Alex Morrison
Biographic Data
| ID | 3601666 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Morrison |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Morrison |
| SIGNATURE | MORRISON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Archaeological Research Institute |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 131 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Building Partnerships to Identify and Address Wildfire Smoke and Extreme Heat Health Effects in Priority Populations
Background: The health impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are unevenly distributed; climate-sensitive populations are more exposed, more sensitive, and less likely to have the resources to respond. In this article, we describe the process of building a community-academic-local government partnership and conducting a climate survey with climate-sensitive populations to inform city-wide climate adaptation planning efforts in San Fran…
Colluvial slope agriculture in context: An extensive agricultural landscape along the slopes of Punalu‘u Valley, O‘ahu Island, Hawai‘i
Archaeological research on traditional Hawaiian agriculture has generally focused on two primary strategies: irrigated pondfield and intensive dryland cultivation. However, other cultivation strategies, such as colluvial slope agriculture, were practiced but have been less intensively studied and remain poorly understood. To begin to remedy this paucity of information, a joint education and research project between International Archaeological Re…
Experimental assessment of Neo-Assyrian bronze arrowhead penetration: An initial study comparing bilobate versus trilobate morphologies
Early Prehistory of Scotland
East Polynesian Islands as Models of Cultural Divergence: The Case of Rapa Nui and Rapa Iti
The diverse island societies of East Polynesia are well-suited as models for comparative evolutionary analysis. Settled ca. 750 BP by a common ancestral population, colonists of the remote corners of the Pacific shared a pool of cultural traits that included commensal species, language, technology, and other cultural practices. Following colonization however, island populations diverged in language, subsistence practices, degree of territoriality…
The Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database: Initial description and application to settlement pattern studies in the Sāmoan Islands
Jeff Clark's archaeological research on Eastern Tutuila Island provided the first regional scale settlement pattern data in American Samoa that could be meaningfully compared to earlier data drawn from projects on the archipelago's western islands, Savaiʻi and ʻUpolu. Building on Clark's work, in this paper we generate a spatial and temporal geodatabase incorporating 900 archaeological sites and 520 age estimates spanning the entirety of the Sāmo…
A spatiotemporal model of risk and uncertainty for Hawaiian dryland agriculture and its implications for ahupua'a community formation
Archaeological and sedimentological data indicate Lapita settlement on a newly formed coastal plain: Tavua Island, Mamanuca Group, Fiji
The timing and choice of initial settlement location are examined on the small island of Tavua in Fiji’s Mamanuca Group. The mid- to late-Holocene sea-level retreat influenced the island’s coastal landforms through the acceleration of coastal progradation and the production of habitable land. Archaeological, sedimentological, and chronological data are integrated to better understand the island’s settlement and geomorphological history. These dat…
Pre‐contact fish choice and foraging efficiency at Tula, American Sāmoa
Marine foraging is an under‐studied aspect of Sāmoan archaeology, although it clearly played a primary role in subsistence, with implications for settlement and demography. A pair of previous ichthyoarchaeological studies identified general stability in fish exploitation during ∼1500–2000 year sequences. We present a foraging‐theory‐based analysis of fish remains from Tula Village, Tutuila Island. Our results identify a decrease in foraging effic…
Human behavioural ecology and Pacific archaeology
The diverse islands of Oceania are ideal locations for the study of human ecology. Here, we argue that human behavioural ecology (HBE) provides a useful theoretical framework to approach a range of topics in Pacific prehistory, including, but not limited to, subsistence, territoriality, and monumentality. We further stress that the strength of this approach lies in the use of models as heuristic devices, and that HBE is not mutually exclusive fro…
Timing, magnitude and effects of late Holocene sea level drawdown on island habitability, Aitutaki, Cook Islands
Geologist Bill Dickinson argued that prior to late Holocene sea level fall, in many Pacific island settings low‐lying islands were awash, shallow nearshore environments were restricted and human settlement was constrained or sometimes impossible. Stable coastlines and islets of modern configuration only developed after the “cross‐over date”, when declining high‐tide levels fell below mid‐Holocene low‐tide levels, a regionally variable process. We…
