Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Pratt. Kurt Rademaker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his monograph, Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology (2009), Todd Surovell models mathematically the economics of prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ production, use, and discard of lithic technologies. Although we see great potential in these models to extend our understanding of hunter-gatherer mobility patterns and landscape use, they have received...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lacey Fleming. Robert Losey.

Humans and dogs have been living together for thousands of years, participating in various forms of relationships. One of these relationships involves the partial or complete provisioning of dogs by humans. Because of these practices, it has been argued that a dog’s diet should generally resemble that of the humans with whom it lived. This proposed interspecies dietary similarity has been an important aspect of some archaeological studies in that dog stable isotope values are in many cases used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudio Cioffi-Revilla.

This paper presents the Canonical Theory of the origin and early development of social complexity, which has previously been successfully applied to other formative polities in the Near East, early China, Inner Asia, Aspero-Caral, and Oaxaca, among others. The theory explains how and why sociopolitical complexity emerges following repeated instances of challenges and opportunities that are successfully or unsuccessfully resolved by the local community, based on extant lines of evidence. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Jonassen. Kenichiro Tsukamoto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-floor assemblages provide clues as to how complex administrative and domestic activities interplayed within a structure. By combining photogrammetry, total station and GIS, we developed a geospatial method that plotted each on-floor remain accurately on a GIS map. This poster presents its application to horizontal excavations that took place at the Guzmán...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabelle Martínez-Muñiz.

In this project I applied X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques to characterize the mineralogical composition of 11 clay samples collected from the Tuxtla Mountains, in the vicinity of Matacapan, Veracruz, México. These samples had already been analyzed through X-ray fluorescence (Pool 1990), and the data generated by XRD was compared to the already existing elemental analyses of these clays and of ceramics from the region. In this way, I attempt to distinguish minerals added to these clays in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth De Marigny.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through a comparative analysis of ceramic materials from three archaeological sites, including Bracara Augusta, the Citânia de Briteiros, and the Cividade de Bagunte, this research explores the effects of Romanization on the production and use of ceramic materials from the Castro Culture of northwest Portugal. This research applies several principles from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katia Chaterji. Alexander Reinhold.

This paper discusses the application of innovative 3D heritage documentation methods to augment science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. A California-based nonprofit dedicated to the digital documentation and preservation of cultural heritage sites worldwide, CyArk is a leader in digital heritage preservation, archival, and technological advancement. CyArk practices a range of techniques, including 3D laser scanning, high definition photography, and photogrammetry,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Prebble. Seth Quintus. Ethan Cochrane.

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 development and present nature of landscape archaeology in the Pacific owes much to the pioneering work of Janet Davidson and Roger Green in Falefa Valley, Upolu, Sāmoa. This research, completed in the absence of modern geospatial technology, not only demonstrated the potential of landscape-scale investigations in Polynesia but also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leszek Pawlowicz. Christopher Downum. Michael Terlep.

Recent advances in hardware and software have made implementation of advanced machine learning algorithms for image classification and analysis faster and more accessible. We demonstrate the applicability of machine learning to the classification and analysis of common decorated ceramic types from Northern Arizona. Both supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms are used to investigate standard ceramic typologies, as well as design/temporal similarities/differences between different ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Striker.

Iroquoian ceramic analysts typically focus on decorative style, in part because this approach maximizes the amount of information that can be obtained from an assemblage in a short amount of time. Decorative attributes can be rapidly identified and recorded, and a significant literature links patterns in decorative styles to social, temporal, and cultural trends. Characteristics of ceramic fabrics including clays and tempers are rarely examined, but adding these elements to the standard...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline McKinney. Sarah Hlubik. David R. Braun.

Multispectral imagery is a powerful tool for various disciplines that use landscape scale spatial patterning to understand and identify underlying geochemical variations. Paleontologists have used multispectral imagery in numerous locations; however, it has not been extensively applied in the study of archaeological sites associated with human fossil localities in East Africa. Extensive geological exposures combined with laterally expansive volcanic ashes in the Turkana basin make this an ideal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Hinojosa-Balino. Gerardo Gutiérrez.

Mapping caves has always been a daunting task, given the complexity of its forms and the usually difficult access for surveyors and their equipment. 3D modeling of the exterior and interior of some caves is now possible using photogrammetry. Here, we present how we captured the complexity of the Mesoamerican underworld using both drones and digital photography in the caves of Guerrero.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Swift.

