Projects | Daniel A. Contreras

Landscape taphonomy in the Bonneville Basin

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Integrating archaeological and geomorphic data to improve reconstruction of past population dynamics by accounting for landscape taphonomy.

PIs: Daniel Contreras (U Florida), Brian Codding (UC Santa Barbara)

This project develops new methods estimating past population sizes, in order to more accurately reconstruct past population dynamics. Accurately reconstructing past population dynamics is critical for addressing many key questions about the human past, including the origins of modern behavior, the emergence of agriculture, and the development of states. Although estimates of past population size are widely employed, current archaeological methods struggle to adequately account for the fact that the available records of past human habitation are biased by local geologic processes, which preserve sites of some ages while destroying others. This can lead to systematic bias in estimates of past population, erroneous reconstructions of past population dynamics, and mistaken interpretations of social processes. This project develops a novel approach that analyzes ages of archaeological sites relative to local frequencies of landforms of varying ages, using the Bonneville Basin (Utah and Nevada) as a test case. By providing a method that is capable of more accurately describing past populations, this project will enable improved analysis of past human responses to environmental changes as well as the potential impacts of human populations on past environments. Archaeologists increasingly turn to assemblages of radiocarbon dates as measures of past population sizes. Improving the accuracy of this technique by accounting for landscape change over time will allow us to explore the drivers of past population dynamics in the Bonneville Basin, especially the interactions between human demography, subsistence adaptations, land use, and environmental change. By developing a new methodology for addressing biases in assemblages of radiocarbon dates, illustrating the potential of the method through this Great Basin case study, and disseminating the tools that other researchers can use to replicate the approach, this project will open new possibilities in reconstructing past population dynamics. In addition, by standardizing an approach and providing computational tools for coupling the archaeological radiocarbon record and local landscape history recorded in landform ages, this work will enable further research that addresses compelling questions including the role of population dynamics in long-term sustainability and resilience, in the onset of the Anthropocene, and in such social transformations as the beginnings of agriculture and urbanism.

Scaling the Central Andes (SCA)

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PIs: Daniel Contreras (U Florida), Kurt Wilson (Lawrence U), Nick Gauthier (U Florida), John Krigbaum (U Florida)

Understanding the effects of climate change in the past and projecting those effects in the future faces persistent challenges of spatiotemporal scale and causal mechanisms. Past climates are rarely reconstructed at temporal and spatial scales most relevant to human experience, complicating investigation of mechanisms that link changes in climate to human consequences. Exploring the social and ecological mechanisms – e.g., diet and food production – that link climate changes and human impacts across scales is crucial for moving beyond correlation to analysis of causation, leveraging information from the past to anticipate future challenges and explore potential solutions. The Scaling the Central Andes (SCA) project is focused on developing methods that can address these multiscalar interactions between human and environmental systems using a 6000-year case study from the Central Andes, a geographically diverse region that spans environmental extremes and is a hotspot of past and future climate change. SCA addresses the challenges of:

Scale, through a state-of-the-art generative machine learning approach that performs simultaneous downscaling and assimilation of climate models and data to reconstruct past climates on human scales, and
Mechanism, through causal inference of the human consequences of climate change based on meta-analyses of proxies for changes in diet, subsistence, settlement, and sociopolitical connectivity for the period ~5000 BCE - 1650 CE.

Research on the Archaeology of Pastoralism in Tanzania (RAPT)

Wed, 27 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

PIs: Kate Grillo (U Florida), Mary Prendergast (Rice U)

The Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project (SNAP)

Wed, 27 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

PI: Tristan Carter (McMaster U)

Chicama Environmental Archaeology Project (CHEAP)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

PIs: Benjamin R. Vining (U Arkansas), Daniel A. Contreras (U Florida)

Programa de Investigación Arqueológica y Conservación Chavín de Huántar (PRIACCH)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

PI: John Rick (Stanford University)

Exploring communal action problems at the 1st millennium BCE monumental center - and World Heritage Site - of Chavín de Huántar in highland Ancash, Peru.