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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Berger.

This paper will explore the links between bioarchaeology and human ecology, and how they can contribute to studies of ancient Chinese subsistence. Both fields deal with similar types of data, including measures of nutritional status, fertility, disease burden, food production, and human-environment interaction. However, the two fields differ widely in both the time scale and the resolution of their data. Can models from human ecology inform bioarchaeological research? Can the long time scale...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guiyun Jin. Fuqiang Wang.

Early Neolithic plant exploitation is a key subject for understanding the subsistence strategies of late hunter-gatherers and early farmers. As archaeobotany has developed in China, plant remains, together with other ecofacts, have been recovered from several early Neolithic sites around Shandong Highlands, East China. Preliminary results show changes in the role of plant resources. At about 10000 year BP, the inhabitants of Bianbiandong Cave relied mainly on animal food with very small amount...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giacomo Gaggio. Paul Goldstein.

Much is known nowadays about the role of plants in Tiwanaku households and political economy, yet, their function in ceremonial contexts is still unclear. Unlike the state's heartland in the Bolivian altiplano, where preservation conditions are not always favorable for the systematic recovery of paleobotanical remains, excavations of Tiwanaku sites in the hyper-arid environment of the Moquegua valley in southern Peru have resulted in the recovery of a wide array of ancient organic finds,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Bardolph.

This paper explores the roles of plant foodways in the social, political, and economic organization of Cerro la Virgen, a Late Chimu site in the Moche Valley of North Coastal Peru. Located in the hinterland of Chan Chan, the capital the Chimu Empire (AD 1000-1460), Cerro la Virgen comprised a diverse community of craftspeople, farmers, and fisherfolk. Recent paleoethnobotanical investigations of assemblages from different household contexts afford a closer look at the diverse economic strategies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Mayer. Matthew Sayre.

In this paper we present macrobotanical data from the Peruvian archaeological site of Tenehaha in the Cotahuasi Valley. Soil samples from archaeological excavation areas were recovered by Justin Jennings and his field crew from the Tenehaha site. These soil samples were floated in order to sieve out the botanical remains of the ancient past lives of Peruvians at a ritual and ceremonial burial site of Tenehaha. Our analysis revealed new insights into site use and the distribution of botanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Biwer. Donna Nash.

This paper presents preliminary analysis of macrobotanical remains from the Middle Horizon Wari Imperial sites in the Upper Moquegua Valley, Peru. Plant remains from the sites Cerro Baúl and Cerro Mejía are compared to begin contracting a baseline for Wari residential subsistence at the colony, and the greater Empire. Additionally, paleoethnobotanical remains from the sites are compared to further develop archaeological interpretations of Wari social practices surrounding food. SAA 2015...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Taylor.

The Middle Formative (800-250B.C.) on the Taraco Peninsula was a period of burgeoning status and wealth differentiation that saw the rise of platform mound construction and the intensification of quinoa farming nearby the shores of Lake Titicaca. This paper will present data from a macrobotanical analysis of the site Alto Pukara, a 3.25 hectare village excavated in 2000 and 2001. A thorough examination of the distribution of charred plant remains across all contexts of a single structure will be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hendrik Van Gijseghem. Giacomo Gaggio. Kevin Vaughn.

Mina Primavera was a hematite mine exploited during the first part of the Early Intermediate Period by members of Nasca society. Its exceptional preservation conditions have led to the recovery of a large assemblage of botanical remains. Recent analysis of the ubiquity and diversity of botanical species allow us to reconstruct consumption practices that took place as part of mining activities. However, observation of taphonomic processes and stratigraphic distribution of the hundreds of maize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

In recent years, coastal Peru has seen an encouraging upwards trend in the number of archaeologists trained in the field of paleoethnobotany or archaeobotany. With growing numbers of practitioners in the field, it is crucial to remain vigilant of methodological concerns that are relevant not only to archaeobotanists as a whole, but particularly to those working in the unique environment of coastal Peru. In the interest of maximizing interpretative potential while maintaining the capability to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lizette Munoz. Brendan Weaver.

The 2012-2013 season of the Haciendas of Nasca Archaeological Project focused on the recovery of material correlates of domestic production, consumption, and discard from two Jesuit coastal haciendas, San Joseph and San Xavier, where the majority of the labor was enslaved and of African descent. Our systematic analysis of macrobotanical remains and sediment samples aimed at branching our understanding of: a) colonial foodways beyond the Native Andean/European dichotomy, as several years of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only BrieAnna Langlie.

In the Peruvian altiplano near Lake Titicaca during the Late Intermediate period (LIP; A.D. 1100 to 1450) peoples’ lives were overwhelmingly structured by warfare. Martial conflict between competing ethnic groups incited people to live defensively in fortified hilltop villages during the LIP. However, little is known about the agricultural practices and the internal sociopolitical dynamics of these fighting communities. Drawing on recent excavations and macrobotanical data collected from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirk Costion. David John Goldstein. Lizette Muñoz Rojas.

Analysis of the micro and macrobotanical remains from the Huaracane settlement of Yahuay Alta's early Middle Horizon (AD 550 – 800) contexts revealed no recorded signature of maize use at this site, but the presence of a variety of other agricultural remains. We know that the Tiwanaku and Wari states established colonial settlements in the Moquegua Valley in this period, and that the Tiwanaku colonial project in the middle valley focused on its excellent potential for maize agriculture....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliet Morrow. Sarah Stuckey.