Stable isotope analysis of small commensal fauna provides a novel approach to paleoecological reconstruction and investigations of human site activities. The human translocation of rat species, especially the black rat (Rattus rattus), brown rat (R. norvegicus), and Pacific rat (R. exulans), has significantly—and often deleteriously—impacted native floral and faunal communities, particularly within island ecosystems. Rats are small-bodied omnivores with limited home ranges and highly generalized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Jazwa. Kyle Jazwa. Stephen Collins-Elliott.

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ideal Free and Ideal Despotic Distribution (IFD/IDD) models have become increasingly popular in the archaeological and anthropological literature because of their flexibility to be applied at a variety of geographic scales. With some exceptions, however, most of the applications of the models...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hadden. Katharine Napora.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wiggle-match dating (WMD) of tree-ring sequences facilitates high-resolution radiocarbon dating in historical archaeology, a period notorious for an imprecise radiocarbon record. We demonstrate the application of WMD in historical archaeology with two case studies: (1) a cypress dugout logboat exhibiting a unique combination of European and Native American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeologists, our ethical obligations include responsibly training future generations of practitioners. Oftentimes, we understand this responsibility as taking the form of training proper field methods, timely and complete reporting of data, and other aspects that deal specifically with the physical aspects of archaeology – artifacts, records, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ash Scheder Black.

Geospatial and temporal mapping technologies continue to rapidly evolve, making possible archaeological visualizations capable of revealing patterns in the past from new and potentially dramatic perspectives. The TemporalMapping.org project, now in collaboration with the University of Oxford’s PalaeoChron.org, will share techniques and research results from data visualization efforts including a global 30-arc second resolution model of sea level change from 475,000 BP to Present and a high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Kotsoglou. Andrew Crocker.

The ceremonial center of Tzak Naab, located in the northern hinterlands of the major Maya city of La Milpa, displays many idiosyncratic and unique elements in its built environment that speak to the relationship of the site with the natural landscapes it inhabits. The site core is constructed on three large tiers which overlook the Dumbbell Bajo, a large seasonally inundated wetland. Within this area, aspects of (in)visibility are employed to control movement through—and perception of—space. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Martínez Tagûeña.

This paper contributes to the field of applied ethnobotany, which focuses on the role that knowledge, institutions and cultural perspectives play in resource management and conservation (based on Cunningham). Through different case studies to understand people and their use of wild desert plants, this paper stresses the importance of collaboration between disciplines, principally among biological and social sciences; and secondly between formally trained researchers, and local people and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman.

The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was nearly driven to extinction on the Pacific Coast in the 19th century due to intensive commercial hunting and the maritime fur trade. Despite some successful reintroduction efforts in North America, the Oregon sea otter population remains locally extirpated and listed as endangered. One aspect of Lyman’s 1988 study examined precontact sea otter teeth from Oregon and found they were similar in size to modern California sea otter teeth, and smaller than modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Ramos.

At present, human population groups in the Colombian Caribbean, in common with people from most regions of the world, face problems associated with the sustainability of resources that results to a large extent from the indiscriminate use of plant and animal species for food among other uses. The phenomenon not only impacts plant and animal species but rebounds, too, on human beings. Although governmental and non-governmental bodies have made some efforts to implement preventive programs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencia Rizzo. Sabrina Leonardt. Amber Johnson. Vivian Scheinsohn.

In this work we apply theenvironmental and ethnographic frames of referenceconstructed by Binford (2001) and calculated in EnvCalc2.1 in order to generate and evaluatearchaeological hypothesis for the Central-Western area of Chubut Province (Patagonia, Argentina), an area in which archaeological research has recentlystarted. Patagonia is an elongatedterritory located between 39º W and 55º S in Southern South America. By its shape, it receives animportant oceanic influence which determines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joyce White. Elizabeth Hamilton.

Application of archaeometric techniques to metals and related evidence from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia is in its infancy. One result is that sample sizes per site have in most cases been minute or even unspecified, although in rare instances, such as Ban Chiang, sample sizes for metallographic and elemental analyses have been more robust and representative. Small sample sizes obscure key evidence for intrasite and regional variability in technological and economic systems. Recent lead...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Woollen. Jennifer F. Byrnes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Not dissimilar to a medical autopsy, whereby a forensic pathologist directs their view inward towards a body’s tissues and organs in an attempt to reconstruct and explain an individual’s underlying cause of death, social autopsy directs its view outward. A social autopsy dissects the interworking layers of social institutions, political laws and policies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone.

Archaeologists often struggled with understanding the life-cycles of relic agricultural field systems. By incorporating the multi-variable approach of the adaptive cycle, complex relationship dynamics can be identified and applied to understanding the historical sequences of specific cases studies. Demonstrating this is the intensive terrace systems and settlement within the Contreras Valley and the associated ancient Maya center of Minanha, Belize. The variables identified include the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dylan Kelly.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the early 1600s, the Great Bay Estuary was a frontier colonial settlement that rapidly became an economic hub for the extraction and export of natural resources into the West Indies trade network. Being directly accessible from the Atlantic coast of modern-day New Hampshire, the Great Bay Estuary provided a logical point of entry for water vessels and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reymundo Chapa. Roger Ciuffo.

