Zooarchaeology (Other Keyword)
1,151-1,175 (1,356 Records)
Stable isotope studies have become common-place in archaeological investigations of human diet and mobility, often underpinned by small comparative studies of associated animal remains which are generally utilised as baseline data. However, the value of moving beyond such anthropocentric studies and of analysing animals in their own right is becoming increasingly recognised. Detailed research on animal diet and mobility is enhancing our understanding of animal management and patterns of...
Thermal Processes on Tropical Archaeological Shell: An Experimental Study (2018)
Tropical archaeological shell middens throughout Australasia provide valuable information about subsistence practices, environmental changes, and human occupation. One of the major anthropic processes that can occur in any midden site is burning or heating of the shell, either from cooking or heat-treating shell for working. Thermal influences on marine shell are poorly understood across all disciplines, including archaeology. Burning or heating may not always show any visual signs and rather...
Thieves, Stowaways, Hitchhikers, and Hangers-On: The Commensal Niche in the Prehistoric Caribbean (2018)
Prehistoric commensal animal relationships are understudied for the Caribbean, with little explicit consideration for the defining attributes of the insular commensal niche or what taxa may be rightly considered commensal. Here, I address these issues by clarifying the nature of Caribbean commensalism with respect to synanthropy, domestication, animal management, and phoresy. I consider which vertebrate and invertebrate taxa most likely enjoyed commensal relationships with humans in the...
Thinking Through Zooarchaeological Approaches to Empire and Environment (2017)
In this paper, I explore the intersection of empire and environment in imperial and post-imperial contexts using the collapse of the Hittite empire and its aftermath in central Turkey around 1200 BC as a case study. More specifically, I mobilize zooarchaeological evidence from the Hittite capital of Hattuşa and from Çadır Höyük, a rural town, in order to discuss how we might distinguish between political, economic, and climatic factors in our interpretations of the relationships between empire...
Thylacines, Dingoes, and People (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The peopling of Greater Australia at about 65,000 years ago preceded that of Eurasia and differed in several key aspects. First, there were no other hominins in Australia, though modern humans moving into Eurasia encountered Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly relict populations of other hominins. Second, the predatory guild in Australia was less...
To Eat, Discard, or Venerate: Faunal Remains as Proxy for Human Behaviors in Lowland Maya Terminal or Problematic Deposits (2018)
Deciphering middens, feasting, ritual, or terminal deposits in the Maya world requires an evaluation of faunal remains. Maya archaeologists have been and continue to evaluate other artifacts classes, but often simply offer NISP values for skeletal elements recovered from these deposits. To further understand their archaeological significance, we analyzed faunal materials from deposits at the sites of Baking Pot and Xunantunich in the Upper Belize River Valley. We identified the species, bone...
Todd’s Taphonomy: Addressing Questions Too Often Left Unasked (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. Larry Todd has played a central role in applying taphonomy to studies of prehistoric human behavior. He developed standardized and, most importantly, reproducible methods of observational quantification. We here present studies of Trinil (Java) and Hadar (Ethiopia), both of which figure prominently in...
Tool manufacture and bone breakage patterns at a Haudenosaunee site in New York (2016)
The Myers Farm site is located on a hill ten miles east of Cayuga Lake, central New York. It is a small mid-15th century Cayuga farmstead and feasting ground identified by a midden approximately ten meters in diameter. A large roasting pit, hearth features, and storage pits contained animal bone, including worked tools and food debris. This paper describes a preliminary faunal analysis of selected features. Recovered fauna include a generous range of local species, including mammals, birds,...
TOOL PRODUCTION, SUBSISTENCE, OR PRACTICE: AN INVESTIGATION OF HUMAN MODIFIED BISON PHALANGES PRESENT AT THE BULL CREEK AND CLARY RANCH SITES (2015)
The Clary Ranch site in Southwestern Nebraska and the Bull Creek site in Northwestern Oklahoma are Late-Paleoindian camps that were used for processing the meat and bones from bison hunts. This is an experimental archaeological investigation involving Clary Ranch and Bull Creek, both of which contain evidence of spiral fracturing on bison phalanges resulting from the butchering and preparation process. This archaeological experiment investigates possible motives Paleoindian hunters would have...
Toward a Holistic Understanding of Marine Ecosystems in the South Central Andes: An Interdisciplinary Marine Invertebrate Biodiversity/Zooarchaeological Survey (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maritime adaptations play an essential role in the central Andean past as far back as the region’s earliest occupation. While economically useful molluscan species are well known by archaeologists, other invertebrates are inadequately understood due to poor preservation and/or lack of interest. This poster presents the preliminary results of a biodiversity...
Toward a Multispecies Perspective on Human-Animal Networks in Early Urban Societies of Upper Mesopotamia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Decades before anthropologists advocated for multispecies anthropology and ethnography, Richard Redding was charting a new path for a multispecies approach to anthropological archaeology. His research reveals an implicit awareness of the complexity of human-animal relationships that is a hallmark of...
