Morphometrics (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently, an alarming number of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss caused by human activities and climate change. Though numerically unprecedented, this may not be the first instance of a human-driven mass extinction. For decades, scholars have hypothesized that human predation led to the...
Archaeological Maize: Does It Vary across Space and Time? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recovery of maize cobs as part of the archaeological record yields a rich potential for discerning connections between people, places, and through time. Started almost three decades ago, the study of maize cob phytolith morphometrics has now produced a sufficient dataset for comparison of phytoliths from reference cobs spanning ancient varieties and more...
Can You Predict the Pot? Using Morphometric Variability to Predict Potting Techniques (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While geometric morphometrics (GMM) roots are in biology, there has been an increase of studies applying GMM to archaeological material in recent years. Archaeologists have utilized morphometrics to determine the level of craft specialization at prehistoric sites, test the symmetry of stone tools, classify ceramic sherds, examine the level of...
Ceramic Classification and Social Process (2016)
Sir Flinders Petrie revolutionized archaeological ceramic analysis in 1904 by developing ‘sequence dating’ —the relative dating of strata, buildings or tombs based on changes in formal and stylistic attributes of vessels overtime as determined by seriation. Since the efficacy of sequence dating is directly related to the quality of the typology upon which it is based, stylistic typologies and classification of ceramic have been the norm for the last century, despite their manifold limitations....
A Comparison of Dog Shoulder Height in European and Native American Contexts (2017)
Dogs are the only domestic animal to have existed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean prior to the Columbian Exchange. Historic documents indicate that European colonists to North America brought their own dogs and generally preferred large breeds capable of protecting livestock, hunting, defending settlements from both predators and Native American raids. As early as 1619 the Virginia Assembly banned colonists from trading European dogs to Native Americans, and these policies were quickly...
Geometric Morphometrics & Elliptic Fourier Analysis of 3D Ceramic Data (2015)
We demonstrate two quantitative methods for potential inter- and intra-group comparisons of archaeological ceramics. For 3D morphometrics, we define a single stable landmark that is consistent throughout our ceramic data, and employ opposing curves populated by semi-landmarks to capitalize on the shape variation that occurs in coil-built ceramics. Eight such curves are used to capture four complete profiles. The landmark data are then subjected to generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) and...
Geometric morphometry versus traditional stone artefact typology in the Hoabinhian of northern Vietnam (2017)
Hoabinhian typologies dominate stone artifact analysis in discussions of late Pleistocene archaeology in mainland Southeast Asia. Although, the objective reality of the types in this system has been questioned, there has been little empirical work to test the usefulness of the commonly used types as discrete entities. We collect 3D scan models of 110 artifacts from Mau A, a recently excavated site in northern Vietnam, where the Hoabinhian was was first described. We derive semi-landmarks along...
Morphometric Analyses of Cereal Grains from Central Jordan Improve the Resolution of Identifying Shifts in Crop Cultivation and Processing Strategies over 2000 Years (ca. 800 BCE - 1300 CE) (2015)
The measurement of carbonized domesticated cereal caryopses through a number of established morphometric parameters has the potential to provide information on past cultivation conditions, crop processing practices, and taphonomic processes. This poster presents the results of morphometric analyses using a microscope-mounted camera on carbonized cereal caryopses of wheat (Triticum aestivum/durum and Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) collected from the archaeological site of Dhiban,...
Pioneering Poultry: A Morphometric Investigation of Domestic Chickens (Gallus gallus) in Preindustrial North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chicken bones are common in many historic faunal assemblages. Historic accounts indicate that domestic chickens introduced to North America by European colonists did well and multiplied quickly, but provide little information on the origins, characteristics, or roles poultry played in the North...
Testing the effectiveness of 2D morphometric data for identifying species in Galliformes (2017)
Galliformes, or game birds, are one group of birds commonly utilized by prehistoric people that are particularly difficult to classify beyond family. In addition, bird bone assemblages are often fragmentary and poorly preserved, making avifauna notoriously difficult to identify to species, even by trained specialists. Non-identified bones lead to a decrease in information available about taxa present at the site, hunting preferences of the site inhabitants, environmental conditions, and other...
A Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Iron Oxhide Ingots from the Cape Gelidonya Shipwreck (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geometric morphometric-based landmark analyses have long been used as a method for quantifying the shape of biological data sets, but their utility for non-biological samples is often overlooked. The Cape Gelidonya shipwreck, dated to 1200 BCE, contained cargo consisting of over one ton of fragmentary and complete copper oxhide ingots originally classified by...
Using Computerized X-ray Tomography to track rates of Agricultural Domestication using Seed coat Thickness (2017)
Pulses were an important crop in human prehistory. Tracking traits of domestication in pulses has been limited in the past due to poor preservation of diagnostic features of domestication. Traditionally, morphometric techniques have focused on changes in seed size. The authors measured horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum) from South Asia, dating from the Neolithic (2000BC) to the Early Historic Period (400-700AD), which showed an increase through time with domestication. This is in juxtaposition to...
Vertebral Wedging: A potential tool for the determination of parity in archaeological samples? (2016)
During pregnancy, women experience lordotic posturing to compensate for the weight of the growing fetus. Biomechanical stress from lordotic posturing causes bone remodeling of the lumbar spine during pregnancy resulting in lumbar wedging, which may persist after giving birth. Persistence of lumbar wedging in skeletal samples has potential applications for estimating parity in the archaeological record. This research analyzes the possibility that lumbar wedging is observable in the skeletal...