Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominic Bush.

The archaeological site of Flores is a small, lacustrine island located in Northern Guatemala. Despite lacking in physical size, the island has a lengthy occupational history, dating from the Preclassic Maya period through the present. Flores, which became a provincial capital during the late Postclassic, was able to resist Spanish rule until 1697 AD, making it the last Maya holdout. Given this distinction, the island has been under much archaeological scrutiny and the subject of many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takao Sato. Andrzej Weber. Taichi Hattori. Tomonari Takahashi. Hirofumi Kato.

In the animal utilization and animal rituals of the Okhotsk culture, chronological and regional differences can be observed. Significant differences can be seen between the northern and eastern regions of Hokkaido in terms of the volume of archaeological artifacts recovered relating to both domestic animals (dogs, pigs) and wild animals. In northern Hokkaido, there are conspicuous differences in the use of a variety of fishes and types of sea urchins between the early period (Towada) and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Schnell. Sarah Newman. Andrew Scherer.

Excavations within the S-Sector at Piedras Negras in 2016 yielded an assemblage of lithic and bone artifacts consistent with evidence of craft production. The Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras – Yaxchilan returned to the S-Sector during the 2017 field season to conduct more extensive excavations in an attempt to understand production and exchange at this Maya polity capital. Between the 2016 and 2017 seasons, over 4,300 fragments of worked and unworked bone, both human and animal, were excavated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Riley. Katy Corneli.

This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many museums across the American West, the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum houses a collection containing well-preserved perishable objects. Many of these artifacts incorporate organic binders, such as hafted arrows and pitched containers. Yet scant attention has been given in the literature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Grossman.

This paper presents the results of a five year zooarchaeological study at the site of Hamoukar, a major Late Chalcolithic (fourth millennium BC) site in northeastern Syria. The Late Chalcolithic occupation at Hamoukar presents an excellent opportunity to study the social impact of foodways at an early urban site in northern Mesopotamia. When the site was destroyed by fire during the late fourth millennium BC, the occupants fled, leaving their goods and garbage behind in a well-preserved building...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses results from examination of faunal remains and iconography from Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma. By combining multiple analyses, this research yielded data useful to recognizing animal use patterns at the site that may suggest how ideological structures affected food choice at the site. In particular, this paper highlights some examples that may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurel Poolman.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Zincirli Höyük, the ancient city of Sam’al, provides nuanced archaeological testimony to the complex interactions between imperial ambition and local concern in the Iron Age of Southern Anatolia (ca. 850–600 BCE). During this period, Syro-Hittite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Arbuckle.

This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I argue that animals do in fact speak to us and discuss several ways in which this framework can be approached. Through consideration of perspectivism as well as methodological approaches designed to disrupt zooarchaeological work as usual, I attempt to take animals seriously by listening to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Dahl. Catriona Semple. Erin Crowley. Rebecca Bria.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents recent analysis of faunal materials from three distinct funerary structures at Hualcayán, Ancash, Peru, in order to assess differences in taphonomic environments and funerary practices through interred faunal remains. This study compares species representation, bone modifications, and fragmentation from Early Intermediate Period and Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Cootsona. Madeleine Strait.

This poster reports on the analysis of the faunal remains from a D-shaped kiva in use during the late 1200s or early 1300s at Pot Creek Pueblo in the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. The kiva was decommissioned in a highly ceremonial manner with both human and animal interments, as well as a variety of additional animal offerings on the floor. Additional animal deposits in the fill of the kiva, suggesting the continued use of the space as a receptacle for offerings. Close analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sanger.

Traditional conceptions of power, hierarchy, and inequity focus on the relations between and among human communities. To a certain extent, objects and places are considered important aspects of human relations, but they are largely framed as inanimate tools wielded by human actors. This prevalent view is threatened by a rich body of research among non-Western societies that shows non-human things, places, and animals are often considered to be powerful beings imbued with agency and efficacy....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Skoglund.

The rock art of southern Scandinavia includes a variety of images and among these are ships, humans and animal images. The ship is the most common motif and appears in various constellations. The ship may appear without associated images, it can be seen with a row of lines indicating a crew, and it can be associated to rather detail human and animal images. The process of adding humans and animals to the ships changed the significance of these images. In this paper I will go through some of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

To understand the relationships among rock art and ritual landscapes needs recognize how the process of making engaged in a set of spatial and social practices. These practices create a field of relationships that define the rituality of rock art as well as the sacredness of landscapes. In this paper, we discuss this process in a prehispanic agrarian community of Central North Chile. We propose the process of making rock art related to the animation of a world constituted by a web of non-human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Johnson.

