Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Miller.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network was established in 2005 and within a year hosted its first Project Archaeology: Intrigue of the Past workshop. As a proud sponsor of Project Archaeology in Florida, regional center staff partnered with the National Park Service and University of Florida to publish the first Investigating Shelter investigation in the southeast. It was also the first in the Investigating Shelter series to feature a National Park site. Investigating a Tabby Slave Cabin teacher...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Howell. Meghan Forney. Holly L. Andrew. Stephanie Stutts.

In conjunction with Secretary of the Interior’s new Play, Learn, Serve and Work Initiative, the Bureau of Land Management’s Oklahoma Field Office in Tulsa, Oklahoma has vastly expanded its archaeological outreach program by partnering with Project Archaeology. This partnership marks the first occasion Project Archaeology has been represented in the state of Oklahoma. Initially, we felt creating a new Project Archaeology Program in a state that has had none before would present a monumental task...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Motta. Laura Jessmore.

The site of Pecica Şanţul Mare, Romania is among the most important settlements of the European Bronze Age to understand the origins and control of metalwork networks that redistributed the metal resources of the western Carpathian Mountains throughout prehistoric Europe. The study of the ways vegetal resources were used by the inhabitants of Pecica will provide crucial information about the level of social, political, and economic complexity achieved during the Bronze Age. In particular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elspeth Geiger.

The Bronze Age site Pecica Şanţul Mare is an important fortified tell settlement in Arad County, Romania. Situated along the river Mureş, Pecica lies within a unique resource zone between the ore rich region of the Western Carpathian Mountains and Carpathian Basin. While metal production and regional connectivity are associated with the site, it is poorly known how wood fuel for metal work was acquired. Archaeological charcoal remains are often used to reconstruct local woodland compositions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Polly Burnette-Egan.

The Bronze Age is a period of fundamental social and technological changes in Europe, including the emergence of more complex political and economic systems. Pecica "Şanțul Mare," a large tell located in the Carpathian Basin (Romania), provides an ideal case study of economic reorganization throughout the course of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), when it came to rise as a regional center. The Middle Bronze Age was an era of more centralized control over animal production and specialized horse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Quinn.

Metal from southwest Transylvania fueled the development of inequality and regional polities across Eastern Europe during the Bronze Age. However, little is known about the communities in the resource-rich region. Through regional survey, test excavation, and digitization of existing collections, the Bronze Age Transylvania Survey (BATS) Project seeks to understand the long-term dynamics of social organization throughout the Middle Bronze Age in southwest Transylvania (2000-1400 BC). A robust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Dalton. Colin Quinn.

The Bronze Age was a period of dynamic social transformations in Transylvania. Unfortunately, there have been no systematic archaeological studies of the subsistence economy that funded, and was affected by, the social transformations of emergent inequality. In this poster, I present the first analysis of faunal assemblages from Bronze Age contexts in Transylvania. The faunal assemblages, collected during the 2012-2014 surveys of the Geoagiu and Mureş Valleys, provide the first opportunity to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Anderson.

Optical reflected light and transmitted light microscopy, laser confocal analysis, SEM and EDX analyses, accompanied by field and laboratory experiments, were used to study surfaces and residues for stone and bone tools, soil deposits and mudbrick. Case studies presented here suggest two types of intensive threshing practices were occurring from the beginnings of agriculture. Bone tools from the early Neolithic in Iran show large amounts of cereals were threshed so as to leave long stems,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Macdonald. Lisa Maher.

The use and division of space in the Early Epipalaeolithic gives insights into the nature of social interaction in the Southern Levant prior to the advent of permanent architecture. This presentation presents preliminary results from the microwear analysis of the Jordanian Epipalaeolithic site Kharaneh IV to explore the nature of domestic tasks within a hut structure. Kharaneh IV is located in the Azraq basin, Eastern Jordan, dating to the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic periods. The site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Evans.

This paper builds on discussion of combined blind-test datasets for lithic microwear analysis method previously presented by the author (Evans 2014). A large randomly sampled assemblage, from the Mesolithic site of West Stainton in England, was analysed using traditional microwear analysis. The size of the assemblage may allow an investigation of variation of tool function within different classes. However predicted error rates from the combined blind-test dataset were used in monte carlo and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randolph Donahue. Anders Fischer.

Microwear analysis in combination with refitting and lithic reduction is applied to reconstruct the function and social organisation at the Late Glacial site of Trollesgave, Denmark. Analyses of the flint knapping and the spatial distribution of its products reveal the traces of at least three individuals: expert, medium competent, and inexperienced. Based on the quality of craftsmanship and the aberrant habits of disposing their products of the latter, there is evidence for one and possibly two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aimee Little. Shannon Croft. Charlotte Rowley. Oliver Craig. Nicky Milner.

New research on micowear and micro-residue traces on flint and organic artefacts from Star Carr is currently underway. Extensive 3D recording of thousands of artefacts spanning several excavation seasons using GIS has provided an excellent high-resolution spatial record. As well as low/high power approaches to microwear analysis, microresidues are being analysed using the contextual approach. Flint tools displaying residues of particular interest are being flagged for more detailed imaging by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harry Lerner.

