Landscape Archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-25 (784 Records)
Most archaeologists would agree that ancient irrigation systems preserve important information about the technology, economy, and social organization of past societies. However, considering that archaeologists generally lack training in hydraulics, it is often difficult for us to extract much information from an ancient irrigation system beyond basic description and chronology. Thanks to the recent development in drone technology and flow modeling techniques we now have the option of generating...
The Abbott Farm National Historic Landmark: A Look into the Future (2018)
When the Abbott Farm site was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, it had already been well-known for a hundred years as a significant archaeological site. Now over 40 years later, the Abbott Farm continues to baffle archaeological scholars as to the precise meaning of its importance to prehistoric and historic native peoples of the region. Past research, present trends, and future analysis are discussed providing a myriad of evidence showing that this site continues to provide and...
The Advantages of Landscape-Scale Cultural Assessments for Public Land Management (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In response to a recent shift toward a regional landscape-scale approach to resource management on public lands, Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with multiple federal agencies developed a cultural heritage values and risk assessment strategy to support interagency land-use planning in the...
Aerial Drone Photogrammetry of Aboveground Mortuary Architecture in the Amazonian Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For centuries, Indigenous Andean communities known as the Chachapoya placed their ancestral dead in aboveground architecture across the landscape of the Amazonian Andes, in what is now northeastern Peru. The study of Chachapoya ancestral sites presents a series of ethical and...
Agency and Pilgrimage in a Living Landscape: Contemporary Lacandon Maya Visits to Ancient Ruins (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we analyze Lacandon Maya communication with nonhuman forces through pilgrimages to ritual landscapes, particularly ancient Maya ruins in the lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala. Through archaeological and ethnographic evidence we examine these spaces where Lacandon Maya have undertaken...
The Agency of Flowing Water in Human Mobility and Interaction (2018)
Water is one of the most powerful agents of change on the planet. Flowing water can build and destroy landscapes rapidly in dramatic fashion as with flash flooding or gradually through incremental natural processes, shaping the terrain through sedimentation, erosion, and seasonal fluctuations in water flow. Within human societies, these waterways may be perceived as a source of danger, but also provide subsistence and non-subsistence resources, and serve as landscape features that alter how...
Agricultural Landscapes of the Mesopotamian-Zagros Borderlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Upper Diyala River Region in northern Iraq has long served as a strategic political, economic, and cultural borderland between the Mesopotamian alluvium and the Zagros Mountains. The region is also environmentally complex, encompassing a steep gradient of agroecological zones ranging from irrigated alluvial...
Agricultural Life and Socioeconomic Dependencies in the Western Andes of Southern Peru during the Second Half of the First Millennium BCE (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond Borders at the End of a Millennium: Life in the Western Andes circa 500–50 BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Formative Paracas archaeological culture has long been considered a coastal phenomenon in the southern Peruvian Andes. In this paper, we change this perspective and examine two Late Paracas and Initial Nasca (370 BCE–CE 90) highland settlements: Collanco (1,630 m asl) and Cutamalla (3,300 m asl) in...
Agricultural Strategies and Intensification: A Study of Risk Management in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2018)
The decisions and consequences behind the intensification of agricultural strategies among past societies has long been a topic of debate among archaeologists. These discussions are often dominated by factors of population dynamics and production capacity. This paper will explore the less discussed factor of risk management. Controlling the variation of production in regard to fluctuating natural and social pressures was critical to past agrarian societies and undoubtedly played a role in the...
Agriculture and Landscape Change in the Tesuque Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Collaboration to Partnership in Pojoaque, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The relationships of people with their land over time leaves visible and invisible traces. As archaeologists we are confronted with landscapes that are the resulting accumulation of these traces over time, such that they may no longer resemble the place that people of the past interacted with. Place is not just a geographic...
All for Drone and Drone for Free: A Free and/or Open-Source Workflow for UAV Imagery Collection and Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Full coverage pedestrian survey to record new sites on unknown archaeological landscapes is costly in terms of money, time, and personnel. Archaeological projects are usually limited in these resources and have to simultaneously balance data quantity with quality within their budgetary means. Researchers have experimented...
"All the Usual Improvements": Rediscovering the Plantation Landscape at James Monroe’s Highland (2018)
Unlike other Presidential plantations, archaeological research at Highland has been relatively limited. This, combined with a complex occupational history and sparse documentary records, has provided little evidence of the plantation landscape constructed by Monroe in 1799 or clues to how that landscape was reshaped by subsequent owners. However, spurred by the recent discovery of the original plantation house, ongoing archaeological survey is providing new insights into landscape organization...
Alligators, Serpents, Pirates, and a Wedding: Ritualized Political Landscapes of the Oaxacan Pacific Coast, Mexico (2018)
Straddling maritime, lowlands, and highland environments, the neighboring Chontal and Huave ethnic groups occupy one of the most diverse landscapes in southern Mexico. For over five centuries this resource-rich territory served as a junction for Indigenous and European colonial encounters, where interethnic and intercontinental political alliances and conflicts came forcefully into play. In addition to leaving material remains scattered throughout the landscape, this political history was...