Modern kichwa-speaking Runa peoples inhabit much of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon. Ethnographic study focusing on Runa communities of both the Pastaza and Napo Rivers indicate these groups share many of the views, collectively known as Amazonian Perspectivism, that characterize numerous lowland cultural groups. This paper will detail some of the ways in which Runa persons perceive and interact with their environment, focusing on relations with socially salient plants and animals thought to be persons,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Fitzhugh. Catherine West. Sven Haakanson.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Alaska and the broader North Pacific Rim has revealed a long and complex history of human occupation, dynamic human-environmental interactions, and – above all - underscores the relevance of archaeology to people living across the region today. These developments span the nearly two decades of Dr....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irina Panyushkina. Steven Leavitt. John Zawiskie.

The last deglaciation was characterized by numerous abrupt climate shifts including the extended Bølling and Allerød warm periods and the Preboreal, Younger Dryas, Older Dryas and Intra-Allerød cold periods, which caused loss of stability across the periglacial landscapes of the Great Lakes region. To date, assessing the possible impact of abrupt late glacial environmental change in this area has been limited by paucity of high-resolution environmental proxies that can be compared to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Lorenz. David Preston.

This is an abstract from the "Social Interaction and Networks at the Intersection of Central Mesa Verde and Chaco/Cibola Culture Areas in the Middle San Juan River Valley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2016 and 2018 seasons, excavators found more than 150 features in Floor 2 of the eastern half of the Great Kiva at Point Pueblo. Of these, 99 were east of the eastern vault complex. Features were lined with clay or adobe, demonstrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. M. Adovasio. Tom Dillehay. J. S. Illingworth.

Recent analysis of the basketry assemblage derived from the re-excavation of Huaca Prieta, Peru indicate the production of several highly complex “wall” types concurrently with escalating cultural complexity at this unique coastal site. These basketry variations include two expressions of twining which are presently unparalleled in South America. Both types also exhibit blue dyed elements and appear to have been intentionally dismembered before deposition. The technical attributes, chronological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pape Laity Diop.

This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite its abolition by France in 1818, the slave trade continued along the coasts of Senegambia until 1888. When, in 1822, France created a special African naval squadron stationed at Gorée Island to patrol the West African coasts, slave traders in the Senegambia responded by developing new strategies to escape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Bos.

This paper addresses the ongoing phenomenon of settler colonialism that permeates even the best intentioned "decolonizing" efforts. This paper gives the same credence to Indigenous and non-Western laws, stories, and epistemologies; practices what Sara Ahmed (2014) calls "citational rebellion;" and putts substantial weight into the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples in order to argue that when white archaeologists capitalize on Indigenous, Black, or People of Colour’s (BIPOC) things, bodies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Lennon. Thomas Kutys. Amy King.

Beer and Soda, typical beverages found in the lives of Victorian American’s; the remnants of their proliferate use, a plethora of bottles found at historic archaeological sites across the county. While often overlooked, these bottles, offer the potential to illuminate the landscape of small businesses, domestic residences, and the booming Industrial Revolution. Recent excavations by AECOM, sponsored by PennDOT, within the I-95 corridor of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maren Hopkins. Octavius Seowtewa.

After the Zuni people emerged into this present world from Ribbon Falls in the Grand Canyon, they set out on a centuries-long journey in search of their spiritual and physical destination, Idiwana. During their travels, the Zuni people split into groups and moved in different directions, forming medicine societies, acquiring song and prayers, and gaining knowledge about the environment that would become the core of their cultural practices into the present. As such, the places of Zuni’s past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Dalton-Carriger. Elliot Blair.

Native American inhabitants in the interior Southeast did not experience direct and prolonged European contact until the late 1600s, however European trade goods still managed to filter their way into the area. While trade goods are present, site chronology has not been clearly defined in many areas. Both pXRF and LA-ICP-MS testing on glass trade beads from East Tennessee and surrounding states has revealed trends in their chemical composition which can be correlated to date ranges. This method...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Bussiere.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As an archaeological repository, the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Archeological Research Laboratory is simultaneously a public-facing entity and a gatekeeper, standing between the public and a massive corpus of sensitive archaeological evidence in the form of held-in-trust archaeological collections and records. It is therefore not surprising that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Altschul.

This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Keith Kintigh has been at the forefront of the digital revolution in archaeology. He was one of the first to recognize the potential and need of digital archives to house and make accessible the vast treasure trove of archaeological data. He has been a leader in developing tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Fallu. W. Flint Dibble.

The assumed increase of cattle in Dark Age Nichoria has been a key piece of evidence for the "cattle-ranching" model of Dark Age Greek economy. New zooarchaeological analysis, however, demonstrates a distribution of more robust skeletal specimens which are likely the result of preservation bias, rather than economic reliance on cattle. Geoarchaeological analysis of "archival" soils retrieved from uncleaned bones provides some confirmation and additional detail: the abundance of cattle bones at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Sunell. Jeanne Arnold.