Ever since the inception of the New Archaeology back in the 1960s there has been an emphasis within the discipline on increasing analytical rigor through ever-more precise quantification of material culture variability. While striving to improve and expand our analytical arsenal is always a worthy pursuit, these efforts must be accompanied by critical reflection on how and why we use our increasingly refined analytical techniques to address larger behavioral and cultural questions. Precise and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annelou Van Gijn.

Many microwear studies focus on one material category. Instead we explored the technological and functional interconnectivity of different tools used in one chaîne opératoire. During the experimental reconstruction of a Late Neolithic houseplan excavated in the Dutch wetlands, we made use of a variety of implements: stone axes and adzes, bone and antler objects, and tools of wood. In total 120 tools were used for almost 20,000 minutes during the four week construction period. We recorded the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Doelle. Karen Schollmeyer. Jeffery Clark.

Salado archaeology in New Mexico was largely defined in the Upper Gila, where the regional name "Cliff phase" originated. Early work by Kidder and the Cosgroves in the 1920s and several professional and avocational projects in the 1960s-70s included important Salado sites. Despite this early promise many projects were underreported, and there has been comparatively little research with modern methods. Recent research by Archaeology Southwest addresses this gap. A strong base of survey and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Barkwill Love.

The Early Pithouse period (AD 200 to 550) is characterized by circular pithouse structures often located on isolated knolls, an abundance of undecorated brownware, and a small percentage of red-slipped ceramics generally associated with the end of the time period. Few studies have focused on these Early Pithouse period ceramics. To help fill this gap, a preliminary study was conducted on a sample of the ceramics from Winn Canyon, an Early Pithouse period site in the Cliff Valley in the Upper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Roney. Robert J. Hard. A.C. MacWilliams. Mary E. Whisenhunt.

Investigations on a cerro de trincheras site overlooking the Gila River were conducted in 2014. The Round Mountain site tentatively dates to the Early Agricultural period (2100 B.C.-A.D. 100). The 6 ha expanse of the site includes 1.9 km of constructed walls and terraces. The remains of 16 houses are defined by a constellation of rock rings in the central part of the site. Projectile points include five Tularosa corner-notched points. This style of point is associated with both Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Dungan.

Between the end of the Mimbres Classic period in the 12th century C.E. and the beginning of the 14th-century C.E. Cliff Phase, most of the Upper Gila region of New Mexico is thought to have been only sparsely populated if not entirely unoccupied. Recent excavation in Mule Creek has demonstrated a strong 13th-century presence in this area, however. Like the Gila Cliff Dwellings on the West Fork of the Gila, the settlements in Mule Creek show clear connections to contemporary sites in the Mogollon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jago Cooper. Alice Samson.

Water security is the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods. Small islands can often face particularly problematic issues surrounding water security with the impacts of precipitation variability and relative sea level change keenly felt on islands with limited rain catchment and fast draining hydrological systems. This paper explores some archaeological case studies on small islands from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Strawhacker. Peter Pulsifer. Shari Gearheard.

Scientists are realizing the importance of social science research to fully understand how the rapid environmental change in the Arctic will affect human populations living in the Artic and beyond. Millions of dollars are invested in scientific research, including in the social sciences, on the changing Arctic every year, and with that investment, scientists have begun stressing the importance of preserving these collected data for future analysis. With the increased recognition of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Hicks. Árni Einarsson. Kesara Anamthawat-Jónsson. Ágústa Edwald. Thomas McGovern.

Archaeological, paleo-environmental and ethnographic research in the lakeside community of Mývatn, N. Iceland, is uncovering the millennium-long history of interactions between people and seasonal populations of waterfowl. Protection of waterfowl from hunting seems to have been applied in tandem with annual, managed egg harvesting as a common resource management strategy. The interdisciplinary investigation underway seeks to understand long term norms and local traditional knowledge (LTK)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksander Pluskowski. Alexander Brown. Rowena Banerjea. Krish Seetah. Daniel Makowiecki.

In the 13th century, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against indigenous non-Christian societies in the eastern Baltic region. Tribal territories were replaced with new Christian states run by the Teutonic Order and individual bishops, who constructed castles, encouraged colonists, developed towns and introduced Christianity. At a time of deteriorating climate, their impact on the local environment, especially plants and animals, would have been profound. Furthermore, since many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Manning. Sue Colledge. Enrico Crema. Adrian Timpson. Stephen Shennan.

The domestication of plants and animals facilitated major changes in human ecology, demography, and social organization. Despite the seeming advantages of domestication, however, new analysis reveals major episodes of collapse in the early agricultural systems in Neolithic Europe. In this paper we present evidence for a progressive deterioration in arable farming conditions, alongside a reversion to wild resource exploitation across different regions in Europe. These apparent failures in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sander Van Der Leeuw.

This paper argues that we would massively increase the value of our archaeological understanding of the past for the present if we cast it differently. Rather than use a reductionist, 'ex-post' approach (which explains the present by invoking the past, looking for origins), we should be using an "ex ante" approach that looks at the emergence of change, allowing us to learn from the past about the present and for the future. The paper first briefly summarizes some of the difficulties encountered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Oram.

Archaeological excavation of medieval settlements in the coastal districts of Scotland has revealed significant evidence of protracted environmental impacts on their material culture exploitation regimes and domestic economies between the later 13th and early 16th centuries. These impacts are represented chiefly by shifts in the marine species being exploited or changes in the levels, species and age profiles of livestock carried on grazing-land, or trends in the suite of cultivars represented,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristram Kidder.

