Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
576-600 (619 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition from coastal foraging to inland/upland horticulture in Viti Levu, Fiji appears to be marked by the early incorporation (~3000 BP) of fruit arboriculture in the primary tributaries of the Sigatoka River, with later (~2500 BP) evidence for the development of more intensive agriculture involving root and tuber farming and pond...
Thriving under the Killick Critical Gaze (KCG): Toward Taphonomically Informed Forensic Sedimentology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists and Indigenous and national governments agree on the need to address the wicked problem of heritage resource crime, but archaeologists have yet to deploy the full range of analytic tools at our disposal to assist in the investigation and prosecution of looting, vandalism, and grave...
Through fire and water: the vulnerability and resilience of highland Ancestral Puebloan communities to prehistoric droughts in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico (2015)
Establishing causality between climate change and cultural history is often fraught by mismatched temporal scales and weak archaeological correlates. In the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico the abandonment of large villages on the Pajarito Plateau in the early 16th century has largely been attributed to drought, however the persistence of large communities on the adjacent Jemez Plateau, which shares similar climate histories, ecological settings, and prehistoric adaptations, has not been...
Time and Tempo in Shell Midden Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From her dissertation work in the Green River region of western Kentucky to her work along the coast of Washington, Julie K. Stein has engaged with core research problems related to the study of archaeological shell midden sites. One of the key issues that she has addressed is connected to how quickly and in what way do these...
The To'aga Site - Three Millenia of Polynesia Occupation in the Manu'a Islands, American Samoa (1992)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Towards a Historical Ecology of An Alluvial Plain in North-Central Puerto Rico: Preliminary Geoarchaeological Results (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Under the precept of Historical Ecology landscapes are considered artifacts where the mediation of humans over environments accumulates over time leaving traces of these relationships in the form of sedimentological and paleobotanical records. Alluvial plains in the Neotropics are among the most important environments where humans first settled, beginning the...
Towns under the Microscope: Revising Historical Narratives on the Development of Medieval Towns and their Markets in Northwestern Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The central markets of medieval towns in Northwestern Europe, and more specifically the Low Countries, are considered to be the theatres of late medieval urban identity. They are often associated with the origins of these towns, or at least their glory as merchant towns in the past. In reality, these...
Transplanted at the Coast: The Adaptation of Caribbean Resourcing Practices during the Late Holocene (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The movement of early agriculturalists from the South American continent during the Early and Late Ceramic Ages (500 BCE–1500 CE) marked a significant transformation of the cultural landscapes of the Caribbean archipelago. These arriving groups expressed a strong cultural identity in their ceramic materials, settlement...
The Tricky Business of Dating Shell Middens and Improving Regional Chronologies (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fifteen years ago, Julie Stein spearheaded research into the often problematic task of dating shell middens and interpreting their accumulation. By examining paired charcoal-shell dates from the San Juan Islands, Stein and colleagues refined the local marine reservoir correction (ΔR) associated with radiocarbon-dated shell,...
Tuners Falls Gorge Geoarchaeological Investigations: Modeling Landscape and Archaeological Developments within the Connecticut River Valley. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tuners Falls Gorge region of the Connecticut River Valley is composed of a dynamic post-glacial alluvial landscape which contains extensive Pleistocene and Holocene deposits as well as an abundance of Pre-Contact archaeological sites spanning the last 12,000 years before present. This paper presents a new...
Two Controversies in Chronology: Geoarchaeological Re-Interpretations at St. Lawrence Island and Cape Krusenstern Beach Ridges (1989)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Understanding Archaeology in the Dunes: OSL Dating of the Tolleston Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Its Implications for Interpreting the Archaeological Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The puzzling scarcity of archaeological sites on the Tolleston Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore prompted an investigation into the development of this dune field in an attempt to determine whether the distribution of known archaeological sites is governed by ancient human behaviors, or influenced by its dune setting, which can affect site preservation...
Understanding Dam Effects on Downstream Archaeological Resources: Lessons Learned from Three Decades of Research Downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The destructive effects of large dams on upstream archaeological sites has been recognized for many decades, resulting in passage of federal legislation and numerous large-scale archaeological salvage projects in the 1940s through 1970s. Considerably less attention has been paid to the effects of large dams on downstream archaeological resources. For the past...
Understanding Environmental Thresholds through Geoarchaeology: Case Studies from the Maya Lowlands (2016)
All depositional environments can leave complex records of environmental change over time. We consider floodplains, alluvial fans, and wetlands of the Maya lowlands at present day Neundorf, Belize. We have documented a rich history of sedimentation, water chemistry, and archaeological data that show a measurable environmental and archaeological signature that date back over 4,000 years in this region. This research uses soil geomorphology to study the chronology and processes of wetland...