Early Prehistoric Maize in Northern Highland Ecuador
The discovery of the fully developed Formative sites of Cotocallao (ca. 3750-2350 cal. B.P.) in the Quito Basin and La Chimba (ca. 2650-1700 cal. B.P.) in the northern highlands of Ecuador has raised questions about their cultural antecedents, which have not been resolved despite decades of archaeological work in the region. Paleoenvironmental coring investigations were conducted at Lake San Pablo in northern highland Ecuador to determine the dat…
Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions (Terra Australis 39)
Although historic sources provide information on recent centuries, archaeology can contribute longer term understandings of pre-industrial marine exploitation in the Indo-Pacific region, providing valuable baseline data for evaluating contemporary ecological trends. This volume contains eleven papers which constitute a diverse but coherent collection on past and present marine
Modelling site formation dynamics: Geoarchaeological, chronometric and statistical approaches to a stratified rockshelter sequence, Polynesia
Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions
This volume contains a total of eleven papers which constitute a diverse but generally coherent collection on past and present marine resource use in the Indo-Pacific region, within a humanecological perspective.The geographical focus extends from Eastern Asia, mainly Japan and Insular Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines) to the tropical Pacific (Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia) with geographically outlying papers on sites in coastal …
Early Human Impacts on Megamolluscs
Examining Causes and Trends in Marine Trophic Level Change: 1500 Years of Fish Exploitation at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa
Excavations at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa reveal a rich cultural deposit spanning approximately 1500 years (1620–150 cal BP). Abundant cultural material was recovered, including a large assemblage of fish remains. We present our analysis of a sample of the fish remains, including a trophic level analysis applied to the assemblage to document patterns in fish community structure and composition. Results indicate relative stabilit…
The Temporal and Spatial Patterning of the Initial Settlement of Sāmoa
Among the Lapita-bearing island groups of the Pacific, Sāmoa is unusual for having a relatively large land area but only one cultural deposit containing Lapita ceramics. Although it has been proposed that additional Lapita settlements may have been distributed along the coasts of much of the archipelago, investigations have not located these deposits nor reliably dated early Polynesian Plainware deposits older than ∼2500 cal BP. We combine a chro…
Investigating shellfish deposition and landscape history at the Natia Beach site, Fiji
Assessing the role of climate change and human predation on marine resources at the Fatu‐ma‐Futi site, Tutuila Island, American Samoa: An Agent Based Model
In the tropical Pacific, climate change has been implicated as a causal variable in the development of a variety of social processes, including resource scarcity, cultural diversification, changes in spatial organization, and conflict. Hypotheses concerning the effects of climatic variability on cultural change can be better evaluated once links between environmental processes and subsistence patterns are established. Here we present data on appr…
Prepare and Participate: Africa's contribution to peacekeeping
“Africa has an indispensable contribution to make in ensuring that 2005 becomes a turning point for the continent, the United Nations and the world.” According to UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan’s statement on January 30th, 2005 to the 4th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of African Union held in Abuja, Nigeria, this contribution includes continued involvement in peacekeeping “when prevention fails, UN peacekeepers, including men and women in unif…
Resources review
For first timers my advice would be to find out all you can about dialysis. Don’t be afraid of it...work around it and take control. You dialyse to live, you don’t live to dialyse. The above quote comes from a patient attending the Renal Unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, many of whom have played a vital role in the development of a new web site: The Kidney Patient Guide. Work done by Dr Peter Rutherford at Wrexham has shown that patients in Renal …
Obituary
The Early Prehistory of Scotland
Bringing together the latest work on the Mesolithic in Scotland and Northern England, this is a fundamental re-assessment of early prehistory from the key researchers in the area. Based firmly on archaeological evidence from recent excavations, this important book also includes work on the environmental background.