This presentation is a continuation of research on the intersource and intrasource variability of Burlington chert and its implications for interpretations of pre-contact period settlement and procurement. Our results presented in 2013 suggest that Burlington look-a-like cherts (e.g., Lafayette Fomation chert, etc.) display the same mid-infrared spectral range as Burlington Formation chert from quarries and secondary deposits (St. Louis area, northern-central Missouri, and southwest Missouri)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Burke.

This work presents results on the use of microscopic and PXRF analyses for determining Suwannee chert provenance. Traditionally, analysis of the diagnostic microfossils, fabric, and inclusions in Florida cherts has allowed for successful sourcing of lithic raw materials to a distinct quarry cluster within a specific limestone formation. Instrument analysis has not been pursued due to its prohibitive cost, and trace-elemental analysis has been discouraged because of the inherent difficulty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Anderson.

The University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) has an expansive lithic raw material assemblage with a 30 year compilation history. The largest portion contains multiple samples of 75 in-state lithic types while the second portion contains multiple samples from the seven surrounding and 16 additional states. A revision and reorganization of the OSA collection was completed in 2006 to provide a more systematic and consistent approach to lithic identification and sourcing. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Barrientos. Juan Belardi. Luciana Catella. Flavia Carballo. Fernando Oliva.

The aim of this presentation is to introduce and discuss an approach to sourcing chert materials based on the use of spatial continuous models of relative frequency data (i.e. percentage representation of toolstone classes in georeferenced artifact assemblages), which is particularly useful in areas where there is scarce information about both the variability of one or many toolstone classes represented in lithic assemblages across the regional space and the localization of their likely or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Kendall.

Globally, chert is the most common rock material found in archaeological contexts. Its prevalence on the Earth’s surface in Quaternary deposits and relative abundance in archaeological contexts indicate that it was an important resource material for ancient populations and, as such, can provide information about toolstone exploitation in prehistory. The results of this research suggest a local origin for the chert artefacts recovered from ST 109 at the Keatley Creek site (EeRl-7) in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel ten Bruggencate. Brooke Milne. Mostafa Fayek. Robert Park. Douglas Stenton.

The southern Baffin Island chert sourcing project was initiated in 2007. Eight years of fieldwork and geochemical analysis have allowed us to refine our chert characterization technique and its instrumental application. We have successfully characterized two large chert quarries in the interior of southern Baffin Island using solution ICP-MS trace element analysis. We have also linked chert artifacts from one of these quarries to a nearby Palaeo-Eskimo occupation site, demonstrating transport...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Speer.

Portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) has become a common tool in compositional studies of archaeological materials due to its quick analytical time and ever-increasing capability with new models and technology. Additionally, pXRF is also beginning to see widespread use for sourcing archaeological materials. This study compares pXRF with two other widely accepted analytical techniques, Laser Ablation – Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and Instrument Neutron Activation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wayne Wilson. Neil Hauser.

Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometry (LIBS) has been used in Colorado and Wyoming for identifying and sourcing lithic materials for the last ten years. These have primarily focused on chert and silicified sandstone materials and quarry-derived artifacts. During 2012-2013 the LIBS was used to assess whether Bridger chert from sources in northwestern Colorado and southwestern Wyoming could be distinguished from each other. It was found that with greater than 80% accuracy, chert from these areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Rissetto. Giancarlo Pepponi. Igor Gutiérrez-Zugasti. Rossana Dell’Anna. David Cuenca-Solana.

Radiolarite is a fossil-rich derivative of biogenic chert found in isolated geologic formations across northern Spain. This inconsistent presence on the landscape has often led archaeologists to misidentify it with other siliceous rock types. However, as the proveniencing of lithic raw materials increase in Spain, archaeologists are becoming more aware of radiolarite and its possible unique technological, typological, and social significance in prehistoric cultures. This paper will present the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beverly Chiarulli.

During the Late Prehistoric period, at least four major lithic raw material types were used for the manufacture of a limited variety of tool types. The major tool forms were small triangular projectile points and flake tools. The major raw material types used in this region include Onondaga, Loyalhanna, and Shriver cherts and Vanport Siliceous Shale. Workshops and quarries have been identified have been identified and are found on the north, south, east and west sides of this region. An analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Nazaroff.

In the past decade, a tremendous increase in the use of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments in archaeological provenance research has warranted several critical reflections on the analytical protocols which underpin their application in various material and regional contexts. This paper approaches the use of pXRF analysis for determining chert provenance with particular emphasis placed on tailoring empirical calibrations to best suit the dynamic properties of chert materials. In so...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Parish.

The Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys boast some of the highest concentrations of diagnostic Paleoindian artifact finds in the Americas. However, many of these finds are from secondary contexts void of associated deposits. The study utilizes chert provenance data, obtained using reflectance spectroscopy, on a large sample of Late Paleoindian diagnostic bifaces from sites along the Lower Tennessee River Valley. The objective of the study is to visualize group mobility at the close of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khori Newlander.