I analyze more than 400 lithic artifacts associated with the development of intensive Chumash shell-drilling activities from four sites on Santa Cruz Island (SCRI), CA. By the second millennium CE, the Chumash of the northern Channel Islands had developed a specialized bead-making industry and a parallel industry of formal microdrills to perforate those beads (as documented by Arnold [1987]). During the latter part of the Middle Period (AD 900-1150), trapezoidal microdrills dominated; in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Janetski.

The dry deposits of Antelope Cave on the Uinkaret Plateau in northwestern Arizona have yielded a rich artifact assemblage and abundant faunal and botanical remains dating to the late Archaic, Basketmaker II, and especially late Pueblo I/early Pueblo II times,. The collections recovered through archaeological work provide especially useful insights into Ancestral Puebloan life in this region. These activities include rabbit drives for food and the production of rabbit skin textiles, sandal repair...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxane Matias. Sandra Lennox. Ana Gomes. Nuno Bicho. Jonathan Haws.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2016, our teams carried out survey and excavation field work in the Inhambane Province, located in southern coastal Mozambique. At Praia da Rocha we have identified several previously unknown shell middens dated to the regional Iron Age (c. 700 BP). All sites are located within few hundred meters of each other and only one (Praia da Rocha 1) was, so far, ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heckenberger. Wetherbee Dorshow.

The Anthropocene is defined here as the time when human-induced alterations of the environment become a driver of regional and global climate. The Amazon has very deep histories of human alterations of forest systems, but settled occupations that dramatically altered forest structure in regional systems of Late Holocene age, particularly following the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), ca. 900-1300 CE. Global population loss in the Old World, beginning in the 13th century, and the demographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Bauer. Erle Ellis.

Much scientific debate has focused on the timing and stratigraphic signatures for the Anthropocene. In this paper, we argue that strident debate about the Anthropocene’s chronological boundaries arises because its formal periodization necessarily forces an arbitrary break in a long history of human alteration of environments. The aim of dividing geologic time based on a "step-change" in the global significance of socio-environmental processes goes directly against the socially differentiated and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass. Henry Wright. Robert Dewar.

The date of Madagascar’s initial settlement has long been the subject of academic inquiry and debate. Archaeologists, historians, geneticists, linguists and paleoecologists interested in the history of Malagasy and Indian Ocean peoples, regional exchange, and environmental change have contributed diverse datasets and perspectives to this debate over Madagascar’s colonization, but consensus on the timing of human arrival remains elusive. Despite its relative proximity to the African mainland,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Leppard.

To what extent are Anthropocene dynamics prefigured or anticipated in microcosm during the later Quaternary, and how do scalar differences in environmental organization (result in anthropic processes working at different rates) complicate any search for a Golden Spike? Drawing on datasets from islands worldwide during the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene, this paper explores how humans drive change in biophysical systems, emphasizing similarities of type yet differences of scale between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Gaggioli.

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Factors of earthquakes in archaeology are often relegated to disaster and collapse narratives. Causality runs from the “natural” extreme to its human impacts. Following political ecology and Science and Technology Studies literatures and using the case of Helike, Greece, from the third millennium BCE to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Homburg. Fred Nials. James Vint.

A soil quality study was conducted at the Las Capas site to document and evaluate the soil productivity and hydraulic soil properties of this ancient agricultural irrigation complex. This site presents an unprecedented opportunity to study the complete configuration and evolution of the oldest irrigation system documented in the Southwest to date. Mechanical stripping permitted earthen berms around small field grids to be identified so that soil samples could be collected in relation to nearby...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant Snitker.

Humans have intentionally set fires for millennia to transform the arrangement and diversity of resources within their landscapes, often altering the relationship between fire and ecosystems at multiple scales. Although scholars regularly identify human-altered fire regimes through paleoecological studies, archaeological research has not yet fully incorporated the spatial, temporal, and cultural dimensions of human-caused fire into discussions of the development of agricultural landscapes. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Carlson. George Crothers.

In the Mammoth Cave Plateau and the Sinkhole Plain of Central Kentucky, caves and rockshelters are the primary site type. The Plateau contains little arable bottom land, but cliff overhangs, caves, and perennial streams and springs are abundant. The Sinkhole Plain has abundant arable land, but surface water is quickly diverted to underground streams and permanent water sources are limited to caves and karst windows. We compare the archaeology of two important cave sites—Salts Cave in the Plateau...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jed Kaplan. Andrea Kay. Leanne Phelps.

Did humans affect global climate before the Industrial Era? While this question is hotly debated, the co-evolution of humans and the natural environment since the last Ice Age had an undisputed role in influencing the development and present state of terrestrial ecosystems, many of which are highly valued today as economic, cultural, and ecological resources. Yet we still have a very incomplete picture of human-environment interactions over the last 21,000 years, both spatially and temporally....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Moriah McKenna. Anthony Graesch.

