Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna-Marie Casserly. Briana Moore.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable portions of bioarchaeological work have been dedicated to examining evidence of violence and conflict, little research has been devoted to understanding collaboration in the past. Analysis of stress biomarkers, particularly that which utilizes an osteobiographical approach, provides one potential avenue for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aimee Alvarado.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Peri-abandonment deposits in the Maya region have been a source of contention in recent years given the varied artifact assemblages and the lack of clear understanding for their purpose. This research describes peri-abandonment deposits at Xunantunich, Group B, an elite residential plazuela group located approximately 150 meters from the site core. Excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Cross.

Ames (40FY7) is an Early-Middle Mississippian period town with two dozen structures, four mounds, and plazas enclosed within a palisade located in Fayette County, Tennessee, which dates to A.D. 1050-1300. Very little research has been done on Early-Middle Mississippian settlements in West Tennessee; this has resulted in very little being known about the social life history of these sites. Recent research at Ames has utilized multiple lines of evidence such as magnetometry data, surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Domenique Sorresso.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and ethnographic records indicate that a change in ceramic technology from recent shell to fossil shell temper took place as the contact period Chickasaw of Mississippi migrated north and adjusted to upland settlements of the Blackland Prairie. While this shift is widely accepted within the archaeology of the region, it can be difficult to apply...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Curtis.

In Akçalar, Turkey, the location of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Aktopraklık site, urban and industrial development present shocking social, cultural, and economic changes to the community. The local landscape is transforming as towering apartment complexes are quickly expanding into areas previously occupied by sprawling fields of crops. As documented ethnographically, these processes have heightened local awareness of the decline of community heritage values, like neighborliness, agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Briggs.

Wupatki Pueblo is one of the best known pre-Hispanic settlements in northern Arizona. Unfortunately, very few excavation reports exist and only a couple of successful dendrochronological analyses have been published. Through a reexamination of wooden construction elements, legacy data from previous publications, and unpublished field notes, stored at the Laboratory of Tree-ring Research, this paper presents the results of the first wood-use behavior analysis at Wupatki Pueblo. The use of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Duke. Sarah Rowe. Sara Juengst.

This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many ways, Buen Suceso is a unique archaeological site. Not only is it a multicomponent site, with evidence for occupation throughout almost the entirety of the ~2,200-year Valdivia sequence and specialized use by the much later Manteño culture, but it exhibits an occupational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Gonzalez-Tennant.

This paper explores the relationship between anarchism, collaborative archaeology, and the decolonization of African diaspora heritage in the US and Caribbean. The heart of anarchism as a political theory articulates a robust criticism of hierarchy, and neatly intersects growing interests in collaborative archaeology and heritage. This represents a crucial intersection as the majority of archaeological projects remains rigidly hierarchical, often resulting in the silencing of local stakeholder...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Becker.

This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early explorers thought that Tiwanaku was a ritual or pilgrimage center because of its heartland location in the high-altitude, seemingly inhospitable altiplano of Bolivia. Years after “progressing” beyond a ceremonial center, Tiwanaku was fit into the “state” category within a political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassandra Boyer. Briana New. Arielle Pastore. Jenevieve Walbrecker. G. Richard Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no footwear in nature—only hooves and soles. Protecting feet through artificial means is a human invention of relatively recent origin. The oldest direct evidence for footwear includes woven sandals and moccasins dating to the early Holocene. Inferences from footprints, decorative beads, and morphological analysis of phalanges suggest an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Lyons. Lisa Hodgetts. David Haogak. Mervin Joe.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive Inuit knowledge of and interest in plants, archaeobotanical studies are incredibly rare in the Arctic, representing a clear bias of archaeologists. The proliferation of community-engaged research in the north is helping to open an avenue to more archaeobotanical work. While fish and mammals certainly composed the bulk of the Inuit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen.

This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology and ethnohistory of western Burkina Faso provide myriad insights into the ways that social and political identities can be simultaneously strong, anchored, and flexible: communities can be simultaneously autonomous, connected, and engaged in collective action; and hierarchies can exist while being extensively...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Núñez Aparcana.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bebel Ibarra Asencios.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary studies have followed different perspectives, such as ancestor veneration mostly based on intrasite analysis. This paper examines the regional distribution of Recuay's funeral practices and its implications for ancestor worship studies. Radiocarbon dates available for the valley show an occupation between AD 200-900, and it correlates with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLance. Jaime Awe.

Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica frequently encounter construction fill within architecture. Construction fill has been variously used as a tool for determining architectural construction sequences, as a resource for seriation dating, and occasionally as a context for radiocarbon deposits. Although much information can be gleaned from examining construction fill, material culture found within such fill is frequently mentioned in passing as little more than refuse, if it is mentioned at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M Thompson.

