North America (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (3,610 Records)
Discussion of the themes raised in the papers presented in this session.
An Archaeologist and a Historian Walk Into A Classroom . . . (2024)
This is an abstract from the "AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the fall 2022 semester, we co-taught a Special Topics in Anthropology course entitled The Culture and History of Food and Drink. From our respective academic backgrounds as a historian and an archaeologist, we provided students with both an anthropological and a historical perspective to examine how...
Archaeologist-Collector Collaborations in the San Luis Valley: A Case Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research project explores the ways in which the professional world of archaeology clashes with collectors, and how understanding both domains is vital to furthering knowledge of the past. By combining methods of collaboration as well as ethnohistory and field methodologies, professionals and other stewards of the past can retro-actively document sites...
Archaeologists as Indian Advocates? Lessons from Skinner, the Little-Weasel, and Moorehead, the Indian Commissioner (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists who study the Native past have a responsibility to the Native present. But our academic training does little to prepare us for advocacy work. Personal interests, ethics, and the precariousness of employment often dictate what can be done. Doing nothing is easier and safer than speaking out, but...
Archaeology and Architecture: How to restore an 18th century manor house at Melwood Parke (2016)
Generally speaking standing structures are most typically the domain of Architects, Structural Engineers, or Architectural Historians. Recent efforts to stabilize the Melwood Parke, a ca. c.1715-1767 manor house located in Prince George’s County, Maryland, highlight the critical role of archaeology in understanding construction chronologies, as well as form and function of colonial American architecture. Topics to be addressed within this paper include: the role archeology can play in the...
Archaeology and Dissonant Memories of Japanese American Incarceration (2018)
Memories of the Japanese American Incarceration Camps during WWII vary widely across America. For some, memories of the incarceration are a focal point of their identity and a driver of political action. Others who underwent this imprisonment chose not to recall their experiences. The incarceration can haunt their descendants as an ever-present but silenced past. Broadly, the United States’ relationship to this past is fractured. Activists invoke the incarceration as an affront to American...
Archaeology And Gardens At A WWII Japanese American Incarceration Camp In Gila River, Arizona (2016)
Violence can be seen in the archaeological record in many different ways, from trauma in the osteological record to depictions in iconography. This paper will focus on reactions to violence. In World War II, all those of Japanese Ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States were forcibly incarcerated in prison camps. These people reacted to this violent act of imprisonment with many different strategies. Recent archaeological work has examined the material manifestations of these...
Archaeology and Informal Education Progams for Youth (2013)
Archaeology programs conducted daily by archaeologists make a difference in how citizens perceive their cultural heritage and science. Through educational programs and outreach, archaeologists are inspiring new generations to explore the many fields of archaeological study. Education programs, which introduce students to archaeology through an informal education model, tend to capture the attention and the interest of students. This approach rests upon the idea that when presented with...
Archaeology and Interpretation at The Hermitage (2018)
Archaeology has contributed to interpretation at The Hermitage in a variety of ways but two benefits particularly stand out: First, by increasing our knowledge about Andrew Jackson’s enslaved workers and their built environment, topics with very few written records. This has allowed us to interpret a large part of the historic site and more aspects of the plantation where previously, the Hermitage mansion dominated the interpretation program. Secondly, the archaeology program gave us the tools...
Archaeology and Preservation at the Lake George Battlefield (2015)
The Lake George Battlefield Park is located at the southern end of Lake George, New York, where it was the setting for the Battle of Lake George between the British and the French in 1755; for an entrenched camp of British reinforcements for Fort William Henry at the time of the massacre in 1757; for Gen. James Abercromby's army in 1758 and Gen. Jeffery Amherst's army in 1759; and then for additional British and American occupations during the American Revolution. The Park thus contains the...
Archaeology and Public Memory at the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail Site (2016)
The discovery and excavation of the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail Site (44HE1053) in Richmond, Virginia, between 2006 and 2009 garnered more media and public attention than any other archaeological project in the city’s history. Spearheaded by the Richmond City Council’s Slave Trail Commission, the investigations revealed the remarkably well-preserved remains of the slave-trading complex operated by Robert Lumpkin from the 1840s through the fall of Richmond in 1865, and which later served as the site...
Archaeology and Stable Isotope Ecology of the Passenger Pigeon: Tracing the Prehistory of an Extinct Bird (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The passenger pigeon, once the most abundant bird in the world, became extinct barely a hundred years ago. It has been assumed that the passenger pigeon was equally abundant prior to the European colonization of North America, but some have argued that the bird was nowhere near as common in prehistory. Because so much of what is known is based on...
Archaeology and TCPs (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Perceptions of the past are culturally bound, which can inhibit research objectives and our interpretations. Taking a reflective approach in archaeology encourages researchers to consider the social and political ramifications of their work and how it may affect the communities...
Archaeology and the Battle of the Atlantic: Approaches, Methods and Results of Studying and Underwater Battlefield (2015)
Seven years of focused research has been directed towards studying and characterizing WWII losses off the coast of North Carolina. During this time, NOAA has worked with multiple state, federal, academic and private sector partners to increase our understanding of this large collection of resources. This project evolved over time in both theoretical approaches as well as methodologies employed to collect data. Over the course of seven years an incredible amount of information has been uncovered:...
