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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Armit.

The papers in this session explore the extended biographies of prehistoric enclosures, bringing together researchers from several geographical areas and periods. Although archaeologists have been drawn by the often monumental qualities of prehistoric enclosures, the act of enclosure was frequently just one episode in long-lived and/or recurrent patterns of human activity at significant places in the landscape. The European focus on the concept of the ‘hillfort’, for example, has tended to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Wright.

Middle Woodland geometric enclosures are among the most complex earthen monuments ever built in Eastern North America. Well-known 19th century maps have long provided archaeologists with a view of their shape, size, and scope, in their final forms. However, because relatively few of these enclosures have been systematically excavated, their early life histories and the ways they may have evolved through time remain enigmatic. In this paper, I seek to document a more complete biography of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefan Brannan. Jennifer Birch.

Earthworks and enclosures have a long history of construction and use in the eastern Woodlands of North America. However, the development of palisaded enclosures around permanent settlements occurs concomitantly with the transition to maize horticulture, the transition to settled village life, and an increasing concern with boundary maintenance. In this paper, we employ data from Northeastern and Southeastern North America to examine how processes of enclosure transformed the relationships...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Fernandez-Gotz.

The genesis of large fortified central places is one of the most important phenomena in Later Prehistoric Europe. In Temperate Europe, the origins of urbanism have long been identified with the emergence of the Oppida of the 2nd-1st centuries BC, considered to be the ‘earliest cities north of the Alps’. However, large-scale research projects carried out over recent years have started to challenge this long-established view, to the point that nowadays it is possible to assert that the term...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Schoeman.

Stonewalled enclosures and associated terraces embody the intersection of Bokoni gorge biographies and broader social history. The complex biographies of the gorges include being ritual spaces marked by rock art, iron smelting sites, refugia and strongholds. Many of the uses did not substantially alter the gorges, but in the troubled times of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in southern Africa pre-colonial farmers used stonewalling to reconfigure several gorges in Bokoni. The stonewalled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hrvoje Potrebica.

One of the most prominent landscape features of the Hallstatt Culture that more or less stands for the Early Iron Age of the Central Europe are hillforts. They are usually located on prominent spots in landscape and surrounded with some kind of fortification. This paper will try to combine geographic and social contextual analysis of these enclosures and create complex model of their meaning within cultural and physical landscape of the Iron Age communities. Usually they are interpreted as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harold Mytum.

European hillforts contrast greatly in scale and complexity, and different regions of the continent have experienced varied historiographies of research. Using a few key examples to illustrate the different approaches to hillfort monumentality, this paper addresses the contrasting emphases on function and meaning seen in such studies. Particular focus will be placed on three aspects, through the theoretical lens of structure and agency: the role of earthwork construction in the creation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Mason.

The early Iron Age (EIA) landscape in central and south-eastern Slovenia is dominated by hillforts and barrow groups. These monumental structures express and symbolise elite power in the landscape. Despite traditional emphasis on outside agency in the formation of these landscapes, it will be shown that the EIA landscape incorporated and transformed many places of the preceding Late Bronze Age (LBA) landscape, often through monumentalisation. The expansion of hillfort settlements coincides with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Norman.

This paper builds on recent archaeological efforts to theorize the active role landscape features had in framing social relations, delineating zones of safety and inclusion/danger and exile, and marking spaces where cosmological actors tend to reside. In the coastal forests of pre-Colonial West Africa, ditch features and sacred groves did such social work, and as such; these powerful and liminal features held prominent positions within the kingdoms of West Africa. This paper explores massive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Gorgues.

Hillforts are a typical feature of the Iron Age settlement patterns of the north-west Mediterranean (Southern France and North-East of Spain). Their morphology appears as relatively homogeneous, and gives a prominent importance to the domestic sphere, the stone ramparts being often the only clearly communitarian building. The development of these agglomerations –quite small according to central European standards- is broadly contemporary with the beginnings of Greek colonization and with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Silliman. Katherine Sebastian Dring.

One of archaeology’s seemingly inescapable practices is the act of taking, and it remains one of the hardest aspects to manage for communities that work with archaeologists because of its appropriative nature and colonial legacies. A way to balance this "taking" is to emphasize at least as much "giving" in the process, which requires a level of sharing and dialogue that are only now becoming part of archaeologists’ conceptual and methodological toolkits. This paper considers these issues in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Sunseri. Jun Sunseri. Heather Atherton.

Historically, precious little academic archaeology has occurred under the watchful eye of descendant communities who have witnessed generations of researchers come and go, sometimes with no direct contact regarding the results of archaeological investigations in their ancestral places. Despite more recent overtures to mend these practices, we (as a discipline) are still woefully lacking in this regard. Nevertheless, significant changes in the role of cultural patrimony to that of lynchpin in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Britt.

The task of decolonizing the practice of archaeology for a collaborative community project in the public sector is one that is at times easier said than done. While many archaeologists working in federal, state and local agencies may subscribe to a postcolonial approach to research and dissemination of data, political bureaucracy, budget cuts, limited staff and time, among other issues, all make this endeavor challenging to say the least. However, for federal agencies, a variety of laws and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Loubser.