This paper addresses the social memories and identities of the spirits of the dead in the Prehispanic American Southeast and Southwest to consider their involvement in socio-political affairs. I argue that archaeology can begin to identify different kinds of spirits in the mortuary record, and that these spirits play different, unique roles in respective communities. I describe an effort to recognize ancestors, ancestral spirits, and/or collective groups of the dead in a Mississippian period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King. Elizabeth Konwest. Marijke Stoll.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous examples across the Nejapa region of Oaxaca that demonstrate the ways archaeological ruins retain meaning and power through time. This paper highlights ruins in the sites of Majaltepec, Los Picachos, Cerro del Convento, Hacienda San José, and the modern town of Santa Ana Tavela to show how ruined,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Lytle.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancestor veneration was a cornerstone for Maya social organization and vital to the maintenance of hierarchy. As the Maya became more politically and socially complex, ritual practices involving ancestors also rose in complexity. Critical to the concept of ancestors is the recognition of the bond between ancestors and spaces. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerry Sagebiel. Helen Haines.

Maya archaeologists commonly discover "smash-and-trash" deposits, collections consisting of large quantities of broken sherds, lithics, faunal materials, and other remains, in varying contexts on Maya sites. Interpretations of these deposits vary from simple trash or midden deposits, to remains of feasting, to termination and other rituals. These interpretations are often strongly influenced by the theoretical and analytical approaches taken by the excavators. At Ka’Kabish, Belize, a series of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Musser-Lopez.

The "archaic" abstract rock art style in the midst of the revered, fiercely defended cultural sanctuary of the Yuman-Hokan speaking tribes in the Mohave Valley along the lower Colorado River links culture with style, particularly when considering the absence of styles associated with linguistic family branches later expanding into surrounding areas. Further, that an archaic abstract style regionally associated with historic period Hokan speakers is also found throughout the Mojave Desert,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cobb. Brad Lieb. Tony Boudreaux.

We describe recent investigations of Indigenous communities who vacated the Tombigbee drainage of eastern Mississippi in the mid-fifteenth century A.D. These and surrounding groups migrated into nearby uplands known as the Blackland Prairie. Populations continued to move northward within the prairie and coalesced around what is today Tupelo, MS, in the 1600s. The move from a riverine to upland setting involved a dramatic shift in practices of historical ecology. The rich soils and open terrain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric McLay.

This paper will explore indigenous and archaeological ways of understanding "inland shell middens" in the Salish Sea on the Northwest Coast, British Columbia, Canada. Archaeological evidence suggests inland shell middens represent depositional practices that may have embodied new strategies of social memory and ritual practice beginning in the Marpole Phase (2400 to 1200/1000 calBP). To move beyond the deeply-plumbed Northwest Coast ethnographic literature to interpret the archaeological past,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Howard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing investigations at the Bockmier One Site in southwestern New York State are providing new insights into the lives of the Ancestral Ohiyo Haudenosaunee, who lived in the upper Allegheny Valley from around AD 800 to around AD 1350. This paper will focus on ceramics thus far recovered from the site, which indicate at least two temporally distinct...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Riordan. Julie Field.

This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of landscapes of movement establishes the theoretical basis for understanding meaning behind the creation and use of roads, trails, and pathways. This meaning can be categorized by "prioritized relationships" (i.e., social, political, religious, economic) which ultimately stimulate the existence of landscapes of movement. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Van Vlack. Jamie A. Civitello. Rory P. Gauthier. Robert Powers.

In honor of Robert Powers, Bandelier National Monument (BNM) presents research on his final project investigating agricultural potential in the arid highlands of the American Southwest. Powers’ research was conducted on behalf of the University of New Mexico’s anthropology doctoral program for archaeology. The Park is well-known for its ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites and the unique, natural ecotones throughout the Eastern Jemez Mountains. The region is topographically dynamic; the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanna Diederichs.

This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A range of evidence suggests that the Ancestral Pueblo tradition of the northern Southwest crystallized during the Basketmaker III period in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. As farming was adopted and populations expanded, social problems related to conflict mitigation, land tenure, and private...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dombrosky.

This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is a common misconception that fishes were unimportant in the diet of past Pueblo people in the US Southwest. Yet, small numbers of fish remains are consistently recovered from late prehispanic/early historic (ca AD 1300–1600) archaeological sites in the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico. The end of drought conditions may have impacted food...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Holtkamp. Sandi Copeland. Alan Madsen. LeAnn Purtzer. Jennifer Payne.

The Pajarito Plateau of northern New Mexico has been a place of significant archaeological study for over one hundred years. Situated just north of Bandelier National Monument, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is situated on 25,395 acres of the northern Pajarito Plateau, 90.9% of which has been surveyed for heritage resources, LANL manages over 2,000 archaeological sites, 1,505 of which are affiliated with the Ancestral Pueblo culture. This study has two primary objectives: the first is to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyler Conrad. Sandi Copeland.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we use bone apatite and collagen stable isotope analysis to examine long-term Ancestral Pueblo turkey management strategies on the Pajarito Plateau in the northern Rio Grande of New Mexico. Since previous preliminary research within this region identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Braeden Dimitroff. Candice Disque.

