North America (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (3,468 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeologists, our ethical obligations include responsibly training future generations of practitioners. Oftentimes, we understand this responsibility as taking the form of training proper field methods, timely and complete reporting of data, and other aspects that deal specifically with the physical aspects of archaeology – artifacts, records, and...
Applying Continuous Process Improvement Methodologies to Evaluate and Rebuild the Air National Guard Cultural Resources Management Program (2018)
The Air National Guard (ANG) Cultural Resources Program oversees historic preservation and tribal consultation for 160+ installations throughout the United States and its Territories. One government official and one CEMML Cooperator manage the program centrally from Joint Base Andrews, MD, but the volume of work has prevented officials from managing resources in a proactive and systematic way. As such, managers are applying the Continuous Process Improvement/Lean Six Sigma methodology to focus...
Applying pXRF Technology to Repatriation at the National Museum of Natural History (2018)
The Anthropology collections at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) have a long history of treatment with pesticides and contact with other materials that contain potentially hazardous elements. When the NMNH Repatriation Office began to use portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) technology, it focused on identifying potentially hazardous elements on archaeology, ethnology, and physical anthropology collections. If identified, the Repatriation Office attempted to determine the source of...
Approaches to Openness: Digital Archaeology Data in Virginia and Public Engagement (2016)
Virginia’s archaeological site inventory contains detailed information on nearly 43,000 sites in datasets maintained by the Department of Historic Resources (State Historic Preservation Office). At times, responsibility to protect sensitive sites from looting and vandalism seems to run counter to providing information to the public about Virginia’s archaeology. But the two are not mutually exclusive. This paper will explore Virginia’s historical approach to archaeological data dissemination with...
Approaches to Sample Selection for Strontium Isotope Testing Within Historic Cemetery Contexts: An Illustrative Example from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project (2017)
Strontium isotope analyses have become a vibrant frontier for historic cemetery research in the United States. Isotopic analyses can make vital contributions to our understanding of the past, particularly in the categories of demographics, temporal refinements, and individual identifications. This analytical method can be understood as a catalyst for research- similar to a catalyst in a chemical reaction. When utilized in combination with multiple lines of evidence, strontium analyses become a...
Aquinnah Past To Present (2018)
The nineteenth century history of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah is a snapshot of continuous Native American presence on Martha’s Vineyard over thousands of years. Residents were placed under state guardians in 1781. Between 1863 and 1878, communal lands were subdivided and distributed among tribal families, and a census of tribal members and professional survey of existing homesteads was completed. Aquinnah ceased to be an Indian reservation with town incorporation in 1870,...
[AR]chaeology of El Presidio de San Francisco: Augmented Reality as a Public Interpretation Tool (2018)
Archaeologists have often eschewed technology as too expensive or superfluous for public outreach efforts. How can we as professionals overcome these long-held ideas and start to bring our projects into the digital age? This paper attempts to answer this question by examining how affordable cutting-edge technology can enhance public interpretation of archaeological resources. Augmented reality and 3D modeling were used in conjunction to visualize long-gone historical structures within the modern...
Arboreal Historical Anchors: Sacred Forests and Memory Making in Southern Benin, West Africa (2013)
The Bight of Benin region is well known as a locale filled with poignant places associated with the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved individuals. This paper follows recent efforts in the region aimed at writing landscape features into deeper historic narratives and exploring them in terms of broader political and economic processes. In so doing, it pushes beyond coastal points of loss and into dynamic cosmopolitan interior places. It argues that the historical and archaeological arc of...
Archaeogaming Theory: Explaining Post-Entanglement Dualist Artifacts (2017)
Archaeogaming, the study of the intersection of archaeology in (and of) video games), explores a unique class of ordinary artifacts that effortlessly occupy both real and virtual worlds. This presentation explains archaeogaming's many branches while providing a new way of discussing digital games, dismissing their appearance as simply media objects, treating them instead as both archaeological artifact and site created by both hardware and software into vehicles of iconoclasm. As archaeologists,...
Archaeological And Archival Investigations Of A Norwegian Farmstead In Bosque County, Texas (2018)
Bosque County, Texas, has a rich history as the most successful Norwegian settlement in the state, attracting immigrants throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Ole Finstad was no exception to this Texas fever; immigrating in 1871 at the age of 51, he acquired 160 acres in Bosque County, built a rock house, and spent his days farming and raising cattle. His descendants continued this tradition for the next 84 years, and the ruins of the original rock house still stand today. This paper...
Archaeological and Geomorphological Investigations along Salado Draw, Lea County, New Mexico. Public Poster (2023)
This is a public audience poster that summarizes multiple facets of a multi-part archaeological and geomorphology study. It is a component of an undertaking entitled Salado Draw Archaeological Survey, Small-scale Excavation, and Geomorphological Characterization, GSA Contract No. GS-10F-0396P. The work was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) as part of research carried out under the Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement,...
Archaeological and Geophysical Investigations of the Tebbs Bend Battlefield, Taylor County, Kentucky (2015)
In 2011 McBride Preservation Services and the Kentucky Archaeological Survey conducted geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations of the Tebbs Bend Civil War Battlefield for the Tebbs Bend-Green River Bridge Battlefield Association and the American Battlefield Protection Program. This investigation consisted of archival research, military terrain analysis, geophysical surveys, and archaeological survey and testing and resulted in the discovery and exposure of sections of the forward...
Archaeological Associations With Extinct Pleistocene Mammals in North America (1984)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Archaeological Considerations In The Study Of The Anthropocene (2016)
The Anthropocene epoch, garnering the interest of geologists and environmental scientists for the past decade, has now entered the archaeological lexicon. As in other disciplines, questions remain about what Anthropocene means and when it began, as well as how it differs from the Holocene. This presentation explores some of these issues and offers a ground-up approach by which conventional approaches in archaeology might be adapted to a reassessment of the human experience and the role of...