As a cost-effective and non-destructive method for multi-element analysis, portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) has the potential for broad archaeological application. Several studies have demonstrated the validity of pXRF for sourcing obsidian and fine-grained volcanic artifacts. In this study, I assess the validity of pXRF for sourcing chert artifacts from Paleoindian sites in the North American Great Basin. Because chert artifacts dominate many archaeological sites, the ability to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Killian Driscoll. Adrian Burke. Gilles Gauthier. Graeme Warren. Stefan Bergh.

The Irish Lithic Landscapes project is investigating the places where prehistoric communities obtained the raw materials for their flaked stone tools during the Irish Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Early Bronze Age, which dates to c. 8,000–2,000 BC. While Ireland has a very rich archaeological heritage, there is a significant gap in the island's raw material sourcing research. This project will begin to fill this gap, and therefore deepen our understanding of the prehistoric communities there. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Kulick.

Recent studies of structural remains at Magdalenian open-air sites have provided valuable insights into patterns of occupation and intra-site spatial organization. However, interpretations of activities that may have occurred within the structures have primarily been limited to understandings of the repetition and duration of such activities. Determining more detailed use-of-space within the structures has been challenging at many sites due to site disturbance, not only from natural and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nada Hosking.

To deal with the destructive nature of archaeological excavations, today’s archaeologists are using new technologies to create 3D records of not only the archaeological sites, but also the archaeological process. This project explores how photogrammetry and 3D modelling can support theoretical approaches to the phenomena and processes by which Palaeolithic out-of-context imagery, especially that which is engraved, is produced. Using 3D technologies can allow researchers to simulate a variety of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastien Lacombe.

Recent research on Magdalenian flint provisioning strategies in southwestern France, particularly from sites associated with decorated caves, have opened doors to new interpretations regarding the role that these materials played in the construction and maintenance of Magdalenian society. Beyond the traditional typological and technological factors that seem to mainly fluctuate according to circumstances, more consistent symbolic functions appear to have been imbedded in most of these materials,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Schwendler.

A decade ago this author completed a synthesis of information about the circulation of exotic lithic raw materials, items of personal ornamentation, and portable decorated objects across western Europe during the Magdalenian ca. 17,000 to 12,000 B.P. Tests of hypotheses about the relationship between population density and visual display suggested that population density was probably not the sole driving force behind the types and intensities of visual displays used by generations of Magdalenian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Sterling.

A number of recent publications about Magdalenian life have used terms such as "domestic" or "household" and their derivations to differentiate between different types of sites or tools, and perhaps also to underscore the fact that archaeology is about people, not just materials. This language also reflects the influence household archaeology has had in expanding studies of sedentary societies. It is not clear, however, that a distinction between domestic and non-domestic activities is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John O'Hara.

Besides its rich and complex archaeological record, the Late Glacial of Franco-Cantabria is also a moment of central importance in the population history of Western Europe. This region was the principal demographic source for the post-LGM recolonization of Western Europe, and the influence of cultural trends originating here may be observed across the continent. This paper will present the goals and initial results of an ongoing research project to analyze the internal social dynamics of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Kukekova. Jennifer Johnson. Anastasiya Kharlamova. Rimma Gulevich. Lyudmila Trut.

Domestication as a special form of evolution offers valuable insight into how genomic variation contributes to complex differences in behavioral and morphological phenotypes. The silver fox (Vulpes vulpes) is taxonomically close to the dog but normally exhibit distinct patterns of aggressive and fear-aggressive behavior to humans. At the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (ICG) in Novosibirsk, Russia the process of animal domestication has been experimentally reconstructed and a strain of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Fillios.

Archaeological evidence suggests dingos were brought to Australia sometime during the mid-Holocene (c. 5,000-3,500 years ago). Their introduction coincides with significant changes in human behaviour, specifically in technology, settlement patterns and diet. While their relationship with Aboriginal people is commonly held to have been commensal, this interesting amalgamation of changes certainly begs the question of whether there may be a dingo ‘signature’ in the archaeological record....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pat Shipman.

Using morphological and statistical techniques, Germonpré and colleagues have identified over 40 Paleolithic dogs, ranging from ~36,000 to 13,900 cal yrs BP. These unusual canids have a different dietary signature from wolves at the same sites according to isotopic analyses. MtDNA analyses by Thalmann and others show that at least Paleolithic dog had a unique mtDNA sequence. I propose that these canids represent early domesticated dogs which significantly improved human hunting success....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Losey.

Humans and dogs have long engaged in complex relationships, ranging from loving and intimate, to extremely violent and exploitive. Archaeology has tended to focus on the former, mostly ignoring the sometimes-ample evidence for trauma and tooth loss in remains of ancient dogs. Inferring the causes of such lesions on ancient dog remains has proven difficult, in part because of the lack of comparative data for canids living outside of the human niche. This paper compares patterns of cranial trauma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Greger Larson. Keith Dobney. Anna Linderholm. Allowen Evin. Thomas Cucchi.

Dogs were unquestionably the first domestic animal and the only animal domesticated within a hunter-gatherer context prior to the advent of agriculture. Understanding the precise temporal and geographic origins of domestic dogs has proven difficult for several reasons including: the widespread distribution of wolves and the lack of a easily interpretable phylogeographic signatures amongst modern dog populations. More recently, studies making use of high-coverage genomes of dogs and wolves have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Perri.

