Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers (Other Keyword)
326-350 (352 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster is a collaboration in an attempt to create a new archeology rooted in a Native American tradition of the people who created the archeological deposits, based in a Nim sense of time, space and values. Archeologists must get away from the artificial concept of sites, which divides rather than looks for interconnections. We must show respect for...
Tracing Paleoamerican adaptations to South American Tropics: new data from lithics analyses in Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological findings in the neotropical region of South America are central to understanding the early adaptations of Paleoamerican populations to diverse ecosystems, especially tropical areas, between 14,000 and 9,000 BP — a period marked by significant paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic shifts. This study focuses on the critical role of...
Tracking Quartz: A Methodological Approach to an Elusive Type of Sources Using Chemical Characterization According to Their Geological Origin (2018)
In the archaeology of the Sierras Centrales of Argentina more than one hundred years ago studies reported the presence of a lithic technology centered on the use of quartz as a predominant raw material. However, little effort has been made to try to characterize its chemical composition so as to understand the circuits of mobility or the exchange networks in the archaeological sites of the region. The results of provenance studies have allowed us to advance in a geochemical characterization of...
Transition from Hunting-Gathering to Agriculture in Amami and Okinawa Archipelagos, Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Amami and Okinawa archipelagos in the southwestern part of Japan started more than one hundred years ago. One of the most important archaeological themes in this region has been when food production began here. Archaeologists have agreed that the subsistence economy of the...
Traverse Ware: A Case Study in Ceramic Regionalization, Style Horizons, Interaction Patterns, and Ethnicity in the Late Prehistoric Upper Great Lakes (2018)
Among the many changes that take place during the Late Prehistoric period in the Upper Great Lakes are greater levels of regionalization and shifts in region-wide interaction patterns. These changes are generally viewed as being reflected in varying degrees of similarity and dissimilarity in ceramic wares, decorative styles, and technology seen across the region during this period. Suites of ceramic types and decorative styles have also been used to link particular ceramic groupings with...
Trends in Paleoindian Projectile Point Technology during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition at the Old River Bed Delta, UT (2018)
The fossil Old River Bed delta, located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, UT, contains one of the highest concentrations of Paleoindian archaeology within the Great Basin. Occupied from 13,000 cal B.P. until its desiccation around 9,500 cal B.P., this productive marshland provided a wide array of dietary resources utilized by the region’s inhabitants during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. However, changes in climate, local hydrology, and human populations during this dynamic period likely...
Trends in Prehistoric Tool-Stone Use in the Upper Mojave Desert of Eastern California (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The upper Mojave Desert of eastern California is bounded by the transverse ranges on the south, the Sierra Nevada on the werst, and the Great Basin on the east and north, and has been utilized by Native peoples since Paleoindian times. Occupation has varied through time due to population movements and resource variability, probably including climatic...
Unmodified Cobbles and Boulders from the Middle Stone Age Occupation of Witberg 1, Southern Kalahari, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Witberg 1 is an open-air Middle Stone Age (MSA) occupation within diatom-rich sediments in the southern Kalahari, suggestive of a small ancient lake system (~360,000–140,000 years-ago). The occupation horizon is dense with flakes, blades, cores, and MSA points, mostly less than 10 cm. However, there are numerous...
An Update on the Sonvian-Hoabinhian Controversy: Shape Analysis of Flakes and Cores from Mau A, Northern Vietnam (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding stone artefact variation in northern Vietnam can be challenging because of the underspecified cultural taxonomies that have dominated analytical frameworks. For example the Hoabinhian is often thought to be a descendant taxa to the Sonvian. Our recent excavations at Mau A challenge this sequence. We apply statistical shape analysis...
Upper Paleolithic Movement and Trade as Represented at the Abri Kontija 002 Rockshelter Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Abri Kontija 002 rockshelter and cave located in the Istria Peninsula of Croatia provides a wealth of archaeological material dating to the Upper Paleolithic. Excavations beginning in 2014 produced several thousand artifacts, some of which can be traced to distant sources. This paper presents recently identified evidence...
Use of Introduced and Native Plants by Early Humans in the Japanese Archipelago (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents recent archaeobotanical findings on the use of plants by early humans in the Japanese archipelago. The first humans arrived in the Japanese archipelago about 38,000 years ago. Although there are not many archaeobotanical records from this period, pine seeds, hazelnuts, and acorns have...
Using Faunal Stable Isotopes to Assess Past Hunting Practices and Landscape Modification Along the Feather River, CA (2018)
Isotopic studies of faunal remains provide an ecological framework from which to interpret human behavior, including diet, subsistence, settlement, and mobility. In this study, we present isotopic analysis of four well-dated sites that span a 3500-year record along the Feather River, the biggest tributary of the Sacramento River located in Northern Central California. Through carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur stable isotopes we explore the effects of human population growth on the type(s) of browse...
