Geoarchaeology (Other Keyword)
601-619 (619 Records)
The Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona has a long record of prehistoric occupation, including within extensive deposits of semi-stabilized dunes and sand sheets. It has been hypothesized that during the Pueblo periods, inhabitants farmed these eolian soils. Eolian sands are not typically conducive to dry-farmed agriculture; however, dune farming is known ethnographically, and has been inferred in archaeological contexts on the southern Colorado Plateau. This paper...
Using the Archaeological Record to Better Understand Models: An Australian Case Study (2017)
In Australia’s desert regions, different conceptual models are sometimes used to explain patterning in late Holocene surface deposits. Among these patterns are distributions of radiocarbon determinations, which have been concurrently explained as generated by intermittent occupation by hypermobile foragers, or growing semi-resident populations of broad-spectrum hunter-gatherers. This paper shows how models connected to the language and logic of record formation can help resolve competing...
Vegetation of Indian Mounds and Middens and Marshes in Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes, Louisiana (1936)
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.
The View from the Ground: How Geochemistry Informs Our Understanding of the Regal, Ritual, and Residential Character of Actuncan (2018)
The archaeological investigation of Actuncan in western Belize included the geochemical analysis of one of the largest and most diverse sets of activity surfaces in the Maya world. Over 1200 soil, sediment, and plaster samples from four major architectural complexes representing regal, ritual, and residential locations were assayed using ICP-MS. The results allow a uniquely "atomic" perspective on the changing use of urban space over roughly 900 years, ca. AD 100-1000. This research identifies...
The View from the Trenches: Tying Paleoenvironment to Archaeology at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 2018 fieldwork emphasized trench excavation across the relict stream channel directly in front of the rockshelter. Sedimentary deposits comprise a well-stratified, five-part sequence of bedrock basalt overlain by a gravel bed of rounded cobbles and boulders; dark gray blocky to massive cienega...
View of the site (2015)
View of the excavation from the entrance. We use two total stations, one for each half of the cave.
Village Aggregation and Native Subsistence Practices at a Middle Woodland Mound Center, Gulf Coast Florida, USA (2018)
Current research at Garden Patch (8DI4), a Middle Woodland mound center with circular village construction in northern peninsular Gulf Coast Florida, provide quantitative insights into the timing and temporality of monument construction and village aggregation. Here, we combine previously modelled radiocarbon assays with new isotopic data on season of collection and habitat of exploitation. The four-phase model of site occupation when combined with the new isotopic data provide new insights into...
The Walker Lake Landscape: Combining Geophysical Studies to Clarify Regional Change and the Archaeological Record (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The high desert basin surrounding Walker Lake, Nevada, has been subject to multiple landscape shifts since the lake reached its Late Pleistocene highstand, 15,679 cal BP. Research has identified at least four lake transgression and regression events postdating 5000 BP, and after its nineteenth-century historic highstand, the lake has...
Walnut Creek National Wildlife Refuge Cultural Resource Investigations (1991)
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.
Watch Out For Landslides and Gopher Holes! using obsidian hydration to measure post-depositional site disturbance in the VCNP (2017)
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...
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...
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...
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....