Dogs have played a variety of roles in ancient and modern groups, including hunting companions. This role is often suggested as an impetus for domestication or one of the dog’s earliest functions. Though advantageous in some cases, the hunting dog’s effectiveness (or inefficiency) is linked to external factors, such as environment, prey species, and hunting method. Under optimal conditions, dogs can act as the primary tool in capturing prey, often proving critical to hunting success. In other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Widga. Dennis Lawler.

The Midwest has the earliest and possibly richest record of dog burials in North America. New direct AMS 14C dates on Archaic-period canids from the region confirms this pattern (Koster Horizon XI, 10,130-9680 cal BP; Stilwell II, 10,200-9630 cal BP; Rodgers Shelter, 9000-8600 cal BP; Rodgers Shelter 8560-8210 cal BP). We use 2D and 3D geometric morphometrics to assess variability in the morphology of wild and domesticated Canidae from midwestern Archaic assemblages (10,000-6000 cal BP). Health...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Smith.

The study of prehistoric dogs has become a global trend. Not only did they fulfill a variety of roles and were an important part of past human societies, but they can be used to understand human-modified environments and human movement. On the California Channel Islands the domestic dog has been shown to be a significant component of the archaeological record. Dogs are uncovered in a variety of cultural contexts and their presence on the islands dates to the middle Holocene. Despite their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

Canids are among the most commonly encountered animals in archaeological assemblages worldwide. Using examples from the Arctic, I discuss some of the key ways that humans employ dogs to think about their relationships with other humans, animals, and the world around them. While dogs were often treated similar to human persons, they were also used to distance and distinguish "real people" from others. Ethnohistoric evidence suggests that a dynamic tension existed in the Arctic between humans and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mietje Germonpré. Sergey Fedorov. Mikhail V. Sablin. Martina Láznicková-Galetová. Robert J. Losey.

Our group has demonstrated, on the basis of detailed morphometric analyses, the antiquity of the domestication of the wolf. The dog is the first domesticated animal and its origin can be traced to the Upper Palaeolithic. Two canid morphotypes can be distinguished in Pleistocene Eurasian sites dating from before and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM): a morphotype that is similar to extant wolves, described by us as Pleistocene wolves, and a morphotype distinct from wolves; relative to wolves,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Brown. Christyann Darwent. Ben Sacks.

The peopling of the North American Arctic, occurred in two waves. First the Paleoeskimo people migrated from Siberia roughly 4,000 BP, followed by the Thule people ca. 1000 BP. The Thule people are known for their innovation and rapid colonization of the North American Arctic, compared to small population sizes of the Paleoeskimo. A distinguishing characteristic of Thule culture relative to previous Arctic cultures was increased use of dogs, particularly for dogsled traction. Use of dogs by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clive Wynne.

The nature of the cognitive similarities and differences between dogs and wolves is highly relevant to considerations of possible mechanisms for the origin of dogs. I shall present results which show that wolves possess the potential to match dogs’ levels of responding adaptively to human actions if the wolves have been carefully hand-reared by people skilled in raising wild animals. Hand-reared wolves match pet dogs’ ability to follow human points to a desired object and to interpret the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Pacheco-Cobos. Bruce Winterhalder.

We provide evidence useful to ethnoarchaeological research on the behavioral coordination of hunting movements among humans and dogs. The domestication of dogs (~15000 y BP) is hypothesized to have benefited humans by increasing the food supply, saving human energy, and guarding camps or agricultural fields. Drawing on a year of fieldwork in Santa Cruz, Toledo District, Belize, we analyze the economics of hunting and the extent to which dogs could have helped humans to protect cultivated fields...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree.

Zooarchaeological data have provided much new information on Anglo-Saxon dogs including information on animal sizes, ages at death, paleopathology, and evidence for the treatment/mistreatment of dogs. However, many aspects of the relationship between humans and dogs in the Anglo-Saxon period cannot be understood on the basis of animal bones alone. This paper will explore the non-archaeozoological evidence for human-dog relationships in the Anglo-Saxon period drawing on evidence from literature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This paper queers archaeological interpretation by unpacking and destabilizing underlying assumptions in Southeastern iconography. While not focusing expressly on sexuality or gender in these representations, this research discusses the ways ambiguities in engraved shell iconography, more broadly, have been dismissed, glossed, and deemphasized. In part, this exclusion is unintentional and results from the amount of research that remains to be conducted on the vast body of images, but we need to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Springate.

The National Park Service (NPS) is undertaking a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Heritage Initiative. Purposes include increasing the number of LGBTQ historic and heritage properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and as National Historic Landmarks (NHL), as well as encouraging interpretation of LGBTQ history at sites managed by the NPS. The creation of an archaeological context facilitates the evaluation of properties under NRHP Criterion D and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Burkholder.

Because we so often think about archaeological theory as something for "advanced" students, and gender and queer theory still regularly get little 'air-time' in most courses, it is unusual to introduce students to these perspectives at the level of general education and introductory course work. Personal experience in teaching Archaeology of Gender in two religiously conservative states - Kentucky and Wisconsin - over the last 15 years suggests that there are ways in which we can move students...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Lennen. Jamie Arjona.

