Water Management and Irrigation (Other Keyword)
26-42 (42 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Yaxnohcah is a large site in Campeche, Mexico with evidence of continual occupation from the early Middle Preclassic into the Postclassic. In 2014, the Yaxnohcah Archaeological Project commissioned a high resolution lidar scan of the region, which has allowed for accurate modeling of surface hydrology and significantly contributed to our understanding of...
Reassessing Agricultural Potential in Chaco Canyon: Exploring the Link between Soil Salinity and Soil Texture (2018)
Determining the soil salinity of a site can aid in the assessment of the agricultural potential of a particular area, thus enabling researchers to draw conclusions about the potential for cultivation and subsistence intensification. Studies pertaining to soil salinity in Chaco Canyon often argue that the electrical conductivity (EC) levels within the area—a standard proxy measure of soil salinity—were too high for maize farming in many areas of the canyon, drastically limiting the potential...
Reinterpreting Archaeobotany in Mainland Southeast Asia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1990s, two major archaeobotanical studies were undertaken which shape our understanding of subsistence and agriculture in Prehistoric Mainland Southeast Asia. Although most field archaeologists in Southeast Asia do not routinely collect samples for biological studies, archaeobotanical data has grown...
A Relationship between Seasonal Flooding and Raised Agricultural Fields in the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia (2018)
The Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia, a seasonally flooded savanna region in the western Amazon lowlands, has several types of artificial landscape modifications that point to a significant pre-Columbian occupation with some approximately as old as 500BCE. These earthworks include 40-50,000 raised fields which were used as a regional-wide agricultural technique to grow a variety of crops. This paper focuses on the relationship of these fields to their hydrological environment. Using GIS in conjunction...
Sacred and Profane Aspects of Water Management in Ancient Thmuis, Egypt (2018)
Water management in ancient Egypt entailed harnessing natural and supernatural forces. Thmuis grew to power in the heart of the Nile Delta evolving as a nexus of Greco-Egyptian ideological syncretism within a riverine/lacustrine environment. Water management challenges included mitigating damage from annual floods, optimizing production, and maintaining transport. To survive in this dynamic hydrologic regimen, the people of Thmuis harnessed and controlled the Nile waters through engineering and...
Soil and Water Chemistry: Aguada Fenix, Tabasco and Northern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of the Yucatan has no vestige of rivers; humans and ecosystems rely on rainwater catchment and soil and ground water. Along the southern margins of the Peninsula, however, lie rivers in Belize and Quintana Roo to the southeast and Tabasco and Campeche to the southwest. This paper...
Soil and Water Management in the South Kohala Field System, Hawai‘i Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The South Kohala Field System (SKFS), Hawai‘i Island, is a network of contoured and sloping field borders first constructed in the prehistoric period but utilized into the 19th century. Many features are located below the 750 mm rainfall isohyet, the lower boundary for rainfed agriculture in Hawai‘i. In order to sustain agriculture in...
Starch Granule Size and Morphology as a Proxy for Water Influence on *Zea mays (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A wealth of information on regional patterns of human subsistence and plant domestication has been generated from studies on the starch granules of *Zea mays (maize). Very little work, however, has been conducted on how the size and structural attributes of those grains might change if exposed to different environmental contexts...
Staying Afloat: A Comparative Case Study of Angkor Wat and Tikal’s Management of Water (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 is a large-scale comparative case study of two distinct regions to see how their use and control of water was similar given their environments but different from social, political, and cultural perspectives. Specifically, I examine the sociopolitical nature of Angkor Wat as an expression of ancient Khmer culture and the Classic Maya city of...
Surveyed with LiDAR: Identifying Lo’i Pondfields in Windward Kohala, Hawai’i Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project is a demonstration of GIS methods for identifying irrigated agricultural complexes in the heavily vegetated drainage of Halawa Gulch, windward Kohala. Through use of GIS tools on a LiDAR data set I created slope interpolation and elevational profile graphs of potential agricultural sites. In some cases these could be verified...
Three Rivers Watersheds: Regional Water Resources of Northwestern Belize and Beyond (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research seeks to understand the interconnections and interactions of the water resources of Northwestern Belize, via its contributing Three Rivers Watersheds. The Three Rivers Watersheds drain Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize via the Rio Azul/Blue Creek, Rio Bravo, and Booths River systems. These Three Rivers merge to form the...
Water for the Keep: Hydrological Flow and Accumulation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present the final results and interpretations of data collected from La Cuernavilla’s aguada. Special emphasis is placed on new data collected through several types of soil and geoarchaeological analyses that crucially supplement the data that have already been presented. Previous presentations on this topic...
Water Management in the Land of the Terribly Hot: A Hydrological Study of the Bagan Settlement Zone (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located along the Ayeyarwady river, in the dry-zone of Upper Myanmar, is an area once described as "the land of the terribly hot", a land where the Classical Burmese capital of Bagan (11th to 14th centuries CE) is found. Home to over 4,000 monuments, a large and diverse population lived within the mixed urban-rural...
Water Management on the Mesa: The Horseshoe Ridge Reservoir Community and the Occupation of Park Mesa, Colorado (2018)
Water management is a critical concern in the arid landscape of southwest Colorado, particularly for farmers. As such, significant developments in water supply systems — like the construction of reservoirs — reflect the social, political, and economic climates in a community. Three reservoirs are located on Park Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park. These were originally documented during surveys in the 1970s and revisited after the Chapin 5 fire in 1996, but none have been analyzed beyond basic...
Water Management, Pastoralism and Settlement Shifts in the Andean Apolobamba Region (2018)
The qochas of the high-altitude Bolivian Apolobamba Puna region had a pivotal importance in the local agropastoral economies. Fed by snow melt and inner water sources, the qochas formed a complex hydrological system along the rich marshes. Although we do not know their origins, some of these qochas were modified during the Late Intermediate period, and a network of canals expanded in order to accommodate increasingly specialized pastoralism. Later the Inka arrival prompted specialized...
Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Medieval Capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th Centuries CE): Preliminary Exploration of the Tuyin-Thetso "Water Mountain" and the Nat Yekan Sacred Water Tank (2018)
The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Medieval Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th century CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated on the Tuyin-Thetso mountain range, located 11.25 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This upland area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, and...
Water, Water, Everywhere, but You Need to Walk to Get a Drink: The Relationship between Water Sources and Teuchitlán Culture Sites in the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico (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 explores the relationship between several Teuchitlán Culture archaeology sites and their proximity to permanent and seasonal water sources within the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico. Water is an essential resource that humans cannot live without. With a lengthy dry season of nearly seven months, questions arise regarding access to water and...