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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Stratigraphic Architecture Of Pozuelo Mounds As Revealed By Earth Resistivity Tomography, Caeli Connolly
Stratigraphic Architecture Of Pozuelo Mounds As Revealed By Earth Resistivity Tomography, Caeli Connolly
Honors College
This study is a geoarchaeological analysis using earth resistance tomography (ERT) surveys of two of four mounds at Pozuelo (Formative Period, cal yr 3000 BP) in the Chincha Valley of coastal, southern Peru. Layers identified in the subsurface were to determine the presence or absence of regional continuity between the mounds. This effort is part of a larger investigation examining the paleoenvironmental setting of the site, and its influence on site location and use. Ten earth resistance tomography profiles were collected using an ABEM Terrameter LS2 and 81 pin array. These profiles were then topographically corrected using topographic survey data …
Late Classic Soil Conservation And Agricultural Production In The Three Rivers Region, Byron Smith, Stanton Morse
Late Classic Soil Conservation And Agricultural Production In The Three Rivers Region, Byron Smith, Stanton Morse
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations
Agricultural production during the Classic Period (c.1,700 to 1050 BP) in the Central Maya Lowlands was comprised of a variety of techniques that were used to satisfy dietary needs and to stimulate its subsistence economy. The complexity of those methods was a consequence of a variable topography and previous forest management practices that likely resulted in wide-spread deforestation, and subsequently large-scale erosion which limited arable land. The Classic Maya solution to limitations in arable land, augmented by increased erosion seems to have come in the form of geotechnical constructions placed in a variety of positions along the contours of hillsides …
Middle To Late Holocene (7200-2900 Cal. Bp) Archaeological Site Formation Processes At Crumps Sink And The Origins Of Anthropogenic Environments In Central Kentucky, Usa, Justin Nels Carlson
Middle To Late Holocene (7200-2900 Cal. Bp) Archaeological Site Formation Processes At Crumps Sink And The Origins Of Anthropogenic Environments In Central Kentucky, Usa, Justin Nels Carlson
Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology
Though some researchers have argued that the Big Barrens grasslands of Kentucky were the product of anthropogenic land clearing practices by Native Americans, heretofore, this hypothesis had not been tested archaeologically. More work was needed to refine chronologies of fire activity in the region, determine the extent to which humans played a role in the process, and integrate these findings with the paleoenvironmental and archaeological record. With these goals in mind, I conducted archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations at Crumps Sink in the Sinkhole Plain of Kentucky. The archaeological record and site formation history of Crumps Sink were compared with environmental …
Utilizing Ground-Penetrating Radar In The Delineation And Cultural Resource Management Of Eroding Maine Coastal Shell Middens, Jacquelynn F. Miller
Utilizing Ground-Penetrating Radar In The Delineation And Cultural Resource Management Of Eroding Maine Coastal Shell Middens, Jacquelynn F. Miller
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Shell middens along the Maine coast archive up to 5000 years of cultural and climatic change, but the record is continually and rapidly lost to the sea through climate-driven coastal erosion and sea-level rise. These sites were constructed by the ancestors of Maine Tribes, and are composed of centimeters to meters of clam (Mya arenaria) and/or oyster (Crassostrea virginica) shells, other faunal remains, and cultural materials. Shell middens record human interaction with the environment and early coastal occupation and adaptation. The faunal remains reflect paleoenvironmental conditions and the distribution of extinct and extant forage-species along the western Gulf of Maine. …
Documentation Of Cultural Landscape Alteration At The Heritage Mounds Site, Georgia, Shannon Sullivan
Documentation Of Cultural Landscape Alteration At The Heritage Mounds Site, Georgia, Shannon Sullivan
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
This project used geoarchaeological techniques to examine how humans impacted the landscape at the middle Mississippian archaeological site Heritage Mounds (9DU2), in Dougherty County, Georgia, specifically looking at a borrow pit and a plaza. The site was the civic and ceremonial capital of the Capachequi territory, occupied at two separate times between AD 1250 – 1700. At the site soil samples were collected from two excavation units and two wetland cores. The units were for analysis of the plaza, and the cores were for analysis of the Mound A borrow pit. The samples were used for particle size and chemical …
The Origin Of Dark Mats At The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45pi408) Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, Sean Stcherbinine
The Origin Of Dark Mats At The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45pi408) Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, Sean Stcherbinine
All Master's Theses
The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site is a precontact archaeological site located in the upland forest soils of Mount Rainier National Park. Site stratigraphy is complicated, consisting of tephra deposits from mostly known origins that are intercalated with dark sediments of unknown origin, referred to here as dark mats. Precontact occupation has been split previously into two components based on the ambiguous depositional history of the dark mats, notably their unknown parent material, depositional environment, and relationship with adjacent tephra strata. Stratigraphic samples from excavation units, features, and one off-site excavation unit was used to investigate these data gaps. Grain …
A Geoarchaeological Analysis Of Ground Stone Tools And Architectural Materials From Mitrou, East Lokris, Greece, Lee Bailey Anderson
A Geoarchaeological Analysis Of Ground Stone Tools And Architectural Materials From Mitrou, East Lokris, Greece, Lee Bailey Anderson
Masters Theses
Important but seldom asked questions in the study of practice in Bronze Age Aegean society (ca. 3100-1100 B.C.) pertain to the acquisition and usage of stone material in architecture and ground stone tools. My main research questions are, “How did people’s choice of stone material change over time?” and “Why did stone usage change over time?” During the 2013 and 2014 study seasons at Mitrou, I studied the stone inclusions in clayey architectural materials, as well as stone types used in the site’s architecture, and stone types used for ground stone tools at the site. My geological identifications allowed me …
