Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Baumgartel.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Claiborne site, located in Hancock County, Mississippi, has been dated using many different techniques since discovery in 1967. In order to create a tighter chronology and firmly place it into the timeline of the Poverty Point culture, chronometric hygiene protocols were used to dismiss dates that are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Forrest Kranda.

This is an abstract from the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A National Perspective on CRM, Research, and Consultation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Alaska District's Formally Used Defense Site (FUDS) program conducts environmental remediation of abandoned World War II and Cold War era military facilities owned by federal, state, and local parties. These FUDS properties, which are often in remote...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wetherbee Dorshow. Patricia Crown. John Crock.

Airborne LiDAR and orthophotography are increasingly ubiquitous in modern archaeological research, particularly at the regional scale. For detailed intrasite analyses of architectural sites, rockshelters, and caves, however, these airborne technologies offer limited utility. This paper highlights the significant research potential and conservation value of very high-resolution terrestrial LiDAR and gigapan HDR photogrammetry for architectural and "built" cultural dwelling places. Drawing on two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darcy Wiewall.

This is an abstract from the "Expanding Our Understanding of the Mojave Desert: Emerging Research and New Perspectives on Old Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Antelope Valley Archaeological Repository (AVCAR) houses over 300 archaeological sites from the western Mojave Desert. These collections constitute over 40 years of compliance-based and salvage archaeological excavations led by Antelope Valley College and the Antelope Valley...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Hanson.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological survey and excavation on Adak Island, Aleutian archipelago, Alaska were funded by NSF through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The chance NSF and Anna Kerttula took on a small project in a remote location with a small crew had an unexpected and significant effect on the understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Kyle Wright. Paul Burnett.

The Shoshone National Forest (Northwestern Wyoming) encompasses some of the most remote, inaccessible landscapes in the continental United States with 56% (1.4 million acres) designated Wilderness. Documenting, researching, and managing heritage resources in these Wilderness areas provides special challenges. A fundamental issue is that little basic archaeological inventory has been conducted and working in the area is logistically difficult. Over the last several years, a partnership between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Patricia McAnany. Adolfo Batún Alpuche.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the past 500 years of nearly continual human presence on the lands held today by residents of Tahcabo, Yucatán, Mexico. Previous work addressed why town residents continued to persist in this area despite the violence of colonialism. One answer pointed to significant human relationships with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean-Luc Houle. Michael Rosenmeier.

Climate has been debated by historians and archaeologists as one possible contributing factor for the emergence and collapse of complex societies. Recently, connections have been proposed between an ameliorating environment, surplus resources, energy, and the rise of Chinggis Khan’s 13th-century Mongol Empire. If favorable climate and increased rangeland productivity do indeed play a critical role in the politics of pastoral nomads, then we should be able to observe this in other cases too. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Claire Ebert. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 25 years, numerous paleoclimate studies have been published across the Maya Lowlands, providing the climatic context for cultural change from Preclassic through modern times. Increasing archaeological studies have followed suit by documenting cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Beamer. Lisa Park Boush. Mary Jane Berman. Perry Gnivecki. Amy Myrbo.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The islands of the Lesser and Greater Antilles were permanently settled as early as 8000 ybp, but the earliest human presence in the Bahama archipelago is dated ~1200 ybp, some 6700 years later. It has been noted that a connection between climate variations in the Caribbean/West Atlantic region may be the key to understanding the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vibeke Martens. Jens Rytter.

This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To respond to climate change impacts as well as other societal and environmental impacts to archaeological preservation, Norway has been applying environmental monitoring of archaeological deposits and sites since the 1990s. To standardize monitoring methods, tools, and evaluations, a Norwegian Standard was implemented in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Ingram.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation provides a practical introduction and toolkit for investigating relationships between climate and human behavior. The urgency of addressing the problems of our warming world is beyond the responsibility or exclusive domain of climate scientists or specialists – it is a shared human responsibility. Public or scholarly contributions do not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Jones.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By analyzing radiocarbon date frequencies, it is possible to look at the prehistoric archaeological record on a wider plain, assessing how people dealt with large-scale changes in climate. While radiocarbon date frequencies have often been used to pinpoint time periods of population growth and decline, relatively little is known about how or why these changes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Buckley. Rosanne D'Arrigo. Caroline Ummenhofer. Michael Griffiths. Kyle Hansen.

We have developed millennial length reconstructions of regional hydroclimate using multiple collections of tree cores from throughout Southeast Asia. Several published records of seasonal hydroclimate from Vietnamese cypress represent the most robust and well-replicated tree ring records from the global tropics, and allow for detailed analyses of the regional hydroclimate for multiple seasons. We demonstrate zonal changes in the mean climate over the past millennium with strong linkages to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Douglas.