Toward Developing an Economic Model of Fish Rank for Late Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest Households (2017)
Considerable research has been conducted on archaeofaunal food remains as a proxy for consumer practices in Euro-American historical archaeology. Such research often incorporates price-driven meat rankings, in which the historical cost of a meat cut determines its rank. Archaeological fish remains also present an opportunity to examine how historical communities engaged with fish that could be acquired through subsistence practices, leisure activities, or market purchases. However, the...
Town and Gown: Foodways in Antebellum Chapel Hill, NC (2016)
Chartered in 1789 and enrolling students in 1795, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of three schools that claims the title of oldest public university in the United States. Despite this storied history, relatively little is known about the lives of antebellum university and Chapel Hill residents, particularly archaeologically. In October 2011, contractors excavated a trench around the Battle, Vance, and Pettigrew buildings at UNC. In the process, they exposed archaeological...
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: Emergence of Pest-Host and Commensal Relationships at Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey (2016)
The objective of this poster is to present an overview of the emergence of pest-host and commensal relationships that emerged between humans and microfaunal species over the course of approximately 1,500 years at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük. My research is focused on the investigation of the frequency and taphonomic contexts of microfaunal remains in a formative village setting. Co-evolution between humans and plants and animals occurred as feedback systems developed because...
Tracking Ancient Animals to Provide an Archaeological Perspective on Wild Mammal Management, Conservation and ‘Rewilding’ (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human immigration and biological invasions are high-profile topics in modern politics, but neither are uniquely modern phenomena. Migrations of people, animals and ideas were common in antiquity and are frequently incorporated into expressions of cultural identity. However, the more recent the migration, the more negative modern attitudes are towards them. Native is...
Tracking Individual Raptors in the Archaeological Record Using Stable Isotope Analysis: Some Implications for the Study of Ritual Economies in New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we explore a cost-effective method for tracking artifacts made from individual raptors (or birds of prey) through the use of intra-skeletal variation in δ13C, δ15N, δ2H in modern samples of Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) and Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos). Current methods of quantification in zooarchaeology, such as the minimum number of...
Tracking Individual Raptors in the Archaeological Record Using Stable Isotopes: Limitations, Possibilities, and Causes of Intraskeletal δ-Value Variation (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Birds in Archaeology: New Approaches to Understanding the Diverse Roles of Birds in the Past" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ability to track trade of socially valued goods made from raptor bones can give archaeologists a deeper understanding of both human-raptor interactions and networks of exchange. Reconstructing distribution of such goods from production centers, however, requires the ability to identify bones...
Tracking Morphological Changes in the Domestication of Sheep and Pigs: A Comparison (2018)
How do animal morphologies change during domestication? How do different parts of the skeleton adapt to human management? In this poster, I take a quantitative approach to domestication by comparing biometrical data from two species of mammals that were domesticated in the Middle East around the same time (ca. 8000 BC): pigs (Sus scrofa) and sheep (Ovis aries). Both pigs and sheep were domesticated by Pre-Pottery Neolithic B communities in northern Syria/southern Anatolia, but these species...
Trajectories of Zooarchaeological Research across Central America: The Influences and Interests of Richard Cooke (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Central America is often seen as quite disparate between the northern regions of Mesoamerica (primarily Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and northwestern portions of Honduras and El Salvador) and the more southerly Intermediate Area...
Trans-Holocene Human Impacts on Endangered California Black Abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) Population Structures: Historical Ecological Management Implications from the Northern Channel Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) were an important subsistence resource in southern California for 10,000 years, first for coastal Native Americans, then as a commercial shellfishery. By 1993, however, black abalone populations declined dramatically, resulting in the closure of the California fishery. Recently, black abalone are showing signs of...
The Transect Survey at 30-something (2015)
In 1977, an American Museum of Natural History team lead by David Hurst Thomas began an ambitious survey of St. Catherines Island, Georgia. The intent was to systematically survey 10% of the island following a series of transect lines using a research design from plant ecology. The survey collected hundreds of small vertebrate samples, none of which met zooarchaeological standards for adequate sample sizes and analysis. These hundreds of small samples, however, proved invaluable because they...
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...
Tree Island Life: Late Archaic Adaptations of a Northern Everglades Community (2018)
The Wedgworth Midden (8PB16175), a Late Archaic tree island site near Belle Glade, Florida, produced large quantities of faunal remains during excavations undertaken by Florida Gulf Coast University in May of 2016. Analysis of these remains allows insight into patterns of resource acquisition and reveals ways in which people adapted to the local environment. Comparison of proportions of taxa from different occupational periods allows us to trace changes in resource use and sheds light on...
A Tropical Treasure Trove: Preliminary Assessment of Archaeological Faunal Remains from Culebra Bay, Guanacaste, Costa Rica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over 50 years, excavations in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, have yielded a large amount of well-preserved faunal materials, yet few zooarchaeological studies have been carried out. To explore the research potential of archaeofaunal materials in the region, I will present data from several sites around the Culebra bay area. These...
TThe Use of Shells as Personal Ornaments in Liguria during the Upper Paleolithic: A Review (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Personal ornaments are commonly attributed to a modern human dispersal in western Asia and Europe, representing a veritable key tool for understanding the human dispersal out of Africa. Objects loaded with symbolic meaning such as beads made from modified marine shells were largely used during the Upper Paleolithic in...