Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Burns.

This is an abstract from the "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data recovery investigations at the James W. Hatch Site in Centre County, Pennsylvania via a collaboration between PennDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, and Juniata College demonstrate the potential for transportation archaeology to provide insightful data on prehistoric lifeways. The project provides a glimpse of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropologists have long defended the social value of their work beyond the immediate acquisition of new knowledge. In archaeology, community engagement and public outreach are now common and desirable. In general education, we tout the powers of archaeology classes to inform students of where we have come from, to appreciate diversity, and to be more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cailey Mullins.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology has long captured the minds of the public, but it has not always been as open to community involvement as it could be. How could the field change if our research was run by, with, and for communities? How can archaeology shape the minds of young people through educational programs? When used in a hands-on educational manner,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Risa Arbolino. Kit Nelson.

In the 1960s women were beginning to make major strides in the field of archaeology. It is also during this time that informal mentoring relationships began between women active in the field and young women interested in pursuing their interests in archaeology. One such example is the role of Bertha Dutton with the Girl Scouts during the early 1960s. Working out of Camp Elsa Seligman, Girl Scouts conducted survey and excavation within Sandoval County. Their field notes, archaeological field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Jones. Elizabeth Church.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, Structure-from-Motion(SfM) photogrammetric 3D models were created of mid- 19th century historic house ruins. Tyler house (Mound, TX) and Eyrie house (Holyoke, MA) have similar stone construction but dramatically different environmental contexts. The aim of this study was to compare point-cloud differences in, and the benefits and drawbacks of,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rowe. Collin Rucker.

During the Late Paleocene and Early Eocene, a tropic/sub-tropic forest located in a large swamp was located in present day east-central Colorado. Overtime the swamp was enveloped by subsequent volcanic eruptions which resulted in the creation of the Paleosol-Dawson Arkose formation. The primary area of this geological formation is located in Elbert County, between Colorado Springs and the small town of Agate on the plains of Colorado. Large stands of tropical wood, including sycamore, walnut,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Walsh. Alice Gorman.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Out-of-the-Box: Investigating the Edge of the Discipline" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of archaeology in outer space seems as far "outside the box" as it is possible for the discipline to go. There are major challenges to carrying out field research in off-Earth contexts – among them, remoteness, hostile conditions, cost, and the demonstrable bias of space agencies against the social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Odewale. Joshua Torres.

The national parks on the island of St. Croix (Christiansted National Historic Site, Salt River Bay Historic Park and Ecological Preserve, and Buck Island Reef National Monument) engage thousands of visitors every year and stand out as some of the most historically and ecologically important sites in the Caribbean region. Cultural resource management projects within these parks have a new focus on community outreach and local youth engagement initiatives. Developing more inclusive programming,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

Archaeology in the US is undergoing a series of transformations, emphasizing community engaged scholarship, new research questions of contemporary relevance dealing with such things as resilience, social memory, and production of historical identity, and a shift towards non-invasive methods and intensive analyses of smaller samples from more limited excavations. Yet the normative vision of archaeological research still is original excavation of a site selected purposively to answer a question,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Walsh. Alice Gorman. Shawn Graham. Chantal Brousseau.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On 14 January 2022, NASA astronaut Kayla Barron placed adhesive tape on the walls of the International Space Station (ISS), marking the sample locations for the first archaeological work to be conducted in outer space. Over 60 days, ISS crew documented the station’s in situ material culture through daily photography of six areas. This payload, developed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only MacKenzie DiMarco. Carlton Gover. Sarah Hatcher.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper, focused in Bloomington, Indiana public schools, discusses how students understand and how students experience classroom interactions with objects. This research was conducted in an attempt to increase STEM skills and involvement with archaeology museums. Using collections and archaeology kits, I brought interactive experiences to classrooms to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paola Valentin Irizarry.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1952, Puerto Rico began a new era of self-administration. The establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico inspired the creation of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (1955). The propaganda given to indigenous heritage resulted in the rise of amateur archaeologists. This paper considers the contributions of these groups toward the development of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wright.