The 2017 Alkali Ridge Data Modernization Project completed an intensive survey of 10 Ancestral Pueblo habitation sites within the Alkali Ridge National Historic Landmark as part of the ongoing collaboration between NMSU and the National Park Service to modernize data and conduct research. The 2017 fieldwork season focused on recording small residential sites in close proximity to community centers to examine the role small satellite habitations played in the Pueblo II-III period landscape of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Greenwald. Mary Weakhee. Hayley Kievman. Andrew Merryweather. Jamie Herridge.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Running is an important, and even sacred, cultural practice among modern Indigenous peoples of the western North America and has deep roots in prehistory. Oral history and limited archaeological evidence suggest that running was important in ceremonial contexts, communication between communities, in hunting practices, and warfare. However, the prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Deady.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological survey of 800 acres at Redwood Llama Ranch in southwest Colorado documented over 50 previously unrecorded archaeological sites. A 2016 survey, completed as a settlement pattern study using a landscape archaeology framework, explored the extent of Ancestral Puebloan habitation and activity within this property situated in a canyon and on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keli Watson. Dana Evaschuk. Marina Elliott. Mike Robertson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the fall of 2020, human ancestral remains were discovered eroding out of the bank of a lake within the traditional territory of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, at the northern end of the Canadian Plateau. In 2021 more remains were found at the same location. At the request of the Cheslatta t’en archaeologists conducted salvage excavations to protect and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lindeman. Henry Wallace.

The transition to the early Classic Period (ca. A.D. 1100-1300) in the Tucson Basin has its roots in the disintegration of long-lived pre-Classic Period (ca. A.D. 500-1100) villages in the 11th century. The break-up of these villages engendered a variety of responses among the constituent social groups including the use of ancestral ties to place, real or constructed, to stake claims to land. Early Classic period settlement at the site of AA:12:46 begins during the fluid period immediately...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kalina Kassadjikova. Kelly Harkins. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Georgetown County in South Carolina housed some of the largest slave plantations and rice agriculture in the New World. Today, the descendants of these enslaved laborers form the Gullah Geechee community and comprise a distinct African-derived creolized cultural praxis. This study concerns itself with the long-term trajectory of biological and cultural change experienced by the individuals living in the South Carolina Lowcountry. First, ancient DNA extraction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Barbour.

Drawing inspiration from the work of Tim Ingold, I seek to find the middle ground of phenomenology, ecology, and materiality in describing how humans dwell and make their worlds among the various other communities around them. In the Lower Suwannee River Valley, Florida, human and oyster communities have interacted and intersected with another for millennia. Like people, oysters dwell and build creating their Umwelt, a concept introduced by Von Uexküll. This resulted in communities numbering in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Downey. Jean-François Millaire.

For decades north coast specialists worked within a paradigm that viewed the Moche as an expansionist state. Moche fine ware was regarded as a reliable indicator for dating this polity's imperialism over its neighbours, an idea that traces its roots to the Virú Valley Project of the 1940s. Extensive recent field research has led many to question this colonial model, however, and to propose other, more fragmented, geopolitical scenarios. This shift has both undermined the universal usefulness of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Crawford.

When historic Alaskans chose a settlement site, access to adequate fuel was as important as the availability of food and water. Despite its importance fuel use in the Arctic and Subarctic has received relatively little attention. Work currently underway aims to clarify the criteria used to select fuel in ancient Alaska by testing two hypotheses. The Efficiency Maximization hypothesis, derived from the prey choice model of human behavioral ecology, proposes that Alaskans ranked woody taxa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Robb.

In 2013, the Saint Louis Art Museum presented the first major re-installation of its collection of art of the ancient Americas in nearly thirty years. This paper will present some observations on the challenges presented by a collection largely defined by a single donor, Morton D. May. May's donations coincided with the high water mark of collecting so-called "primitive" art in the 1950s and 60s. But there is also a history of collecting and displaying pre-Columbian art in Saint Louis before...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruination studies allow one to see the past not as a fixed “thing” but as living landscapes that emerge from, enliven, and incorporate temporal dimensions, ancestors, and animating forces young and old, near and far. Furthermore, over the past two decades Mesoamerican scholars have increasingly recognized that ruins were an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn. Laure Dussubieux. Shinu Abraham. Alok Kanungo.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass—and particularly the glass bead—was a common commodity of Indian Ocean trade, beginning as early as the mid-first millennium BCE and continuing through the second millennium CE. While existing elemental and isotopic analyses of glass beads recovered from outside India have identified glass production recipes likely from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Turcanu-Carutiu. Rodica-Mariana Ion. Alessandro Ravotto. Sorin Tincu. Verginica Schroder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The synergic approach to preserving and restoring chalk stone, artefacts, mosaics, and fresco surfaces, which belong to the cultural heritage, with archeomaterials brings novelty through transdisciplinarity. Applied research is needed to save some of the most important pieces of art and archeology belonging to the national cultural heritage and requiring...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Kosiba. Bruce Mannheim.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars of the Andes often assume that the social units they study—residence, community, and region—are monotonically scaled, nested from smaller to larger. This suggests universal correspondences between the analytical and observational objects through which social units are known; hence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Larson. Kristin Landau. Laure Dussubieux.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2026, the Corning Museum of Glass—a world-renowned institution for glass studies in upstate New York—will update its major permanent exhibit of historical glass, “35 Centuries of Glass.” This reinstallation is committed to telling a more global, inclusive, and contextualized history of glass that features little-known and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Sholts.

