More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment

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 "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The central role of the built environment and the importance of architecture for structuring cultural patterns and behaviors are well known for complex societies. In contrast, hunter-gatherer’s relationship to the built environment, particularly mobile hunter-gatherers, is not often discussed outside of utilitarian shelters. This session explores the diversity of hunter-gatherer interaction with the built environment including how structures are constructed, used, and the social and symbolic importance of architecture within these communities. This session takes a broad, cross-cultural approach to understanding hunter-gatherer houses, exploring the use of architecture across time and space.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)

Documents
  • Archaic and Paleoindian Houses in the Southern Rocky Mountains (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Stiger.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A series of archaeological structures ranging in date from Folsom (10,400 RYBP) to Middle Archaic (3000 RYBP) have been excavated in a high mountain valley in central Colorado. These prehistoric residences show temporal changes in architecture and artifact assemblages which hint at variability in social...

  • Architecture and Human Behavior at a Folsom Period Residential Camp (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Morgan. Brian Andrews.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mountaineer Folsom site, located in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, contains evidence of at least four substantial habitation structures occupied over the course of at least one winter residence. The structures required significant energetic investment in their construction and were...

  • Built Environments in the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Clark.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hunter-gatherers are mobile because their resources shift based on season or by ecological zone. This mobility means that their built environments are ephemeral and their mark on the land is light. Many of the traces of structures or land modifications are therefore invisible within the archaeological...

  • Built Environments of Epipalaeolithic Southwest Asia: A Life History of Place (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A place is structured and given meaning through human experiences at both individual and group levels. Places are created through repeated human action and made tangible in the landscape by material culture. These places become part of a built environment, marked by daily routines or habitus. At the...

  • Early Thule Inuit Architecture in the Arctic: An Anchor in Migration and Movement (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Norman.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During and for a few hundred years after the Thule Inuit migration around AD 1200, early Thule groups in the North American Arctic established village sites in new locations where they maintained a similarity in ceremonial architecture, house form, and division of space, despite the variability of...

  • Experimental Construction of Hunter-Gatherer Residential Features, Mobility, and the Costs of Occupying "Persistent Places" (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morgan. Dallin Webb. Kari Sprengeler. Marielle Black. Nicole George.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Temporal and caloric costs associated with building common hunter-gatherer residential features – housefloors, housepits, storage pits, rock rings, and various types of wickiups – are presented based on experimental construction of these types of features. For subsurface features, excavation rates and...

  • Five Seasons with the Dukha: House Structure among Nomadic Herders (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew O'Brien. Todd A. Surovell. Randy Haas.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Houses are common structures, and the importance and distinction of domestic space has been researched a great detail through ethnography. Yet, how these common structures shape the spatial behavior of residents is often not clearly articulated. This is a particular concern for ephemeral structures that...

  • Give Me Shelter: Reverse Engineering a Paleolithic Home (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Klint Janulis. Cory Stade. Mansoor Ahmad.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans today are ubiquitous shelter makers but despite this, relatively little is known about the construction of the earliest shelters built by palaeolithic humans. While there is possible evidence for earlier shelters, archaeological evidence in Europe and Asia indicate shelter construction had become...

  • A Space for Living and Dying: The Life-History of Kharaneh IV Structures (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Macdonald. Lisa Maher.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The built environment delineates space for daily actions and important moments. Separating the occupants from the external world, walls can create barriers between the outside or can build communities within them. Recent excavations of two structures at Kharaneh IV, an Epipalaeolithic site in Eastern...

  • Why Build When There Are Caves? Investigating the Construction and Use of a Stone Structure in Pleistocene France (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Sterling. Sébastien Lacombe.

    This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene in Western Europe is the origin of the idea of the "caveman," and the majority of research has historically focused on cave sites. In regions of Europe where caves are not present but archaeological evidence is, the assumption is that people used lightweight ephemeral shelters such as...