(Almost) Making it in the Margins: Medieval Norse Adaptation to the Arctic Fjord Environments (2018)
The medieval Norse settlements in Greenland formed the westernmost frontier of Scandinavia, and the Old World, between ca. AD 980-1450. A Norse society of perhaps only some 2500 farmer-hunters settled two subarctic niches: the Eastern Settlement in South Greenland with ca. 550 sites and the smaller Western Settlement 500 km north in the inner parts of the Nuuk fjord region and with only some 90 sites. For still not completely understood reasons, the latter was completely abandoned by AD...
Alternative Interpretive Lenses for Landscape at Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as an Engine or a Camera?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses ongoing archaeological investigations at the Late Classic Period (CE 600-800) Maya site of Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize. Survey and excavation at the site have revealed an unconventional geographical density of man-made subterranean spaces ("chultuns") in association with provocative architectural and geological features....
Amazonian Wetland Domestication: a spatial analysis of Pre-Columbian zigzag features in Lowland Bolivia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological studies show that pre-Columbian communities began modifying Southwestern Amazonia approximately 3,500 years ago. Previous research within lowland Bolivia has primarily focused on the fields and forest islands that populations built to elevate themselves and their crops from seasonal flooding. However, a series of zigzag earthworks...
AMFOrA: Computer Vision for Macroscopic Ceramic Fabric Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prospect of using computer vision to aid or automate the production of archaeological data is not new to archaeology. Computer vision offers a number of advantages compared to traditional approaches to quantifying archaeological data, including replicability, precision without fatigue, and the ability to expand the size of datasets analyzed. The...
An Analysis of Pollen from Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest: the South Profile of the Gully Located within Site B (2009)
Nineteen soil samples from Site B, an early nineteenth-century site located in Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest (Virginia) were submitted to the Fiske Center for palynological analysis. Over 100 distinct taxa were recovered from the eleven samples that were considered to be well preserved enough to allow for a representative reconstruction of past environmental conditions. When viewed collectively, the recovered taxa describe a landscape consisting of both managed ornamental grounds and areas of...
Analysis of Settlement Patterns Near the Big Burro Mountains (2018)
This poster presents the results of an archaeological survey of Pitchfork Ranch, located near the Big Burro Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. The survey was conducted by staff and students of the Archaeology Southwest Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school from 2015 to 2017. There is evidence on the ranch of human activity ranging from possible Paleolithic and early Archaic sites up to 20th century sites. Using GIS and geospatial data collected during this survey it is...
Analysis of spatial characteristics and traditional knowledge of freshwater springs as a foundation for predictive settlement modeling and identification of submarine groundwater discharge (2017)
Modeling of late Pleistocene and early Holocene coastal regions in the northern Channel Islands and globally has provided important foundations for understanding impacts of sea level rise on the archaeological record, near coastal communities and environments during the past 20,000 years. A complex, effective model of suitable coastal locations for human settlement and habitation takes into account myriad variables, including resources such as water and less-quantifiable, cultural causes. The...
Ancestors and the Power of Ruins in Nejapa and Tavela, Oaxaca (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous examples across the Nejapa region of Oaxaca that demonstrate the ways archaeological ruins retain meaning and power through time. This paper highlights ruins in the sites of Majaltepec, Los Picachos, Cerro del Convento, Hacienda San José, and the modern town of Santa Ana Tavela to show how ruined,...
The Ancestral Puebloan Community of Alkali Ridge: Investigating The "Prudden Unit" Paradigm (2018)
The 2017 Alkali Ridge Data Modernization Project completed an intensive survey of 10 Ancestral Pueblo habitation sites within the Alkali Ridge National Historic Landmark as part of the ongoing collaboration between NMSU and the National Park Service to modernize data and conduct research. The 2017 fieldwork season focused on recording small residential sites in close proximity to community centers to examine the role small satellite habitations played in the Pueblo II-III period landscape of...
Ancestral Puebloan Settlement Patterns of Redwood Llama Ranch: Analysis of GIS and Fieldwalking Survey (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological survey of 800 acres at Redwood Llama Ranch in southwest Colorado documented over 50 previously unrecorded archaeological sites. A 2016 survey, completed as a settlement pattern study using a landscape archaeology framework, explored the extent of Ancestral Puebloan habitation and activity within this property situated in a canyon and on the...
Anchoring in the Gulf: Trans-Species Dwelling and Building in Gulf Coast Florida (2018)
Drawing inspiration from the work of Tim Ingold, I seek to find the middle ground of phenomenology, ecology, and materiality in describing how humans dwell and make their worlds among the various other communities around them. In the Lower Suwannee River Valley, Florida, human and oyster communities have interacted and intersected with another for millennia. Like people, oysters dwell and build creating their Umwelt, a concept introduced by Von Uexküll. This resulted in communities numbering in...
Ancient and Contemporary Maya Ruins as Living Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruination studies allow one to see the past not as a fixed “thing” but as living landscapes that emerge from, enliven, and incorporate temporal dimensions, ancestors, and animating forces young and old, near and far. Furthermore, over the past two decades Mesoamerican scholars have increasingly recognized that ruins were an...