Archaeology and Ethnobiology: Long-Term Perspectives on Biocultural Diversity
Archaeology and Ethnobiology: Long-Term Perspectives on Biocultural Diversity
Session Type:
Oral
Session Date and Time:
Thursday, 21 May, 2026 - 13:40 to 16:20
Primary Organizer/Session Chair:
Jonathan Dombrosky
Email address:
Names of Additional Organizers:
Martin Welker, Arizona State Museum
Humans, plants, and animals have co-existed and impacted one another for millennia. Archaeology provides a distinct view of the entangled histories of people, animals, plants, and ecosystems over long timescales offering insights into these relationships and the effects of co-existence. This session explores how zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data illuminate biocultural diversity across many different environments, from waterscapes to landscapes. We invite papers that explore how human-environment interactions reveal enduring patterns of biocultural diversity, adaptation, and resilience.
Presentations
Abstract
13:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Pastoralism’s spread through Kenya may have been slowed by disease challenges presented to livestock by wild taxa. One such disease, wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), is carried by wildebeest and extremely fatal to cattle. As herders moved south into the native range of wildebeest, WD-MCF may have kept cattle populations low, hindering pastoral expansion into central Kenya. Today, wildebeest have well-known distributions and annual migration patterns, but archaeological sites document their presence outside of their current range. Extirpation of wildebeest populations by food-producing populations from the prime grazing areas of the Central Rift Valley is one likely cause of their shifting biogeography over time. Carbon, oxygen, and strontium stable isotope analysis of sequentially sampled wildebeest molars from archaeological sites spanning the Holocene reveal shifts in wildebeest distributions and mobility as herding spread throughout East Africa.
14:00
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Small-bodied fish (<15 cm TL) play key ecological and cultural roles in Taiwan today, most visibly through their whitebait fishery. Yet their contribution to prehistoric subsistence has remained largely invisible in zooarchaeological research. This study addresses this gap by integrating a novel fine-recovery zooarchaeological method with a systematic compilation of archived ethnographic records on small-fish use. Analysis of archaeological sediments from the Hepingdao B site in northern Taiwan recovered a highly diverse assemblage of 47 taxa dominated by small-bodied species. Ethnographic archival research documented 77 small-bodied taxa exploited across three Indigenous groups. Comparative analysis shows strong overlap between the Late Neolithic assemblage (2800–3300 BP) and contemporary Indigenous fisheries, indicating deep historical roots of specialized, broad-spectrum fishing centered on small-bodied taxa. These findings challenge long-held assumptions that Austronesian fisheries prioritized larger-bodied species and highlight enduring traditions of sustainable, multispecies coastal subsistence.
14:20
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Rabbits and hares are ubiquitous in the archaeological and paleontological records of late Quaternary North America, with modern species displaying well-documented habitat preferences. Given their ubiquity and sensitivity to environmental conditions, accurate identification of leporid species in these records has the potential to aid in paleoecological and paleobiogeographical reconstructions. Unfortunately, most species display overlapping skeletal characteristics, and researchers frequently rely on small skeletal reference collections inadequately capture the inter- and intra-species diversity needed to accurately identify their remains to species. To resolve this problem, we developed an osteometric database of known-species leporids sourced from reference collections across the United States and Canada. Using this database, we modeled the distributions of osteometric traits across species to enable probabilistic identifications for archaeological and paleontological bones. Preliminary application of this method to assemblages from Arizona suggests that snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) may have expanded their range over 150 miles south and west during the Little Ice Age.
14:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Inferences about how the environment factors into past migrations in the northern U.S. Southwest have variously relied on diversity metrics from disintegrated plant and animal datasets. However, there are long-standing issues of how to interpret such metrics given different sampling protocols and scales of analysis. In this paper, we reassess these interpretations by examining how multiple measures of plant and animal diversity structure archaeological inferences about human-environment relationships in the Mesa Verde region. Using a large, multisite database curated by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, we evaluate patterns in taxonomic richness, evenness, and assemblage composition across the region and through time. Rather than treating individual taxa as direct environmental proxies, we focus on relationships among diversity estimates and how analytical decisions shape perceived environmental change. Our results highlight the need for relational, biocultural approaches to environmental archaeology that move beyond deterministic narratives of decline and migration.
