Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
376-400 (715 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Love That Dirty Water: Submerged Landscapes and Precontact Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Half Mile Rise Sink (8TA98) is a submerged prehistoric site located ca. one hundred meters downriver from the Page-Ladson site in the Aucilla River of Northwest Florida. Here, all known Floridian Paleoindian projectile points, Archaic projectile points, and associated paleontological material were...
The Local Environmental Context for Settlement and Abandonment of the Wetland Site Haimenkou, Yunnan, China (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Haimenkou is a wetland site with exceptional preservation and represents one of the earliest Neolithic occupations in Southwest China at ca. 3600 cal BP. The site is located on the margin of the alpine Jianhu Lake (ca. 2,200 m asl). A coring survey along the lakeshore reveals nearly 10 m fluctuation of the water level and complex intercalations of...
Long and short-term lacustrine and fluviolacustrine dynamics in relation to prehistoric settlements: The case of Lake Texcoco (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite the existence of archaeological data from surface surveys and excavations, the extent and dynamics of the lake and its shores over time are poorly known. Archaeological works often refer to a model of distribution of the Basin of Mexico’s lakes that is to a large extent fixed...
LONG TERM ALLUVIAL RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE: IDENTIFYING PAST LANDSCAPES AND SITE DISTRIBUTION ALONG MIDWEST WATERSHEDS (2015)
The Pleistocene-Holocene climate change had a global effect on the patterns and variations of river channels. Following the Last Glacial Maximum there was site specific variability regarding fluvial reactions, including vegetation, fluvial discharge, dominant sediment transport systems, and climate. This project will investigate and compare the various inputs and routing of sediment in two Midwest watersheds in response to the changing climate of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the...
Long-Term Geomorphological History and the Farming Landscape of Pañamarca (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca: Findings from the 2018–2023 Field Seasons" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we discuss the results of the geomorphological survey carried out parallel to the archaeological fieldwork in 2018 and 2019. The analysis of geological profiles at alluvial terraces, satellite imagery, and radiocarbon dating produced a 9,000-year sequence showing the high dynamism of the...
Looking for Sites in all the Wrong Places: Finding Evidence of Preceramic Occupations in Northern Highland Ecuador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. J.S. Athens and colleagues recently published evidence of early maize (6,600 CAL BP) from a lake core in northern highland Ecuador. Deposits with maize phytoliths and pollen were interspersed with ash layers from volcanic eruptions. The various geological processes that have shaped the environment...
Looking under the Rocks: Geoarchaeological Investigations of Earth Oven Facilities in Various Settings of the Lower Pecos, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The multi-year Ancient Southwest Texas (ASWT) Project at Texas State University has investigated numerous earth oven facilities (more commonly known as burned rock middens or BRMs) in the Lower Pecos of southwest Texas. The investigated prehistoric sites ranged from large,...
Los Morteros and Pampa de las Salinas: Early Monumentality and Environmental Change in Preceramic Peru (2018)
Los Morteros is a preceramic archaeological site located on Pampa de las Salinas, in the lower Chao Valley, north coast of Peru. Archaeological excavations in 1976, Los Morteros was identified as a "stabilized dune" whose top was used as a cemetery for pre-pottery people around cal. 5000 BP. Excavations in 2012 and 2016 have uncovered a very long and complex history of occupation of Los Morteros which includes the presence of early adobe monumental architecture dating before 5500 cal. BP, more...
Low-Density Maya Urbanism in the Dynamic Fluvial Landscape of the Upper Usumacinta Confluence Zone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proximity to aquatic resources, rich soils, and transportation corridors can make riverine landscapes attractive settings for human occupation. Floodplains, however, are dynamic environments subject to flooding, erosion, and channel migration, which can dramatically transform the surrounding landscapes and create challenges for sedentary communities. The...
Loyalhanna Lake: A Geoarchaeological Approach to Understanding the Archaeological Potential of Floodplains (2018)
Unlike uplands, floodplains generally yield stratified deposits that may include deeply buried landscapes and archaeological sites. Most state specifications for cultural resources surveys require floodplains to be geomorphically evaluated in order to identify buried landscapes. This is most frequently accomplished via trenching, an effective, but timely, costly, and sometimes destructive method. This project reports on an alternative technique utilizing a multi-proxy methodology coupling...
Luminescence Age Calculation Models, Termites, and Dune History in the Northern Kalahari Desert, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often accept optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages with less critical review than those derived from the more commonly used radiocarbon dating methods. This is largely because of an incomplete understanding of optical dating techniques and the modeling assumptions used to calculate these ages....
Macro and Micro Floor Stratigraphy from Poverty Point Ridge 2 Northwest (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Poverty Point’s concentric ridges have long been assumed to be residential areas despite an absence of archaeological evidence for houses. In 1991, a field school excavation was initiated based on a core that suggested a possible clay floor buried ~60 cm below the surface. Sixteen 2 × 2 units were opened,...
