Paleoethnobotany (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ming Jiang. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes. Zhanghua Jiang. Zhiqing Zhou. Rowan Flad.

This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The constraints and advantages presented by the natural environment of the Chengdu Plain had important impacts on how ancient humans exploited and occupied this environment. This poster considers how that the Plain was subject to a high degree of geomorphological remodeling due to frequent flooding and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nuria Torrescano-Valle. William Folan. Joel Gunn.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoenvironmental inferences are based on pollen and geochemical data from sediment cores collected in Lakes Silvituc and Uxul, and Oxpemul Reservoir, near three archaeological sites that supported agricultural activity between ca. 900 BC and AD 750, under the control of the Kaan Dynasty. These sites show patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Murphy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research project used Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to identify tree species of 33 charcoal samples from funerary and non-funerary contexts at the ancient Maya site of Chan Chich, Belize. To identify species, we compared SEM images of the plant structures in the charcoal to images from databases and other studies. We were able to identify over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Gudiel.

Dr. Scott Fedick’s research goals have always emphasized the importance of understanding the diversity and ingenuity of lowland Maya subsistence. Through his guidance and mentorship my dissertation focus was developed to explore the role of root-crops in ancient Maya subsistence. Recent paleoethnobotanical research has demonstrated that the ancient Maya diet included a wide array of plant foods.Currently lacking is enough evidence for the role of roots-crops.To begin to acquire an understanding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara J. Heath. Kandace Hollenbach.

Historians of the 17th-century Chesapeake have emphasized the importance of tobacco for export and maize for domestic consumption, arguing that wheat became an economically important crop after about 1720. Results from a regional analysis of paleoethnobotanical samples dating from 1630 to 1725 reveal that Eurasian grains began to appear with some consistency in Virginia’s Northern Neck and Maryland after about 1660. Documentary evidence indicates that planters and tenants grew small grains in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Edwards.

Using palynological data, this project attempts to contextualize the ecological impacts of Spanish settlement and land-use practices at LA 20,000 within a broader discussion of the long-term environmental history of La Cienega, New Mexico. This is essential because La Cienega has a deep and complicated settlement history that includes Puebloan, Spanish, and Anglo-American occupations. As a result, the ecological relationships created during initial colonial settlement must be considered in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fedick. Louis Santiago.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Far from being limited to maize, beans, and squash, the ethnographic Maya are known to make use of 497 species of food plants indigenous to the Maya Lowlands. This study presents initial results of determining “food values” based on nutritional content for these plant species, and the methods used to determine the values. The results have significant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Newhall. Amber VanDerwarker. Christopher Pool.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tres Zapotes is an important site in the broader discussion of Olmec cultural continuity and Formative period political economy with an archaeological record that spans the two millennia between 1000 BC and AD 1000. It is a key site for understanding the emergence of Classic period civilization from ancient Olmec roots in Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaley Tucker. Lisbeth Louderback. Erick Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Green River Basin of Wyoming, archaeological sites dating from the Early Archaic to Late Prehistoric are often found associated with or adjacent to dense patches of *Cymopterus bulbosus, a nutritious geophyte that would have been an important food source for prehistoric humans living in the region. Experimental data have shown that the caloric return...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haden Kingrey. Shannon Tushingham. John Blong.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Earthen ovens in the Southern Columbia Plateau are associated with the preparation and cooking of roots and tubers, with evidence dating back to the middle Holocene. Despite issues with the preservation of these plant elements in the archaeological record, researchers can use microbotanical analyses to identify microscopic remains that oftentimes preserve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Herrmann. Rebecca Hawkins. Christina Friberg. Jayne-Leigh Thomas.

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. Evidence of agriculture during the Mississippian period in the Midwest derives largely from the identification and analysis of cultivar macrobotanicals from refuse contexts. However, research that investigates how and where crops were grown on Midwestern sites is scant. As a result, few sites have been identified that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelina Perrotti. Ryan Duggins.