TThe presentation deals with fieldwork conducted between 1983 and 1985 to reconstruct the early history and political-economy of Venda-speaking communities in the Soutpansberg region of South Africa. In order to visit, locate, identify, map, excavate, and interpret ancestral stone-walled sites, the permission, guidance, background information, physical labor, and orally transmitted information of local Venda-speaking people were essential. In most instances permission and guidance to sites were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Marek-Martinez.

For many Native American tribes, archaeology has been a tool used to dismantle and displace tribal narratives of the past. However, with the development of such approaches as Indigenous archaeology and community based participatory approaches, innovative collaborative projects have emerged, which have changed the way tribes view archaeology and how they engage with archaeological practice. My experiences working with Navajo communities have changed my approach and assumptions when engaging with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annelise Morris.

Community engagement is a growing aspect of archaeological practice; not only are archaeologists realizing that these kinds of projects are increasingly important to the movement of decolonization in regards to the histories of under-represented communities, but also that these relationships produce valuable knowledge about sites and their life histories. This paper specifically examines the unique ethnographic moment that arises when descendants and archaeologists come together in the practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Adler.

Practicing archaeology as part of descendant community historical research necessarily addresses issues of cultural identity, concepts of historical continuity, political status and myriad other considerations. This case study focuses on the interplay of communities in the northern Rio Grande region of the American Southwest that are variously defined by Native American, Hispanic, and other identities, as they relate to ongoing negotiations over water rights and other natural resource uses. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Clark.

The open house has long been a tool employed by archaeologists who wish to engage or at least inform the public about their field work. Projects that have a strong community mandate would seem tailor-made for this type of activity. Yet if these events are to meet their promise they need to move from mere "show and tell" to more thoughtful and theoretical interventions. That is particularly true for sites with difficult or contested histories. This presentation draws on four seasons of open...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Striebel MacLean.

Tourism has replaced sugar as the Caribbean’s economic engine. The ruins of sugar mills incorporated into resorts create cultural experiences rooted in romanticized notions of colonialism. Paradoxically the labor structure of this externally driven model replicates the racial, economic, and social divisions of the plantation structure. Promoted as "sustainable," the recent shift to heritage tourism while advantageous to archaeology is rife with the colonizing potential of Eurocentric tourism and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Montgomery.

Consultation with descendant communities is now a widely accepted reality of doing archeology in North America. Since the passing of NAGPRA twenty-five years ago a robust body of scholarship has developed around the methodological and theoretical aspects of consulting with indigenous communities. Although many scholars today point out the need for "collaboration" in addition to "consultation" the constraints of archeological research and tribal politics often make true collaboration difficult....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Nelson.

Archaeology has a long history of extracting knowledge and physical resources from Indigenous communities without redistributing resources or benefits to these communities. The ideas of giving back or "paying in our own currency" are well-meant, albeit simple, attempts to atone for our discipline’s history. However, the historical traumas in Indigenous communities from political, economic and scholarly colonialism are complex, and cannot be remedied with simple fixes. Research that seeks to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J Bremer. Anne Baldwin.

The management of cultural resources on the Santa Fe National Forest includes interpreting the evolving histories of communities and coordinating those histories with the present state of archaeological practice. At the time of its desgination in 1915 the Forest had active excavations and ethnographic research being conducted on it with continuous research since that time. This research has consistently involved using local community members as participants or interpreters. Frequently these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Mills.

Hawaiʻi’s state regulations require principal investigators in the 26 active archaeological consulting firms to possess "a graduate degree from an accredited institution in archaeology, or anthropology, with a specialization in archaeology, or an equivalent field." Because there have been few opportunities for appropriate local graduate training, many heritage management specialists are hired from regions outside of Hawaiʻi and begin with little background or connection to descendant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen. Damian Evans. Terry Lustig. Barry le Plastrier. Eileen Lustig.

Several studies have argued that the collapse of an unsustainable hydraulic network was a major factor in the abandonment of medieval Angkor (~9th to 15th centuries AD) as the capital of the Khmer civilisation. However, Angkor presents us with a great deal of uncertainty due to the spatial and temporal complexity of the archaeological remains. The Angkor-period city of Koh Ker, in contrast, provides the opportunity to study a medieval water management system whose structure and functioning can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anke Hein.

The Liangshan Area in Southwest Sichuan is known for its great diversity both in geographic layout and ethnic composition. It is furthermore characterized by a highly diverse archaeological assemblage, whose date and cultural affiliation is in large parts still unclear. To solve this problem, in recent years archaeological fieldwork has focused on settlement sites, whose stratigraphy promises to aid in establishing a local chronology and furthermore provides insight into the daily life of past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Castillo.

Archaeobotany as a specialisation in Southeast Asia began in the late 1960s. Archaeobotanical methods (e.g. flotation, phytolith and pollen sampling) are still not routinely used in archaeological fieldwork in SEA, although in the past ten years, archaeobotany has gained momentum. For example, several sites in Thailand (Ban Non Wat, Khao Sam Kaeo, Khao Sek, Non Ban Jak, Phu Khao Thong), Vietnam (Lo Gach, Loch Giang, Rach Nui) and Cambodia (Ta Phrom) have included archaeobotanical analyses as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson.

