Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
126-150 (486 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tres Zapotes is an important site in the broader discussion of Olmec cultural continuity and Formative period political economy with an archaeological record that spans the two millennia between 1000 BC and AD 1000. It is a key site for understanding the emergence of Classic period civilization from ancient Olmec roots in Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast...
Evidence for Forest Clearance and Food Production in Lapita and Post-Lapita Fiji (2018)
Investigations at the site of Qaraqara have sought to determine the antiquity of forest clearance and food production in Fiji. Located over 25 km inland from the coast, archaeological excavation has indicated that the site was used for habitation and cultivation, producing a ceramic-rich deposit that extends to a depth of 250 cm. Geoarchaeological analyses of sediment cores from Qaraqara reached 500 cmbs, and document the formation of stable soils by 3000 BP, during the Lapita period. Plant...
Evidence for Geophyte Exploitation in the Green River Basin of Wyoming (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Green River Basin of Wyoming, archaeological sites dating from the Early Archaic to Late Prehistoric are often found associated with or adjacent to dense patches of *Cymopterus bulbosus, a nutritious geophyte that would have been an important food source for prehistoric humans living in the region. Experimental data have shown that the caloric return...
Evidence for Pleistocene Horse Hunting on the Columbia Plateau from the Rock Island Overlook Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Second-Oldest Sites in the Pacific Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent reanalysis of selected artifacts from a 1974 archaeological salvage excavation at the precontact Rock Island Overlook site, 45CH204, in central Washington State indicates that cultural deposits are much older than previously reported. Projectile point chronology and obsidian hydration dating suggest the Rock Island Overlook site...
Evidence for Ridge and Furrow Agriculture at Angel Mounds in Southern Indiana (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing the Archaeology of Indigenous Agriculture in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence of agriculture during the Mississippian period in the Midwest derives largely from the identification and analysis of cultivar macrobotanicals from refuse contexts. However, research that investigates how and where crops were grown on Midwestern sites is scant. As a result, few sites have been identified that...
Evidence for Winter Bear Hunting from Lava Tube Caves in Southwest Washington (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern flanks of Mt. Adams, Washington, contain numerous lava tube caves. These lava tubes can be quite complex, containing narrow passages on multiple levels. In the course of exploring these lava tubes, modern cavers have inadvertently discovered a total of sixteen projectile points and a flake tool, within twelve different lava tubes. These...
Examining Recent Archaeological Findings at the Bronze Age Korean Settlement of Jungdo Using an Economic Perspective (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. Recent archaeological excavations at the Jungdo site, Chuncheon, Korea have revealed a rare ditch-enclosed Bronze Age settlement in which more than 1,000 pit houses and 100 dolmens were found. As a large-scale complex settlement with evidence of spatial demarcation that divides the site into...
Examining the Impacts of Non-human Animals on Sequences of Agricultural Change (2018)
Historical sequences of agricultural change are influenced by several key factors. While much attention has been paid to the political context of agricultural production, as well as environmental changes brought about by certain techniques, less has been paid to the active manipulation of productive environments by non-human animals. Within the context of some recent theoretical advances in archaeology and ecology, it has become apparent that animals - intentionally or unintentionally introduced...
Examining the Subsistence and Social Landscapes of the Late Precontact Occupations at the Topper Site (38AL23), Allendale, South Carolina (2018)
The Late Woodland to Early Mississippian transition within the Atlantic Coastal Plain is characterized by widespread and dynamic changes from more dispersed and politically decentralized organizational practices into highly centralized, stratified, and complex sociopolitical organization. This period also experiences changes in both hunting technologies and horticultural food production. The timing of the linkages among these developments are not well established locally, something that this...
Experiencing Foodways and Community in Southeast Asian Archaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cultural aspects of science and technology—the science, culture, and art in everyday life—can be demonstrated through food and foodways. Foodways is the chaîne opératoire of what happens to food and associated materials from their acquisition until their discard. It is also a series of cultural formation processes, where...
An Experimental and Ethnographic Approach to the Analysis of Fire-Cracked Rock at Three Monongahela Sites in Southwestern PA: The Case for a Middle Monongahela Stone Boiling Technology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite being a ubiquitous artifact class, fire-cracked rock (FCR) has been largely overlooked in traditional archaeological studies. Due in part to its shear abundance and cumbersome nature, FCR is often more cursed for its space consumption than embraced for its interpretive potential. As a result, the archaeological...
Experimental Archaeology of Medieval Food as Participant Observation (2018)
Central to anthropology is the concept of participant observation, where a researcher engages in immersive learning through ethnographic fieldwork. This concept is also important for archaeologists as immersive learning provides an avenue for more robust interpretation and the development of better research questions. Participant observation is not directly possible in the study of medieval archaeology, but replication studies of food culture can serve as one avenue toward immersive learning in...
Explanatory Frameworks in Zooarchaeological Research: Are Dichotomies Necessary and Meaningful? (2018)
Zooarchaeologists have often employed binary oppositions such as "urban consumers" and "rural producers" and distinguished between centralized/regulated and decentralized/unregulated animal economies with direct/indirect food provisioning systems to elucidate pastoral economies of early complex societies. As zooarchaeologists, we are tasked with bridging more abstract and ideational anthropological variables with the archaeological hard evidence as well as with a narrower set of more explicit...
