The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The unique ecologies of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCF) throughout the Americas have impacted the human cultures to which they are home from initial human colonization to the present. Decades of research have contributed to understanding these environments biologically, yet they often remain understudied archaeologically. This organized session aims to bring a comparative approach to the study of TMCFs, exploring how human-environment interactions within various tropical and subtropical cloud forests in Latin America have influenced past human populations and cultures, as well as the development of archaeological practice within these regions. This symposium brings together a number of papers exploring archaeology in tropical cloud forests, including social, political, and economic complexity; identity construction; paleoecology; environmental change; subsistence practices; and resilience. Regional contributions include scholarship from Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico, etc. A comparative perspective on archaeology in such regions can greatly enhance our knowledge about human-environment interactions in Tropical Montane Cloud Forests, including implications for conservation of these fragile ecosystems today.