Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
176-200 (436 Records)
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. The Magic Mountain site (5JF223) in Golden, Colorado, has long been recognized as one the most important stratified archaeological sites on the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Although Archaic artifacts have been recorded there, the site’s richest and most extensive cultural deposits represent...
The Geoarcheology of Vista Alegre (2018)
The maritime Maya site of Vista Alegre, located in the northeastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula is being investigated with the aim to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the daily life of the past inhabitants, and their interaction with their surrounding environment. Results from a sediment core campaign resolved the character, environmental associations, and ages of underlying sediments. To achieve a continues lateral understanding of the underlying sediments, a seismic survey was...
Geochemical and Sedimentary-Based Reconstruction of the Palaeoenvironment and Formation of the Late Stone Age Site of Txina-Txina (Massingir, Mozambique) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study aimed to reconstruct Txina-Txina site (located between the junction of Machampane and Chifati rivers, Southeastern Mozambique) paleoenvironment and site formation processes to better understand its occupation pattern, preservation of archaeological materials and the impact of palaeoenvironmental changes on human evolution. For this, we collected...
Geographical Margins as Key to Understanding Crop Dispersal Mechanisms in Prehistory: Case Study for Kyrgyzstan (2018)
More than 8000 years ago, a variety of crop species began to spread across Eurasia, reaching its edges approximately 4000 years later. The chain of mountains that stretches across Central Asia constituted a geographical obstacle that slowed down the dispersal process. Special high altitude adaptive strategies were required not only by humans, but also by plants due to changes in the length of the growing season, climatic conditions, UV intensity, among other factors. Therefore, the mountain...
Getting to Know the Neighbors: Commensal Insights into Human-Ecosystem Dynamics (2018)
Advances in zooarchaeological method and theory, increased attention to the recovery and analysis of microfaunal remains, and multidisciplinary collaborative research have generated increasingly nuanced understandings of past human-animal relationships. This paper provides a brief introduction to archaeological investigations of commensal fauna, highlighting the myriad ways that research focused on the commensal niche sheds new light on past societies and ecosystems. A case study from Makangale...
Ghosts of Climates Past: Evaluating the Effects of Climate Change on the Foraging Ecology of Paleoindian Hunter-Gatherers in the North American Great Plains (2018)
The environment has a strong influence on the evolutionary ecology of hunter-gatherer foraging. Studies of prehistoric hunter-gatherers have often made hypotheses regarding the effect of climate on foraging strategies, but have rarely tested those hypotheses. The absence of explicit hypothesis testing has been partly due to a dearth of operationalized paleoenvironmental variables. Although paleoenvironmental reconstructions have been abundant, particularly those based on pollen, they have mostly...
GIS Analysis of Environmental Change during the Paleoindian Period in Central Texas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the advent of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technologies, GIS has allowed archaeologists to ask new questions of the archaeological record. The state of Texas has one of the richest archaeological records in North America from decades of work by professional, academic, and avocational archaeologists. Due to Texas’ rich archaeology record, ample...
Giving Form to Flow: Modeling Paleohydrology in North-Central Coastal Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In coastal Andean archaeology, long-standing interest in water and cultural dynamics is intensifying, especially with diminishing glacial water supplies in the coast’s headwater regions. However, archaeologists who have hinged their hypotheses on the availability or management of water resources have frequently overlooked or disregarded the non-linear ways...
Gone with the Wind: The Modelling of the Wind Conditions of the Prehistoric and Historic Communities around the World (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climatic conditions determine the ways in which local communities live to a great extent. The wind is responsible for the everyday life experience by bringing precipitation, moving dust and fire. The general assumption of the current research is that in the past people chose to live in relatively calm spots of the local landscapes to prevent themselves from...
Habitat Preferences in Early Hominins and the Origin of the Human Lineage (2018)
Early hominins, such as australopithecines, are characterized by bipedality and enlarged posterior teeth. Originally, these traits were thought to be adaptations to an open environment. However, discoveries of older hominins, such as Ardipithecus that were possibly only occasionally bipedal and did not have enlarged teeth, have refocused the origins of early hominins within a much more closed, wooded setting. Even the later australopithecines are currently cast as inhabitants of mosaic...
Heavy Metal Animals: A Preliminary Study of Anthropogenic Pollution in Animals from the Southern Carpathian Bronze Age (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the past archaeology rarely played a role in the discussion of anthropogenic pollution. This lack of study is mainly due to the skepticism around the accurate representation of heavy metals in archaeological material as a result of diagenetic processes. In this study, we present preliminary results of a systematic selection of animal...
Heterogeneity in Late Glacial Environments of Southwest Germany and Implications for Magdalenian Settlement (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Glacial (~18-11.6 k cal yr BP), Magdalenian peoples recolonized southwest Germany, which was uninhabited during the Last Glacial Maximum (~27.2-23.5 k cal yr BP). Past research has generally characterized the landscape in this region as tundra or steppe during this time but making smaller-scale interpretations can be difficult due to the nature...
