Republic of Nicaragua (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,351-1,375 (1,860 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The South Texas Sand Sheet (STSS) spans ~7,000 km2, and consists largely of sand sheet deposits, mostly under three meters thick, stabilized by vegetation, but active SE-NW longitudinal dune ridges make up less than 5% of its area. Evidence of human presence in the STSS in prehispanic times is sparse. Limited archeological investigations have revealed a record...
Projectiles or Pikes? Clovis Point Attributes and Braced Weapon Use (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fluted point weaponry types and the expansion of Indigenous people across North American megafauna habitats 13,050–12,650 cal BP are considered in light of historical polearm use. Confronting megaherbivores such as Proboscidea and Bison or megacarnivores such as Arctodus, Panthera, and Smilodon with thrust or thrown spears was likely less effective than...
Promoting an Archaeological Perspective in Repatriation, Consultation, National Monuments, and Data Science (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Keith Kintigh is having quite a career in archaeology. I use the active voice because, as those of us who work with Keith well know, he’s not finished yet! Throughout his career, Kintigh has promoted the benefits and values of an archaeological perspective steadfastly. Since...
Property Regimes, Resource Protection, and Sustainability in the Remote Pacific (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tradition of resource-use prohibition known as rahui is found throughout the Pacific Islands. Rahui typically involves placing certain resources or areas of the land and sea under the protection of a central authority. For rahui to exist the concept of collective resource exploitation must also exist. This appears antithetical to the traditional...
The Provenance and Technology of Paynes Creek Salt Works Pottery and Briquetage (2017)
The pottery recovered from Late Classic Maya salt works sites can reveal important information about both the production and distribution of this highly valued trade item. Determination of the geographic origin of the serving vessels and storage jars recovered from salt works, for example, provides direct evidence of trade connections to other areas, as well as the geographic extent of the exchange networks through which salt was distributed. From local perspective, the technological...
Provisioned and Caught: Historic Perspectives on Diet in the Danish West Indies (2018)
Historic records indicate that during the late 18th and into the 19th century preserved North Atlantic fishes were shipped to the West Indies as a relatively cheap source of protein to feed enslaved persons and also the planter class. However, in historic zooarchaeological analyses of faunal assemblages from the Caribbean, the presence of these food remains is often not identified. Using two sites from the Danish West Indies, a case will be made for the use of fine-screen techniques to ensure...
Proyecto Arqueológico Cochasqui-Mojanda (2017)
El Parque Arqueológico Cochasquí se encuentra en las estribaciones sur orientales del macizo montañoso de Mojanda, en la provincia de Pichincha a 52 Km al norte de Quito. El sitio está conformado por 15 pirámides truncas, casi todas conservando sus rampas que facilitan el acceso a la parte superior. En el mismo espacio se puede encontrar varios montículos circulares. En 1932 Max Uhle - el primer arqueólogo en realizar excavaciones dentro del sitio – concluyó que las pirámides fueron sitios...
Proyekto Paisahe Kultural di Kòrsou: The Environmental Legacy of Curaçao’s Cultural Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project (CCLP) initiated a long-term field investigation on the ecological legacy of Indigenous and European colonial occupation of Curaçao, in the southern Caribbean. Drawing together multi-proxy records from human settlement, resource use, and environmental conditions over ca. 4500 years, this interdisciplinary...
Public Engagement through Maritime Landscapes (2018)
The future of American Archaeology lies in its ability to engage the public and demonstrate the field’s relevance to a broad range of communities. One way that maritime archaeology can contribute to this future is through identifying and interpreting maritime landscapes. A maritime landscape approach draws on the "lure of the sea" that attracts many people to shipwreck studies, but engages larger constituencies through place-based history. Geographic space is one of the things that all people...
Puerto Rican Cultural Heritage Under Threat by Climate Change (2017)
As a tropical, oceanic island in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico is feeling the effects of climate change. Rising sea level, increased storminess, and unpredictable sudden weather events combine with heavy coastal occupation and little or no coherent development planning, to increase social vulnerability to coastal change. The burden of economic problems that the Island is suffering from also increases the complexities of working towards resiliency. Within this context, coastal...
Push and Pull, Part II: Modeling the Inland Exploration and Settlement of Fiji (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous GIS-based analyses (2017) by the authors have identified the ranges of several classes of terrestrial fauna that would inhabited the island of Viti Levu in prehistory. The ranges and habits of reptiles (giant tortoises, iguanas, and snakes), flightless birds (megapodes and giant pigeons), and bat and seabird colonies intersect in...
Putting a Face on History: Using Forensic Facial Reconstructions and Imagery in the Arch Street Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Bones and Burials in Philadelphia: The Arch Street Project’s Multidisciplinary Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the application of forensic art and 3-D facial reconstruction (in clay) that was conducted on selected skull replicas made from the Arch Street salvage cemetery site. These reconstructions help to "put a face" on the people who lived in Philadelphia between the 18th to...