This essay draws from contemporary strands of affect and materiality in queer theory to discuss approaches to queer materialities in archaeology. This attempts to move beyond privileging sexual acts and orientations as defining queerness (Blackmore 2011), towards vast assemblages of human and material convergences that queered social norms (Chen 2012). The provocative capacities of bodies, both human and non-human, to disorient social norms offers archaeologists alternative perspectives on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Casey Campetti.

A perennial critique of cultural resources management (CRM) has been its perceived overemphasis on field methods and its dissociation from advancements in archaeological theory, particularly the integration of gendered archaeologies and feminist perspectives. Over the past two decades CRM has made considerable gains toward inclusivity of theory - however, the climate for queer practitioners in CRM working as field technicians, managers, and principal investigators does not readily reflect these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Blackmore.

When we speak of complex societies, archaeologists focus primarily on broad systems of power, socio-political access, and economic control. These discussions, both explicit and implicit, continue to be framed by heteronormative, androcentric and classist assumptions. Elites and men (as conceptual and literal heads of households) remain the primary frame of reference for how states operate and who and what matters in our discussions of complexity. In this paper, I explore how notions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Craft.

Architectural relationships between the eastern Roman imperial capital at Constantinople and its provinces have traditionally been understood as derivative. In the province of Isauria on the southern coast of Anatolia, however, distinctive remains have led to the conceptualization of a group of native stonemasons known as ‘Isaurian builders,’ who traveled through provinces across Anatolia and northern Syria, leaving in their wake an identifiably Isaurian style of early Christian churches. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Murphy.

One of the most iconic images of the Roman Empire was and is that of the Legions, citizen-warriors clad in shiny lorica segmentata and with gladius in-hand. These soldiers were however skilled not only in the art of war, but also in crafts and trades – supplying and supporting the operations of the Roman imperial military through their daily activities. One such industry about which we have relatively extensive evidence is ceramic production (of tile, brick, and pottery). While most ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Karacic.

The Hittite Empire seized control of Cilicia, corresponding with the present-day states of Mersin and Adana in the Republic of Turkey, in the latter half of the second millennium BCE. While this region was under imperial rule, Hittite-style pottery became the most common ceramic type. Geochemical analysis of the pottery from Tarsus-Gözlükule, an urban center within Hittite Cilicia, indicates that the Hittite-style pottery was locally produced. At the same time, alternative ceramic types are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Alconini.

In this paper I will evaluate the nature of Inka specialized craft production in the province of Kallawaya, and the ways in which the manufacture and distribution of imperial pottery was an avenue to enhance status. I have two goals in this presentation. First, using archaeological and ethohistoric data, I will assess the nature of production in the ceramic workshop of Milliraya and the role of specialized mitmaqkuna colonies in such processes. Second, I will illuminate the ways in which the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cathy Costin.

The "organization of production" is not a monolithic, homogeneous entity in complex empires, and the production of different types of goods will be organized commensurate with the role they play in sociopolitical processes. In this paper, I investigate the ways in which craft production was reorganized after the Inka conquest of the Chimú polity of Peru to control the creation and deployment of wealth and to manipulate the construction of social identity in the changing sociopolitical landscape....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Aland. R. Alan Covey.

During the Late Intermediate Period (LIP, c. AD 1000-1400), longstanding traditions of specialized craft work and distribution of wealth goods on the north coast of Peru culminated under the rule of the Chimú Empire. In contrast, the same period in the highlands shows little evidence of specialization or large-scale access to wealth goods during the advent of the Inca Empire. This paper will compare the evidence for craft production and wealth consumption at sites located in valleys near the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Sekedat.

This paper provides an introduction to the session and its associated topics, while also presenting a case study of marble quarries in the Roman empire. Long regarded as an example of imperial power shaping craft production in provincial settings, the case study presented here explores these political and social relationships as located practices that play out in a landscape context. The dynamic interplay between local environmental conditions, existing social practices, and political power...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johanna Pacyga. François Richard.

In this paper, we examine aspects of craft production in west-central Senegal between the 18th and 20th century. This period encompasses turbulent political times marked, in succession, by the apogee of African centralized polities, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, the advent of formal colonial empires, and the establishment of the postcolonial state of Senegal. Using a perspective of the long-term blending archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence, we explore the dynamics of ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Parker.

This paper examines ceramic production in the Upper Tigris River Valley of southeastern Anatolia before and during the incorporation of this region into the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Using manufacturing techniques and technologies as windows on the organization of ceramic production, this paper argues that imperial incorporation drastically altered the organization of labor, the distribution of ceramic type fossils and the relationship between producers and consumers. This paper also suggests that,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Pereira.

Ethnohistoric sources from prehispanic Michoacán highlight the symbolic importance of fire for the Postclassic Tarascan state. The fact that Curicaueri, the principal Tarascan god, was a fire god and that cremation was used during the warriors’ and ruling elite’s funerary rites, emphasizes its symbolic and social importance. In this presentation, I will examine the different roles played by fire in ritual transformations of the human body. I will consider the ethnohistoric sources as well as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vera Tiesler.

