Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
101-125 (486 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to gain a better understanding of the faunal diet composition of Native Americans in south-central Florida, an examination was conducted to determine which types of animals appeared most frequently within tree island assemblages. Of the faunal remains examined from a 2016 excavation, all were identified to at least an animal’s taxonomic order,...
Dietary Change during the Middle and Late Pleistocene in the Northwestern Mediterranean: New Insights from the Analysis of Rabbit Assemblages (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. In Europe, medium- to large-sized herbivores are widely considered to have formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. In contrast, small fast prey taxa were allegedly rarely exploited. Here, we report new data for a number of leporid assemblages from Southern...
The Dietary Importance of Maize and Aquatic Resources during the Regional Development Period at El Dornajo, Southwest Ecuador (2018)
Earlier studies of subsistence at the site of El Dornajo in southwestern Ecuador examined faunal, macro- and macro-botanical remains. These studies indicated that residents consumed large quantities of shellfish and marine fish during both the Formative and Regional Development periods (2800 BC – 700 AD), with a marked decrease and differential access based on socioeconomic status in the later period. It has been hypothesized that site residents increased their reliance on domesticated plant...
Dietary Insights from a Middle Holocene Latrine Feature at the Connley Caves (35LK50), Oregon (2018)
The Connley Caves site is composed of eight rockshelters situated in a south-facing ridge of welded tuff on the margin of Paulina Marsh in the Fort Rock Basin of central Oregon. Poor preservation of perishable materials and the removal of much of the Middle Holocene deposits at the site with a backhoe during archaeological excavations carried out in the 1960s limit our knowledge of this period at the Connley Caves. Recent excavations conducted by the University of Oregon uncovered a small alcove...
Dietary Variation at Point San Jose, San Francisco: Stable Isotope Evidence from a Late 19th Century Medical Waste Pit (2018)
This study used stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to evaluate dietary variation among 30 adult individuals from a commingled assemblage recovered at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason), California (1863-1903). These remains comprise mostly middle-aged adults, both male and female, and two or more ancestral groups. The assemblage was recovered from a medical waste pit with evidence of anatomical dissection, suggesting that these individuals were likely of low socioeconomic status. Right...
Diverging Patterns of Community Organization in the Late Intermediate Period Cajamarca Region of Northern Peru (2018)
The organizational concept of ayllu has been central to many discussions of community generation and organization in the Andes, but the blanket application of ayllu is also problematic. In the Cajamarca region of northern Peru, the beginning of the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000 – A.D. 1450) saw a demographic shift, with many settlements forming or relocating to higher elevation defensible and occasionally fortified positions indicating possible increases in competition and conflict...
Dog Diet Reconstruction as a Tool to Assess Forager Response to Introduction of Agriculture in the Northern Plains: Stable Isotope Analysis and Ancient DNA Data (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to agriculture in the Great Plains of North America is generally assumed to have occurred through processes of migration and diffusion. But understanding the nuance of this transition at local and subregional scales requires a focus on different types of social interactions and community-level decision-making. One method is to use dogs...
Dogs, Diners, and Deposition: The Social Role of Canis lupus familiaris in Cruz B Households in Etlatongo, Nochixtlán, Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a comparative faunal analysis from two distinct Early Formative households from Etlatongo, a multicomponent site located within the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta in Oaxaca. The faunal remains from several different contexts were analyzed; these contexts represent routine domestic refuse and those from a...
Drinking the Diaspora: An Archaeological Investigation into the Maintenance of Traditional Tigrayan Brewing Practices by Emigrant Ethiopians in British Columbia, Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beer: that malty, effervescent drink has been brewing alongside humanity since before written records. Humans today are just as interested in making and consuming beer as they have been in the ancient past. For some people today, beer can serve the same function as it has in the past, being an extra source of calories and...
Dry-Grinding or Wet-Grinding? Use-Wear Reveals the Grinding Technique Used for Cereal Processing in Early Neolithic Central China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Different food processing techniques often shed light on the dietary habits and subsistence strategies adopted by prehistoric populations. Studies have shown that grinding cereals into flour took place since the Paleolithic age. Nevertheless, the grinding method employed in the prehistoric periods was often not investigated. This study discovered the different...
Dugongs, Dromedaries, and Domesticates: Disentangling Diverse Diets in Bronze Age Southeast Arabia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age (ca. 3100 – 1250 BCE) in southeast Arabia is a period of major social and economic changes. In general, several aspects of the southeastern Arabian Bronze Age diverge from patterns occurring in neighboring areas, making it an interesting focal point of study. In terms of subsistence strategies,...
Early Seventeenth Century French Feasting in Acadia and its Relation to Pre-Contact Mi’kmaq Practices (2018)
The early French settlers at the Port Royal Habitation relied heavily on the local Mi’kmaq to survive the cold Nova Scotia winters. In the winter of 1606-07 Samuel de Champlain initiated a social club, commonly referred to as "The Order of Good Cheer", primarily to battle against scurvy, but also to create camaraderie among the colonists and to strengthen their relationship with the local Mi’kmaq. The French developed elaborate rituals for the feasts, partly based on those of their homeland....