Putting a Man in the Machine: Experimental Archaeology and Computational Modeling (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Modeling Mobility across Waterbodies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, numerous studies have shown the importance of the links that existed between the various islands of the Caribbean archipelago in pre-Columbian times. The notion of connection has thus become the central paradigm of the approach of these island but not isolated societies. Thus, until now little addressed, the question of assessing the...
Putting Archaeobotany Under the Microscope: A Case Study for Increased Use of Starch-Grain and Residue Analyses on the North Coast of Peru (2015)
Due to the arid environment and subsequent excellent preservation on the north coast of Peru, evidence obtained from macrobotanical remains here has been the primary sources of information on plant use. However, despite the richness of the macrobotanical record, the combination of arid conditions and the nature of many plants, such as potatoes and beans – which are consumed in their entirety – macrobotanical remains can only tell us so much. In this paper, we discuss some methodological issues...
Putting Archaeobotany Under the Microscope: A Case Study for Increased Use of Starch-Grain and Residue Analyses on the North Coast of Peru
Due to the arid environment and subsequent excellent preservation on the north coast of Peru, evidence obtained from macrobotanical remains here has been the primary sources of information on plant use. However, despite the richness of the macrobotanical record, the combination of arid conditions and the nature of many plants, such as potatoes and beans – which are consumed in their entirety – macrobotanical remains can only tell us so much. In this paper, we discuss some methodological issues...
Pyric Herbivory in Ancient North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fire is a powerful tool for hunting because fire effects have important consequences on habitat and forage for prey species. Using case studies from the northern Great Plains and the Southwest US, I explore how fire-use positively impacted prey abundances or location, resulting in higher encounter rates for particular hunting strategies. Specifically, these case...
Quantifying Earth Oven Fire-Cracked Rock: A View from the Langtry Rock Midden (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper highlights quantification data from the author’s thesis, including the methodology of 33 archaeological excavations in the Edwards Plateau and Lower Pecos Canyonlands in which fire-cracked rock (FCR) quantification attempts were made. My excavations at Langtry Rock Midden (41VV168) were...
Quantifying Energy Investment in Monuments (Ahu) on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Using Structure from Motion Mapping (2018)
Pre-European contact Rapa Nui (Easter Island) society is well-known for its substantial investment in monumental architecture, including over 300 platforms (ahu) and almost 1000 statues (moai). Recent theoretical and empirical research on the island suggests that ahu and moai were focal points for competitive and cooperative signaling by relatively small-scale communities dispersed across on the island. Evaluation of this hypothesis, however, requires the measurement of the amount of energy...
Quantitative Paleodietary Reconstruction with Complex Foodwebs: An Isotopic Case Study from the Caribbean (2018)
Stable isotope analysis is one of the most effective tools for paleodietary reconstruction and has been widely applied to a vast array of archaeological contexts including the Caribbean region. This region, however, possesses a particularly complex isotopic ecology, including both a large number of isotopically variable food sources and a high degree of isotopic overlap between different food groups. As such, to date, most regional paleodietary studies have been limited to descriptive and...
Queer Feminist Science in Hawaiian Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is an important tool for critically analyzing ideas about the past that are normalized and reproduced to the detriment of descendant populations. This approach is particularly relevant when investigating the social structures that governed daily life in the past....
Queer Imaginatives, Normative Narratives: Examining Archaeological Theory and Conceptions of Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Labor and Social Identity (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology’s role and capacity to present multiple narratives about the past situates the discipline as a locus for competing power dynamics: What stories about the past are prioritized? How are stories constructed? Which stories are utilized for crafting a generalizable theory about “human nature”? At the same...
Queering Colonization in Early Colonial Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological narratives of colonial contact have dramatically shifted from a focus on colonizer/colonized dichotomies to discussions about plurality, ethnogenesis, and hybridity. However, much of the work in Mesoamerica continues to define the practice of colonization through a...
The Question of Monumentality in the Sacred Spaces and Features of Ometepe Island, Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ometepe is the largest island in Lake Coçibolca (Lake Nicaragua), itself the largest body of freshwater between Lake Titicapa in South America and the Great Lakes of North America. Its topography is unique, composed of two volcanoes—one active (Concepción) and one ancient...
Questioning Social And Labor Relations In Contract Archaeology From A Feminist Autoethnography (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I use an autoethnographic and feminist perspective to reflect on how the field practice of preventive archaeology has been developing in Colombia. I draw on experiences from my own work to question the naturalization of inequalities and violence present in everyday interactions during the implementation of development projects, involving different actors...
Quilts and Palimpsests: Intensive Agricultural Landscapes in the Llanos de Moxos (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Llanos de Moxos (Moxos) in the Bolivian Amazon is a useful case study for questions of settlement pattern, agricultural intensification, and social organization, particularly in light of its ambiguous status as both Amazonian and Andean, and neither Andean nor...