Environment and Climate  (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Jerrems. Jerry Jerrems.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Israel Russell in 1883 suggested that the shorelines of ancient Lake Lahontan were so pristine that the lake must have been only a few hundred years old. Today it is known that this spectacular Pleistocene Lake, present in a unique environment, has been around for at least the last two million years with an extraordinarily complex history. Increasing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Chang. Sergey Ivanov. Perry Tourtellotte.

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2019 our team has conducted surveys of Bronze Age through Medieval sites in the Jukuu Valley, an intermontane region on the south side of Lake Issyk-Kul. Surveys have uncovered palimpsests of four millennia of land use. Radiometric dating, cultural historical sequences of site types, and mortuary remains have recalibrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Krasinski. Angela Wade. Norma Johnson. Fran Seager-Boss.

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. The circumpolar north is one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet, resulting in changing vegetation, precipitation, and fire regimes along with altered animal migration cycles. Combined these trends are transforming once familiar places into environments to which people are unaccustomed, perhaps even new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Antonelli.

This paper examines shifting environmental paradigms in the Maya realm. Using Mayapán as a case study, a site long-considered to be located in a "marginal" environment for agricultural productivity, I will evaluate site resilience, sustainability, and self-sufficiency and use these concepts to create a more nuanced perspective of human-environment interactions. Data from Mayapán will be cross-referenced to other similar sites across the Maya region. I will show that assumptions about the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerome Reynard. Liezl Van Pletzen-Vos. Sarah Wurz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Klasies River is one of the most significant Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in Africa with a sequence spanning from c. 120,000 to c. 50,000 years ago (ka). Because it yields one of the largest collections of human remains dated to the Late Pleistocene associated with an abundance of MSA cultural remains, it is an important site for understanding the development...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Bergin. Grant Snitker.

During the early and middle Holocene, the introduction of agropastoral subsistence to Europe resulted in significant social and economic transformations. For decades, researchers have recognized that early agricultural communities had an ecological impact on the surrounding landscapes. As a whole, paleoecological records indicate increases in charcoal abundance and changes in vegetation communities’ distribution or diversity related to Neolithic agricultural land clearing, burning, or pastoral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torben Rick. Natasha Vokhshoori. Todd Braje. Christine France. Matthew McCarthy.

This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the social, political, and economic dynamics of coastal hunter-gatherer-fishers was a hallmark of Jeanne Arnold’s multi-decade archaeological research. Arnold integrated marine climate records and archaeological data to develop hypotheses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Roos. William Hockaday.

Through his meticulous work on stratified and buried soils, Vance Holliday has transformed our understanding of Paleoindian environments in the lowlands of the Southwest and Great Plains. Inspired by Vance’s example, we have used a geoarchaeological approach to explore Paleoindian visitation and use of highland environments. Paleoindians have been visiting the Jemez Mountains for obsidian since at least the Folsom period. However, direct archaeological evidence of their presence in and use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Bertacchi. Jessica C. Thompson. Stanley Ambrose. Andrew Zipkin. Elizabeth Gomani-Chindebvu.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zambezian Ecozone of east-central Africa comprises faunal communities that include elements from both southern and eastern Africa. The region has long served as an important crossroads for faunal exchange, but its timing and implications for hunter-gatherer behavior are unknown. Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Dewar. Elizabeth Niespolo. Mike Morley. Judith Sealy. Brian Stewart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Spitzkloof A Rockshelter, northern Namaqualand, South Africa, identified a deep stratified sequence with pulsed occupation dating to the Last Glacial Maximum (23–17 kcal. BP) and Marine Isotope Stage 3 (>51 ka BP), while the lowest layers are candidates for U-series dating. Importantly, this period encompasses a time of marked climate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Haws.

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. The Iberian Peninsula has long been regarded as a glacial refugium for humans, as well as temperate, Eurosiberian flora and fauna. The well-documented Cantabrian region served as an "active" and densely populated refugium during the LGM and Late Pleniglacial. In southern Iberia, the Mediterranean-type biota found refugia...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales. Eduardo Corona-M.. Felisa J. Aguilar-Arellano.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Back in 1970s, a great effort was undertaken to synthethize the knowledge of human and environmental relationships in the Basin of Mexico, which could be extended to at least 24,000 years BP. Since then, further studies were warranted after initial results and research has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lenzi. William Bloomer. Zygmunt Osiecki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological testing at three sites on the Sierra Army Depot in Honey Lake Valley recovered several Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene artifacts. Obsidian hydration rim measurements on tools and debitage display remarkably thick hydration rinds (~9.0-11.0 microns) and confirm very early occupations. Results of X-ray fluorescence sourcing reveal a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Lees. Tom Dawson. Sally Foster. Joanna Hambly. Marcy Rockman.

