Paleoethnobotany (Other Keyword)
176-200 (572 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Both the ancient and modern Maya have employed a broad range of plant exudates, gums, resins, and other natural products for many centuries. Numerous plant species indigenous to Mesoamerica possess bioactive compounds that have served as medicine, pesticides, fish poisons, dyes, adhesives, unguents, tanning...
Fabrics of the South American Desert Coast: The Study of the Marine Hunter-Gatherer's Plant Fiber Technology in the Atacama Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research aims to study the earliest fabric artifacts made by marine hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Peru-Chile desert coast. Thanks to the aridity of this area, I use a remarkable amount of well-preserved plant-fiber materials, most belonging to the world’s oldest Chinchorro mummies buried...
Fanning the Flames of Complexity: Archaeobotanical Approaches to the Study of Fuel Economies at Late Chalcolithic Sites in Northern Mesopotamia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The burning of fuel resources for the heating and lighting homes, preparing food and craft goods, and eliminating waste is an essential daily domestic practice on par with the acquisition of food and shelter. With the emergence of socioeconomically complex societies in Northern Mesopotamia during the Late Chalcolithic, ever greater resources would have been...
Farming and Foraging in Late Ceramic Period Society at Sitio Drago, Western Caribbean Panama (2015)
This paper examines patterns in plant and animal remains excavated from midden contexts at Sitio Drago, a 1400-year-old village site located on a Caribbean island in Panama. To date, most studies of farming and foraging in ancient Panama have focused on villages located in the central highlands and Pacific foothills – regions with a cooler, drier tropical climate that better facilitates agricultural productivity. Although highly informative, these studies alone do not provide us with a complete...
Farming, Warfare, Drought, and Soil Fertility in the Mississippian Central Illinois River Valley: Carbon and Nitrogen Isotopes on Maize Kernels from Five Sites Spanning Two Centuries (2018)
We report on carbon and nitrogen isotope results from a total of 60 maize kernels from five sequentially-occupied sites in the Central Illinois River Valley that span the Mississippian period (AD 1100-1300). The sites span: (1) the onset of and intensification of warfare in the region; and (2) a long period of drought that eventually gave way to wetter conditions during the last 50 years of the sequence. C13 and N15 isotope values from these maize kernels provide independent support for the...
Feasting, exchange, sociopolitical interaction: Assessing the Tiwanaku presence in the Kallawaya region (2015)
In the Tiwanaku era, the Kallawaya territory was part of a web of an inter-ecologic exchange networks that provided altiplanic polities with a myriad of resources flowing from the valleys and tropical Yunga mountains. In this context, Tiwanaku centers were important places of exchange, storage, and ritual celebrations. By looking at the botanical remains, this paper will explore the changes in feasting and consumption patterns, and the ways in which various resources were utilized in funerary...
Feasts for the People, Crumbs for the Bird: Communicating Archaeological Data on Ancient Crop Diversity (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food security and food adequacy are at the core of many sustainability debates. Growing urban populations and a simultaneous decline in staple crops are severe threats to both. While the relation between rising demographics and subsistence has been a focus of scholarly debate in anthropology, crop diversity in ancient...
Fedickschrift: Notes on a Prominent Historical Figure in Ethnoecology, Ethnoarchaeology, and Landscape Studies (2015)
The legacy of Scott Fedick in ethnoecology, ethnoarchaeology, and landscape studies cannot be understated. Aside from years of active collaborative work and mentorship, the dissemination of his research has led to rich interpretations far beyond his immediate influence. In the first part of this paper, I follow impacts of Fedick's scholarship in several fields, as tracked through citations and students. I also trace his impacts on public policy and common understandings of Maya lifeways. In...
Feeding the Gods, Calling the Rains: Archaeobotanical Remains from a Monumental Fire Shrine at El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2015)
The discovery of a fire shrine atop the adosada of Structure M13-1 at El Perú-Waka’ supports the archaeological and epigraphic records which have at various places in the Maya region (including Waka’) made reference to the arrival in AD 378 of Siyaj K’ak’. This event resulted in the introduction of the fire shrine cult, glossed as Wite Naah in Mayan, from Teotihuacan to the Maya Lowlands. M13-1’s cal AD 7th century fire shrine is the final phase of the main temple’s fronting platform. Careful...
Feeding the Mountain: Plant Remains from Ritual Contexts On and Around Structure M13-1 at El Perú-Waka’ (2017)
Structure M13-1, a major civic-ceremonial building at the center of the Classic Maya city El Perú-Waka’ in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, held special significance to its citizenry. While it was likely ritually significant since the Early Classic period, evidence indicates it was the focus of sustained and repeated ceremonial acts of likely varying scales, accouterment, and practitioners throughout the Late and Terminal Classic periods (circa A.D. 600-900). In this paper, we explore data from...
Feral Fields of the Eastern Adriatic Coast (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On Mediterranean islands and coastal areas of southern Europe, extensive field systems of drystone walls, terraces, and clearance cairns are common landscape features that attest to generations of landscape modification for cultivation. Tracing the precise chronologies of these fields is perennially challenging....
