Subsistence and Foodways: Domestication (Other Keyword)
26-50 (126 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing the Archaeology of Indigenous Agriculture in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In precolumbian eastern North America, archaeological evidence indicates that Indigenous peoples domesticated a unique crop system called the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC) before the arrival of maize (Zea mays) from what is now Mexico. The EAC is thought to have sustained past Indigenous people in eastern North...
Decision-Making in Subsistence Herding: A View from Mediterranean Europe (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Richard Redding’s body of research pushed zooarchaeologists to think more deeply and creatively about human-animal interactions. His 1981 dissertation “Decision-making in Subsistence Herding of Sheep and Goats in the Middle East” set the stage for his impactful career, bringing together multiple...
Detecting Domestication of the Four Corners Potato (Solanum jamesii Torr.) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The process of domestication is essential for producing nutritious foods that can be grown, harvested, stored and eaten. Recent evidence suggests that a novel potato species, known as the Four Corners Potato (Solanum jamesii Torr.) was manipulated by ancient people sometime during the last 12,000 years. The tubers might have been an important food and...
Diachronic Analysis of Sequential Enamel Stable Isotope Analysis in Human Populations (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The agricultural-demographic transition highlights a positive correlation between increasing consumption of agricultural products and population. However, this correlation varies regionally. In Eurasia, agriculture and population growth coincide with increasing sedentism hypothesized to drive population change. In the Amazon, agriculture and sedentism...
Dietary Evidence for the Timing and Diversity of Mesoamerican Turkey Husbandry (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the absence of morphological changes, clear genetic markers, and pen structures, the archaeological evidence for turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) husbandry and domestication in Mesoamerica relies primarily on identifying dietary shifts in ancient turkeys. As in the American Southwest, captive Mesoamerican turkeys exhibit greater consumption of maize than...
Divergence of Domestic Dog Morphology through Deep Time (2018)
The modern domestic dog is behaviourally and morphologically far removed from its ancient counterpart. Increasingly, research has demonstrated that using modern comparative collections for identifying domestic animals in archaeological contexts is problematic. This is likely the result of the intensive breeding that modern animals have undergone in at least the last two centuries. It is unclear how far back the current modern morphology of dogs goes, or how different ancient dogs were from their...
Diverse Genetic Resources Facilitated Chenopodium Domestication (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prehistoric domesticate C. berlandieri var. jonesianum is well documented in the archaeobotanical record of eastern North America from ca. 3,800 BP to European contact when it fell out of use. The seed morphology of the domesticate resembles other new world Chenopodium domesticates (C. quinoa and C. berlandieri subsp. nuttalliae) and is distinct from...
Domestic Animal Use at St. Inigoes Jesuit Plantation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plantations in the Southern United States functioned on a system of power over enslaved Africans that is reflected in the material culture of daily life. Zooarchaeological analysis of the fauna from St. Inigoes plantation in St. Mary’s County Maryland provides insight into what everybody on the plantation was eating, and the work enslaved peoples performed...
Domesticating the Mosaic: Stable Isotope Approaches to Agroecologies in South Asia (2018)
The origin of agriculture is a long-standing and pivotal point of archaeological research. The focus, however, has predominantly been on the earliest instances of crop domestication, whereas less is known about the nature of early farming. South Asia with its mosaic of environments and early farming strategies demonstrates the need for nuanced attention to aspects of early agro-ecologies such as manuring, water management strategies, and animal husbandry. Stable isotope analysis of botanical,...
Domestication and Management of Indigenous Plants in the U.S. Southwest: Case Studies of Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum Nutt.) and a Wild Potato (Solanum Jamesii) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the histories of major New World plant domestications of beans, corn, squash, gourd, and tobacco are well-known, histories of regional plant domestications from local wild plants are not. In the pre-Hispanic U.S. Southwest, a wild late winter/early spring-ripening annual grass known as Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum Nutt.) became a crop of...
Domestication and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the past decade, a growing group of biologists, ecologists, and anthropologists have proposed a paradigm-shifting revision to the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory: the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The EES seeks to foreground developmental plasticity, epigenomics, and niche construction as evolutionary drivers. The EES is helping...
Domestication of the Cochineal (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying the specifics of location and time of the cultivation and domestication of the cochineal beetle (Dactylopius coccus) in the New World has eluded archaeologists and ecologists for decades. The cochineal’s production of red dye from its rich storage of carminic acid has made this insect a notable element in the lives of pre-contact Mesoamerican and...
Early Agricultural Use of Ground Stone in Southern Sonora (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavation at the site of Las Chachalacas in Quiriego, Sonora produced evidence for Early Agricultural period (EAP) occupation. Dating likely between the Silverbell Interval and the San Pedro phase this settlement would have been contemporaneous with other important early agricultural sites in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Arizona such as La Playa, Cerro...