Elaborate water management systems in the form canals, bridges and massive reservoirs (baray) are a defining characteristic of medieval Khmer occupation across their former territories in mainland SE Asia. Beyond the cities, hydraulic control is further manifest in the widespread distribution of smaller water tanks (trapeang) visible across Cambodia and southern Laos. Found variously in association with temples, road infrastructure and settlement mounds these reservoirs represent a key data set...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Evans.

Recently, a series of intensive pedestrian surveys were conducted in the Upper Mun River Valley, northeast Thailand to examine prehistoric and historic settlement patterns at an intermediate scale. This paper will focus on the early prehistoric (1650 – 420 BC) finds, in particular evidence of Neolithic (1650 – 1050 BC) occupation. Our results indicate that during the early prehistoric period, site density was unexpectedly high, but settlement integration was weak; site sizes varied greatly and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Yao. Zhilong Jiang.

Regions under paddy cultivation often present limits on site detection. In addition to deep plowing and continuous flooding of the fields, which intensify erosion and weathering of cultural remains, paddy fields are constructed and managed through field leveling and canal dredging. These processes raze and displace sites, leaving behind a fragmentary settlement record consisting primarily of sites defined by raised mounds and/or standing architecture. Oft used survey techniques that seek to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hetian Jin. Xu Liu. Rui Min. Xiaorui Li. Xiaohong Wu.

In 2010, flotation work was carried out at the site of Dadunzi in the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Zone. A number of crops were recovered from this work including: foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and rice, as well as weeds originating from both fields and the natural environment. The results of the flotation show that at 4000 BP, that the Yuanmou site had already entered a phase of agricultural production and the majority of the diet of the inhabitants of this site came from these three crops....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasper Jan Hanus. Emilia Smagur.

Prehistoric and historic societies have established the material dimension of space through either the physical alteration of the landscape or the formalised recognition of space. Although the latter aspect is rather difficult to trace archaeologically through the use of aerial images, physical modifications of the landscape are often still visible. The northern part of Tonle Sap basin were subjected to intensive survey using satellite imaging in order to identify anthropogenic adjustments on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tegan McGillivray. Nam Kim.

Co Loa is a 600ha Iron Age settlement located in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. Recent excavations of the three earthen ramparts at Co Loa are illuminating the processes of site construction begun during the Dongson cultural period (600 BC-AD 200). The scale and organization of these efforts reflect a highly centralized and institutionalized authority; however, little is known about the nature of settlement and urban form. Using preliminary palynological data from cores and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nanny Kim.

This paper uses geographic visualization to analyse possibilities and limitations of historical sources and fieldwork in studying changes in settlement patters and environmental change in Yunnan province. Local gazetteers are an important source on local conditions. It reflects the perspective of the administration on to some extent that of the Han-Chinese elite, and creates a written and rewritten local tradition. Mapping the zones of attention and the information provided in this type of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Murphy IV.

This paper outlines the cultural context of a complex of sites (known as the LCC sites) nearest to Cache Cave in South Central California. Results from LCC test excavations provide new information that help characterize cultural occupation of this Chumash and Yokuts borderland area in the San Emigdio Hills. The paper focuses on artifact assemblages from excavations near bedrock milling features associated with LCC sites. Artifacts recovered during excavation, such as lithics, fragmented faunal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Earle. John R. Johnson.

The native groups who inhabited the San Emigdio Mountains on the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley are believed to have been speakers of an interior dialect of one of the Chumashan languages, although which one has been open to debate. Certainly the Emigdiano Chumash occupied an important position in the economic exchange system that linked indigenous Kitanemuk and Yokuts groups of the San Joaquin Valley with coastal Chumash peoples. Ethnohistorical study of records kept by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Hill. Julienne Bernard.

Cache Cave exhibits one of the most significant in situ assemblages of basketry and cordage recorded within the Chumash culture area. The abundance and quality of the unique items preserved in this cave system attest that caching served as one important aspect of site function. The presence of utilitarian lithic artifacts, identified during excavations at the cave in 2012 and 2014, suggest that this site may have served additional functions throughout the duration of its use. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Reeves.

Along with a remarkable utilitarian perishable assemblage, a number of objects recovered from Cache Cave can be considered from ideological or symbolic perspectives. These include a number of ornamental and personal items that clearly indicate something other than the storage of everyday objects within the cave. This assemblage contains a variety of beads, a coyote femur tube, an exquisite chert knife, and several other enigmatic objects made of animal bone, skin, wood, and shell, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julienne Bernard. David Robinson. John Johnson.

Caching in caves and rockshelters has been documented in many parts of the Chumash region and beyond, but the discovery and excavation of this Cache Cave provides one of the first opportunities to document cached items in context, assess formation processes, and interpret a site of this kind with preservation of perishable artifacts, as well as materials that are potentially associated with their manufacture and maintenance. This paper introduces the Cache Cave site, situates this site among...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Jolie.

