Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
226-250 (486 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As we look at agricultural intensification and the archaeological correlates, we need to understand that capital based investment and arable farming are only one path to intensification. Labor-based economies, especially those of the Americas before European conquest, present an entirely distinct track toward...
Intersectionality and the Archaeology of Commensality (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. To food scholars, meals serve as microcosms of the world at large. Those interested in disentangling the complex relationship between food and structural inequality must simultaneously engage many dimensions of social life including class, race, ethnicity, gender, status, ritual, and religion. Since Kimberlé Crenshaw's...
Investigating Ancient Maya Foodways in the Copan Valley, Honduras: Macrobotanical Analysis from Late Classic to Postclassic Middens in the Rio Amarillo East Pocket (2018)
Within the Copan Valley a dearth of macrobotanical assemblages have been analyzed, and most that were focused on the area within or close to the Acropolis. As part of a larger project investigating ancient practices of sustainability within the Copan Valley, macrobotanical remains recovered through flotation from two commoner communities, Site 29 and Quebrada Piedras Negras, Group C, in the Rio Amarillo East Pocket have been analyzed. Due to acidic soil in the area both bone and other types of...
Investigating Organic Residues on Prehistoric Cooking Technologies in the Aleutian Islands (2018)
Stone bowls and griddle stones were in use in the Aleutian Islands for the past 9.000 years. People invested great time and effort into the manufacture and maintenance of these artefacts which insinuates their importance in prehistoric Aleutian food processing practices. A sudden increase in stone bowl occurrence around 3.500 years ago emphasizes their importance during this particular time. What was it that made these artefacts so important? We believe the answer to this question lies in their...
Investigating the Dietary Economy of Ancient Margiana: Ongoing Archaeobotanical Research at Togolok 1 (2300–1700 BC) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeobotanical research in Central Asia has expanded greatly in the last two decades, changing much about our understanding of past subsistence strategies and lifeways throughout the broader region. Archaeobotany is a crucial tool for gaining insight into the way that human/plant relationships shape and structure society. The...
Investigating the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico: New Dates and Isotopic Data (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dry caves and floodplain archaeological sites of the Tehuacan Valley in Puebla, Mexico, excavated by Richard S. MacNeish and his team in the 1960s, contained some of the earliest macrobotanical evidence for domesticated New World plants, including maize, avocados and chili peppers. While many studies have focused on the levels associated with these...
An Investigation of Middle Archaic Maize at Site LA 112766 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides evidence of the presence of maize in southeastern New Mexico radiocarbon dated to 1,000 years prior to any in a dataset of 30 known southeastern New Mexico “Old Maize” sites. The oldest maize site is Keystone Dam radiocarbon dated to 3540 cal BP. Site LA 112766 radiocarbon dates to 4825–4575 BP. An investigation of the macrobotanical,...
Isotopic Analyses of Diet in Late Prehistoric Southwestern Transylvania (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southwestern Transylvania houses a rich prehistoric archaeological record, as well as abundant natural resources, including salt, tin, and some of the richest copper and gold deposits in Europe. The Mureș River, which connected prehistoric communities in Eastern and Central Europe, also flows through the region. Despite its status as an economic and...
Isotopic Analysis of Dietary Variation at Casas Grandes, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of prehistoric human remains has complemented other dietary reconstruction techniques for many years. It provides biologically-based data that allow an examination of what was actually consumed. Using 70 individuals from Paquimé and 14 from the nearby Convento site, we examine whether bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values are correlated...
An Isotopic Study of Dietary Diversity in Formative Period Ancachi, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis has been used to reconstruct the dietary patterns of individuals recovered from archaeological sites. Given the centrality of food to human social interaction, dietary insights provide a window into the inner-workings of past societies. In the present instance, stable isotope analysis, when coupled with multi-source mixture modeling,...
Kitchen Affairs: First Insights into the Intimacies of Food Plant Preparation at El Flaco, Northern Dominican Republic (XII–XV Centuries) (2018)
Ongoing investigations by the Nexus 1492 Synergy Project (Leiden University) at El Flaco archaeological site, has revealed the existence of an interesting Amerindian hamlet chronologically situated between XII and XV centuries. People who lived and died there, being carriers of the Meillacoid and Chicoid traditions, kept their kitchen areas extremely close to their houses, leaving noticeable remnants of their processing tools (shell scrapers, rudimentary grinding stones), cooking pots and...
The La Prele Mammoth Site: A Clovis Mammoth Site with an Associated Campsite, Converse County, Wyoming (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the biggest sticking points in the ongoing debate about Clovis subsistence is the small sample size of human killed extinct megafauna. While just over a dozen terminal Pleistocene megafauna kill sites have been identified in North America, there are only two cases where campsites have been found in association with butchered extinct megafauna...