I use geoarchaeological data to argue that human activity in the late Holocene transformed the environments of the Yellow River, China, into an anthropogenic landscape and that these changes altered China’s history. Ancient China provides a critical case study for understanding how economic intensification, demographic change, technological innovation, and political centralization combine to create the roots of the modern Anthropocene. The Yellow River-- known as "China’s Sorrow"—is seen as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Prufer.

Since 2007 the IHOPE Maya team has focused on synthesizing dynamic human-environmental interactions of the ancient Maya of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America (400BC-900AD). A series of great tropical societies, the Maya occupied a diverse range of tropical environments, adapting local strategies to meet varied subsistence, economic, political, and ecosystem service needs at large and small urban centers. Cycles of expanding populations, increasing despotism, and reliance on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Nelson.

Vulnerability to climate change is a central issue in contemporary policy at local, state, national, and global scales. Facing an uncertain future, public and private organizations, policy makers, and resource managers are concerned about our ability to develop social-ecological systems resilient to climate change. "Long-term sustainability" in the face of present and anticipated climate impacts is a national and international goal. However, planning for long-term sustainable management is a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson. Heather McKillop.

Underwater survey and excavation in a large salt water lagoon between 2004 and 2013 revealed ancient Maya wooden buildings with briquetage—the broken pots from evaporating brine in pots over fires to make salt. Unexpected in the tropical landscape of Belize, the wooden buildings were preserved below the sea floor in mangrove peat, which created an anaerobic matrix. Elsewhere, historically and in modern times, the salt content of the brine was enriched by pouring it through salty soil—reducing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Faught. Michael Arbuthnot.

In 2013 SEARCH conducted underwater archaeological investigations and monitoring at the Chassahowitzka Headsprings restoration project in Citrus County, Florida. Although the initial underwater survey yielded a sparse artifact count, hundreds of artifacts were recovered during the monitoring of commercial diver's as they removed substantial amounts of algae, detritus, and cultural materials from the springhead with 6-inch induction dredges. Diagnostic and rare artifacts include a Suwannee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darrin Lowery.

Understanding the magnitude of sea level rise over the past century is a hot topic in the Chesapeake Bay region. The research presented in this paper combines 20th-century aerial imagery, 19th-century land use data, and geoarchaeological information associated with various coastal archaeological sites to provide a high-resolution marine transgression record spanning the past two centuries. Tide gauge models have suggested that there has been ~1 foot (30cm) to ~1.5 feet (49cm) of sea level rise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kelley. Joseph Kelley. Daniel Belknap.

Predictive models to address site location and preservation of submerged cultural resources have improved with growing societal interest in the nearshore. While some commonalities exist and are broadly applicable, working at a local scale requires an understanding of regional geology, geomorphology and sea level history, and the dynamic landscape processes that acted in the region through time. Along the Atlantic coast of Northern New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, varying bedrock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Robinson. Doug Harris. John King.

Narragansett Indian Tribal oral history relates to us that "More than 15,000 years ago, the ancient villages of the Narragansett were out where the ocean is now. The waters began to rise overnight and the people had to abandon their homes." This Tribal oral history echoes the regional geological record indicating that at the time of the last glacial maximum, ca. 24,000 years ago, what are now the Atlantic waters of Rhode Island and Block Island sounds were part of a subaerially-exposed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Smith.

The first field school on an underwater prehistoric site in the United States was conducted on the Guest Mammoth site in the Silver River, near Ocala, Florida in the 1970s. This site was touted as a Columbian mammoth kill site, the first found east of the Mississippi River. The excavators presented evidence of this in the form of a single fluted point, six direct percussion flakes, and several pressure flakes found associated with the remains of an adult and a juvenile mammoth. In addition,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Valerie Feathers. Heather McKillop. E. Cory Sills.

The mangrove peat comprising the sea floor at the ancient Maya saltworks in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, provides an ideal matrix for the preservation of wooden architecture. The acidic peat has preserved wood, charcoal, and botanicals at other inundated saltwork sites in the area. The unexpected discovery and subsequent excavation of an underwater shell midden at the Eleanor Betty Site in 2013 allowed for a greater comparison between the two matrices and their preservational properties....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Puckett.

Underwater archaeology in the Great Basin has been generally ignored because underwater researchers often do not associate this desert with inundated environments. Despite this misconception, many large lakes, marshlands, and rivers are found throughout the region. For instance, northern Nevada includes 168 sizable man-made perennial reservoirs that partially or completely cover 188 known sites. In addition, during the late Pleistocene large lakes of fluctuating size covered many of the valleys...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Leach.

Prehistoric sites beneath modern marshes are uncommon and valuable cultural resources with superior organic preservation potential. Such sites generally offer greater stratigraphic integrity than their terrestrial counterparts as they were not historically plowed. However, these sites are overlooked and understudied in eastern North America due to low visibility, disagreement on surveying strategies, and misperceptions regarding the high costs of investigation and low potential for site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Cartajena. Valentina Flores. Cristina Ortega. Diego Carabias. Renato Simonetti.