Community resilience can be enhanced by engaging local and indigenous groups in the management of their cultural resources, both intangible and tangible. Many communities in developing nations were formally subjected to colonial governance, which imposed foreign architectural designs, irrigation agriculture and economic crops—and these systems vastly changed the social-cultural dynamics of these communities, often destabilizing systems that had been in place for generations. After colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Kirgesner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the current climate crisis intensifies, requests for proposals of grant funding related to solutions addressing these issues have increased. For over a decade, there has been a push to integrate archaeology into conversations about climate change (Van de Noort 2011). In this poster, I analyze how archaeologists engage with questions related to climate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Biehl. Johannes Mueller.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This contribution will discuss the relationship between climate change research in archaeology and its application in the heritage management sector, museums, education, and policies. We will do so within a global framework of past climate change action in intergovernmental panels,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smyth. Timothy Beach. Eric Weaver.

Exploratory research into climate change and the formation of chiefdoms took place in the Valley of Leiva. Preliminary findings from cultural-environmental contexts provide extraordinary interdisciplinary data. A stone-walled, oval-shaped elite building with compacted earthen floors, post-holes, and artifact-ecofact assemblages (decorated pottery, spindle whorls, deer fauna, and stone monoliths) was revealed near El Infiernito. Soil survey along the Rio Leyva produced evidence for major erosion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Anderson. Thaddeus Bissett. Martin Walker.

The historical trajectories of many societies in southeastern North America have been linked to changes in climate and biota. Rainfall regimes influenced population distributions as much as political geography during the late prehistoric era, and arguably well back into the past. Likewise, sea-level fluctuations shaped settlement near changing shorelines and resulted in population movement over much larger areas. Changes in biota over large areas brought about changes in settlement at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonas Gregorio De Souza.

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate change has been linked to the reorganisation of past societies in different parts of the globe. However, until recently, the lack of archaeological and palaeoclimate data for the Amazon had prevented an evaluation of the relationship between climate change and cultural change in the largest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Buchanan. Melissa Baltus. Sarah Baires.

This is an abstract from the "*SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists, particularly in the southeast, have often looked to the environment and climate change to understand the evolution of past societies. Droughts, floods, and environmental degradation have been implicated in the rise and fall of societies, especially Mississippian period societies like the city of Cahokia. Despite calls...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Koons.

In this paper I will discuss the different lines of evidence pertaining to detecting El Niño and La Niña events at the site of Licapa II and surrounding Northern Chicama Valley. Flood deposits, dune encroachments episodes, malacological data, canal destruction and rebuilding events, and radiocarbon evidence are used as proxies to help understand the intensity and timing of ENSO events. I compare evidence from Licapa II to other sites inside and outside the Chicama Valley to highlight the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelly Davis-King.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. America’s first people have been extremely knowledgeable about animals, plants, and fungi they ingest and/or breathe in for medicinal purposes. Medicine, from a Native perspective, is something honored, taken in for healing and well-being, to be used with respect and knowledge, with spiritual reverence and recognition of cultural continuity....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

International, interdisciplinary fieldwork is at the core of Lawrence Straus' long-term archaeological research. Inspired by such an approach since my involvement with Straus' excavations at the Abri Dufaure in southwest France, I have been conducting field work in the Arabian peninsula, which aims to understand the relationship between climate change and human demography across the Pleistocene. Satellite images and GIS studies have effectively demonstrated that there were wet phases in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Iriarte. Mark Robinson. Shira Maezumi. Daiana Travassos. Denise Schaan.

In this presentation, we discuss pre-Columbian Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE) polyculture agroforestry systems and its implications for management and conservation efforts on Amazonian sustainable futures under current threat from climate change and development. We present and compare new multi-proxy paleoclimate, palaeoecological and archaeobotanical data from two mid to late Holocene records of land use history of ADE in Santarem (Lower Amazon) and the Itenez Forest Reserve (SW Amazonia). Our data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Konrad Smiarowski.

Changes in climate regimes have played a significant role in the cultural settlement patterns of Greenland for several millennia. This presentation focuses on the Norse Settlement ca. 985-1450 CE and how the terrestrial and marine (wild and domestic) animal resources were utilized, managed and modified in the face of climatic and environmental changes at all levels of the Norse social strata. Datasets from small tenant farms and shielings such as E74 Qorlortorsuaq and E168 , middle size...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Ullah. Meredith Chesson. Paula Lazrus. Kostalena Michelaki.

