Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
201-225 (486 Records)
Archaeologists have successfully used spatial analyses of different contexts (elite/non-elite, ritual/domestic, public/private, etc.) to examine the intersection of food-related activities with status, political economy, gender, ritual, and the public/private division. In this paper, I consider the intersections of food processing, ritual, and gendered labor through an examination of paleoethnobotanical data from Cerro León, a Gallinazo/Early Moche phase (A.D. 1-300) highland colony in the Moche...
Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of Early Maize in the Eastern Woodlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maize was ubiquitous in eastern North America at the time of European contact; however, the timing and trajectory of its introduction and adoption by communities across the region remain unclear. Recent redating of collections previously reported to support Middle Woodland maize have rejected original interpretations by either yielding dates centuries...
Hohokam Dry Farming along the South Mountains Bajada, South-Central Arizona (2018)
Hohokam communities who resided alongside the perennial rivers in south-central Arizona are renowned for the massive canals they engineered and operated, representing some of the largest preindustrial irrigation systems in the world. In light of such achievement, dry farming technologies and practices remain a lesser known component of the Hohokam agricultural landscape. This paper takes a close look at recent fieldwork around the South Mountains, an upland setting at the confluence of the Salt...
Horses and Hares: What Analysis of Museum Collectrions Can Tell Us About Life in the Protohistoric American Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Collaboration to Partnership in Pojoaque, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many museum collections, the fauna recovered from LA38 was not systematically collected, yet it can still provide interesting and important information regarding life, diet, and practices of the individuals who occupied the area in the past. This paper focuses on both the expected and unexpected results of faunal analysis of...
The Household Ecology: Investigating the Household Response to Food Insecurity among the Lacandon Maya (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Starvation and malnutrition have ravaged societies for thousands of years, but the effort to leverage food insecurity has existed just as long. When faced with hunger, humans adapt and respond to the best of their abilities, which may look different according to the resources and options available to them at the time. Maya subsistence literature has a long...
Household Garden Plant Agency in the Creation of Classic Maya Social Identities (2018)
Domestic gardens are a well-established aspect of Classic Maya residential settlement, and they are rightly considered important components of food security and even food sovereignty strategies utilized by the ninety-nine percent. Taking inspiration from the emerging field of human-plant studies, I argue daily interactions with household garden plants exerted a profound influence on not only the daily habits of ancient Maya populations, but also on their memories and sense of social identity. ...
How Advances in Archaeobotany Benefit Us All: Perspectives from Zooarchaeology, Bioarchaeology, and Isotope Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origin of agriculture in the American tropics drastically altered human societies and their environmental settings. Through the domestication of various plants for subsistence, medicine, and technological purposes, human populations grew and expanded at an unprecedented rate across the landscape from the Middle Holocene onward, spreading...
How Burned Is Too Burned? ZooMS-Based Identifications of Thermally Altered Bone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying skeletal remains to species can be a challenge in archaeological and forensics contexts. The high rates of fragmentation and often poor preservation of bones have rendered skeletal fragments specimens unidentifiable beyond broad categories, such as “large mammal.” Identification of skeletal specimens through Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry...
Human Adaptations to Environmental Change on the California Channel Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides an overview of human adaptations to environmental change during 13,000 years of human occupation on the California Channel Islands. In particular, I consider how the range of economically important species shifted with changing environmental conditions and how different foraging...
The Human-Mediated Evolution of Cattle and Its Impact on Cattle-Based Agriculture in the Neolithic of the Polish Lowlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cattle were the most important domesticated animal in the Neolithic of the Polish lowlands. The paper will explore the character of human-mediated evolution of cattle following rapid development of Neolithic groups in the region, the need of adaptation to new ecological niches and the strain caused by climate change and human induced environmental pressure. It...
Identifying Consumption of Putrefied Meat in the Archaeological Record from δ15N Values (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Speth (2017) proposed that the consumption of putrid meat and fish might be a dietary item that is underexplored in the Upper Paleolithic food menu. In this presentation we explore ways to identify the consumption of putrid foods. We compare the results from our study of Δ15N observed in mammal muscle tissue decomposing during winter with published stable...
Identifying Crop Rotation during the Early Medieval Period in England: Charring Temperature, Contamination and Isotopic Boundaries (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Challenges and Future Directions in Plant Stable Isotope Analysis in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Farming practice changed in Medieval England, allowing a dramatic increase in cereal production. Historical documents describe 13th century agricultural practices as open-field collective farming including three-field crop rotation and use of the heavy plough. Our research investigates how and when such...
Identifying Fremont Large Game Hunting Practices through the Modified General Utility Index and Strontium Isotope Analysis (2018)
The analysis of faunal bones from several Fremont sites have resulted in complications when compared to the Modified General Utility Index (MGUI). In this research, I explore the processing and transportation techniques of Fremont hunters at Wolf Village by comparing skeletal frequencies to the MGUI. Then, I compare these frequencies with results of strontium isotope analysis on small artiodactyl teeth from Wolf Village to determine which species were obtained locally. I also identify the...