GNL Quintero 1 (GNLQ1) is a Late Pleistocene paleontological submerged site located in Quintero Bay (32º46’S), ~50 km north of Valparaíso, on the Pacific coast of Central Chile. We describe the geoarchaeological approach applied by combining geomorphological, bathymetrical, sedimentological and paleontological data with a digital simulation model. The resulting evidence indicates that the unit containing the extinct bone assemblage (Unit 2) was deposited in a low-energy fluvial sedimentary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grady Caulk. Daniel Hughes. Wendy Weaver.

Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires Federal agencies like the US Army Corps of Engineers to make a reasonable good faith effort to consider the effects of their undertakings on historic properties. The Jacksonville District of the Corps of Engineers has been conducting underwater cultural resource surveys since the 1970’s. While the potential for prehistoric sites has always been considered, technological advances have allowed us to improve our ability to evaluate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Miles. Kyle Woodson.

The Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program has conducted a long-term study of canal irrigation along the middle Gila River in south-central Arizona. The work has been conducted in conjunction with the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project with funding by the United States Bureau of Reclamation. These efforts have provided a wealth of information on prehistoric Hohokam canal systems, which were used between A.D. 450 and 1450. Principal contributions of these studies are a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoffman. Teresa Rodrigues. Emery F. Manuel. Alan Sinclair.

Wildland fires have the potential to impact a variety of resources, and cultural remains are among those most vulnerable. Unlike most natural resources, archaeological sites including structures, artifacts, and sacred places are irreplaceable once damaged or destroyed. Over the past three decades, archaeologists have increasingly served as technical specialists on wildland fire incidents. Cultural resource specialists are now included in strategic planning and implementation of fire...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J Andrew Darling. Barnaby V Lewis.

Ethnogeography considers the ways in which human beings invest places, spaces, or points on the land with names and information that render them culturally meaningful. Many places in a culture’s ethnogeography are also Traditional Cultural Properties or TCPs. TCPs are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and by definition are significant to the perpetuation of traditional worldview and living indigenous cultures. This presentation reports on recent advances in O’odham and Pee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Rodrigues. Frances Landreth. Lorrie Lincoln-Babb. Chris Loendorf.

The Gila River Indian Community is actively engaged in the inventory and documentation of petroglyphs located within the Community. These recording efforts also include oral history interviews with tribal members who have knowledge of the areas where the art occurs. Rock art sites include prehistoric and historic period figures, and they are found throughout the buttes and mountains surrounding the Middle Gila River. This art often occurs along trails, and in prominent locations such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Loendorf. Shari Tiedens. Brett Coochyouma. R. Scott Plumlee.

This presentation summarizes a Gila River Indian Community research program that is designed to provide quantified projectile point data, which are used to address significant research questions for the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project data recovery investigations. In contrast to people from most other regions of the world, the Akimel O’odham continued to extensively employ flaked stone points until the late 1800s. Consequently, considerable ethnographic and ethnohistorical data are available...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Fertelmes. Michael Withrow. Letricia Brown.

Vesicular basalt was a preferred material for groundstone manufacture in central Arizona, and identification of source areas for raw materials will provide important information regarding prehistoric and historic exchange and interaction patterns in the region. As part of archaeological research under the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, the Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program has recently devoted considerable effort to the creation of a vesicular basalt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Woodson.

Many Native American communities have developed their own archaeology programs and taken over management of cultural resources from Federal agencies. The formation of Tribal Heritage Management programs has increased interactions between non-tribal archaeologists and members of native communities, and resulted in greater numbers of Native Americans becoming trained archaeologists. This synchronism has fostered new understandings of the past and has led to research that is scientifically valid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ulf Bertilsson.

Footprints are frequent on prehistoric petroglyphs. The author has studied its design, sprawl, dating and interpretation in archaeological research as a wider investigation of this theme. Case studies of significant rock art sites in Scandinavia, the Mediterranean and the Near East show that the footprint is a general phenomenon, occurring in all these areas during the time period c. 3000 BC - 500 BC. The footprints have been interpreted in different ways; as the epitome of an otherwise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Clayton Martinez.

Spatial analysis is a methodology that has been widely used for researching rock art. It has had a wide-ranging focus, varying from informed methods (using ethnographic information), to formal, and experiential methods. Spatial analyses undertaken on Murujuga, the Burrup Peninsula in northwest Australia, have primarily focused on establishing chronologies, the clustering of rock art motifs at a broad landscape scale, and the relationship with resource foci. My research has focused on formal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only JULIAN MARTINEZ.

El arte rupestre de la Prehistoria Reciente de la Península Ibérica ofrece un conjunto de datos de importante relevancia para estudiar el aparato simbólico de las sociedades complejas y sus implicaciones territoriales. Su amplia distribución también ofrece la oportunidad de discutir sobre la ocupación del territorio desde la perspectiva de la Arqueología del Paisaje. El espacio se convierte en un eje estructural en el que también es posible plantear las alternativas socio-económicas de las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johan Ling.

War related social and ritual traits are common features in European Bronze Age rock art and native North American rock art. There are some general similarities in the material that needs to be stressed between the North American images and those from Bronze Age Europe, fighters depicted with spears and shields etc. This resemblance speaks of how far un-connected human groups may build similar imageries, given only a set of rather superficial social similarities in general terms. Moreover, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curtis Schaafsma. Polly Schaafsmsa.