This is an abstract from the "Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding how human activity, climate systems, ecosystems, and earth surface processes interact to change the capacity for different human livelihoods over time is crucial to finding livable strategies for coping with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arkadiusz Marciniak.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social strategy of imposed egalitarianism provided solid foundations for the unprecedented growth of the Neolithic community inhabiting the large settlement at Çatalhöyük for more than half a millennium. Its constituting elements comprised symmetry and balance among cross-cutting sodalities, as well as integration of domestic and ritual domains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Weinelt. Christian Schwab. Jutta Kneisel. Martin Hinz.

In the eastern Mediterranean area, coherent patterns and synchronous events around 4.2 kaBP suggest an obvious link between cultural upheaval in urban societies and climate forcing. Here, the 4.2 kaBP aridification event is thought the cause of severe economic consequences and social unrest. The picture for the central and western Mediterranean regions, at the interface of North Atlantic (Bond event 3) and monsoon-influenced climate, is different. It remains unclear whether supra-regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Sanders. Stephen Acabado. John Peterson.

The Little Ice Age was a global phenomenon beginning in the late 13th century A.D. that impacted the northern Philippines by creating more arid conditions. This was more evident in the eastern lowlands of Luzon where northeastern trade winds were typically dry. Conversely, the central highlands of Ifugao and the Cordilleras were relatively more humid due to orographic relief. These conditions, caused by periodic volcanism cooling the northern hemisphere, forced the Inter-Tropical Convergence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Nihells. Melissa G. Torquato. John Rapes. Matthew E. Hill. Erik Otárola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The foraging lifestyle persisted as the major human subsistence strategy worldwide for most of the human career. With notable exceptions, this way of life was eventually replaced by a subsistence base complemented and often dominated by cultivated foods. Archaeologists have proposed several hypotheses to explain this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joyce White. Mick Griffiths. Cyler N. Conrad. Kathleen Johnson.

Archaeological research in mainland Southeast Asia is a relatively recent endeavor, but as the region’s culture history has become more fully known, a gap in evidence called the "missing millennia" has emerged. The gap falls during the middle Holocene c. 6000-4000 BP when few sites have dated deposits. Yet from evidence dating before and after those millennia, important changes must have occurred, including changes in settlement systems, lithics and ceramic technologies, the appearance of cereal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Nash. Heather Wholey.

The U.S. Middle Atlantic region, known for its rich archaeological record and diverse topographic settings, is experiencing a range of climate change impacts: sea level rise and coastal erosion; increased precipitation and flooding in some areas; and mountain-based forest fires associated with drought in other areas. Documented paleostratigraphic and palynological studies throughout the region provide a record of late Pleistocene/Holocene environmental response to changing climate, confirming...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jørgen Hollesen. Henning Matthiesen.

Archaeological sites in Greenland represent an irreplaceable record of extraordinarily well-preserved material remains covering more than 4000 years of human history. Out of the more than 6000 registered sites very few have been excavated and it is anticipated that thousands of sites are still to be discovered in the many unexplored parts of the country. However, the climate is changing rapidly in Greenland leading to accelerated degradation of the archaeological sites. Since 2009, the National...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Harmsen. Jørgen Hollesen. Henning Matthiesen. Bo Eberling. Christian Koch Madsen.

The REMAINS (REsearch and Management of Archaeological sites IN a changing environment and Society) of Greenland project has explored a number of factors that currently threaten Greenland’s archaeological landscape in the coming decades. This paper reviews recent work as well as the problems and threats to coastal and inland middens along the country’s West coast and adjacent inner fjord systems. Information gathered in recent years provides a baseline for "ground-truthing" predictive models of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margo Schwadron.

South Florida contains millions of acres of wetlands, subtropical estuaries and prehistoric waterways interconnecting thousands of tree islands and shell work islands, comprising one of the largest and most complex prehistoric maritime landscapes worldwide. Recursive human and natural dynamics shaped these landscapes over deep time, but will soon be lost by rising sea level. Integrated archaeological and paleo-ecological studies are critical to understanding the long term impacts of humans on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Adler. Barbara Judy. Sarah Stokely. Rory Gauthier.

The Ancestral Puebloan sites at Bandelier National Monument include both masonry pueblos and man-made cave sites. The dry climate of Northern New Mexico in conjunction with the environmental awareness and architectural ingenuity of the builders have played an important role in the preservation of these sites, which continue to yield valuable archaeological information. Changes in the semi-arid climate in which the monument is located have begun to threaten the equilibrium between these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcy Rockman.

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. Development of the landscape learning model began more than 20 years ago as part of my work to find ways to use the past to help address modern environmental problems. Combining initial work with nineteenth-century gold rush miners in Wyoming with models of Paleoindian colonization and assemblages led to the hypothesis that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Nash.