High Altitude Maize (Zea mays L.) Cultivation in the Lake Titicaca Basin and Endemism (2018)
Scientists have long maintained the upper limits of maize (Zea mays L cultivation was 3,600 masl. Archaeological evidence has documented a particular maize variety called tunqu by indigenous speaking populations, generally cultivated on terraces around the Copacabana Peninsula between 3810 to 4100 masl, in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia. This is the first known maize variety cultivated above 3600 masl. There were wide-spread landscape modifications such as raised fields and terraces geared to...
High-Altitude Andean Wetlands: Classificatory Systems, Nomenclature, and Functional Implications (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. High-altitude wetlands, known as bofedales, are vital resources for Andean herding communities because of the high-quality, perennial vegetation they provide. These wetlands are often peat-accumulating, and are attracting renewed attention because of their roles in carbon sequestration and water...
High-Altitude Hunting and the Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism in Eastern Eurasia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of herding economies prompted drastic changes to life in eastern Eurasia—situating the cold, arid steppes of Mongolia as a center of the ancient world. Although a growing body of evidence points to an important role for mountain zones in this transition, issues of archaeological preservation have prevented a clear understanding of...
High-Precision AMS Radiocarbon Chronologies Demonstrate Short-Lived Agricultural Village Occupations on the Northern Colorado Plateau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Fremont archaeological complex provides an important window into the socioecological dynamics underwriting the formation of settled pithouse communities in the western North America drylands. We developed high-precision AMS radiocarbon chronologies based on short-lived annuals for four Fremont sites (Cub Creek, Caldwell...
High-Resolution Paleoenvironmental Shell Proxy Data: Implications for South Florida and Beyond (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. We present exploratory analyses of subannual environmental proxy data from a variety of freshwater, estuarine, and marine mollusk species from South Florida and the broader US Southeast. Using modern baseline specimens as well as specimens from archaeological contexts analyzed via microscopy and...
Historic and Recent Investigations of the Geology and Paleontology of Vicksburg National Military Park (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Vicksburg National Military Park (VICK) was established in 1899 to commemorate the 47-day siege of Vicksburg, which ended in a Confederate surrender on July 4, 1863. VICK’s significant history extends even further than the Civil War as the park contains evidence of life from...
Historical Archaeology of Capitalism and Climate Change (2018)
Much of the climate change literature focuses on whether it is an empirically verifiable process or how individual’s behavior can ameliorate the impacts. Our common approach abstracts the environment, economy, society, and individuals as external relations that posit the cause and effects of global warming as categorically separate from endemic global poverty, starvation, and income disparities. Instead, we argue that discussions need to bring together all the social and natural aspects that...
A History of Knowledge of the Amazonian Dark Earths (2018)
The anthropogenic origin of the Amazonian dark earths (Terra Pretas) has been a methodologically assured fact for 70 years. Especially during the last 30 years, Terra Preta have been scientifically investigated with increasing intensity and in an ever-widening context. Currently, the dominant concept guiding research is the idea of binding atmospheric carbon which artificially produced dark earths. The large-scale production of terra preta is said to be an efficient instrument to combat global...
A History of The Manteño of Bola De Oro: Understanding Manteño Adaptation to a Changing Climate through Age-Depth Modeling and Charcoal Abundance Analysis of Agricultural Landscape Modifications (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A modified agricultural landscape of cultivation terraces and water retention ponds in the high elevations of the Chongón-Colonche Mountains of southern Manabí indicates a shift in agricultural practices by the Manteño civilization of coastal Ecuador (ca. 650–1700 CE). This shift must be understood through time as a societal response to a changing climate...
Holocene Palaeoenvironmental Changes in Southeastern Mozambique: The Case of the Inhambane Bay (2018)
Geoarchaeological surveys were conducted in 2016 and 2017 to better understand the environmental history and landscape evolution of the Inhambane coastal area, Southeastern Mozambique, aiming to know the environmental context of human occupation of the Tofo, Praia da Rocha and Chibuene archaeological sites. To reach this aim, 4 cores were collected in a mangrove area of the Inhambane estuary, an area both influenced by sea-level and climate changes. All the boreholes were georeferenced and...
Holocene Perspectives from the Gobi Desert: New Paleoethnobotanical and Geoarchaeological Analyses at Delger Khan Uul, Mongolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Delger Khan Uul is located in southeastern Mongolia near the eastern Gobi Desert. Today, the climate is semi-arid with cold winters and warm summers, but the region has experienced dramatic changes since the beginning of the Holocene with intervals of warm and cool periods. Utilizing lake cores we can gauge climatic trends for the...
Holocene Vegetation Changes and Fuel Use in the Honduran Highlands: The Anthracological Sequence of El Gigante Rockshelter (11,000–1000 BP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Holocene pollen sequences have highlighted several episodes of vegetation opening in Central America since the Archaic period, which have often been related to the dispersal of nomadic slash-and-burn agriculturalists from the Central Mexican Highlands. However, few archaeobotanical data from archaeological sites have been available to date to examine...
Honing an Integrated Approach to Geoarchaeological Research in Alluvial Environments of the Lower Ohio River Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identification and interpretation of buried cultural deposits in alluvial settings is improved by an integrated approach that considers the area at an appropriate scale in line with prehistoric land use; applies key underlying concepts; and utilizes multiple methodologies of subsurface investigation, laboratory analysis, and environmental modeling. Success at...