The 2016 decision by the Working Group on the Anthropocene of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to designate an Epoch based on a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) fixed at AD1950 is significant for managing global ecological systems moving forward. There is no serious scientific debate on whether humans have impacted the global ecology, but regardless of the ICS decision to anchor the so-called "Golden Spike" to the advent of the nuclear age, humans are known...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Griffin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. St. Matthew and Hall Islands are located in the Bering Sea, far from the Alaskan mainland. Located within the Bering Sea Wildlife Refuge, these uninhabited islands are visited by refuge biologists about once every five years for an approximate 8–10-day period, in order to conduct studies of island fowl and fauna. Since 1997, the Refuge has sponsored an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Levy. Patty Jo Watson.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Julie Stein joined the Shell Mound Archaeological Project (SMAP) in western Kentucky in 1977 when Patty Jo Watson and William Marquardt, leaders of the project initiated in 1971, recognized the need to add geoarchaeology to the already interdisciplinary project. I started as a graduate student at Washington University–St. Louis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Eklund.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Just off the main highway, the Ruta del Río Sonora, in Banámichi, Mexico, is the Plaza de la Piedra Histórica (Plaza of the Historic Rock). Raised upon the shoulders of Ópata / Teguïma inspired stone figures is a petroglyph originally found in the floodplain below. The imagery on the rock was interpreted by archaeologist William Doolittle in 1984 as "the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Ramon Celis.

This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will be focused on understanding how archaeology has been practiced in different ways by different people in more than 100 years of explorations in the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Also, who has produced information about the past in this region, and for whom,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Curtis.

Yosemite National Park (California) receives an overwhelming four million visitors per year. While most visitors remain in the developed areas of the park, many people venture forth into the 704,556-acre Wilderness areas for recreation and solitude - the sheer frequency of which leads to resource impacts unprecedented in many other Wildernesses. In response, park resource managers developed the “Wilderness Restoration Program” in 1987, a program designed to directly mitigate and alleviate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca OSullivan.

Over the past 10 years, staff from the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) have developed curricula, programs, and trainings that educate both the general public and land managers about archaeology and Florida's unique past. While many of these initiatives might take place in a classroom or lecture hall, FPAN archaeologists also get out in the field to organize community archaeology projects that engage the public with the discovery of their own pasts. This presentation will highlight some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Warner.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking about Eating: Theorizing Foodways in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of animal bones is an important contributor to many areas of archaeology, specifically in areas such as domestication, climate change, human/environment interactions, etc. However, when looking at the broader lens of anthropological theory as well as the burgeoning food studies movement, archaeology evidence is only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marne Ausec.

This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long before terms like "underrepresented," "community engaged learning," and "undergraduate research" were popular in the field of study abroad, Urban and Schortman gave undergraduates an unparalleled field research experience. This paper explores some of the highlights of the student experience, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Heath-Stout.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the great parts of being an archaeologist is that it is an excuse to travel: for jobs, research, and conferences. Yet some of us are more free to travel than others. In this paper, I will focus on the experiences of parents—mothers in particular—to explore how the expectations of mobility in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza.

Many people in our society misunderstand the nature of archaeological fieldwork. The misunderstanding often results from a lack of open access with the public by professionals in our discipline. An aggressive shift to providing the public with information and education about archaeological research and the value of cultural heritage will address this concern. In the highlands of Ancash, Perú, a central objective of PIARA (Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Regional Ancash) promotes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nina Schreiner.

Woodville Plantation, also known as the Neville House, is an important archaeological resource just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The mansion was constructed c. 1780 by the family of Virginian General John Neville—of the Seven Years War, Revolutionary War, Whiskey Rebellion, and early state and local governments—and was occupied by their descendants until 1973. This unique record of ownership resulted in a relatively undisturbed site delivered into the hands of a private preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Margaris. Mark Rusk. Patrick Saltonstall. Molly Odell.

The site of Mikt’sqaq Angayuk (KOD-014) on eastern Kodiak Island provides an intimate view of Native Alutiiq responses to the colonial labor regime imposed by 19th century Russians in Alaska. Recent excavation of KOD-014 through the Alutiiq Museum’s Community Archaeology Program revealed a well-preserved Alutiiq style sod house and associated faunal midden dating to the 1830s. The midden was rich in cod remains, and the artifacts comprised mostly colonially-introduced products including metal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Lawrence. Peter Davies. Ewen Silvester. Darren Baldwin. Ian Rutherfurd.

The impact of gold mining on rivers in the Australian colony of Victoria during the nineteenth century provides a case study of the acceleration of human intervention in world systems characteristic of the Anthropocene. As miners used water to extract gold from the soil they also re-shaped river systems, turning rivers into artefacts that were modified and manipulated as tools in order to achieve cultural goals. The cumulative and widespread effect of mining activity is made evident through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carrie Heitman. Paul Reed.

The goal of this paper is to bring together disparate data sources on various Chaco-era sites both within Chaco Canyon, NM and outside (Salmon Pueblo) to examine the use of ash in intramural contexts. In light of recent work on the dimensions of animation, precedence, ancestors and heirlooms evident in Chacoan architecture, what patterns emerge regarding the deliberate use and deposition of ash? And how might we use Puebloan ethnographic accounts of ash to help inform our interpretations? ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner. Ruth Van Dyke.

