Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
301-325 (353 Records)
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...
Smoke on the Water: Addressing the Burning Issue of Threats Climate Change Poses for Submerged Historical Sites in Florida (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. 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...
Societal Cycling Influenced by Climatic Variability Among Early Agricultural Communities: Comparative Perspectives from Belize and Croatia (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. Archaeological studies continue to highlight the extreme variability in sociopolitical responses to prehistoric fluctuations in climate, from the emergence to complete breakdown of hierarchical societies. These processes were likely more volatile among early farming communities with high degrees of...
Socioecological Dynamics of Forager to Farmer Transitions in Southern Utah (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The specific ecological and social processes that structure the spread of agriculture into regions occupied by hunter-gatherers remain elusive. Drawing on ideal distribution models from population ecology, we evaluate whether the spread of agriculture in southern Utah was driven by free,...
Soil Carbon Persistence and Influence in the Early Anthropocene of the Maya Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coupled studies of Maya Lowlands soils and geoarchaeological exploration provide insight into neotropical soil and atmospheric carbon cycle dynamics in space and time, and soil carbon’s role in defining the Early Anthropocene. This paper tests the hypothesis that soil carbon persistence differs in time, space, and...
Soil Conservation Past and Present: A Study of Archaeological Raised Fields in North Coastal Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Casma Valley, on the central-northern coast of Peru, is home to a relatively unique system of raised agricultural fields. Relicts of prehispanic culture, these fields are unusually well preserved. The most significant research on these fields was completed by Jerry Moore, along with excavations of the nearby...
Soil Quality and Agricultural Productivity of Eolian Landscapes in Petrified Forest National Park (2018)
The Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona contains extensive sand sheets and dunes. Archaeologists have long recognized the importance of the eolian landscape for prehistoric agriculture. Archaeological sites dating from c. 200-1400 A.D. correlate with eolian landscape features, which suggests that eolian soils were used for dry-farmed dune agriculture. Eolian soils are not always conducive to dry-farmed agriculture; however, dune farming is known ethnographically, and has been...
Splintered Hinterlands: Public Anthropology, Environmental Advocacy and Indigenous Sovereignty in Resource Frontiers of the Americas (2018)
This paper analyzes the role of public anthropology in socio-ecological justice movements by examining conflicts over natural resources and indigenous sovereignty through policy-oriented research. It considers the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) international projects to protect "special areas" and wildlife in the Western hemisphere, specifically rivers in Chilean Patagonia, and the boreal forest in Canada. Despite geographical, historical and cultural differences, these two priority...
Squeaky Clean: An Experiment to Test the Usefulness of Cleaning Agents on Silicon Dental Impression Molds (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As surface texture analysis has become more popular in archaeology, various materials were adapted to gather data left by use and dental-wear. Silicon-based dental impression materials, such as President® Jet by Coltène Whaledent, are used to make negative molds of wear patterns. These techniques have been applied to examining the dental microwear of teeth...
Stable Isotope Analysis Applied to the Reconstruction of Paleoenvironment and Landscape Use during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic at Üçağızlı I and II, South-Central Turkey (2018)
Stable isotope analysis of δ13C and δ18O in herbivore tooth enamel from the archaeological sites of Üçağızlı I and II in south-central Turkey is used to explore human responses to environmental change during MIS 3 in the eastern Mediterranean. Although changes through time in local ambient moisture are associated with changes in the local animal communities, they generally do not correlate with proxies for site occupation intensity, and thus do not indicate depopulation or shorter site stays...
Stable Isotope Signatures in Modern Elk Teeth and Their Relevance for Paleoclimate Reconstruction (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isotope signatures of oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) from herbivore tooth enamel carbonate have been established as useful paleoenvironmental proxies in a number of archaeological contexts. Elk remains are abundant in the European and North American archaeological records, therefore making them a valuable taxon for study. We selected 13 individuals of...
A Stable Isotopes Analysis of Ungulate Remains from Lapa do Picareiro: An Assessment of Refugia Concepts during the Middle Paleolithic and Transition to Upper Paleolithic (2019)
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. Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMH) adapted to a series of environmental changes during the Late Pleistocene and may have sought refugia in the southern reaches of Europe in response to environmental degradation. Explanatory models such as the Ebro Frontier Model propose that Neanderthals were adapted to...
The State of the Art in Stating Risk: Assessment of Climate Vulnerability Assessments for National Park Service Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Resources (2018)
Across America, the National Park Service has conducted an array of vulnerability assessments for climate change impacts for cultural heritage resources, including archaeology, historic structures, cultural landscapes, and others. A project is currently underway to analyze these assessments. This process is designed to improve the practice of vulnerability assessments as well as scientific understanding of cultural resources vulnerability to climate change. In this paper we share preliminary...
