North America - Midwest (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (329 Records)
This paper attempts to synthesize the influence of raw material quality and abundance, mobility patterning, and social organization on the lithic assemblage. Each factor has been shown to have significant effects on the chaîne opératoire of lithic technology; acquisition of raw material, discard, and recycling. Following a literature review, distinct archaeological correlates to a wide variety of behaviors are used to analyze the lithic assemblage from Woodpecker Cave, a multi-component...
Effects of Varying Levels of Soil pH on the Preservation and Appearance of Chicken Bones (2017)
Past studies have noted the carnivore digestion process results in the enlargement of foramina and expansion of Haversian canals within the bones; however, it is not clearly known or taphonomically documented whether acid erosion from soil produces similar signatures.Although bones are oftentimes found within soil matrices, some at highly acidic levels, undoubtedly affecting the preservation and appearance of the remains, the effects are still poorly understood.Studies of erosion on bone mainly...
The Eighteenth-century Fur Trade: A Colonial Endeavor? (2016)
The late eighteenth-century fur trade in the Western Great Lakes region offers a particular multi-ethnic context in which social relations between Indigenous peoples and men of European or mixed descent were created and negotiated on a daily basis. With his seminal book “The Middle Ground,” Richard White (1991) challenged prior views, often of a Marxist bend, of the fur trade as a strictly colonial endeavor that led to the inevitable acculturation of Native peoples. While the Montreal merchants...
Elemental Analysis of Scioto Valley Hopewell Copper (2016)
Artifacts of copper occupy a position of prominence in the Hopewell societies of Ohio’s Scioto Valley. Earspools, repousse plaques, effigy cutouts, celts, and a wide variety of other forms represent a technological and artistic mastery of the medium. These artifacts also represent the social contacts and long distance interactions that brought copper to the Scioto Valley and yet our understanding of copper acquisition for Ohio Hopewell, and the movement of copper artifacts within the social...
Elements of Cahokian Neighborhoods (2015)
American Indian neighborhoods were very much under construction during the late-eleventh century at Cahokia. A social order that transcends pre-Mississippian village life may now be defined based on large-scale excavations at East St. Louis and Cahokia proper. Architectural patterns and craft production debris within the greater central complex indicate possible religious if not political or ethnic divisions that did not form organically. The central problems of a Mississippian analysis,...
Enhancing Archaeology Education and Outreach in Iowa through Project Archaeology (2015)
Iowa has been an active partner in Project Archaeology since 2002, joining at a time when the national program was redefining its mission, recreating its curriculum, and expanding its partnerships. This presented the opportunity to assist in determining the scope and direction of national Project Archaeology while remaining cognizant of the challenges Iowa would face as a state where curriculum decisions are locally determined. Thirteen years later, Iowa PA has a stable foothold with dedicated...
Entangling Mississippian Identities: A case for postcolonial theory in the Upper Mississippian world (2016)
Postcolonial theory has provided a useful framework that archaeologists have applied over the last several decades to confront issues of social identity in colonial encounters. However, few have considered its utility in addressing cultural interaction in prehistoric contexts. This paper considers the applicability of postcolonial theory in the Upper Mississippian world between 900-1200 CE. In particular, I consider the material evidence and site distribution at multiple scales to argue that...
Entheses and activities: a Metric and Non-metric analysis of entheseal change of the shoulder complex within the Milwaukee county institution grounds population (2015)
The analysis of the features that mark tendon and muscle insertion sites on bone has been used in an attempt to reconstruct past life activity patterns of individuals and populations represented by skeletal remains. Many of these analyses have focused on comparing evidence from these individuals with known musculoskeletal and biomechanical data. Recent experimental tests have illustrated that defining these correlations is more complex than expected (Mariotti et al., 2007). Modern clinical data...
evidence for antemortem or perimortem Trauma among individuals recovered from the 2013 milwaukee county institution poor farm cemetery excavations (2015)
2013 excavations at the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds (MCIG) cemetery resulted in the recovery of approximately 685 burials containing over 700 individuals, adding to the existing collection of 1649 individuals excavated in 1991 and 1992. The individuals from the 2013 excavations were inventoried and examined macroscopically for evidence of pathology and trauma. Sean P. Dougherty (2011) observed that the pattern of traumatic fractures among the 1991 and 1992 collection reflect not...
