Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
151-175 (436 Records)
The scale of pre-Columbian impact on Amazonia is one of the most debated topics in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological soil profiles and lake sediment cores from the lower Tapajos are used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions over the past 8,000 years. Pollen and phytolith data indicate the presence of polyculture crops including Ipomea, Manihot, Zea mays, and Cucurbita. The presence of Theobroma,...
Examining Environment, Ecology and Patterns of Maya Culture at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico (2018)
Our study examines the interplay of the environment, topography, conflict, and social change. Recent research stresses the role of environmental and ecological fluctuations in the Classic Maya collapse (AD 700-1000). Scholars have linked drought cycles and changing climate to increased warfare and culture change at the end of the Classic Period (AD 200-900). However, numerous studies highlight that not all places in the Maya area collapsed, some communities grew and continued to be places of...
Exploring Cultural Differences in Irrigation Canal Systems through Time at the Creekside Village Site, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Irrigation systems provided the foundation of many prehistoric and historic communities in the Southwest. Creekside Village near Tularosa, New Mexico, is a Jornada Mogollon site occupied from AD 400-1150 containing evidence of both prehistoric and historic irrigation systems. Geoarchaeological investigations of stratigraphic sequence and site formation...
Exploring the Effect of Ancient Landscape Modifications on Current Vegetation Structure in the Rio Bravo Conservation Area, Belize (2023)
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. Airborne laser scanning (ALS), also referred to as lidar, has enabled archaeologists, geologists, geomorphologists, and many others to identify and map ancient modifications of the landscape under dense forest canopies. The impact of ALS in archaeological settlement research has been profound and, to some, even...
Farmers and Late Holocene Climate Change on the Edge of the Qinghai Plateau (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late Holocene, a cooling and drying climate, greater intergroup contact, and increasing sociopolitical complexity prevailed across Eurasia. On the eastern edge of the Qinghai Plateau, at the edge of the East Asian summer monsoon zone, millet farming societies faced local, cyclical changes to moisture and vegetation between 3000...
Farming, Warfare, Drought, and Soil Fertility in the Mississippian Central Illinois River Valley: Carbon and Nitrogen Isotopes on Maize Kernels from Five Sites Spanning Two Centuries (2018)
We report on carbon and nitrogen isotope results from a total of 60 maize kernels from five sequentially-occupied sites in the Central Illinois River Valley that span the Mississippian period (AD 1100-1300). The sites span: (1) the onset of and intensification of warfare in the region; and (2) a long period of drought that eventually gave way to wetter conditions during the last 50 years of the sequence. C13 and N15 isotope values from these maize kernels provide independent support for the...
Feeding a Citadel: Subsistence Practices (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Cuernavilla is an ancient Maya site situated in the El Zotz Biotope in the central Petén of Guatemala. This study focuses on the paleoenvironmental changes, agricultural subsistence, and occupational trajectories of La Cuernavilla, based on data gathered from across the larger landscape between 2009 and 2017 on the Proyecto...
Finding Sites in the Amazon Forest: AI-Based Deep Learning Analysis of Satellite Imagery from the Upper Xingu Basin, Brazil (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes preliminary results of an AI-based analysis that identifies potential precolumbian Amazonian archaeological site locations based on the presence of clusters of a specific species of palm tree. The study uses Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and Planet satellite imagery as...
‘Finding the time’: A Long-Term Perspective on Human Interactions with Tropical Landscapes and Its Implications for Sustainability (2018)
Archaeology provides a truly long-term record of anthropogenic landscape interactions and human responses to environmental change. Such a record is particularly important in tropical settings that contain some of the most threatened terrestrial ecosystems in the world today. However, poor preservation and assumed human avoidance have meant that past records of human behaviour have been patchy for these biomes. Here, I review how new methodologies and archaeological interest has enriched datasets...
Fire and Vegetation Dynamics: Blazing the Trail in Pre-contact Southern New England (2018)
The concept that Native Americans were using fire for wide spread vegetation control and subsistence procurement during the pre-contact period in Southern New England has long been excepted as common practice, leading to changes in the landscape and then settlement patterns. However, save for the accounts of early explorers and colonists, whose goal was to solicit the "new land" as a familiar landscape and not an unknown wilderness, there is little supporting scientific evidence. This paper...
Fire Effects on Obsidian Landscapes: A Case Study (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Work by Chronicle Heritage" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We know fire can affect obsidian hydration, but how do forest fires, and our management practices impact these sites and their potential for data contribution under Criterion D? Is there a different way of going about evaluating data contribution or management practices to work with management in our age of large, intense climate-change...
First Human Occupations of the Southern Atacama Desert (24.5° S): Settlement Dynamics and Environmental Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early peopling of the Atacama Desert coincided with the Central Andean Pluvial Event II (CAPE II), an extensive pluvial event during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene (13,800–8500 cal yr BP). A large number of early human archaeological sites from this period have been found along the borders of the Imilac and Punta Negra (24.5° S) high altitude basins...
Flexibility Against Fragility at the Diallowali Site System during the 1st Millennium BC (2018)
The first millennium BC was a period of dramatic social and environmental change throughout West Africa. Along the Middle Senegal Valley (MSV), communities experienced rapid and dramatic changes to biospheric conditions accompanied by largescale technological, social, and economic reorganizations. On the western edge of the MSV, the inhabitants of the Diallowali site system developed a network of flexible institutions capable of maintaining a thriving community throughout this turbulent period....