Biomolecular analyses have revolutionized the field of archaeology in the 21st century. Rapid advances in technology have lowered barriers to biomolecular information by increasing the speed, affordability, and effectiveness with which researchers can extract and analyze biomolecules from ancient materials. Amid growing attention on museum collections as a source of samples for biomolecular research, the people who curate and manage these collections are faced with new challenges and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Leon Romero.

Cacao had a transcendental role in the life of prehistoric people of Mesoamerica, becoming part of their economic, ideological and social system. Due to the morphological and environmental characteristics necessary for the growth of cacao tree, the main producers were concentrated in places like southern Mexico and Central America. However, written sources of the first colonizers in Yucatan disclose that the indigenous nobility of that time had at their disposal cacao orchards in different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Newsom. Lourdes Pérez Iglesias.

The Caribbean’s pre-peopling flora and fauna were the culminations of both vicariant and long-distance dispersal processes, coupled with evolution in relative isolation spanning more than 20 Mya. Human colonization beginning around 7,000 years ago coincided with extinctions of megalonychid sloths and giant flightless owls-- the archipelago’s only large terrestrial vertebrates-- probably precipitating the first human-induced trophic cascades and initiating the first of a series of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Van Keuren. William Graves.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wendy Ashmore’s concept of ceremonial landscapes highlights how sacred ideas and ritual practices are intertwined with “sacred geographies” and “spiritscapes.” Her ideas have been primarily applied to pre-Hispanic urban settings in the Americas, where cities and surrounding natural features are seen to manifest “cosmograms.” We think her broader concept...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman.

Investigations at the ancient Maya city of Dos Hombres have been guided by an interest in social, political and economic organization, based on architecture and material culture remains. Excavations in the civic ceremonial center of Dos Hombres have been focused in the northern plaza, a very public space that likely was a place of commerce, public ritual and sacred space, thereby the prime backdrop for publicly legitimizing authority. Newly excavated data, especially architectural exposures as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ginevra Toniello. Dana Lepofsky. Kirsten Rowell.

Clam gardens, anthropogenic rock-walled terraces built at the lowest intertidal, are part of an ancient system of mariculture of the Indigenous people of the Northwest Coast of North America. The construction of clam gardens increased shellfish production by increasing ideal clam habitat and creating substrate preferred for clam growth. On Northern Quadra Island, where there is a dense concentration of clam gardens, we assess bivalve productivity of clam gardens by 1) calculating how much clam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric McLay.

Clam Gardens of the Southern Gulf Islands and southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia This paper describes a comprehensive, five-year archaeological project to identify and document the location of ancient intertidal clam garden features in the Southern Gulf Islands and southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It is discovered that clam gardens in the Southern Gulf Islands region are extensive, exhibit clear patterning in location and morphology, and demonstrate a monumentality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Salter. Amy Groesbeck. Kirsten Rowell. Anne Salomon.

Emerging evidence suggests that Northwest Coast First Nations sustained and enhanced shellfish production through features known as clam gardens, intertidal rock-walled terraces, built in the late Holocene. Experiments and surveys have revealed that clam gardens are 2-4 times more productive than non-modified clam beaches, supporting greater densities, biomass, and higher growth rates of important clam species. While heightened productivity within clam gardens is partly attributable to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cedric Habiyaremye. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes. Kevin Murphy.

Millets are among the world’s oldest crops. Unique characteristics such as their adaptation to high temperatures, drought conditions, marginal environments and low-input farming systems, make millets promising rotational in diverse agro-environments across the U.S. Millets could play a vital role in the diversification of cropping systems and provides a regionally available source of highly nutritious cereal grain. Despite being a very early domesticated cereal crop, and a major food source in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Hutson.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research in northwest Yucatán, Mexico, has played a large role in the development of demographic archaeology in the Maya area, beginning with Edward Thompson’s nineteenth-century investigations of housemounds at Labna and reaching a mid-twentieth-century pinnacle with maps of Mayapan and Dzibilchaltun. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Monroe. Paul Sandberg. Rita Austin. Marc Levine. Cecil Lewis.