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. In June 2018 interdisciplinary scholars from Scotland and the US convened in Edinburgh to consider action in the face of inevitable loss of coastal and carved stone heritage from accelerated processes related to climate change. The project, "Learning from Loss," was funded by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R.G. Matson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What archaeological knowledge might be significant in our climate emergency? I examine this question using climate “triage.” Optimistically, climate warming restricted to a 2°C increase would allow humans to adapt without destroying the global connections that support the modern economic system. A somewhat greater temperature increase could allow some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Conly. Mark Schurr.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Grant Creek archaeological site, located in northeastern Illinois, was a prehistoric village occupied in the early seventeenth century, during one of the coldest periods of the Little Ice Age. Despite this, the site was home to up to 200 inhabitants for around a decade and showed signs of impressive maize cultivation and storage to feed the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Magargal.

This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous dynamics of risk associated with acquiring any resource. The risk of investing time unsuccessfully, of incurring too great an opportunity cost, and of dangers to life or limb when venturing forth all come into play. How do these different types of risk trade off and how does a human in need of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reno Nims.

Numerous paleoclimate proxies indicate the Little Ice Age caused marked declines in New Zealand’s atmospheric and sea surface temperatures for much of the period between 1450 C.E. and the end of the nineteenth century. These trends could have keenly affected the productivity of marine fisheries, which have always been critically important to Māori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Considering the close connections that continue to exist between traditional fisheries and Māori economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Pérez Calderón.

El registro arqueológico muestra que durante el pasado prehistórico en el valle de Ayacucho, ocurrieron diferentes lluvias que no solo inundaron y sepultaron aldeas, templos, pueblos y otros monumentos, sino que testimonian los cambios drásticos sucedidos en el desarrollo de las culturas. Como en el caso de la Costa, se vieron afectadas por el fenómeno "El Niño" o ENSO, y lluvias torrenciales que produjeron huaycos y sequias en la región interandina y en otras partes del mundo. Desde los lo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kai Su. Tristram Kidder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Haimenkou is a wetland site with exceptional preservation and represents one of the earliest Neolithic occupations in Southwest China at ca. 3600 cal BP. The site is located on the margin of the alpine Jianhu Lake (ca. 2,200 m asl). A coring survey along the lakeshore reveals nearly 10 m fluctuation of the water level and complex intercalations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Cordova.

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. Despite the existence of archaeological data from surface surveys and excavations, the extent and dynamics of the lake and its shores over time are poorly known. Archaeological works often refer to a model of distribution of the Basin of Mexico’s lakes that is to a large extent fixed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fatemeh Ghaheri.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Neo-Assyrian Empire as one of the major empires in the Ancient Near East emerged soon after late Bronze Age collapses. It ruled Mesopotamia from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to western parts of Iran and to Persian Gulf during the first millennium B.C. in a cold period in theHolocene Epoch. For my thesis, I am focusing on their plant cultivation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lattanzi.

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. Beginning in 2013, the office of the New Jersey State Archaeologist began receiving requests to identify artifacts found along the Atlantic shoreline and the Delaware Bay. While finding artifacts along beaches is not new, the substantial increase both in number and locations of finds can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria-Auxiliadora Cordero.

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. J.S. Athens and colleagues recently published evidence of early maize (6,600 CAL BP) from a lake core in northern highland Ecuador. Deposits with maize phytoliths and pollen were interspersed with ash layers from volcanic eruptions. The various geological processes that have shaped the environment...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Mauricio.

Los Morteros is a preceramic archaeological site located on Pampa de las Salinas, in the lower Chao Valley, north coast of Peru. Archaeological excavations in 1976, Los Morteros was identified as a "stabilized dune" whose top was used as a cemetery for pre-pottery people around cal. 5000 BP. Excavations in 2012 and 2016 have uncovered a very long and complex history of occupation of Los Morteros which includes the presence of early adobe monumental architecture dating before 5500 cal. BP, more...