The Air National Guard (ANG) Cultural Resources Program oversees historic preservation and tribal consultation for 160+ installations throughout the United States and its Territories. One government official and one CEMML Cooperator manage the program centrally from Joint Base Andrews, MD, but the volume of work has prevented officials from managing resources in a proactive and systematic way. As such, managers are applying the Continuous Process Improvement/Lean Six Sigma methodology to focus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Stelson.

The term "altar" is a western concept which has been used in the study of the ancient Maya to describe a plethora of carved stone artifacts, ranging from small pedestals, to carved boulders, to three-dimensional, multi-component, carved sculptures. In many cases, it seems unlikely that the only purpose of these altars was to serve as a place to deposit sacrifices. After spending two field seasons cataloguing the carved stone altars at Copán, Honduras, the chronological trends in shape and style...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Marks. Grant McCall. Andrew Schroll. James Enloe.

In his landmark work, "Constructing Frames of Reference", Lewis Binford attempted to create a series of models relating hunter-gatherer adaptive responses to observable climatic and ecological dynamics. In Southern Africa, the large scale shift toward microlithic technologies associated with the Middle to Later Stone Age transition is believed to coincide with the environmental changes that occurred around the Last glacial Maximum. It has been frequently hypothesized in the African literature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Rodriguez. Nicholas Herrmann.

This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research examines the relationship between the Old Church Cemetery and the Jewish Cemetery on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius. These cemeteries are located near each other, yet the people buried in them had different religious ideologies and social positions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathaniel Erb-Satullo.

For a variety of historical reasons, the interdisciplinary field of innovation diffusion research has been underutilized by archaeologists examining technological change. Yet there is much to be gained by engaging with the predictive models produced by hundreds of investigations of technology adoption. Using the case of iron adoption in Western Asia, I demonstrate how an approach utilizing these concepts, with some modifications, provide a more complete perspective on technological change. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darlene Applegate.

Instruction in introductory archaeology courses focuses on student understanding of key concepts such as artifact, preservation, formation processes, context, stratigraphy, and association. This poster presents hands-on activities for applying key archaeology concepts in the undergraduate classroom.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Wisner. Tucker Austin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, Logan Simpson conducted two intensive cultural resource surveys on the South Kaibab National Forest consisting of more than 1,800 acres in the Upper Basin and 5,330 acres to the east of Red Butte, south of Tusayan, Arizona. Logan Simpson employed the mean thickness model developed by Sorrell (2005) to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lewis.

"Community based" archaeology programs are all the rage in North America, as both academic and consulting archaeologists respond to descendant communities’ rights to management over their cultural heritage in the face of large-scale development and resource management. This movement is not yet applied in other regions facing similar challenges of economic development opportunities and access to heritage. The Khirbet al-Mukhayyat Community Archaeology Program (KMCAP) is inspired by North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Ozorio De Almeida. Brenda Bowser. Sachiko Sakai.

This study provides an example of the potential for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to resolve chronological questions that cannot be adequately addressed using conventional radiocarbon dating alone. We have applied this method to ceramics from the Teotônio site, located beside the Teotônio waterfall on the upper Madeira River in southwestern Amazonia. This site can be understood as a persistent place, with several occupations ranging from at least 6000 BP to recent times, when...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Luze.

The Anthropology collections at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) have a long history of treatment with pesticides and contact with other materials that contain potentially hazardous elements. When the NMNH Repatriation Office began to use portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) technology, it focused on identifying potentially hazardous elements on archaeology, ethnology, and physical anthropology collections. If identified, the Repatriation Office attempted to determine the source of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Menzer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Magnetometry is probably the most widely used archaeo-geophysical technique in the world, despite its major drawback of an absence of depth information to an anomalous source. Many users, novices in particular, are under the impression that magnetometry does not or cannot provide depth information. Yet, depth estimation techniques are commonly utilized in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linea Sundstrom.

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) provides a legal framework for site protection. A review of various ARPA cases involving rock art points out the advantages and challenges of referring rock art vandalism and theft for prosecution. Case outcomes have ranged from out-of-court settlements to fines to incarceration. The keys to successful prosecution of such cases are appropriate public education about archaeological resource protection laws, competent gathering of evidence,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Stephen. Joshua Toney.