Much of what is known about the pre-contact textile industries of interior Chumash peoples derives from early archaeological investigations and nonprofessional collections acquired from caves and rockshelters during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The vast majority of this material is undated, poorly provenienced, and underreported, which makes interpreting such artifacts’ technological stylistic variability and significance difficult. Recent recovery of more than 500...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dan McArthur. David Robinson.

This study aims to explore the purpose and use of bifurcated sticks found in cache caves of Southern California. Known as ‘witchsticks’ or ‘spirtsticks’, little formal research has been undertaken on these enigmatic cave sticks. As suggested by their naming, interpretations presume a ritual connotation despite little evidence; alternately, a purely practical application has equally been poorly considered. With the discovery of new Cache cave comes the ability to observe well preserved cave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Robinson. Julienne Bernard.

This paper presents an overview of the site structure within the confines of Cache Cave with a particular focus on excavated crevices, deposits, and features. We also present the results of 25 AMS dates so far submitted from the site. These dates include a range of material from basketry, cordage, matting, reeds, bone objects, and charcoal. In total, this program represents the most comprehensively dated Chumash cache cave assemblage yet achieved and yields important data regarding site usage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Wienhold. Alana Springer. Abby Viselman.

The spatial documentation at Cache Cave entailed the mapping of the cave’s interconnecting passages and shelters, its taphonomic environment, and the archaeology present at the site. Due to its complex formation and small spaces, the overall cave structure could not be recorded by more traditional mapping methods. Through the use of three-dimensional (3D) scanning during the Spring and Summer of 2014, a multi-scalar, high resolution approach was used to capture both the interior structure and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gloria Brown. Daniel Reeves. David Robinson.

Due to taphonomic processes at most open sites, bone tools are underrepresented in relation to stone tools. Tools made from modified artiodactyl scapulae are best known from protected sites (caves and rockshelters) in the Great Basin, such as Humboldt Cave and Lovelock Cave. These scapular tools vary in form and presumably function. Some are pointed and described as awls, but a second type is a serrated form, which we will discuss here. Many serrated forms are described as scapular saws, suited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Lee.

My paper will look at textiles as marker of identity in the Viking Disapora in Britain and Ireland. While oval brooches and metal work have been given prominent roles in the discussion of identity, the textiles they adorned are often only mentioned in passing. However, techniques and fabrics may tell us something about connections with the homelands, as well as identities which are maintained in the areas of the Viking diaspora. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Orri Vesteinsson.

The cultures that arose in the North Atlantic during the Viking Age - the Scottish Isles, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland - were emphatically Norse in their ethnic signalling. Yet the environments of these islands, especially the more westerly ones, were significantly different from Scandinavia or Britain and supported quite different lifeways, different economic strategies, settlement patterns and material cultures. Focusing on Iceland and Greenland the paper aims to highlight the tension...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Griffiths.

This paper will begin by reviewing how ‘Viking Archaeology’ came about in the 19th and 20th centuries. Formed under the influence of a handful of key scholars, with their primary index of recognition based in Scandinavian museum collections, a widely-accepted paradigm of Nordic precedence was created. Aided by a series of influential Scandinavian publications, this stance produced a seemingly fixed series of cultural references, creating a strongly-identified intrusive ethnic grouping in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catrine Jarman.

Recent reassessments of the gender balance among Viking Age Scandinavian populations in the British Isles have suggested a greater presence of immigrant women than previously thought. At the same time, increasing support for a view of the Viking world as a diaspora, with a sustained network between the original and the acquired homelands, has necessitated a better understanding of the mechanics of the migration process. This paper evaluates interdisciplinary evidence for the level of mobility...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Ashby.

When considered at all, objects of bone and antler tend to be discussed in functional terms. Occasionally, ornate objects such as hair combs may be seen as communicators of information. In this paper I will argue that if such objects tell us anything about identity, it is not through their form or ornament, but through the tradition in which they were made. Crafts are grown out of tradition, which means that objects are reservoirs of important cultural and social information. For the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Hadley.

From 865, Viking raids on England intensified with the arrival of an army much larger than any previously known. This so-called 'Great Army' (micel here) raided northern and eastern England, spending the winter at a number of sites recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but which, until recently, have remained archaeologically elusive. Recent fieldwork at a handful of these sites, some of which were first identified by metal detectorists, has now begun both to identify their precise locations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Callow.

This paper briefly sets out and analyses recent terminological discussions among archaeologists and other scholars working on regions influenced and settled by 'vikings' in the Viking Age, c.800-c.1050CE. 'Diaspora' has, perhaps belatedly, been a term applied to the pattern of social and economic relationships linking some communities across Europe and the North Atlantic. The applicability of the term 'diaspora' or of seeing a series of diasporic communities will be considered alongside the more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson.

The people of Viking Age Scandinavia shared a common culture and could as a group be regarded as Northmen or people from the North. It is clear, however, that contemporary Northmen recognised differences between, and divisions within, their own cultural and political sphere. In order to advance in our interpretation and understanding of the Northmen and their geographical expansion during the Viking Age, we need to recognise these differences, which they themselves were well aware of. The Viking...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Mussington.