Utilizing Drone Modeling to Facilitate Targeted Pedestrian Survey in Central Western Patagonia (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. Regional archaeological survey is notably difficult in continental Aysén, Chile. Many researchers mark the difficult terrain and dense vegetation of forest and forest-steppe biomes of this region of Central Western Patagonia as major factors limiting our ability to identify new archaeological sites. Thus far, most...
Valle de Bonanza (Zacatecas, Mexico): Desert Varnish and Technology in a Surface Lithic Assemblage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Valle de Bonanza (northeast of the Mexican state of Zacatecas) is a surface-only archaeological site located in a highly eroded desert landscape on the edges of a vast endorheic basin in Concepcion del Oro county. The site consists of a sand-and-dust surface affected by intensive deflation that caused the formation of a palimpsest of crudely made flaked stone...
Variability in Clovis Biface Morphology from the Type-site, Blackwater Draw Locality 1 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Blackwater Draw Locality 1 site provides one of the most unique perspectives of Paleoindian behavior in North America. Spatial evidence surrounding faunal and lithic assemblages have inspired researchers to hypothesize site function to represent kill, scavenging, caching, or domestic activities. Its setting relative to other localities of resource...
Variability of Clovis Lithic Assemblages from El Fin del Mundo and the San Pedro River Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Clovis populations have been traditionally characterized as wide ranging, highly mobile foragers, as reflected most notably in the intense utilization of high quality, nonlocal cryptocrystalline lithic raw materials. However, in Sonora, Mexico, local non-cryptocrystalline tool stones dominate Clovis...
When Window Mesh is Worth It: Assessing the Potential of Microrefuse in Spatial Analysis of Hunter-Gatherer Sites (2018)
The smallest pieces of chipped stone flaking debris are often overlooked in the analysis of hunter-gatherer camps. Several factors account for this, including recovery methods, research focus, and time and cost allotted for a project. At shallowly-buried sites where features have been obliterated, concentrations of microrefuse have the potential to reveal in situ activity areas or secondary deposits formed by batch dumping. This paper presents a case study of the Mountaineer Folsom site near...
White Eye Traditional Knowledge Camp: Exploring Prehistoric Subsistence Behavior through Gwich’in Traditional Ways of Knowing (2018)
This study explores how indigenous archaeological methods can quantitatively assess prehistoric subsistence practices in interior Alaska. Archaeological sites in Alaska are among the oldest in the Americas, providing valuable information concerning human/animal interactions. Although there are substantial amounts of archaeological information present in the literature, there is a distinct lack of indigenous ecological knowledge. The goal of this project is to combine traditional indigenous ways...
Who Let the Beads Out? The Importance of Bead Manufacture and Exchange at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa, and Implications for Understanding Holocene Social Networks in Southern Africa (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell and marine shell beads have been linked to the establishment and maintenance of hunter-gatherer social networks in southern Africa, but studies focusing on the methods of their manufacture and especially the social contexts surrounding their manufacture are often overlooked. This research presents a...
Whole Assemblage Behavioral Indicators: Examining Pattern in the Late Pleistocene of the Wadi al-Hasa, Jordan (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1980s, surveys in Jordan’s Wadi al-Hasa document dozens of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer sites, some of them tested or partly excavated. To track landscape-scale forager mobility and settlement patterns over time, we examine 26 levels from 13 sites dated to the Middle, Upper and Epipaleolithic using aspects of Barton’s WABI research protocol,...
Why Build When There Are Caves? Investigating the Construction and Use of a Stone Structure in Pleistocene France (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene in Western Europe is the origin of the idea of the "caveman," and the majority of research has historically focused on cave sites. In regions of Europe where caves are not present but archaeological evidence is, the assumption is that people used lightweight ephemeral shelters such as...
Why Choose Small Packages When There Are So Many Big Packages Around? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The trajectory of diet change in Northeast Asia, is distinct from that in the Near East, whose archaeological record has shaped our most enduring models for changes in human diet. Traditional optimality models, as applied to the archaeological record, predict that small game will only...
Women Warriors among Central California Hunter-Gatherers: Egalitarians to the Last Arrow (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Participation of females in inter-group combat is well-attested in the historic and ethnographic record of central California, but is often overlooked and/or trivialized in contemporary archaeological research. Drawing from the Central California Bioarchaeological Database (CCBD) that includes information on more than...
The Wooden Club: The Oldest Weapon or Myth? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a popular idea that archaic humans commonly used wooden clubs as their weapons. This is not based on archaeological finds, which are minimal from the Pleistocene, but rather on a few ethnographic analogies and the association of this weapon with simple technology. This paper presents the first quantitative cross-cultural analysis of the use of...
Year One of New Excavations at the Paleo Crossing (33ME274) Clovis Site, Ohio: The 2017 Field Season (2018)
The Paleo Crossing (33ME274) Clovis site in Northeast Ohio was discovered in 1989, and excavated in the early 1990s. Analysis of the collections over the past 27 years has shed light on Clovis technology, mobility, raw material transport, and forager colonization behavior. Now, armed with several new questions involving the site's chronology, Clovis tool function, and the possible presence of a Clovis "structure", we re-opened excavations at the site during June 2017. While more excavations...