La subsistencia en el sitio de El Campanario, Valle de Huarmey (2018)
La obtención de alimentos es quizás la función de elemental prioridad que el poblador andino de la costa peruana haya tenido que afrontar desde sus inicios como sociedad pre- industrial. La subsistencia como mecanismo para el autoabastecimiento de alimentos ha llevado a las sociedades complejas a innovar ideas, tecnologías, redes de intercambio para asegurar una sobrevivencia compleja. No obstante, los diferentes aspectos tanto ambientales como sociales, políticos y económicos permitieron a...
Lakescapes/Landscapes in the Prehispanic Basin of Mexico: Recent Evidence for Early Subsistence Adaptations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies of both macrobotanical and microbotanical remains associated with early populations in the Basin of Mexico provide broader evidence for plant use and contribute to understanding of the range of subsistence components available to these communities. From a methodological perspective, the complementary...
Landscape and Agriculture in the Bears Ears Formative (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For non-industrial communities, subsistence strategies are tightly constrained by ecological factors. Prehistoric peoples in the Bears Ears area were entirely dependent upon maize—a cultivar adapted to low-altitude, subtropical conditions in Mesoamerica—by at least 400 BC. Given the...
Landscape Ecology, GIS and Faunal Abundances in Ancestral Puebloan Sites in the San Juan River Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The abundance of faunal remains in archaeological sites is generally associated with the availability of those fauna on the landscape. However, over time, the spatial variability in faunal abundances could change due to environmental or anthropogenic factors. In the American Southwest, the occurrence and abundance of artiodactyls and lagomorphs varies...
Late Paleoindian Earth Ovens in the Texas Big Bend (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last eight years, the Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS) has investigated a number of Late Paleoindian thermal features in the Big Bend region of Texas. Excavation of these features and attendant laboratory analyses have provided new insights regarding hot rock cooking...
Late Pleistocene Faunal Utilization: Some Current Thoughts on Paleoindian Diet and Tool Source Selection (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Accumulated evidence regarding the range of prey utilization and tools made from animal remains is rapidly growing and overdue for a summary consideration of Clovis and Pre-Clovis sites in North America. This discussion is heavily weighted with data from Florida sites along the Wakulla and Aucilla Rivers, and the Old Vero Site. Recent proboscidean data from...
Late Pleistocene Megafauna in the Archaeological Record of the Greater Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The record of extinct fauna from Terminal Pleistocene archaeological sites in the Southwest is stereotypically characterized as mammoth from kill sites. Mammoth kills certainly are well known from the region, including the highest concentration of such sites anywhere in the Americas, but the remains of other extinct megafauna with evidence for human...
Lend Me Your Ears: Modeling Traditional Maize Production at Las Cuevas, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Las Cuevas region, situated on the southeastern edge of the Vaca Plateau in western Belize, consists of several medium-sized centers dispersed between low hills, steep ridges, and small seasonal swamps. Although occupied only briefly during the Late Classic period (700–900 CE),...
Let the Crops Speak for Themselves: How to Avoid Imposing Agroecological Assumptions at Altar de Sacrificios (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any sizable population must be sustained by an adequate food supply. As such, estimates for high population densities in the Maya Lowlands must be met with an equal or greater productive capacity. The “Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities” symposium seeks to understand this on a...
Let Them Eat Corn: Using Stable Isotopes to Explore Turkey Management in the Mississippian Period Southeast (2018)
The eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo sylvestris) is a well documented resource for Native Americans in the Southeastern United States. Recent research suggests that turkeys may have been managed by Mississippian period people in Middle Tennessee as opposed to being hunted solely in the wild. These conclusions are based on a combination of ethnographic sources, osteometric data, and other non-osseous evidence. As a part of my thesis, I extracted collagen from 12 prehistoric turkey...
Leveraging DNA Capabilities for Lithic Analysis: Experimental Results and Best Practices (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper outlines the results of a multipart experiment in obtaining DNA deposited on lithics to address questions regarding localized resource use. Previous publications hypothesize that DNA molecules can be preserved in microcracks in lithics and suggest that questions regarding resource exploitation can be addressed with lithics. The goal of this...
Living on the Edge: Uncovering Quotidian Life of the Eighteenth-Century Land Grant Community of San Miguel de Carnué (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the approval of their application for a community land grant east of Albuquerque in 1763, several New Mexico families of diverse origin ventured into the Tijeras Canyon in hopes of improving their status by managing lands in this colonial buffer zone. The constant threat of Apache raids, however, meant the...
Long-Term Changes in Human-Animal Relationships on the Pajarito Plateau (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous research from the northern American Southwest suggests that human populations gradually transitioned their animal-based diet away from artiodactyls to a focus on lagomorphs and turkeys throughout the Basketmaker to Pueblo periods. Faunal...