Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Zooarchaeology is a powerful subfield in archaeology that can provide critical information on a wide range of topics including past foodway practices, ancient environments, taphonomic conditions of a site, and the nature of religious and social organizations of the past. Indeed, the analysis of faunal remains is an inherent part of archaeological research, providing vital insights into past peoples and societies. Contemporary archaeological research has become increasingly interdisciplinary through the integration of disparate datasets, perspectives, and techniques from outside disciplines. What can we learn about how human activities shaped past ecosystems through the integration of faunal and ecological datasets? What does the historic and archaeological record tell us about past societies? And how do community-based research methods help answer archaeology’s big questions? The goal of this session is to highlight creative approaches that address fundamental questions about past societies and human culture that cannot be answered by zooarchaeology alone.

Other Keywords
Zooarchaeology • Neolithic • Coastal and Island Archaeology  • Environment and Climate  • Domestication • History Of Archaeology • Theory • Radiocarbon • Archaic • stable isotope analysis

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Utah (State / Territory) • Nevada (State / Territory) • California (State / Territory) • USA (Country) • North America: California and Great Basin • Canada (Country) • Republic of Panama (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates on Terminal Pleistocene Horses from North America Shows Synchronous Local Extirpation and Overlap with Paleoindian Technocomplexes (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Larkin Chapman.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Absolute dating in archaeology is dominated by radiocarbon dating, a method that is frequently conducted on zooarchaeological material, creating a large and diverse global dataset that is readily accessible. Though radiocarbon dates are certainly valuable on their own, their value extends...

  • Animal Architecture: Historicizing Nonhuman Material Culture (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Newman.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As new research continues to reveal the cognitive richness and social complexity of animal lives and as recently developed technologies expand the materials that can serve as traces of the past (as well as the information that can be gleaned from them), the range of activities and actors that...

  • Boundaries of Interdisciplinarity: Can Zooarchaeology Handle Ontological Diversity? (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Arbuckle.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although cross-cutting disciplinary boundaries from its inception, zooarchaeology has traditionally been most at home among the positivist sciences. As a result, interdisciplinary work has proceeded most easily with science and science-adjacent fields (stable isotopes, aDNA, ecology, etc.) with...

  • Could Large Mammal Faunal Remains Provide Indirect Evidence of Precontact Landscape Management? (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Whitaker.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is widely acknowledged that fire was used throughout the western United States as a landscape management tool. Direct archaeological evidence is rare and successful studies that identify Native American burning rely on multidisciplinary approaches. One such study in California by Lightfoot,...

  • Differences in Procurement of Arctic Fox in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (NWT, Canada) Revealed through Stable Isotope Analysis (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Derian. Paul Szpak.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite their prevalence in zooarchaeological assemblages across Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland), there is a paucity of information in the ethnographic and zooarchaeological literature about Inuit and Paleo-Inuit relationships with arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus). Furthermore, the information...

  • Fish, Fishing, and Ecological Resilience along the Big Sur Coast of California (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Azevedo.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Along the Big Sur coastline, the Salinan and Esselen relied on a relatively consistent repertoire of small and medium-bodied fish species for at least 6,000 years. Decades of systematic excavations have identified the importance of fish, although we are still gathering data on temporal and...

  • From Hunting to Herding in the Lake Titicaca Basin: A Preliminary Investigation of Faunal Assemblages, 9.0–3.5 ka (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Noe. Randy Haas. Mark Aldenderfer.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the sole large-bodied animal domesticate in South America, camelids constituted a central component in Andean socio-economies and were pivotal for the expansion of early complex societies. The timing and nature of domestication, as well as the subsequent spread of husbandry practices,...

  • Neolithic to Bronze Age Human Impact on Island Landscapes and Faunal Communities: Exploring the Wild/Domestic Dichotomy (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Pilaar Birch.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper synthesizes zooarchaeological and stable isotope evidence from the eastern and western Mediterranean to consider the influence of humans on island landscapes and ecosystems from the earliest Neolithic through the Bronze Age. How did the importation of new faunal species, whether...

  • Open Ocean Fisheries of Indigenous California: Origins and Technological Inferences (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugh Radde.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pelagic fishing entails substantial risks and investments in fishing equipment, including sturdy boats, paddles, hooks, lines, nets, and spears. In the context of Indigenous California, this fishing practice has been linked to population growth and the evolution of fishing technologies over the...

  • Paleozoological Baselines Inform Climate Change and Help to Restore Indigenous Socioecological Systems: A Case Study from the Bear River Basin, UT (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Brian Codding. Tyler Faith. Randall Irmis.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As human impacts on ecosystems accelerate, there is a growing emphasis in conservation planning toward maximizing the capacity of ecosystems to respond to anticipated changes in the near future. Doing so requires understanding how ecosystems responded to past changes (e.g., human impacts,...

  • Taphonomic Analysis with Multisite Big Data in the Central Mesa Verde Region (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Wolverton. Jonathan Dombrosky. Lisa Nagaoka. Susan Ryan.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding taphonomic patterns across large spatial scales can greatly enhance archaeological interpretation. However, standardized data curation across many sites is a significant challenge. Thus, opportunities for taphonomic analyses that employ big multisite datasets are rare. Data...

  • What Lovely Teeth You Have: An Examination of Canid Dental Anomalies and Their Use in Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Welker.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A survey of over 200 published sources on archaeological domestic dogs in the Americas reveals that dental anomalies, particularly the absence of the first mandibular premolar, are mentioned in Native American domestic dogs with some frequency. They have even been promoted as a means of...