Our paper reports on our recent archaeological testing at the previously unexcavated Aztec North great house at Aztec Ruins National Monument. Standing on the river terrace behind and above the better-known valley great houses, Aztec North is out of sight of those great houses but tightly bound to them as part of the formalized cultural landscape of Aztec Ruins. It is a crucial site for understanding the development of Chaco Canyon’s outliers, as it was likely the earliest great house built in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Schon.

Warren Ballpark is considered the oldest continuously operating baseball field in the United States. The list of athletes who played at the park throughout its history includes Connie Mack (Major League Baseball’s winningest manager), Jim Thorpe (arguably the greatest athlete of the twentieth century), and Earl Wilson (the first African-American pitcher for the Boston Red Sox). Despite this history of competition, very little is known about the spectators who visited Warren Ballpark. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Duwe. Robert Preucel.

From the emergence into this world to the settling of the modern villages, the Pueblos view their own history as a dynamic, living process. While key elements of Pueblo identity and worldview have always been with the people, migration experiences and the amalgamation of people with diverse backgrounds and beliefs were essential in shaping the culture and cosmology of each Pueblo group. This process – called ‘becoming’ by Pueblo scholars – is never complete and represents the malleability of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Cassedy.

The Hudson River in upstate New York formed a strategic military corridor between the North American British and French colonies for centuries. In the 1750s, it was the setting for multiple British expeditions moving north to contest the French coming south out of Lake Champlain and Canada. Because the fighting was seasonal, as were the garrisons of the forts and storage depots, the facilities had to be frequently rebuilt, and the entire supply chain had to be renewed annually to move tons of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nick Angeloff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cannabis industry in Humboldt County, California has driven archaeological work over the past three years. The Cultural Resources Facility at Humboldt State University in collaboration with Archaeological Research and Supply Company strive to garner research value from the exponential increase in workload created by regulatory requirements. Several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zada Law. Susan Knowles. Ken Middleton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A prototype visualization tool for a statewide historical geography of African American communities emerging in Tennessee’s post-Civil War period is raising awareness and elevating visibility of the African American historic cultural landscape—both above and below ground—for cultural resource management as well as for students, educators, planners, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Hamilton. Briggs Buchanan.

In this paper we discuss recent work at the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site, New Mexico, and the surrounding region, designed to understand how Clovis hunter-gatherers utilized and adapted to the regional landscape and its available resources. Focusing on lithic raw material use, we show that the Clovis occupants of Mockingbird Gap had access to a wide diversity of high quality raw materials from a large area of the Southwest. Moreover, Clovis raw material network analysis across the continent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Dungan. Kathryn MacFarland.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Arizona State Museum (ASM) was founded in 1893 with the stated purpose of collecting and preserving archaeological material for what was then the territory of Arizona. In step with the larger field of archaeology, the practices and ideas that have shaped ASM’s collecting of archaeological material have evolved over the subsequent 130 years, including a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Pagels.

This paper examines the possibility of using the narrative form to expand the ways by which the archaeological record can be interpreted. Narrative archaeology has become a prominent mode of academic communication within the discipline. The acceptance of this stylistic format creates a space where narrations alienating effect can be used as a tool so to better understand the alienation colonial encounters produce in the past. This is not to say that all standard manner of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Bedford.

Much of the European mapping of the South West Pacific occurs relatively late in terms of global history. In Vanuatu (ex New Hebrides) the first visits were Spanish ships in 1606. The wider archipelago was not further explored until the visit of Cook in 1774 but soon afterwards it had been incorporated into the rapidly infilling global map. The geography, climate and people had been described as had hints of the economic potential and the islands could now be discussed and dissected amongst the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Moragas. Sandra Montón-Subías. James Bayman.

This paper presents a new archaeological project that we are co-directing in Umatac, Guam. Combining historical written sources and archaeological information, we seek to contribute a better understanding of the historical-archaeological legacy connected to colonial processes related to the Hispanic Monarchy in the western Pacific, and their role in resulting ethnogenesis.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color plays a central role in the work of many archaeologists. We use it to establish cultural affiliation and seriation, to analyze artifacts, and to interpret sites. We type pottery, source glass, and identify lithic materials based largely on their colors. Yet the use and meaning of color have not been widely and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich. Sarah Peelo. Linda Hylkema.

In this paper, we examine the challenges associated with understanding indigenous community formation and change through the archaeology of the native ranchería at Mission Santa Clara de Asís. The mission’s indigenous population had well-documented and distinct temporal shifts, initially drawing local Ohlone converts but eventually extending recruitment to Yokuts groups in the more distant San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills. These population changes pose an intriguing archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Newson. Ruth Young.