This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At first glance, the archaeological resources of the uplands of the North American Middle Atlantic region are much less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than are tidal or coastal sites. However, as the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, archaeological sites of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ayers-Rigsby. Victoria Dominguez. Valentina Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate change is negatively impacting cultural heritage and archaeological sites worldwide. The site of Balsamaragua, which signifies 2,500 years of human occupation on the coast, is rapidly deteriorating, having lost 10 m of shoreline since 2009. Increased awareness and documentation at the site can help us glean valuable information about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Snyder. Randy Haas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of the pre-Columbian Andes provides an ideal study of the range of human responses to climate change given the region’s extreme climatic variability, excellent archaeological preservation, and robust paleoclimate records. We evaluate the effects of climate change on the frequency of interpersonal violence in the south central Andes from 470...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karim Alizadeh.

Recent research in the borderlands has increased our knowledge on the irrigation systems and urbanization plans of the Sasanian Empire in the late antiquity. In particular, surveys and excavations in the Mughan Steppe indicate that irrigation canals connected nearly all Sasanian settlements. Evidence suggests that after the 7th century AD most of the elaborate settlement system was abandoned and its irrigation infrastructure went out of use. While the exact date of this abandonment is unclear,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Downs. Sandra Pentney. Marla Mealey. Nicole Turner. Natalie Brodie.

Climate change poses threats to both inland and coastal archaeological resources alike. Sites along the coast of San Diego County are under various threats such as inundation and erosion due to sea level rise. For over two years, the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) and the San Diego County Archaeological Society (SDCAS) have been directing the Climate Change Project to assess the effects of climate change on San Diego County resources. This study utilizes GIS analysis to examine coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu. Robert Kelly. Craig Lee. Ira Matt. John Murray.

Managing the impacts of climate change to cultural resources, and conducting relevant research, cross-cuts disciplinary boundaries and calls for an innovative, outward looking mindset. Descendant communities, particularly Native groups with long ties to lands and resources and high stakes in climate change outcomes, are rich in traditional ecological knowledge and cultural expertise. These bodies of knowledge are key building blocks for successful strategies for risk evaluation, vulnerability...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Harmsen. Christian Koch Madsen. Elie Pinta. Michael Nielsen.

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Eastern Arctic is currently observed to be undergoing significant environmental change as a direct consequence of global warming. For archaeologists working in Greenland, this means the rapid and complete loss of cultural remains due to changing soil conditions. As annual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chapurukha Kusimba.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Complex city-states arose on the East African Coast that were hubs of international trade networks. However, by the seventeenth century, most of these settlements had been abandoned. What were the causes of the Swahili state collapse? Historians and archaeologists have implicated climate change as one of the causal factors in the collapse of highly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Lucero.

In response to growing needs for dry-season water, the southern lowland Maya constructed increasingly larger and more complex reservoirs at major centers throughout the Late Classic period (550-850 C.E.). Annual rainfall replenished reservoirs and nourished rainfall-dependent crops. In exchange for access to reservoirs during the annual dry season, farmers contributed goods, services and labor to kings and their administrators. When several multiyear droughts struck between 800 and 900 C.E., the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erick Robinson. Jacob Freeman. David A. Byers. Spencer R. Pelton. Robert L. Kelly.

Increasing energy consumption returns, or economies of scale, have been illustrated similarly for modern urban societies and ancient complex societies. However, the relationship between underlying scaling relationships and the development and decline of population and social complexity over the long-term are yet to be investigated. This poster addresses their role in hunter-gatherer societies. Using formal mathematical models from macroeconomics, we examine the long-term variability of economies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorian Burnette. David Dye. Arleen Hill.

This is an abstract from the "Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tree-ring reconstructions of cool- and warm-season moisture reveal several multi-decadal droughts that impacted the northern Lower Mississippi Valley between AD 1250 and 1450. These chronic droughts contributed to the regional abandonments and population migrations southward out of the Cairo Lowland and adjacent areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Wilson. Lucas Stamps. William Gilhooly. Broxton Bird.

Archaeologists are increasingly turning to climate change as part of their explanatory models of regional and interregional population movement, socio-cultural transformation, and the dissolution of societies in North America. In the lower Midwest, both megadroughts and megafloods have been invoked to explain declining agricultural returns, rises in conflict, and abandonment of major river valleys during the latter half of the Mississippian Period. However, the data sources and indices recording...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher T. Fisher.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The societal impact of climate change in Central Mexico during the Postclassic Period is an important question in Mesoamerican archaeology. Here, using archaeological evidence from the ancient city of Angamuco, including LiDAR analysis, I argue that an engineered environment buffered the environment from reduced rainfall...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleni Asouti.