The now-forested New England landscape has been shaped substantially by long-term human activities. Partitioned by thousands of miles of stone walls, the young and dense woodlands visible today are a consequence of intensive clear-cutting and farming activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this study, we apply the theory and method of landscape archaeology to the study of farming practices at an eighteenth century, 49-acre colonial farmstead in southeastern Connecticut. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Ellis.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I analyze anthropogenic landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, in order to gain insight into settlement formation and organization. Settlement patterns and artificial landscapes are the result of human action, technological innovation and ingenuity. Understanding anthropogenic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Crowther. Nicole Boivin. Leilani Lucas. Henry Wright. Chantal Radimilahy.

Although Madagascar is probably best known for its unique endemic flora and fauna, humans have also played a key role in shaping biological diversity on the island. Indeed, it is estimated that humans have been responsible for the introduction of some 10% of Madagascar’s flora in the centuries since the island was first colonised. For many of these plants, the precise dates of introduction are unknown; and while many are undoubtedly relatively recent introductions, a number are suggested to have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Larsen.

Archaeologists have given little direct attention to the taphonomic effects of cooking methods for marine invertebrates, particularly the effect on shell mineralogy. Various methods of heating and steaming shellfish directly in the shell are recorded as traditional for Northwest Coast peoples and the shell samples at the Tse-Whit-Zen Village site in Port Angeles, Washington State, contain many specimens that visually appear to be thermally altered. This type of heat exposure has been shown...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Tripti Bhattacharya. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Timothy Beach.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now clear that wetlands were critical resources for populations throughout human history in the Maya Lowlands of Belize and adjacent regions, and that these wetlands serve as important ecosystems and cultural heritage zones today. In northwestern Belize, decades of research have transformed our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Jennifer Huebert.

The native forests of the central and eastern Pacific Islands were extensively modified by Polynesian settlers, but our understanding of these processes are generalised. In the first large study of anthropogenic forest change in the Marquesas Islands, the identification of two members of the Sapotaceae family in archaeological charcoal assemblages was notable. Plants from this taxonomic group are poorly represented in Eastern Polynesia today, and the findings of Planchonella and another species...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Stewart. J. Lynn Funkhouser. Avery McNeece. Christopher Lynn. Omega Rakotomalala.

Public outreach and education are essential for the future of archaeology. While many organizations are actively involved in informing the public on the value of archaeological knowledge and the importance of preservation, the majority of in-depth education on archaeology and anthropology as a whole remains at the university level. Anthropology is Elemental is an education and outreach program that teaches four-field anthropological concepts to elementary school students through a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinzia Perlingieri. Kelley Shanahan. Elena Toffalori.

Much of what we do today as archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals is designing digital projects. From organizing field documentation methodologies to processing, analysis, publication, and sharing, we design workflows based on how content is best represented in a digital format. Transition to digital form is still rarely linear, even more so when you help others adopt digital solutions for their content. Given the cultural nature of projects we work on, at CoDA, we have adopted a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Airola.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster asks a question: how can we use social media to talk about anthropology and archaeology? To answer this question, we will explore different social media platforms and how to use them. Platforms covered will include Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. It will also discuss best practices on social media and draw on how-to articles, scholarly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Lemke.

Submerged prehistoric landscapes have unique traits which make them invaluable to archaeologists – increased preservation of organic remains, Pompeii-like snap shots in time, and data that either do not exist on land or are deeply buried. These attributes make the few challenges that remain for conducting archaeology underwater more than worth the effort. Early human occupation in the Great Lakes has been difficult to investigate as acidic soils and dynamic water levels left many archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abdullah Alsharekh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art is vastly abundant in Arabia, and there are large concentrations of panels in key localities. Hail, Najran and Tabuk are the most prominent ones. These three localities house thousands of panels, which can be multi-period, and were done in various styles and engraving techniques. Anthropomorphic figures can give us an insight into these past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Yoder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For almost a century, clay figurines have been described as one of the defining traits of the Fremont culture of the eastern Great Basin and northern Colorado Plateau. But surprisingly, many questions about the figurines’ basic characteristics, distribution, chronology, and meaning have remained unanswered. In this presentation I discuss the results of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Dillehay.

This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation centers on indigenous proto-state or polity formation in the early Spanish period in the south-central Andes and the sociocultural conditions that shaped a specific type of archaeological record, an unostentatious material culture for a polity-level of society. The historical focus is on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Renaud.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2001, as part of the development of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP), the Pima County government created a list of Priority Cultural Resources (PCRs) as a proactive approach to local heritage conservation. This list of PCRs highlights archaeological and historic sites considered integral to the county’s historical and cultural values and demand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Mackenzie.