Identifying Signatures of Bone Grease Rendering in Archaeological Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toward the end of the Paleolithic, foragers have been inferred to render small amounts of fat from cancellous bone in a process known as bone grease rendering (BGR). As the goal is to extract additional energy from each animal, the technology possibly emerged in response to seasonal resource stress. BGR is presently associated with the Holocene; more...
Identifying Subterranean Storage Features: A Cautionary Tale (2018)
Recent research in northern lower Michigan systematically tested the ability to identify subterranean food storage features using surface criteria. Subterranean storage features were used during the late Late Woodland period (AD 1200-1600) in parts of the Michigan Inland Waterway. Such cache features prolong the availability of food stuffs and mitigate against the risk of food shortage. This paper discusses the research methodology required for identifying such features. While many are...
Identifying Use and Consumption Patterns through a Quantitative, Qualitative, and Comparative Analysis of Mollusks at Huaca Menocucho, Moche Valley Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Huaca Menocucho in the Moche Valley, Peru, revealed occupation sequences from the Initial period to the Middle Horizon with large amounts of malacological remains. Quantitative, qualitative, and comparative analyses are being conducted to interpret the role of gastropods, bivalves, and other mollusks at the site. A quantitative analysis will...
Immigrant Diets and the Making of Australia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Australia, Casella and Fredericksen have argued, places of confinement have a disproportionate importance in the national mythology because they are material representations of classic Australian heroes: the convict, the outlaw, and the larrikin. Criminal or mischievous acts are recast as rejecting an unjust social system or an...
The Impact of Diet and Dental Health among the Mixtec Urban Societies from the Formative Period of Oaxaca, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the results of a preliminary study that investigates the impact of increased social complexity on the dental health of two Mixteca Alta populations, one from the Middle Formative (850 – 400 BC.) component of the site of Etlatongo and the other from the Late to Terminal Formative (400 BC. – AD. 300) urban center of Cerro Jazmín. Our research...
The Impact of Settlement Patterns on Health and Diet: Differences in Skeletal Pathologies and Stable Isotope Values at La Corona and El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya settlement patterns and density have come into focus thanks to site survey and, more recently, extensive lidar mapping. Settlement density zones suggested by recent investigations in northwest Petén, Guatemala, allow for interpretation of areas of higher and lesser settlement density and the comparison of those groups between sites of...
Implications of Efe Ethnoarchaeology for Recognizing Human-Derived Faunal Assemblages and Carcass Processing Decisions (2018)
Archaeological analyses of faunal remains frequently rely on observations derived from ethnoarchaeological studies to identify bone surface modifications that were the result of animal capture, butchery, and consumption by humans. In addition to the accurate identification of human-derived modifications, ethnoarchaeological studies in which carcass processing and consumption were observed and documented can provide a more precise means to recognizing specific human behavioral choices, such as...
Implications of Stable Isotope Values from the Skyrocket Site (CA-Cal-629/630) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster summarizes the analysis of 60 AMS 14C dates, including the associated stable isotopes of delta 13C, delta 15N, and delta 34S for human burials from the Skyrocket archaeological site (CA-Cal-629/630). Located 40 miles east of Stockton, California, these burials span a period in which there was a change in subsistence, as evidenced by material...
In the Garden: Studies in the American Neotropics (2018)
Gardens are spaces where households grow plants for food, medicine, and beauty. They provide subsistence as well as economic benefits. However, gardens are more than just economically functional. Gardens are also spaces where families interact and children are socialized, gender and status are negotiated, and ancestral memories are maintained. Archaeologically, soil chemistry, archaeobotany, and spatial analysis have enabled us to identify the locations of gardens, but addressing more...
Indications of Faunal Starvation in Jamestown Colony (2018)
The interpretations surrounding the first English colony founded in Jamestown, Virginia has developed through analyses of historical documents and excavations of the archaeological record. Continued excavations have provided an analysis of fauna within the colony affected by the diminishing food stores during the starving months of 1609 and 1610. Faunal remains were sampled from two archeological water wells in Jamestown dating to 1607-1610 and the second well from 1650. Based upon the...
The Influence of Diet on the Ancient Dog Gut Microbiome (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coprolites are recognized as an important source of archaeological data; they contain biological remains from the organism’s diet, as well as genetic material from microorganisms, dietary components, and the host. Modern studies have shown that the gut microbiome reflects dietary trends; as microbial remains are also present in coprolites, these provide...
Ingredients for Resistance: Foodways in Prehispanic and Colonial Tlaxcallan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Known as the "traitors to Mexico" for their fateful alliance with the Spanish, the Tlaxcalteca are often denigrated in Aztec-influenced versions of Mexican history. In these accounts, Tlaxcallan’s alliance with the Spanish was assumed to be a sign of the population’s political and economic...