Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Coastal environments have been among the most crucial venues of human evolutionary and cultural history, yet more work is needed for clarifying the relevant archaeological evidence, cultural folklore and traditions, and long-term paleo-environmental sequences of changing coastlines and habitats. This session invites experts in coastal studies to compare their diverse findings about ancient life, lore, and landscapes in the world’s coastal zones, toward understanding the complex natural and cultural histories of coastal environments in a global perspective. The global-scale issues involve how people have adapted with changing coasts through variable periods of stability versus instability in climate, sea level, habitat ecology, cultural use of resource zones, population distributions, cross-regional migrations, and other aspects of urgent applicability in the world today and into the future.
Other Keywords
Coastal and Island Archaeology •
Geoarchaeology •
Zooarchaeology •
Dating Techniques •
Environmental Archaeology •
Shell Midden •
Gender •
Settlement patterns •
Household Archaeology •
Archaic
Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) •
United States of America (Country) •
United Mexican States (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Cayman Islands (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
Republic of Honduras (Country) •
Republic of Cuba (Country) •
Jamaica (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)
- Documents (6)
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Building Islands on the Northwest Coast: Intertwined Histories of Cultural and Geomorphological Landform Development at Garden Island, Prince Rupert Harbour, Canada (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some of the most immense anthropogenic shell-bearing archaeological sites in North America are located in and around the Prince Rupert Harbour, on the northern coast of British Columbia. The largest ancient villages have shell deposits upward of 10 m deep and over a hectare in area, resulting from a combination of...
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Changing Shorelines and Maritime Foraging during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene along California’s Northern Channel Islands: Assessing Settlement Patterns with Chirp Subbottom Data (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The California Northern Channel Islands contain one of the best preserved and most abundant records of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation in all of North America. These records have contributed to our understanding of early coastal migrations, the importance of Paleoindian maritime economies,...
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Mollusk Foraging and Gendered Labor in Seventeenth-Century Guam, Mariana Islands (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological investigation of gendered labor in traditional households in the Mariana Islands is still in a nascent stage of development. Archaeological field school excavations by the University of Guam Micronesian Area Research Center and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa yielded a rich assemblage of...
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Natural-Cultural Contexts of the First Inhabited Seashores of Remote Pacific Oceania: 1500–1100 BC in the Mariana Islands (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People first migrated to the remote-distance Pacific Islands around 1500 BC, and their ancient sites have provided insights into the physical and cultural world that these people had inhabited. Geoarchaeological investigations have clarified the composition of the coastal landforms and ecosystems, availability of...
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New Evidence from the Hokfv-Mocvse Shell Ring (5000–4800 cal BP) on the Emergence of Ring Sites on the South Atlantic Coast (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Circular and arcuate shell rings along the South Atlantic coasts are the vestiges of some of the earliest known villages in North America. Most rings date to the Late Archaic period (5000–3000 BP) and are often associated with early pottery production, providing important insights into Indigenous economies,...
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Sugpiaq Foodways during the Russian Colonial Period: Zooarchaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives from Old Harbor, Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sugpiaq/Alutiiq peoples have millennia-long relationships with the coasts and waters of the Kodiak Archipelago, from which they harvest a variety of marine mammals, fish, shellfish, sea birds, and coastal plants. Harvesting and preparing these foods remain important ways of life in Sugpiaq/Alutiiq villages, such as...