North America (Geographic Keyword)
1,776-1,800 (3,610 Records)
The Virginia Street Bridge, one of the oldest reinforced concrete bridges in the west, located in downtown Reno, Nevada, was built in 1905 and designed by the well know architect John B. Leonard. The bridge stood on the founding location for the city of Reno and with its construction shifted the commercial core of Reno away from the railroad and to the Truckee River making the area around the bridge a center point for commerce in the city. Because of the bridge’s loss of structural integrity...
Insights into Nineteenth Century US Westward Expansion from the River Basin Surveys Collections. (2015)
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Louisiana Purchase significantly expanded the United States. For decades thereafter, the Missouri River was the main transportation route for US interests in the new northwestern regions of its territory. Consequently, many sites related to US colonialist expansion in the form of fur trade posts, military forts, Indian Agencies, and early US settlement, were located along the Missouri River. Several of these sites were investigated during the River...
Insights on the American Experience from Zooarchaeology (2013)
Archaeological investigations of historical sites in the midwestern United States provide numerous examples that illustrate how zooarchaeological analyses can provide unique perspectives on how various social and ethnic groups responded to changing culture contact situations, as well as to alterations in economic and environmental settings. Although studies of animal remains are typically directed at revealing details about past foodways, several case studies demonstrate how animal exploitation...
The Inspiration of Landscape in the Works of Vardis Fisher (2013)
Vardis Fisher, an Idaho native, was a mid-Twentieth Century prolific writer of novels on Western Americana, as well as histories, articles and poetry. Fisher was born and grew up in rural southeastern Idaho, surrounded by mountains and wide open spaces. Almost all of his writing career was spent near Hagerman, Idaho, on property overlooking a large lake, fed by waterfalls emanating from a basalt cliff face. He and his wife, Opal, built a house there and fully landscaped the property, in...
Institutions of the Reformation, Institutions of Reform: Archaeology, Protestantism, and Modernity in the South Pacific (2013)
When scholars speak of "the Modern World", they often refer to capitalism, nation states, and colonialism. It is often assumed that the transition to modernity correlates with increased secularism, though recent scholarship challenges this idea, specifically linking certain concepts about modern subjectivity to the philosophy of the Protestant Reformation. Tracing the impact of the Reformation across time and space is crucial to understanding modernity, especially in situations where some of the...
Insufferable Conduct: The Slave Overseer in 18th-Century Virginia (2018)
Historical and archeological literature documenting plantation overseers in the American South is very limited and the extant sources focus almost entirely on overseers from the later antebellum period. The relevance of such information to colonial-period overseers, who are rarely identified in the archeological record and who left few documentary traces, is unclear. At the Accotink Quarter site (44FX0223) in Fairfax County, Virginia, intact historic features and artifact deposits indicated the...
Integrating Close-Range Photogrammetry Methods for Outdoor Scene Documentation of Scattered Remains (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Documenting the context of outdoor crime scenes with decomposing bodies and skeletal remains using traditional methods can pose a challenge due to the complexities of outdoor scenes and various taphonomic processes that can modify the remains and the scene. While the use of close-range photogrammetry (CRP) methods are currently more often...
Integrating Low- and High-Precision Chronologies in North American Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists have questioned the value of using aggregated radiocarbon ages as a proxy measure of past human population growth. Most of these criticisms revolve around the lack of precision in these aggregated approaches. Higher-precision Bayesian approaches have often been presented as a better alternative. However,...
Integrating Material Culture from the Betty’s Hope Archaeological Project: a Multifaceted Approach (2013)
This paper examines how archaeological investigations at Betty’s Hope, a former English sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua, can encompass a variety of approaches in working with archaeological materials recovered from the site, as well as the site itself. Betty’s Hope operated from 1651 until 1944, making it one of the oldest and most continuously operating plantations on the island. Its long history, combined with good preservation, provides an ideal laboratory for studying...
Integrating pollen and macrobotanical evidence to understand change in African-American lifeways at Monticello (2018)
The transition from tobacco to wheat cultivation in the late-18th century at Monticello radically altered agricultural ecology, as swidden plots gave way to permanent fields. We use macrobotanical remains and pollen as complementary evidence to assess how this shift affected plants use strategies employed by enslaved field hands and the botanical environments they maintained adjacent to their houses. The identified shift in pollen taxa does not match the pattern we previously identified for...
Integrating Teacher Professional Development with Archaeological Summer Camps (2018)
The sheer joy of being a kid at an archaeological summer camp is not lost on adults. In fact, by involving teachers in summer camp and other investigations, in a "kid" role, allows them to experience the wonder of hands-on discovery. Add in some additional professional development and you create empowered teachers who infuses their lesson plans with engagement, rich content, authenticity, and relevancy. In recent years the PAST summer field teams introduced this new type of teacher professional...
Integrating UAV-Based Photogrammetry, Digital Data Collection, and GIS during the Trincheras Tradition Project Excavations (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Trincheras Tradition Project is an ongoing collaborative effort to better understand the prehispanic past of Northwest Mexico. Led by Dr. Randall McGuire and Elisa Villalpando, researchers from Binghamton University and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) spent two field seasons in 2017 and 2018 excavating three Trincheras Tradition...
