Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
51-75 (650 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeogastronomy: Grocery Lists as Seen from a Multidimensional Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mughr el-Hamamah (MHM) cave site, located on the Jordan Valley’s eastern flanks, contains a prehistoric layer associated with Early Ahmarian artifacts. AMS 14C dates bracket the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) occupation between ca. 45 and 39 ka cal BP and are comparable in age to Ahmarian-associated layers...
Assessing the Impacts of the Atlantic Slave Trade and American Crops on African Agriculture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the Columbian Exchange had a significant impact on local agroecologies, we still know very little about the African side of the exchange. This is particularly complex knot to unravel given that the Atlantic slave trade peaked during those same centuries. Both processes were to have major impacts on...
Bappir: The Ancient Mesopotamian Brewer's Best Friend (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bappir (Sumerian: "beer bread") was a ubiquitous ingredient in ancient Mesopotamian beer brewing for millennia. However, little is known about exactly what bappir was or how it was used. Nevertheless, the scant evidence available from contemporary texts, such as the second-millennium BCE "Hymn to Ninkasi," have...
Bayesian Multilevel Models of Diachronic Dietary Trajectories (DDTs) from 13,000 years of Great Plains Faunal Exploitation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists rely on long-term records of faunal remains to study significant diachronic changes in human-environmental interactions, including foraging-farming transitions, human-driven extinctions, animal translocations, and the development of complex societies. Here, we define the magnitude and direction of change observed in the...
Beer and the Politics of Affect in Mesopotamia (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. Many early states were deeply invested in alcoholic beverages. In focusing on the political instrumentality of these beverages, however, archaeologists have often lost sight of what makes them such an effective tool of statecraft. People seek out alcoholic beverages because of their affective power, their ability to...
Beer in the Desert: Archaeological, Ethnohistoric, and Experimental Perspectives on Early Beer Brewing in the Central Namib Desert, Namibia (2018)
For the better part of a century, archaeologists have surmised that beer brewing played a significant role in a range of major social and economic changes having to do with origins of agriculture. This paper examines an unusual case of early beer brewing, which likely originated during the Middle Holocene among the Later Stone Age (LSA) populations of the hyper-arid Central Namib Desert of western Namibia. In this paper, I discuss practices of modern traditional beer brewing in the region and I...
Beer, Pots, and Caste: A Tale of Two Sites in the Gamo Highlands of Southwestern Ethiopia (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 is an essential culinary food for many African societies today and in the past for daily meals, economic compensation, and ritual feasting. This paper focuses on the ethnoarchaeology and archaeology in the Gamo region of southwest Ethiopia located on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. Today, a unique...
Beyond Boiling and Baking? Cooking Plant Foods in the Early US Midsouth (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Eastern Woodlands of North America, researchers tend to discuss cooking technologies of early foragers at the close of the Pleistocene and early Holocene in terms of nut processing rather than for use of...
Beyond Projectiles: Experimental Study of Microblades as Cutting Tools (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The miniaturization of lithic artifacts indicates a significant shift in lithic technology and functions since the Upper Paleolithic, revealing a probable shift in subsistence strategy. Microblades are specific kinds of small stone tools that occur in sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic through Neolithic in many parts of the world. Although it is widely...
Beyond the Biface: Revisiting Cobble Tool Use During the Cascade Phase at the Kelly Forks Work Center Site, Idaho (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cascade Phase, spanning roughly 9000-5000 years BP, is defined by distinctive lithic technology and edge-ground cobbles. Archaeological data suggests mobile foragers temporarily camped in resource-rich areas during this period. Despite its recognition as a unique cultural period, our understanding of Cascade Phase lifeways, particularly resource use...
The Biggest Party of All? Zooarchaeological Analysis of an Oversized Late Inca Banquet at Pachacamac (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pachacamac is a major archaeological site on the central coast of Peru, occupied from the 5th to the 16th centuries, AD. This paper reports the results of an interdisciplinary study of a late Inca context discovered in building B4, excavated in 2016 and 2018 by the Ychsma Project (ULB). A series of analyses were conducted, including zooarchaeological ones,...
The Black Burned Bits of Prehistory: A Celebration of Dr. Karen R. Adams (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. This paper provides a brief overview of Karen Adams’s career and contributions, with a special emphasis on her extensive research and her legacy as a mentor to decades of junior scholars and budding archaeobotanists. Dr. Adams’s investigations into the long history of people-plant relationships in the US...
Bodies Shaping Bodies: Using Butchery to Trace Human-Animal Relationships (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While our relationship encompasses far more than just the dinner menu, food is one of the key ways in which human and animals lives and bodies directly shape one another. Indeed, beyond just the act of eating, how human and animal bodies meet in the context of procurement and processing can...
