Environmental Archaeology (Other Keyword)
26-45 (45 Records)
Marginal environments present risks to food shortfall to prehistoric small-scale societies, which create and rely on social and environmental strategies to mitigate those risks. One piece to understanding the vulnerability to failing to produce enough food is defining the risk factors that may limit food procurement on a given landscape – in our case, the U.S Southwest. Using large archaeological, historical, and ecological datasets, our main risk to food production – growing season...
Meeting a Region of Archaeology within its History of North Atlantic Market Relations (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Governance and Globalization in the North Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper presents a interdisciplinary perspective on the long-distance market relations between and within the regional Hinterlands of an Icelandic trading station, and the socio-economic organization and structures in place. While the main part of the presentation will focus on the 12th to 14th century evidence from both...
Natural-Cultural Contexts of the First Inhabited Seashores of Remote Pacific Oceania: 1500–1100 BC in the Mariana Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People first migrated to the remote-distance Pacific Islands around 1500 BC, and their ancient sites have provided insights into the physical and cultural world that these people had inhabited. Geoarchaeological investigations have clarified the composition of the coastal landforms and ecosystems, availability of...
Paleoenvironmental Dimensions of Historic Landscape Change at LaSoye, Dominica (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. European colonization of the Caribbean and the imposition of imperialist practices of resource extraction and slave labor is possibly the most significant change in human-environment interactions since the early Holocene. Multi-proxy study of ecological responses to land use during this time is...
The potential of coastally eroding palaeoenvironmental deposits and middens as climatic and cultural data reservoirs (2016)
The acute problem facing Scotland’s archaeological heritage through loss and damage by rising sea levels and increased storminess in response to global climate warming is gaining increasing recognition. This threat is prompting diverse mitigating responses, most significantly Historic Scotland's Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys and the work of the SCAPE Trust. These surveys have, however, predominately focused on the recording of cultural, rather than palaeoenvironmental remains; while midden...
Practicing Environmental Archaeology: Methods and Interpretations (1982)
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.
Present in the Past: Environmental Archaeology and Public Policy (2015)
Eroding farmland, diminishing forest stocks, sediments choking navigable waterways….these are environmental changes wrought, at least in part, by human decisions and human actions. In the present, these are highly politicized issues, providing thin veils to debates about ideology. Exploring environmental changes in the distant past creates a safe place in which dialogue participants have little or no vested interest and ideology a less prominent role. Public dissemination of archaeological...
Proposal for Modeling: Dolores Area Socio-Cultural Change (1982)
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.
Provisioning Antigua and Beyond: How Herding and Farming Transformed Barbuda, West Indies (2016)
The island of Barbuda was farmed by English settlers from the 1660s onwards. The Codrington family of England held the lease to the island from the 1680s-1870, and they introduced a variety of plant and animal species, some of which continue to thrive on the island. Sugar cane was never grown on this dry, low lying island and instead, lime and charcoal were produced along with other subsistence crops for export. Herding became an important part of the economy and, as a result, water management...
Rice Berms and Deadhead Logs: Co-Creating Land and Labor on the Cape Fear (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Co-Producing Space: Relational Approaches to Agrarian Landscapes, Labor, Commodities, and Communities", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Studies of antebellum rice plantations in the Southeastern United States tend to center on South Carolina and Georgia, largely because they were the most extensive land holdings in terms of acreage, production, and enslaved labor. One area where rice agriculture is...
Shaping the South: Environmental Archaeology's impact on colonial archaeology of the American South and the Caribbean (2016)
This paper argues that the incorporation of environmental archaeological data into long-term research programs can significantly influence theoretical and methodological practice thereby enriching and sometimes reshaping interpretations. We draw on our respective experiences of producing, consuming and integrating environmental data to reflect on the benefits of such collaborative endeavors. To illustrate our points, we use examples from the American South and the Caribbean to explore the ways...