Magnentic Gradiometry Surveys of the Upper and Lower Plazas at La Sufricaya, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shallow geophysical prospecting methods have been underutilized in the Lowland Mayan regions due, in part, to the densely forested environment. Recent research at La Sufricaya, a Classic Maya site in the Homul region, has produced promising results using magnetic gradiometry to identify features buried below the plaza surface. Despite copious foliage and...
Magnetic Gradiometry in the Spatial Reconstruction of the Early Agricultural Period Canal System at La Playa, Mexico (2016)
La Playa (SON F:10:3), in Sonora, Mexico, is an Early Agricultural period (2100 B.C.-A.D. 50) archaeological site which has the remains of an irrigation canal system. The Early Agricultural Period is characterized by the development of agriculture in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. Due to severe erosion at La Playa, intact canals and cultivated soils had not been located for study. Magnetic gradiometry was used to detect intact agricultural features buried by alluvium....
Maine Midden Minder Network: Collaborating to Save a Cultural Resource (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maine’s coastline hosts over 2,000 Native American shell middens. Composed of clam and/or oyster shells, faunal remains, and artifacts, these sites record over four thousand years of cultural and paleoenvironmental information. However, virtually all of these rich archives are eroding in the face of climate change-induced sea level rise and altered weather patterns. The...
Marco Gonzalez, Ambergris Caye, Belize - Evidence for Salt Production (2018)
Investigations carried out at Marco Gonzalez, a Maya site on Ambergris Caye in Belize, were aimed at examining site formation processes, particularly the dynamics that led to dark surface and subsurface soils (Maya Dark Earths), which have a higher nutrient capacity than would be possible under natural conditions. Sediments of critical interest in soil formation were those deposited in the Late Classic period and associated with intensive processing. Features of the ceramics in the deposits as...
The Maritime Mode of Production: The Role of Seafaring in Bronze Age Societies (2018)
As exemplified by Viking and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, we model the political dynamics of raiding, trading, and slaving as a maritime mode of production (MMP). It includes political strategies to control trade by owning boats and financing excursions, thus permitting chiefs to channel wealth flows and establish decentralized, expansive political networks. Such political institutions often form at edges of world systems, where chieftains support mobile warriors, who were...
Materials Preparation and Procurement at Cochasquí as Indicators of Social Organization (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at earthen pyramid sites in northern Ecuador have documented the presence of unique circular baked-earth floors atop the pyramids which have been interpreted to be a marker of the especially sacred nature of the structure. Yet little is known about the process by which these floors are produced and fired or the societies that built them. Recent...
Maya Structures for Wet and Dry Seasons: Adaptive Strategies and Microenvironments at the Site of Chulub in the Crooked Tree Lagoon System (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study evaluates a water feature and two associated structures within the Late Terminal/Early Postclassic Maya site of Chulub in the Western Lagoon Wetlands near the island of Crooked Tree, Belize. The term “pocket *bajo” is a term used to describe water features that are similar to...
Maya Wetland Fields from 2014 and Earlier Coring Evidence (2015)
This paper has two main goals: first to present our latest findings for wetland field formation from a series of 2014 palustrine, floodplain, and lacustrine cores, and second to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to coring: piston-, soil-, and vibra-coring compared with excavation in these environments. We first present how the new cores from 2014 at Akab Muclil and Laguna Verde compare with previous coring and excavation data toward understanding ancient...
The McKean Complex Occupation in the Sunlight Basin, Northwest Wyoming: An Updated Assessment of Cultural and Geological Stratigraphy at Site 48PA551 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Site 48PA551 is a widely recognized winter camp originally dated to Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) period. Original investigators described the McKean occupation as a singular unit within a 30-90 cm thick sedimentary stratum beginning at the ground surface. Original radiocarbon dating...
Melrose Air Force Range Resources
Project metadata for resources within the Melrose Air Force Range cultural heritage resources collection.
Mercadal from the Onset of Settlement through the Medieval Crisis in Southern Aragon (Spain) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. San Miguel de Mercadal is one of 23 villages abandoned in the late 15th century during the Medieval Crisis in the Comunidad de Aldeas de Daroca created AD 1248 to encourage resettlement and self-defense of the southern borderlands of the Kingdom of Aragon. In 2023 we conducted a geophysical and satellite survey of Mercadal and its surroundings combined...
Mercury pollution and the ancient Maya: where, why and how. (2015)
Multi-element inorganic geochemical studies across the Maya lowlands have revealed elevated levels of mercury (Hg) in soils and sediments that date mainly from the Classic period (c. 250-900 AD). Mercury pollution has now been recorded at a range of archaeological sites despite the absence of metallurgy until the Postclassic Period (after 1000 AD), or any other industry capable of significant heavy metal pollution of the environment. This paper presents the first detailed analysis of the extent...
Mesodesma donacium as a Paleoclimatic Archive on the Coast of Peru (2018)
Quebrada Jaguay is one of the earliest maritime settlements in the New World. The southern Peruvian coastal site was occupied from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene ~13 to 8 ka and demonstrates a society highly dependent upon marine resources. Archaeological deposits excavated in the 1990’s and 2017 contained high volumes of marine faunal remains, predominantly the surf clam Mesodesma donacium, which accounts for 99% of the shell remains. M. donacium are used in this study to...