Early-Middle Holocene resource use and niche construction in Jeju Island, 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. Study of various human adaptations and human-environmental dynamics amid Early-Middle Holocene (ca. 11,500-5,000 BP) climate changes has been a noteworthy theme in archaeological research. One of the main questions in this discourse is how occupants in various environments and landscapes have...
Eating and Empires: Stable Isotope Analysis to Reconstruct Diet and Foodways in the Wari Heartland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dietary patterns within a community can reveal insights into how communities were organized and how social class or gender roles could shape who had access to which foods. In this study, we use stable isotope analysis of archaeological humans and fauna from three Wari sites in the imperial heartland...
Eating Local: Plant Use and Identity in the Cinti Valley, Bolivia, in the Late Intermediate Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cinti Valley, Bolivia, has been occupied for at least 9,000 years, with an intensification in settlement in the Late Intermediate period. In 2004 Rivera Casanovas proposed that the sites in the Cinti Valley formed a three-tier site hierarchy, with a capital, local centers, and small villages. To study the impact of these settlement patterns on food and...
Ecological and Anthropogenetic Drivers of Artiodactyl Abundance and Distribution in Northeastern California: Implications for Social Signaling, Resource Intensification, and Resource Depression (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Variation in large-game hunting has long been viewed as a primary driver influencing many aspects of change in human behavior and biology worldwide. In western North America, variation in Holocene artiodactyl (e.g., bison, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep) hunting has often been examined from a behavioral ecological perspective to understand past...
Effects of Acetolysis on Starch Granules (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ability to concurrently analyze multiple microfossils from the same palaeoecological or archaeological sample would allow for faster and multi-evidenced analyses. Most microfossils require chemical processing to become identifiable under different types of microscopy; acetolysis is commonly employed in palynological study. We present the effects of...
The Effects of Sedentism and Increased Agricultural Production on Migratory Bird Flyways: A Case Study from the American Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies in avian biology have highlighted the plasticity of avian migratory flyways and location of wintering grounds for a range of taxa in response to agricultural production. This research provides a test of these studies to assess if pre-contact migrations in the American Southwest could have caused a shift in the wintering grounds of migratory birds along...
Environmental Context and Archaeobotanical Results of the Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The constraints and advantages presented by the natural environment of the Chengdu Plain had important impacts on how ancient humans exploited and occupied this environment. This poster considers how that the Plain was subject to a high degree of geomorphological remodeling due to frequent flooding and...
An Ethno-ecological View of the Evolution of "Solares": A Yucatan Maya Houselot Case Study (2018)
Using a household ecology model, this longitudinal comparison of the flora and fauna of village yards attempts to show how and why solares and their contents have evolved over the last two and one-half decades. Particular emphasis is placed on showing how such changes might be detected in and impact current and future archaeological explorations of Maya farming communities. Changes in water usage, economic activities, family structure and social organization, religious beliefs, evolving house...
Ethnoarchaeological Contributions to Interpreting Pacific Archaeofish Assemblages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Supporting Practical Inquiry: The Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Thomas Dye" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1976, Tom Dye conducted an ethnographic study of marine resource exploitation on Niuatoputapu, Kingdom of Tonga, to help provide a reference from which to interpret prehistoric patterns evident in the archaeological remains. Ethnoarchaeology provides a point of control for an expanded comparative...
Evaluando la explotación de los recursos malacológicos en el Cerro Azul prehispánico (2018)
El impacto de la expansión Inca a lo largo de los Andes Centrales ha sido documentado y conceptualizado de diferentes maneras. Ciertas elites de los grupos culturales locales inmersos en este proceso tuvieron un escenario beneficioso que permitió una reformulación en las relaciones políticas y económicas en diferentes grados y escalas. Presentaremos el caso de Cerro Azul o también conocido como la gran fortaleza del Huarco en el valle de Cañete de la Costa Centro Sur de Perú. Este sitio es...
Evaluating Dietary Change: Adaptive Strategies within the Northern Everglades and Surrounding Areas (2018)
Throughout the past several millennia South Florida has been subject to profound environmental changes. As such, by examining paleoenvironmental change on seasonal and climatic scales, we can further understand this unique environment and infer how it has shaped human and animal histories of the past. This work will be carried out by employing broad spectrum ecological theories which shall provide the necessary framework to understand past resource scheduling, seasonal mobility patterns, and...
Evaluating Differential Animal Carcass Transport Decisions at Regional Scales using Bayesian Mixed-Effects Models (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists frequently face the problem of explaining uneven skeletal element representation, with explanations involving either non-human taphonomic agents or differential carcass transport decisions made by humans. Existing statistical methods for evaluating these explanations are generally applicable at the...
Evaluating the Food Values of Alternative Crops and Implications for Drought Effects on the Ancient Maya (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Far from being limited to maize, beans, and squash, the ethnographic Maya are known to make use of 497 species of food plants indigenous to the Maya Lowlands. This study presents initial results of determining “food values” based on nutritional content for these plant species, and the methods used to determine the values. The results have significant...