We present a brief history of rock art research in North America, identifying some of the social forces and schools of thought that have shaped these studies within and outside of the confines of traditional archaeology. Among relevant issues within academia are prevailing paradigms that aspire to specific goals and interests that orient archaeological research. Even when these interests and concerns would benefit from the analysais of prehistoric images made by the socio/cultural groups under...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Skoglund.

The aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate some general trends in Scandinavian rock-art research. For a larger part of the 20th century scholars from the history of religion had a strong impact on the interpretation of south Scandinavian rock-art. Images were contextualized by a comparative approach where scenes and details from rock-art were compared to similar phenomenon in other media. Today, this perspective is complemented by a variety of approaches; but a dominating perspective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rodriguez-Rellan. Ramón Fábregas Valcarce.

Geographic Information Systems and high-resolution cartography (LIDAR), together with Agent-Based Modeling, are used for assessing the traditional view of open-air rock art as an active element in the shaping of the prehistoric landscape. Petroglyphs have been usually thought to play a major role in the configuration of the different significations of the prehistoric landscapes, their location repeatedly analyzed in terms of spatial proximity with paths and resource-rich areas that would have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Haines. Saša Caval.

This paper discusses research on the most complete and well-preserved 18th and 19th century sugar estate on Mauritius and how communities and identities were constituted under the conflicting conditions of both physical control and local/regional connectivity. Established in 1786, the Bras d’Eau Sugar Estate (now a national park) grew in the following century when the island shifted from French to British colonial rule. The slave trade and the institution of slavery were later abolished across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diego Calaon.

Between 2010 and 2013 an archaeological excavation was carried out in the warehouse where the Beekrumsing Ramlallah Interpretation Centre on Indenture Labour (BRIC) has been set up. In the 19th century, the warehouse was located in the proximity of the "Hospital Block" and nearby the "Immigrants’ sheds" of the Immigration Depot. The excavation represented an exceptional opportunity to investigate the topography and the industrial development of a key area of Port Louis. The ceramic, glass and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Santana Cabrera. Jo Appleby. Krish Seetah.

This contribution presents the preliminary results of an osteobiograhical approach to the life conditions of a slave/ex-slave population from Le Morne cemetery (18-19th centuries, Mautiritius Island). We evaluate the incidence of several stress indicators/pathologies on the human remains that are the result of environmental conditions during life. Dental health, infectious diseases and physical activity markers were analyzed to address the daily life of this population. Our results indicate high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Fregel. Martin Sikora. Krish Seetah. Hannes Schroeder. Carlos Bustamante.

From a demographic point of view, the island of Mauritius can be considered a multicultural melting-pot derived from forced and free labor, as it was there where the British conducted the 'Great Experiment' to replace slaves with indentured workers after abolition. Despite the huge potential that Mauritius offers for studying admixed populations, it has remained uncharacterized from a genetic perspective until now. Several genetic markers have been analyzed in the current Mauritius population...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chip Colwell.

This paper examines a "mythic" settlement named Makak, located at the edge of Le Morne Cultural Landscape, a World Heritage Site, in Mauritius. A recent ethnohistoric study, conducted in collaboration with Mauritian colleagues used an array of oral, written, and material evidence to show that Makak is an informal place name for an area first settled by French colonists in the 1700s, then by several prominent "Free Colored" families in the 1800s, and finally depopulated as residents were forcibly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Lane.

Research on the archaeology of the last five hundred years around the Indian Ocean rim is distinctly patchy. This contrasts with the body of material now available concerning earlier periods, and especially concerning the ear between ca. 500 BCE and 1500 CE. Where research has been undertaken this has tended to have had either a fairly local or at best limited regional focus. This has meant that many of the interconnections between different areas of the Indian Ocean have been left unexplored....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krish Seetah.

This presentation centres on two distinct material assemblages, both representing resistance, but in markedly different ways and at different times. It also introduces a new regional comparative of African religious syncretism, longanis, a belief system that developed within slave communities, and offers both insightful similarities to Atlantic counterparts, as well a unique features in its own right. The article, undertaking a first such appraisal for the Indian Ocean, applies an archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfredo Ramirez.

This paper explores the hierarchical differences between households at the site of Panquilma. Previous studies at the site have identified two types of household compounds: central and peripheral. Despite the fact that central compounds are bigger and located closer to the public buildings of the site, no other difference has been identified that can point towards the presence and the nature of any type of hierarchical distinction between both types of domestic compounds. Using 3-D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Núñez Aparcana.

One of the characteristics of the funerary practices in the central coast during the late periods is the presence of interments inside domestic spaces. It has been proposed that this type of funerary practice in the region is related to an increment in ancestor veneration practices due to the proximity of the Inka invasion. This study presents the analysis of ceramic materials associated to secondary burials recovered from a Central Household Compound in the domestic sector at the site of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sudarsana Mohanty.

In the Early Intermediate Period (AD 1-700) there was a notable development of belief systems or "ideologies of power." These systems reinforced and naturalized the relations of the dominant classes over the less important social groups. The use of ideology to exert control is an efficient tool, especially when applied to concepts of life and death. Funerary practices effectively serve to promote social cohesion, whether related to kinship ties or political and economic means. The intent of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Gilbert.

