Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
326-350 (619 Records)
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...
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....
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...
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...
Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany (2014)
Paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, is poised at the intersection of the study of the past and concerns of the present, including agricultural decision making, biodiversity, and global environmental change, and has much to offer to archaeology, anthropology, and the interdisciplinary study of human relationships with the natural world. Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany demonstrates those connections and highlights the increasing relevance of the study of past...
Methods of Correlating Cultural Remains With Stages of Coastal Development (1959)
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Methods to Identify Post-depositional Geochemical Alterations to Ceramics in Submerged Archaeological Sites: a Case Study Using Prehistoric Ceramics from Eastern Dominican Republic (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Geochemical analysis methods such as trace element and stable isotope analyses have been refined in recent years to better address archaeological questions pertaining to clay sourcing as well as ceramic trade and transport. However, these analyses are rarely applied to studies of ceramics from submerged sites due to increased...
Microarchaeological Approaches to the Identification of the Younger Dryas in the Northern Great Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Younger Dryas Chronozone (YDC) is a cooling event occurring 12,900–11,600 years ago (cal BP) marked by rapid changes in plant and animal communities, subsequently affecting late Pleistocene human population organization and settlement dynamics across the globe. In North America’s Northern Great Basin, these changes...
Microarchaeology of Lapa do Santo, a paleoindian rock shelter from central Brazil (2016)
The site of Lapa do Santo (state of Minas Gerais, Brazil) is a key location to understand the mundane and ritual activities of early South Americans. Radiocarbon dating placed its occupation between 7.9 and 12.7 cal kyBP. Rock art from the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary was found beneath 4 meters of sediment, and 26 human burials revealed unique mortuary practices involving mutilation, defleshing and decapitation. In this work, we focus on the stratigraphic sequence from the early Holocene, where...