Shifting Baselines of the British Hare Goddess(es?) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of past religions tend to fall into one of two camps: tightly-focused empirical examinations of a particular religious culture, or wide-ranging phenomenological studies divorced from any local context. Little scholarship engages with the middle ground of longue durée development in particular phenomena within the same geographic region or ecological niche....
Studying Past Human-Environment Interactions with High Precision AMS 14C at Penn State (2017)
The newly established PSU AMS Radiocarbon (14C) Facility provides high-precision measurements of 14C content in a wide range of carbon-bearing materials. Our primary mission is the study of human-environment interactions in the past and present with the goal of working with archaeologists in the context of inter-disciplinary environmental research. The facility operates a NEC 1.5 SDH 500kV Tandem Pelletron accelerator optimized for relatively small samples, requiring only 700µg of graphitized...
Subsistence ecology in the making of the Shang state, Eastern China (2016)
This study examines the transition of subsistence practices in early Bronze Age sites in eastern China, when the region was integrated into the Shang state in the second millennium BC. Through a combination of geomorphological and archaeobotanical analyses, I reconstruct the long-term environmental history as well as land-use practices at the Yueshi cultural sites, to explore a variety of responses and adaptations that would have been developed before and after the Shang expansion into the area....
The Tacahuay Landscape: Land Use and Environmental Change on the South Coast of Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tacahuay Quebrada on the far southern coast of Peru was shaped by a combination of human and environmental forces. Within its watershed, there is a system of channels that have provided resources for humans and other living beings throughout its anthropogenic history. Excavations within these channels revealed use of the Tacahuay landscape between 1000...
Teaching Archaeology from a Sustainability Perspective (2015)
In the twenty-first century, archaeology should be applied and should include scientists and engineers. Why? The reason is simple: because the discipline contributes to our understanding of contemporary issues such as global warming and environmental degradation as well as the past. As a paleoethnobotanist (and now historian of paleobotany), I saw a need for more collaborative work. Thus, in my classroom, I utilized a multi-disciplinary perspective, one that drew from anthropology, water...
Transforming frontiers into heartlands: The immediate and long-term environmental impact of the crusades in NE Europe (2015)
In the 13th century, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against indigenous non-Christian societies in the eastern Baltic region. Tribal territories were replaced with new Christian states run by the Teutonic Order and individual bishops, who constructed castles, encouraged colonists, developed towns and introduced Christianity. At a time of deteriorating climate, their impact on the local environment, especially plants and animals, would have been profound. Furthermore, since many...
Transition from a Natural to a Cultural Landscape in Quebec City : An Entomological Point of View (2013)
Quebec City’s Intendant’s Palace site is rich in history. For my thesis, I am interested in one history in particular, namely the transition from a natural to a cultural landscape at this site. The landscape pre-dating and after the arrival of Europeans has already been investigated to some degree; however, how the actual transition took place remains unclear. Various methodologies have the potential to address this research question. This thesis will rely on archaeoentomology, micromorphology...
Using Ancient Plant Macroremains to Understand Resource Consumption in the Past and Present (2017)
Many people recognize the need for markedly different mode of living amid a growing body of scientific evidence that the current world population is environmentally unsustainable. Exploring ancient foodways and landscape management techniques may improve our ability to imagine highly productive modes of food production and resource consumption dissimilar to that of our current global reality. Here, I show how a reconstruction of macrobotanical and faunal remains builds a narrative of...
Using Environmental DNA to Examine Human-Animal Interactions on the California Channel Islands (2016)
Conducting aDNA analyses can be limited by the preservation and availability of biological remains at archaeological sites. Soil can contain DNA (environmental DNA [eDNA]) from the animals and plants that were present In the landscape and provide a record of prehistoric plant and animal distributions. We designed and tested a protocol to capture DNA from several extinct and extant taxa from soil on the California Channel Islands as a potential tool for understanding the biogeography of island...