North America (Geographic Keyword)
2,876-2,900 (3,602 Records)
Central to community conversations about the economic development of Shockoe Bottom was the general concession that any indication of significant archaeological findings would result in efforts to accommodate this possibility before development. Recognizing that conversations about archaeology did not feature the significant "voice" of archaeologists, the community convened a day-long symposium on the history and archaeology of Shockoe Bottom. This gathering led to the formation of RVA...
S.S. Thomas T. Tucker (1942): Updated Research on a Wrecked U.S. Liberty Ship in South Africa (2017)
S.S. Thomas T. Tucker, a U.S. Liberty Ship operated by the Merchants and Miners Company on behalf of the US Maritime Commission, was part of the 42-ship convoy carrying material to the British African Front during World War II. The ship was reported lost in action carrying an assortment of British lend-lease and wartime purchase cargo. This disarticulated beach shipwreck site provides an ideal educational opportunity for students to conduct basic pre-disturbance archaeological recording,...
Sacred or Mundane? Use of Comparative Zooarchaeology to Interpret Feature Significance at Kingsley Plantation, Jacksonville, Florida (2017)
Field schools offered by the University of Florida between 2006 and 2013 yielded exceptional potential to understand the lifeways of enslaved Africans who lived and labored at Kingsley Plantation, located on Fort George Island in Jacksonville, Florida (1814-1839). In 2013, excavations included a high-density deposit discovered in front of a slave cabin. It resembled an ordinary trash pit in some ways, but also contained some objects that have been associated with ritual or religious activity in...
"Sad And Dismal Is The Story": Great Lakes Shipwrecks And The Folk Music Tradition (2017)
Music has often taken maritime disasters for its theme, and Great Lakes wrecks claim no shortage of songs. Some were written at the time of the disaster, and others appeared years later, reviving the memory of the event. In an effort to understand the relationship between shipwrecks, folk traditions, memory, and preservation of the wrecks themselves, this paper will focus on four famous Great Lakes shipwrecks: the Lady Elgin, the Eastland, the Rouse Simmons (a.k.a. the Christmas Ship), and the...
Saddle Plates, Sheaves And Sulfur: The Archaeological Visibility Of Chilkoot Pass Aerial Trams (2015)
Chilkoot Trail tramways played a significant role assisting stampeders crossing the perilous Chilkoot Pass during the peak years of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897-1899. Competing freight companies constructed three different aerial tram systems to haul equipment and goods over the steep and narrow pass. Today, no tram structures remain standing – all physical evidence of the tram systems survive only as archaeological features scattered among the high outcrops and boulder strewn...
"A Sadness in Our Circle": Charting the Emotional Response to Norfolk’s 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic (2016)
Norfolk’s 1855, yellow fever epidemic offers a unique opportunity within which to consider the way a commmunity’s emotional response is manifested in the cemetery landscape. Within a three month period, a third of the city’s population had died, martial law had been declared, and the city had been blockaded to prevent the fever’s spread. The epidemic was well-documented in newspapers as well as in the accounts of diarists and epistolarians, which chronicle the overwhelming fear, disruption and...
Saenger Pottery Works: Preliminary Report, Unlocking a Town’s History through Their Pottery (2017)
This investigation of historical ceramics is conducted on a collection that dates from 1886 to 1915. Saenger Pottery Works was in operation from c.a.1885 through c.a. 1915. The size, form, and function variability of the ceramics inform about production techniques used and what forms are preferred over others. The issues in provenience and provenance are discussed because the pottery, while attributable to the site, do not have records of surface collection. Background research is a joint effort...
Salt-Gila Aqueduct (Fannin-McFarland Aqueduct) Archaeological Data Collection Studies and Supplemental Class III Survey Project
This project presents a series of publications associated with the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Archaeological Data Collection Studies and Supplemental Class III Survey Project (SGA). The research focused on data recovery at those sites potentially subject to impact as a consequence of Central Arizona Project construction. Salt-Gila Aqueduct Central Arizona Project construction occured along a route extending 97 km from a point south of Apache Junction, Arizona, to the Picacho Reservoir. Significant...