Understanding Formation Processes of Archaeological Sites in Eolian Settings in the Petrified Forest National Park (2015)
Located on the southern edge of the Tusayan Dune Field in northeastern Arizona, the Petrified Forest National Park contains abundant archaeology sites located in dune settings. Past and recent archaeological survey has shown an apparent correlation between archaeological site locations and eroded dune blowouts. It is likely that sites are located in dune settings due to their favorable environmental setting; however, it is not clear if the apparent distribution of visible sites in relation to...
Underwater Geoarchaeology of Perennial Lakes in the Great Basin (2015)
Underwater archaeology in the Great Basin has been generally ignored because underwater researchers often do not associate this desert with inundated environments. Despite this misconception, many large lakes, marshlands, and rivers are found throughout the region. For instance, northern Nevada includes 168 sizable man-made perennial reservoirs that partially or completely cover 188 known sites. In addition, during the late Pleistocene large lakes of fluctuating size covered many of the valleys...
Underwater in the High Desert: Exploring Site Presence and Preservation on Drowned and Buried Lake Features (2018)
Walker Lake, NV, a high desert, perennial lake in the western Great Basin, has been subject to naturally changing water levels for over 15,000 years. Ranging in size from the southernmost branch of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan to a small alkali wetland, Walker Lake provided varying landscapes for people to use and live around through time. Fieldwork during summer 2017 investigated drowned river channels and beach features for depositional history, site presence, and site preservation. Submerged...
Underwater, terrestrial, and intertidal core extractions at the Walk Bridge, Norwalk, CT: An alternative to traditional Phase I survey (2017)
The CTDOT Walk Bridge Replacement Project in Norwalk, Connecticut presented several challenges, making it unsuitable for a traditional Phase I archaeological survey. The urbanized Area of Potential Effect (APE) has been heavily industrialized since the mid-19th century. The pervasive ground disturbance, landmaking, and hazardous soil contamination that characterize the APE presented obstacles to typical survey methods such as hand-excavated shovel test pits. Documentary research identified...
Unpacking the Geoarchaeologist’s Geospatial Tool Bag: A Case Study Using Predictive Modeling on the Central Coast, Pismo Beach, California (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While geographic information system (GIS) based modeling applications are not new to archaeological practice, they offer a suite of tools and techniques for building a robust geoarchaeological dataset when used judiciously. Such models utilize geologic unit and age, soils, slope, aspect, distance to water, distance to known resource procurement areas, or other...
Unraveling the Site Formation Process at Finch (47JE0902): A Multicomponent Habitation in Southeastern Wisconsin (2015)
The Finch site is a multicomponent open-air habitation located in southeastern Wisconsin. Archaeological excavations conducted at the site yielded numerous artifacts and cultural features indicating recurrent and/or continuous occupation (or use) spanning twelve thousand years, from the Early Paleoindian through Late Woodland periods. The site is situated on the rim and side slopes of a kettle basin formed in matrix-supported glacial till overlying outwash and glaciolacustrine deposits. The till...
Unsettling Infrastructure: The Feral Qualities of Water in an Archaeological Tale of Railroads and Pipelines (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The eastern Great Plains of North Dakota and west-central Minnesota are home to the remnants of one of the world’s largest ancient glacial lakes, Lake Agassiz, as well as the United States’ longest river, the Missouri. These two powerful water entities shaped and disrupted the...
An Urban Micromorphological Perspective on Neopalatial Environmental Changes at Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete (2018)
Transitional phases between settlement periods on Bronze Age Crete are often associated with ‘natural’ destructive events. However, it is unclear whether these ‘natural’ destructive events and subsequent shifts in material practices were influenced by anthropogenic or environmental processes. For example, the end of the Neopalatial period on Crete occurred in the LM IB period; some researchers view LM IB destructive fires as indicative of human action during a phase of social and political...
Urban micromorphology at Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete: Evidence of transitions (2017)
Sequences at Bronze Age Cretan settlement sites are defined by destructive events, natural or anthropogenic, that capture cultural material in a particular time and space. The traditional approach of studying urban archaeological contexts based on these snapshots of material culture is not completely suitable for analyzing transitional phases that occur between these events. However, detailed micromorphological examination of the sediments present in these transitional stratigraphic sequences...
Use of Different Time and Space Scales in Geoarcheological Research: An Example from Northern Alaska (1985)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Using Geoarchaeological Methods to Evaluate Site Integrity at Dali, Kazakhstan (2015)
Dali, a site located in the Bayan-Zherek Valley in Semirech'ye, Southeastern Kazakhstan, is a multi-phase Bronze Age pastoralist settlement (3rd-2nd millennia B.C.). Recovered artifacts include combustion features, bones, ceramics, lithics, bronze metals, and potentially in situ wall constructions. Radiocarbon dates cannot conclusively suggest that the stratigraphic sequence is in situ due to geological unconformities and high energy colluvial system, so geoarchaeological methods were employed...