Early and Middle Holocene Food Choices, Farming, and Diet Quality in the Neotropical Maya Area (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite a century of research into the lives and diets of the northern neotropics’ earliest populations, our understanding of food production and consumption and its impact on diet quality remains relatively impoverished. We present a first view of data generated from archaeological sites in the Maya...
Early Millet Cultivation, Subsistence Diversity, and Wild Plant Use at Neolithic Anle, Lower Yangtze of China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines the macrobotanical assemblage of Anle, a middle Neolithic site in the Lower Yangtze region of China. The Lower Yangtze is thought to be the origin of domesticated rice and most studies of this region to date have focused on rice domestication and cultivation within its paleoenvironmental setting. In contrast, we highlight here diverse...
Early Subsistence and Settlement in the Basin of Mexico: Preceramic and Pre-Urban Indicators (2018)
The race to stay ahead of modern human impact on preceramic and early ceramic sites in the Basin of Mexico is particularly dramatic. Recent investigations at sites located in three sectors of the Basin of Mexico, all of which are threatened to some degree, contribute to a broader understanding of the kinds of communities that anticipated increased complexity in social, economic and political spheres that ultimately developed into early urban centers such as Cuicuilco and Teotihuacan. ...
The Effects of Regional Climate Change on the Foraging-Farming Transition in Eastern North America (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For a century, scholars studying prehistoric subsistence have questioned why humans began farming. A common hypothesis is that climate change contributed to the emergence of agriculture. One area where climate change may have influenced early agriculture is the Interior Eastern Woodlands of North America, where the independent domestication of native plants...
Eleventh-Century Aviculture in the Mimbres Valley: An Archaeology of the Human Experience Approach (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the past 2,000 years, people throughout the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico have woven scarlet macaws and turkeys into their economic, social, and ceremonial fabric. Pueblo groups in the past did not view all birds as being equal, and neither do archaeologists today, as we study macaws and turkeys more so than any other...
The Environmental and Cultural Context of North American Turkey Domestication (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only native vertebrate animal domesticated in North America. As such, the history, timing and process of its domestication is critical to our understanding of past human-animal relationships in the ancient Americas. This paper summarizes recent advancements in reconstructing the...
Evaluating Turkey Wellness and Treatment in the Maya World (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the primary domesticated animal in prehistoric Mesoamerica, the turkey occupied a prominent and multivalent role in society, as a food source, a feather provider, and a subject of ritual sacrifice. The preponderance of turkey remains across the archaeological record of...
The Evolution of Domestication in Cassava Unraveled through Historical Genomics and Archaeobotany (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cassava (‘manioc' or ‘yuca' regionally) is a staple food for 800 million people worldwide. It was domesticated in the southwestern Amazon ~7,000 years ago, and archaeobotanical evidence suggests that it dispersed widely, including through Central America, shortly thereafter. In the present day, it is most widely grown in Brazil and throughout sub-Saharan...
An Examination of Circum-Alpine Lake Dwelling Botanicals at the Milwaukee Public Museum (2018)
The lake dwelling sites of circum-Alpine Europe were discovered by the archaeological community in the mid-19th century and their artifacts were dispersed to museum collections in the United States and Europe. The Milwaukee Public Museum houses one such collection, which includes zoological material, textile fragments, tools, and carbonized botanicals and food. This paper focuses on the collection of plants and food, which come from Robenhausen, a lake-dwelling site south of Zurich. In studying...
Examining the Bread-Basket Model: Puuc Intra and Inter-Site Diversity in Plant Foods (2018)
The Puuc mountains in the northwestern Maya lowlands have proven themselves to be double-faced in regard to pre-Columbian human settlement. On one side, the valleys exhibit the region's most fertile soils. On the other hand, rainfall is scarce and access to the underground water table is comparatively difficult. Nonetheless, authors such as Smyth (1991) have long suggested that the Puuc represented some of the bread-basket for the wider northwestern lowlands. As part of a broader study, in this...
Examining the Shift in Seed-Dispersal Mechanisms During Early Plant Domestication (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholarship is reframing the study of plant evolution under cultivation to focus on the effects of complex human harvesting practices (seed predation), increased human population size, and sedentism, while turning away from conscious human selection. Research has pointed out that parallelism in domestication is linked to seed-dispersal mechanisms, but...
Exploring Early Historic Human-Canid Relationships in the Intermountain West: A Case Study from Seventeenth-Century Blacks Fork, Wyoming (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Relationships among people, dogs, and wild canid taxa played important cultural and functional roles in the early Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. However, the complexity of human-canid relationships in precolonial America and morphological similarities among wild and domestic canids make tracing human-canid interaction through the archaeological record...