Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
576-600 (650 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last fifty years, from Amazonian Archaeology there has been a remarkable and growing debate about the origin and dispersion of the cultures of the area, their carrying capacity, population number and density, political structure, and links with the adjacent geographical areas, as the Andes to its western border. More recently, carrying capacity and...
Towards a Social Paleoethnobotany of Urbanization: Integrating Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Data to Explore Foodways at La Blanca, Guatemala (2018)
This paper uses macrobotanical and microbotanical remains to investigate the impacts of developing sociopolitical complexity on the foodways of Middle Preclassic inhabitants of the Pacific coast of Guatemala. I use these datasets to explore how urbanization affected food-related practices of residents of La Blanca (900-600 BCE). Macrobotanical remains from house floors facilitate comparisons between elite and commoner foodways, while starch grains and phytoliths extracted from grinding...
Towards a Synthesis of California Archaeobotany (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. I take a pan-regional frame of reference to address the impressive variability in more than 7,500 analyzed plant macroremains samples from the desert, coastal, and interior lowland and upland reaches of California. I focus on the effects of variation in habitat, including animal resources, especially fish and shellfish,...
Tracing the Human Exploitation of Salmonids on the Pacific Coast of North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) are important economic and subsistence resources for contemporary and past indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast of North America. The seven recognised Oncorhynchus species each occupy different ecological niches and exhibit diversity in seasonal spawning and migratory behaviours. Although salmonid remains are ubiquitous at...
Tracking the Origins of Animal Management in a Neotropical Foraging-to-Farming Population using Carbon Stable Isotope Analysis of Lysine (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The middle-late Holocene in southern Belize saw shifts in subsistence strategies, including the introduction of managed plants and animals. Botanical and stable isotope data have been used to track the introduction of agricultural products into human diets, with maize first consumed before 7,000 cal. BP. However, the timing of the introduction of managed...
Traditional Dishes and Culinary Improvisations: Elite Gastronomy in the Maya Area (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, understandings of cuisine in the Maya area have been radically amplified by the use of new techniques. Some methods offer the opportunity to directly connect artifacts and features with actual plant food residues. The ability to recover microscopic residues of food from sediments, artifacts, and human teeth has revealed not only...
Traditional Dishes and Culinary Improvisations: Elite Gastronomy in the Maya Area (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. Over the past few decades, understandings of cuisine in the Maya area have been radically amplified with the use of new techniques. Some methods offer the opportunity to directly connect artifacts and features with actual plant food residues. The ability to recover microscopic residues of food from sediments, artifacts,...
The Traditional Nutrition Project: A Collaborative Study of Plant Foods to Understand Indigenous Foodways and Health in the Northern Great Basin (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Foodways, culture, and health are closely intertwined. As such, food is a central aspect of Indigenous identity and the subject of much anthropological research. Traditional knowledge and archaeological records show that plants have always played important roles within Indigenous foodways in the Great Basin, yet nutritional information for those...
Traditions and Community: Hornos and Communal Feasting among the Hohokam (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. Earth ovens (hornos) have been documented at many sites across the Hohokam region of south-central Arizona. These features were commonly used to cook large amounts of food at public gatherings. They were part of a long-standing tradition of communal feasting that served, among...
Trees among the Cereal Fields: Arboriculture Reframed as Integral to the Food and Economic Systems of the Indus Civilization of South Asia ca. 3200–1500 BC (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I synthesize a big picture of how people in the Bronze Age Indus Civilization of South Asia engaged with trees as a vital resource, and how there was no single conception of trees as “wild” versus “domesticated,” “orcharded” versus “stand-alone,” “exotic” versus “native,” and potentially “owned” versus “communal.” While...
A Tropical Treasure Trove: Preliminary Assessment of Archaeological Faunal Remains from Culebra Bay, Guanacaste, Costa Rica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over 50 years, excavations in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, have yielded a large amount of well-preserved faunal materials, yet few zooarchaeological studies have been carried out. To explore the research potential of archaeofaunal materials in the region, I will present data from several sites around the Culebra bay area. These...
Tubers, Grain, and Everything In Between: Mesoamerican Applications of Dolores Piperno’s 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. Over the past several decades, Dolores Piperno has made broad contributions to archaeology and deep contributions to paleoethnobotany. Her published work includes studies on the origins of agriculture in the Neotropics, the presence of cooked plants in Neanderthal diets, the process of domestication, the use of wild cereals in the Upper...
The Underestimated Utilization of Aquatic Resources in Neolithic Northern China: Evidence from Stable Isotopes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Resources and Society in Ancient China" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no doubt that millet farming and pig husbandry were the dominant subsistence practices in late Neolithic northern China. However, wild resources, such as foraged fruits and nuts, shells, and hunted wild animals, also contributed substantially to people’s diet at this time. Wild resources, especially aquatic resources, are sometimes...
