Zooarchaeology (Other Keyword)
701-725 (1,356 Records)
In 1598, Spanish colonialists introduced European domestic fauna, including sheep, pigs, and cattle, into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley (MRGV). Sometime after this initial contact, Native residents of the MRGV shifted away from the use of a diverse set of native fauna and focused their diets on non-native domestic taxa. This shift had far reaching effects; reliance on domestic grazers ultimately led to overgrazing, erosion, and loss of native species – all of which characterize the...
Lead (Pb) Isotope Analysis as a Means of Tracking Animal Migration and Trade in Mesoamerica (2017)
This study examines the first use of lead (Pb) isotope analysis as a means of tracking animal movement and exchange in the Maya area. Strontium and oxygen isotope ratios have been previously used to track animal and human movements archaeologically in Mesoamerica. Lead has been used to track movement and exchange in other parts of the world, and its application to Mesoamerican archaeology holds great potential for refining sourcing strategies. This study identifies local and non-local fauna at...
"Left for the Tide to Take Back": Specialized Taphonomic Mechanisms at Play in a Coastal Maine Seal Hunting Camp (2018)
Archaeological investigations at Holmes Point West (Maine site 62-8) on the eastern Maine coast have yielded potential indicators of cultural treatment of seal remains that vary between two primary species: harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) and gray seal (Halichoerus grypus). Analyses of these patterns required development of element-specific speciation factors for best represented elements for each species, the temporal bone of the skull, including the auditory bulla and mastoid process. Holmes...
Leporids and Landscapes: Stable Isotope Ratios of Rabbit and Hare Bones Reflect Local Environmental Conditions at Modern and Archaeological Sites (2015)
This study investigates the utility of stable isotope analysis (δ13C apatite, δ18O apatite, δ13C collagen and δ15N collagen) of leporid (rabbit and hare) bones to monitor the environmental conditions in which the animals lived. Since leporids were one of the most commonly consumed vertebrates in the pre-Hispanic New World, their skeletal remains are frequently found at archaeological sites. The relatively small home ranges and short lifespans of leporids, moreover, make them an ideal species to...
Les Cottés Sequence: A New Lens for Investigating the Cultural Changes Occurring during the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic Transition. (2017)
During the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, the replacement of Neanderthal populations by Anatomically Modern Human ones is concomitant of major cultural transformations. Progressively, human population incorporated new raw materials in their personal gear cumulating into an explosion of the cultural material diversity. Les Cottés in France preserves a detailed sequence with levels attributed to the late Mousterian, Chatelperronian, ProtoAurignacian and Early...
Let Them Eat Corn: Using Stable Isotopes to Explore Turkey Management in the Mississippian Period Southeast (2018)
The eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo sylvestris) is a well documented resource for Native Americans in the Southeastern United States. Recent research suggests that turkeys may have been managed by Mississippian period people in Middle Tennessee as opposed to being hunted solely in the wild. These conclusions are based on a combination of ethnographic sources, osteometric data, and other non-osseous evidence. As a part of my thesis, I extracted collagen from 12 prehistoric turkey...
Let's Cut to the Chase: An Analysis of Experimental and Archaeological Data in the Process of Butchery (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research identifies where taphonomic effects, specifically cut marks are found on zooarchaeological materials from both the archaeological and experimental contexts. Analysis of such taphonomic effects include identification of similar patterning, placement of those marks between the archaeological record, and experimental research. This allows...
Leukoma Seasonality and Maturity at WH-55, Implications for the Lacarno Beach Phase in the Pacific Northwest (2018)
In addition to other sites in the middle Salish Sea, Western Washington University field schools have conducted several years of test excavation at 45WH55, resulting in an extensive collection from several spatially distinct areas of the site. Leukoma seasonality and maturity from samples in each area are used to address questions of site integrity and season of occupation. Comparable data from other sites in the region allows preliminary assessment of larger scale movement and seasonality...
Life on the "Periphery": Pastoralism at Atalla (2017)
Atalla, located in the South Central Andes of Peru in the province of Huancavelica, boasts a monumental temple and expansive, multi-phase domestic areas. Occupation of the site intermittently spans approximately 3000 years, and human presence in the surrounding area likely predates this site. Recent excavations focusing on both the monumental and domestic sectors of the site have yielded faunal remains from nearly all contexts. Here, I present an analysis of the faunal remains and bone tools...
Life on the Edge: An Investigation of 18th Century Spanish Colonial Subsistence Strategies in the Northern Rio Grande (2015)
The 18th century Northern Rio Grande basin of New Mexico was a politically volatile and contested landscape. Hispano settlers, including those who established the aldea of San Antonio del Embudo (now Dixon, New Mexico) along the Embudo River in 1725, found themselves entangled in a complex web of socioeconomic interactions and, at times, hostilities with diverse indigenous peoples. To what extent did these Spanish colonists adhere to European subsistence strategies or embrace native foodways? Do...
Life’s a Ditch: The Role of Ditches, Canals, and Waterways for Animal Waste in Historical New Orleans (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE New Orleans and Its Environs: Historical Archaeology and Environmental Precarity" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since its founding, New Orleans has required infrastructure to collect and move water from its below-sea-level terrain. The urban development of the city required drainage ditches and canals that connected to bayous, the Mississippi River, or Lake Pontchartrain. Although there was trash collection in...
Little Ice Age Impacts on Traditional Māori Fisheries: Preliminary Results from North Island, New Zealand (2018)
Numerous paleoclimate proxies indicate the Little Ice Age caused marked declines in New Zealand’s atmospheric and sea surface temperatures for much of the period between 1450 C.E. and the end of the nineteenth century. These trends could have keenly affected the productivity of marine fisheries, which have always been critically important to Māori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Considering the close connections that continue to exist between traditional fisheries and Māori economic,...