This paper examines public architecture and expressions of power in the Lurín Valley of central-coast Peru. During the Late Intermediate and Late Horizon Periods, adobe pyramids with ramps characterize the public architecture of sites in the valley. Analysis of the architectural configuration of pyramids with ramps in relation to domestic compounds within the public sectors of the settlement indicates a hierarchical arrangement. The conspicuous design and placement of the pyramids suggest a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Kelleher. Sudarsana Mohanty.

The Ychma site at Panquilma, dates from the 13th to 15th centuries, in the Lurin Valley of central coastal Peru. The site provides an interesting case study for the development of ideologies, specifically mortuary rituals, due to the close proximity and relationship the Ychma community maintained with the important Andean religious center of Pachacamac. Significantly, during excavations in the 2014 field season, two in-tact mummy bundles were found at the site. One was of an adult, found in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Critchley.

This work discusses and explores the results of excavations performed in the public sector of the site of Panquilma, located in the Lurin Valley on the central coast of Peru. It was a complex multicomponent community dating to the Late Intermediate Period, which has been divided into three sectors based on use. The first sector, containing three ramped pyramids, was used for ritual and administrative purposes. This work provides an examination of what is known about the uses of the public areas,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Lacy.

This paper explores the relationship between population fluctuation and changes in sociopolitical organization at the community and regional level. There is consensus among researchers that the Lurin valley during the late intermediate and late horizon periods experienced drastic sociopolitical changes. The nature of these changes has been attributed to the Inka invasion of this region around 1460 AD and was mainly characterized by either the transformation or abandonment of local public...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Christakos. Augusto Vásquez.

An analysis and discussion contributing to previous research of the socio-political organization found at the Yschma site of Panquilma, located on the Lurin Valley, central Peruvian coast. Panquilma is a 13th–15th century site on the borders of one of the most important and influential religious centers in the Central Andean Coast – Pachacamac. The site of Panquilma is comprised of three sectors; Sector 1 is characterized as the public zone and includes monumental architecture in the form of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyra Webb.

The rank size analysis of the archaeological sites inhabited during the Late Intermediate and Late Horizon periods located in the Lower Lurin Valley of the Peruvian Central Coast presents a comparison of power politics and the possibility of a hierarchical organization among the different inhabitants of the respective sites. The Lurin Valley is located on the Peruvian Central Coast, and the mouth of the Lurin River is located in close proximity to the site of Pachacamac. This site is an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camila Capriata Estrada.

The Inca conquest of the Peruvian central coast brought a series of changes to the political and social landscape of the Lurin valley. At Pachacamac, the main religious center of this area, radical changes included, not only the resurgence of this sanctuary and expansion of its cult, but also a series of transformation in its architectural setting. In other settlements of the valley associated to the Ychsma polity, changes were less obvious, probably due to the different strategies followed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Howie.

For the ancient Maya residing at the urban center of Lamanai, the period encompassing the Maya Collapse and its aftermath (A.D. 750-1150) was a time of significant changes in the fabric of day-to-day life. Widespread economic and political instability across the Lowland region seriously impacted both community and extra-local affairs. Networks of socio-economic interaction and affiliation were disrupted and people were on the move, seeking to relocate to more stable environs. The strong evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Albero Santacreu.

Potters can exploit certain clay resources for long periods of time due to several reasons of different nature. In this presentation I will address how raw material procurement can be made according to ecological, economic and functional concerns, but also considering social and symbolic phenomena. In order to test these different theoretical perspectives and promote more holistic positions in the interpretation of the raw material procurement I will present a case study focused on the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Whitbread. Jeremy Taylor. Mark Williams. Ian Wilkinson. Ian Boomer.

Burrough Hill hillfort, east Leicestershire, United Kingdom, is an example of an Iron Age settlement of the Corieltauvi people who occupied the East Midlands in the millennium prior to the Roman occupation of Britain in AD 43. The hillfort is set in a sedimentary landscape with few distinctive rock types. Objectives of the current study are to determine signatures of the local sedimentary deposits, building materials and pottery using ceramic petrography, micropalaeontology, WDXRF and micro-XRF....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vassilis Kilikoglou. Anno Hein.

Historically, pottery provenance studies in the Aegean were conducted by the application of chemical techniques for element determination. The underlying principle was that ceramics made with the same clay paste should exhibit lower chemical variability than those with different pastes. Although this principle has not changed over the years, pottery studies have undergone serious analytical and most importantly, methodological developments. The main reason for the methodological developments...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Millhauser.

In this paper, I show how thin section microscopy enhances our understanding of the social relations and technological sequences of production in the Late Postclassic (1350-1520 AD) salt industry of the northern Basin of Mexico. Aztec salt-making sites have dense concentrations of "fabric-marked" pottery, which is a light, friable ware distinguished by impressions of textiles on its exterior surface. Fabric-marked pottery was probably used to mold blocks of salt for sale in the market. Because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Sherman. Leah Minc.

In this paper we present the results of an ongoing study of ceramic production and exchange in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, during the Late to Terminal Formative (500 BC–AD 200)—the period when the Monte Albán state formed and consolidated control over its hinterland and surrounding regions. We have found that adopting a multifaceted approach that combines chemical (INAA) data with detailed qualitative and quantitative mineralogical (petrographic) data enables us to differentiate cultural from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Moody. Linda Howie. Lisa Hodgetts.