The illicit trade in looted cultural property has been observed to be an example of a ‘transnational criminal market’. Other examples of transnational criminal markets are given in the non-exhaustive list in the title. These markets function in respect of a variety of goods – some are ‘collectibles’ markets (eg. antiquities; wildlife), some trade ‘consumables’ (eg. drugs; diamonds; counterfeit/pirated goods), while others move non-consumer goods that are not collectibles (eg. guns; radiological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Currie.

This paper presents findings of a new European Community funded research project: "Indigenous Concepts of Health and Healing in Andean Populations". The study population are indigenous Quechua peoples in northern Andean Ecuador. The project examines ethnic Andeans’ understanding of their world and how health, illness and healing are understood within it. Current practices of traditional medicine (TM) have evolved within complex historical contexts into new forms which can reveal the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Kuhn. Mary Stiner.

One of the challenges of Paleoanthropology is developing coherent models for ancient social and economic systems that have no close analogues in the recent archaeological and historical records. Systematic observations of variability among recent foragers produced by Binford, Kelly and others, are vital tools for understanding early humans. They provide necessary frames of reference for predicting variation, and for understanding why observations may not fit predictions. In a 2001 paper we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Beck.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1988, James Skibo lived and worked in a small village along the Pasil River in the northern Philippines. His observations there of women cooking, and the material traces of vessel use, still have a lasting impact on archaeological ceramic analysis 30 years later. In this paper I consider some of Skibo’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Vlemincq Mendieta.

The topic of this work is the anura, i.e. frogs and toads, in Moche iconography. Its primary aim is to establish if the anura were, in Moche cosmovision, associated with rains and agricultural fertility. During the early stages of this project, I gathered data and interpretations about the anura, while at the later stage, I built upon these findings to establish a classification system for these amphibians. The objectives of the classification are: first, to create a comprehensive database of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicoletta Maestri. Arianna Campiani.

For the Classic period, recent regional studies in the Usumacinta basin have proposed a mixed system of communication involving both waterborne and inland routes. Circulation of people and things along these routes depended on physiographic features as well as political boundaries. Several settlements located on strategic points along these itineraries could have controlled and/or facilitated the transit. Some of these sites, due to their proximity to the river course, might have been ports and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Fiedel.

The close relatives who buried the Anzick infant ca. 13,000 cal yr BP made classic Clovis tools and were unequivocally the lineal genetic ancestors of all the living Native peoples of southern North America, Central America, and South America. Clovis-derived Fell 1 fishtail points track the rapid southward migration of this ancestral population all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Any hypothesized earlier populations—e.g., the seaweed eaters of Monte Verde or the rock-bashers of Pedra Furada—if they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel White.

An assemblage of lithic and osseous artifacts, associated with the fragmentary remains of a child was discovered in Montana at the Anzick Site (24PA506). The remains and assemblage, all covered with red ochre, are thought to represent the only known burial from the Clovis Culture. Found on several lithic artifacts in the assemblage are unique flaking patterns which form "margin scrapers", possibly utilized as an integral part of an osseous tool crafting technology overlooked in western Clovis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel White.

The Anzick Site is a multi-component archaeological site located at approximately 5,000 ft above sea level in the Shields River Valley of south central Montana. Included in the archaeological discoveries at the site are the fragmentary human remains of two individuals as well as an assemblage of approximately 115 lithic and osseous tools diagnostic of Clovis Culture technology. This assemblage of tools was thickly covered with red ochre, as was one set of remains, presumably indicating a burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelly Robles García.

This is an abstract from the "Avances en los estudios de la arquitectura de Monte Albán" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los recientes trabajos de restauración arquitectónica en Monte Albán, resultantes de los sismos de 2017, nos han hecho replantear las intervenciones realizadas por el Proyecto Especial 1992-1994. En particular, encontramos que los deterioros causados por los sismos en el Edificio A fueron exacerbados por intervenciones de esa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Flores Ramirez. Carlos Salgado Ceballos.

Dos cementerios no contemporáneos fueron parcialmente excavados en el sitio El Tropel, Villa de Álvarez, Colima, en 2004. En el cementerio correspondiente a la Fase Comala fueron excavados seis entierros, mientras que en aquel de la Fase Armería fueron excavados 23 entierros, uno de ellos doble. Además fue excavado un solitario entierro de la Fase Chanal. Los restos de los 31 individuos fueron estudiados bioarqueológicamente, buscando determinar edad, sexo, características físicas, estado de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Martz. David Wood.

En la actualidad la Zona Arqueológica de Tamtoc, un área cívico-ceremonial prehispánica de larga duración, presenta un porcentaje considerable de estructuras liberadas, cuya arquitectura expuesta ha permitido al Proyecto Arqueológico Origen y Desarrollo del Paisaje Urbano de Tamtoc, dirigido por Estela Martínez y Guillermo Córdova, el realizar un estudio metodológico de sus orientaciones y las posibles relaciones que guardan entre ellas. Cabe decir que este tipo de trabajo genera un antecedente...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Garcia Lalo. Nelly Robles. Dante Garcia.

