Landscape Archaeology (Other Keyword)
426-450 (784 Records)
Conflict pervaded the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica from an early time. In the Maya lowlands, the physical vestiges of defensive fortifications date to the Late Preclassic period, while textual evidence of conflict comes from the subsequent Early Classic period. This paper examines settlement changes within the context of a contested landscape. The Buenavista Valley, largely controlled during the Classic period by the kingdom of El Zotz, extends out west from the great city of Tikal....
Living on the Spine of the World: Placemaking at Early Community Centers, Rincon, UT (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In southeast Utah, two of the most dominant geographical features, Comb Ridge and the San Juan River, converge in dramatic fashion. Several large villages at the intersection of these features represent central places for wider communities from 500 BCE through at least 900 CE. While the three largest sites represent different time periods, each maintained...
Living Things in the Landscape: Gendered Perspectives from Amazonia (2018)
Santos-Graneros writes about persistent places in Amazonia, places that have been used by generation after generation of people, because of their special qualities—waterfalls, mountains, caves. The current interest in the ontology of objects, inspired by the work of Ingold, Latour, Gell, and others has opened the door for archaeologists to consider how we can investigate the meanings of places and objects in these ways, as living things. Like objects, places are alive. The headwaters of the...
Locating Wisconsin's Past Indigenous Agricultural Landscapes Using Historical Aerial Photography (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. Wisconsin has the largest number of recorded precolumbian and early historic Indigenous ridged and hilled garden beds in the American Midwest, with over 450 known examples. But, twentieth-century land-use practices have destroyed or obscured more than 90% of these sites. Leveraging a comprehensive database of...
Long-Term Perspectives on the Resilience of Food and Socioeconomic Systems in Prehistoric Japan: Examples from the Early and Middle Jomon Periods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper argues that the examination of rich archaeological data from the Jomon period of prehistoric Japan can contribute to the recent discussion of the resilience of food and socioeconomic systems. Theories of resilience which consider the importance of adaptive cycles and panarchical...
Long-term Survival of Indigenous Cultures in Haiti (2018)
The Espanola island was disrupted by the Spanish colonial power by massively forcing Indigenous people to work in the gold mines and to cultivate fields for producing foods for the Spaniards following the Encomienda system. The rise of European imperialism conducted to share the New World where the island of Espanola was officially occupied by the Spanish and French. Massive French investments into an agricultural industry lead to a large number of enslaved Africans being transported into the...
The Long-Term Trajectory of Tom Dalton Dillehay in Chile (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tom Dillehay appeared publicly in Chile in October 1976 during the VII Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Chilena. Since then more than 16,769 days have passed, a figure that exceeds the archaeological depth, in thousands of calibrated years, that Tom has imprinted on the human history of the Andes, in...
Los caminos de la Sierra de las Cruces: Reflexiones sobre el significado del paisaje en la comunicación interregional (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sistema montañoso que divide a la cuenca de México y el valle de Toluca, conocido como la sierra de las Cruces, constituyó, desde tiempos remotos, una región clave por la que ocurrieron desplazamientos...
Lost Landscapes of the Kawarthas: Investigating Inundated Archaeological Sites Using Integrated Methods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Kawartha lakes region of south-central Ontario is a region dominated by water bodies and rivers, where humans are known to of lived at least since 12,000 years ago (only shortly after the retreat of glaciers from the region). Since this time, water levels within the region have changed dramatically as a result of various geophysical, climatological, and...
Low-Density Maya Urbanism in the Dynamic Fluvial Landscape of the Upper Usumacinta Confluence Zone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Proximity to aquatic resources, rich soils, and transportation corridors can make riverine landscapes attractive settings for human occupation. Floodplains, however, are dynamic environments subject to flooding, erosion, and channel migration, which can dramatically transform the surrounding landscapes and create challenges for sedentary communities. The...
Loyalhanna Lake: A Geoarchaeological Approach to Understanding the Archaeological Potential of Floodplains (2018)
Unlike uplands, floodplains generally yield stratified deposits that may include deeply buried landscapes and archaeological sites. Most state specifications for cultural resources surveys require floodplains to be geomorphically evaluated in order to identify buried landscapes. This is most frequently accomplished via trenching, an effective, but timely, costly, and sometimes destructive method. This project reports on an alternative technique utilizing a multi-proxy methodology coupling...
The Magnetic View of a Princely Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hallstatt period hilltop settlement at Mont Lassois and its environs have been the focus of archaeological interest ever since the discovery of the famous princely grave of the "Dame de Vix" in 1953. Several excavations as well as aerial and geophysical prospections have since explored the sites on top and around the...
Making the Invisible Visible: LiDAR and the hidden sites of Plantation labor (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Roads, Rivers, Rails and Trails (and more): The Archaeology of Linear Historic Properties" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. LiDAR at President Madison’s Virginia plantation has highlighted fields, ditches, and even plow furrows in areas that have been overgrown or wooded since abandonment in the 1840s. In these same areas, metal detector surveys have revealed work sites (barns, sheds, and fence areas) that...
