Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
701-713 (713 Records)
Our study examines the potential for using obsidian hydration analyses to quantify post-depositional site disturbance. The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) in northern New Mexico encompasses a diverse and dynamic mountainous landscape that people have visited regularly for millennia to access large obsidian quarries and other resources. The result is a rich archaeological record with abundant obsidian artifacts. However that record has been altered, sometimes dramatically, by physical,...
Water for the Keep: Hydrological Flow and Accumulation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present the final results and interpretations of data collected from La Cuernavilla’s aguada. Special emphasis is placed on new data collected through several types of soil and geoarchaeological analyses that crucially supplement the data that have already been presented. Previous presentations on this topic...
Weathering of Surficial Lithic Assemblages in the Hyperarid Core of the Atacama Desert, Chile (2018)
Surficial archaeological sites are widespread in arid environments. However, due to the difficulties in numerically dating them, they are usually considered as coarse indicators of past behaviors. Here, we explore the use of lithic weathering to develop local relative chronologies, and to better incorporate these assemblages into archaeological research. We test whether the most weathered artifacts should be considered the oldest; an assumption that has informally served to compare assemblages....
What Is Going On with the Younger Dryas in Florida? Late Pleistocene Perspectives from the Aucilla Basin (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 Aucilla River basin in northwestern Florida contains 92 recorded sites with components predating 9000 cal BP, making it an excellent area in which to examine terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene landscape use. More importantly, some of these sites, all drowned terrestrial localities, contain strata with...
What Lies between the Dots: Exploring the Archaeology of the Broader Basin of Mexico Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico survey established a diachronic palette of settlement locations that has served as the baseline for a wide range of studies. But settlements only comprise the nucleus of the most visible form of past human activities. A wide range of activities, agrarian and...
What's Cooking at Devils Kitchen? Context, Content, and Chronology of an Early Site on the Modern Oregon Coast (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary geoarchaeological investigations at the Devils Kitchen site (35CS9) produced a stratified archaeological record comprised of stone tools, debitage, and fire-cracked rock associated with alluvial deposition occurring between ~11,600 and 1900 14C BP (i.e., ~13,470 and 1800 cal BP). The robust Holocene-age portion of this record demonstrates that...
When the Volcano Erupts: Lessons from the Archaeological Record on Human Adaptation to Catastrophic Environments (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How do repeated disasters shape and strengthen communities? The Tilarán-Arenal region of Costa Rica is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world, but despite the risk, from the advent of sedentary villages during the Tronodora phase (2000-500 BC) until the arrival of Spanish in the 16th century, people demonstrated remarkable resilience. Using...
Where and How did the Maya Practice Agriculture in the Classic Period City of Naachtun, Guatemala? (2016)
Maya communities occupied and cultivated the tropical lowlands of Naachtun (Peten, Guatemala) for nearly a millennia (AD 150-950). Major goals of the Peten-Norte Naachtun project include understanding why the city was founded, the reasons for its development and why it was abandoned. Due to constraining environmental conditions (non-permanent water supply, shallow soils), the availability and management of water and soil resources in the city and around the bajo are closely tied to settlement...
Where Men Get Their Meat: Predicting Jump Locations at the Grapevine Creek Buffalo Jump Complex (2016)
Buffalo jumps have long been part of Crow oral histories. In 1962, at Grapevine Creek in Montana, Joseph Medicine Crow recounted oral histories to identify two buffalo jumps and associated drive lines above cliffs overlooking the floodplain. In 2015, a team of archaeologists, and Crow tribal monitors from the Tribal Historic Preservation Office employed geoarchaeological methods to investigate whether bison bones might be preserved in primary context in the drainage. We focused on recorded oral...
Which Stories for Which Storytelling? A Community-Based Approach to the Nineteenth- to Twentieth-Century Nunatsiavummiut Material Heritage (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation discusses archaeological research that is intended to create a space for the inhabitants to reconnect with their material heritage on the land. The project took place in the Nain region (Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada) in 2021 and 2022. It contributed to the Nunatsiavut Government policies...
Wildfires and Human Communities in Bronze and Iron Age, Armenia: A Macro-Charcoal and Paleo-Temperature (brGDGT) Reconstruction (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans today and in the past have to contend with the impacts of wildland fires. In grasslands, these fires occur frequently at annual to decadal scale. In the Kasakh valley, Armenia, recent research has revealed periods of increased fire activity during the Early Bronze and Late Iron Age and decreased activity in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (Cromartie et...
Willamette Valley Project Overview: Using Subbottom Profiling, Coring, Augering, Geomorphic Mapping, and Regional Archaeological Data to Inform Sensitivity Modeling and Archaeological Research Design in the Willamette Basin, Oregon (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manages the Willamette Valley Project, a system of thirteen dams and associated reservoirs in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon. Environmental settings of these thirteen project areas vary by elevation, substrate, vegetation, and other characteristics, but all are located along major rivers draining into the...
Yuzanu 36, a Late Archaic Site in the Mixteca Alta (2018)
We report the discovery and excavation of a site radiocarbon-dated to 3000 BC near the village of Yanhuitlan in Oaxaca. The site is buried under alluvium at a depth of 5m. At the time of its occupation it was situated on the floodplain of a large seasonal stream. The excavation of 30m2 revealed several superimposed features, including hearths, small refuse pits, and a bell-shaped pit. Debitage of different varieties of chert is ubiquituous, as is heat-spalled rock of different lithologies....