When faced with the destruction of archaeological sites through conflict, and the accompanying loss of knowledge, what can archaeologists do? Archaeologists, politicians, and many others recognise that damage to heritage is irreversible and has very serious, lasting consequences. The impact of war on archaeological sites is rightly an area of great significance and concern to archaeologists and other heritage professionals, and is increasingly an area of research and debate, both within and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Sperry-Fromm.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, I will conduct an analysis of the assemblage excavated from a 1960s back-to-the-land commune in Taos called New Buffalo. Tracing commodity chains of objects brought to and bought at New Buffalo, reveals patterns of consumption and engagement with the American Market, even within am Anti-Capitalist site. Individual objects from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinthya Vidal Aldana. Emmanuel Gómez. Hugo Sánchez. Alfonso Grave. Jorge Blancas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Culiacán valley is located in central Sinaloa. It is well known in archaeological literature because of the excellent quality of its pottery. Nevertheless, archaeological knowledge is limited due to the lack of continuity in research during last seventy years. This work presents a new perspective on the region through integral research carried out by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cerezo-Román.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will explore similarities and differences between mortuary practices and concepts of embodiment of the dead from Hohokam Classic Period (AD 1150 to 1450/1500) sites in the Tucson Basin and from the Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora (ca. AD 1300 to 1450). I will discuss challenges and opportunities for conducting bioarchaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Britton. Edouard Masson-Maclean. Ellen McManus-Fry. Claire Houmard. Carly Ameen.

Historically and ethnographically dogs have played a prominent role in the lifeways and lifeworlds of many Arctic and sub-Arctic peoples, and are considered to be a vital aspect of adaptation to living in these regions, providing protection, fur and meat, as well as aiding hunting and transportation. Excavations at the precontact site of Nunalleq in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in coastal Western Alaska have uncovered a significant proportion of dog bones amongst the faunal assemblage. The presence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

Why does archaeology matter in the 21st century? One value is its ability to help us understand how humans react to changing circumstances, not with law-like statements but instead in terms of general behavioral patterns. The social context south-central California rock art, a record of visions or dreams, is an example of this fact. As partly indicated by rock art, the Medieval climatic anomaly led in one area to a population collapse but, in a related region, to population increase and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart.

In the 1960s and 1970s, cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport criticized the effects of the West on the developing world. Well before Crosby popularized the term, Rappaport labeled this process "Ecological Imperialism" to clarify the unequal relationship between the needs of an empire and environments it absorbs. Rappaport wrote when scientists were beginning to observe global ecological degradation, but anthropologists had yet to develop a historical perspective. Over the past decade,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Poplin. Howard Cyr. Kandace Hollenbach. David Baluha. Carolyn Rock.

A multi-disciplinary approach was taken during recent archaeological investigations at multiple Everglades tree island accretionary middens. The research design focused on recovering as much information as possible to ascertain the evolution of tree islands across the Everglades with respect to human adaptation. An immense amount of material was recovered, which permitted researchers to reconstruct paleo-botanical environments, soil formation processes, and human adaptations on these tree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey Camp.

Amidst wartime xenophobia, the United States government unjustly imprisoned over 120,100 individuals of Japanese heritage during World War II. Despite being housed in dreary, tar-papered military barracks at sites that ranged from former racetracks to prisons, Japanese internees transformed their inhospitable living conditions into places that embodied some semblance of home and Japanese culture. These transformations were material in nature; internees creatively modified and consumed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Markus.

The Block Family Farmstead in Washington, Arkansas represents the first documented Jewish immigrant family to arrive in the state and their home is the most extensively excavated Jewish Diaspora site in North America, dating to the first half of the 19th Century. The site gives unique insight into the domestic practices of a Jewish family on the frontier in absence of an ecclesiastical support network or coreligionist community. The faunal assemblage recovered primarily from the home’s detached...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flavia Morello Repetto. Fabiana Martin. Mauricio Massone. Marta Alfonso-Durruty. Manuel San Roman.

The fueguian archipelago, dominated by three mayor islands named Tierra del Fuego, Dawson and Navarino, is located in the southernmost end of South America. Peopled by hunter-gatherer societies since c. 10.500 BP, the interior sea formations date to Early Holocene. Shoreline environments have evidence of specialized marine adaptation since c. 6.500 BP, after which colonization has been generally interpreted as homogenous, stable and continuous. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic records account for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Brown.