Citizen science has been a relatively new component of the curricular activities at Sir McChesney George Secondary School in Barbuda. This approach is designed to more effectively engage youth living in a technologically advanced age in a small island community. By using science to understand and develop solutions to everyday challenges associated with climate change and development, classroom work is made more relevant and science comes alive and is transformed from the abstract to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Boger.

The island of Barbuda, West Indies has a relatively unique history, land tenure and geography. Despite its arid climate and thin soils, the enslaved and eventually free people of Barbuda developed a complex herding ecology and built historic wells that are strategically located around the island to support their sustainably resilient agricultural practices. Now, these wells are largely abandoned and people are increasingly dependent on external food and water. An interdisciplinary team of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Franco.

The relationship between the academia and non-academic individuals is often challenging, as there are tensions between who owns the power to produce knowledge. Citizen science is breaking this untold rule by incorporating the communities, fostering interactions that help transform segregated relationships. Recovery of knowledge from traditional and local perspectives has shown that individuals and communities hold very valuable, deep knowledge regarding their specific surroundings and daily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

Adherence to codes of ethics is central to successful and respected practice of archaeology. The SAA’s Code of Ethics includes eight principles that address critical broad issues, including the importance of in-situ long-term conservation and protection of archaeological sites (Principle 1), establishing beneficial working relationships with all parties (Principle 2) and the importance of public outreach (Principle 4). Even though, as members of the SAA, we agree that these principles are the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Garay.

Only in exceptional moments can we explore the thoughts of others. Community archaeology projects, together with the ethical practice of the discipline, foster communication between the academia and the communities. Being part of one of these projects as a research assistant has given me the opportunity of interacting with people of diverse backgrounds, and of learning about their concerns and interests towards archaeology and their historical and cultural heritage. This experience has taught me...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Rivera-Claudio.

Un interés personal por la historia me llevó a buscar cómo entender mejor mi presente, aprendiendo sobre los errores y los éxitos de nuestro pasado. La creación de las investigaciones de Ciudadano Científico coordinadas por Para la Naturaleza da oportunidades al público para obtener experiencia en varias áreas de la naturaleza y personalmente me abrió las puertas hacia el mundo de la arqueología. Mi experiencia en la investigación Descubriendo Nuestras Raíces y en proyectos anteriores del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jen-I Costosa.

As local communities are trying to adapt to the challenges of the anthropocene they are being faced not just with the loss of archaeological sites but also their livelihoods, identity and home. When living in a small island developing state (SIDS), the partnership of cultural heritage investigations with citizen science, transcends theory and provides the local participants with the tools to conserve and preserve the stories of the past while making empowered solutions towards challenges of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Perdikaris.

The small sister island of Antigua, Barbuda, has been the center of archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations over the last nine years. Archaeological presence on the island has progressed from seasonal projects with some local volunteers to the creation of two museums and a research center with a permanent presence on the island. This transition assisted in the founding of the first ever NGO on island, The Barbuda Research Complex focusing on research, heritage, education,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Díaz-Díaz.

La erosión costera es el proceso por el cual la acción hidráulica del mar transporta los sedimentos de un lugar de la costa a otro. Esta situación es particularmente importante en islas, donde gran parte de la población ha vivido y continúa viviendo en zonas costeras. Dentro del contexto de ciencia ciudadana, en esta charla presento el desarrollo de mi investigación multidisciplinaria que combina geomorfología y arqueología para evaluar cómo la erosión puede amenazar un sitio arqueológico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Lopez.

El Programa Ciudadano Científico de Para la Naturaleza es un proyecto que da al ciudadano común la oportunidad de conocer, guiados por expertos, las huellas del pasado analizadas con técnicas del presente. Esto no sólo da una idea de cómo se vivía en aquel entonces sino permite conocer y entender las costumbres y estilo de vida del humano en el pasado. Comencé a participar de este Proyecto antes de finalizar mis estudios de escuela secundaria. Cuando formas parte de este proyecto aprendes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Hanks. Chuenyan Ng. Roger Doonan. Elena Kupriyanova. Nikolai Vinogradov.

The diffusion of metalworking, horse-drawn transport, and use of domesticated plants and animals across the Eurasian steppes and forest-steppes have dominated recent scholarly discussions of second millennium BCE socio-economic development. The term "globalization" is routinely used to characterize these early processes and key horizons of technological development. This paper draws on recent archaeological field research in the Southern Ural Mountains of the Russian Federation to emphasize the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gayle Fritz.

Two crops domesticated in North America north of Mexico before European colonization have achieved global economic success: (1) sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus); and (2) eastern squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera var. ovifera). Other members of the Eastern Agricultural Complex became extinct as domesticates before European contact or shortly thereafter, forfeiting potential to figure in the Columbian Exchange. Both sunflower and the domesticated eastern chenopod (Chenopodium...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Jones. Emma Lightfoot. Martin Jones. Tamsin O'Connell. Cameron Petrie.