Prevailing theories concerning the role of climate change in the transition from foraging to farming in SW Asia view socioeconomic change as a response to climate deterioration (push theories) or improvement (pull theories) which caused resource depression or abundance respectively. With this paper I propose that periods of socioeconomic and cultural innovation correlate with periods of climatic instability, which occurred at the timescales of direct human experience of the landscape (i.e., at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petra Vaiglova. Gideon Hartman. Guy Bar-Oz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the absence of a high-resolution climate archive in Negev Desert, southern Israel, it has been challenging to understand why the Byzantine Empire built large towns in this arid region in the fourth century CE—and why it abandoned them three centuries later. In this study, we use dietary and mobility patterns of animals recovered from three Byzantine Negev...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier. Darcy Bird.

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate variability can significantly constrain the population dynamics of ancient agrarian societies, although its direct influence is often mediated by a complex interplay of social, ecological, and technological factors. Untangling these relationships in the archaeological record is challenging due to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Laurent Cases.

Increasing literature has focused on the role of climate change in the collapse of complex societies. These studies suggest that abrupt shifts in climate can exacerbate existing political, social, and economic issues by affecting the basic subsistence systems on which populations depend. Here we compare archaeological, historic, and climate proxy data from two state-level societies: the Classic Maya and the Roman Empire. A strong focus on the impact of multi-decadal droughts from the ninth to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Byers. Peter Yaworsky. Jack Broughton.

This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we synthesize the available empirical data on return rates for artiodactyls and lagomorphs and explore and integrate different currencies to guide a trans-Holocene analysis of variation in artiodactyl hunting using massive archaeofaunal datasets from predominantly open-air sites from the Bonneville and Wyoming...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Lancelotti. Xavier Rubio-Campillo. Matthieu Salpeteur. Marco Madella.

The aim of this study is to model resource management and decision making among hunter-gatherer and agro-pastoral groups in semi-arid zones in order to explore evolutionary trajectories in relation to (a) the appearance of other specialized groups during the mid-Holocene and (b) environmental variability. The study of coexistence and interaction between groups with different subsistence strategies and land-use behaviours represents an interesting research challenge to understand socio-ecological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Fallu. Andreas Lang. Leonidas Vokotopoulos. Florence Gaignerot-Driessen. Antony Brown.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Environmental change during the Bronze Age (3000 to 1100 BC) on Crete had a strong impact on the viability of agriculture and subsequent development of land land management technologies. In particular the development of terraced agricultural systems increased the capacity of slope agriculture, allowing cultivation to keep pace with population growth. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie De La Torre Salas. Michelle LeFebvre.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Hope for the Future: A Message of Resiliency from Archaeological Sites in South Florida" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climate change is intensifying hurricanes, posing increased disaster risks. These risks encompass various factors, from physical to attitudinal, magnifying their impact. Hurricane Ian's impact on Southwest Florida in September 2022 underlines these challenges, particularly for archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlene Rosen.

In recent decades, studies of climate change and its impact on past societies have been colored by a veneer of political agenda and oversimplification of how ancient societies might have actually responded to changes in their environments. Although many of these climatic changes would have profoundly impacted economic systems of past societies, these social and economic systems have often demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of such changes. Other times, abrupt environmental changes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Bocinsky. Andrew Gillreath-Brown. Tim Kohler.

This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we explore the emergence of the first Pueblo Canon — how the period of initial Pueblo exploration in the northern upland Southwest coalesced into the suite of material and social patterns archaeologists readily identify as Basketmaker III. Steadfast development of temperate maize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Gayo. Jose M. Capriles.

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The south central Andean highlands have a rich and complex socio-environmental history. Although generally seen as a single cultural area with fluid sociocultural interaction, its geographic heterogeneity is mirrored by its cultural diversity. To explain the varying effects of climate in the late Holocene...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dante Garcia. Guillermo De Anda.

According to the ceramic evidence that came out of the Chichen Itzá sinkholes or "cenotes" it seems the ancient Maya offered into these wells important quantities of pots and very unique ceramic vessels within a very specific period of time, and under very specific situations. The evidence indicates that most of the ritual activity occurred approximately between AD 900-1100, a time that coincides chronologically with the end of the Terminal Classic Period, the rise and subsequent abandonment of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Lebenzon. Elic Weitzel. Isaac A. Hart. Brian Codding.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recognizing how climate variability altered the landscape in regards to nutrient availability is a key aspect in reconstructing how prehistoric peoples were able to thrive. Further, understanding how past climate and environmental change affected organisms is important for predicting the role of imminent future climate change on populations today. Previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Jones. Emma Lightfoot. Martin Jones. Tamsin O'Connell. Cameron Petrie.