The Northward March of Palaeolithic Man in Britain’: An Appreciation of Armand Donald Lacaille
Assessing the role of climate change and human predation on marine resources at the Fatu‐ma‐Futi site, Tutuila Island, American Samoa: An Agent Based Model
In the tropical Pacific, climate change has been implicated as a causal variable in the development of a variety of social processes, including resource scarcity, cultural diversification, changes in spatial organization, and conflict. Hypotheses concerning the effects of climatic variability on cultural change can be better evaluated once links between environmental processes and subsistence patterns are established. Here we present data on appr…
Investigating shellfish deposition and landscape history at the Natia Beach site, Fiji
Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions
This volume contains a total of eleven papers which constitute a diverse but generally coherent collection on past and present marine resource use in the Indo-Pacific region, within a humanecological perspective.The geographical focus extends from Eastern Asia, mainly Japan and Insular Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines) to the tropical Pacific (Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia) with geographically outlying papers on sites in coastal …
Modelling site formation dynamics: Geoarchaeological, chronometric and statistical approaches to a stratified rockshelter sequence, Polynesia
The Temporal and Spatial Patterning of the Initial Settlement of Sāmoa
Among the Lapita-bearing island groups of the Pacific, Sāmoa is unusual for having a relatively large land area but only one cultural deposit containing Lapita ceramics. Although it has been proposed that additional Lapita settlements may have been distributed along the coasts of much of the archipelago, investigations have not located these deposits nor reliably dated early Polynesian Plainware deposits older than ∼2500 cal BP. We combine a chro…
Examining Causes and Trends in Marine Trophic Level Change: 1500 Years of Fish Exploitation at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa
Excavations at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa reveal a rich cultural deposit spanning approximately 1500 years (1620–150 cal BP). Abundant cultural material was recovered, including a large assemblage of fish remains. We present our analysis of a sample of the fish remains, including a trophic level analysis applied to the assemblage to document patterns in fish community structure and composition. Results indicate relative stabilit…
Early Prehistoric Maize in Northern Highland Ecuador
The discovery of the fully developed Formative sites of Cotocallao (ca. 3750-2350 cal. B.P.) in the Quito Basin and La Chimba (ca. 2650-1700 cal. B.P.) in the northern highlands of Ecuador has raised questions about their cultural antecedents, which have not been resolved despite decades of archaeological work in the region. Paleoenvironmental coring investigations were conducted at Lake San Pablo in northern highland Ecuador to determine the dat…
Early Human Impacts on Megamolluscs
Human behavioural ecology and Pacific archaeology
The diverse islands of Oceania are ideal locations for the study of human ecology. Here, we argue that human behavioural ecology (HBE) provides a useful theoretical framework to approach a range of topics in Pacific prehistory, including, but not limited to, subsistence, territoriality, and monumentality. We further stress that the strength of this approach lies in the use of models as heuristic devices, and that HBE is not mutually exclusive fro…
Timing, magnitude and effects of late Holocene sea level drawdown on island habitability, Aitutaki, Cook Islands
Geologist Bill Dickinson argued that prior to late Holocene sea level fall, in many Pacific island settings low‐lying islands were awash, shallow nearshore environments were restricted and human settlement was constrained or sometimes impossible. Stable coastlines and islets of modern configuration only developed after the “cross‐over date”, when declining high‐tide levels fell below mid‐Holocene low‐tide levels, a regionally variable process. We…