Bog Butter: Experimenting with the Preservative Nature of Peat Bogs (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The anaerobic and highly acidic nature of peat bogs produces a perfect environment for preservation. Biological material which would usually decay, such as human tissue, is kept stagnant unable to decompose thus allowing for preserved individuals and items to be discovered. Peat bogs located in both modern-day Ireland and Scotland have produced an unusual...
Bonfire Shelter: A Zooarchaeological Reevaluation of Bone Bed 2 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonfire Shelter is a rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon, a short tributary of the Rio Grande in West Texas, that contains three distinct bone beds of varying ages. The middle bone bed, Bone Bed 2, is a Paleoindian-aged deposit dating to ~12,000 years BP. Bone Bed 2 was originally interpreted as the remains of one or more bison mass kills;...
Boron Isotopes: A New Tool for Characterizing Wetland Use In The Past (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic and historical evidence shows that wetlands are highly variable environments, and humans exploit them in both spatially- and seasonally-specific ways. Reconstructing such patterned use with currently-available archaeological methods is extraordinarily difficult or, in most cases, impossible. We have identified a promising new tool for precise...
Botanical Resources in Ancient Costa Rican Cloud Forests (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical investigations at domestic contexts in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in a tropical montane cloud forest setting. Macrobotanical remains recovered through horizontal excavations of household structures at G-995 La Chiripa and G-164 Sitio Bolivar and flotation of soil...
Bread, Beer, and Beef: Diet of Seventeenth-Century Harvard College (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While historical documents can provide a plethora of information for the historical archaeologist, they are often incomplete in revealing holistic images of the day-to-day life of humans that lived centuries ago. This poster presentation outlines my ongoing research on the diet of students at seventeenth-century Harvard College. In particular, I address...
Bridging the Divides at Azoria: Environmental Archaeology at an Archaic Greek City (2018)
Excavations at the Archaic (7th-6th centuries B.C.) city of Azoria on Crete demonstrate the value of intensive environmental archaeology for understanding an historical Greek context. Texts document the important role of food and dining to ancient religion and politics; however, ancient authors presented a normative picture and excluded details they assumed were common knowledge. Studying plant and animal remains can "ground-truth" ancient sources on foodways and provide contextual nuances not...
Bronze Age Economic Transitions in Western Mongolia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the late Holocene saw tremendous changes in foodways across the eastern Eurasian steppe, poor preservation of organic and faunal remains make it challenging to trace important changes like the introduction of pastoralism during the Bronze Age and beyond. Here we present preliminary results from two archaeological...
Building a Deeper Understanding of the Archaeology of Food through Photographs and Critical Reflection (2024)
This is an abstract from the "AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of food is rarely revelatory of an individual’s diet or of individual meals. Instead, it is usually indicative of a community’s procurement and processing patterns, consumption patterns, cooking methods, and disposal practices. But how can we teach students to understand this distinction and to...
Building a Novel Archaeobotanical Framework to Investigate the History of Plant Foods in Aboriginal Australia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With a wide variety of biomes and extreme fluctuations in water availability, Australia’s Channel Country saw Indigenous Australians develop a unique suite of subsistence strategies to live in this environment. Ethnohistoric accounts report combinations of semipermanent habitation and seasonal mobility, intensive seed...
Caddo and Settler Salt Production at the Holman Springs Site (3SV29), Sevier County, Arkansas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caddo homeland of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas contains one of the major source areas for salt in North America. Coming to the surface as brines, this resource was an important part of local foodways, economies, and political relations for centuries, both for the Caddos and the American settlers who occupied the area beginning in the 19th...
Camelid Exploitation at the Middle Horizon Site of Huari (2018)
Excavations at Huari, the urban center of the Wari state in Peru's Ayacucho Basin, have uncovered well preserved faunal remains, with the majority belonging to native camelid species. While knowledge pertaining to camelid exploitation by the Wari people has been enhanced in recent years through excavations at sites such as Conchopata, little is known about camelid usage at the site of Huari. In this paper, I use osteometric analysis to identify specimens to the species level and to examine the...
Camelids Consumption and Utilization at the Archaeological Site of Huayuri, South Coast of Peru (2018)
In this work the author presents the preliminary results of the animal bones analyzes from the archaeological site of Huayuri. This site, located in the south coast of Peru, shows evidences of ocupations since the Late Intermediate Period to the Late Horizon. The materials were recovered during the excavations that took place in 2002 and 2005 in the Compound 03, located at the south part of the site. The analysis was primarily focused on the camelid bones, taking into consideration the cultural...