Making the Landscape Divine at Dainzú, Oaxaca, Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout its prehispanic occupation, Dainzú played a significant ceremonial role in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico. In the Formative period (200 BCE–CE 200), prominent terrain features were intentionally incorporated into the settlement’s design with the intent of making a shared place through ritual practice. For...
Mapping a Large Scale Amazonian Landscape using GIS (2016)
Among the many challenges for landscape archaeologists is the “palimpsest” nature of the landscapes that they try to study. Archaeologists around the world have long been at work using GIS to study a wide range of questions across scales from meters to thousands of kilometers, and from single occupations to thousands of years. Thinking of archaeological landscapes as a palimpsest uses the recognition that connecting individual landscape features exclusively to a single moment or period of time...
Mapping Historical Sacred Spaces in Southern Ethiopia (2018)
In 2011, we began a collaborative project with Boreda Gamo communities of southern Ethiopia to understand the spatial and historical relationships between settlements and sacred areas. Community elders guided us along winding footpaths that ascended 9 mountain tops leading to settlements that were first occupied in the early 13th century and have now been abandoned for nearly 100 years. Surrounding these historic settlements are sacred groves with springs, caves, and boulders that give physical...
Mapping Marronage and Afro-Indigenous Relationality in Central Peninsular Florida (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeking Freedom in the Borderlands: Archaeological Perspectives on Maroon Societies in Florida" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following investigations at the early nineteenth-century African/Black Seminole settlement of Pilaklikaha (“Abraham’s Old Town”), Florida has emerged as a key space for examining the complex intersections between archaeologies of marronage and Afro-Indigenous relationality. Beginning with...
Mapping the Buffalo Lake Métis Wintering Site (2015)
Mapping techniques change over time, and with that we are presented with new ways of visualizing and recording information at archaeological sites. Although work was undertaken at the Buffalo Lake Métis Wintering Site for a number of years in the 1970s, since then newer technologies such as Total Stations and RTK GNSS receivers have allowed for accurate maps to be more easily created at the site scale. This poster looks at how our understanding of the spatial organization of the cabin features...
Mapping the Cuzco Ceque System (2018)
The Cuzco Ceque System was composed of 328 shrines (huacas) organized along 41 lines (ceques) that radiated out from the city of Cuzco, the Inca capital. Historic research indicates that the ceque system was conceptually linked to the fundamental social divisions of the Cuzco region. The ceque system of Cuzco has been frequently discussed in the literature, and anthropologists and historians have long speculated on the locations of shrines in the system and the projection of the ceque lines. The...
Mapping the Maya Hinterlands: A LiDAR-Derived Approach to Identify Small-Scale Features in Northwestern Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various GIS and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic...
Marshland of Cities: Deltaic Landscapes and the Evolution of Early Mesopotamian Civilization (2003)
Prevailing theories of the evolution of early complex societies in southern Mesopotamia presume a uniform, arid landscape transited by Tigris and Euphrates distributaries. These theories hold that it was the seventh millennium BCE introduction of irrigation technologies from the northern alluvium to the south that began the punctuated evolution of Mesopotamian irrigation schemes. In this view, irrigation-dependent agro-pastoral production was the primary stimulus to urbanization and, millennia...
Materialization of Time, Space, Nature, and Societies Denoted by New Lidar Maps at Teotihuacan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Landscapes and Cosmic Cities out of Eurasia: Transdisciplinary Studies with New Lidar Mapping" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Primary archaeological data indicate that the current reconstruction of the city of Teotihuacan was apparently built with a master plan around AD 200. Three major monuments were harmoniously integrated into a rigorously calculated city layout with functional and/or symbolic units...
Materializing Aksumite: Power Plays through Natural Landscape in the Northern Stelae Field (AD 100–400) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper looks at how the location of the central stelae field in Aksum (in use from ~AD 100–400) took advantage of natural features to amplify Indigenous ideologies. The Northern Stelae Field is the burial location of the most powerful Aksumites, and tradition dictates that at least some were kings. The stelae field is...
The Meaning of Water: One Mountain’s Tale of Water Politics and Heritage in Northern New Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jicarita Peak, a looming shoulder of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, is a convergence of disparate peoples, cosmologies, and politics. The mountain is a crucial part of a vast watershed that extends from its 12,000′ slopes down to the Rio Grande and is home to Picuris Pueblo, North America’s oldest continually inhabited settlement....
Measuring Ancient Reuse of the Past: Archaic and Woodland Landscape Histories of the St. Johns River Valley, Florida (2018)
The middle St. Johns River valley in northeast Florida was occupied more-or-less continuously beginning at least 9000 years ago. Regional inhabitation by hunter-gatherers involved extensive terraforming of the landscape, including the construction of earthen and shell mounds, in addition to many non-mounded places. Many locations were repeatedly occupied over the millennia, with successive generations modifying or otherwise interacting with existing, often ancient, places. Earlier research took...