Why might societies adopt new crops or change their cropping patterns? Climate change is one of several possible drivers, but its role in crop exchange has rarely been empirically tested and its importance relative to other factors, particularly cultural factors, remains controversial. As part of the Food Globalisation in Prehistory project, two isotopic studies have aimed to directly test the relationship between climate change and crop movement in particular contexts. One focuses on the Hexi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorenzo Castellano. Roderick Campbell. Yitzchak Jaffe.

In the last two decades, climatic narratives have returned as a central issue in archaeological discourse. The field has been flooded with publications on paleoclimatic reconstructions and we believe it is time for a critical evaluation – both as means of seeking better science, and for building better archaeological narratives. Climate history is composed by an overlapping meshwork of long-standing trends, punctuated events and short-term phases, with impacts ranging from the local to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Grove.

It has long been known that temporally unstable environments are likely to promote the evolution of plastic adaptations, whilst it is equally clear that such adaptations are characteristic of successful colonizers. These two established findings, however, are rarely related. This contribution bridges this gap using a very simple evolutionary algorithm that tracks the evolution of plasticity under various climatic regimes, allowing for the construction of an index of climate-mediated dispersal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman. Jesper Nielsen.

According to Henry B. Nicholson, the rain deity Tlaloc enjoyed the most active and widespread cult in ancient Mexico. This assertion is surely correct, and is further evidenced from later ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources. Closely related to Tlaloc - and his earlier manifestations - were the Tepictoton, little directional mountain deities venerated during the veintenas of Tepeilhuitl and Atemoztli. In this paper we review Nicholson's original observations seen in the light of new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Mills.

Hawaiʻi’s state regulations require principal investigators in the 26 active archaeological consulting firms to possess "a graduate degree from an accredited institution in archaeology, or anthropology, with a specialization in archaeology, or an equivalent field." Because there have been few opportunities for appropriate local graduate training, many heritage management specialists are hired from regions outside of Hawaiʻi and begin with little background or connection to descendant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Émilie Blondin. Lindsey Bouldin. Sarah Faber. Cindy Tian. Grace Motes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the fall of 2021, a group of 13 students, a graduate teaching assistant, and two professors continued the years-long excavations and credit-offered course of the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project, which takes place amongst one of the busiest tourist attractions and academic centers of Boston. A primary goal of the 2021 field season was to further...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff. Joel W. Palka.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ancient Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala, was briefly re occupied by Yucatec refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatan. The Tikal village was poised on the confluence of the frontiers of Mexico, Guatemala and British Honduras, as well as the belligerent Santa Cruz Maya from Yucatan. Despite the limited presence of settled European diasporas in the northern Petén, colonial institutions were still able to reach indigenous communities seeking refuge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gidusko. John Schultz. Mason Branscome.

The use of close-range photogrammetry (CRP) for 3D documentation is becoming a standard practice for archaeological site documentation. Less explored, however, is the utility of CRP to document forensic scenes, especially those involving skeletal remains. Since digital camera documentation is already a standard practice at forensic scenes, additional data captured for CRP can be included alongside standard site photography. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the utility of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Moragas.

This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aim of this paper is to do a general overview of the different archaeological processes identified in Teotihuacan in the last years of the Classic to Epiclassic period. In a space between the crisis of the Teotihuacan political and ideological power until the reorganization of new players in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Tringham.

When I tell people I'm an archaeologist, their eyes light up with a wistful look and they say "I've always wanted to be an archaeologist". I could describe one reality, that it is not as glamorous as they think, work is slow and repetitive, and that leaves them disappointed. But usually I describe another reality: what I love about what I do - and they are delighted. However, I have never articulated it in a professional presentation or publication: I excavate layers of dead people’s residential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacquelyn Bluma.

This study describes statistics of life expectancies among the immigrant population and its sub-sets throughout the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries in southeastern Wisconsin. At this time, German populations were becoming established as a major cultural and ethnic force in Milwaukee and the surrounding counties. Data from individuals disinterred from two unmarked cemeteries in Ozaukee county were analyzed to assess cultural and physical disparities in the mortuary record among these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Stephens Reed. Aron Adams. Jeffery Wharton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Three Chacoan great houses (Aztec North, West, and East) comprise the focal point of the Ancestral Pueblo community at Aztec Ruins National Monument in the Animas Valley of northwestern New Mexico. The well-known occupational histories of Aztec West and East, established through decades of tree-ring dating, includes over 4000 tree ring dates taken from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heriberto Marquez.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of caves is a part of an essential role in Maya cosmology and ideology. The Petexbatún Regional Cave Survey identified 22 caves and over 11 kilometers of cave passages between 1990 through 1993 at Dos Pilas, Guatemala. This study reexamines 205 human remains collected from Cueva de Sangre. Previous studies (Minjares, 2003) of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aron Adams. Lori Reed. Linda Scott Cummings.

