Water Management and Irrigation (Other Keyword)
26-50 (71 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project analyzes the water management systems of a smaller Puuc community, tentatively labeled Site A that was recently identified using lidar (light detection and ranging) technology. This region is distinctive for having no natural surface water features. Precolumbian Puuc communities captured rainwater during the wet season in chultuns (underground...
Historic Water Management Infrastructure in the San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy (2018)
Over the last several field seasons, the Bova Marina Archaeological Project has been documenting the timing of construction and the physical characteristics of the original water management infrastructure as well as documenting the changes in the natural and social systems of the San Pasquale Valley in Calabria, Italy. The Valley was recolonized in the 19th and early 20th centuries for both large scale bergamot plantations and by peasant farmers. With large scale population exodus from the...
Hohokam Water-Harvesting in the Queen Creek Area: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives of Water Management along Ephemeral Drainages in the Southern Arizona Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Phoenix Basin Hohokam are celebrated for the construction of massive and elaborate canal systems fed by perennial waterways, principally the Salt and Gila rivers. In desert areas, however, along the many ephemeral drainages that crisscross the region, rainfall-harvesting and water-storage technologies largely overshadowed canal irrigation. These...
House and City: Ancient Maya Water Management in Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rainfall-dependency of the ancestral Maya shaped their daily and seasonal existence in homes, communities, and cities. They adapted quite well to the annual wet and dry seasonal cycles—as well as extreme weather events like hurricanes, tropical storms and severe droughts,...
The Hydraulic Landscape of Muralla de León (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Premodern landscape modification at the northeast corner of Lake Macanché, surrounding the site of Muralla de León, predominantly consists of small hilltop settlements and hydraulic channels. These channels interact with the lake itself, as well as the juleques (pond-sized water-filled sinkholes) that cluster in the vicinity. Two...
Imperial Water: Fountains as an Expression of British Colonial Control in Cyprus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2024)
This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of the ethnoarchaeological component of the Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP), a team has conducted a survey of the public drinking fountains built in the town of Athienou in central Cyprus during the British colonial period....
Inca Hydrodynamics at the Chachabamba Archeological Site (Machu Picchu National Archeological Park, Peru) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chachabamba archaeological site in the Machu Picchu National Archeological Park contains a unique water complex erected by the Incas. Based on archaeological investigations, it has been established that the function of this water complex was strictly ceremonial. The necessity to control water flow in an architectural context...
Irrigation Time: An Assessment of Time as a Factor in Hohokam Irrigated Acreage (2018)
The Hohokam within the lower Salt River Valley, central Arizona, practiced large-scale irrigation the spanned thousands of acres. Previous studies examining Hohokam irrigation assumed that there was a direct correlation between the amount of available water within the lower Salt River and the amount of land that could be irrigated. The amount of available water is necessary for assessing where water was sufficient for successful crops and where insufficient water made agricultural production...
Just Add Water: ENSO-Driven Ephemeral Agricultural Systems in the Arid Chapiyungas of Peru’s North Coast (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Abrupt climatic changes caused by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) bring profound ecological transformations to the Andean pacific coast. Archaeological research has largely focused on the impacts (which have been shown to be largely negative) of ENSO-positive phases, or “El Niños,” on complex socioecological systems in coastal...
La Playa and the San Pedro Phase in the Sonoran Desert (2024)
This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins of village lifeways foundational to more complex precontact societies in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States can be traced back to the independent development of irrigation and associated social changes in early irrigation communities at La Playa and sites in the Sonoran Desert during the...
Landscape Modifications and Water Management at Aguada Fénix (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Aguada Fénix and the Middle Usumacinta Region: Interregional Interactions and Social Transformations in the Middle Preclassic Period" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The latest archaeological evidence has shown that 10,000 years ago the landscapes of the actual Mexican territory suffered constant changes due to human activities. Fire, horticulture, species dissemination, and agriculture are among the factors that...
Long-Term and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Water Use and Management in the Mountain West (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water heritage associated with water use and management, including infrastructure like canals, irrigation ditches, and ponds, and intangible heritage like traditions, experiences, stories, and myths, reveals how past and present communities adapt to uncertain climatic and changing social conditions....