This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel from past conflicts to their families and the nation. We search for missing personnel from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars, and other recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail C. Bleichner. Megan Lickliter-Mundon. Hannah Fleming.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Since 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's Partnerships and Innovations Directorate (DPAA/PI) has successfully completed over 150 missions around the world, aided by the expertise and capabilities of more than 80 partner organizations. Included in this growing number of partners are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shereen Lerner.

In 2001, the SAA received a National Science Foundation grant to revise undergraduate archaeology curriculum to reflect the needs of archaeologists in today’s world. As part of this grant, seven principles were developed: (1) discuss the importance of stewardship, (2) take into account the diverse pasts of stakeholders, (3) articulate the social relevance of the past, (4) include a consideration of archaeological ethics and values, (5) teach effective written and oral communication, (6) provide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Keenan Early.

The Gault site is a well-known Clovis-age occupation site in Texas, with further evidence of pre-Clovis activity. In addition to an abundance of lithic artifacts, the site has yielded thousands of faunal remains. Unfortunately, the taphonomic processes to which these bones have been subjected have resulted in the vast majority of them being morphologically unidentifiable beyond small, medium, and large mammal. This greatly restricts researchers’ abilities to understand the human-environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Lipo. Mark Madsen.

At scales where individual copying events are not measurable but the regional archaeological record is rich enough to support models more detailed than phylogenies, seriation can play a unique role as a diachronic measurement tool for linking cultural transmission models to data composed of assemblages of artifact class frequencies. As a first step towards fitting cultural transmission models to regional-scale transmission scenarios, we develop a iterative deterministic seriation algorithm. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Claudia Herrera López.

San José de Moro (SJM) is one of the most important Moche cemeteries studied in the North Coast of Peru. It is recognized by the presence of several elite tombs and strong evidence of rituals that took place along these burials. SJM also has a proper style of potter manufacture which is easily differentiated from southern styles. It is important to mention that the Moche society was divided in those who inhabited the north and south areas of their territory. In this context, during the last...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Bayliss.

For the fortunate few, dendrochronology allows an annual window into the archaeological record. Over the past 20 years, however, Bayesian chronological modelling has brought chronologies precise to within the scale of past lifetimes and generations within the reach of all archaeologists. Explicit statistical modelling allows radiocarbon dates to be interpreted within the framework of existing knowledge provided by associated archaeological evidence, providing more precise dating and thus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Sandor. Jeffrey Homburg.

Farming alters and can wholly transform landscapes and soil properties, through both deliberate management and unintentional trajectories. The archaeological record of agriculture holds important long-term evidence about land management and change relevant to archaeology and current agriculture. Quantitative assessments of soil change in ancient fields are relatively few because of methodological challenges, soil’s dynamic nature, and post-agricultural imprints of environmental change and land...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald. Theresa Barket. Ahmad Thaher.

This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural affiliation and change in the Epipaleolithic (EP) period of Southwest Asia has historically been marked through microlithic stone tool technologies, where stone tool manufacturing is focused on the production of a large number of small bladelets then retouched into various microlith types. While researchers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Skoglund.

The aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate some general trends in Scandinavian rock-art research. For a larger part of the 20th century scholars from the history of religion had a strong impact on the interpretation of south Scandinavian rock-art. Images were contextualized by a comparative approach where scenes and details from rock-art were compared to similar phenomenon in other media. Today, this perspective is complemented by a variety of approaches; but a dominating perspective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Trusler.

Since the 1950s, zooarchaeologists have noticed that the expected number of each skeletal element varied from the recovered frequencies. Determining the reason for such variation is an important aspect of zooarchaeological research. Several approaches to understanding skeletal part frequencies are current, including density mediated attrition and differential transport. One method of interpreting skeletal part frequencies that is underused in studies of complex societies involves food utility...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Gadsby.

For over a century, the National Park Service (NPS) has worked to preserve natural and cultural resources in more than four hundred park units for future generations. In addition, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) requires all federal agencies to maintain inventories of their historic properties. For decades, the NPS has relied upon three inventory systems: The List of Classified Structures, the Cultural Landscapes Inventory (CLI), and the Archeological Sites Management Information...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Green. Iqtedar Alam. Claudette Lopez. Cameron Petrie.

This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of South Asia challenges theories about the deep history of inequality, but data from its first cities are rarely included in comparative studies. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a preliminary analysis of spatial data produced by the early twentieth-century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Szymanski.

In analyses of paleoenvironmental records, the specific effects of climate/precipitation patterns and human landscape impacts on ancient ecologies can be difficult to discern. As largely substrate-specific in nature, fungal spores may serve as proxy for a range of phenomena, such as soil erosion, landscape burning, vegetation clearance, moisture availability, and the existence of particular plant types in a given area. Microbotanicals, including pollen, fungal spores, phytoliths, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Everhart.