Excavation of a recent test unit at Aztec West revealed stratigraphic deposits yielding corn samples that were well distributed throughout. The primary research objective was to use Accelerator Mass Spectometry (AMS) Radiocarbon dating to date charred corn from the test unit and compare the results with date ranges for pottery from the same levels. A tree-ring date of AD 1130 was also obtained from charred wood in a pit feature below the levels yielding corn, suggesting that the deposits, corn,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Masson. Carlos Peraza Lope. Wilberth Cruz Alvarado. Pedro Delgado Ku. Timothy Hare.

The ceremonious destruction and abandonment of the Itzmal Ch’en group at Mayapán is symptomatic of ritual violence that marked this city’s near collapse at least 50 years before its final abandonment around 1448 A.D. This new evidence revises Contact Period accounts about the demise of this city, the last regional capital of the Maya realm prior to European arrival, and it also reveals the city’s resilient (if brief) recovery. In the tradition of the interdisciplinary approach of the Forest of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria De Lourdes Gallardo.

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio integral de los restos de prendas rituales elaboradas con textiles y elementos laminares de conchas nacaradas, que se depositaron en cuatro ofrendas del sitio arqueológico del Templo Mayor. A pesar del mal estado de conservación que actualmente se observa en la mayor parte de estos objetos, fue posible identificar cuatro prendas rituales, a través de una investigación que observa varios aspectos relevantes y complementarios. Así, el estudio comprende: la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Bellorado.

Scholars have suggested that the process of dressing both animates and ascribes identities to inanimate things. During the thirteenth century, people in the Mesa Verde region of the North American Southwest conceptually dressed special structures, pottery, baskets, and even cotton garments in similar ways. These diverse media were often adorned with clothing depictions and woven textile designs, painted on a white clay-coated background. Grounded both physically and conceptually in bodily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estanislao Pazmiño.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cloud forests along the eastern and western foothills of the northern Andes have received little attention in the overall archaeology of South America. These regions of broken geography and dense forests have historically been considered culturally poor, with little impact on the sociocultural transformations of the Andean and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Asher.

Clovis and Folsom artifact distributions, particularly projectile points, are not homogenous throughout the Central Plains. Uneven artifact distributions are in part attributed to diverse land use and hunting techniques that resulted in distinct artifact breakage patterns. Lithic material use and transportation is also unique. These differences are partially driven by changing ecosystems during the terminal Pleistocene. Models of Clovis and Folsom land use are explored to account for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew G. Hill.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 40 unpublished AMS results on Rangifer, Cervalces, Bootherium, and Ovibos combined with ~80 published assays for Mammuthus and Mammut are used to profile extinction of these taxa in the Southern Great Lakes. At least one result for each of these taxa falls in the Clovis time period, except for Ovibos. Numerous dates for Mammut and Cervalces...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Tumelaire. Samuel H. Fisher. Francis Smiley.

This is an abstract from the "The Paleoindian Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of research at the Rainbow Forest locality and the Blue Mesa site, two early Paleoamerican occupations in Petrified Forest National Park. Rainbow Forest and Blue Mesa are likely Clovis occupations and present the problem of identifying Clovis-era sites in a region in which site surface assemblages have been collected by human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Velchoff Littlefield. Thomas Williams.

Clovis biface manufacturing represents a complex flaked stone reduction technology (Bradley, et al. 2010:64) where extant evidence has established that Clovis knappers possessed a high degree of skill in their craft. Most Clovis behaviors have been gleaned from data-rich Clovis caches and kill-sites. However, quantitative data is limited on Clovis flaked stone debris, and thus, remains an open research issue. One issue raised is the careful preparation of striking platforms during biface and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sanchez-Morales.

Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site located in the north-central portion of the state of Sonora, northwestern Mexico. The site comprises multiple localities including a buried kill of two gomphotheres (cuvieronius sp.), a Clovis camp and raw material procurement areas. The Clovis lithic component at the site consists of Clovis points, Clovis point preforms, bifaces, unifacial tools and a blade industry. The tool types suggest that Fin del Mundo was occupied for a long time span, possibly during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sánchez-Morales.