An Archaeological Examination of Cookware from the Storm Wreck, 8SJ5459 (2016)
The Storm wreck is an 18th-century Loyalist shipwreck located off St. Augustine, Florida. The shipwreck excavation has been an ongoing focus of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) since 2009. An examination of the iron and copper cookware present on site offers an entryway for the analysis and interpretation of Loyalist intentions and lifeways. These goods were once part of a colonial, capitalistic society and were key items for survival in an intermediary and uncertain time...
An Archaeological Examination of the Human Remains associated with Vasa (2018)
When Vasa sank in 1628, approximately 30 lives were lost. Through the course of the excavation of the ship in the 1950s and 1960s, over 1,500 human bones were recorded and cataloged, which are currently believed to represent 15 individuals. The human remains have been the subject of osteological, odontological, and DNA analyses, though none of these studies have taken into account their archaeological context. This research provides the first complete archaeological analysis of the human remains...
Archaeological Excavations in Monticello's First Kitchen (2018)
In 1808, enslaved African American laborers at Monticello dumped about 1,000 cubic feet of dirt to raise the floor to convert the Kitchen into a Wash House in preparation for Thomas Jefferson's retirement years. For the previous forty years, this Kitchen had been the space in which fine cuisine was prepared for Jefferson, his family, and guests. Archaeologists recently excavated nearly a third of this deposit, reidentifying the stew stoves, the original brick floor, and fireplace. Analysis of...
An Archaeological Exploration of St. Joseph’s College, the First Catholic Boarding School for Boys within the Oregon Territory (2016)
St. Joseph’s College was located within St. Paul, Oregon, the first Roman Catholic mission in the Pacific Northwest. It was established in 1839 by Father Francois Blanchet, four years after the French-Canadian settlers in the area had requested the presence of a Catholic priest. On October 17, 1843, St. Joseph’s College was officially dedicated, becoming the first Catholic boarding school for boys within the Oregon Territory. The school eventually closed in June 1849 due to the mass exodus of...
Archaeological Findings From The 2015 Survey of the Tanker SS Dixie Arrow (2016)
Between May 22 – 29, 2015, the Battle of the Atlantic Research and Expedition Group collaborated with NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary to survey the wreck of the Dixie Arrow, an American tanker sunk in 1942 by the German submarine U-71. Over this 7-day period, 13 divers mapped the nearly 500-foot-long contiguous wreck. This paper will outline the methodology undertaken by the group, the challenges encountered in conducting the survey, and the key archaeological findings from the...
Archaeological Geographies - A Reflexive Consideration of the Impact of Archaeology across Racial and Socioeconomic Regions Using DINAA (2018)
This paper uses "big data" about archaeological sites from the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) to reflexively assess and interpret how archaeology has affected minority communities. DINAA’s data set represents an almost complete record of the current extent of archaeological site definitions, within the project’s area of effect. Therefore, collectively, these data can reveal information about archaeologists and archaeology as a discipline, as well as the past. As public...
Archaeological Impacts on Collective Memory: Re-creating a Mayan Identity? (2018)
If collective memory "requires the support of a group delimited in space and time," (Halbwachs 1992) how does archaeological work engaging local communities impact the memory of historical events? As scholars interested in the indigenous rebellion known as the Caste War (1847-1901) in Tihosuco, Mexico, we are often told by members of the local community who repopulated the area eighty years ago that we know more about the history of the uprising than they do. This paper seeks to explore three...
Archaeological Investigation of the Brookgreen Plantation, South Carolina (2017)
Brookgreen Plantation was one of the largest and most productive rice plantations in the United States prior to the Civil War. Owner Joshua John Ward held more than 1,000 Africans in slavery on this and his other plantations. The remains of Brookgreen Plantation are now a part of Brookgreen Gardens, an outdoor museum established in 1931 by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Brookgreen Gardens is expanding its public interpretation of the historic plantations on its property, including the lives of enslaved...
The Archaeological Investigation of the Storm Wreck, a Wartime Refugee Vessel Lost at St. Augustine, Florida at the End of the Revolutionary War: Overview of the 2010-2015 Excavation Seasons (2016)
The Storm Wreck, site number 8SJ5459, was discovered in 2009 by the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP), about a mile offshore St. Augustine, Florida. It has been excavated every year since then in conjunction with LAMP’s underwater archaeology field school. A wide range of artifacts has been recovered, including ordnance, firearms, ship’s equipment, tools and hardware, personal effects, and household items, and are now being conserved at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime...
Archaeological Investigations at the Historic Locations of Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma: A GIS-based Investigation of Cultural Rescources Within Chickasaw National Recreation Area (2015)
Sulphur Springs, located in south-central Oklahoma on what is now Chickasaw National Recreation area presents a complex tale of frontier politics. Located around a series of mineral and fresh-water springs, Sulphur Springs was an attempt by European Americans to create a health resort on land owned by the Chickasaw Nation. National politics, including the Dawes Act, and issues involving water quality led to the purchase of the town’s improvements in 1902, and again in 1904. This purchase became...
Archaeological Investigations in the Salado Draw Watershed, Lea County, New Mexico—A Public Education Report, Technical Report 23-135, Statistical Research, Inc. (2023)
This public education is a component of an undertaking entitled Salado Draw Archaeological Survey, Small-scale Excavation, and Geomorphological Characterization, GSA Contract No. GS-10F-0396P. The work was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) as part of research carried out under the Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement, Blanket Purchase Agreement No. 11, Contract No. L14PA00010. It addresses Task 17 (public education report)...