The Woodland societies of the central Scioto Valley are renowned for various aspects of their ceremonial practices. Among the better known are craft production of ornate works from exotic materials and the erection of vast monumental landscapes. Those construction practices led to monuments with an incredible diversity of form, scale, and organization. This variability is yet difficult to explain, with the existing explanations differing widely and being inter-related with various other social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Alarcón Tinajero. Christopher Morehart. Angela Huster.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Censers are a subset of Mesoamerican ceramics interpreted as ritual vessels used to burn incense. In ancient central Mexico, censers tend to feature mold made or handmade clay ornaments that were possibly part of iconographically composite vessels. A challenge in their interpretation, however, is that these complex vessels are often found in isolated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner.

When Native American sacred objects were recently auctioned off as art in Paris, many Americans were shocked by the headlines. American institutions and archaeologists continue to face their own histories of appropriation of Native American culture and objects, but many in the U.S. still seem surprised by the extent to which European institutions resist calls for more sensitive handling of cultural property. Others see a disparity between a widespread acknowledgement of the need to repatriate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yolanda Peláez Castellanos. Nawa Sugiyama. Agustín Ortíz.

Candeleros are ceramic artifacts that are almost exclusively found at Teotihuacan and appear in the archaeological record during the Late Tlamimilolpa, Xolalpan and Metepec phases. Their unconventional shape led scholars to propose different hypotheses regarding their specific function (i.e. "candle holders", incense burners, lighting devices, domestic ritual paraphernalia). This paper studies 368 candeleros (fragments and complete pieces) recovered from the 2015 and 2016 excavations carried out...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angeles Alberto-Villavicencio.

En este trabajo se analizan las formas de apropiación de los recursos naturales y el uso de los servicios ecosistémicos del río Lerma para las actividades cotidianas y económicas durante la época reciente, asimismo, se explican los procesos de configuración territorial y transformación paisajística en torno al río en la zona Metropolitana La Piedad-Pénjamo. Se analizan los procesos de degradación de la calidad ambiental del río que han alterado la provisión de servicios ecosistémicos, y se ponen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

El valle de Maltrata se ubica en un punto intermedio de una importante ruta de comunicación, comercio e intercambio entre la Costa del Golfo y el Altiplano Central. Esto permitió que los asentamientos prehispánicos asentados en el valle contaran con la posibilidad de disponer de algunos tipos de artefactos y materiales que no se encontraban en la región cercana. En cuanto a la obsidiana se refiere, la cercanía con los yacimientos del Pico de Orizaba permiten suponer que durante todo el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Favio William Ramirez Muñoz.

La presente investigación tiene por propósito aproximarnos al conocimiento tecnológico alcanzado por las sociedades prehispánicas durante el Horizonte Tardío en los distintos espacios geográficos que abarca la cuenca hidrográfica del río Cañete, enfatizando en el aprovechamiento de los recursos naturales renovables, acontecido por una constante interacción entre el hombre y su medio ambiente, siendo un factor importante en los cambios ecológicos la necesidad de adaptación al entorno en el que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Espinosa. Blanca Iveth Castañeda Espinoza.

This is an abstract from the "Aproximaciones arqueológicas y paleontológicas en Santa Lucía, México" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En el sur de la base aérea de santa lucia se ha detectado fauna marina, específicamente restos óseos de peces, gasterópodos, caracol univalvo de agua dulce llamado Physa acuta, o Physella acuta, los cuales se han encontrado en arcillas y arenas, este presente trabajo será una aproximación a la zona marina del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Severin Fowles.

In this paper, I explore Ancestral Tiwa rock modifications and linguistic conventions to identify what might be referred to as an "aquatic imaginary" governing Pueblo engagement with the northern Rio Grande landscape. The movement of water, it is argued, emerged out of a preceding Archaic preoccupation with the movement of animals as the dominant new way of both conceptualizing ecological systems and intervening in those systems through the organization and modification of stone. Evidence from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Simmons.

It long has been assumed that most of the world’s islands, especially remote ones, were first visited or colonized by fully modern humans. With few exceptions, these events occurred late, during the Neolithic or later, with an implied assumption that most islands could not support hunters and gatherers. We know that this scenario is no longer viable, with examples from Australia and southeastern Asia, such as Flores and Sulawesi, suggesting considerable antiquity extending prior to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Huw Groucutt.