The extensive research on pottery manufacture in past and contemporary societies suggests that the pallet of tempering materials potters select from includes a relatively limited range of options deriving from the geological landscape, plants (e.g. chaff) and animals (e.g. bone). This tendency is significant considering that almost any material or substance can be incorporated into a paste mixture; what is included in any specific instance is a matter of choice, shaped by the potter’s learned...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Meanwell.

Petrography has long been recognized as a powerful way to understand pottery provenience and production decisions. Despite this, few studies focus on production decisions made by potters working in a single community, especially potters who practice household-level production. In this paper, I investigate decisions made by potters at the site of La Queseria, Guerrero, Mexico during the Classic Period (AD 200-900). Petrographic analysis of their vessels suggests that two major clay sources were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Hilditch.

Acknowledging analytical scale, or emphasizing the importance of moving coherently from macro to micro to elemental, is not a new concept within ceramic analysis. The work of David Peacock since the 1970s has demonstrated the necessity of a multiscalar approach, yet our attempts to combine techniques that bridge these various scales of analysis have met with mixed success, particularly when confronted by assemblages that include a spectrum of fine to coarse wares. This paper highlights recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ioannis Iliopoulos. Albert J. Ammerman.

Roman roof tiles and architectural terracottas constitute an important resource for the study of the architectural development of early Rome, through the detection of different sources and perhaps workshops in the region of the Roman capital. Unfortunately, the location of possible clay sources available to the Roman tile-makers has been obscured due to the city’s extensive urbanization. However, a drilling project in the area of the Roman Forum and other sites offers important evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Stoner.

Archaeologists have employed many different approaches to characterize the composition of ceramic pastes, but until recently only a minority of studies have used multiple analytical techniques to examine the same sample. An "analytical technique" is used here to mean a single perspective that characterizes an aspect of a ceramic paste. Since humans created pottery using different processes and recipes, it follows that each perspective teaches us about a unique aspect of the potter's behavior...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher. Marc N. Levine. Flor Arcega-Cabrera.

Historically, the application of petrographic techniques and NAA to the compositional analysis of archaeological ceramics in the New World emerged from two very distinct intellectual foundations. Initially, petrographers focused on studying temper to characterize the types of materials used, their geological sources, and their coarseness in an effort to reconstruct the cultural development of potting traditions and interaction among cultures. NAA, on the other hand, was originally used to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Tenconi. Peter Day. Elina Kardamaki. Joseph Maran. Alkestis Papadimitriou.

The analysis of Transport Stirrup Jars in the Aegean world has been seen as a test-case for the relative effectiveness and reliability of chemical and petrographic analysis in terms of provenance. These jars are important as they moved in large quantities between the ‘Minoan’ and ‘Mycenaean’ worlds and because they sometimes feature inscriptions in Linear B, reflecting elite control of production and consumption in Crete, as well as in a variety of mainland ‘palaces’. This makes the vessels key...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Makarewicz. Sarah Lublasser.

Herding strategies involving the regular movement of domesticates to new pastures is a critical feature of pastoralist subsistence strategies. However, the utility of strontium isotope analysis as a proxy for mobility becomes complicated in regions where geological substrates are either homogenous over a wide area or are heterogeneous over small distances. Taking advantage of the geographic sensitivity of carbon and oxygen isotopes to precipitation levels, altitude, and latitude, we explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Ventresca Miller.

Isotopic investigations of ancient materials often lack the robust isotopic baselines necessary for comparative analyses. A paucity of isotopic data for baseline ecology creates gaps in our knowledge and allows for multiple interpretations of prehistoric practices. This is especially true for the Eurasian steppe, where isotopic values have been used to consider long-distance human migrations without sufficient baselines. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to use an innovative approach in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Byerly. Jean-Luc Houle. Cheryl Makarewicz.

Khirigsuurs are large stone burial and ritual monuments that served as stages for group activities and social negotiation during the Late Bronze Age (c.1300-700 BC) in Mongolia. Animal remains were routinely interred in satellite mounds associated with primary burial features, in particular the heads and extremities of horses, and often in great numbers. The question remains, however, whether horses selected for interment in khirigsuur satellites were from local or distant herds. Here, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn Laws. Cheryl Makarewicz. Isabella von Holstein.

The topography of Jordan is uniquely characterized by dramatic shifts in altitude from -300 b.s.l. to +1300 a.s.l. over extremely short distances, which results in sharp differences in precipitation levels and the composition of vegetation communities along altitudinal gradients. Graze species favored by sheep and goats collected along an altitudinal gradient indicate predictable shifts in floral δ13C values, influenced by altitudinal differences in water availability, while nitrogen isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Hermes.

The nature of mobility carries significant implications for social interaction in pastoral societies. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of radiogenic strontium and stable oxygen isotopes of domesticated fauna remains excavated from Bronze Age sites across the mountains of eastern Kazakhstan. Results are contextualized with the ecological and geographic backdrops surrounding the sites and placed into a diachronic perspective of pastoral interaction and herding strategy. This research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maureen Marshall.

