Subsistence and Foodways (Other Keyword)
251-275 (486 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 13,000-year-long record of hunting by North American Great Plains populations is often portrayed as an almost exclusive reliance on large-bodied prey, such as bison. This simplified perspective ignores temporal and regional variability in environmental conditions and changes in human-prey dynamics, making exclusive reliance on a single taxon unlikely. The...
Machine Learning Species Identification with ZooMS Collagen Fingerprinting (2018)
The creation of a robust method of species identification using collagen fingerprinting, also known as ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) has been useful for objectively defining the composition of the fragmentary component of archaeological assemblages. The method usually works through the measurements of the sizes of collagen peptides following enzymatic digestion, which yield a fingerprint that can be genus or even species-specific. However, even these peptide biomarkers have been...
Macro- and Microbotanical Results from Select Archaeological Contexts in the Plaza of the Columns Complex, Teotihuacan, Mexico (2018)
Paleoethnobotanical analyses provide significant information regarding past human behaviors, which include the selection, production, and consumption of plant resources, among others. This paper focuses on select archaeological contexts, domestic and ritual in nature, which have been investigated from a paleoethnobotanical perspective at the urban center of Teotihuacan, and more specifically in the area known as the Plaza of the Columns Complex. The recovery of macrobotanicals such as maize (Zea...
Macrobotanical Perspectives on Earth Oven Use in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Texas (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. The tradition of cooking foods in earth ovens goes back at least 10,000 years in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. Throughout millennia earth ovens were used to transform otherwise inedible plants into food, fiber, and possibly beverages. The region’s arid climate...
Maize Adaptation to Changing Environments (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. All organisms must contend with rapidly changing environments in the face of climate change in order to ensure the survival of the population (Hoffmann and Sgrò 2011). Domesticated plants, with a 10,000 year history of adapting to new environments, provide an excellent model for understanding genetic responses to...
Making a Meal at the Late Moche (AD 600-850) Site of Wasi Huachuma, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Farm to Table Archaeology: The Operational Chain of Food Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Creating a meal at the Late Moche (AD 600-850) site of Wasi Huachuma was not simply a matter of visiting the pantry and cooking the ingredients. It required the knowledge of whom to acquire ingredients from, when the ingredients were available, and how to process them. The culinary materials recovered from Wasi Huachuma...
Making Archaic Snaileries out of Shell Heaps: Human Behaviors and Ecological Niches (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Global evidence for human consumption and management of gastropods predates the Neolithic Revolution - the period noted for independent experimentation and domestication of terrestrial plants and animals. Archaeological data indicates that gastropods, terrestrial and aquatic, were vital resources...
Mapping Faunal Data to tDAR Ontologies to Address Data Comparability and Archaic Period Use of Animals in the Interior Eastern United States (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With support from a National Science Foundation grant, the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) uploaded faunal datasets for 24 Archaic Period (10,000-3,000 BP) archaeological sites in the Interior Eastern United States into the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) to address research questions about the roles of...
Mapping Thermal Features at Quartz Lake, Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Few archaeological sites from the late Holocene Dene/Athabascan tradition have been extensively studied, leaving researchers with many questions about everyday practices. Specifically, the function and spatial distribution of thermal features has yet to be extensively evaluated. Despite the ubiquity of cooking in daily life and cooking features in the...
Marine Foragers at the Top of the World: Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Thule Period Small Site at Uivvaq, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Thule period is significant as a predecessor to modern Iñupiat culture, and yet understanding Thule life remains partial to the selectiveness of archaeological investigations. Much of the Alaskan Thule period research has focused on large settlements along the northwest coast (e.g. Point Hope, Walakpa, and Utqiaġvik). Smaller sites, such as the Uivvaq...
Mass Spectrometry Database of Archaeologically Relevant Plants for Organic Residue Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Organic residue analysis in archaeology using mass spectrometry (MS) is a robust technique to detect and explore ancient biomolecules for reconstructing past cultural behavior, such as diet composition and even specific recipes. Studies often involve targeted MS analyses of known or suspected substances, while untargeted analyses characterizing broad...
Maya Paleoethnobotany and La Milpa: Evidences from Northwest Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Widespread terrace construction in the Lowland Maya region is often viewed as a response to increasing demands for food during the Late Classic. Such was the demand that terraces became integrated into the architectural arrangements of large urban entities, going so far as to be built right up to the edge of a settlement center....
Maíz y olmecas: una truculenta trayectoria. (2018)
Tradicionalmente en la arqueología de la costa del golfo y en específico, dentro de la zona nuclear olmeca se había propuesto que uno de los principales productos que se consumieron durante el preclásico por la sociedad olmeca fue el maíz. Aunado a esto las contantes representaciones de esta planta dentro del sistema de registro olmeca, sugerían una tendencia muy marcada y una preferencia inminente a la producción de este alimento, ya sea con fines ceremoniales o para consumo. Sin embargo,...
