Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
301-325 (650 Records)
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 Human Subsistence Strategies in Panamá during the Late Holocene (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subsistence strategies and foodways were at the heart of Richard Cooke's and colleagues' pioneering work in Panamá. Early work found that shifting resource reliance (terrestrial and marine) had impacts on the evolution of these early peoples’ cultures...
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 Southeastern United States Early Pottery Uses through Lipid Residue Analysis (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 evidence suggests that shell rings are not only potential origin points for pottery in North America, but also places where people lived and feasted. Techniques borrowed from analytical chemistry now allow archaeologists to test these hypotheses. Lipid analysis was conducted on 60 potsherds and 20 baked clay objects, the latter...
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...
Investigating the Pottery Use of Neolithic Ceramics from Guijiabao in Southwest China Using Organic Residue Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Guijiabao is an archaeological site in southwest China that dates from the Neolithic to the historical period. Its crucial location at the interaction of the Henduan Mountains and the Sichuan Basin offers a unique opportunity to study the southward spread of new crops and species into this region. Although it is widely accepted that mixed farming of...
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,...
Isotope Values Reveal “Canopy Effect” in Deer Territoriality and Maize Consumption for Dogs at Kentucky Archaeological Sites Dating to the Middle Woodland through Late Fort Ancient Time Periods (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our study aims to investigate the movement and territorial behaviors of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus Zimmermann) and dogs (Canis familiaris Linneaus) over time, utilizing carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope values derived from archaeological remains. An analysis of these isotope values extracted from tooth collagen and enamel was conducted...
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...
Isotopic Evidence of Long-Term Aquatic Resource Use at Tanada Creek, Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salmon are considered a critical subsistence resource in the Copper River basin, Alaska both currently and traditionally. Salmon migrations typically occur during a relatively short period in the summer, and provide a reliable, abundant influx of food. The duration of their presence in the basin and history of use are not well...
Isotopic Investigations into Dietary Patterns of Early Medieval Communities in Thuringia, Germany (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Medieval period in Central Europe was a time of pronounced socioeconomic differences, as well as sociopolitical unrest. While the former Roman infrastructure was deteriorating, the costs of importing foods and other material goods into Thuringia increased, exacerbating differences in food availability between the various sectors of...
An Isotopic Study of Diet at Mtwapa, Kenya (15-18th c CE) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project investigates the diet and foodways at Mtwapa, Kenya, on the East African coast during the 15th to 18th century. During this period, local East African populations negotiated Portuguese colonialism in the region. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses were conducted using bone collagen from 28 individuals interred at Mtwapa, Kenya. 13C...
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,...
Jack’s Back Yard: Earth Oven Features on the Edge of Eagle Nest Canyon (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The canyon edge around Eagle Nest Canyon contains the remains of numerous prehistoric earth oven features. It was also the property of Jack Skiles, who made a lifelong contribution to the study of archaeology. This paper will document the results of excavations conducted during a 2013 field school on...
Karen Adams: Scholar, Collaborator, and Friend (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Enduring Relationships: People, Plants, and the Contributions of Karen R. Adams" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Karen Adams richly deserves recognition as a premier, foundational Southwest archaeobotanist, a status personally and professionally celebrated by the organizers of today’s session in her honor and by her past term as President of the Society of Ethnobiology. Few other researchers in the field approach her...
Keeping Up Productivity: Persistence of "Lost" Crops in the Trans-Mississippi South (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Enduring Relationships: People, Plants, and the Contributions of Karen R. Adams" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most crops in the Eastern Agricultural Complex were no longer members of Native American farming systems when Europeans first took note. Reasons usually proposed for the fall-off entail advantages of maize over the pre-maize cultigens, with heightened defensibility of close, compact fields being another...
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...
La Playa and the San Pedro Phase in the Sonoran Desert (2024)
This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of village lifeways foundational to more complex precontact societies in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States can be traced back to the independent development of irrigation and associated social changes in early irrigation communities at La Playa and sites in the Sonoran Desert during the...
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...