Clovis populations are thought to have been wide ranging, highly mobile foragers, as reflected in stone tool raw material procurement patterns and technological features of associated lithic assemblages. Intense utilization of high quality non-local cryptocrystalline raw materials, heavy stone tool refurbishing and repair strategies, and a lithic industry based on bifacial reduction are main features of the Clovis lithic technological organization suggestive of high mobility. In north-central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliet Morrow. Stuart Fiedel.

I review the archaeological record of northern Eurasia and North America from 15,000 to 12,000 cal BP to better define the Clovis cultural complex and identify its most likely area and time of origin. Evidence including a clinal pattern of point style changes indicates migration southward and eastward through North America south of the ice sheets. Diagnostic attributes permit discrimination of early, middle and late Paleoindian assemblages. These data support a relatively simple and parsimonious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thulman. Brendan Fenerty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Clovis projectile point attached to the end of a spear or dart is an iconic symbol of North America’s late Pleistocene hunter, but the point’s use is more assumed than demonstrated. We find evidence for the "point-as-projectile" inference equivocal, because that same evidence also supports "point-as-knife". We present new experimental data that demonstrate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jody Clauter. Zachary Garhart. Adam Guinard. Rachael Shimek.

This poster details the archaeological collections housed at the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository (UWAR) located in Laramie. The repository houses approximately 3 million artifacts from 15,000 different Wyoming sites as well as comparative, replica, experimental, and educational materials. We highlight our extensive suite of artifacts from across the state, which includes artifacts from all time periods from the Paleoindian to the Historic. Many of these objects are submitted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Williams.

Many studies have made statements about the origin and method of the spread of the Clovis style hafted biface technology, but little research of late has evaluated Clovis from a Lithic Technological Organization perspective. This study examines a sample of 695 Clovis style hafted bifaces from across North America. I analyze trends in raw material use, flute length, re-use and resharpening in Clovis style hafted bifaces from across the country. I conclude that there is much variation in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper details my archaeological research on Clovis lithic tool technology at the Glen Quarry Locality, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, southeastern Utah. As the earliest inhabitants of North America dating from approximately 13,400 BP, Clovis cultures form the baseline for the archaeology of the continent. I report the results of intensive field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Soza.

Recent research done by the University of Arizona at Rock Art Ranch, located on the southern Colorado Plateau near Winslow, Arizona, yielded a wealth of information on preceramic land use in an area where prior research had not been conducted. Survey of a six square mile area recovered more than 140 projectile points ranging from Clovis to San Pedro, 50 bifaces, and 88 sites. Multiple canyons crosscutting the ranch carry water that results in a diverse range of flora and attracted animals to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Huckell.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The role of obsidian in Clovis technological organization in the US Southwest and northwestern Mexico is investigated. The distribution and typology of obsidian artifacts from excavated sites as well as surface contexts is reviewed. Projectile points appear to be the principal, and nearly only, tool for which obsidian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Tune.

Considerable debate has recently been focused on understanding the effects of the Younger Dryas on human behavioral adaptations throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It has been proposed that adverse paleoecological conditions in southeastern North America triggered a decline and/or substantial reorganization in human populations. The Tennessee Paleoindian biface data in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas is used to assess the evolution of behavioral adaptations during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Mackie. Todd Surovell. Spencer Pelton. Robert Kelly. Matthew O'Brien.

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of the transition from Clovis to Folsom complexes has long been an area of interest for Pleistocene archaeologists in the West. While it has been hypothesized that Folsom was an innovation started during the Clovis time period there have been few clear cases of temporal overlap. A recent find at the La Prele Mammoth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Haynes. Janis Klimowicz.

Published opinion pieces about Clovis prey choices are unintentionally misleading. Over 120 individual animals from 8 extinct megafaunal species (or 12, depending upon taxonomy) were killed by Clovis people in a relatively short time span, according to conservative estimates -- and the number is even higher in some lists. The 11 Clovis sites said to have acceptable evidence for human predation on mammoths actually contain 50-53 separate individuals, some being discrete kills that should be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Ruth. James Boone.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cross-cultural data show a strong positive relationship between latitude and dependence on hunting for subsistence. Higher latitude foragers that were dependent on megafauna for subsistence were equally dependent on animal hides for clothing and shelter to survive through winter, and for the survival and reproduction of corporately organized, hearth-centered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolina Mallol. Margarita Jambrina-Enríquez. Gilliane Monnier. Gilbert Tostevin. Goran Pajovic.

This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A trend in the past few decades of archaeological research is to apply different microstratigraphic techniques, which provide clues about behavioral and paleoenvironmental aspects of past societies. At Crvena Stijena (Montenegro), a Middle Paleolithic site under current...