Measurements of Archaeobotanical Diversity and Richness Using Combined Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Data: Methodological and Theoretical Considerations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent computational advances in the accessibility of robust statistical techniques used to estimate the biological richness and diversity of ecological communities using observational data provide a strong foundation for archaeological assessments of botanical richness and diversity using archaeobotanical data. While there is broad consensus amongst...
Meat and Potatoes: A Mixed 7,000-Year-Old-Diet (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines the diets of 16 prehistoric burials at Soro Mik’aya Patxja, a high-elevation Archaic Period site occupied 7,000 years ago in the Peruvian Andes. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were analyzed to infer the prehistoric hunter-gatherer diets during a period that preceded the domestication of tubers, quinoa, and vicuña. Plants such as...
Meat on the Hoof: Isotopic Evidence of Administrative Herd Management at Khirbet Summeily, Israel (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Khirbet Summeily is an Iron Age II site located northwest of Tell el-Hesi in Southern Israel. Excavations have revealed a large, singular structure with an adjoining ritual space dated to the Iron Age IIA (ca. 1000–870 BCE). Recent interpretations suggest the site was integrated into a regional economic and political system and functioned as a potential...
Meat or Grains: Compound Specific Carbon Isotope Analysis along the Northern Edge of the Tibetan Plateau (2018)
Various foothills, oases and valleys along the north edge of the Tibetan Plateau played important roles in the process of food globalization in prehistory. These are the key corridors that brought southwest Asian animals along with the western grains into China and Chinese cereals to the West. Recent research demonstrates that broomcorn and foxtail millet (both C4 plants) were the key staple food in this region during the third and second millennium BC, but it remains unclear to what degree...
Meat Production and Animal Sacrifice during the Urbanization of Archaic Rome (2018)
During the Archaic period (8th-6th cent. BCE), Rome underwent rapid urbanization with concomitant social changes. This shift from modest settlement to urban center affected how animals were raised, distributed, and consumed. Namely, large-scale animal sacrifice rituals within the city acted as a new mechanism for distributing meat to the masses, provided by centralized authorities. The increased scale of animal sacrifice in the nascent city would have created new meanings to these rites and led...
Meat, Transport, Fertilizer, and Meaning: Considering the Role of Camelids and Ritual in Moche Food Production (2018)
Camelids (i.e., llamas and alpacas) were domesticated in the Andean region of South America over 6000 years ago. Since then, camelids have occupied a place of central importance in Andean lifeways over the longue dureé. Nevertheless, while camelid pastoralism in the landscape of the highland Andes has been well documented ethnographically, ethnohistorically, and archaeologically, the intimate relationship between people and camelids in the Andean coastal valleys is less understood. In this...
Medieval Agricultural Practices in the "Champion" Region (2018)
During the early medieval state formation process, England’s political organization transformed from localized tribal groups to large and consolidated kingdoms. Farmers at early medieval settlements experienced a related increase in agricultural production demands, and they introduced improved agricultural technology such as replacing the light ard with the heavier moldboard plow. The midlands counties (commonly referred to as the core of the "Central Province" or "Champion" region) are often...
Meta-analysis of the North Atlantic Cod Fisheries: The Zooarchaeology of the Sixteenth- to Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Cod Trade (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 distribution and abundance of animal populations have significantly impacted human settlement decisions, mobility, economics, and conflict throughout history. The abundance of cod (*Gadus morhua) in North Atlantic fisheries enticed English, French, and Basque fishermen to the region to catch, salt, and export cod to Europe. Efforts to monopolize...
Metabolomic Residue Studies of Foodways in the Motul de San José Polity, Petén, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The subject of ancient Maya cuisine continues to fascinate researchers, but little is known about the “recipes” that may have been used by different people at different times across the Maya world. This study takes a metabolomic approach to residue analysis to compare flavors and preparation methods during the occupation of...
Metabolomics in the Study of Ground Stone Tools (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological ground stone tools used for food processing have proven to be rich sources of residues, in particular microbotanicals such as pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains. This data adds to the studies of tool function, foodways, and other lines of archaeological inquiry. To date, ground stone has not been the target of chemical residue analysis,...
A Microbotanical View of Classic Period Households in Central Yaxuna, Yucatán, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya city of Yaxuna was a political and economic center of the northern lowlands in the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC–AD 250), and residents continued to occupy the city through the Classic period (AD 250–900) amid geopolitical shifts in the region tied to the rise of Coba and the Late Classic (AD 600–800) construction of a...
Microfauna Analysis at the La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401): Implications for Clovis Diet and Paleoenvironments (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of the research focusing on Late Pleistocene hunting has been tailored to examining megafauna, with microfauna receiving little attention in the Clovis archaeological record. This project examines the microfauna remains recovered from the La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401). La Prele is an open-air Clovis mammoth camp and kill site located in Converse...