Why might societies adopt new crops or change their cropping patterns? Climate change is one of several possible drivers, but its role in crop exchange has rarely been empirically tested and its importance relative to other factors, particularly cultural factors, remains controversial. As part of the Food Globalisation in Prehistory project, two isotopic studies have aimed to directly test the relationship between climate change and crop movement in particular contexts. One focuses on the Hexi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loukas Barton.

The adoption of agricultural products and practices is a social process. Archaeological patterns reveal more than just the timing and direction of the adoption, they help to reveal the very nature of social interaction over a wide area. In particular, the spatial and temporal patterns of diffusion point to norms and priorities in social learning, which in turn generate new avenues for exploring archaeological data. Evidence for the adoption of wheat (a western domesticate) in East Asia is best...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute. Martin Kenneth Jones.

The main goal of this research is to explore the contribution of plant food to the diet of pastoral societies. It is still a subject of debate whether domesticated plants were being consumed and grown or just traded in this region during the Bronze Age, as the role of domesticated crops and their intensity of consumption in pastoral societies has been overlooked and until now hardly studied. This research presents the first results of stable carbon/nitrogen isotope analysis and archaeobotanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shuzhi Wang. Zenglin Wang. Xuelian Zhang. Maolin Ye. Linhai Cai.

Hulijia site was located in Minhe County, Qinghai Province, western China and was the earliest Neolithic site (5000 BP) in Qinghai Province. Two pieces of roll carbonized remains similar to steamed twisted rolls made of wheat were unearthed from this site. The remains were analyzed by means of stable carbon isotope firstly and the results showed that the value of δ13C was -25.1‰. So roll carbonized remains were tree remains. Then the anatomic structure of the remains was observed by means of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Lightfoot.

The spread of agriculture in the Neolithic and Bronze Age is an important topic of archaeological research, with major implications for human societies across Eurasia. The Food Globalisation in Prehistory project (FOGLIP) has furthered our knowledge of the spread of crops across Eurasia in prehistory using a variety of archaeological methods including archaeobotany, genetics and stable isotope analysis. This presentation will focus on the contribution of stable isotope analysis to our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Przelomska. Harriet Hunt. James Cockram. Frances Bligh. Martin Jones.

Eurasian millets (genera Panicum and Setaria) are amongst the world’s oldest cereal crops, with evidence of cultivation in China from 10,000 years cal BP. Archaeobotanical evidence also indicates the presence of domesticated millet in Europe as early as 7,000 years cal BP. New archaeological evidence coming to light suggests that these important staple food crops were part of a 'Trans-Eurasian exchange' during prehistory. Traditional cultivars, or 'landraces', of millet have been preserved in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dong Guanghui. Ying Yang. Hui Wang. Xiaoyan Ren. Fahu Chen.

Barley and wheat are now important cultivated crops in northwest China, especially on the Tibetan Plateau, which are suggested to have been firstly domesticated in West Asia before 10000 cal yr BP. When these two crops were firstly introduced to China that locates in the other part of the Eurasia has been widely concerned and intensively discussed in recent years. Gansu and Qinghai Provinces is a key region of the "Ancient Silk Road", where might have included important passages in "Food...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Lister. Huw Jones. Hugo Oliveira. James Cockram. Martin Jones.

By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the South-west Asian crops wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) are being cultivated in much of Central, South and East Asia. How did these crops spread from west to east? Can we find evidence of the routes of spread through the archaeogenetic analysis of these South-west Asian cereals? We describe our analyses of Eurasian barley and wheat using microsatellite and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs); this data is enabling us to elucidate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Steere.

In this paper I reflect on Steve Kowalewski’s influence on my research on houses and households in the native Southeast. In the early days of my graduate training, Steve encouraged me to move away from a single-site focus and instead think about household archaeology as a broadly comparative anthropological enterprise undertaken at a macro-regional scale. It was a good idea. To meet Steve’s challenge, I constructed a database that catalogs the architectural features of 1258 structures from 65...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Barba.

During field seasons 2008 – 2011 a large set of archaeological prospection techniques were applied in large areas surrounding present town of Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca in a joint project carried on by University of Georgia and the National University of Mexico. This project attempted to put together the large experience of Kowalewski in archaeological survey in Oaxaca’s valleys and the experience of the Archaeological Prospection Laboratory using geophysical techniques in Mexico. These approaches are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Pluckhahn. Victor Thompson.

From his early work on social evolution in Mesoamerica to his more recent macrohistory of coalescent societies, Steve Kowalewski has epitomized the big picture approach to anthropological archaeology. Taking a cue from the latter body of work, as well as the recent overview of the topic by Bandy and Fox, we work toward a macrohistory of early village societies. Building from recent work at the Crystal River site (8CI1) on Florida’s west central Gulf Coast, we look to commonalities in early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chamblee.

Steve Kowalewski’s work demonstrates the importance of long-term data and provides methods for synthesizing archaeological and other social science data to address problems of contemporary concern. This paper takes cues from that research and combines it with the social conscience for which Steve is known and respected. Instead of treating the deaths of undocumented border crossers in isolation, this phenomenon is contextualized by the long-term history of the U.S. Mexico Borderlands as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yanxi Wang.

