Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology

ISBN-13: 9780387713960 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 484 str.

Opis

A few years ago, one of us was approached by a student who asked if we really knew anything about human behavior from environmental archaeology. This student was taking an environmental archaeology course in which taphonomy and the biases of the techniques and methods used by environmental archae- ogists figured prominently. The goal was to train students to be informed users of environmental data. But the student, quite rightly, wanted to know if beyond taphonomy, recovery biases, and analytical biases, there was anything envir- mental archaeologists could say about the human condition. Her question was the stimulus for the first edition of this volume and continued to guide us as we edited this second edition. Our purpose is to show students and scholars, through a series of case studies, that there are things environmental archaeologists do know about the human-environmental relationship; many of which defy conventional archaeological expectations. To do so, however, we must break with the t- ditional organization of environmental archaeology along disciplinary lines. Environmental archaeology is intrinsically interdisciplinary. The demands of each discipline often mean, however, that specialists become further speci- ized in a very limited technical focus. While almost every environmental technique and method is represented in this edition, they are used as tools, not as ends in themselves.

Spis treści

to Environmental Archaeology.- Environmental Archaeology and Historical Archaeology.- Historical Perspectives On Timbisha Shoshone Land Management Practices Death Valley California.- The Physical Environment and Environmental Change.- Geoarchaeology and Archaeostratigraphy View from a Northwest Coast Shell Midden.- Anatomy of a Southwest Florida Sand Burial Mound Smith Mound at the Pineland Site Complex.- Archaeozoology Art Documents and the Life Assemblage.- Using Land Snails and Freshwater Mussels to Chart Human Transformation of the Landscape an Example from North Mississippi U.S.A.- Climate Change and Archaeology: The Holocene History Of El Niño On The Coast Of Peru.- Human Ecology.- Living on the Margins: Biobehavioral Adaptations in the Western Great Basin.- Pathoecology of Two Ancestral Pueblo Villages.- Nutritional Constraints and Mobility Patterns of Hunter-Gatherers in the Northern Chihuahuan Desert.- Developing Models of Settlement for the Florida Gulf Coast.- Reconstructing Subsistence in the Lowland Tropics A Case Study from the Jama River Valley Manabí Ecuador.- What Seasonal Diet at a Fort Ancient Community Reveals About Coping Mechanisms.- Game Procurement among Temperate Horticulturists The Case for Garden Hunting by the Dolores Anasazi.- The Emergence of Maize Farming in Northwest Mexico.- Social and Economic Strategies.- Meat Consumption and Bone Use in a Mississippian Village.- Who Ate What? Archaeological Food Remains and Cultural Diversity.- Seasonal Slaughter Cycles and Urban Food Supply in the Colonial Chesapeake.- Crop Husbandry Practices in North America’s Eastern Woodlands.- Pets and Camp Followers in the West Indies.

Blurb

The purpose of Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology is to highlight studies addressing significant anthropological issues in the Americas from the perspective of environmental archaeology. Environmental archaeology encompasses the application of biological and geological techniques to the study of human/environmental interactions. Each chapter is an original or revised work by internationally-recognized geoarchaeologists, human biologists, paleoethnobotanists, and zooarchaeologists. Each study demonstrates how and why the information obtained using environmental techniques is important to anthropologists instead of describing, critiquing, or advocating a method. These ethnographic, geological, and biological case studies successfully demonstrate the application of environmental science toward the resolution of questions related to human behavior in the past.

This second edition is based on the 1996 book of the same title. The editors have invited back a number of contributors from the first edition to revise and update their chapter. They also have included new studies in order to cover recent developments in the field or additional pertinent topics. It also includes a separate index listing the scientific and vernacular names of plants and animals referenced in the volume.

These case studies present examples from sites in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Some of the key topics addressed in this unique volume include:

Systemic relationships between people and the physical environments and paleoenvironments in which they live

Relationships among landscapes, resource use, residential patterns, and political alliances

Issues involving human nutrition, health, mobility, sedentism, plant and animal domestication, diet, and trade

Subsistence strategies and resource availability

Intra-community social relations, rural/urban relationships, ethnic identity, and the development of social complexity