Colluvial slope agriculture in context: An extensive agricultural landscape along the slopes of Punalu‘u Valley, O‘ahu Island, Hawai‘i
Archaeological research on traditional Hawaiian agriculture has generally focused on two primary strategies: irrigated pondfield and intensive dryland cultivation. However, other cultivation strategies, such as colluvial slope agriculture, were practiced but have been less intensively studied and remain poorly understood. To begin to remedy this paucity of information, a joint education and research project between International Archaeological Re…
Pre‐contact fish choice and foraging efficiency at Tula, American Sāmoa
Marine foraging is an under‐studied aspect of Sāmoan archaeology, although it clearly played a primary role in subsistence, with implications for settlement and demography. A pair of previous ichthyoarchaeological studies identified general stability in fish exploitation during ∼1500–2000 year sequences. We present a foraging‐theory‐based analysis of fish remains from Tula Village, Tutuila Island. Our results identify a decrease in foraging effic…
Experimental assessment of Neo-Assyrian bronze arrowhead penetration: An initial study comparing bilobate versus trilobate morphologies
The Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database: Initial description and application to settlement pattern studies in the Sāmoan Islands
Jeff Clark's archaeological research on Eastern Tutuila Island provided the first regional scale settlement pattern data in American Samoa that could be meaningfully compared to earlier data drawn from projects on the archipelago's western islands, Savaiʻi and ʻUpolu. Building on Clark's work, in this paper we generate a spatial and temporal geodatabase incorporating 900 archaeological sites and 520 age estimates spanning the entirety of the Sāmo…
A spatiotemporal model of risk and uncertainty for Hawaiian dryland agriculture and its implications for ahupua'a community formation
Archaeological and sedimentological data indicate Lapita settlement on a newly formed coastal plain: Tavua Island, Mamanuca Group, Fiji
The timing and choice of initial settlement location are examined on the small island of Tavua in Fiji’s Mamanuca Group. The mid- to late-Holocene sea-level retreat influenced the island’s coastal landforms through the acceleration of coastal progradation and the production of habitable land. Archaeological, sedimentological, and chronological data are integrated to better understand the island’s settlement and geomorphological history. These dat…
Cist Burials and Food Vessels—some Recent Discoveries and Rediscoveries in Western Scotland
A Bronze Age Burial Site near South Mound, Houston, Renfrewshire
Two Bronze Age Weapons from Mid-Scotland
The Mesolithic Period in South-West Scotland: A Review of the Evidence
First Page
Alexander Fenton, The Shape of the Past, 2: Essays in Scottish Ethnology . 184 + vii pp., 57 figs., John Donald Ltd., Edinburgh, 1986, £12
RCHAMS, Argyll, volume 6: Mid Argyll and Cowal , 234 + XXXVI pp., numerous figures and plates, RCAHMS, Edinburgh, 1988, £57
Nato at Forty: Change, Continuity, & Prospects
Lecture Summaries
Eight lecture summaries:The discovery of a Norse horizontal mill at Orphir, OrkneyBritain and the Mediterranean in Late AntiquityScottish prehistoric 'jet' jewellery: some new workMedieval embroiderersField survey and excavation at Dunbeath, CaithnessThe post-medieval burial vault 1450-1715Post-glacial hunter/gatherers in Europe and their adaptation to changeBrochs: domestic architecture and changing social configurations in prehistoric and Early…
After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the Middle East
The Early Prehistory of Scotland
Bringing together the latest work on the Mesolithic in Scotland and Northern England, this is a fundamental re-assessment of early prehistory from the key researchers in the area. Based firmly on archaeological evidence from recent excavations, this important book also includes work on the environmental background.