This paper explores some of the forms, occasions, and meanings of human fire exposure among the Northern Lowland Maya during the Classic period. Conceptual points of departure are native concepts of heat, smoke and fire, together with their transformative powers in human beings, ritual enactment, and physicality. These notions provide blueprints for the spectrum of treatments documented in the area’s mortuary record, spanning veneration, profanation and/or sacrifice. Combining forensic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Scherer. Stephen Houston.

The dichotomies of hot and cold, light and darkness were essential to Classic Maya cosmology. The celestial and underworld journey of solar deities offered a fundamental mythic charter, and fire was the ultimate transformative force, providing a bridge between earthly and otherworldly realms. Such ideology is especially patent in rites of death, sacrifice, and veneration. Monuments from western kingdoms describe censing rituals performed months, years, and even decades after the death of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Markus Eberl.

The ancient Aztecs believed in multiple souls, including Tonalli, Ihiyotl, Yolia, and Nahualli. These souls overlap and extend beyond animated bodies. For example, the Tonalli is not only the heat of life and centered in the head but also an essence shared by animals and humans, similar to the Nahualli. Yolia refers to the physical heart and animates living beings. At death, it takes the form of a bird and flies away. These examples mix description and symbol: Is Tonalli literally heat or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel W. Palka.

Lacandon Maya fabricate incense burners ("the gods’ ceramic vessels") found by archaeologists in Maya ruins, caves, and abandoned "god houses". Ethnographies and my field notes describe the incense burners and how they are made and used. The function and symbolism of the burners provide clues to the importance of fire and smoke in past Maya rituals, including cremation. The incense burners are formed from clay with human heads, arms, and legs. The anthropomorphic bowls become bodies of gods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Duncan. Gabrielle Vail. Prudence Rice.

Fire and smoke were fundamental ritual forces in Mesoamerican religious worldview. Found in varied contexts (funerary processing, animation ceremonies, and desecratory rituals), fire and smoke were applied to multiple media (human bodies, architecture, and ceramics). In the Postclassic (AD 950–1524) Maya lowlands, burning both processed honored ancestors’ remains and violated enemies’ remains. Ceramic incense burners with deity effigies were used to burn resins to communicate with supernaturals....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ximena Chávez Balderas.

As described in historical sources, the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan was the final resting place for some elite individuals: their bodies were exposed to the fire and cremated bones were deposited in funerary urns. However, archaeological findings suggest that funerary rituals were more complex, depending on the identity, social status and cause of death of the deceased as well as body symbolism. Seven urns containing cremated bones from five individuals along with numerous burial goods were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Worth.

Beginning not long after the Spanish discovery of the Florida peninsula in 1513, indigenous groups along the Georgia coast were increasingly subject to sporadic maritime visits by Spanish and later French ships. By the time Georgia’s coastal chiefdoms were assimilated into the expanding Franciscan mission system of Spanish Florida after 1587, they had already experienced more than seven decades of occasional interaction with European slavers, colonists, soldiers, missionaries, traders, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gale Bishop. Kelly Vance. Brian Meyer. Fredrick Rich. Mehmet Samiratedu.

Geologists involved in sea turtle conservation have documented deterioration of sea turtle nesting habitat during sea level rise in The Modern Transgression on a "Sentinel Island," Deterioration of habitat has resulted in rapid erosion of backbeach nesting habitat at ~ 3.0 m per year (declining from 25% to 12% adequate habitat in a decade), including fragmentation of three beaches in 1990 into eight beaches in 2013, formation of washover fans and wash-in fans onto backbeach marsh meadows and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Blair. Kent Lightfoot.

Recent ethnohistorical research on the Spanish mission communities of La Florida has done much to document and elucidate complicated patterns of indigenous population relocations. These migrations, aggregations, and dispersals—due to multiple factors such as epidemics, Spanish reducción policies, and flight from antagonistic native groups—resulted in the formation of complex and diverse colonial social networks. At Mission Santa Catalina de Guale (GA), the most pronounced of these was the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Wilcox.

Throughout his career David Hurst Thomas' work has stretched the disciplines of archaeology and history in novel and unexpected directions. Mr. Thomas essay on cubism and archaeology is one such example. This essay traces the shifts in borderlands archaeology using Thomas' powerful metaphor, and demonstrates the unique creativity and flexibility that characterizes Thomas' approach to the past. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Kelly.

This contribution opens the Fryxell session by providing an overview of the career of David Hurst Thomas. Thomas’ career spans some 50 years and includes contributions to Great Basin, Southeastern and Southwestern archaeology, from the paleoindian to the historic periods. He has produced widely-used textbooks; the first textbook in statistics for anthropologists; and other popular words. Significantly, he served as a founding board member of the National Museum of the American Indian....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Semon. Victor Thompson.

In his research along the Georgia Coast, David Hurst Thomas identified the "Guale problem" as one of the key issues for late prehistoric research in the region. The problem centers on the relative degree of Guale mobility and subsistence during the pre- and postcontact eras. One view is that these were highly mobile, moving seasonally as they exhausted resources. Alternatively, others posit a more sedentary existence where the rich estuarine environment supplemented by maize agriculture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Reitz.