More than a generation since the implementation of NAGPRA, many museums continue forward with the process of repatriation. This creates a unique opportunity for active and collaborative engagement of Native American communities in both the inception and implementation of scientific research. Biomolecular analyses of dental calculus can be an attractive research avenue because they address questions of mutual interest to tribes and scientists, and the sampling techniques are non-destructive to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Anthony.

New methods for analyzing ancient human DNA are introducing a new "molecular archaeology". aDNA permits us to detect mating networks, to see ancestry evolve across generations as populations expanded or died out, to track migrants and their genes across geographic space, and to say whether and with what frequency migrants and the indigenous population mated at the destination. aDNA analysis is an unprecedented tool for the study of ancient migrations, kinship, and biological adaptation. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Super. Meradeth Snow. Anna Prentiss. Ethan Ryan. Nathan Goodale.

There has been little research specifically designed to examine variability in how the porosity of lithic raw materials and micro-fractures from use-wear create environments that trap and preserve residues containing DNA on lithic tools. This study examines lithic tools made from a variety of raw materials to assess the effects of variability of raw material type, use-wear, and damage on preservation of ancient DNA (aDNA). aDNA analysis of stone tools can begin to address if the tools were used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawei Cai. Quanjia Chen. Hui Zhou. Dongya Y Yang.

The Houtaomuga site is located on the east bank of Xinhuangpao Lake, in Da'an County, Jilin Province, Northeast China. According to the archaeological excavations, the Houtaomuga site can be divided into seven phases from the early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age (8000-2050 BP). Although many Bos skeletal remains were found in the phases Houtaomuga III (6300-5500 cal. BP) and Houtaomuga IV (5000 cal. BP), it was very difficult to identify to the species level. In this study, ancient DNA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Royle. Dongya Y. Yang.

Excavations of Charlie Lake Cave (HbRf-39) in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, have recovered well-preserved faunal remains from stratified deposits that span the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. These remains represent a variety of taxa, including amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles. A previous morphological analysis of the fish remains from the site (n=1,235) identified the majority of the fish remains as sucker (Catostomus sp.) (n=669). Due to bone fragmentation and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Weyrich. Alan Cooper. Keith Dobney.

Sequencing ancient microorganisms using next generation sequencing approaches have truly revolutionized our view of the past. While past paleomicrobiological research was largely restricted to coprolites and sediments, the recent analyses of ancient calcified dental plaque has provided novel insights into ancient human diets, disease, behaviors, and lifestyles. Despite the benefits, obtaining DNA from diverse microbial communities is difficult and is fraught with issues for first time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Plattner. Meradeth Snow.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Orton Quarry site is a Late Prehistoric ossuary along the coast of Lake Erie in Pennsylvania. In March 1991, heavy-equipment operators accidentally destroyed a majority of the site before archeologists arrived. Since the excavation very little had been published on the Orton Quarry site, it’s importance or its original inhabitants. One of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Viganò. Gülfirde Akgül. Frank J. Rühli. Abigail Bouwman.

Historical records and epidemiological studies can be a wealth of information about ancient diseases, nevertheless in some cases DNA evidence is also needed. The data showing high frequencies of malaria genetic adaptations (MGA) in modern and historical populations testify to the presence of malaria in the past along the Mediterranean coast. However, neither modern epidemiological data nor historical records can explain the differences in MGA frequencies that we observe in some regions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meradeth Snow. Kathleen Hauther. Ashley McKeown.

Five burials were excavated from a small Colonial cemetery at the Elkins site in New Castle County, Delaware by Hunter Research, Inc. for Delaware DOT. The remains were analyzed for mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in conjunction with a standard skeletal biological assessment. Analysis of the mtDNA demonstrated European maternal lineages for all of the individuals. Additionally, an infant and an elderly male shared a derived haplogroup T haplotype, suggesting a matrilineal relationship between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Rodrigues. Chelsey Geralda Armstrong.

It is now generally accepted that humans are the primary drivers of environmental change; virtually no ecosystem has escaped our influence. With increasing awareness of the impact of humanity on the biosphere, researchers have begun to focus on understanding, protecting and perpetuating biological diversity at all scales and levels of biological organization. One of the best ways to understand current and future anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity is by studying their effects in the past....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Nakatsuka. Vera Tiesler. Jakob Sedig. David Reich.

This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The colonial period in Mexico was an unprecedented time when previously disparate populations began living together under Hispanic leadership and Catholic faith, often unwillingly. Immediately after the conquest, Spanish colonists established urban strongholds, often bringing African slaves and servants with them. In these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Linderholm.

This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ever since the Etruscans disappeared, their origins have been heavily discussed and debated and several hypotheses have been put forward that utilizes their language and culture as a source. Recently DNA have been use to try and solve this mystery. Modern DNA in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meradeth Snow. Clare Super. Anna Marie Prentiss.

