Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many research questions about human-ecological relationships investigate the causes and consequences of change. Change can be inferred using inductive scientific observations, then the hypothetico-deductive process can be used to predict the ‘why and why not’ questions that lie behind transitions or boundaries that we observe. However, categories may become ingrained over time. This session presents case-based approaches from Asia, the Americas, and Africa that query assumptions behind pre-existing categories and offer new methods for explaining cultural transitions and boundaries.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)

Documents
  • Across Boundaries: Origin of Microblade Technology in NE Asia under a Macroecological Approach (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Meng Zhang.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The spread of microblade technology has been explained using human migration and cultural transmission under the culture-historical paradigm of a "refugium model" that illustrates movements of foraging societies from Transbaikal eastward to the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kurile (PSHK) Peninsula and to North China in...

  • Changes and Reactions: Hunting and Gathering by Agriculturalist in the Woodland Period (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the midcontinent of North America, the transition from the Archaic to the Woodland Period is generally signaled in the archaeological record by the presence of ceramics and the adoption of agriculture, particularly of low yield indigenous plants including barley grass, goosefoot, sunflower, and squash during the...

  • Differentiating Ecological Contexts of Plant Cultivation and Animal Herding: Implications for Culture Process (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Johnson. Tanigha McNellis. Anthony Scimeca.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last few decades archaeologists around the globe have documented a much more variable pattern of prehistoric foraging and food production than was previously imagined. We have also made great progress understanding the macroecology related to variation in hunting-gathering subsistence and social...

  • Domestic Crop Production among the Ju/’hoansi San of Nyae Nyae, Namibia: Ethnoarchaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hitchcock.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the oscillations between foraging and farming among the Ju/’hoansi San of Nyae Nyae, Namibia from both ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic perspectives. In addition to a certain amount of foraging, some of the important economic activities of the Ju/’hoansi San Nyae Nyae region are agriculture...

  • Drought and the Transition from Foraging to Farming in the American Southwest (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Vierra.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The American Southwest is an arid landscape that has experienced dynamic shifts in climate between dry and wet periods. Researchers have traditionally focused on the effects of drought conditions on farming communities. They often suggested that these extreme conditions dictated the regional displacement of...

  • Fragmented Records: Fuego-Patagonian Hunter-gatherers and Archaeological Change (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Borrero. Fabiana Martin.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One common assumption in the interpretation of Fuego-Patagonian archaeological long stratigraphic sequences is that they represent occupational continuity. Several archaeological markers, including chronological and stratigraphic gaps, as well as recent molecular results erode that assumption, inviting us to...

  • Living in the Marginal Land of Agriculture: The Adaptive Changes and Risks in the Ecotone of North China (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Shengqian Chen.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ecotones are characterized by diverse resources which would attract hunter-gatherers and early practitioners of food production, but they also have a disadvantage that the resource boundary easily changes with climatic fluctuation. Long-term climatic changes, as well as annual seasonality, would produce significant...

  • Moving Beyond: Using Methods of Assessing Holocene Environmental Change in Northwestern Guyana (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Plew. Louisa Daggers.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To assess Holocene dietary changes we conducted isotopic analysis of human and faunal remains from seven shell mounds in Northwestern Guyana. We used stable carbon 13C and oxygen 18O isotope compositions data to assess the degree of dietary constancy as a proxy for determining the likelihood of there being any...

  • On the Neolithic Edge: Predicting Crop Adoption by Paleolithic Foragers of Taiwan (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The adoption of agricultural crops by intensified foragers occurred throughout Southeast Asia, resulting in mixed and low-level economies. Behavioral ecology provides models for evolutionary decision-making for mixed forager-gardener economies. The Paleolithic to Neolithic transition in Taiwan is represented by a...

  • The Role of Theory and Ethnographic Analogies in Understanding Paleoindian Mobility in the Great Basin (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Zeanah.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Great Basin hunter-gatherers procured obsidian from more distant sources during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (PHT) than did their Holocene successors, suggesting a more mobile subsistence adaptation. However, this requires annual rounds and logistic forays beyond the scale of ethnographic, pedestrian...

  • Variation in the Configuration of the Middle Snake River and its Relationship to Prehistoric Fishing Site Locations (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Wardle.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The configuration of the various elements of a river system can have significant impacts on the availability, abundance, and nutritional profitability of aquatic organisms utilized as food by groups of human foragers. These factors may have influenced where and when Late Archaic foragers decided to fish along the...