The sudden appearance of hilltop citadels and vast cemeteries on the Late Bronze Age landscape of the South Caucasus suggests that it was a period of dynamic socio-political transformation as society shifted from highly mobile agropastoralism to a more settled lifestyle revolving around fortresses. Yet, within the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia, there is little archaeological evidence of domestic architecture and activities, throwing into question people’s residential and subsistence practices....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Huffer. Christine France. Bruno Frohlich. Michelle Machicek.

This paper presents human and faunal bone, dentine and enamel stable isotopic data from a small (n=30) Bronze Age skeletal assemblage excavated from a large burial mound (khirigsuur) complex (n=2000) located in northwest Mongolia (c. 3,500-2,700 BP). Covering 900 sq. km and spanning 600 years, osteological and mortuary data suggest no strict correlations occurred between individual age and sex estimates, and the size or form of burial mound, suggesting instead that khirigsuur variation signifies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabella Von Holstein.

Identifying which of a group of material cultural objects is non-local has long been part of artefact analysis in archaeology. Identifying the movement of objects, and the movement of ideas about how to make and use objects, is important to understanding physical and ideological links between sites. This work has relied on data from typological, technological and chemical analyses of object construction and use. Textiles made from sheep wool were a highly valuable commodity which was traded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Cameron.

During the Xiongnu Period (300 BC-AD 100), mobile agro-pastoralism constituted the primary form of subsistence. While this is supported by domesticated animal remains uncovered in mortuary and domestic contexts and historical and micro-botanical evidence for the use of agricultural products, a dearth of research exists concerning the variation of mobile agro-pastoralism among the Xiongnu. As such, this paper centers on regional differences in herding patterns and specifically does so through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gloria Aju. Barbara Arroyo. Lorena Paiz. Andrea Rojas.

Recent research at the site of Kaminaljuyu and the revision of the ceramic sequence has promoted a revision of Naranjo chronology and ceramics. The site of Naranjo is located 3 kms north of Kaminaljuyu and has a significant occupation during the Middle Preclassic. An abandonment of the site has been dated to around 500-400 BC, the moment when the first rise of Kaminaljuyu has been identified. The results of analysis presenting the relationships of various ceramic types from Naranjo connected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart.

This paper presents evidence for a lowland origin of Maya hieroglyphic writing and iconography during the Late Pre-Classic period. It calls into question long-standing models of highland-lowland interaction that have assigned temporal priority of Maya monumental art and visual culture to the southern highlands and Piedmont region. In addition to the several known sculpted and inscribed monuments from the Peten region, archaeological evidence from the site of San Bartolo has revealed integrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson.

Evidence of sedentism in the Antigua Valley begins in the Middle Preclassic Period at the archaeological sites of Urias and Rucal, located at the head of a corridor to the Pacific coast. This area has evidence of mobile Early Preclassic peoples as early as 1400 B.C. Middle Preclassic finds at Urias and Rucal include middens, bottle-shaped pits, stone markers, platforms, a burial, and pottery similar to Charcas types from Kaminaljuyu and Naranjo. Radiocarbon dating and stratigraphy could...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Raul Ortiz.

In a recent work, Inomata and colleagues present a revised chronology of Kaminaljuyu during the Preclassic period which cross-dates other cultural sequences in southeastern Mesoamerica. This paper provides further ceramic data including a re-evaluation of the various typological sequences already established in the literature and presenting a modal sequence of vessel shape, surface treatment, and decoration based on ceramic analysis of collections from the most important sites in the greater...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Henderson.

This paper considers the impact of the new highland chronology proposed by Dr. Inomata on prevailing interpretations of the stone sculptures of Kaminaljuyú. The revised chronology moves the archaeological record of Kaminaljuyú approximately 300 years forward, shifting the site’s sculptures to a wholly new cultural and chronological framework. This paper begins the process of re-contextualizing the art of Kaminaljuyú by investigating the ways in which the new chronology disrupts and/or supports...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

An evaluation of new and existing data indicates that the Middle and Late Preclassic portions of the Kaminaljuyu chronology need to be shifted 300 or 400 years later. This paper primarily examines relevant radiocarbon dates and then discusses the implications of this revision for our understanding of how centralized polities with rulership developed in the southern Maya area and in the Maya lowlands. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Mandujano. Sarah María Mattiussi.

Uno de los objetivos del proyecto Arqueológico Sierra de la Giganta, es localizar y registrar la gran variedad de sitios arqueológicos en la sierra que lleva el mismo nombre. Dentro de la clasificación de los sitios arqueológicos, encontramos campamentos tanto al aire libre como en cuevas, concheros y sitios con arte rupestre, dentro de los que se incluyen los petroglifos y los sitios con pintura rupestre. En estos últimos sitios, pondremos particular interés en esta presentación, en donde...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María De La Luz Gutierrez. María de la Luz Gutiérrez.

En Baja California central (México), se eleva el sistema volcánico Tres Vírgenes, el rasgo geográfico más conspicuo de la región. En sus dominios han sido encontrados yacimientos de pigmentos minerales, material esencial para la elaboración de la pintura con la que los indígenas que habitaron las montañas aledañas, decoraron sus cuerpos y pintaron sus moradas y recintos sagrados. Uno de los lugares que muestra evidencia arqueológica de extracción de óxidos de hierro y yeso es el Cañón del...