The last five years have seen a rapid acceleration in research on Late Pleistocene Arabia. A growing number of Late Pleistocene archaeological sites have now been identified. While Pleistocene hominin fossil remains are currently unknown in Arabia, a fast expanding corpus of faunal remains and paleoenvironmental archives provide important contextual information for hominin occupations. Claims have been made for close similarities between Arabian and broadly contemporary East and Northeast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Huebert. Melinda S. Allen.

Contact-period accounts point to considerable variability in Polynesian agronomic production systems. In the Marquesas Islands, a mountainous island group in the eastern Pacific, food production in the proto-historic period was narrowly focused on tree cropping and breadfruit cultivation in particular. Early western visitors remarked on the archipelago’s large and thriving island populations, and their stable and productive arboricultural systems. In this paper, we present the results of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen. Rachel Loehman.

How can the archaeological record be used as a chronicle of prehistoric forest fires? How do cultural resource managers today evaluate the potential impacts of wildland fires? The "ArcBurn" project, funded by the Joint Fire Science Program, is a collaboration among archaeologists, fire scientists, forest ecologists, and fire managers. This project was created to develop hard data on fire effects to ensure that the best science is effectively and appropriately used to guide management plans, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Francisco Sanchez Guerrero. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Lissandra González González. Juan Julio Morales Contreras.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in South Central Michoacán México, Ongoing Studies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1788 the Spanish Crown wanted to evaluate the mining industry in New Spain in order to start the implementation of new technologies, change the domain and administration of the mines, and create new foundries that would help the mining industry to have more eficiency in all the processes related to this activity. That is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Meyer. Frank Rühli. Christian Auf der Maur.

In 1985/86 the parish church of St. Georg, Sursee was excavated. The archaeological findings showed that the ecclesiastical beginnings of the church date back to the early Middle Ages. In the early 7th century CE a wooden church was built near burials dating back to late antiquity. In total, five occupational phases for the cemetery can be associated with five construction phases (one wooden and four stone phases) of the church. Of the 223 recovered burials, only 119 individuals were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Hill. Jesse Casana. Elise Jakoby Laugier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional methods for collection of ground penetrating radar (GPR), magnetic gradiometry, and other archaeo-geophysical data generally require precise grid layout ahead of surveys and significant labor to set up and move survey ropes, slowing data collection and creating a hurdle to larger, landscape-scale investigations. Although some commercial systems...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Pascali. Kirsten Green Mink. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites in the United States are governed by a complex network of state and federal regulations, sovereign tribal governments, and private landowners. This often leads to difficulties managing access to heritage sites and their research potential. In contrast, extant literature describes the efforts of the Belize Institute of Archaeology and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Radoslaw Palonka. Katarzyna Ciomek. Vincent MacMillan. Ross Gralia. Maiya Gralia.

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the presentation of selected examples of Ancestral Pueblo and historic Ute rock art panels located in the Sand Canyon and Sandstone Canyon areas within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM), southwestern Colorado, USA, and raises some methodological questions. Some of the panels...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Purcell. Ashley Schubert.

In this paper, we present the results of archaeobotanical analysis from the Cane River Site in Yancey County, NC. Thirty-three samples were collected during the 2013-2014 field season from features associated with different spatial contexts such as household architecture and palisades. Our results show that corn, beans, and squash are ubiquitous in the assemblage, indicating that Cane River has unexpectedly high amounts of domesticates given its higher elevation and lack of lowland floodplains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sydney Hanson. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes. Steve Weber. Thanik Lertcharnrit.

Thailand is a relatively new frontier for archaeobotanists, having suffered in the past from a shortage of archaeobotanical research. While archaeologists in Southeast Asia have begun to chart when and how rice and millet agriculture developed and spread, a clear picture of prehistoric agriculture in central Thailand has yet to emerge. This paper describes some preliminary results from a series of sites that have been occupied from ca. 2500 BCE to 500 CE. These are Non Pa Wai, Non Mak La, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Holloway.

Vegetation and plant resources can impact forager mobility and subsistence strategies. However, misconceptions about the preservation of organics in subarctic archaeological contexts and underestimations of the importance of plant resources to foraging societies limit paleoethnobotanical research in high-latitude environments. This research addresses these issues with analyses of archaeobotanical remains found in hearth features from multiple components (approximately 13,300 through 8,000 cal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Ryabogina. Robert Spengler.

Plants in the Chenopodium genus have attracted human interest around the globe for millennia; they have been used for grain and vegetable food as well as being a key forage plant for herd animals. Historically, several wild species have been economically significant across Eurasia, notably in Central Asia, and the genus has been domesticated in various parts of the world, including East Asia. Wild Chenopodium seeds are the dominant category of archaeobotanical remains found in the vast majority...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Cuthrell.