15:20
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Questions about the sustainability of ancient Maya subsistence focus on the expansion of fields at the expense of the forest. Working with Master Forest Gardeners and leveraging their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Maya house construction, we use LIDAR data and GIS to assess the capacity of the landscape of the ancient city of El Pilar to provide subsistence and housing materials–trees required for posts, beams, and rafters–for 1,925 domestic structures occupied in the Late Classic (600–900 CE). Assessing the El Pilar cropscape in collaboration with Master Forest Gardeners, the 20-year milpa-forest-garden cycle shows that the regenerative milpa system provides not only sufficient land for subsistence, but yields enough trees to construct and maintain all of the structures at El Pilar. Benefitting from TEK, we promote a new ecological narrative that demonstrates the sustainable balance of forests and fields of the ancient Maya.
15:40
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
During the Late Archaic (6000–3000 years before present [BP]) and Early Woodland (3000–2200 years BP) periods, communities on either side of the Southern Appalachians clearly interacted with each other, as attested by the recovery of soapstone vessels in East Tennessee that were sourced in western North Carolina, and similarities in stone tool and ceramic styles between both groups. Yet groups in East Tennessee appear to have cultivated native crops earlier than their neighbors, with greater recovery of seed crops from Late Archaic sites. Here we compare changes in plant use and land use in both regions during these two periods to tease out nuances in groups’ decisions to invest in native crops in the Ridge and Valley versus the Blue Ridge Mountain region, and the roles that waterways played in this process.
16:00
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The United States Forest Service is conducting a study of fire use as a land management tool to maintain woodland and savannah ecosystems under the Southern Tier Oak Restoration Initiative (STORI). As part of this project, a University of Tennessee Knoxville team is studying paleoenvironmental proxies to reconstruct past vegetation change relative to changing fire regimes and land use. To this end, this paper presents analyses of phytoliths from a soil core from Cupola Pond in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri and situates the results in the context of Indigenous fire stewardship and biodiversity among Eastern Woodlands landscapes.
Presentations
| Abstract | |
|---|---|
| 13:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Pastoralism’s spread through Kenya may have been slowed by disease challenges presented to livestock by wild taxa. One such disease, wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), is carried by wildebeest and extremely fatal to cattle. As herders moved south into the native range of wildebeest, WD-MCF may have kept cattle populations low, hindering pastoral expansion into central Kenya. Today, wildebeest have well-known distributions and annual migration patterns, but archaeological sites document their presence outside of their current range. Extirpation of wildebeest populations by food-producing populations from the prime grazing areas of the Central Rift Valley is one likely cause of their shifting biogeography over time. Carbon, oxygen, and strontium stable isotope analysis of sequentially sampled wildebeest molars from archaeological sites spanning the Holocene reveal shifts in wildebeest distributions and mobility as herding spread throughout East Africa. |
| 14:00 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Small-bodied fish (<15 cm TL) play key ecological and cultural roles in Taiwan today, most visibly through their whitebait fishery. Yet their contribution to prehistoric subsistence has remained largely invisible in zooarchaeological research. This study addresses this gap by integrating a novel fine-recovery zooarchaeological method with a systematic compilation of archived ethnographic records on small-fish use. Analysis of archaeological sediments from the Hepingdao B site in northern Taiwan recovered a highly diverse assemblage of 47 taxa dominated by small-bodied species. Ethnographic archival research documented 77 small-bodied taxa exploited across three Indigenous groups. Comparative analysis shows strong overlap between the Late Neolithic assemblage (2800–3300 BP) and contemporary Indigenous fisheries, indicating deep historical roots of specialized, broad-spectrum fishing centered on small-bodied taxa. These findings challenge long-held assumptions that Austronesian fisheries prioritized larger-bodied species and highlight enduring traditions of sustainable, multispecies coastal subsistence. |
