Environment and Climate (Other Keyword)
1-14 (14 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Preceramic period (ca. 11,000–5,000 cal BP) in Mesoamerica has focused on the transition from a foraging way of life toward agriculture, plant domestication, and sedentism. Yet we know little about the processes and contexts that drove this transition, particularly the relationship between foragers and animal prey. In this paper I present...
Behavioral Ecology and Evolutionary Approaches to Human-Environment Dynamics on Southwest Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Madagascar’s southwestern coast has been inhabited by coastal foraging and fishing populations for over a millennium. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, little is known about the scale, pace, and nature of human settlement and subsequent landscape modification. Recent...
Climate and Heritage in the Arctic: Environmental Monitoring and a New European Standard (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To respond to climate change impacts as well as other societal and environmental impacts to archaeological preservation, Norway has been applying environmental monitoring of archaeological deposits and sites since the 1990s. To standardize monitoring methods, tools, and evaluations, a Norwegian Standard was implemented in...
Crisis in Geoarchaeological Context: Reassessing Bronze Age ‘Collapse’ at Palaikastro, Crete, Greece (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on social change and ‘crisis’ demonstrates that both phenomena require analyses of longer-term processes and discrete local processes that need to be evaluated on site-by-site bases (Vigh, 2008; Visacovsky, 2017). The multi-scalar attention required to study crisis and change at individual Bronze Age settlement sites on Crete, Greece, has been...
Environmental Change and Human Ecology in Central Alaska during the Early Holocene: Hollembaek’s Hill (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dramatic environmental changes occurred in central Alaska during the Early Holocene as mixed woodlands and grasslands transitioned to boreal forest ecosystems. Despite 80 years of research in this region, we are just beginning to understand how interior Alaskan populations coped with the extinction of the large grazers (bison and elk) that constituted their...
Fixed if by Ice, Loose if by Sea? Harpoon Technology as Evidence of Hunting-Scapes in the Neoglacial Eastern Aleutian Islands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The effect of cooling climate during the Neoglacial period (3000-5000 BP) on societies in the Eastern Aleutian Islands is contested. Some archaeologists have argued that the appearance of toggling harpoon heads by 3000 BP indicate an adaptation to hunting marine mammals in an icy environment. This conclusion is problematic because toggling harpoons were...
From the First to the Last Amazonian Dark Earths: The Longue-Durée of Landscape Management at the Teotônio Site, Upper Madeira River, SW Amazonia (2018)
The Teotônio site, situated on the right bank of the Madeira river near Porto Velho, Rondônia, is a key location for understanding the deep history of human-environment interactions and landscape management in southwest Amazonia. Its archaeological record stretches back to the early-mid Holocene and includes vestiges of 6,000-year old Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) belonging to the Massangana Phase, hypothesised as marking the beginning of widespread landscape transformations in the Upper Madeira...
GIS Modeling of Precolonial Maya Natural Resource Management Strategies during Major Climatic Changes (2021)
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...
Human-Environment Interactions and the Hunter-Gatherers of Chachapoyas, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although a growing bodies of scholarship address later cultural developments in such regions, Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCF) are nevertheless perceived by many as environments marginal for human occupation, especially for hunter-gatherers. One such region, the Chachapoyas culture area in northern Peru, has to date been home to...
Molecular and Isotopic Analysis Indicates Variable Uses for Early Pottery from Northwest Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic technology was adopted approximately 2,800 and 2,500 years ago in Alaska, coinciding with a transition toward an economy increasingly focused on marine resource use. Despite expectations for marine resource use in early northern pottery, an initial pilot study found strong evidence for freshwater aquatic...
Obsidian Fracture Resulting from Forest Fire Exposure (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fire fractures in obsidian nodules and artifacts have been observed following several large forest fires at quarries, other archaeological sites, and geological deposits in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico. This presentation describes the characteristics of thermal fractures observed in this brittle material...
Shell Midden Zooarchaeology and Paleoecology of Guaimoreto Lagoon, Northeast Honduras (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research documents resource use and ecological change at the Selin Farm site, a group of around 30 well-stratified house and shell mounds occupied AD 300 – 1000 near the Guaimoreto Lagoon on the northeast coast of Honduras. A 4.5 m high shell mound with excellent preservation of vertebrate and invertebrate remains provides a full view of landscape...
Site Formation and Karst Processes during the Last Glacial Cycle at Lapa Do Picareiro, Portugal (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paleolithic cave site of Lapa do Picareiro is located on the upper slopes of the Serra de Aire limestone massif (571 m asl) about 100 km northeast of Lisbon, Portugal. The cave is a single chamber (15 × 15 m) with >10 m of sedimentary fill, mostly limestone éboulis clasts and muddy sediment in pore spaces. During the last glacial stage, the cave...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of Fishing Strategies at Rio Chico, Ecuador (OMJPLP-170) (2018)
The Rio Chico site was occupied almost continuously for 5000 years (ca. 3500 B.C.E. to 1532 C.E.) in a region of coastal South America that is heavily influenced by climatic events such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Evidence suggests that occupants of Rio Chico were heavily dependent on marine resources. The fishing strategies utilized at Rio Chico sustained the community over time, which allowed for the long-term development of an economy based on the Spondylus trade. This combination...