Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
551-575 (619 Records)
Many studies have discussed the first century BC to first century AD Nabataean rock-cut monuments in the Nabataean city of Petra, Jordan. These surveys provide information about proposed chronologies for the façade tombs and limited data about burial customs of the Nabataeans themselves. One neglected topic is the Nabataean tomb placement in relation to the structural geology of the Petra region. During the 2014 field season of the BYU Ad-Deir Monument and Plateau project, it was discovered...
Sub-Tropical Agronomy on a Variable Landscape: Exploring Classic Maya Farming Through Geotechnical Design and the Distribution of Edaphic Variables (2018)
Late Classic hinterland agronomy presents a compelling glimpse into the socioeconomic dynamics of production and demand in the Three Rivers region. This project focused on a prominent house-group located 350 meters east of the site of Dos Hombres which was known to exhibit intensive agricultural strategies as well as a specialized degree of stone working. Additionally, a series of four karst depressions bordered the site and likely leveraged moisture demand resulting from agricultural needs as...
Submerged Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Sites in the Aucilla River Basin, Florida: What Can They Tell Us About Early Cultures We Could Not Learn Elsewhere? (2018)
Many projectile points of late Paleoindian and early Archaic styles have been recovered from underwater contexts in the Aucilla Basin. A large percentage of these are unprovenienced surface finds, but these artifacts have also been found in association with soils currently submerged more than 4 meters underwater. Dates from these soils span the Younger Dryas at Page-Ladson and Sloth Hole, while other sites have proven complex to date but provide excellent environmental information....
Submergence of Indian Mounds (1935)
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Substances in Transition: Tell Construction in Chalcolithic Bulgaria (2018)
Tells are living places continuously constructed and transformed by their inhabitants through their actions on the matter and objects constituting these places. In effect, the accumulation of clay, rubble and refuse on which houses are built and lives lived reflects daily actions, cultural events happening on longer cycles as well as environmental considerations. Therefore, the blend of things and matter that transited from the riverbed to houses, pots, and aggregated rubble and rubbish requires...
The Suitability of Ground-Penetrating Radar for Mapping Sub-Marsh Paleogeography and Implications for Large-Scale Archaeological Surveys of Wetlands and Marshes (2015)
Prehistoric sites beneath modern marshes are uncommon and valuable cultural resources with superior organic preservation potential. Such sites generally offer greater stratigraphic integrity than their terrestrial counterparts as they were not historically plowed. However, these sites are overlooked and understudied in eastern North America due to low visibility, disagreement on surveying strategies, and misperceptions regarding the high costs of investigation and low potential for site...
Surviving Climate Change (2018)
During the past decade, the University of Cincinnati has offered a summer archaeological field school, which focuses on periods of rapid and profound global climatic change. Students undertake detailed excavation profile descriptions, collect samples for AMS radiocarbon and OSL dating, botanical, faunal, soil, and geochemical analyses to develop an accurate chronology and paleoenvironmental framework of the depositional history for archaeological sites, which date to the Younger Dryas and Little...
Sustainability and Climate Change in the Ancient Maya Area: Evidence from Remote Sensing and Long-Term Land Use (2018)
The sub-tropical forests that once covered the ancient ruins of much of Mesoamerica are being rapidly removed due to modern subsistence practices. Yet, archaeological and ecological research shows that this is not the first time that extensive human-caused deforestation has occurred in this region, minimally representing the third iteration of such an event. Analyses of lake-cores and remote sensing imagery provide evidence for extensive land clearing around 1000 BCE and again after CE 250, with...
The Swag Site (38AL137): Yet Another Paleoindian Site at the Allendale Quarries in South Carolina (2018)
The Swag Site (38AL137) was recorded during the initial survey of the Allendale chert quarries by Albert Goodyear and Tommy Charles in 1984. While subsequent work focused on the Topper and Big Pine Tree sites, the Swag site was overlooked until a systematic survey conducted in 2015 identified several localities with buried archaeological deposits. In May 2016 and March 2017, further excavations at the Swag Site produced artifacts that are comparable to Clovis components at Topper,...
Synthesizing Results from the 2017–2022 Excavations at Crvena Stijena (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The excavations at Crvena Stijena from 2017–2022 have had two main objectives. The first is to test the Sandgathe/Dibble hypothesis that Neanderthals did not have the ability to make fire; rather, they were dependent on natural occurrences of fire. The testable implication...
The Tacahuay Legacy: Landscape Modification and Reuse on the South Coast of Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tacahuay Quebrada has a long geologic history of flood events, as well as human occupation. Around 12,000 years ago, early inhabitants lived along the coastline of this landscape. Through time, people moved away from the ocean to settle along the channel, floodplain, and elevated terraces of the quebrada. In...
Tackling the Early Holocene Record in Patagonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The early Holocene archaeological record in Patagonia has always been elusive. It is often recorded as layers within multi-component cave sites where archaeological and natural materials accumulate. However ordered the layering, careful the excavation techniques, or large the quantity of radiocarbon dates, such sites are complex to interpret due to site...
A Tale of Two Houses: Soil Chemical and Floor Assemblage Evidence of Domestic Activities at the Menoken Site, North Dakota (2015)
Although they are often used by archaeologists to identify activity patterns within domestic spaces, floor assemblages are influenced by a variety of cultural and natural formation processes, especially those related to abandonment. By contrast, soil chemical traces are thought to be less vulnerable to alteration by subsequent activity and, therefore, are treated as primary residue of activities in their original location. Although the formation histories of these two types of evidence differ,...