The Northward March of Palaeolithic Man in Britain’: An Appreciation of Armand Donald Lacaille
Obituary
Resources review
For first timers my advice would be to find out all you can about dialysis. Don’t be afraid of it...work around it and take control. You dialyse to live, you don’t live to dialyse. The above quote comes from a patient attending the Renal Unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, many of whom have played a vital role in the development of a new web site: The Kidney Patient Guide. Work done by Dr Peter Rutherford at Wrexham has shown that patients in Renal …
Prepare and Participate: Africa's contribution to peacekeeping
“Africa has an indispensable contribution to make in ensuring that 2005 becomes a turning point for the continent, the United Nations and the world.” According to UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan’s statement on January 30th, 2005 to the 4th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of African Union held in Abuja, Nigeria, this contribution includes continued involvement in peacekeeping “when prevention fails, UN peacekeepers, including men and women in unif…
The Temporal and Spatial Patterning of the Initial Settlement of Sāmoa
Among the Lapita-bearing island groups of the Pacific, Sāmoa is unusual for having a relatively large land area but only one cultural deposit containing Lapita ceramics. Although it has been proposed that additional Lapita settlements may have been distributed along the coasts of much of the archipelago, investigations have not located these deposits nor reliably dated early Polynesian Plainware deposits older than ∼2500 cal BP. We combine a chro…
Investigating shellfish deposition and landscape history at the Natia Beach site, Fiji
Assessing the role of climate change and human predation on marine resources at the Fatu‐ma‐Futi site, Tutuila Island, American Samoa: An Agent Based Model
In the tropical Pacific, climate change has been implicated as a causal variable in the development of a variety of social processes, including resource scarcity, cultural diversification, changes in spatial organization, and conflict. Hypotheses concerning the effects of climatic variability on cultural change can be better evaluated once links between environmental processes and subsistence patterns are established. Here we present data on appr…
Examining Causes and Trends in Marine Trophic Level Change: 1500 Years of Fish Exploitation at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa
Excavations at Fatu-ma-Futi, Tutuila Island, American Sāmoa reveal a rich cultural deposit spanning approximately 1500 years (1620–150 cal BP). Abundant cultural material was recovered, including a large assemblage of fish remains. We present our analysis of a sample of the fish remains, including a trophic level analysis applied to the assemblage to document patterns in fish community structure and composition. Results indicate relative stabilit…
Early Human Impacts on Megamolluscs
Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions (Terra Australis 39)
Although historic sources provide information on recent centuries, archaeology can contribute longer term understandings of pre-industrial marine exploitation in the Indo-Pacific region, providing valuable baseline data for evaluating contemporary ecological trends. This volume contains eleven papers which constitute a diverse but coherent collection on past and present marine
Modelling site formation dynamics: Geoarchaeological, chronometric and statistical approaches to a stratified rockshelter sequence, Polynesia
Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions
This volume contains a total of eleven papers which constitute a diverse but generally coherent collection on past and present marine resource use in the Indo-Pacific region, within a humanecological perspective.The geographical focus extends from Eastern Asia, mainly Japan and Insular Southeast Asia (especially the Philippines) to the tropical Pacific (Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia) with geographically outlying papers on sites in coastal …
Timing, magnitude and effects of late Holocene sea level drawdown on island habitability, Aitutaki, Cook Islands
Geologist Bill Dickinson argued that prior to late Holocene sea level fall, in many Pacific island settings low‐lying islands were awash, shallow nearshore environments were restricted and human settlement was constrained or sometimes impossible. Stable coastlines and islets of modern configuration only developed after the “cross‐over date”, when declining high‐tide levels fell below mid‐Holocene low‐tide levels, a regionally variable process. We…
Early Prehistoric Maize in Northern Highland Ecuador
The discovery of the fully developed Formative sites of Cotocallao (ca. 3750-2350 cal. B.P.) in the Quito Basin and La Chimba (ca. 2650-1700 cal. B.P.) in the northern highlands of Ecuador has raised questions about their cultural antecedents, which have not been resolved despite decades of archaeological work in the region. Paleoenvironmental coring investigations were conducted at Lake San Pablo in northern highland Ecuador to determine the dat…
A spatiotemporal model of risk and uncertainty for Hawaiian dryland agriculture and its implications for ahupua'a community formation
Archaeology (27 works) · Geography (26 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (14 works) · History (12 works) · Geology (11 works) · Biology (10 works) · Isotope Analysis in Ecology (9 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Paleontology (5 works)