Livestock Economy and the Emergence of Urbanism in Central Italy during the Iron Age and Archaic Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses subsistence specialization, livestock mobility, and husbandry strategies at Gabii during the eighth–fifth centuries BCE, a time of transition to state-level, urbanized political systems. The site of Gabii is one of several emerging cities in the Lower Tiber Valley that grew along a similar trajectory, expanding from dispersed hut...
Living on the Edge: Dogs and People in Early New Zealand (2018)
New Zealand is situated on the southern margins of the Polynesian triangle in the Pacific Ocean. Its temperate climate and environment differs greatly from the tropical central East Polynesian islands, from where its first human colonists originated. Although possessing plentiful bird life, sea mammals and other marine taxa, people faced challenges adapting their tropical horticultural practices to this new land. This paper explores the changing fortunes of people and dogs during the settlement...
Living with People can be Bad for your Health: Tooth Loss and Trauma in Northern Wolves and Dogs (2015)
Humans and dogs have long engaged in complex relationships, ranging from loving and intimate, to extremely violent and exploitive. Archaeology has tended to focus on the former, mostly ignoring the sometimes-ample evidence for trauma and tooth loss in remains of ancient dogs. Inferring the causes of such lesions on ancient dog remains has proven difficult, in part because of the lack of comparative data for canids living outside of the human niche. This paper compares patterns of cranial trauma...
Living with Reindeer in Arctic Siberia: the View from Arctic Yamal, Russia (2017)
Reindeer are an essential part of daily life and special events across a broad stretch of northern Eurasia, but their long term history with people has remained elusive. Ethnographers have characterized reindeer as living in ‘intermittent co-existence’ with humans, or as ‘semi-domesticates’, ‘pastoral herd animals’, and even ‘slaves’. Archaeology has struggled to characterize human-reindeer relationships, with even the geographical origins of modern domesticated deer remaining unclear. The Yamal...
Local food, exotic sacrifices: the tentative summary of the animal management in Castillo de Huarmey. (2017)
Even through the majority of faunal remains so far recovered at Castillo de Huarmey site derived from ceremonial contexts (i.e. main mortuary mausoleum and adjacent palatial complex), studies demonstrate that at the very least, the site’s elite inhabitants extensively exploited local resources, and simultaneously benefited from developed trade connections. At the core of animal management was the extensive camelid husbandry. The standard zooarchaeological analysis and mortality profiles...
Local Organization in Imperial Settings: Evidence from Late Antique and Middle Islamic Dhiban, Jordan (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. One of the many intellectual legacies of Richard Redding’s work is his exploration of how local communities made provisioning decisions to meet both their own local needs and demands by political authorities. This paper examines these themes among inhabitants of ancient Dhiban, Jordan during the Late...
Local Trajectories, Regional Patterns, and Human Ecodynamics in Northern Māori Fisheries (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological fishbone assemblages are the product of dynamic interactions between human fishers and fish stocks, both of which are enmeshed in broader, dynamic socioenvironmental contexts which are continually transformed and sustained by people and non-human entities. Understanding the history of fisheries therefore depends on careful consideration of...
Long Term, Community Level Protection and Management of Waterfowl in Mývatn N. Iceland (2015)
Archaeological, paleo-environmental and ethnographic research in the lakeside community of Mývatn, N. Iceland, is uncovering the millennium-long history of interactions between people and seasonal populations of waterfowl. Protection of waterfowl from hunting seems to have been applied in tandem with annual, managed egg harvesting as a common resource management strategy. The interdisciplinary investigation underway seeks to understand long term norms and local traditional knowledge (LTK)...
Long-Term Changes in Human-Animal Relationships on the Pajarito Plateau (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous research from the northern American Southwest suggests that human populations gradually transitioned their animal-based diet away from artiodactyls to a focus on lagomorphs and turkeys throughout the Basketmaker to Pueblo periods. Faunal...
Long-Term Dietary Change among Hunters of the North American Great Plains (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 13,000-year-long record of hunting by North American Great Plains populations is often portrayed as an almost exclusive reliance on large-bodied prey, such as bison. This simplified perspective ignores temporal and regional variability in environmental conditions and changes in human-prey dynamics, making exclusive reliance on a single taxon unlikely. The...
Long-Term White-Tailed Deer and Human Relationships in Parita Bay, Panama (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. A long history of human groups interacting with white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can be traced to Parita Bay in Panama. Archaeological evidence supports deer consumption since the Middle Holocene, and modern deer are continuously abundant on...
Los camélidos en el Ecuador: Estudio arqueo faunístico y etnográfico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Barbacoan World: Recognizing and Preserving the Unique Indigenous Cultural Developments of the Northern Andes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El tema zooarqueológico en el Ecuador sobre los camélidos es muy escaso especialmente en la región, solo algunos sitios reportan dicha especie, especialmente en la Sierra Norte, donde su presencia no es significativa, se presenta como un elemento especial o escaso. Nuestra...
Los cánidos en las ocupaciones post-teotihuacanas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Derivado del proyecto arqueológico “Estudio de túneles y Cuevas en Teotihuacan” es una colección de 455 cánidos que fueron estudiados para conocer su diversidad y la forma como interactuaron estos animales con los hombres en las diversas épocas (siglos VII-XX). En la colección fueron reconocidos perros comunes, xoloitzcuintles, híbridos de...