This is an abstract from the "Liquid Landscapes: Recent Developments in Submerged Landscape Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Manasota Key Offshore (MKO) site is submerged under the gulf of Mexico off the shore of Manasota Key, Florida. This site, which was occupied over 7,000 years ago, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of early Holocene environmental change on hunter-gatherers, particularly relating to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ximena Power. Claudia Silva. Rodrigo Díaz-Plá. Valentina Hernández. César Borie.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Seaweeds have been part of the daily life of coastal populations worldwide. Despite the wide range of species and human uses, seaweeds have been under-researched in the human sciences and historical ecology compared to other marine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Thakar.

This paper reconstructs shifts in botanical foraging behavior on Santa Cruz Island, California and quantitatively demonstrates specialization and intensification in the exploitation of small oily and starchy seeds from the terminal Early Period (ca. 3000 cal. BP) through the late Middle Period (ca. 1000 cal. BP). This shift accompanied an increased reliance on terrestrial food resources overall. A recently recognized climatic transition (2800 cal. BP-1800 cal. BP) likely altered the geographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Pearsall. Philip Riris. Peter Siegel.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Except for Jamaica, the earliest human occupations in the Greater Antilles date to ca. 6000 cal yr BP. Contrary to older ideas, the view taking shape now is that survival strategies incorporated a range of plant domesticates along with wild resources obtained through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Eberwein.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Oas.

Investigations at varying scales have been undertaken to understand the role of maize in the diets and daily lives of prehistoric societies in the U.S. Southwest. In the Cibola region, around the modern Pueblo of Zuni, archaeological studies provide a detailed temporal and spatial picture of rapid settlement reorganization and aggregation in the Pueblo III and IV periods between A.D. 1150-1400. Less well understood, however, is how daily subsistence practices and interactions with local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Spengler.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Calla McNamee. Sofia Laparidou. Georgia Tsartsidou. Maria Bofill. Soultana-Maria Valamoti.

Microbotanical residue analysis, particularly starch grain and phytolith analysis, of ground stone artifacts has become a well-established method for investigating subsistence practices, plant processing patterns, and tool use at prehistoric sites around the world. Within the Aegean, however, where wheat and barley are the primary staple grains, microbotanical analysis of stone tools has only recently been incorporated into on-going research. A collaboration between PlantCult, a European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolette Edwards.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Numerous oleaginous (oil-producing) tree species exist across tropical Africa. Indigenous populations both past and present used many of these species in a variety of ways including for fuel, cooking, medicinal, and cosmetic purposes. Current emphasis in the literature is often placed on the importance of E. guineensis (African oil palm) likely due to it being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yi-lin Chen. Chihhua Chiang. Yi-Chang Liu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research examines starch residues on food related pottery vessels in order to investigate the utilization of various plant foods in the late Neolithic Wansan society. Based upon preliminary identifications, most of the residue starch belongs to Panicoideae, with definite identification of foxtail millet and Job’s tears. No taro or yam have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Pillay.

This is an abstract from the "Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives on Oceanic Archaeology: Papers to Honor the Contributions of Melinda Allen" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In honour of Melinda Allen’s contributions to Oceanic Archaeology this paper explores multi-faceted relationships between humans and animals across East Polynesia as understood by the archaeological record. Drawing on archaeological, osteological, and ancient DNA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Mayer. Matthew Sayre.

In this paper we present macrobotanical data from the Peruvian archaeological site of Tenehaha in the Cotahuasi Valley. Soil samples from archaeological excavation areas were recovered by Justin Jennings and his field crew from the Tenehaha site. These soil samples were floated in order to sieve out the botanical remains of the ancient past lives of Peruvians at a ritual and ceremonial burial site of Tenehaha. Our analysis revealed new insights into site use and the distribution of botanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Nagaoka.

This is an abstract from the "Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives on Oceanic Archaeology: Papers to Honor the Contributions of Melinda Allen" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Niche construction theory (NCT) has become an interesting evolutionary mechanism for archaeologists interested in understanding human-environment interactions. The idea that humans’ penchant for environmental modification could be understood from an evolutionary model is...