Los Morteros: Early Monumentality And Environmental Change In The Lower Chao Valley, Northern Peruvian Coast, Ana Cecilia Mauricio Llonto
Los Morteros: Early Monumentality And Environmental Change In The Lower Chao Valley, Northern Peruvian Coast, Ana Cecilia Mauricio Llonto
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This doctoral dissertation presents the results of archaeological and geoarchaeological studies carried out at the site of Los Morteros and the Archaeological Complex of Pampa de las Salinas, lower Chao Valley, North Coast of Peru, between September 2012 and July 2014. This research focuses on the study of the mound-shaped site of Los Morteros and the environmental contexts in which this site developed. Previous excavations at the site considered Los Morteros as a “stabilized dune” whose top was used as cemetery for pre-pottery people around cal. 5000 B.P (Cardenas 1995, 1999). However, geo-radar explorations of the mound in 2006 and …
Landscape Legacies Of Sugarcane Monoculture At Betty's Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies, Suzanna M. Pratt
Landscape Legacies Of Sugarcane Monoculture At Betty's Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies, Suzanna M. Pratt
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Sugarcane cultivation has played a key role in the development of the Caribbean since the seventeenth century A.D. The Eastern Caribbean island of Antigua in the West Indies was almost exclusively dedicated to sugarcane monoculture from the mid-1600s until its independence from Britain in 1981. This research seeks to better understand the landscape legacies left by long-term sugarcane monoculture at the site of Betty's Hope Plantation in Antigua. This study creates a 400-year simulation of crop yields using the USDA's Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC), and evaluates the simulated trajectory of landscape change using historical information about the plantation's agricultural …
Cultural Implications Of Late Quaternary Environmental Change In Northeastern Texas, Michael B. Collins, C. Britt Bousman
Cultural Implications Of Late Quaternary Environmental Change In Northeastern Texas, Michael B. Collins, C. Britt Bousman
CRHR Research Reports
Northeastern Texas is one of the most intensely studied archaeological regions of the state, principally for the two reasons that (1) archaeologically-rich Caddoan manifestations have long attracted interest and (2) many large land-modifying projects, such as reservoirs and strip mines, have occasioned environmental studies which include investigations of cultural resources. This greater amount of activity relative to other regions in the state has generally prevailed for more than a century (Guy 1990) and prospects are good that archaeologists will continue to intensely research the area in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, however, they will be hard-pressed to keep pace with the …
(Re)Constructing The Sacred: Landscape Geoarchaeology At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras
(Re)Constructing The Sacred: Landscape Geoarchaeology At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
Chavín de Huántar is a first millennium B.C.E. Central Andean ceremonial center set in a steep mountainous landscape that is at once dynamic and, traditional Andean belief systems would suggest, sacred and animate. Landscape geoarchaeology at the site serves to examine both of these factors, characterizing the site’s dynamic environment while also examining the ways in which Chavín’s inhabitants interacted with their fraught surroundings. Using mapping of geomorphic hazards, the character and chronology of the site’s construction and expansion, and ethnohistoric information on the relationships of indigenous Andean peoples to their environments, I discuss ways of examining this interaction. Landscape …
Geoarchaeology Of The Orontes River Floodplain Surrounding Tell Qarqur, Syria, Anna Flora Wieser
Geoarchaeology Of The Orontes River Floodplain Surrounding Tell Qarqur, Syria, Anna Flora Wieser
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This project combines geoarchaeological soil description and GIS analysis of archaeological site distribution to investigate the history of marsh formation in the northern Ghab Basin, located within the Orontes River Valley of western Syria. Tell Qarqur, the archaeological site around which this project is focused, has a continuous occupational sequence throughout the Holocene. Annual inundation of the site by seasonal marshlands suggests that the marsh was either smaller or non-existent in the past, but its history remains unknown. The objectives of this investigation are to interpret the nature of depositional environments, particularly fluvial action, in the vicinity of Tell Qarqur, …
Plant Remains, Investment Strategies, And Site Processes: Two Sites Along The Nolichucky River In Greene County, Tennessee, Jessie Luella Johanson
Plant Remains, Investment Strategies, And Site Processes: Two Sites Along The Nolichucky River In Greene County, Tennessee, Jessie Luella Johanson
Masters Theses
Sites 40GN228 and 40GN229, located in Greene County, Tennessee, provide a record of subsistence change and variation in landscape management practices spanning from the Late Paleoindian to the Pisgah phase of the Mississippian period. The botanical remains from these sites detail changing plant-human relationships over a 12,000-year time span in the upper Ridge and Valley of eastern Tennessee. The expansive temporal and spatial scale of the two sites presented an opportunity to evaluate the plant assemblages on several levels. The substantial cultural deposits allowed a synchronic and diachronic look into plant use. In addition, the geographic proximity of the two …
The Character And Use Of The Soros Hill Obsidian Source, Antiparos (Greece), Tristan Carter, Daniel A. Contreras
The Character And Use Of The Soros Hill Obsidian Source, Antiparos (Greece), Tristan Carter, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
This article details the geological and elemental character of the obsidian from the Soros Hill source on the Cycladic island of Antiparos, Greece. EDXRF was used to analyse 40 geological geo-referenced samples. The products are clearly chemically discriminated from those of the other Aegean sources, and those from the Carpathians and central Anatolia. While the obsidian is of excellent tool-making quality, the small size of its nodules seems to have made it a less attractive raw material, attested at only a handful of prehistoric sites in the central Cyclades.
