North America (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher P. Barton. Patricia G. Markert. Guy Weston.

Meaning is not monolithic. Presented here are different narratives on the interests of archaeologists and descendants. Focus is given to the African American community of Timbuctoo. This project, like many other attempts at community archaeology is not a story of unabated triumphs: rather, these narratives are about the challenges that can emerge through collaboration. This is not meant to demean collaborative archaeology, rather it is to underscore that through pragmatic discourse we can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eve H Dewan.

The Archaeology of College Hill is a course at Brown University, taught by two graduate students, that aims to train undergraduates in various field methods, documentary research, and readings and discussions of archaeological theory. In 2016, the course underwent several exciting changes. First, it relocated from Brown’s campus, where it had been conducting excavations for several years, to the nearby Moses Brown School. This paper presents the results of two seasons of fieldwork at this new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Piner. Lauren M Christian. Mitchell Freitas. Allyson G. Ropp. Sydney Swierenga.

East Carolina University’s Program in Maritime Studies studied two shipwreck sites in Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica. These sites presented unique challenges to the group because of their location, distribution, similarities, unique formation processes, and role as part of a dynamic and protected ecosystem. One site has a brick pile and few scattered artifacts, including cannon, concretions, a grinding stone, and two bottles. The other has 13 pieces of concreted cannon, two anchors, and a few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara F. Mascia.

For well over a century Historical Archaeologists have been faced with the persistent problem of losing archaeological sites to development.  Recently, another challenge has come to the forefront – how these sites are being adversely affected by climate change.   Many of the problems encountered were the result of either increased coastal flooding or flooding in areas where former watercourses have been diverted, altered, or filled to accommodate development.   In the last decade, requests for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Sosa Aguilar. Felicia De Peña.

This is an abstract from the "Leveling Up: Gaming and Game Design in Archaeological Education and Outreach" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When teaching about archaeological concepts on trade and exchange, typically, theoretical models dominate the classroom lecture and discussions. Traditional theoretical discussions limit explanations to biological, social, environmental, or religious reasons. Although lectures and discussions are useful, they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Blank.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological content in high schools appears in the social studies curriculum as historical narrative rather than as part of the process of active information production. Surveys of students indicated that they do not see value in archaeological content beyond the classroom and that they perceive their role in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa M. Dretske.

Dr. Elizabeth Scott introduced me to many aspects of understanding ethnicity in the historical and archaeological record through her years of work at the Janis-Ziegler site (23SG272). Despite Ste. Genevieve being founded by the French, the German Ziegler family resided in the town beginning in the early 19th century. In 2006, archaeological investigations went underway on the Janis-Ziegler site, directed by Dr. Elizabeth Scott and Donald Heldman.  The purpose of my research was to discover to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather B Trigg. Stephen A Mrozowski.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Particularly during the early years of Spanish and English colonies in North America, the relationships colonists created with the environment were focused on subsistence production. Colonists’ practices in these efforts frequently entangled Indigenous people. Despite introducing many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth M Mitchell.

In 2013, archaeologists at Historic St. Mary’s City excavated a newly discovered building within the Governor's Field. The remnants of this colonial period structure survived below Anne Arundel Hall on the campus of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. The large 1950’s period classroom building had been demolished in preparation for new construction. Likely dating to the late 17th century, this structure underwent numerous repairs and analysis of the post holes will aid in the understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dale.

While the archaeology of the Chinese diaspora has grown and expanded to incorporate numerous realms of study, most work has continued to focus on ethnicity as the key marker of Chinese identity, culture, and artifacts. More recently, archaeologists have explored the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity and class and ethnicity at Chinese sites. Age, however, is underexplored throughout archaeology in general, and completely unaddressed in archaeological research into the Chinese diaspora....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Lierenz.

This is an abstract from the "From Hard Rock to Heavy Metal: Metal Tool Production and Use by Indigenous Hunter-Gatherers in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Archaic period in North America was a time of technological innovation and experimentation with new tool materials. Conical copper projectile points appeared in North America during this time and recent radiocarbon evidence shows that they were in use by 7,500 years ago....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Drake. Marla MacKinnon. America Guerra.

In 2016, The Field Museum was awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The overall mission of this project is to "research, explore, develop, and implement thoughtful, practical, and forward-thinking practices for the ethical care of human remains." The project is working to bring together stakeholders from collections-holding institutions, scientific research institutions, and Native American and First Nations communities to move beyond...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey D. McQuinn.

Since the signing of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, the Society for Historical Archaeology and the cultural resource management (CRM) industry have grown along parallel, but slightly different, paths. While CRM archaeologists make up more than half of the SHA’s membership, and the industry arguably generates more raw archaeological data each year than any other sector of the discipline, its representation in the journal is disproportionately low. This study presents the results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandria D. Salisbury. Linda Stine.