In 1977, an American Museum of Natural History team lead by David Hurst Thomas began an ambitious survey of St. Catherines Island, Georgia. The intent was to systematically survey 10% of the island following a series of transect lines using a research design from plant ecology. The survey collected hundreds of small vertebrate samples, none of which met zooarchaeological standards for adequate sample sizes and analysis. These hundreds of small samples, however, proved invaluable because they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Napolitano. Matthew C. Sanger.

A copper band recovered from a Late Archaic burial located on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, demonstrates the earliest use of metal objects in the region. This discovery shows that copper usage in the American Southeast, largely thought to relate to Hopewellian and Mississippian influences, has a greater antiquity and distribution than previously assumed. A reassessment of the copper found within the burial dates to the Archaic throughout the Eastern Woodlands; chemical analysis shows the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Zedeño. Jesse Ballenger. Matthew Pailes. Francois Lanoe.

As early as the terminal Pleistocene, the northern Rockies witnessed human movement across mountain passes and high terraces overlooking expanses of boreal forest, tundra, and melting ice. Applying lessons learned from David H. Thomas’ work in the central Great Basin, we combine the archaeology, geomorphology, and ethnohistory of the St. Mary River Bridge Site (24GL203) and other sites in the vicinity of east Glacier National Park to discuss how mobile groups colonized a landscape characterized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clark Larsen.

The St. Catherines Island Archaeological Project, now more than 40 years in duration, has provided a wealth of data for addressing questions and hypotheses about native adaptations in the Georgia bight. Owing to the rich archaeological context and robust research design, the project has provided opportunities to document and interpret key developments and adaptive transitions in ways not dreamed of when fieldwork began in 1975. The bioarchaeological arm of the investigation, viewed in its rich...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Deagan-Harris.

The archaeological study of Spanish missions among the American Indians has been underway in the Southeastern and Western regions of the United States for more than 70 years. This paper considers the directions and contributions of that body of work in the Southeast, with particular attention to the interdisciplinary impacts of the Santa Catalina Mission program, carried out by Dave Thomas between 1974 and today on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Forman.

OSL dating has advanced in the past decade with refinements in single aliquot and single grain regeneration (SAR) dating of quartz and feldspar. There is now many independent studies to evaluate the accuracy and precision of OSL dating, particularly for eolian and littoral sediments where solar resetting is often assured. This assessment will examine the potential meaning of radiocarbon ages that are > 45 ka in light of corresponding finite OSL ages for fluvial and marine sediments from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Ames. Andrew Martindale. Kevan Edinborough. Kisha Supernent. Bryn Letham.

A large regional suite of radiocarbon dates documents changing Pacific Period settlement patterns in the Prince Rupert Harbor region of northern British Columbia. Late Pleistocene/Holocene sea level changes focuses discussion on the last 5000 years. At that time, the settlement pattern appears to be one of small, one to four house communities dispersed across the sea-scape. Non-residential middens are present throughout the Holocene. Larger linear villages appear after 5000 calBP and larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Waters.

Chronology is key to understanding the story of the first Americans. Accurate and precise ages from sites are necessary to develop chronological relationships and overlaps among different Paleoindian complexes. Proper dating of any Paleoindian horizon requires an understanding of the geological context, geochemical environment and potential contamination factors, material and chemical fraction dated, number of ages obtained, and many other variables. Without understanding these factors of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wright.

Primarily located in the tropical latitudes with a diverse array of unique floral and fauna, there are unique challenges for obtaining a reliable chronology for archaeological sites on the African subcontinent. Radiocarbon dating is the most frequently employed method for gaining age control on Late Quaternary sites, however aspects affecting the accuracy of the method are rarely considered. Carbon recycling from reservoirs in old sedimentary structures may uptake into ostrich eggshell or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Martindale. Matthew Betts. Michael Blake. Nicholas Jakobsen. Ryan Wallace.

CARD was developed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History) by Richard Morlan as a text-based online tool to compile c14 dates from archaeological and palaeontological contexts. Over the years it has compiled about 40,000 dates from across Canada and into the northern United States. The database has grown to the extent that it can now be used to answer critical continental-scale questions of demography and human-ecosystem interactions In July 2014, the CMH and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Dolan. Colin Grier.

Documenting the formation, growth, and decline of individual settlements is critical to explaining the development of settled village life. Radiocarbon dating is often the best, and in our case only, chronometric tool for establishing these temporal dynamics. Here, we explore several approaches to reconstructing the temporality of settlement at the Dionisio Point site, a precontact plankhouse village in southwestern British Columbia. Two decades of research at this 1,500 year-old...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaeyong Lee. Youngseon Lee. Jangsuk Kim.

The goal of the study is to investigate the uncertainty of radiocarbon dating measurements. To study the variability of the measurements, the samples from the same specimen were sent to different radiocarbon dating labs and the estimated dates from various labs were obtained as data for analysis. Through a Baeysian analysis of the data, we could estimate the variability of the labs as well as variability between labs. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Grier. Eric McLay. Michael Richards.

Shell and other marine-derived materials are common in Northwest Coast archaeological sites, particularly shell middens. Yet, uncertainties in the marine reservoir offset have produced a hesitation among some researchers to generate or utilize chronological information derived from marine samples. Clearly. marine-derived dates introduce significant complexities into chronology building that need to be addressed. Here, we present radiocarbon results generated through dating two or three samples...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevan Edinborough.