Proteins and DNA can be trapped in the microcracks on the surface of stone tools, which can then be extracted and analyzed to aid in inferring the use of the tool (Shanks et al. 2001; 2005). This nondestructive method involves the use of sonication to release DNA from the microcracks, then amplification of regions of mitochondrial DNA that are species specific. This technique was applied to ground and chipped stone from the Bridge River site in British Columbia. Focus on groundstone was of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Aguirre-Samudio. Blanca González-Sobrino. Rafael Montiel. Brenda Álvarez-Sandoval. Abigail Meza-Peñaloza.

La Ventilla is a household from Teotihuacan, a great city whose people lived during Classic Period (1-700 AC) reaching a vast demographic grow. Farmers and merchants were residents of La Ventilla. Archaeological evidence has showed commercial, political and service interchanges with Teotihuacan spreading to all Mexico. We analyzed population diversity and genetic distance between La Ventilla and 11 ancient groups from Mexico. Materials from bone tools set were processed yielding ancient DNA; the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Waller. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Ana Morales-Arce. Meradeth Snow. Miguel Vallebueno.

Paquimé, the political and religious center of the Casas Grandes culture, demonstrates extensive evidence of Mesoamerican influence, including macaws, architectural characteristics such as ballcourts and platform mounds, and mortuary practices in the form of modified trophy skulls and human sacrifice. The role of Mesoamerican influence on the development and florescence of the Casas Grandes culture remains an important but contentious research question for the late prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jiawei Li. Ye Zhang. Xiyan Wu. Yongbin Zhao. Hui Zhou.

The genetic diversity of the ancient Mongols, especially the Gold family of Genghis Khan remains unclear. Gangga site was a nomadic site dated to the 8th to 10th centuries AD in the HulunBuir grassland, northeast China. This site belonged to the Shiwei population, believed to be the direct ancestors of the ancient Mongols. Nine graves at the Gangga site were excavated with log coffins, which were considered the characteristic burial custom of the royal ancient Mongols, included the Gold family...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan deFrance. Neeka Sewnatha. Nicolas Delsol. Robert Guralnick.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to Spanish colonization, the indigenous peoples of Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina) incorporated domesticated camelids (Camelidae), llamas (Lama glama), and alpacas (Vicugña pacos) into their economic and ritual life and were skillfully adept at breeding and rearing camelids for different utilitarian and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raquel Fleskes. Frankie West. Graciela Cabana. Theodore Schurr.

The Avery’s Rest archaeological site near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, represents an early phase of European colonization in North America. Previous archaeological and osteological analysis conducted by the Archaeological Society of Delaware and the Smithsonian Institution, respectively, indicated the presence of two burial clusters containing 11 excellently preserved individuals, one containing individuals of European ancestry and the other individuals of African ancestry. Ancient DNA (aDNA)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ash Matchett.

Recent advancements in DNA sequencing has initiated a revolution in the field of Archaeogenetics. The results of these new studies have fundamentally affected our understanding of early human migration and peoples. Limitations, however, still exist, notably in tropical environments. These environments are believed to affect the preservation of DNA in human fossils, to the extent where DNA extraction and analysis is at the limit of even the newest technologies. A specialized facility has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ash Matchett.

Studies into ancient DNA have advanced significantly in the last few years, but these have largely been absent in tropical environments. In the Caribbean, a number of questions still pertain as to the bioarchaeology of the indigenous pre-Columbian populations and the exact origin of these early inhabitants. Focusing on the skeletal remains of a late Saladoid population from Punta Candelero site (AD 640-1200), three correlated and simultaneous studies have been coordinated with the aim to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xin Zhao. Dongya Yang. Jing Yuan. Xiaoling Dong. Hui Zhou.

This study aims to use ancient DNA techniques to characterize the genetic features of ancient domesticated cattle in order to trace the origin and spread of cattle in ancient China from eight Late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Northern China. DNA was successfully extracted from ancient cattle bone or tooth samples in dedicated ancient DNA labs following vigorous protocols for contamination controls. This study was focused on amplifying mitochondrial D-loop using standard PCR techniques....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman. Torben Rick. Antonia Rodrigues. Dongya Yang.

Pre-contact whaling on the northern Oregon coast is an issue that has received limited attention from archaeologists. The discovery of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalanx with an embedded elk (Cervus elaphus) bone point from the Par-Tee Site (35CLT20) in Seaside, OR precipitated a discussion of ethnographic and archaeological evidence for whaling in the area. Previous genetic and archaeological research suggested that opportunistic whaling may have occurred in this region. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurent Frantz.