This is an abstract from the "Avances en los estudios de la arquitectura de Monte Albán" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La utilización de la tierra en los sistemas constructivos es el método más probado por la historia y el más antiguo empleado por el hombre para formar sus edificaciones, ya que es un material abundante y versátil para la construcción. Los antiguos zapotecos alcanzaron un gran desarrollo de la técnica constructiva a base de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria De Muñoz. Minerva Mejia-Rangel. Miguel Moreno-Galeana. Gerardo Peréz-Ramírez. Yoko Sugiura-Yamamoto.

El valle de Toluca es una región que ha jugado un papel histórico importante dentro del altiplano central de México. Hasta el momento se desconoce el origen de estas poblaciones, aunque la primera aproximación basada en el estudio genético ha sugerido que podrían haber sido conformados por los grupos de raigambre otomiano. El presente estudio a través de la secuenciación del DNA mitocondrial y su análisis filogenético tiene el objetivo de conocer el origen materno de las poblaciones antiguas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Lozano Varela.

Esta investigación busca determinar la importancia de los recursos faunísticos para una población del Formativo Temprano en el norte de Colombia (6000-1000 A.P). Los seres humanos que habitaron el sitio arqueológico de Punta de Pájaro en la Ciénaga del Guajaro Atlántico utilizaron una gran variedad de recursos faunisticos para complementar una dieta a base de plantas. Contrario a lo que se planteo en la teoría arqueológica para el norte de Colombia en los primeros años de investigación, este...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Hernández.

La Sub-región Diquís de la Región Gran Chiriquí posee a la fecha un total de 1.595 registros de sitios arqueológicos documentados en la Base de Datos Orígenes del Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. El presente trabajo expone los resultados logrados al aplicar un análisis geoespacial diseñado para conocer la distribución de dichos depósitos arqueológicos, en un contexto fisiográfico modelado para tal efecto mediante sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), que permite aproximarse a las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Berenice Pedroza. Luis Velázquez. Fernando May. Blanca Maldonado. David Larreina.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Este trabajo presenta los avances de la clasificación morfológica, caracterización química elemental (pXRF), y microscopía estereoscópica y óptica de las escorias de cobre recuperadas entorno a las áreas productivas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nanebah Nez.

The area known as Fossil Creek in Central Arizona is of significant cultural importance to the Western Apache people. It is known to them as Tu’dotłiz (TWO DOE CLIZ), or "blue water." Tu’dotłiz is associated with the Dilzhę́’é (Tonto Apache) creation story, and a clan origin location imbued with ancient placenames. It is a venue for ceremonies, home of the Gảản (Apache mountain spirits), a source of holy water and herbs, and place where prominent Apache historical figures once lived. As one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Pigott.

By the 18th century the Central Gulf Coast of North America was a complex of cultural borderlands, a result of constant Native American migrations and violent European power struggles. The Apalachee, a group of Floridian Indians, was one of many groups caught up in the rapid changes of culture contact. After the Spanish mission system inhabited by the Apalachee disintegrated, they dispersed across the Southeast, settling in small groups among other splintered Indian nations. As the Apalachee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman. Frank Earley.

Rather than a western extension of the Plains Village tradition, the Apishapa phase was more likely an eastern extension of the Great Basin Desert culture. Among other things, Great Basin origins explain the Apishapa foraging economy that focused on small mammals, antelope and deer, and meager horticulture. Insubstantial structures and temporary rock shelter habitations attest to residential mobility. As others have noted, Archaic rock art in the Great Basin and Apishapa areas are remarkably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Dudley Gardner.

From 2002 to the present we excavated five Apishapa Structures in the Purgatoire Canyon. This presentation will provide a brief synthesis of structural types and food ways of the sites inhabitants. It appears that maize and a variety of wild plants made up a considerable portion of the Apishapa diet. Analysis of the floral remains from these sites indicate the sites inhabitants relied heavily on available edible plants but also consumed exotics such as pecans. This brief synthesis puts forth our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adelso Canan. Alexandre Tokovinine. Barbara Fash.

La documentación de los monumentos prehispánicos, ha sido uno de los objetivos principales de los investigadores de la cultura maya por la información que sus imágenes e inscripciones proveen sobre la historia, organización social y cosmovisión de los habitantes de las antiguas ciudades de Guatemala, México, Belice y Honduras. La documentación topométrica digital de alta resolución también conocida como escaneo en tres dimensiones (3D) representa una nueva fase en la investigación y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Lefebvre.