A Tale of Two Projects: Geoarchaeological Investigations along the Shores of Pleistocene Lake Waring in Elko County, Nevada, and the Importance of Early Planning and Collaboration between Public Land Managers, Project Proponents, and Stakeholders (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations conducted between 2015 and 2021 along the margins of a Great Basin pluvial lake applied multidisciplinary methods that resulted in the identification of significant deeply stratified sites. A geoarchaeological approach that entailed detailed mapping and modeling of the...
A Tale of Two Styles: A Geoarchaeological Investigation into Lima & Ychsma Construction Materials at Cajamarquilla, Peru (2015)
This paper examines construction materials from Cajamarquilla, one of the largest prehistoric urban sites on the Central Coast of Peru. Little work has been published about the architecture at Cajamarquilla, other than to comment on the enormity of the site and its constructions. Rammed earth (tapia, in Spanish) is the main construction style at Cajamarquilla, but with marked observable differences between the Lima Phase (AD500 – 800) and Ychsma Phase (AD1100 – 1450) occupations. Lima walls were...
A Tale of Two Villages: Exploring the Role of Villages with Massive Shell Accumulations as Anthropogenic Coastline Modifications in Prince Rupert Harbour (2017)
3D mapping, percussion coring, and radiocarbon dating are used to explore the geoarchaeology and chronology of two villages composed of massive shell deposits in the Prince Rupert Harbour. We map out accumulation and development of these sites through time and demonstrate that they are major anthropogenic coastline modifications, which, with dozens of other large villages in the area, form a substantial built environment. As well as providing well-drained terraformed terraces on which to build...
The Tangled Roots of the Anthropocene: China from the Late Neolithic to the Song Dynasty (2018)
The Anthropocene is now commonly defined as a geological event, or "golden spike" that begins in the later twentieth century with the detonation of nuclear weapons. While this event-based characterization serves a useful purpose in providing a formal geological definition, it tells us nothing of how humans developed the social, economic, technological, and moral capacities that allow us to affect natural processes at a global scale. Using archaeological and environmental data from China between...
Taphonomic and geological approaches to the identification of in situ versus ex situ archaeological material: a case study from BK East, Bed II, Olduvai Gorge (2017)
A variety of post-depositional processes can add to, subtract from, and/or spatially reconfigure archaeological deposits. The challenge for archaeologists, then, is to unravel these processes in order to assess the fidelity with which a given deposit reflects hominin behavior. BK East, an early Pleistocene locality in Olduvai Gorge’s middle/upper Bed II, preserves stone tools, butchered animal bones, and hominin remains. This rich archaeo-paleontological collection rests within an interbedded...
Taphonomy and Chronology of Mounds A and B at the Quapaw Village of Osotouy (Menard-Hodges Site; 3AR4) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Menard-Hodges (3AR4), also known as the Quapaw village of Osotouy, is a Mississippian site along the Arkansas River in southeastern Arkansas. Professional excavations have yielded French trade goods and various diagnostic artifacts that supports a predominantly Mississippian-to-protohistoric origin. The site also includes several mounds, the largest of which,...
“Temporal, temporal, allá viene el temporal”: Memory, Disaster, and Change in Puerto Rico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As one of the oldest colonies in the world, Puerto Rico has developed diverse strategies to transfer knowledge about disasters and to stimulate community ties for social resilience. The impact of disasters and the memory of response are present in intangible heritage. An example of this is the song “Temporal”...
Terminal Pleistocene Climate Change and Shifting Paleoindian Landscapes in North Florida (2018)
Much of the Southeastern United States suffers from poor organic preservation. Direct dating of archaeological components is often impossible, and intact paleoenvironmental sequences are very rare, especially for the terminal Pleistocene. Inundated terrestrial sites in the Aucilla River of northwestern Florida can overcome both of these difficulties, with archaeological materials buried within directly-dateable intact strata containing well-preserved paleobotanical and faunal remains. Strata...
Testing Potential Archaeological Applications for Surficial Magnetic Susceptibility Probes in Shallow Depositional Environments: A Study from Agiak Lake in Alaska’s Brooks Range (2017)
Magnetic susceptibility (MS) is the measure of a material’s potential to hold a magnetic field, the variation of which can indicate anthropogenic forces acting upon a substrate. In Alaska, diachronic MS analyses have been useful when investigating environmental change and anthropogenic variation through time in deeply-stratified subarctic interior sites. Synchronic MS approaches, on the other hand, use surficial MS probe mapping to analyze contemporaneous variation across space and can reveal...
Testing the (Disappearing) Waters: A Preliminary Assessment of the Sedimentary Record of Lake Jackson, Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent coring at the Lake Jackson Aquatic Preserve in Northwest Florida investigated the current sediment and stratigraphic integrity in order to assess the research potential of the area for exploring associated cultural events from the Mississippian Period (AD 1050 - 1500). The lake is a unique karst formation with sinkholes that cause dramatic drydown...
A Thousand Years of Wetland Management at Hacienda Zuleta in the Ecuadorian Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nestled within a deeply incised valley in the eastern cordillera of the Andes, the archaeological site of Zuleta is an immensely humanized hydrologic landscape. A complex network of perennially and seasonally wet streams and canals crisscross the pastures along the valley floor carrying water from the paramo to the...
Three Rivers Watersheds: Regional Water Resources of Northwestern Belize and Beyond (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research seeks to understand the interconnections and interactions of the water resources of Northwestern Belize, via its contributing Three Rivers Watersheds. The Three Rivers Watersheds drain Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize via the Rio Azul/Blue Creek, Rio Bravo, and Booths River systems. These Three Rivers merge to form the...