Much of the literature on performance in cultural and political spheres in archaeology over the last 4 decades has focused on social memory. This paper shifts that discussion from the arena of public commemoration and cultural rites to the de facto performances of the domestic sphere. Private, interpersonal interactions are important in the transmission and creation of social memory as well- they place an individual’s social world in the context of shared social memory, and vice versa. Gossip is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madonna Moss. Eleni Petrou. Camilla Speller. Dongya Yang. Lorenz Hauser.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alaska Natives and BC and Washington State First Nations have maintained sustainable relationships with herring over millennia. Over the past 10 years, we have been using molecular methods to study the ancient and modern DNA of Pacific herring to track changes in genetic diversity through time. Analysis of over 260 herring bones from 24...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Speller. Eleni Petrou. Madonna Moss. Dongya Yang. Lorenz Hauser.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific herring were an abundant and important component of the coastal ecosystems of western North America for millennia; today, many populations have been decimated as a result of commercial or reduction fisheries. Focusing on genomic data, our hypothesis was that population and phenological diversity was higher in ancient herring than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arnau Garcia. Héctor A. Orengo. Tania Polonio. Josep M. Palet.

This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. European high-mountain landscapes are nowadays characterized by the presence of pastures and grasslands. Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted during the last decades are picturing these environments as long-term cultural productions, resulting from complex environment-society interactions. Since prehistory,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Castanzo. Elgin Klugh.

Laurel Cemetery was created in 1852 in Baltimore, Maryland, as a nondenominational burial place for African Americans in the city. By the 1930s, after perhaps several thousand people were interred at the site, the cemetery company had become insolvent, and the grounds were no longer being maintained. After the property was sold in the 1950s, the cemetery was demolished in preparation for what would become a shopping center. Approximately 300-400 burials were moved, but it was not known how many,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heckenberger.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two decades of relentless agropastoral development has reduced the closed tropical forests to small patches in most of northern Mato Grosso, within the so-called “arc of deforestation” along the southern margins of the Amazon’s closed tropical forests. There are larger blocks in two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Graesch. Corbin Maynard.

A boon to the archaeological study of American lifeways in the past and present, the massive assemblages of discarded objects at landfills poignantly speak to an era of unrivaled consumption and waste. Aggregated through municipally sanctioned collection services, these assemblages, however, are rarely representative of the full range of household-level discard behaviors. Illegal dump sites, in contrast, comprise assemblages that cannot be easily or quickly discarded through regular garbage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Wallman. Mark Hauser. Douglas Armstrong. Kenneth Kelly.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017, storm surges from Hurricane Maria exposed evidence of an early European colonial settlement on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica. Subsequent survey and testing established the site as a trading settlement, dating from the sixteenth until eighteenth century, a period of dynamic change in the Caribbean. The site is located on the coastline of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McKee.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The production of indigo dye dominated the economy of El Salvador for over 250 years, from the late sixteenth century decline of the cacao and balsam industries to the mid-nineteenth-century rise of coffee production. The Proyecto del Inventario de los Sitios Arqueológicos del Departamento de Morazán documented five indigo works (obrajes de añil) in 2015 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only WengCheong Lam. Liangbo Lv. Qianglu Zhang.

Although the imperial strategy of the Han Empire in its southern peripheries attracts significant scholarly interests, how to synthesize the issue of ethnic integration and imperial expansion within the study of material culture is still widely under-addressed. Especially, how the Han’s control over the movement and distribution of iron—a strategical resource for agricultural and military conquest—is almost overlooked in the literature. This presentation presents the latest statistical studies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Cross.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Texas, emancipation of slaves was formally announced in Galveston on June 19, 1865. In the decades that followed "Juneteenth," freed men and women established hundreds of communities across the state in search of land, loved ones, opportunity, and freedom. Such rural settlements have been the focus of both historical and archaeological research. Yet some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Klenck. Mohammed Sahib. Epifania Suafo'a Taua'i.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An archaeological survey covering 50 acres was conducted in and around Luatele or Judds Crater, an extinct volcano, on Taʻu Island, Manuʻa District, American Samoa. The project identified 24 precontact sites comprising 101 archaeological features and a 142 m cave associated with the Samoan legend of Vaatausili. These features include star mounds, oval boulder...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agne Civilyte.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Amber is still today a material which is highly appreciated in modern societies. To use amber means to be part of the tradition of thousands of years. The topic "amber in prehistory" became very popular in the last decades in European archaeology. It shows a huge potential for understanding the use practices of special materials in prehistoric societies....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Haines.

This paper provides a comparative case study for archaeological studies of slavery and indenture. I investigate the 19th century landscape and material culture of indentured laborers on the Bras d'Eau sugar estate in northeastern Mauritius, Indian Ocean. After emancipation, indentured laborers lived and worked within the same physical plantation landscapes as the enslaved individuals who came before them. However, Asian indentured laborers in Mauritius were immigrants and migrants: one-third...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Ozorio De Almeida. Guilherme Mongeló. Eduardo Góes Neves.