En México, los dos primeros siglos de la Colonia española siguen sin considerarse suficientemente en la investigación arqueológica. Los proyectos se enfocan principalmente en estudiar la época prehispánica y posteriormente las haciendas (principalmente después del siglo 18), creando un verdadero hiato de conocimiento de la cultura material y de la arquitectura de los siglos 16 y 17. Además, esta asimetría es todavía más evidente en las zonas rurales. Esa situación se explica tanto por la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ridel Morales. Carmen Julia Fajardo. Blanca Fajardo.

Los departamentos de Choluteca y El Paraíso al sur de Honduras cuentan con un escaso registro arqueológico de asentamientos prehispánicos y coloniales. El desconocimiento de su historia deriva constantes saqueos y destrucción arqueológica, alterando el patrimonio cultural y generando un vacío histórico a las comunidades aledañas a estos sitios arqueológicos, desvinculándolas con su pasado. El Proyecto Arqueológico El Paraíso y Choluteca (PAPCH) comienza en el año 2016 como parte de los procesos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rona Ikehara-Quebral. Judith McNeill. Michele Toomay Douglas. Michael Pietrusewsky.

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural Resources Management studies in the Mariana Islands have consistently expanded opportunities for in-depth bioarchaeological research. Burial assemblages originating from historic preservation compliance obligations generally derive from one of three contexts: displaced fragmentary remains;...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Harvey. Sandra Nogué. Nathan Stansell. Kathy Willis.

This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Central American dry corridor is currently and has historically been the most densely populated area of the Central American Isthmus and is subject to the greatest covariance in precipitation between seasons. The vegetation of this region was typically composed of dry tropical forests, which are suggested to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn.

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the commodities heading south across the Saharan Desert over the past 2000+ years was glass. The typical form was as beads, but vessel glass and other forms also have been recorded. Glass not only was imported but at some point in the past also was produced by indigenous populations for local and regional consumption. Advances in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Lane.

This paper focuses on issues and methodological approaches to the comparison of archaeological sites, scaling from a regional to a global perspective, with a specific focus on settlement archaeology. The key issue appears to be the logical difficulty of contextualizing regional culture historical data within theories of global settlement patterns. A secondary problematic issue related to the one aforementioned is in the comparison of data sets with highly variable integrity at both these scales,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Leitermann.

The use of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has been the primary technique for ceramic sourcing studies within archaeology for the last several decades. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is an atomic emission spectroscopy technique that provides archaeologists with a time and cost effective alternative to NAA. LIBS has been used by the author on a large sample of corrugated sherds originating from two Classic Mimbres sites within the Gila National Forest of New Mexico in an attempt to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Litschi.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone in the Andes is an integral component of both the natural landscape and of the material expressions of cultural beliefs and practices. Growing evidence from multiple cultures indicates preferences for stone materials from certain sources, which held political, symbolic, and ideological importance. Determining quarry locations is a vital step in analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Peter Yaworsky.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events influence climatic variation on a global scale, considerably impacting modern human and animal populations. There is, however, a dearth of literature regarding the long-term effects of ENSO variation on prehistoric vertebrate populations. Here we examine how kangaroo rat (Dipodomys...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Plekhov. Christopher H. Roosevelt. Christina M. Luke.

This poster presents a study that applies an architectural energetics model to around 140 monumental earthen burial mounds located in an area known as Bin Tepe (the "Thousand Mounds") in western Turkey, which served as the burial ground for Iron Age Lydian rulers and elites. Using measurements obtained from ground survey and aerial reconnaissance, volumetric figures for each of the tumuli are calculated to determine the amounts of building materials necessary to construct each tumulus. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathy Loftis. Alex Cherkinski. Robert Speakman.

The ability to generate accurate and reliable radiocarbon dates for bone is of great importance in archaeology. Routinely, the age of bones is determined by radiocarbon dating of hydrolyzed bone extract. However, this method does not isolate collagen-derived organic matter, and contaminant organic carbon may be present in the extract. Exogenous organic matter, introduced during burial or post-excavation treatment, can affect the estimated radiocarbon dates. Pre-treatment methods can minimize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damon Tarrant. Laura Yazedjian. Michael Richards.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isotopic analysis has been used in archaeological and forensic contexts to examine diet, migration, trace evidence, and the origin of individuals. This project examines whether individuals were of a forensic or archaeological context using δ13C, δ15N, and δ34Sisotope values on behalf of the British Columbia Coroners Service. Carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joe Collins. Richard Langford. Thomas Gill.

Sedimentological investigations were conducted on Unit 2 of Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855), a deeply stratified, multi-component Paleoindian site located in the Harney Basin, eastern Oregon. Field descriptions and end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) of grain-size distributions of 13 sediment samples identified six stages of site formation: three stratigraphic units (SU), two unconformities, and a Bt soil horizon. EMMA resulted in the characterization of three end-members (EM) that correlate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Hall. Samantha Mitchell. Patrick Lewis.