| 14:20 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Rabbits and hares are ubiquitous in the archaeological and paleontological records of late Quaternary North America, with modern species displaying well-documented habitat preferences. Given their ubiquity and sensitivity to environmental conditions, accurate identification of leporid species in these records has the potential to aid in paleoecological and paleobiogeographical reconstructions. Unfortunately, most species display overlapping skeletal characteristics, and researchers frequently rely on small skeletal reference collections inadequately capture the inter- and intra-species diversity needed to accurately identify their remains to species. To resolve this problem, we developed an osteometric database of known-species leporids sourced from reference collections across the United States and Canada. Using this database, we modeled the distributions of osteometric traits across species to enable probabilistic identifications for archaeological and paleontological bones. Preliminary application of this method to assemblages from Arizona suggests that snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) may have expanded their range over 150 miles south and west during the Little Ice Age. |
| 14:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Inferences about how the environment factors into past migrations in the northern U.S. Southwest have variously relied on diversity metrics from disintegrated plant and animal datasets. However, there are long-standing issues of how to interpret such metrics given different sampling protocols and scales of analysis. In this paper, we reassess these interpretations by examining how multiple measures of plant and animal diversity structure archaeological inferences about human-environment relationships in the Mesa Verde region. Using a large, multisite database curated by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, we evaluate patterns in taxonomic richness, evenness, and assemblage composition across the region and through time. Rather than treating individual taxa as direct environmental proxies, we focus on relationships among diversity estimates and how analytical decisions shape perceived environmental change. Our results highlight the need for relational, biocultural approaches to environmental archaeology that move beyond deterministic narratives of decline and migration. |
| 15:20 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
Questions about the sustainability of ancient Maya subsistence focus on the expansion of fields at the expense of the forest. Working with Master Forest Gardeners and leveraging their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Maya house construction, we use LIDAR data and GIS to assess the capacity of the landscape of the ancient city of El Pilar to provide subsistence and housing materials–trees required for posts, beams, and rafters–for 1,925 domestic structures occupied in the Late Classic (600–900 CE). Assessing the El Pilar cropscape in collaboration with Master Forest Gardeners, the 20-year milpa-forest-garden cycle shows that the regenerative milpa system provides not only sufficient land for subsistence, but yields enough trees to construct and maintain all of the structures at El Pilar. Benefitting from TEK, we promote a new ecological narrative that demonstrates the sustainable balance of forests and fields of the ancient Maya. |
| 15:40 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
During the Late Archaic (6000–3000 years before present [BP]) and Early Woodland (3000–2200 years BP) periods, communities on either side of the Southern Appalachians clearly interacted with each other, as attested by the recovery of soapstone vessels in East Tennessee that were sourced in western North Carolina, and similarities in stone tool and ceramic styles between both groups. Yet groups in East Tennessee appear to have cultivated native crops earlier than their neighbors, with greater recovery of seed crops from Late Archaic sites. Here we compare changes in plant use and land use in both regions during these two periods to tease out nuances in groups’ decisions to invest in native crops in the Ridge and Valley versus the Blue Ridge Mountain region, and the roles that waterways played in this process. |
| 16:00 |
Presentation Format:
Oral (in-person)
The United States Forest Service is conducting a study of fire use as a land management tool to maintain woodland and savannah ecosystems under the Southern Tier Oak Restoration Initiative (STORI). As part of this project, a University of Tennessee Knoxville team is studying paleoenvironmental proxies to reconstruct past vegetation change relative to changing fire regimes and land use. To this end, this paper presents analyses of phytoliths from a soil core from Cupola Pond in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri and situates the results in the context of Indigenous fire stewardship and biodiversity among Eastern Woodlands landscapes. |