Transmissible cancers are mostly known from Tasmanian devils, soft shell clams and dogs. In dogs, the Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumors (CTVT) manifests as genital tumors and spreads between dogs (usually during mating) by the transfer of living cancer cells. This tumour first originated in the cells of an individual dog, up to 11,000 years ago, and possesses the genome of that founder dog. As such, CTVT cells contain an ancient living genome (the founder’s dog genome) that was passed along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meagan Dennison.

Skeletal remains of domestic dogs, particularly dog burials, are common from prehistoric archaeological sites in the Southeastern United States. Efforts to describe these ancient canines have traditionally focused on body size and cranial morphology, however, more recently paleopathology has played a key role in understanding ancient canine lifeways and the interactions between humans and domestic dogs. Mortuary analysis can also bolster interpretations of life histories and dogs’ roles within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Lucarelli.

The collection of texts and illustrations known as the ancient Egyptian "Book of the Dead" was especially en vogue on papyrus from the beginning of the New Kingdom through the Graeco-Roman period. However, abridged versions of Book of the Dead texts and vignettes have also been widely used to decorate a number of other funerary and magical objects. Among others, the anthropoid coffins produced during the Third Intermediate Period and the 25th Dynasty present a few intriguing features in relation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Verstraete.

This is an abstract from the "Interactions with Pseudoarchaeology: Approaches to the Use of Social Media and the Internet for Correcting Misconceptions of Archaeology in Virtual Spaces" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Current digital tools and social media provide a near constant stream of data. While the trustworthiness of this data may be suspect, communication mediums such as internet memes and Tumblr blog posts saturate common search results....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause. Verena Schuenemann. Alexander Peltzer. Wolfgang Haap. Stephan Schiffels.

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we mtDNA and nuclear DNA from mummified humans recovered from Middle Egypt that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carney Matheson. Cory Vickruck. Chris McEvoy. Robert Mason.

Thick-walled small stoneware Sphero-conical vessels have been found throughout the Middle East between the 10th and 14th centuries. Researchers have proposed that these vessels could have been used as smoking pipes, grenades or containers holding medicines, mercury, beer or perfume. The unusual nature of the ceramic, being the only highly fired stoneware produced in the Middle East, together with the very thick walls, would indicate an unusually dedicated function that only existed between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Prentiss. Kristen Barnett.

The Bridge River Archaeological Project is a long-term partnership between The University of Montana and X’wisten, the Bridge River Indian Band. The focus of the project is on understanding the historical development of this large housepit village, located near Lillooet, British Columbia. Previous research has emphasized village-wide demographic, technological, and socio-economic and political change during the Bridge River 2 (1600-1300 cal. B.P.), 3 (1300-1000 cal. B.P.), and 4 (post 600 cal....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruairidh Macleod. Rick Schulting. Angela Lieverse. Andrzej Weber. Eske Willerslev.

This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk will discuss the utility of ancient genomic data to gain insight into prehistoric hunter-gatherer lifeways and social organization at Lake Baikal. Specifically, we will focus on familial relationships in a putative massacre instance from the Early Bronze Age at the cemetery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter De Barros Damgaard. Jeremy Choin. Andrzej Weber. Martin Sikora. Eske Willerslev.

Genome-wide data from hunter-gatherer populations of the Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic has provided unprecedented insight into the human evolutionary and demographic trajectory. However such datasets have hitherto been largely confined to Western Eurasia. The sole representative of Inner Asian past populations post-dating the split between paleolithic Europeans and Asians, as well as paleolithic Siberians and East Asians, are the Mal'ta and Afontova Gora individuals, the Ancient North East...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn.

The study of ancient glass in Africa has undergone a resurgence in the past 10+ years, particularly with regards to the integration of new and varied analytical approaches. Glass from Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Era contexts are increasingly undergoing scrutiny to explore modes of manufacture, access to raw materials, provenance of raw materials and finished glass goods, and the role that glass production and consumption played in those societies, to name a few. Advances in instrumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Melendez.

To date, nine greenstone mosaic masks (GMM), recovered in eight royal and one elite interment, have been found in association with other grave goods belonging to ancient Maya individuals from Tikal, El Zotz, and El Perú-Waka’. Nearly 1,000 tesserae compose these nine GMM, however to date it is unknown what the mosaic masks originally looked like as these were found unassembled. Nonetheless, prior to carrying out preliminary reintegration and restoration projects, a manufacturing study was deemed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Kopperl. Eleni Petrou. Lorenz Hauser. Dana Lepofsky. Dongya Yang.

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. Pacific herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) is an important forage fish and staple food of many Northwest Coast indigenous peoples. Archaeological evidence throughout the south Salish Sea extends this ecological relationship back at least several millennia, but the presence of herring in archaeological deposits is often considered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frido Welker. Jean-Jacques Hublin. Matthew Collins.