Documenting the spatial distribution of scattered and commingled skeletal elements is an important aspect of forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. While existing methods of documentation may effectively represent scattered and commingled human skeletal remains, they do not facilitate further spatial analysis that may be useful in reconstructing taphonomic processes. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have recently been leveraged as a method of inventorying human remains, but their capacity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chen Shen.

Museums play a pivotal role in engaging in diversified communities and public at large, as cultural heritage value is applied to an understanding of the past that is relevant to everyday life today. Museums hold significant collections of natural and cultural worlds over the age that witnessed climatic changes, natural disasters, and humanly-powered manipulations. The survival objects displayed in the galleries and exhibition today are keys to engaging the public into the dialogues of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Banks. Philippe Lanos.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of chronology play a key role in the majority of archaeological research endeavors and are particularly pertinent to examinations of culture-environment relationships, especially during periods marked by pronounced climatic variability. Rigorous evaluations of data and robust methods are necessary to reconstruct...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Martin. Kathryn E. Krasinski. Brian T. Wygal. Fran Seager-Boss.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have long been a standard tool for mapping or depicting archaeological features and sites in the circumpolar north. Recently, remote sensing techniques including Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) have provided extremely high resolution datasets for landscape level survey and site detection from the GIS platform. Initial applications have proven useful for identifying temple complexes and other large scale archaeological sites in the Central American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Hamilton. Kerry Sayle. Colin Haselgrove. Gordon Cook.

The middle of the Iron Age in southern central Britain (c. 400–200 cal BC) is a period that is often seen as becoming regionally inward-looking. A primary focus of the mixed agriculturalists is on building and maintaining massive hillforts. There is very little long-distance exchange or trade noted in the archaeological record, and the metalwork at the time takes on insular forms (e.g. involuted brooches) that separate it from the Continental connections observable in both the Early and Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Pratt. Isabela Kott. Christopher Lee. Carl P. Lipo. Terry L. Hunt.

Object-based image analysis provides a powerful tool for using remote sensing data as a means of identifying archaeological features. Object-based image analysis has multiple advantages over pixel and spectral based tools, because it isolates features in image data based on a combination of spatial, spectral, and geometric characteristics. Using high spatial and spectral resolution imagery available for Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) and the Trimble eCognition software package, we explore how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuichi Nakazawa. Fumito Akai.

Recent progress of obsidian hydration dating (OHD) notably in accurate estimates of effective hydration temperature (EHT) and systematic measurements of rim thickness has now extended the utility of OHD to evaluate chronometric dates of prehistoric sites in various climatic conditions. The present paper discusses the reliability of OHD as the dating method, through a comparison of multiple specimens that were recently obtained from prehistoric sites in temperate and subarctic regions in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Smith. Sarah Hlubik. Tamara Dogandžic. David Braun.

Photogrammetry is a powerful tool using images to create three-dimensional (3D) models of objects and landscapes. Advances in software and personal computing have made photogrammetry an important instrument for the documentation of archaeological sites. Despite this, using photogrammetry to understand spatial data within archaeological sites is uncommon. Recording spatial data on sites is usually done by hand-measuring artifacts within a grid or by using a total station for more accurate mapping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Wolverton. Andrew Barker. Jonathan Dombrosky. Barney Venables. Stanley Stevens.

Protein residues were identified from zooarchaeological turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), rabbit (Leporidae), and squirrel (Sciuridae) remains from ancient pueblo archaeological sites in southwestern Colorado using a non-targeted LC-MS/MS approach. Results indicate that protein residues preserve well in tissues of origin, such as bone. Trace levels of protein residues from artifacts are more problematic to characterize because of poor preservation and due to several methodological challenges. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha A. Streuli. Margaret J. Schoeninger. Andrew D. Somerville.

The Formative period site of Chalcatzingo in Morelos, Mexico (1150-450 BCE) represents a socially complex society and contains the only Olmec-style monumental architecture in the region. Evidence for social stratification at Chalcatzingo includes differences in burial location and unequal distribution of rare artifacts. Significant debate surrounds the potential Olmec cultural influence on status formation and social stratification throughout Formative period Mesoamerica. Some scholars...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon K. Freire. Alexis M. Jordan.

Following the 1991-1992 excavation of the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Cemetery (1878-1925), up to 190 individuals were preliminarily identified using historical documentation, material culture, and geospatial analysis. Subsequent bioarchaeological analyses have provided an additional line of evidence for the identification of these individuals. The cemetery population of Western European immigrants and local/nonlocal native born Americans is composed of paupers, the institutionalized,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Cannon. Ethan Ryan. Houston Martin.

This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Light and heavy isotopic studies have become an integral tool in understanding the ecology of humans and vertebrates. In migration and mobility studies, strontium isotopes are used to determine if the individual is local to a particular area by comparing the isotopic values from bone and dental enamel...