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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Ethnoarchaeology As A Strategy For Building Frames Of Reference For Research Problems, Pei-Lin Yu Jan 2014

Ethnoarchaeology As A Strategy For Building Frames Of Reference For Research Problems, Pei-Lin Yu

Pei-Lin Yu

Ethnoarchaeology is a powerful strategy for structuring archaeological research questions that uses ethnographic information to make inferences about the material residues of past human activities. Ethnoarchaeology is not a theoretical approach per se, so it can investigate research questions generated from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives. Ethnoarchaeological scopes and scales of research are expanding rapidly in geography, chronology, method, and theoretical stance, from variables conditioning the manufacture of traditional technology to the evolution of symbolic expression and ritual behaviors.


Ice Patch Archaeology And Paleoecology In Glacier National Park, Pei-Lin Yu Jan 2014

Ice Patch Archaeology And Paleoecology In Glacier National Park, Pei-Lin Yu

Pei-Lin Yu

A fragment of basket. The tip of a digging stick. The shaft of an ancient spearthrower. Very rarely do such items preserve in the archeological record, but these works of ingenuity and craftsmanship, reflective of past human presence and lifeways in sub-alpine and alpine environments, have been preserved in nearly perfect condition in ice and snow patches for hundreds—or even thousands—of years. Also locked in the ice are traces of vanished ecosystems: animal scat, bones, horns, antlers, fragments of ancient wood, even entire “frozen forests.”


Implications Of Upper Columbia River Lithic Technology For Prehistoric Fishing In The Rockies, Pei-Lin Yu, Jackie M. Cook Jan 2014

Implications Of Upper Columbia River Lithic Technology For Prehistoric Fishing In The Rockies, Pei-Lin Yu, Jackie M. Cook

Pei-Lin Yu

Lithic tools used for fish processing in North America range from hafted lanceolate bifaces and microlithic blades to handheld lunate tools. Despite use wear and residue analysis, archaeologists still lack diagnostic means to identify archaeological fish processing tools at larger scales, resulting in a dearth of knowledge about past fishing behavior. This paper describes and predicts variability in tool shape using ethnographic fish processing data and functional morphology of tabular quartzite tools from Kettle Falls, a major Columbia River salmon fishery. Gender-specific organization of labor during intensive fish harvest and technological behavior associated with large-scale processing practiced by aquatic-focused foragers …


Grappling With Climate Change: Impacts To Heritage Resources, Lauren Meyer, Pei-Lin Yu, Randall Skeirik, Virginia Salazar-Halfmoon Jan 2010

Grappling With Climate Change: Impacts To Heritage Resources, Lauren Meyer, Pei-Lin Yu, Randall Skeirik, Virginia Salazar-Halfmoon

Pei-Lin Yu

17th century adobe walls collapsing at Tumacácori; historic inscriptions rapidly eroding at El Morro; ancestral pueblo field houses at Bandelier impacted by significant soil erosion. Is this deterioration and loss the result of a lack of proper maintenance, a misunderstanding of the needs of fragile site materials, the cumulative effects of 'normal' deterioration, or the result of random and unpredictable natural events and material failures? Could any (or all) of it be related to climate change? As a cultural resource manager, climate change is a difficult matter to grapple with. Can one comfortably say that a wall collapse is the …


Pit Cooking And Intensification Of Subsistence In The American Southwest And Pacific Northwest, Pei-Lin Yu May 2006

Pit Cooking And Intensification Of Subsistence In The American Southwest And Pacific Northwest, Pei-Lin Yu

Pei-Lin Yu

Pit cooking leaves durable, measurable remains and is relevant to the study of resource intensification. This thesis examines pit cooking as a means to explore and quantify the initial conditions for two different modes of intensification: incipient Southwestern food production and semi-sedentized foraging in the inland Pacific Northwest.
First, analytical tools for variability in pit ovens, and a model statement about the role of pit cooking in intensification, were drawn from an ethnographic frame of reference governing pit oven function, physical variation, and contexts of use. Using those tools, hypothetical statements were developed for the relationship between pit oven cooking, …