Salted Beef, the Food of the Sailors: How to Make It and Why It Matters In Archaeology (2017)
Salted beef has been referred to by a 19th-century historian as the "food of sailors," and was the staple of the naval diet between the 16th to 18th centuries on all European vessels—nearly every shipboard account from this period mentions salted beef being eaten on board. Although also consumed on land, it was especially important at sea, where food decayed at faster rates and fresh supplies were often unavailable for long durations. This paper explores shipboard salted beef from an...
San Antonio Missions in the Late 18th Century - Decline or Success? (2018)
Discussion of the Spanish Colonial period in San Antonio in the last quarter of the 18th century often focuses on the decline of the missions, the lack of indigenous people in the missions and the crumbling structures. This characterization contradicts the successful completion of some of the most significant colonial structures in San Antonio such as the church at Mission San José. This paper will begin to look at evidence from the archeological and archival records that suggest that rather...
A San Diego Slave Quarters: Archaeological and Architectural Analyses of the Late 19th-and Early-20th Century Nate Harrison Cabin (2018)
The architectural footprint of the Nate Harrison cabin site is unlike the remains of any other structure found in San Diego County: past or present, rural or urban, ornate or ordinary. An examination of archaeological, historical, and photographic evidence reveals how anomalous Harrison’s home structure truly was for 19th-century southern California. While the immediate region has no architectural parallels in terms of the cabin’s size, shape, building material, orientation, and use areas...
The Sand Creek Sugarbush: Traces of an Extractive Agricultural Industry in Portage County, Ohio (2015)
During Fall 2013 and Spring/Summer 2014, The Mannik & Smith Group conducted a Phase I archaeological survey of approximately 4,700 acres at the Camp Ravenna Joint Military Training Center in Portage County, Ohio. A total of 83 loci of historic activity predating the establishment of the military base in 1940 were recorded during the survey. Among these were three sites, all located along Sand Creek near the center of the modern base, that have been identified as early 20th-century maple sugar...
Sandalwood and Starfish: A Study of the Shipwreck Brunswick (1805) and Site Formation Processes in Simons Bay (2015)
Brunswick was constructed in 1792 in London as a 1,244 ton East Indiaman with 30 guns. The ship was on its sixth voyage to the Far East when it was captured by a French frigate brought into Cape Town and wrecked in 1805. NAS Project Sandalwood investigations of the shipwreck site in 1994 and 1995, followed up by University of Cape Town research in 2013 yielded information the maritime environment of the site revealing that while the metal on the shipwreck was stable, timbers were damaged by...
Sankofa in Cyberspace: Developing New and Social Media at the African Burial Ground National Monument (2013)
The African Burial Ground National Monument is one of the smallest units of the National Park Service. Established in 2006, this still developing institution has developed an outsized presence in new and social media; in a short time it has become the most followed unit of the National Park Service on twitter, and has found ways to use podcasts and QR codes to expand the interpretive profile of the site. These efforts have fhelped unite a disparate series of interest groups,...
Satellite Remote Sensing of Archaeological Vegetation Signatures in Coastal West Africa (2016)
This paper illustrates how images captured by satellite remote sensing technology can be used to detect vegetation that indicates archaeological sites in West Africa. These sites are typically marked by a pattern of vegetation that differs from the surrounding landscape, including concentrations of very large trees with sociocultural and historical significance: cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). These features are conspicuous elements of the landscape both from the ground...
Savage Meets Science: The Rebirth of Royal Savage through Modern Technology (2017)
In 2015, the Naval History and Heritage Command Underwater Archaeology (UA) Branch received the remains of Royal Savage, a Revolutionary War vessel which sank in Lake Champlain in 1776 following service in the Battle of Valcour Island. UA archaeologists and conservators are employing a combination of traditional methods and modern technology to document, research and preserve this important piece of U.S. Navy history. To record the more than 50 remaining timbers, UA archaeologists are utilizing...
