Don H. Butler- PhD
- Assistant Professor at University of Toronto
Don H. Butler
- PhD
- Assistant Professor at University of Toronto
About
31
Publications
5,219
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220
Citations
Introduction
I am interested in the mechanisms that condition variability in human adaptations to pressured ecosystem services. I work primarily with micro-geoarchaeological evidence for resource use, land use, and local environments. My current research focuses on clarifying eastern Beringian forager responses to changing terminal Pleistocene - early Holocene environs. Projects have received funding from SSHRC, Azrieli Foundation, UofT, UAF, University of Haifa.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2015 - May 2019
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Byzantine-Early Islamic Resource and Waste Management Strategies in the Negev Desert, Israel; community-scale responses collapsing agropastoral niches in the southeastern borderlands of the Byzantine Empire.
August 2019 - May 2021
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Human-Animal Interactions in the Tanana Basin; spatiotemporal interplay among wetland, dune field, shrub-tundra, and forest mosaics; impacts of changing wetland health on local biodiversity; waterfowl availability; diversifying adaptive strategies.
September 2008 - August 2015
Position
- PhD
Description
- Soilscape and site structure analyses of a Taltheilei hunter gatherer site in the Canadian Arctic with the purpose of defining site functions, residential mobility, and seasonality.
Education
September 2008 - September 2015
September 2006 - September 2008
Publications
Publications (31)
Ichthyoarchaeological evidence is uncommon at ancient hunter-gatherer sites from various regions and timeframes. This research contributes to the development of microarchaeological techniques useful for identifying fishing economies in situations where classifiable bones are unavailable. Specifically, traces of heat altered bone mineral in domestic...
Abstract Salmonid resources currently foster socioeconomic prosperity in several nations, yet their importance to many ancient circumpolar societies is poorly understood due to insufficient fish bone preservation at archaeological sites. As a result, there are serious gaps in our knowledge concerning the antiquity of northern salmonid fisheries and...
Significance
Historians have long debated the role of climate in the rise and fall of empires of the 1st millennium CE. Drastic territorial contraction of the Byzantine Empire, societal decline, and beginning of the European Middle Ages have generally been linked to the Islamic conquests of the seventh century. This multidisciplinary archaeological...
We report a new Taltheilei site-type found off the west coast of Hudson Bay in southern Nunavut. The Taltheilei is an archaeological culture that existed in the Barrenlands of the central Canadian Subarctic between 2600 and 300 years ago. Their land use strategies were tethered to the seasonal migrations of the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq caribou herds...
Sustainable resource management is of central importance among agrarian societies in marginal drylands. In the Negev Desert, Israel, research on agropastoral resource management during Late Antiquity emphasizes intramural settlement contexts and landscape features. The importance of hinterland trash deposits as diachronic archives of resource use a...
Despite the ubiquity of obsidian in early Holocene archaeological assemblages across Southeast Alaska, artifact sourcing using bi-plots and Principal Component Analysis has been hampered by the highly correlated geochemistry of two major sources: local Aguada Cove on Suemez Island, and distant Mount Edziza, in the Coast Mountain range. Partial Leas...
We outline progress on the geoarchaeological characterization of loess-paleosol sequences at the Mead (archaeological) and Camp (non-archaeological) sites as paleo-critical zone archives. The critical zone is the outermost veneer of Earth's surface where the lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere flux to make terrestrial life possible. Heterogene...
We report new geoarchaeological evidence for a community-scale response to changing agropastoral economics in the Negev Desert during Late Antiquity (ca. fourth-tenth century CE). Sustainable resource management is of central importance among agrarian societies in marginal drylands. In the Negev, the importance of hinterland trash deposits as archi...
This article presents a systematic methodological comparison of three archaeobotanical proxies (phytoliths, pollen and seeds) applied to an assemblage of dung pellets and corresponding archaeological refuse deposits from Early Islamic contexts at the site of Shivta. We set out with three main methodological questions: one, to evaluate the relative...
Inuit people have interacted with northern Labrador's landscape in countless ways. This research explored their influence on the element compositions of soils beneath winter dwellings at three settlements. The objectives were to expand the range of element enrichments associated with Inuit dwellings and to consider variations within these enrichmen...