The regional full-coverage survey at the Guan River Valley reveals a highly integrated, hierarchical and structured settlement system in the first millennium B.C. This settlement system centered on a walled city on the broad alluvial plain of the middle stream. However, a supra-settlement, which was more than twice as large as the city, located at the mountainous area more than 25 km to the upper stream. The nature of this supra-settlement and its relation to the middle stream settlement system...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verenice Heredia Espinoza.

Steve Kowalewski has created the largest full-coverage survey block in the entire world. He has championed survey because of the information it provides on regional and macro-regional processes. This can only be done by walking transect after transect covering large amounts of land. There is neither magic nor trick; it only takes hard work. Steve´s leadership and teachings on survey methods have benefited even the most peripheral areas of Mesoamerica. Based on the methods I learned from Steve, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Birch.

Stephen Kowalewski has advanced a number of conceptual frameworks for the comparative study of organizational complexity. His multiscalar, cross-cultural approach permits the recognition of broad patterns while incorporating meaningful variation. In a 2013 paper, Steve explores the "work" involved in the formation of large, co-residential communities. He suggests that we might productively focus on the labor process, as community members purposefully redirected people’s time, energy, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wilcox.

The fundamental shift from artifacts to settlements as the basic units of archaeological inquiry required a rethinking of methodologies. Now the basic questions were about measuring interactions of people deployed differentially on cultural landscapes. At a more abstract level it required adoption of the logic of relations in preference to the typological logic of entities and their qualities. If settlements are portrayed as variously colored dots on a map, interactions can be expressed as what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelly Robles Garcia.

One of the major contributions of Dr. Kowalweski has been a dual impact in the development of Oaxacan archaeologists, and his model of engagement with communities where he has studied. Undoubtedly, Steve has been an example to follow in academia, his Valley of Oaxaca survey expanded on Ignacio Bernal´s pioneer study. He and his associates used the full-coverage strategy for the central valleys and replicated it in the Mixteca Alta. Steve has always been open to include Mexican archaeologists in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Edgar. Corey Ragsdale.

The offerings of human remains made at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlán include decapitated skulls, some of them reused as masks or headdresses. It is generally accepted that the sacrificial offerings of the Templo Mayor were obtained through warfare. To test this, we used bioarchaeological analyses to determine where the skull masks came from geographically, and whether the skull masks meet the biological profile of elite warriors. We recorded sex, age, and indicators of disease and nutritional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria De Lourdes Gallardo.

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio integral de los restos de prendas rituales elaboradas con textiles y elementos laminares de conchas nacaradas, que se depositaron en cuatro ofrendas del sitio arqueológico del Templo Mayor. A pesar del mal estado de conservación que actualmente se observa en la mayor parte de estos objetos, fue posible identificar cuatro prendas rituales, a través de una investigación que observa varios aspectos relevantes y complementarios. Así, el estudio comprende: la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reyna Solis.

In the Great Temple and the surrounding structures at the Sacred Precinct of Mexico Tenochtitlan, the archaeologists recovered thousands of lapidary objects devoted to the religious cult of the Mexica society. Great quantities of them were considered foreign productions or relics related with certain Mesoamerican styles and traditions. In this research we will show that the technological analysis, using Experimental Archaeology and the characterization of the manufacturing traces with SEM,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eulogio Guzmán.

The excavation of the Templo Mayor yielded a plethora of objects that testify to the supreme ideological importance this edifice held for the Mexica confederacy. While the offerings unearthed within the foundations of this structure comprised a variety of portable objects placed in intimate settings, larger sculptures seem to have articulated more public iconographic programs. My analysis of both portable and monumental sculptures shows these works emphasized the bricolage of incorporated and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only EDUARDO MATOS MOCTEZUMA.

Las últimas investigaciones acerca de diversos materiales en la esfera de producción de Tenochtitlan, apuntan hacia la presencia y vínculos existentes entre la elaboración de objetos y el principal templo mexica. No solo se trata de materiales como concha, cobre, turquesa y otros más, sino que también se ha podido ver en las ofrendas del Templo Mayor y adoratorios aledaños la presencia de una fauna abundante que, al parecer, procedía del zoológico del palacio real. Todo lo anterior revela la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Niklas Schulze.

The studies of the offerings of the Templo Mayor of the late postclassic Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan have shown that these concentrate objects of many different materials, styles and origins. The question of how these objects reached the offerings has probably more than one answer, reflecting the complexity of the postclassic economic system. However, recent research has shown that several artifact groups that were thought to be imports were probably produced in strictly regulated workshops...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naoli Victoria Lona.

In our days, is a general known the amazing offering ritual made by the mexica people in the late Posclassic period. The studies show a high diversity of organic and inorganic material, some local, some brought from foreign lands, like the resin of copal case, as was verified by historical documents and ethnographic studies, so, the copal resin was imported as crude feedstock. The resin was brought to Tenochtitlan where it was transformed into different objects like bars, spheres,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frances Berdan.

