Environmental Archaeology and Historical Ecology: Present and Future Directions

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah E. Cowie.

The relationships between biopolitics and processes of capitalism and industrialization have come under increasing scrutiny by activists in the environmental justice movement.  Ethnographic studies in modern industrialized (and industrializing) societies demonstrate marked environmental inequality, particularly disadvantageous to racialized groups and working-class communities.  These discriminatory practices have resulted in the disempowerment of marginalized populations, loss of land,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemarie T Blewitt.

This paper analyzes botanical remains recovered at the Old Town site, a late 18th century occupation of the Catawba Nation, and integrates those data with faunal and ceramic analysis along with ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources to describe Catawba foodways. The Old Town occupation was defined by wars and a major epidemic, and was one of the places where the devastated Catawba peoples reformed and reconstituted their new identity. I examine the foodways at Old Town as part of the changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorian Burnette. David Stahle. Edward Cook. Jose Villanueva. Daniel Griffin. Benjamin Cook.

A new drought atlas has been developed for subtropical North America, including the entire Republic of Mexico.  This Mexican Drought Atlas (MXDA) is based on 251 tree-ring chronologies, including 82 from Mexico and another 169 from the southern U.S. and western Guatemala.  The new reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index for June-August provide a more detailed estimation of decadal moisture regimes since AD 1400.  Droughts previously identified in a subset of chronologies are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beatrix Arendt. John G. Jones. Derek Wheeler. Crystal L. Ptacek. Fraser Neiman.

Pollen data can serve as valuable evidence to advance our understanding of change and spatial variation in the landscape of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello from its initial European settlement in the 18th century to the present. The data presented in this paper draws from a multi-year campaign of stratigraphic sampling conducted in the largely ornamental mountaintop landscape immediately surrounding Jefferson's mansion. Comparing these data to stratigraphic samples collected away from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Hallinan.

In the early 17th century Spanish colonists came to New Mexico seeking agricultural opportunities to gain wealth and status. Obtaining access to environmental resources proved to be difficult due to a harsh climate and a large population of indigenous people occupying the best agricultural land. Little is known about the colonists that settled on the rural landscapes\ since nearly all documentary evidence and structural evidence was destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and few archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbons.

In the early settlement of Iceland, Scandinavian pioneers brought their social knowledge alongside herds of livestock to the untamed island and in turn initiated a millennium-long tradition of livestock husbandry and survivorship in a harsh and unpredictable environment. Decades of integrated historical ecological research across Iceland allows for an exploration of the complex human ecodynamics of this marginal European outpost in the North Atlantic. Comparative osteometrical data from multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanna M. Pratt.

The historic sugarcane industry transformed Caribbean societies, economies, and environments. This research explores the landscape legacies left by long-term sugarcane monoculture at Betty’s Hope Plantation on the eastern Caribbean island of Antigua, which was dedicated to sugarcane monoculture from the mid-1600s until independence in 1981. The study creates a simulation of crop yields using the USDA’s Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator, which is then evaluated using records of historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Hylkema. Sara Peelo. Eric Wohlgemuth. Thomas Garlinghouse. Cristie Boone.

The Spanish Colonial mission complexes (churches, quadrangles, and outlying buildings and structures) brought about new order on native landscapes with the introduction of European urban planning. As a result, many researchers maintain that Old World plants and animals rapidly supplanted and displaced many types of native species, and they often define "wild" foods as supplemental to agricultural foods. Additionally, many scholars continue to support the notion that agriculture is an active...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean H. Reid.

This paper illustrates how images captured by satellite remote sensing technology can be used to detect vegetation that indicates archaeological sites in West Africa. These sites are typically marked by a pattern of vegetation that differs from the surrounding landscape, including concentrations of very large trees with sociocultural and historical significance: cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). These features are conspicuous elements of the landscape both from the ground...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison L Bain.

In planning research strategies that integrate environmental archaeology, comparative data sets are strongly encouraged. If analyses of faunal, floral or insect remains reveal details about past environments and economies, then the integration of other methods can only provide more data, improving our knowledge of past populations and their daily lives. A decade of environmental research and sampling on a single site in Quebec City, the Intendant’s Palace Site, has allowed the opportunity to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Proebsting. Daniel Druckenbrod.

This paper includes recent discoveries from a survey of natural and cultural resources along a proposed 1.7 mile parkway at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.  In addition to locating archaeological sites and mapping aboveground features, 10 forest plots were established within stands of increasing age adjacent to the proposed path of the parkway.  By measuring tree diameter, identifying tree species, and coring trees from three different positions in the forest canopy using dendrochronology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Peles.

Chartered in 1789 and enrolling students in 1795, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of three schools that claims the title of oldest public university in the United States. Despite this storied history, relatively little is known about the lives of antebellum university and Chapel Hill residents, particularly archaeologically. In October 2011, contractors excavated a trench around the Battle, Vance, and Pettigrew buildings at UNC. In the process, they exposed archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Mathwich.

European livestock accompanied the foundation of Spanish missions and presidios in the arid Pimeria Alta, altering the local landscape and native society. Livestock connected desert farmers to distant colonial markets and providing a new source of protein and grease, but also required new economic, social, and spatial arrangements, potentially affecting the availability of wild animals in native communities near Spanish colonial sites . This paper surveys wild animal presence and diversity at...