Archaeology and the Changing Landscape of Community in a Colonial Capital; The Banjul Heritage Project (2015)
Banjul was founded in 1816 as part of the British efforts to block the slave trade on the Gambia River. A planned urban center, the city developed around a series of neighborhoods designated as colonial, merchant, and African laborer spaces. Amongst the most prominent settlers were the Aku from Sierra Leone and French traders from Goree who were instrumental in the growth of the colonial economy. In preparation for the 200th anniversary of the city in 2016, the Banjul Heritage Project seeks...
Archaeology and the Oil Spill: Exploration of the Mississippi Barrier Islands as a result of the BP Oil spill (2013)
The Mississippi barrier islands are a collection of publicly accessible, naturally occurring, seacoast defense structures with evidence of Native American occupation, French exploration and colonization and American habitation through World War II. In 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurred, spilling oil across the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Mississippi Barrier Island. The Mississippi barrier islands consist of Cat, West and East Ship, Horn, and Petit Bois Islands. As a result of...
Archaeology as Anthropology: Chaîne Operatoire and the Analysis of Contemporary Technologies (2018)
The application of archaeological methods to modern contexts is an emergent trend in cultural anthropology. This paper presents a case study of chaîne opératoire methodologies in the analysis of modern technologies. New materialist ontologies and digital archaeologies offer powerful tools for understand the past. Behavioral archaeologists apply method and theory to relationships between people and things in all times. Dawdy, McGuire and others address the current archaeological turn in...
Archaeology at Bartram’s Garden 1975-Present. (2016)
Bartram’s Garden, an historic garden and house protected by the City of Philadelphia since 1891, saw little interpretation or visitation for almost a century. The current revival of the site can be credited to intervention by NPS historians, archaeologists, and landscape architects beginning in the 1950s. Professional preservation and conservation advice was coincident with documentary and biographical rediscovery of the Bartrams — particularly the 1955 rediscovery of William Bartram’s sketch of...
Archaeology at Iowaville, the 1765–1820 Báxoje (Ioway) Tribe Village on the Des Moines River (2013)
Iowaville (13VB124), a Báxoje village, housed up to 800 people in southeast Iowa from 1765–1820. Known to archaeologists and collectors for its remarkable surface and metal detector finds––beads, silver ornaments, a large faunal assemblage, and nested copper base-metal kettles containing fur and uncharred seeds––little was known about the site’s preservation or lack thereof. The 2010 fieldwork goal was to assess site integrity in this cultivated farm field. The National Park Service assisted...
Archaeology at Paoli Battlefield: Expanding the Interpretations of Conflict (2016)
On evening of September 20, 1777, and into the morning hours of September 21, British Major General Charles Gray led an elite force of British soldiers on a nighttime bayonet raid on American General Anthony Wayne’s encamped troops. The bloody attack enraged the Patriots, and the battle became engrained in American ideology as the Paoli Massacre. Although the battle was brief, its national and local importance extends for over 225 years. Today, archaeology at the Paoli Battlefield seeks to...
Archaeology Education in Bioarchaeology and Human Osteology: Value and Values of Experiential Service Learning (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human osteology and bioarchaeology remain an important part of archaeological practice, transitioning from a focus on legacy collections to service and compliance work rooted in the ethics of direct engagement with descendant communities. Higher education and archaeology can partner in new ways that center respect for pre-contact and historic era ancestral...
Archaeology for the Masses: Presenting the Storm Wreck through Public Archaeology (2016)
The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program’s (LAMP) position as the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum in St. Augustine, Florida, creates the perfect opportunity to extend St. Augustine’s underwater archaeology into the public eye through a series of on-site public archaeology programs. Since the 2009 discovery of the Storm Wreck, a 1782 British Loyalist wreck off the coast of St. Augustine, museum archaeology and education staff have developed a number of...
Archaeology in 3D: Exploring Differences in Photogrammetric Models Created with Popular Structure-from-Motion (SfM) Archaeological Software from both Drone and Terrestrial Photography (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, Structure-from-Motion(SfM) photogrammetric 3D models were created of mid- 19th century historic house ruins. Tyler house (Mound, TX) and Eyrie house (Holyoke, MA) have similar stone construction but dramatically different environmental contexts. The aim of this study was to compare point-cloud differences in, and the benefits and drawbacks of,...
Archaeology in a Revolutionary Town: Multi-Temporal Heritage Narratives at the McGrath Farm, Concord, Massachusetts (2016)
The town of Concord, Massachusetts played a critical role in the American Revolutionary War and will forever be linked to this momentous military conflict. While this connection is understandable, Concord has a rich history of indigenous, European, and American life dating back thousands of years. The McGrath Farm site is an excellent example of this complicated and storied past. Once a portion of a farm owned by prominent Revolutionary War figure Col. James Barrett, the McGrath Farm reflects...
Archaeology in Real-time: The Use of Social Media as Part of the Excavation of Anderson’s Blacksmith Shop and Public Armoury (2013)
Web 2.0 technologies can provide the public a "behind-the-scenes" look at archaeological excavations, thereby engaging them as the research is happening, not merely after the fact. Since 2010, archaeological research has been ongoing at Anderson’s Blacksmith Shop and Public Armoury in Williamsburg as part of a project to reconstruct the site. The archaeological investigations have been featured regularly on both a webcam and reconstruction blog. The "roving" webcam, which is moved to...