Featherworking was among the finest of the luxury industries in the Aztec world. The craft employed complicated techniques and some expensive materials, but a relatively straightforward and inexpensive toolkit. Book 9 of the Florentine Codex features a detailed account of this featherworking technology. Forty-one illustrations accompany the Nahuatl textual account, and 27 phonetic glyphs (as single elements or in structured combinations) are embedded in these illustrations. Renewed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diego Jimenez. Salvador Ruíz-Correa.

This paper focuses on a new kind of typological analysis based on a quantitative procedure called Spectral Clustering. This technique uses Graph Theory to analyse the eigenstructure of an affinity matrix in order to partition data points into disjoint clusters. The original algorithms were developed a decade ago by mathematicians and machine learning professionals. To the best of our knowledge, this technique has not been applied before in archaeology despite its proven performance in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norma Valentin.

The use of animal fur in ancient Mesoamerica is well known due to the historical records, sculpture and painting. Archaeologically, it has been inferred by some evidence, as the presence and absence of certain animal bones and the cultural traces they present (abrasions, cuts and perforations, for example). In the offerings of the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, there has been found a large number of skeletal remains of four classes of vertebrates (fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Velazquez.

Recent investigations about the Tenochca objects have shown that the mexica produced many of the pieces that they deposited inside of the offerings they buried in their Great Temple and its surrounding buildings. It seems that it was during the reigned of Axayacatl (1469-1481 A.D.) that the mexica decided to create their own imperial style not only in terms of forms and decorations but also in the technological aspect. In the present paper it is presented new data that supports this hypothesis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yongxian Li.

The two large settlement sites of Ka’erdong and Zebang which were radiocarbon-dated to 3000-1500 BP probably belong to the former Zhangzhung Kingdom (1500 BC – AD 645). These two sites are unusually large, covering an area of 130,000 m2 and 500,000 m2 respectively. Both sites have large cemeteries, residential areas, ritually-used spaces, and defensive structures. The largest structure observed is a large stone-mound tomb with a diameter of 60 m and a height of 6 m that can be attributed to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xin Zhonghua.

Some of the largest and most important prehistoric archaeological excavations conducted during the last ten years in Sichuan , were those in the Hanyuan Valley in the mid reaches of the Dadu River. So far, ten prehistoric sites have been excavated, revealing hundreds of housing remains, burials, trash pits and other features containing thousands of ceramic objects, stone tools, and bone objects. Utilizing this wealth of new material, this paper presents an analysis of the Neolithic settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio.

Studies on pottery from archaeological sites in Southeast Asia are largely orientated towards aspects of manufacturing and typology. Emphasis is on the identification of transregional similarities and differences of form, decoration, and composition to establish patterns of human migration, contact, and identity. Less emphasis has been directed towards understanding what happens to different pottery vessels between their manufacturing and disposal, as well as their actual functional use. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Piphal Heng. Rachna Chhay.

One of the defining features of the great temples of Angkor is the pattern of enclosed space that surrounds many major monuments. The outer limits of these enclosures are frequently bounded by masonry walls and moats. Although more than a century of research has been devoted to understanding the temples that lie at the center of these enclosures, the structure and function of the vast rectilinear spaces that surround them remains very poorly understood. This paper draws on recent fieldwork by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard.

As with other regions of China with limited settlement evidence, our understanding of life and developments in Lingnan (present-day Guangdong and Guangxi) during the Han dynasty relies in large part on contemporary texts and burial evidence – over 3000 Han dynasty graves have been identified to date in Lingnan. Although a number of non-funerary sites are now known, they offer only limited information about internal organization and function, the exception being the impressive Nanyue palace in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ran Honglin.

From its initial discovery in 1929, much research has been conducted on the site of Sanxingdui, making it the most famous and most important Bronze Age site in all of Sichuan if not Southwest China. While the sacrificial pits with their singular bronze objects have already been discussed in great detail by many scholars, the settlement of Sanxingdui, its structure and development are still poorly understood. Based on a consideration of the stratigraphic sequence and comparative analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only TzeHuey Chiou-Peng. Jianfeng Cui.

Although research works on the Bronze Age burials in Yunnan in the past fifty years have expanded our knowledge on various aspects of ancient Yunnan societies, many questions pertaining to the earliest stages of human existence in Yunnan have remained to be answered for short of a well-defined chronological sequence from settlement archaeology. Recent findings of early habitation sites in the environs of the Lake Er are beginning to shed new lights on the exiting issues, including questions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lo Chi Kei.

Recent archaeological excavations in eastern and northern Guangdong and eastern Guangxi discovered palaces and administrative offices in the period of Nanyue Kingdom. Also, the characteristics of the palaces and the offices were Han-style and other facilities were installed defensive function as a military post. Based on the excavations, this paper studies how the elements of Han culture were integrated into Yue culture as reflected their settlement structures, architectures, and other material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Ehrich.

Neolithic Sichuan formed a crossroad for influences from the north associated with millet agriculture and from the east associated with the growing of rice. But how did the different traditions of habitation of the Upper Yellow River in the north and the Middle Yangzi River as well as the Three Gorges in the east affect the situation in Sichuan and what role did adaptation to the local environment play? This is a survey of prehistoric architecture and settlement structure in Sichuan and an...