This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our research team’s ongoing work on the Central Coast of California explores spatial and temporal changes in the use of natural resources by Native peoples and considers how archaeobiological data can be used to understand the history of traditional resource stewardship practices such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Cuthrell.

The Central Coast and San Francisco Bay regions of California are areas of high climatic, ecological, and indigenous cultural heterogeneity. During the last two decades, archaeobotanical research in these regions has begun to document the contributions of botanical resources in indigenous foodways systems through time. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a large number of anthropogenic shell mounds were population aggregation sites used for thousands of years, and, for the period after ca. 1050 CE,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John G. Jones. Nicholas Dunning.

Examination of sediments from several reservoirs at the Preclassic site of Yaxnohkah Campeche, Mexico reveals less that stellar pollen preservation, but still useful botanical data. Thus far, pollen grains show varying degrees of degradation, requiring the use of exacting extraction methods. Cultigens and economic taxa are abundant in the samples demonstrating that we are sampling in the right place, but cyclic wetting and drying has resulted in the loss of fragile taxa, skewing the botanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhijie Cheng. Yuzhang Yang.

As an transition zone between the southern and northern China, the Huai river valley possesses distinct uniqueness in climate environment, agriculture, archaeological culture and other aspects. We have taken a series of archaeobotany case study on the Neolithic sites of different period,such as Shunshanji, Longqiuzhuang, Wanbei, in the lower Huai river valley. Combined with previous archaeobotany research in this area, so we can summarize the plant food utilization in various periods. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Castillo.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Harris. Amanda L. Logan. Anne M. Compton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kranka Dada is a village site on the periphery of Bono Manso, a complex polity occupied between the 14th – 17th centuries AD, at the height of the trans-Saharan trade and the shift to early Atlantic trade. Questions remain about the degree and nature of the involvement of sites like Kranka Dada in these different trade networks. In this paper, we offer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trever Duarte. Jon Tulchin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thousands of charcoal specimens from 23 traditional Hawaiian sites throughout Ka’ūpūlehu Ahupua’a in north Kona were analyzed to see how kama’aina (“people of the land”) interacted with their environment. Fifty-one plant taxa, including 36 plants of Hawaiian origin and six Polynesian introductions, were identified. Combining charcoal identification and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Hanselka. Leslie Bush. Phil Dering.

Sheltered sites in the Lower Pecos region of Texas are renowned for their spectacular plant preservation. Recent excavations in Kelley Cave (41VV164) in Eagle Nest Canyon yielded abundant well-preserved plant remains within Feature 4, a large pit thought to represent an earth oven facility with a complex history of use and abandonment. Most of the plant materials from Feature 4 probably represent the accumulation of waste products of plant foods prepared in other nearby earth ovens, intermingled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Madella.

The analysis of plant microfossils has progressed immensely in recent years. The increase in the number of phytoliths and starch grains works in several disciplines has substantially extended our knowledge about these microfossils, while at the same time diversifying the approaches by which they can be used as archaeological and palaeoenvironmental proxies. This presentation will discuss the history and developments of plant microfossils in South Asia.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Wyatt. Cameron S. Griffith. Rebecca Friedel.

The past several decades of research have identified caves as important loci for Precolumbian and historic Maya ritual activity. To the ancient Maya, caves served as portals to the underworld, functioning as sites where ritual practitioners could be in closer contact with important deities and enact rites associated with natural forces. The Belize River Valley has been a significant area for cave exploration and excavation, and Stela Cave in particular, located in the Cayo District in western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Meadow.

Both Zooarchaeological and Paleoethnobotanical studies have been carried out on animal and plant remains from archaeological sites in northwestern South Asia for at least a century. These investigations, while providing important insights into the hunter-gatherer and agro-pastoral economies of the region, have lagged behind those carried out in other parts of the world in both quantity and quality. Indigenous practitioners of both sub-disciplines are few, and interest in these aspects of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Figueroa.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Preceramic period (ca. 11,000–5,000 cal BP) in Mesoamerica has focused on the transition from a foraging way of life toward agriculture, plant domestication, and sedentism. Yet we know little about the processes and contexts that drove this transition, particularly the relationship between foragers and animal prey. In this paper I present...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Klokler. Bruno Silva. Beatriz Trindade.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeogaming is a new found topic in archaeological trends. The publication of the homonymous title by Andrew Reinhart, in 2019, seems to have swung ajar a door that lots of us have been carefully creeping into: the prospect of uniting archaeological theory, methods, and practice with the enjoyment of possible worlds. From that standpoint, we present some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Moots. Margaret Antonio. Ziyue Gao. Jonathan Pritchard.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From shipwrecks to monuments, coins to mosaics, the Aeneid to the Satyricon, classicists, archeologists, and historians draw on a range of media to study ancient Rome. As a new media to study the past, ancient genomes provide direct insight into the demographic histories of Rome’s inhabitants. This talk highlights our team’s interdisciplinary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard George. Stephen Plog. Adam Watson. Kari Schmidt. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hundreds of scarlet macaw skeletons have been recovered from archaeological sites across the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. The location of these skeletons more than 1,000 km outside their Neotropical endemic range has suggested a far-reaching pre-Hispanic acquisition network....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Hofman. Torben Rick. Sabrina Shirazi. Jesus Maldonado.

