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SEMINAR: ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES

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Today's date is Thursday, March 28, 2024
ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES : Reconstructing a vanished landscape: a palaecological and paleoethnobotanical investigation from Barrow Island, WA through archaeobotanical analysis. Other events...
Macrobotanical remains, such as charcoal, generate valuable data surrounding past relationships between people and plant communities. People are a part of ecosystems, and the role of the biophysical environment in offering challenges and opportunities to them is fundamental. After all, plants provide subsistence, shape culture and fund technologies. Therefore, understanding the way in which people interacted with their changing environment is essential. This PhD project seminar will focus on the recovery, identification and analysis of archaeobotanical remains, specifically anthracology (or woody charcoal analysis), from rockshelter excavations to be conducted on Barrow Island over the next 3 years as part of an ARC Discovery project lead by Prof. P. Veth. It aims to provide insights into Barrow Island’s past occupant’s use of changing plant resources, such as wood acquisition. Examination of wood gathering, favored taxa and vegetation communities represented in the assemblages will lead to inferences about past peoples movements throughout their surrounding landscape. Importantly, the examination and identification of archaeobotanical remains provide us with a clearer understanding of the vegetation, which past peoples were once connected to, thus acting as a powerful tool for landscape reconstruction. Anthracology is based upon identifying taxa through anatomical characteristics via comparisons to modern reference material. Understanding species availability and frequency of a now vanished landscape, allows us to visualize the submerged plains, which were once linking Barrow Island to the mainland prior to sea level ascends. Such landscape changes and resource availability would most certainly have influenced past peoples movements and use of their surrounding environment. Therefore, this project will examine how arid coastal foragers used the changing landscape; questioning how their mobility patterns would be reflected in their choice of economically significant plant resources.
Speaker(s) Chae Taylor
Location LAW Lecture Room 1
Contact Ben Smith <[email protected]> : 64882097
Start Thu, 16 May 2013 16:00
End Thu, 16 May 2013 17:00
Submitted by Karen Eichorn <[email protected]>
Last Updated Mon, 13 May 2013 08:22
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