Understanding Animal Use at the Wetland Maya Site of Chulub (2018)
Reconstructions of ancient Maya animal use often emphasize the importance of terrestrial species, such as deer, to the overall diet. While these species played an important role, much less attention has been paid to the use of aquatic resources despite the presence of resource rich perennial wetlands in the Maya lowlands. To further understand this crucial area of the Maya-environment relationship, we investigated the site of Chulub located in the Western Lagoon Wetlands of Belize. This site...
Understanding Food Production in Teotihuacan: New Approaches (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan was one of the largest and most prominent ancient cities in Mesoamerica during the Classic period (150-600 CE). The city housed an estimated population of 100,000 people at its height, all in need of food, shelter, and basic necessities. Spaces dedicated to the production and consumption of foodstuffs in...
Understanding Patterns of Indigenous White-tailed Deer (*Odocoileus virginianus) Exploitation in the North Carolina Piedmont Using Strontium (87Sr/86Sr) Isotope Analysis (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The varied responses by Native communities within the American Southeast to European colonization resulted in a period of dynamic social, economic, and political change. One such response to the colonial encounter was the development of a robust trade in the skins of white-tailed deer. In this paper, I focus on the effects of the deerskin trade on the deer...
Understanding Resource Allocation and Dietary Stress through the Presence of Scurvy in Nonadults from Gać and Dzwonowo, Poland (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries) (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. As a result of the energy requirements related to growth and development, non-adults are more susceptible to biocultural change than adults, making them ideal proxies to examine environmental stress within a population. The village of Gać and town of Dzwonowo (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) in Greater Poland provide a unique opportunity to...
Understanding the Diet of Late to Terminal Classic Period Maya Groups in the Sibun River Valley, Belize, through Food Web Reconstruction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A stable isotope based dietary study, coupled with previously collected zooarchaeological and botanical data, expands our understanding of ancient Maya dietary variation in the Late and Terminal Classic periods in the Sibun River Valley of central Belize. A food web was created based on the analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in plants and...
Understanding the Transition to Villages: A Comparison of Maize between Basketmaker III Sites and an Early Pueblo I Village (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Comparative morphological and other analysis on maize samples informs us of crucial nutritionary changes in key Ancestral Puebloan cultural stages. The transition of the Basketmaker III (500-750 CE) period to the Pueblo I (750-950 CE) period in the Southwestern Utah archeological record is marked by distinct technological changes and larger, more densely...
Unlikely Allies: Modern Wolves and the Diets of Pre-contact Domestic Dogs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Assumptions of prehistoric domestic dogs as scavengers has been pervasive in archaeology and beyond. This project clarifies these assumption by investigating the dietary behavior of prehistoric domestic dogs via dental microwear data or features on the tooth surface that indicate types of food consumed. In order...
Updating and Reevaluating Faunal Datasets from Quina Mousterian Levels at Jonzac and Pech de l'Azé IV by Incorporating Screened Materials (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Logistical challenges of managing large zooarchaeological projects mean that researchers must often conduct faunal analyses in phases and implement sampling strategies, including studying subsamples that do not fully incorporate screened materials. However, screened portions may contain specimens that can provide depth to studies of...
Use of Plants by Enslaved Laborers at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1804 until 1865, The Hermitage was home to Andrew Jackson, his descendants, and over 130 enslaved men, women, and children, often invisible in the historical record, who labored in the fields of Jackson's cotton plantation near Nashville, Tennessee. After emancipation, freed households continued to live in the former domestic quarters. For three decades...
Use-Wear Analysis of the Middle Horizon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear analysis is a qualitative method of study that observes abrasion patterns on material remains. Wear traces can come from stirring, lids, storage techniques, and other culinary practices. Apparent wear patterns and abrasion coarseness are features that help infer the use of different vessel forms. I applied this technique...
Uses of Different Species of Animals from Vista Alegre: A Zooarchaeological Analysis (2018)
Previous zooarcheological research has focused on knowing the patterns of wildlife exploitation in the different archaeological sites of the Maya area. In this sense, the present work intends to approach the different uses of the different species of animals in activities carried out by the pre-Hispanic Maya people located at the site of Vista Alegre, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The simple has c. 23,000 remains of fauna, coming from three architectural constructions: Structure 9 (Operation 3A),...
Using Compound Specific Isotope Analysis of Amino Acids to Distinguish Aquatic and Terrestrial Diets of Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Sweden (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we present the results of compound specific carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on amino acids from bone collagen of Early Holocene humans and contemporaneous terrestrial and marine fauna recovered from multiple sites in southern Sweden. These analyses were aimed at individuals spanning the Early Mesolithic to the Middle Neolithic Pitted...