As many recent genetic and archaeological studies have shown, humans have intentionally and unintentionally moved plants and animals around the world. The California Channel Islands provide a unique environment to explore ancient translocations due to their close proximity to the California mainland, long human occupation (~13,000 years) and limited terrestrial diversity. Here we present our interdisciplinary approach to investigating the origins of California Channel Island terrestrial mammals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher. Ricardo Antorcha-Pedemonte.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent theoretical advances emerging from Historical Ecology have reoriented thinking regarding human-environment relations in many ancient contexts. Consistent with this research program, the concept of the Maya Forest-Garden introduced by Ford and Nigh and Rivera-Núñez and Fargher’s work on Kanan Ka’ax, among others, have provided a more integrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Vadala.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study uses a modified actor-network approach to examine and characterize the human and nonhuman relationships that produced and shaped ancient Maya caches and the corresponding ritual events wherein they were buried. This contrasts with archaeological approaches that have generally focused on defining essential properties of artifacts to define or clarify...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilen Pool. Christina Bisulca.

The ancient cultures of the American Southwest used various plant and insect exudates as adhesives in a range of artifacts, including mosaic plaques, arrows, wooden tools, and in pottery as a repair and sealant. The conservation department at the Arizona State Museum surveyed the adhesives used in the Pottery and Archaeological Perishable Collections, analyzing over 100 objects that included every major cultural group in the Southwest sourced to 35 different archaeological sites. Identification...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Casana. Adam Wiewel. Autumn Cool.

Archaeologists have recognized since the 1970s that thermal images captured at an optimal time in the diurnal cycle have the potential to reveal surface artifacts, subtle topography, and even subsurface architectural remains. However, it is only with the recent development of reliable and stable unmanned aerial vehicles, small, uncooled, high-resolution thermal cameras, and powerful photogrammetric image processing software that archaeological aerial thermography has become practical. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seonaid Duffield. Duncan McLaren. Iain McKechnie.

Detailed tracking of the chronology and spatial extent of shell middens on the Northwest Coast is a challenging and often expensive proposition given the size and time depth often represented at these sites. The Hakai Ancient Landscapes Archaeology Project (HALAP) used vibracore technology to efficiently sample intact 7cm diameter stratigraphic profiles from multiple 4-6 m deep shell midden deposits at site EjTa-13 on Hecate Island. A series of radiocarbon dates from the initial core documents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helina Woldekiros. A. Catherine D'Andrea.

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. Early agricultural systems relied on plants and animals originally carried thousands of miles by land and sea. Due to a lack of data and a greater emphasis on domestication processes, early agricultural complexes are less investigated than their domestication counterparts. This paper examines the introduction and evolution of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Compton.

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While digital literacy typically refers to one’s ability to utilize and navigate various digital platforms, recent literature demonstrates a need to broaden our framing beyond the development of practical skills to include understanding the impact of those technologies in contemporary society. This is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek. Carlos Pallán Gayol.

The past decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of Classic Maya geopolitics, particularly in reconstructing asymmetrical interpolity relationships dominated by expansionist states. Employing variable political strategies, including both direct and indirect rulership, the Kaanu’l Dynasty dominated a large network of kingdoms across the Maya Lowlands. This paper examines the impacts of the expansion and dissolution of the Kaanu’l state in western Campeche, within the northwestern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aspen Greaves.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The history and prehistory of Mongolia and Central Asia is sometimes characterized as static nomadic pastoralism, with little to no change in resource use over hundreds of years. Many scholars have debunked this unnuanced image by showing the complexities of pastoral lifeways, as well as the adoption of other subistence strategies in areas traditionally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Gingerich. William Childress. Daniel Wagner. Michael Johnson.

Identification of stratified Paleoindian components in eastern North America is rare. Because few stratified sites exist, cultural chronologies and depictions of Paleoindian lifeways have been drawn from large geographic areas and warrant revision. Recent work along the upper Roanoke River in Virginia has identified several sites that show an almost complete cultural sequence from 8,000 to 13,000 calendar years ago. These sites also show the use of a unique suite of lithic raw materials during...