In the southeastern portion of North Carolina, near the Cape Fear inlet, Fort Anderson was once a protecting force upheld by Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War.  Previous excavations at a specific encampment inside of Fort Anderson provided artifacts that were once assigned to females' activities.  These artifacts have been deemed quixotic due to the gender restrictions of the fortress.  This presentation examines if and how researchers could tell whether males assumed female...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah C Heffner.

Chinese laborers on the North American transcontinental railroads performed dangerous and labor-intensive work, and many died or were seriously injured as a result of explosions, cave-ins, and severe and unpredictable weather. These workers received meager wages and may have faced additional health risks from ethnic violence and malnutrition. Little is known about how these individuals treated their injuries and ailments and, to this date, not a single document written by a Chinese railroad...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany C. Cain.

How does political violence impact civilian spaces and how can we rethink its consequences for everyday life? The Tihosuco Heritage Preservation and Community Development Project has used collaborative archaeology to grapple with the postconflict landscapes of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Our most recent work focuses specifically on an 18th-19th century town, called Tela, whose fortified houselots, roadblocks, and assemblages offer evidence of the early years (1847-1866) of the Caste War or Maya Social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khadene Harris. Jillian Galle.

In the British Caribbean, archaeologists have documented notable shifts in material culture after emancipation in 1834.  Similar diversity and richness in material culture have been observed but not quantified on nineteenth-century sites of slavery in the United States. We compare artifact assemblages from contemporary post-emancipation sites from Morne Patat (Dominica) and Seville (Jamaica) with pre-emancipation sites from The Hermitage.  We highlight differences in how formerly enslaved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Scharra. Krysta Ryzewski. Kate E Korth. Samantha Malette. Mark Jazayeri. C. Lorin Brace.

Over the past year, members of the Unearthing Detroit project at Wayne State University have created digital and public initiatives to increase project outreach.  We presented Detroit archaeology to local schools, invited the public to a special outreach day during our local field school excavation, and provided opportunities to volunteer in the museum and lab.  Our concurrent digital outreach materials include a webpage, a weekly blog, and an interactive social media platform.  The integration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren Davis. Masami Izuho. Alexander Nyers. Fumie Iizuka. David Madsen.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While paleogenetic studies indicate that the majority of the genomic heredity of indigenous peoples of the Americas can be traced to late Pleistocene human populations in far eastern Asia, we do not yet understand whether a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nedra K. Lee.

As Nantucket, Massachusetts became the center of a global whaling industry in the nineteenth century, the island’s Native American and Black populations formed the mixed-race community of New Guinea.  The Nantucket African Meeting House played a critical role in New Guinea’s adoption of a shared African identity as it became the center of the community’s social and political activities.  Using archaeological materials from the African Meeting House and the neighboring Seneca Boston-Florence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Herbert Seignoret.

This paper explores racial formation in New York City from 1799 to 1863, when the city had the largest free Black population in the North, and ends with the 1863 Draft Riots, which marked a major turning point in the relationship between the city’s Black and Irish communities.  Using the optic of historical archaeology, Diana Wall’s work is critical to this analysis of racial formation in New York City. By unearthing the city's complex racial history while guiding a significant number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Proebsting.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past thirty years, landscape archaeology has been used to study Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation located in Bedford County, Virginia. A goal of this work has been to cultivate a deeper understanding of the individuals who lived and labored on Poplar Forest plantation as well as how their households...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry M Miller. Jay Custer.

An archaeological rescue project in 1990 on the "My Lord’s Gift" site (18QU30) in Queen Anne, County, Maryland revealed a fascinating complex of colonial structures.  This tract was granted by Lord Baltimore in 1658 to Henry Coursey, an Irish immigrant and important official in the colony’s government.    Excavators found a variety of architecture represented at the site.  The largest building they uncovered was the substantial cobble stone foundation of an unusual T-Plan house with a massive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Hallinan.

In the early 17th century Spanish colonists came to New Mexico seeking agricultural opportunities to gain wealth and status. Obtaining access to environmental resources proved to be difficult due to a harsh climate and a large population of indigenous people occupying the best agricultural land. Little is known about the colonists that settled on the rural landscapes\ since nearly all documentary evidence and structural evidence was destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and few archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie N Soder.

During World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of Saipan became one of the pivotal successes of the United States military to turn the tide of war. Unfortunately, this success came at a cost to the residents of the island, and while the Japanese civilian experience has been largely studied, the indigenous experience has been bypassed. By exploring the development of the construction on the island and civilian holding camps by U.S. military and Saipan civilians, the impact sustained from the...