Exploitation of Canarium versus African Oil Palm by Ancient Hunter-Gatherers in Tropical Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Numerous oleaginous (oil-producing) tree species exist across tropical Africa. Indigenous populations both past and present used many of these species in a variety of ways including for fuel, cooking, medicinal, and cosmetic purposes. Current emphasis in the literature is often placed on the importance of E. guineensis (African oil palm) likely due to it being...
An Exploration into Ancient Human Diet Using Stable Isotopes from Helminth Eggs (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In South Korea, the Baekje Kingdom (18 BCE – 660 CE) is well-known for maritime trade with Japan and China. Despite ample historical texts and archaeological data, the subsistence economies of the local groups within the Baekje Kingdom are relatively unknown. The region’s highly acidic soil is a major impediment to archaeological research because it...
Exploring Cooperation and Hierarchy among Napoleonic Soldiers by Reconstructing Dietary Variation using Stable Isotope Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historical evidence indicates that two strategies characterized diet provisioning in Napoleon’s Grand Army: rationing and cooperative foraging. Drawing on practice theory, we examine which strategy dominated Napoleonic soldier diet during military service. Although the amounts distributed varied by rank and corps, rations...
Exploring Enslaved African Lifeways: An Isotopic Study of an Eighteenth-Century Cemetery (SE600) on St. Eustatius, Caribbean Netherlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiple isotope analyses of skeletal tissues are a useful tool for exploring lifeways of past populations. Isotopic analysis of Caribbean populations is still in its infancy, making the technique a useful tool for learning about these populations. St. Eustatius is a small island...
Exploring the Edible Forest: Food Values and Archaeological Visibility of Indigenous Food Plants of the Maya Lowlands (2018)
A review of 28 ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and botanical studies published since the 1930s identified 497 species of indigenous food plants used by the Maya in the lowlands of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America. This consideration of the Maya cornucopia focuses on the relative food values of the plants and the visibility of the species in the archaeological record. The diversity of food plants has significant implications for the reconstruction of ancient foodways, agricultural...
Farmers of the Little Ice Age: Paradox or Enigma? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late Prehistoric Oneota subsistence in the North American Upper Mississippi River Valley has been described using many different and sometimes incompatible perspectives. For example, Oneota maize agriculture could be less intensive than Middle Mississippian agriculture, or more intensive. In a similar fashion, the use of wild resources, especially aquatic...
Fauna at the HO Bar Site: A Mogollon Early Pithouse Period Site (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the HO-Bar Site, identifiable faunal bones are very low given the almost 30 cubic meters excavated in 1979. Indeed, most of the faunal remains are fragments (ratio of 3.0 grams of fragments to 1.0 gram NISP). The species and NISP will be presented, and there will be discussion of why there are so many fragments.
Fauna from Sinkholes at the Site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petén Lakes region of Petén, Guatemala, sits on karst bedrock and is home to a series of lake chains, the largest of which is Lake Petén Itzá. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ lies on the lake’s western arm. The lowland’s limestone topography allows for high drainability of water resulting in scarce surface hydrology. Aside from the few...
Fauna from the Marana Platform Mound Site, Arizona, in Context (2018)
The Marana Platform Mound Site is an Early Classic period (1150-1350AD) Hohokam site in the northern Tucson basin, Arizona. It was one of many sites in the basin, part of an entire landscape that was shaped by the Hohokam people, reflecting their activities and values as a community. Faunal remains from Marana and surrounding Early Classic period communities are an excellent source of information on labor constraints, social organization, diet, microenvironments, and the cultural meaning of prey...
A Faunal Analysis of the Kirshner Site (36WM213) (2018)
The Kirshner Site (36WM213) is a multi-component site in South Huntington township, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania that contains two Middle Monongahela villages. Relatively little is known about Monongahela use of animals. Fortunately, good faunal preservation has made zooarchaeological analyses of materials from this site possible. Identifying and analyzing these faunal remains with respect to taxa and skeletal elements, as well as human and animal modifications, provides important new...
Faunal Evidence for a Big Feast Event within a Bronze Age City Site in China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Zhenghan Gucheng (郑韩故城) site is a well-preserved ancient capital city of Zheng and Han states during Eastern Zhou. It is located at the joining of River Shuangji (Ancient river Wei) and the Yellow River (Ancient river Qin), lying beneath modern Xinzheng city, Henan province, China. Within this city site, well-developed area division and function...
Faunal Exploitation Practices at the Steve Perkins Site, a Lowland Virgin Branch Puebloan Site Located in Southern Nevada (2018)
To date, there has been little research conducted concerning the faunal exploitation practices of the Lowland Virgin Branch Puebloans in Southern Nevada. This project examines faunal remains from the multi-component Steve Perkins site, which was occupied from the Basketmaker II period (A.D. 400-800) to the Pueblo II period (A.D. 1000-1150). This project aims to provide insight into the subsistence strategies and exchange economies of the Lowland Virgin Branch Puebloans. By identifying the faunal...