North America (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline M Thiry. Kaitlyn E Horisk.

This poster presents analysis of children’s toys from two features excavated during the 2014 field season at a nineteenth- and twentieth-century Texas-Alsatian homestead in Medina County, Texas. The features that we focus on in this analysis are a slack-lime pit and a well, whose depositions are largely comprised of 20th-century artifacts. Toys considered include clay marbles, a "Frozen Charlotte" doll, and a promotional Little Orphan Annie seal.  We address the socioeconomic status of occupants...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerry Nichols.

The historical record offers only brief references to the village of Sha’chahdinnih or Timber Hill as the last Caddo settlement in the traditional Caddo homeland. Unfortunately, not long after its abandonment in the early 1840’s, its true location was lost to historians. In 1998, the combined efforts of archival and field researchers succeeded in locating a site designated as 41MR211, and believed to be a possible location for Timber Hill. In the interest of confirming the identity and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara G. Laurence. Amy Borgens. Robert L. Gearhart.

As part of its effort in World War I, the United States and its Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) began an aggressive shipbuilding campaign to counter the merchant shipping losses from Germany’s submarine warfare. Over 100 wooden ships were contracted in the Gulf District (the Gulf Coast west of New Orleans). Construction of these vessels was far slower than anticipated, and when the war suddenly ended, the country was left with a surplus of both complete and incomplete wooden ships. The EFC...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin S. Schwartz.

Often unacknowledged in archival documents and recent historical research, enslaved women’s diverse roles in industrial contexts shaped antebellum Virginia’s infrastructure, economy, and culture. This paper on the Buffalo Forge iron plantation in Rockbridge County, Virginia, uses archaeological, documentary, and architectural research to illuminate enslaved women as active agents within the plantation’s complex built environment. Archaeological examination of yards around two extant quarters in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Baicy.

In 1755, the Board of Trustees of the City of Alexandria, tasked prominent merchant, Thomas Carlyle with providing the Alexandria with a public warehouse.  The warehouse, once built, would be rented out to various merchants on behalf of the town for several decades.  The well preserved foundations of one of the earliest public buildings in Alexandria was uncovered beneath nearly 10 feet of building debris along Alexandria’s waterfront. The following is a brief history of the warehouse, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William White. Brandi E. Bethke.

The boarding school system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was designed by the United States government as a formal program to eradicate Native American cultural identities and lifeways. It was a system that removed Native children from their families and forced them into to a way of life that garishly clashed with their traditional beliefs and culture. One of the primary goals of the Cut Bank Boarding School on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana was to transform...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Hughston.

This paper explores the usefulness of employing theories of place in illuminating the nuanced experiences of Native children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries at Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada. Stewart Indian School was established in 1890 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the goal of stripping surrounding Washoe, Paiute, and Shoshone children of their tribal identity through the imposition of Euroamerican education and vocational training. During the last two centuries,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Kakaliouras.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1970’s bioarchaeology has become both a valid specialization within archaeology as well as a standalone discipline with its own analytical and institutional traditions. Archaeology, though, enjoys a much more robust mosaic of competing theoretical frameworks than does bioarchaeology. From the processual to the postprocessual—to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tyler M Caldwell.

This poster will outline the ten coastal fortifications that ring Cyprus. Using GIS this poster will show the line of site of these fortifications. The line of site will include the Mediterranean Sea. Using this data, it will be possible to extract distance from the shore, and from that it will be possible to calculate reaction time for the population to retreat inland during a raid. The Crusader Era was chosen specifically due to the fact that piracy and raiding was heavily present around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Chesney.

The concept of an "Atlantic World" is a useful one for historical archaeologists because it provides a general geographic starting point for investigations that focus on the transformation of the world and the expansion of European imperial networks but defies strict physical, temporal, and cultural boundaries. As the limits of the known world expanded for Europeans and non-Europeans alike, its mysterious edges contracted, and people and places isolated from outside developments became...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tane Renata Casserley.

Situated just 16 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary protects the shipwreck of the famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor. In 2015, thirteen years after the turret was recovered, NOAA launched an expedition back to the Monitor to document the site. Using closed circuit rebreathers, NOAA and its partners are using the latest technology to assess the ironclad’s current state of preservation. This presentation will highlight NOAA’s efforts to protect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

Since the foundation of the Society for Historic Archaeology 50 years ago changing technology has dramatically transformed historic document research.  Historical data that would’ve taken countless hours of research to uncover is now available through a few clicks of a mouse. Modern technology cannot be relied upon for all historic research; it can, however, lead the researcher down previously undiscovered paths. Document research initiated in 2013 has aided in the reinterpretation of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily S. Dale.