The analysis of ancient proteins is increasingly used to study archaeological and anthropological bone specimens from prehistoric time periods. This ranges from large-scale ZooMS screening (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) of morphologically unidentifiable specimens to the targeted analysis of ancient bone proteomes from humans through the application of LC-MS/MS. Here, some biological and phylogenetic results that can be obtained through the analysis of ancient human bone proteomes will be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Monroe. Fernando Villanea. Eric Lenci Jr.. Alan Leventhal. Rosemary Cambra.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data was collected from over 300 individuals to further understand the hypothesized spread of Penutian populations from the Columbian Plateau into Central California around 5,000 BP. While living and ethnographic Ohlone groups- specifically in the San Francisco Bay area- speak Penutian languages, it is unclear what effect immigrating Penutians speakers had on existing Hokan populations between 2500-3000 BP. Distinct maternal lineages that belong to either immigrating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Lipson. Mary Prendergast. Isabelle Ribot. Carles Lalueza-Fox. David Reich.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We generated genome-wide DNA data from four people buried at the site of Shum Laka in Cameroon between 8000–3000 years ago. One individual carried the deeply divergent Y chromosome haplogroup A00 found at low frequencies among some present-day Niger-Congo speakers, but the genome-wide ancestry profiles for all four individuals are very different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause. David Reich. Iosif Lazaridis. Nick Patterson. Alissa Mittnik.

Ancient DNA can reveal historical events that are difficult to discern through the study of present-day individuals. To investigate European population history around the agricultural transition, we sequenced complete genomes from a ~7,000 year old early farmer from the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) from Germany and an ~8,000 year old hunter-gatherer from Luxembourg. We also generated genome wide data from seven ~8,000 year old hunter-gatherers from Sweden. We compared these genomes and published...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Qiang Wang. Dong Li. Qing Wang. Mingqi Li. Xiaoyan Yang.

The analysis of starch grains from the Xijincheng site showed that most of the starch was from barley (Hordeum spp.) which accounted for about 70% of the total starch grains. Other starches included foxtail millet (Setaria italica), broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), sorghum (Sorghum spp.) and a small amount of starch grains from Leguminosaes and root tuber plants. Combined with the analytical results of carbonized remains, we conclude that ancient Xijincheng people adopted the pattern of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Michell. Jennifer Marla Toyne. Alfredo Narvaez. Victor Vasquez.

This study uses isotopic analysis of fauna remains as a proxy for reconstructing the ancient Chachapoya environment of the northeastern highlands in Peru. Large middens have been excavated at the monumental center of Kuelap (900-1535 CE), yet there is little previous research focused on the fauna remains at this or other archaeological contexts in the region. The goal of this project was to reconstruct animal resource exploitation and provide insight into dietary variation and environment at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Antonelli.

This paper investigates the relationship between soil enrichment and ancient urban environments. I will measure the degree to which ancient settlement density and modern agricultural potential correlate. At the Postclassic Maya center of Mayapan, a spatial concentration of black, midden-like soils have been identified by local farmers. Results of systematic soil transect samples tested for physical and chemical properties reveal agricultural potential. Soils from the urban center were compared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kooiman. Rebecca Albert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of pottery function analysis alongside analysis of adhered food residues on ancient pottery offers new insights into past foodstuff selection and cooking methods, aka cuisine. Identification of phytoliths and starches present in carbonized food residues provides evidence of specific plant species processed in ceramic cooking vessels, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone. Saw Tun Lin. Nyein Chan Soe.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bagan was an authoritative capital as well as a cosmological and ritual epicenter of Theravada Buddhism for the Classical Burmese Empire during the eleventh to fourteenth centuries CE. Integral in the Buddhist belief system is the notion of merit; achieved through good deeds or donations to the Buddhist Church. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Ellis. Anna Browne Ribeiro. Filippo Stampanoni.

We analyze settlement organization and landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-Colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, within local and regional contexts. Pre-colonial land modifications dot the contemporary landscapes of Amazonia. Many such landscape features, such as anthrosols, elevated platforms, mounds, ramps, and riverine ports, are used today by contemporary inhabitants of Amazonia. New data gathered at Macurany reveals that ancient Amerindians altered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Skowronek. Juan Gonzalez. Roseann Bacha-Garza. Christopher Miller. Edward Gonzalez-Tennant.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To educate and engage the community about archeological and geological resources available to the inhabitants of the Rio Grande Valley from Laredo to Brownsville, the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools Program at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley completed a multi-year initiative combining community engagement with the creation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Nieves Zedeño. Francois Lanoe. Anna Jansson. Danielle Soza. Ashleigh Thompson.

The northern Rocky Mountain Front contains critical information regarding human exploration and colonization of the continent. Yet, reconstructed paleo-landscapes in the region extending from southern Alberta to northern Montana have focused almost exclusively on the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Billy Big Springs, a multi-component site located just east of East Glacier Park, provides new data on long-term natural (as old as 21,000 cal. BP) and cultural (post 14,000 to 700 cal. BP) landscape...