Statistical Comparison of Vegetation Trends from Pollen Records in the US Southeast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, vegetation changes during the late Holocene from both anthropogenic and climatic causes will be presented from several pollen coring locations in the southeast United States. These records will be compared and contrasted, along with a summary of previous work on change over time in taxonomic evenness, richness, and diversity. Prior...
Status Update on Archaeology in Relation to the Climate Change Movement (2018)
Archaeology has many connections to climate change: damage and loss due to the impacts of changing environments, the capacity to provide insights for policy and decision-makers about the human processes of adaptation and migration, community connections to the past and the importance of place, citizen science, media coverage, and connections between heritage and identity in conflict, to name only a few. This paper overviews this range of connections and the importance of assessing where cultural...
Stress and Sociocultural Reactions to Environmental Change in the Late and Terminal Lima on the Central Coast of Peru (2018)
This project examined evidence of stress in 469 excavated human skeletons of the pre-Hispanic Lima population from Huaca 20 in the Maranga Complex in modern day Lima, Peru dating to the end of the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 200-600 AD) and the beginning of the Middle Horizon (ca. 600-900 AD). This period saw the movement of the populations on both the North and Central Coasts of the Andes inland to areas with greater access to the critical water supply (Shimada, 1994). While the majority...
Submerged Prehistoric Archaeology on the Atlantic Continental Shelf (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the last two million years of global fluctuations in climate and ocean levels, submerged landscapes are arguably the most important zone for addressing questions concerning human evolution and migration and are unique for their potential to preserve extraordinary evidence of prehistoric peoples. A discovery off the coast of...
Subsistence Economy and Paleoenvironment of Neolithic Islanders in Jeju, Korea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Evidence, Methods, Theories, and Challenges to Understanding Prehistoric Economies in Korea" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The subsistence economy of the Neolithic Period in Korea mainly consisted of hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming. However, there are also regional and chronological variations, which can be understood through the detailed study of lithic and bone tools and the analysis of archaeological...
Surviving Climate Change (2018)
During the past decade, the University of Cincinnati has offered a summer archaeological field school, which focuses on periods of rapid and profound global climatic change. Students undertake detailed excavation profile descriptions, collect samples for AMS radiocarbon and OSL dating, botanical, faunal, soil, and geochemical analyses to develop an accurate chronology and paleoenvironmental framework of the depositional history for archaeological sites, which date to the Younger Dryas and Little...
Sustainability and Climate Change in the Ancient Maya Area: Evidence from Remote Sensing and Long-Term Land Use (2018)
The sub-tropical forests that once covered the ancient ruins of much of Mesoamerica are being rapidly removed due to modern subsistence practices. Yet, archaeological and ecological research shows that this is not the first time that extensive human-caused deforestation has occurred in this region, minimally representing the third iteration of such an event. Analyses of lake-cores and remote sensing imagery provide evidence for extensive land clearing around 1000 BCE and again after CE 250, with...
The Sustainability Lessons from the Archaeological Work of Lynne Goldstein: The Curious Environmental Stories of Aztalan, Fort Ross, and Michigan State University (2018)
Sustainability can be defined as meeting the needs of the present without depleting natural resources for the future. With such a time focused definition, there is no doubt that the meaning of sustainability changes over time and by culture. An examination of three of Lynne Goldstein’s field sites, Aztalan, Fort Ross, and Michigan State University, provides an opportunity to dissect our modern take on sustainability. At Aztalan, sustainability of Native American culture comes into question as...
Synthesis of Social-Ecological Change in the North Atlantic and US Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anna Kerttula had the vision and commitment to support an experiment: two interdisciplinary research teams working in dramatically different settings, striving to find valuable insights from cross-region, cross-case studies. One team from the North Atlantic islands (NABO) and another from the US Southwest (LTVTP) combined...
The Tangled Roots of the Anthropocene: China from the Late Neolithic to the Song Dynasty (2018)
The Anthropocene is now commonly defined as a geological event, or "golden spike" that begins in the later twentieth century with the detonation of nuclear weapons. While this event-based characterization serves a useful purpose in providing a formal geological definition, it tells us nothing of how humans developed the social, economic, technological, and moral capacities that allow us to affect natural processes at a global scale. Using archaeological and environmental data from China between...
Technological Organization on the Paleo-Agulhas Plain: Robberg Lithic Technology from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic technological organization is based on the landscape-scale distribution and availability of resources. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the landscape off the southern coast of South Africa was a different world than it is today. At its most extreme, the...
“Temporal, temporal, allá viene el temporal”: Memory, Disaster, and Change in Puerto Rico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As one of the oldest colonies in the world, Puerto Rico has developed diverse strategies to transfer knowledge about disasters and to stimulate community ties for social resilience. The impact of disasters and the memory of response are present in intangible heritage. An example of this is the song “Temporal”...