Geoarcheology In North-Central Texas: A Framework For Archeological Investigation, And Cultural Resource Management In The Fort Worth Highway District, James T. Abbott
Geoarcheology In North-Central Texas: A Framework For Archeological Investigation, And Cultural Resource Management In The Fort Worth Highway District, James T. Abbott
Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State
This document represents an examination of geoarcheological issues affecting a nine– county area in and around Fort Worth, Texas. The study area includes Tarrant, Wise, Jack, Parker, Palo Pinto, Erath, Hood, Somervell, and Johnson Counties (Figure1–1), which collectively make up the Fort Worth District, a regional administrative entity of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). This study represents the second phase of a district– focused geoarcheological program being implemented at TxDOT. A similar study of the Houston District was published previously (Abbott 2001a), and studies of other districts are planned. The current study is intended to familiarize archeologists, planners, and …
Recalibrated Chronological Framework For Texas Archaeology-Geoarchaeology, Ken L. Lawrence
Recalibrated Chronological Framework For Texas Archaeology-Geoarchaeology, Ken L. Lawrence
Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State
Radiocarbon assays from select archaeological-geoarchaeological research projects within Texas river basins were compiled and recalibrated using the same calibration curve (i.e., INTCAL09). Chronometric data from investigations within the Nueces, San Antonio, Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity River basins were uniformly calibrated to construct a consistent chronological framework. Once calibrated, the analogous chronometric data were then used to compare drainage basins, paleoenvironmental data, and cultural chronologies across Texas and the region. These comparisons revealed four periods (Synchronous Events I–IV) in the Holocene that occurred simultaneously within all of the examined drainage basins. Synchronous Event I dating to 8,750–8,250 cal yr BP (~6800–6300 …
Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras
Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras
The landscape around the prehistoric Peruvian ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar has undergone extensive geomorphic and anthropogenic change since the beginning of monumental construction at the site in approximately 1200 BCE. Archaeological and geomorphic stratigraphy from the site and its near periphery provide the data necessary to characterize these changes in detail. This paper reports on the use of GIS-based interpolation tools to approximate a complex prehistoric land surface using unevenly scattered point data. Such an interpolated surface serves as the basis for the reconstruction of the pre- Chavin landscape and assessment of landscape change contemporary with the site.
Implications Of The Fluvial History Of The Wacheqsa River For Hydrologic Engineering And Water Use At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras, David K. Keefer
Implications Of The Fluvial History Of The Wacheqsa River For Hydrologic Engineering And Water Use At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras, David K. Keefer
Daniel A. Contreras
Channeling of water through a variety of architectural features represents a significant engineering investment at the first millennium B.C. ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar in the Peruvian Central Andes. The site contains extensive evidence of the manipulation of water, apparently for diverse purposes. The present configuration of the two local rivers, however, keeps available water approximately 9m below the highest level of water-bearing infrastructure in the site. Geomorphic and archaeological investigation of the fluvial history of the Wacheqsa River has revealed evidence that the Chavín-era configuration of the Wacheqsa River was different. A substantially higher water level, likely the …
Sediment Analysis Of Two Archaeological Sites In The Deception Pass Area, Fidalgo Island, Washington: A Geoarchaeological Approach, Shelby Anderson
Sediment Analysis Of Two Archaeological Sites In The Deception Pass Area, Fidalgo Island, Washington: A Geoarchaeological Approach, Shelby Anderson
WWU Honors College Senior Projects
The Western Washington University’s Field School (1999 and 2000 seasons) excavated two prehistoric shell midden sites located on Lighthouse Point in the Deception Pass area, Washington. A geoarchaeological approach was taken in studying site depositional processes; grain size analysis and study of sedimentary structures present in excavation profiles provided information about both natural and cultural deposition at site SK-144 and SK-46. Grain size analysis shows that angular, unconsolidated and poorly sorted colluvial sediments compose the lower beds of SK-46. While it is thought that colluvial sediments also underlie SK-144, difficulty relocating where samples were taken from makes testing this impossible. …