Maize: Phenotypic Response to Variable Depth Water Input (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. Prehistoric maize farming has been well-documented in Range Creek Canyon, Utah. Evidence includes numerous corn cobs, maize storage structures, starch on ground stone tools, and pollen and isotopic evidence from sediment cores. Maize farming experiments in Range Creek suggest dry farming would not have been a sustainable option for...
Mind the Gap: Absolute Dating of Middle Gila River Canals provides Evidence for 1,500 Years of Continuous Irrigation Agriculture in the Phoenix Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence suggests that the first irrigation canals along the Middle Gila River were built by at least the Vahki phase ca. AD 450, and the construction and use of canals continued throughout the remainder of prehistory. Canal systems are also a prominent part of the historical lifeway of the Akimel O'Odham who live in the Hohokam core area today, with reported...
Multiproxy and LiDAR Evidence for Intensive Maya Wetland Agriculture Along the Rio Bravo River (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. We present preliminary results from a newly discovered Maya wetland canal and raised field system found along the Rio Bravo River in Northwest Belize using airborne LiDAR. The LiDAR data reveals canals and raised fields in a very rectilinear pattern that suggest planning and organization for many kilometers down the floodplain near...
Paleoenvironmental Research at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When the Proyecto Arqueológico Yaxnohcah began 13 years ago in 2011, some of our driving questions centered on the Bajo el Laberinto and the role that this enormous wetland played in the rise and development of what was to become the great city of Yaxnohcah: Why were the early inhabitants of the...
Past Water Futures: Rehabilitating Ancient Dams for Present Use (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Equity in the Archaeology of Disaster, Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water is essential for life on earth. In the twenty-first century, water scarcity is increasingly seen as the main threat to human world economies. This is especially true of the Peruvian Central Andean highlands where lack of water is understood by experts as the single most threatened natural resource in the face of...
Placing Ancestral Pueblo Water Management Practices into Ritual Contexts (2018)
Across cultures, the ritual use of water is nearly ubiquitous, yet most archaeological studies of water focus primarily on its socio-economic importance. The large (~200-1500 person) mesa-top Ancestral Pueblo (AD 1100-1700) villages of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico are particularly good contexts for the archaeological study of water because small water storage features, often referred to as reservoirs, are found at many villages across the region. Alternative hypotheses for feature function,...
Political Water: Hohokam Irrigation and Sociopolitical Organization in Canal System 2, Lower Salt River Valley, Central Arizona (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the publishing of Irrigation Communities: A Comparative Study in 1955, sociopolitical hierarchy has factored strongly in interpretations of irrigation system control. A lively debate has developed as to where control lies, ranging from a central authority (top-down) to water user cooperatives (bottom-up). Although Hohokam irrigation has appeared in that...
Pompeii’s Pitfalls: The Vulnerability of Water Supply in the Wake of Natural Disasters (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Past, Present, and Future of Water Supplies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Roman water-supply system of Pompeii, Italy, has provided numerous insights into resource management and urbanization in the ancient Mediterranean world. It also provides a unique parallel for understanding the impacts of climate change and natural disasters on urban infrastructure today and in the past. Prior to the eruption of Mount...
Post-Classic Canal Excavations at Yaxnohcah, Mexico (2019)
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...
Predicting Water Availability from Phytolith Assemblages of Finger Millet, Pearl Millet, and Sorghum (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interpretation of water management practices and the use of irrigation for agricultural intensification has been central to the archaeological debate. Until now no direct method has been presented for the discrimination of water availability for C4 cultivated crops, representing the main components of the...
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...
Recent Research in an E-Group (Group AA) at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hydro-Ecological System of the Maya in Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. E-Groups in the Maya world are believed to have had ritual purposes, serving as meeting centers where political meetings or markets may have taken place. They are also believed to have celebrated solar cycles. At Nixtun-Ch’ich’ three or four E-Groups are aligned on the site’s east-west axis. Our excavation in one of the E-Groups...
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...