty with routinely accessing sites coupled with the...