The aim of this presentation is to discuss the importance of the occupation of the so called meaningful places in Amazonia, such as rapids and waterfalls, in the development of regional networks which were archaeologically materialized by the concentration of different ceramic styles in the same site, and possibly through the appearance of new ceramic styles. We further argue that the economic viability of some of these places – and we present here the Teotônio site as an example - did not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florin Curta.

The vast steppe corridor that begins in north-central China and ends on the Middle and Lower Danube has been the habitat of many communities of nomads, and the object of intensive archaeological research. Ever since Svetlana Pletneva, research on the late nomads in the steppe lands now within Russia and Ukraine has focused on burial assemblages, especially on burial mounds. However, new lines of research have opened in the last few decades, which highlight new categories of evidence: stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Castro.

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in Central Asian Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of mining in ancient Central Asia has long interested Russian-speaking archaeologists and geologists. Already in 1917, for example, Veber recognized Central Asia as a fertile ground for archaeological inquiry concerning pre-modern mines. Yet, perhaps due to remoteness and political setting, the research produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcela Bernal.

While the subject of the contact can be approached from different perspectives (political, economic, social, cultural, religious), in this study the reflection will have to do with power and social control over the daily customs and practices of each group involved in a contact society (which includes categories such as physical space management, nutritional practices and identification of material goods to each of the groups), settle in el Cabo de la Vela to continue with the enterprise for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tobin Hartnell.

The case of the Neo-Elamite highlands is significant for understanding more about the potential of archaeology to reconstruct elements of political history through politicized landscapes. This project is particularly important in ancient Iran, which did not create the types of literary genres or historical narratives found in Mesopotamian or Greco-Roman civilizations. For archaeologists studying the Elamite dynasties and the early Achaemenid Empire, the central problem is the absence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyra Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonialism has had significant influences on lifeways across the South Pacific, including health and diet in the past and today. Colonially introduced diets have caused a loss of traditional food practices, created cultural power dynamics, and have led to contemporary public health issues. These colonial legacies not only have continued impacts on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dean. Amelia Perez Trujillo.

In 1536 Manco Inca, the ‘puppet’ ruler installed by Pizarro, threw off the shackles of colonial rule and led a rebellion against the Spanish. After failing to retake the former imperial capital of Cusco, Manco Inca and his followers established a Neo-Inca state in Vilcabamba, the remote region east of Cusco. Vilcabamba functioned as the seat of Inca resistance against the Spanish from A.D. 1536 to 1572. While the historic record from the 1600s and 1700s is rich, few records exist for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Briseno.

This past summer I was given the opportunity to participate in an archaeology field school conducted in the country of Nicaragua. For the past 15 years, archaeologists have excavated sites along the shore of Lake Cocibolca in search for Mexican colonization. During my participation in the field school, we continued this quest through investigations at the site of El Rayo, the most significant site for studying the potential impact of outsiders on indigenous cultural traditions. The core...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mudit Trivedi.

This paper presents the results of an extended project directed at an archaeological investigation of religious conversion to Islam in South Asia. The project combined extensive regional survey, excavations and architectural documentation focused upon the site and valley of Indor, located in the region of Mewat on the borders of Rajasthan, North India. The medieval residents of Mewat were stereotyped in contemporary imperial chronicles as primitive rebels, living in a forested hilly backwater,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Boger. Sophia Perdikaris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Barbuda, a small island in the Lesser Antilles, was directly hit by mega storm, Hurricane Irma, in September of 2017. 90-95% of the modern structures were either completely destroyed or lost their roofs, windows and doors. Additionally, there was tremendous loss to both intangible cultural heritage and heritage sites. Erosion in coastal areas decimated more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Pigott. Christopher Rodning.

This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and ceremonialism were important domains of practice through which Cherokee peoples of the southern Appalachians maintained cultural identities during the aftermath of European contact in the Americas, and through which Cherokee towns responded to the opportunities and challenges associated with European exploration,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masaru Kobayashi.

As in the Northwest Coast of North America, salmon may have played a critical role for the development of subsistence and political economies as well as ritual systems during prehistoric and historic northern Japan. This paper explores the Jomon salmon ceremony in the Japan Sea coastal regions based on the analyses of the (1) ecology of salmon, (2) rock arts (petroglyphs), (3) salmon remains and their archaeological contexts, (4) zoomorphic stone figurines (clubs), and (5) ethnohistory...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Praetzellis. Mary Praetzellis.