Fiber Identifications of Paisley Caves Textiles: Exploring Plant Selection for Technology in the Northern Great Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant fiber identifications were made for a subset of Oregon’s Paisley Caves cordage and netting in order to explore plant selection for fiber technologies. Fiber artifacts from this assemblage include basketry, matting, netting, cordage, and rope, with the oldest braided rope dating to ca. 12,000 years ago....
Fiber Plants of the Northern Great Basin: New Radiocarbon Dates and Plant Identifications for Textiles from Paisley Caves, Oregon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early foraging communities in the Northern Great Basin engaged with a diverse and changing landscape over millennia. Archaeologists have developed settlement-subsistence models in relation to climatic shifts based on tool assemblages, dietary studies, and other datasets. In the current study, textiles from Paisley Caves are examined within the...
Filling the Envelope: a History of Archaeobotanical Research in Cyprus (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the first experiments with the method of flotation in 1962, the sub-discipline of archaeobotany (paleoethnobotany) has developed and revolutionized our understanding of the origins and spread of agricultural systems worldwide. The history of modern...
Finding Value: Integrating Multiple Datasets to Clarify the Nuances of Past Food Choices (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological studies of ancient foodways focus on understanding subsistence practices in terms of the movement of species over space and time, human/plant/animal strategies, ecological transformations, periods of abundance/famine, economics, and politics. The values that foods are imbued with, the meaning and significance they...
Fire up the Uhmw: Deciphering Botanical Residues from Earth Ovens in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia (2017)
In Pohnpei, Micronesia, the uhmw, or earth oven, is one important way of preparing food. These ovens are typically located in cookhouses next to residential sites. Pohnpeians use heated stones on the ground to cook food and cover items with large leaves while cooking. It is clear that umhw are a long-standing Pohnpeian tradition, as multiple examples have been found in the archaeological record. In this paper, we ask what botanical residues from uhmw can tell us about the prehistory and history...
Fires at axis mundi: macro- and microbotanical investigations of a Hopewell woodhenge (2017)
At Hopewell Mound Group in Ross County Ohio (33RO27), 2013 magnetic gradiometer investigations redefined the long invisible Great Circle, a 120-meter diameter woodhenge. The 2016 excavation of one of four central features within the Great Circle revealed a large thermal feature. Although unusually large for this purpose, the arrangement of fire-cracked rock, clay lining, hot-burning hardwoods and grass seed suggest a classic earth oven common to domestic sites. However, ethnographic analogy...
The Flavors Archaeobotany Forgot (2018)
Archaeobotanists find herbaceous plants in their collected macrobotanical collections regularly. Usually they are associated with animal fodder and fuel. But what if they were condiments? Recently there has been more information on wild herbaceous plants and insects as part of rural people’s cuisines. These oft-hidden ingredients should be recalled when taxa lists are studied, as some could have been important if rarely used spices and flavoring ingredients. We see, for example, that some...
Flora, Ethnoecology, and Foodways in the Land of the Sky (2017)
Analysis of botanical residues recovered from the Río Verde Valley has yielded a wealth of information about activities of ancient inhabitants. Data from this paper were derived from large-scale excavations at the Terminal Formative urban center of Río Viejo, and the Terminal Formative outlying sites of Cerro de la Virgen and Loma Don Genaro. Evidence of agricultural practices as well as the collection of wild and fallow-dwelling plants have been revealed through charred seeds and other...
The Flowery Places of the Copan Maya and the Species They Used to Create Them (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Clues to the creation of flower-laden spaces in ancient Maya temples, tombs, and palaces lie on the floors of the best-preserved of these structures. The Copan Acropolis has proved to be a particularly good site for the recovery of well-preserved pollen grains from flowers that adorned ritual...
Follow the Llamero: the Movement of Plant Foodstuffs in the Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exchange of goods and movement among different ecozones is a hallmark of Andean society. Key to this system of mobility were camelid caravans, which are possibly best known for the Wari or Tiwanaku cultures but are today dwindling in frequency or have disappeared in the Andes. These caravans were established in the much earlier Formative...
Food and Firewood in Gallina, New Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing, collecting, preparing, storing, and using food and fuel are practices that illustrate environmental, community, and interpersonal relationships at the smallest and largest archaeological scales. This paper explores the plant landscape of the Gallina region and phase within the Ancestral Puebloan world. As understandings of this period and its...
Food Archaeology for Social Justice (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Why do we do food archaeology, and what can we use it for? In the last few decades, social archaeology has strongly shaped approaches to food in the past, directing our attention to how food is used to create social boundaries and values. More than ever before, archaeology is now facing the challenge of making ourselves relevant...
Food for the Soul & Well-being: Ruminations about the Other Face of Ancient Plant Remains (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper makes the case for a greater concerted effort in archaeobotany to give equal standing to the domain of 'food' for the soul and spirit, that is, useful/edible plants for the well-being of the individual and the community in the past. All too often, the emphasis falls into concerns of staple food as a...
Food for Thought: Engaging Field School Students in the World of Plants (2018)
Field schools run by Chuck Adams and Rich Lange introduced students to many archaeological disciplines. Together an archaeobotanist and a palynologist pulled students into the world of plants via introductory lectures on plant macrofossils and microfossils. Hands-on activities then focused on learning the important plant resources currently available. Student pairs were sent into three different plant communities to collect samples of all the different plants they encountered. When re-assembled...