Paleoethnobotany (Other Keyword)
151-175 (572 Records)
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...
Environmental History of the Petén Campechano (2023)
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...
An Ethnoarchaeological Approach to Understanding the Role of Root-crops in Ancient Lowland Maya Subsistence. (2015)
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...
Evaluating the Environmental Impacts of Colonial Settlement: A Palynological Study of La Cienega, New Mexico (2018)
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...
Evaluating the Food Values of Alternative Crops and Implications for Drought Effects on the Ancient Maya (2021)
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...
An Evaluation of Food during Sociopolitical Transitions at Formative Tres Zapotes (2023)
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...
Evidence for Geophyte Exploitation in the Green River Basin of Wyoming (2021)
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...
Evidence for Possible Digging Implements in the Southern Columbia Plateau: Microbotanical Analysis of Stone Tools from a Late Holocene Earth Oven, 45OK1722, WA (2024)
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...
Evidence for Ridge and Furrow Agriculture at Angel Mounds in Southern Indiana (2023)
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...
Evidence of Mid-Holocene Environmental Change at the Submerged Archaeological Site, Manasota Key Offshore, Florida (2023)
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...
Evidence of Seaweed Use by Coastal Communities of the Atacama Desert Coast, South America (2024)
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...
Evidence of Specialization and Intensification of Small Seed Exploitation on Santa Cruz Island, California (2015)
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...
The Evolution of Plant Resource Diversity in Precolonial Puerto Rico with Direct Implications for the Rest of the Greater Antilles (2024)
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...
An Examination of Circum-Alpine Lake Dwelling Botanicals at the Milwaukee Public Museum (2018)
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...
Examining Settlement Reorganization and Plant Food Use in the Greater Cibola Region A.D. 900-1400 (2015)
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...
Examining the Bread-Basket Model: Puuc Intra and Inter-Site Diversity in Plant Foods (2018)
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...
Examining the Shift in Seed-Dispersal Mechanisms During Early Plant Domestication (2019)
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...
Experimental Archaeology as a Tool for Understanding Microbotanical Taphonomy (2018)
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...
Exploitation of Canarium versus African Oil Palm by Ancient Hunter-Gatherers in Tropical Africa (2021)
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...
Exploring Ancient Foodways: Starch Grain Analysis of Ceramic Residue in Wansan, Yilan County, Taiwan (2024)
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...
Exploring Macrobotanicals of Tenehaha from the Cotahuasi Valley, Peru (2015)
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...
Exploring Plant Exploitation and Food Practices in the Loess Plateau, China: A Comparative Microbotanical Analysis in Urban and Rural Settings during the Late Neolithic Period (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Food and Foodways: Emerging Trends and New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late Neolithic period in the Yellow River region (ca. 5000–4000 cal BP), a significant wave of urbanization unfolded, marked by the rapid development of settlement hierarchies, social stratification, and interregional interactions, which laid the foundation for the emergence of early state-level...
Exploring the Edible Forest: Food Values and Archaeological Visibility of Indigenous Food Plants of the Maya Lowlands (2018)
A review of 28 ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and botanical studies published since the 1930s identified 497 species of indigenous food plants used by the Maya in the lowlands of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America. This consideration of the Maya cornucopia focuses on the relative food values of the plants and the visibility of the species in the archaeological record. The diversity of food plants has significant implications for the reconstruction of ancient foodways, agricultural...
Exploring the Role of Fire in Tarascan Ritual Contexts of the Zacapu Basin, Michoacan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of ritual activities often focus on paraphernalia, architectural structures, and other aspects of performance. While these are all important features, other more subtle elements that are nevertheless crucial to these activities are often not considered in...
Exploring the Social and Physical Landscapes of Colonial New Mexico (2015)
Reshaping the settlement landscape is a significant aspect of the colonial encounter in that it provided the ecological context for social interactions. In the American Southwest, the Spaniards’ introduction of Eurasian plants and animals as well as new land use practices had a profound effect on the physical and cultural environment. We use palynological data from a 500-year period that illustrates both the impact of indigenous Pueblo peoples’ engagement with the pre-colonial landscape as well...