Intellectual "Treasure Hunting:" Measuring Effects of Treasure Salvors on Spanish Colonial Shipwreck Sites (2016)
This poster presents research on the effects of treasure salvors on Spanish colonial shipwrecks in Florida. Currently, there is no basis for quantifying treasure salvor impacts on Spanish colonial shipwrecks. The Pillar Dollar wreck in Biscayne Bay and three vessels from the 1733 Spanish plate fleet serve as case studies for this research. The poster addresses the following questions: 1. What can the academic investigation of the treasure salvor industry reveal about what is lost or gained...
Intellectual Disability, Employment, and the Public Record (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Disability is a natural part of the human experience and our work as archaeologists should reflect this. The key to recognising and minimizing bias in our work is to include marginalized groups as much as possible. But in a field that by its traditional definition demands a high level of intellectual and physical rigor how can we best do...
Interact! How Do Archaeologists “Care” for Human Ancestors’ Remains? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conceptions of “care” are increasingly a topic of interest in anthropological archaeology, and often sit at the intersection of discussions around ethics, best practices, and archaeological research, teaching/training, and curation involving the physical remains of human Ancestors. Care may be perceived as related to preserving the physical integrity of an...
Interacting with the Past: Assassin's Creed, Landscapes, and Other Talking Points (2017)
Assassin’s Creed is a multivolume series, developed by Ubisoft, with 17 games across a variety of platforms. One of the most successful aspects of this franchise is its ability to recreate historical settings. In recreating these settings, the developers and writers draw from all available sources, including sponsoring their own archaeological investigations. Through the use of these sources, developers and writers are able to not only create largely historically accurate plots, but interactive...
Interactions Across the Landscape: Interpreting Social Relationships within Montpelier’s Black Community (2015)
Social relationships structure daily life in a variety of ways. However, when considering the social world that existed inside slave quarters across Virginia, archaeologists have not been able to come to a consensus on how to approach the study of social networks; with some researchers focusing on social standing, seen most often through the role of material wealth to create connections and others focusing on how interactions can be meaningfully interpreted from the archaeological record. This...
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Historical Analogy: Drawing Parallels Between Early 20th Century and Modern Immigrant Groups in Hazleton, Pennsylvania (2013)
In the town of Hazleton, PA, long-term residents exhibit a strong sense of American identity in reference to their ancestor’s immigration to the U.S. from Western, Southern and Eastern Europe in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Though members of this descendant group seem to be well aware of the ethnic and racial discrimination their forefathers faced, their views on a recent influx of Latino immigrants that have established themselves in the area are often surprisingly discriminative. In...
Interdisciplinary Solutions for Intradisciplinary Setbacks: An Eclectic Approach to Problem Solving (2017)
Disciplines across the social and physical sciences often encounter similar setbacks; however, intradisciplinary solutions addressing these setbacks are rarely identical, or transimplementable. Issues such as where to locate funding, how to organizing and streamline access to knowledge, and how to garner public support for the discipline rather than shallow substitutes (e.g. archaeology over treasure hunting) are longstanding setbacks - ones that are not unique to our discipline, alone....
The International Boundary Commission Monuments – 1848 to Today. (2017)
After the Mexican – American War (1846-1848) the International Boundary Commission (IBC) was formed. In 1944, this changed to International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and its counterpart la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA) due to evolving regulatory duties along the U.S. – Mexico Border for both Sections. Since the inception of the formal IBC in 1889, the present International Border from the Pacific Ocean to El Paso, Texas has increased to 276 international border...
Interns and Volunteers and 7th graders , Oh My! (2016)
What began out of a need for free labor to salvage significant sites threatened by development over 20 years ago has evolved into a sophisticated web of public education and community outreach. This wrap-up discussion of the session will summarize the lessons learned and reflect upon the benefits, and the costs, of conducting academically-oriented archaeological research alongside avocationalists and students.
Interpretaions of Slavery throughout the Middle Atlantic Region (2016)
This poster presents the findings of an evaluation of the ways in which museums interpret and present slavery throughout Maryland and Virginia to the public. By comparing the various themes amplified when presenting slavery in a museum setting today, aspects of slavery the public is able to understand after visiting are assessed. To gauge this, a survey was administered to visitors at each of the following sites: Mount Vernon, Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, Montpellier, and Sotterley...
Interpretations of Architectural Remains at Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), Niles, MI (2018)
To better understand the built environment of Fort St. Joseph, an eighteenth-century mission, garrison, and trading post located along the St. Joseph River, the architectural remains have been a focus of excavation over the past ten years. The remains discovered through excavation at the fort will be discussed as they offer insights on the layout and size of buildings uncovered as well as the techniques and materials used in the buildings’ construction by the fort occupants. Knowledge gleaned...
Interpreting a Changing Cultural Landscape – A California Rancho (2017)
The Dana Adobe, site of an 1837 Mexican Land Grant issued to William Goodwin Dana, provides a model example of a managed landscape with a story to tell. This chronicle, situated on the Central California Coast, includes the prehistoric past, rancho period, emergence of statehood, the American Period, and a look to the future in the stewardship and management of the land and resources. This unique 130 acre site, which is a California State Historic Landmark and on the National Registry, is owned...
Interpreting Coefficients of Variation in Archaeological Assessments of Cultural Transmission (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To test hypothesized effects of cultural transmission on material cultural evolution, archaeologists primarily use the coefficient of variation (CV). Interpretation of archaeological CVs is necessarily comparative, and foundational papers have assessed variation across broad geographic regions, and relative to either theoretically-derived threshold CVs or...