Paleoethnobotany (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary investigation into the use of plants at the site of Huari from the 2017 field season of the Programa Arqueológico Prehistoria Urbana de Huari resulted in new information placing the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) as a central component of the daily meal for those living in Patipampa in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Lane. Katherine Cynkar. Kimberly Kasper. Anthony Graesch.

Uncharred botanicals are commonly found on archaeological sites but seldom assigned interpretive significance owing to their assumed ambiguous origins. Thousands of uncharred, fragmented Sambucas racemosa (red elderberry) seeds have been recovered at Welqámex, a Stó:lō-Coast Salish settlement in the Upper Fraser Valley of southwestern British Columbia. In Stó:lō-Coast Salish territory and beyond, Sambucas was used as both a food and a medicine. Owing to the presence of cyanide-like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Zhu. Guillermo ae Anda.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is so widely accepted that the Maya burned copal incense in their rituals that the assumption has gone unquestioned. During the 2018 season, the Gran Acuífero Maya Project began a multi-year investigation of the cave of Balamku near Chichen Itza. The cave contains a large number of incense burners filled with burned material that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Fulgham. Colin Grier. Audrey Rainey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of feasting activity in precontact societies can illuminate hierarchical social structures that existed within a community, because of the labor and wealth investments required to produce a successful feast. It can also highlight the integrative aspects of feasts, since they often involved widespread participation. We present results of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Scott Cummings.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonization of Central and North America involved Spanish mission construction and growing wheat necessary for Eucharist bread. Using evidence of threshing technology, represented by cut phytoliths, as an indicator of trait adoption, we examine missions in California and the southwestern Puebloan region. Introduction of a new religion, new icons, new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily McKenzie. Taylor Puckett. Lawford Hatcher. Katherine Chiou.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The chili pepper (Capsicum spp.) has cemented its place in ancient and modern Mesoamerica as a fixture in medicine, ritual, and cuisine. The timing and context of its domestication which began around 10,000 years BP, however, remains unclear. To address this, we conducted morphometric analyses of a diverse array of modern seeds from multiple species of wild...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Marston. Emily Ubik.

Free-threshing wheat (Triticum aestivum and T. durum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) were staple cereal crops in the ancient Near East. Although modern varietals of these species have significant variation in growing times, water requirements, and grain yields, few studies have distinguished varietals in the past. Traditional approaches have used grain seed size and shape to identify different crop varieties. These coarse metrics, including length:breadth and thickness:breadth ratios, give only a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fedick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For Maya agriculture, both ancient and modern, it is known that a wide range of time is needed between planting and harvesting of various plant species. While annual crops require less than a year to reach full productivity, perennial crops, particularly tree-crops, might require many years to begin production, and even longer to reach full productivity....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Wolff.

The importance of alcohol in the landscape of feasting has been well documented across cultures, and early medieval Europe is no exception. The mead-hall in Anglo-Saxon Britain functioned as a location where social bonds were strengthened both vertically and horizontally; Vikings in Iceland relied on barley beer to demonstrate the power and generosity of chieftains. Production of alcohol in the large quantities required for feasting necessitates some degree of specialization, but to what degree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Traci Ardren.

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic reconstructions of south Florida Indigenous lifeways prior to European contact have focused primarily on the deliberate choice of these highly complex societies to rely exclusively on wild foods, even while corn agriculture was practiced in nearby parts of the peninsula....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Haas.

This is an abstract from the "Histories of Human-Nature Interactions: Use, Management, and Consumption of Plants in Extreme Environments" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper implements a multiproxy approach to Woodland foodways, integrating plant macrobotanical studies, faunal analyses, ceramic morphological and use-wear analyses, and absorbed residue analyses. Datasets from southeastern Wisconsin and the surrounding region highlight...