Archaeological collections from San Francisco’s South-of-Market area speak to the lives of 19th century Jews. We take the position that archaeology can help us understand the effects of the haskalah (the Jewish "enlightenment") on European immigrants’ efforts to divest themselves of their sociological ambivalence. In this way, archaeology can help illuminate one of the most enduring and controversial issues in contemporary Jewish studies: the relationship between identity and religious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Rieth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Schoharie Creek III Site is located in the town of Schoharie, Schoharie County, New York. The site was occupied by the Chantry and Almira Coons household. Their son inherited the property along with his wife Celina. Over time, the house was expanded to become a larger house with a small barn, several privies, and an icehouse. Surrounding the site were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. James Dixon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shuká Káa Cave, is located on an island in the homeland of the Tlingit and Haida people of Southeast Alaska, and records seven episodes of human activity dating between 12,170 and 1200 cal BP. Three periods of occupation (10,600–10,150, 9930–9450, and 8360–7929 cal BP) contain microblades, bifaces, and expedient tools. The discovery of 10,500 cal BP human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Troy Lovata.

Archaeologists have explored the prehistoric development of skiing, but its study as a modern recreational activity, lifestyle, and commercial practice has generally been left to historians. Yet snow sports entail a unique material culture, are a vibrant link between past and present, and leave a visible environmental impact. Recent consolidation of ownership and demographic shifts has spurred the closure of numerous ski areas in North America. This has lead to both the abandonment of slopes and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Javiera Letelier Cosmelli.

Cigarettes are the most numerous, ubiquitous, and tolerated form of trash on the urban landscape (Graesch & Hartshorn 2014:1). This statement has special meaning in Chile, leading country in cigarette consumption in the continent, especially between women and youngsters. Current approaches in the study of this phenomenon are based on interviews, but no material study has yet been conducted. Considering the differences between people´s discourses and actions, along with the abundance and high...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Brianna Rafidi. Christopher Carr. Mary Kupsch.

The potential for accurately reconstructing prehistoric Woodland and Plains Indian societies’ notions of human soul-like essences using symbolically rich mortuary remains and art can be improved when analogous, comparative ethnohistorical information is collected systematically and with sensitivity to tribal and regional variations. Literature on 49 historic Woodland-Plains tribes produced 643 cases informing on nine selected subjects: number and locations of souls in an individual, number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clete Rooney. David Morgan. Kevin MacDonald.

Recent plans to develop a tract of land on Cane River prompted examination of a locality pivotal to understanding the colonial creole experience in northwest Louisiana. Survey work in 2011 and 2012 identified a large river front site, part of which was home to the plantations of Narcisse Prud’homme, John Plauché, and Pierre Metoyer—the latter an economically prominent colonial known for his relationship with the celebrated Marie-Thérèse Coincoin. Subsequent archival research, geophysical survey,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrina Bettcher. Lidio Valdez.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ACARI VALLEY AND THE LEGACY OF FRANCIS ALLEN "FRITZ" RIDDELL Katrina J. Bettcher & Lidio M. Valdez In 1954, newlywed archaeologists Francis Allen "Fritz" Riddell and Dorothy Menzel arrived in the Acari Valley on the south coast of Peru with the purpose of investigating the site of Tambo Viejo as part of the Inca Royal Highway Project directed by Victor von Hagen. Various sites in the region were recorded and investigated. After retirement in the early 1980s, Fritz was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrzej Antczak. Luis Lemoine. Ma. Magdalena Antczak.

Since the 1950s, the archaeology of Margarita, the largest island of Venezuela, has been neglected leaving open an important lacunae in the current knowledge of Venezuelan and Caribbean archaeology. In 2008, human bones were accidentally unearthed on the island, allowing the recovery of two individuals and associated cultural materials that included lithics, shells, and red ochre. The archaeological layer and human bones date to between 4,090 and 2,160 BP. The osteological analyses show...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Wooten.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Journey with me to the year 2167, where our intrepid archaeologist has made a fascinating discovery... a FOOB! Carefully cradled in its pale pink packaging, this breast prosthetic is thought to have had ritual purposes, and while the prosthetics do not deteriorate over time, intact packaging has never been found in situ before! This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Delgado.

Archaeological research conducted in the former, now land-filled Gold Rush waterfront of San Francisco has defined a rapidly developed port infrastructure and substantial remains of discarded material culture that comprises a several block wide and deep macro-site. Buried ships, collapsed buildings, pilings from wharves and piers, and discarded cargoes buried by urban expansion and the filling of the are have emerged periodically due to redevelopment since 1907 and discoveries continue well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Staffan Peterson. Daniel Eakin.

The Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo) National Historic Trail was designated by Congress under the National Trails System Act in 1986 to commemorate the 1877 flight of the non-treaty Nez Perce from their homelands in present day Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, across Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, including 85 miles within Yellowstone National Park. In 2008, Yellowstone began archaeological investigations of the trail corridor. This six-year project includes consultation with the Confederated Tribes of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Nowell. Nan Gonlin.

Archaeologists have been in the dark on the topic of the night for far too long. Like any other aspect of human behavior, the nighttime has firmly planted itself in the archaeological record, ready for us to uncover it, if only we seek it out. Relying upon the material trails that humans leave behind, it is not only possible but productive to pursue an archaeology of the night to enlighten and broaden our knowledge of the human past. Artifacts, features, structures, and sites provide clues to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hoffman. James Myster. Steve Goranson. Rikka Bakken. Camille Warnacutt.

The Port des Morts ruins (47DR497) are from a Great Lakes lighthouse in operation for a brief nine years from 1849 to 1858. Located on Plum Island off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, this hastily constructed and poorly positioned lighthouse was home to William Riggins his wife Phebe and their growing family for all but the lighthouse’s final year. Historic documents suggest they lived a difficult frontier existence, but otherwise little is known about their time on the island. Now part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Holmes. Ben Potter. Josh Reuther. Barbara Crass.

Research begun in the 1990s focused within a small valley system, Shaw Creek Catchment (SCC), within the middle Tanana valley. Investigations show that long-term habitation and resource exploitation began about 14,200 cal.BP at Swan Point, the oldest site in Alaska. Both Swan Point and Mead date to the terminal Pleistocene. Together they constitute key sites for interior Alaska archaeology with their distinct multi-component records illustrating changes in environment, technology, fauna, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Borrero.

The region of Southern Belize is part of the Maya lowlands, an area that is geographically circumscribed, and located in-between several larger regional centers such as Tikal to the west, Caracol to the north, and the sites of Copán and Quiriguá to the southeast. The general history of archaeological investigations for this area are presented, along with site-specific studies from the Southern Belize Region. The current archaeological data of four major ancient polities of this region are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Mueller. Ted Goebel. Julie Esdale. Kelly Graf.

In 2014 archaeologists from Texas A&M University and Colorado State University began a long-term excavation of the McDonald Creek site (FAI-2043), located in the Tanana valley of central Alaska. In this paper we present our initial results. At least two terminal Pleistocene cultural components with preserved living floors, lithic artifacts, faunal and floral remains have been unearthed, respectively dating to about 14,000 and 12,600 cal BP. At the end of the 2014 field season, a probe unearthed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett Kaufman.

This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Popular government, or “democracy,” spread from Lebanon to the rest of the Mediterranean in the early first millennium BC. This form of state-level, consensus-based sociopolitical organization emerged as a face-to-face practice where members or citizens witnessed and participated in communal debates and decisions. While the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chip Wills.

This is an abstract from the "Historical Archaeologies of the American Southwest, 1800 to Today" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Wetherill Trading Post and homestead at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was at the intersection of a nascent professional archaeology in the American Southwest, the emergent trading post economy in the Four Corners region, the establishment of national monuments through the Antiquities Act, and the creation of a culture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Benfer.

Sometime before AD 1, a dynamic interaction and exchange network developed among the villages and hamlets of Greater Nicoya. The range and frequency of trade within this region is demonstrated by geochemically sourced ceramic and stone artifacts. The travel routes along which these artifacts were traded remain poorly understood. Geographic information systems (GIS) offer a means to predictively model the optimal terrestrial and aquatic travel routes that interconnected the settlements of Greater...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Wholey.

This is an abstract from the "The Middle Atlantic Regional Transect Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Delaware Bay is the second largest estuary along the U.S. Atlantic coast and is experiencing some of the gravest effects from sea level rise. Most of the estuarine shoreline is fringed by salt marshes that have been developing for over 2,000 years but are now being lost at a rate of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Upton. Jennifer Green. Barbara Heath.

Coan Hall is the site of the first English settlement on the Northern Neck of Virginia, established by John Mottrom, an English merchant-planter, around 1640. Mottrom resided there with his family, servants, and slaves until his death in 1655. His descendants occupied the house until the early 18th century. It was situated on the banks of the Coan River, a brackish tributary of the Potomac River that empties into the Chesapeake Bay. Representative samples of shellfish, predominantly those of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Gosner. J. Andrew Dufton. Alex Knodell. Catherine Steidl.

Since 2012, a course on the Archaeology of College Hill at Brown University has undertaken a program of research and education – including pedestrian survey, geophysical survey, and excavation – to investigate the historic Quiet Green in the heart of the university campus. This class serves the dual purposes of promoting the material history of Brown during the university’s 250th anniversary celebration and educating undergraduates in the methods, theories, and practices of historical...