The initial results of a radiocarbon local marine reservoir correction study are presented for Prince Rupert Harbor in northern British Columbia, Canada. These preliminary results are integrated into a series of Bayesian age-depth models that illustrate how shell-midden accumulation rates can dramatically vary. Village development in the harbor is discussed in the light of these new findings. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jangsuk Kim.

Using the number of uncalibrated BP dates or summed probabilistic density of calibrated dates, many studies attempt to monitor demographic dynamics of the past. However, some practical factors including differences in intensity and density of archaeological investigations and the preservation of datable materials, natural decay, and even different financial situations of investigations can cause sampling biases, eventually leading to distorted distributions of radiocarbon dates. Thus, database...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thulman.

Many archaeologists struggle to make sense of radiocarbon dates, especially those with large overlapping sigmas. Even with modern analytical techniques that increase precision, the results can be confusing. Bayesian statistics, which employs prior information to constrain posterior results with sets of radiocarbon dates, can lessen confusion and increase precision without using ad hoc measures, such as averaging or ignoring dates with large errors. The power and utility of Bayesian analyses is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chuntaek Seong. Jae Hoon Hwang.

The present study attempts to reconsider the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age transition in central Korea based on evaluation of available radiocarbon dates. Issues regarding reliability of the radiometric dating and its implications on the reconstruction of occupational density are addressed along with methods of evaluating a large set of radiocarbon dates falling between 2000 BC and 1000 BC. This in turn provides a basis for testing common assumptions of the transitional period in Korea....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Brown. Kevan Edinborough. Kenneth Ames.

Using data from a newly constructed regional 14C database for the Early and Middle-Holocene on the northern Northwest Coast of North America, a combination of Bayesian models, summed probability distributions and spatial analyses are used to evaluate hypotheses regarding the nature and timing for the development of collector strategies on the northern coast. Research and taphonomic biases are accounted for by binning the radiocarbon data, and by applying a general linear model to the data set. I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Graesch. Timothy Hartshorn.

Social identity is an elusive subject of inquiry in the archaeological past. Even in the contemporary, we know that expressions of identities are temporary and relational as well as an outcome of socially performative assertions, contestations, and negotiations. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of social identities is a driving aspiration of all archaeological inquiry at one level or another. This paper highlights a multi-year project that explores how discontinuous variation in socially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Logan.

Archaeology as a technique allows us to make visible processes of "slow violence" (Nixon 2011) that unfold over time, providing a critical temporal dimension to understanding how and why modern inequalities come to be. In this paper I attempt to reconcile why "prehistory" matters to understanding structural violence in recent times. While archaeologists of the contemporary and recent past have long used archaeology to make visible the experiences of structural violence among subaltern groups,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haeden Stewart.

This paper is the second part of a two-part dialogue on the use of taphonomy as an archaeological technique in both prehistoric archaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary. Part II explores how using the concept of taphonomy to study the accumulation of harmful toxins in the environment and in the human body opens up new avenues of study for an archaeology of human-environment interactions in the contemporary nuclear and industrial age. Intimately tied to the waste of human activity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Franklin.

Working from tensions within historical and landscape archaeology, this paper examines the stress expressed by the question: "how can we know what happened in the past if we weren’t there?" This query shapes much of the analytical framework within archaeology and underlies anxious discussions of archaeology’s status as a ‘real’ science. At the heart of both this anxiety of "how do we know" and the ways in which we cope with it methodologically are assumptions about what facts are and how (or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Chazin.

This paper is the first part of a two-part exploration of the use of taphonomy as an archaeological technique across prehistoric archaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary. Parts I and II are a dialogue, through which both authors have re-approached their own work on taphonomy as an archaeological method and analytic. Part I is an exploration of how approaching taphonomy as history opens up the possibility of exploring the political ramifications of pastoral practices. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chenoweth.

Parks are the creation of established power structures, and are themselves statements about power over nature. Visitors to these parks, however, negotiate these structures in their own ways. Often, historical archaeological analysis focuses on power struggles: domination and resistance between classes, races, genders, etc. This paper analyzes how some of the tools of these more traditional archaeological analyses apply to the present. A contemporary archaeology of litter in Yosemite has explored...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Thakar.

This paper reconstructs shifts in botanical foraging behavior on Santa Cruz Island, California and quantitatively demonstrates specialization and intensification in the exploitation of small oily and starchy seeds from the terminal Early Period (ca. 3000 cal. BP) through the late Middle Period (ca. 1000 cal. BP). This shift accompanied an increased reliance on terrestrial food resources overall. A recently recognized climatic transition (2800 cal. BP-1800 cal. BP) likely altered the geographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Santy.

Acorns were an essential foodstuff across prehistoric California; the transition to acorn use is currently being investigated. CA-SBA-53, a single-component Middle Holocene site on the mainland coast near Santa Barbara, contains an assemblage fairly evenly split between mortars and pestles, traditionally associated with acorn processing, and manos and metates, generally associated with seeds.; furthermore, these mortars and pestles are some of the oldest known in California. By extracting and...