In 2014, in conjunction with the University of Nevada-Reno, I led a Forest Service Passport in Time project in a survey of rural Chinese woodcutting camps surrounding the turn-of-the-century mining boomtowns of Aurora, Nevada and Bodie, California. In addition to the expected glass bottle fragments, rusting cans, and Chinese-related ceramics and opium tins, we discovered a large portion of the material culture, specifically cans, buckets, and other metal objects, had been modified and repurposed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Dudgeon. Charles Speer. Beau Craner. Rebecca Hazard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thermal analysis (TGA/DTA/STA) has seen sporadic use as an archaeometric technique. Recent papers on archaeological mortars, plasters, ceramic pigments, and paints have sought to understand recipes or mineralogical components by thermal decomposition, especially where traditional chemical analysis by mass spectrometry is limited due to the multiple forms a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katlyn R Likely.

Lindenwood archaeology students have been excavating a pre-1960s university trash dump. Finds include glass shards with a breakage pattern originally hypothesized to be artistically cut glass.  With no evidence of wear from cutting, we undertook heating experiments and now interpret the glass shards as being the result of thermal breakage, possibly due to trash burning. 

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua L. Marano. Lee Pape.

Since the fall of the Batista regime during the Cuban Revolution of 1959 more than one million Cubans have fled the country seeking protection and opportunities as political refugees. While many of these refugees traveled to the United States by more traditional means, many others desperate to flee the nation took to sea in improvised watercraft to attempt to cross the Straits of Florida. These craft, which greatly vary in size, construction, and technology are often found cast ashore and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Chapman.

In Richmond, Virginia, racial discrimination is clearly visible in the condition of historical burial grounds. Efforts to reclaim these sacred sites have generated controversy surrounding the proposed Revitalize RVA development adjacent to the city’s oldest cemetery for people of color. Recent outrage, activism, and attempts at dialogue have also occurred in relation to some archaeological collections of human remains from Richmond, while other such collections have received comparatively little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Masur.

Human burials have been a consistent problem for archaeologists excavating in advance of development at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point. Georeferencing the location of previously identified burials served as a pilot project for a more extensive archaeological GIS. The re-examination of burial features not only reveals their approximate locations on the contemporary landscape, but also illustrates the complex history of human occupation at Gloucester Point, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Rose.

The Warwick ship was owned by Robert Rich, a leading member of the Virginia and Somers Island companies and commissioned to deliver the new governor and workers for the Bermuda plantation. This paper considers the political and financial context in which the ship sailed, and differentiates it from contemporary ships of the same name with which it has often been confused. Time permitting, the paper will also address the legal aftermath of the sinking.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Eck.

As we prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NHPA, it is worth remembering that a nearly forgotten federal law established the first federal battlefield parks a mere 25 years after the end of the Civil War and placed federal authority and protection over cultural resources – the "Act to establish a National Military Park at the Battlefield of Chickamauga" of 1890 and the subsequent related statutes, such as the Military Parks Act of 1897. This paper explores this law, its early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine D. Thomas.

Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series and Square Enix’s Tomb Raider series are two of the most popular gaming titles on the market. With combined sales of 73 million units, in addition to movies, books, and graphic novels, these two franchises have widespread reach and influence. Both titles feature "archaeologists" as their protagonists, and they each have a different approach to material culture. This paper will compare and contrast these two franchises in search of positive representation and how we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcel Kornfeld. Mary Lou Larson.

Forager campsites are commonly thought of as locations where social activities occur, but most archaeologists focus on subsistence (butchery, processing), stone tool production and use, and how these systems relate to mobility strategies. The record is often silent when it comes to the behaviors incidental to what appears central economic endeavors. Often camps yield information beyond subsistence. Ochre, needles, beads, bone rods, structures, and context of various activities provide more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Speakman.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 15-20 years, archaeological chemistry has moved largely from centralized laboratories of interdisciplinary expertise to decentralized laboratories where expertise often times is lacking. This shift is most pronounced in the widespread adoption and use of inexpensive, compact, highly portable XRF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Wallace Coplin.

During the first half of 19th C, dramatic economic changes are evident at the household level. Straddling the urban-suburban divide, residents of Rock Hall on the South Shore of Long Island hybridized farming and summer tourism as they sought to improve their family’s position.  A microcosm of economic choices, this household combined labor and residence in ways that used, and rendered them beholden to, the urban juggernaut of the City while remaining rooted in a distinct local economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Bowen.

From his student years at Brown University, Marley Brown initiated projects that led the field of Historical Archaeology.  During the 1970’s when he directed the Mott Farm Field School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, he linked household cycles and family histories to depositional histories.  As Director of Archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg he again led the field by embedding urban households into Williamsburg’s neighborhoods, the Chesapeake, and the broader colonial world.  As students, we...