Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions

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 "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, advancements in geoarchaeology and soil micromorphology as well as other complementary analyses from environmental archaeology (e.g., geochemistry, palynology, geochronology) have aided in reconstructing complex histories of earthen constructions, such as mounds, platform surfaces, enclosures, and terraces. Innovative analyses have revealed building materials and techniques and episodes in their construction, maintenance, and uses, as well as past environmental conditions and changes. Furthermore, micromorphology has revealed taphonomic and pedogenic processes that alter their preservation. Other recent developments in geoarchaeology that combine techniques of soil micromorphology with geochronology (e.g., radiocarbon and luminescence dating) offer promising avenues to address major challenges in providing absolute dates for earthen-built structures, including their construction phases, events of maintenance and other associated human activities, environmental changes, and postdepositional alterations. Geoarchaeology and soil micromorphology, through the identification of construction materials and techniques and their absolute dating, reveal cultural choices and meaning behind these prominent, often multigenerational, landscape features and associated human activities. This session serves as a platform for researchers to present on novel applications of geoarchaeology and soil micromorphology, regardless of temporal or geographic focus, for advancing the identification and interpretation of sociocultural processes behind comparative earthen-built constructions.

Other Keywords
Geoarchaeology • Architecture • Mississippian • Bronze Age • Cultural Resource Management • Terraces • Micromorphology • Landscape Archaeology • Woodland • Human-environment interactions

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Republic of Turkey (Country) • Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Country) • State of Israel (Country) • Lebanese Republic (Country) • Syrian Arab Republic (Country) • West Bank (Country) • North America (Continent) • Republic of Cyprus (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Assessing the Nature and Pace of Platform Mound Construction in Cahokia's Ramey Field (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Stauffer.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. First detected by Charles Bareis in 1969 in Cahokia’s Ramey Field tract, Mound 17 (the Bareis Mound) was partially exposed beneath artificially mixed plaza fills, immediately west of the palisade wall that bounds the eastern extremity of the site core. Following an analysis of Bareis’s...

  • Birds, Circles, and Landscapes Enclosed with Soil: Geoarchaeology at the Eastern Edge of Pinson Mounds, Tennessee, USA (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lia Kitteringham. Caroline Graham. Abhishek Sathiakumar. Edward Henry.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pinson Mounds is a large Middle Woodland monument complex centrally located between two other mound centers in west Tennessee. Despite intermittent archaeological research, the Eastern Precinct of Pinson Mounds has remained understudied compared to earthen monuments situated throughout...

  • Effects of Rainfall Patterns on the Distribution and Prevalence of Earthen Terraces (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Plekhov.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Earthen agricultural terraces are prevalent worldwide and have continued to be built and used for millennia. Yet relative to their stone-faced counterparts, earthen terraces are often characterized as less intensive and productive, requiring less time, labor, and material resources to...

  • Micromorphology of Earthen Architecture at Palaikastro, Crete (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Kulick.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent geoarchaeological studies of earthen architecture have demonstrated the social and environmental information that may be gained from combined macroscopic, microscopic, and elemental analyses of mudbricks and degraded building materials. Micromorphology can elucidate construction...

  • Terrace Construction and Use across Five Centuries at Ollantaytambo, Peru (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Raymond Hunter.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists are increasingly examining remains from the past, including durable landscape features such as terraces, earthen mounds, and seemingly “abandoned” sites, in terms that query not just their initial construction, but also ongoing use and reoccupation. In this paper, I...

  • Toward a Social Geoarchaeology of Aegean Burial and Ritual at Eleon, Greece (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Gaggioli.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, geoarchaeological and soil micromorphological analyses have aided in reconstructing the complex histories of funerary burial and ritual in the Mediterranean. For the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project in Greece, geoarchaeological work has investigated a burial...

  • Unearthing Earthen Architecture: A Geoarchaeological and Environmental Perspective (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Lorenzon.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation combines the findings of two distinct studies focusing on earthen building materials in different border regions, shedding light on the evolution of earthen architectural practices. The first study delves into the geoarchaeological analysis of earthen materials and...

  • Using Geoarchaeological Methods to Identify Intact Buried Mounds at the Mitchell Site, Illinois (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Rankin. Erin Benson. Michael Kolb.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mitchell site is a major Mississippian (1050–1400 CE) mound center located roughly 10 km north of Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, the largest mound center in North America. At a minimum, Mitchell consisted of 11 earthen mounds; however, only one mound is visible today. In 1960, salvage...