Forager Adaptations to Andean Cloud Forest, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cloud forests are montane tropical rainforests typically characterized by persistent fog, diverse microclimates, and rich biodiversity. Although some regions have long histories of development of technological and sociopolitical complexity in cloud forests (e.g., the Mayan highlands), in the central Andes cloud...
Forest Regrowth and the End of Upland Farming at Picuris: Evidence from Tree Rings (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kilometers of terraced rock alignments characterize the upland slopes of the Picuris Pueblo watershed, capturing rainfall runoff in a water-efficient method of irrigation to combat the aridity of the Southwest. The terraces’ effective use of runoff rainfall and space supported the Pueblo's population growth and Plains-Pueblo...
Formation and Context of Sitio Chivacabe, Western Highland Guatemala (2018)
Located in the Highlands of western Guatemala, Chivacabe is a Pleistocene-age bone bed and Archaic-age archaeological site. In 2009 the site was subjected to intensive geoarchaeological investigation with the goals of identifying the relationship between the faunal and archaeological remains through developing an understanding of their context. Three allostratigraphic units were identified: The oldest unit, which contains the bone bed, consists of colluvially reworked tephra bracketed by...
Fremont Maize Cultivation and Latest Holocene Climate Variability in the Cub Creek Archaeological District, Dinosaur National Monument (2018)
The Cub Creek Archaeological District in northern Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument was an early center of Fremont maize cultivation and village settlement AD 450-850. Cub Creek lies near the northern limit of maize cultivation in western North America in the foothills of the Uinta Mountain Range. We couple a Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon-dated pithouses and roasting features with a 2,115-year tree-ring reconstruction of August-July precipitation to explore relationships between Fremont...
From Fontaneda to Archie Carr: Sea Turtle Zooarchaeology and Conservation in Southeast Florida (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Hope for the Future: A Message of Resiliency from Archaeological Sites in South Florida" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In southeast Florida, sea turtles (Chelonioidea) are both a major focus of conservation efforts and a hallmark of local zooarchaeological assemblages. Despite this abundance however, little work to date has been done to connect these archaeological turtle remains to contemporary sea turtle...
From Pozuelo to Paracas: An Approach to the Processes of Formation and Social Complexity in Early Societies in the Chincha Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paracas, believed to be the oldest complex society on the southern coast of Peru, occupied the Chincha Valley during part of the Formative Period (400–200 BCE). Although there is evidence of the Paracas occupation throughout the Chincha Valley, little is known about the formation of Paracas within the valley. Relatively...
From Soil to Society: Local Variability in Inferred Climatic and Environmental Change and Landuse in the Valencian Community, Spain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climatic and environmental factors are ‘creeping’ phenomena with rapid thresholds, and there is a disjuncture between product and best-practice in terms of landuse. The ways in which people engage with their environment are necessarily influenced by the nature of the given region, but the form of that engagement is contingent on cultural and historical...
Fruits from the Ancestors: Tsimshian Forest Gardens in the Pacific Northwest (2018)
The historical ecology of Dałk Gyilakyaw, the ancestral village of the Gitsm’geelm Tsimshian, is a community-based research program that focuses on connecting the past to the present using a heterarchy of ethnographic, ethnobiological, and archaeological methods that are organized from Tsimshian Adawx, worldviews, and community objectives. Traditional resource management and environmental wisdom are explored as a means of investigating the archaeological past in less invasive ways. In this...
Galapagos marine plastic pollution: a perspective from contemporary archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Marine plastic pollution is an issue threatening most places around the world, including the remote and unique Galapagos archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Building on how archaeology of the contemporary world can help address urgent and global environmental issues, this paper offers suggestions for an archaeology of plastic pollution in Galapagos....
Genetic Analysis of Microbial Community Structure in Soils from the Hell Gap Witness Block (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleomicrobiology is probably best known as an approach that yields anthropological findings connected to human health and disease, such as long-term records of oral microbiomes recovered from ancient dental calculus. However, the tools of microbial ecology have been tested for their potential to address other anthropological...
A Geoarchaeological Analysis of the Site Formation Processes at Brown Hole and WR-1. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. WR-1 and Brown Hole are two submerged archaeological sites in the West Run of the Aucilla River. This thesis utilizes a geoarchaeological approach to evaluate the depositional sequences of these sites as well as their potential for further archaeological investigation. The sedimentary histories of the sites represent adjacent depositional facies within a...
A Geoarchaeological Investigation of Site Formation Processes and Late Pleistocene and Holocene Environmental Change at the Foxwood Farm site (38PN35) (2018)
The Foxwood Farm site (38PN35) is deeply stratified (4.8 m) sedimentary sequence located on the Oolenoy River, near the boundary between the Piedmont and Blue Ridge in Pickens County, South Carolina. The lower most sediments, (4.8 to 3.2 m), consisting of channel gravels, lateral accretion sands, and clays, were deposited during the late Pleistocene prior to 12.6 ka. These sediments exhibit a fining upward sequence from channel gravels and sands, through bar sands, to a cap of clays. The upper...