Saving Sacred Places in Perpetuity: Research Report of Ongoing Archaeological Investigations at Vicksburg National Cemetery, Vicksburg, Mississippi (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our national cemeteries are some of the most significant cultural properties in the United States and either by design or circumstance often exemplify our complex and at times conflicting multicultural heritage. The National Park Service manages 14 national cemeteries that are integral to the historic character, uniqueness, and solemn nature of both the...
Scalar Analysis of Early 19th century Household Assemblages—Focus on Communities of the African Atlantic (2013)
Recent research on early 19th-century slave households at James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia has focused on comparative household assemblage analysis on a number of levels including the local (between households within a single community), region (households within a market region), and the Atlantic (comparison of households between Jamaica and the Chesapeake). An important element in this comparative household analysis is scalar analysis. Scalar analysis is an analytical tool that allows...
Scaling and Integration in Environmental Archaeology (2016)
In planning research strategies that integrate environmental archaeology, comparative data sets are strongly encouraged. If analyses of faunal, floral or insect remains reveal details about past environments and economies, then the integration of other methods can only provide more data, improving our knowledge of past populations and their daily lives. A decade of environmental research and sampling on a single site in Quebec City, the Intendant’s Palace Site, has allowed the opportunity to...
Scanning at the Artifact Roadshow: 3D Imaging as an Outreach Tool in Community Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Capturing and Sharing Vermont’s Past: 3D Imaging as a Tool for Undergraduate Research and Community Engagement" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Community outreach has played a major role in the Castleton Hidden History Project, which highlights a diverse and inclusive history of the Castleton, VT area from the end of the Ice Age through the present day. Since 2023, a significant part of outreach programming has...
A School for Williamsburg's Enslaved: The Bray School Archaeological Project (2013)
In 1760 the London-based philanthropy, the Associates of Dr. Bray, established a charity school for the religious education of free and enslaved African American children in Williamsburg, the eighteenth-century capitol of the Virginia colony. Known as the Bray School, the school was briefly housed in a rented dwelling adjacent to the campus of the College of William and Mary. The archaeological investigation of the suspected site of the Bray school in 2012 was a rare opportunity to materially...
The Schuyler Effect: From Brooklyn to Lowell, Utah, and Beyond (2017)
Over the past half century Robert Schulyer’s penetrating intellect and rigorous scholarship has had a deep and sustained impact on the development and maturation of the field of Historical Archaeology. His impact has been nowhere as profound as in his role as a mentor to generations of students. Not a few of those students share the common experience of having their professional career course sent careening, topsy-turvy, in unanticipated directions under the influence of Schulyer’s catholic...
Schuyler’s "Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions"—Then and Now (2017)
Robert Schuyler’s Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions was first published in 1978 and is now in its fifth printing. The Guide was the first work to gather together some of the most important founding documents of the relatively new field of historical archaeology and is still in use in undergraduate and graduate courses today. This paper will review the themes of that volume, as selected and edited by Dr. Schuyler, and will discuss how the ideas put forth...
Schwatka: The History and Engineering of a Late Nineteenth-Century Yukon River Steamboat (2015)
In the late 19th century the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory created an unprecedented shipbuilding boom along the West Coast of North America. More than 131 riverboats were constructed in a single year, often with considerable design variation. This paper describes the history, unique characteristics and engineering of the well-preserved wooden hull of Schwatka, a stern wheel steamboat now lying in the terrestrial "boneyard" at West Dawson, Yukon, Canada.
Science, Circumstance, Dollars and Cents: Perspectives on the Public Benefit of Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as a Public Good: Why Studying Archaeology Creates Good Careers and Good Citizens" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Opening with an introduction to a fictional (as of this writing) federal agency seeking to mine the public value of our nation’s archaeological legacy, this presentation pivots to a consideration of the origins of precontact versus historical archaeology and our subfield’s interactions with the...