Examining the Fort Ancient Madisonville Horizon "Index Fossil" Pottery Type Using Optically-Stimulated Luminescence (2016)
Establishing temporally-diagnostic artifacts has long been a tradition in American archaeology. One such case is that of using the Madisonville-type pottery, one of the most agreed upon temporal markers in the Fort Ancient region of the Middle Ohio Valley. This pottery type is often used as the defining characteristic separating A.D. 1400-1650 Fort Ancient sites from those dating to the earlier A.D. 1000-1400 period. While this temporal marker has been demonstrated in strict terms through...
Examining the Use Lives of Archaic Bipointed Bifaces: Cache Blades from the Riverside Site (2017)
During the Late Archaic to Early Woodland transition, caches of blue gray chert bifaces were deposited throughout the Midwest, often in association with burials. Their utility between manufacture and deposition has long been the subject of speculation, but never compellingly demonstrated. Comprehensive use-wear analysis of these bifaces demonstrates that they were, in fact, used prior to deposition. Unfortunately, use-wear data in isolation tells us little about the actual role these bifaces...
Excavating St. Louis: French Colonial and Urban Archaeology (2015)
The history of the city of St Louis, Missouri begins with the arrival of the French and spans over 250 years of development into the large urban center of today. The original settlement was thought to have been destroyed by the expansion of the city; however, recent excavations by the Missouri Department of Transportation at the Madame Haycraft Site (23SL2334) have discovered intact French colonial occupations in the heart of downtown. Work here has uncovered a large poteaux-en-terre French...
Excavation at the Second Ward Cemetery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2016)
The Second Ward Cemetery Association incorporated the Second Ward or Gruenhagen Cemetery, in 1850 after the association purchased the land from Joachim F. Gruenhagen. This Milwaukee cemetery consisted of between three and five acres and interments took place until 1870 when the Association defaulted on the property’s mortgage and the land was sold by Sheriff’s auction. By 1874 plans had been made to subdivide the property and an article appeared in the Milwaukee Sentinel announcing that...
Expanding juvenile dental age assessments using 2013 recovered MCIG subadult dental data (2015)
Outstanding preservation of the juvenile dentition of individualsrecovered during the 2013 Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) Poor Farm Cemetery project allowed for the application of four separate dental age assessments. We present the results of a pilot study that attempts to broaden the utility of the Moorrees et al. (1963a, b) tooth formation stages through their application to maxillary dentition and mandibular incisors from a sample of sub-adults from the MCIG cemetery. Tooth...
Experimenting with Multilevel Agent Based Archaeological Modeling in NetLogo (2016)
Agent Based Modeling (ABM) has become increasingly popular because of its relatively shallow learning curve and robust capacity for simulating social and environmental phenomena. This paper discusses new developments in ongoing work simulating social interaction in Precontact small-scale societies using NetLogo, a freely available software package. Model design, assessment and experimentation of a multilevel ABM are discussed, as well as how the simulation results compare to real world,...
Exploration of Wet and Dry Portable X-ray Fluorescence for Archaeochemical Prospection: A Pilot Study in Comparative Method (2015)
Geoscience approaches are being applied for prospection and intra-site analysis with increasing frequency in a variety of contexts around the world. There currently are a variety of archaeochemical procedures in use, each of which suffers from inherent limitations Colorimetric measurement is limited in the number of elements measured simultaneously. Inductively Coupled Plasma techniques are expensive and restricted to a narrow range of institutions. Yet the recent availability of Portable...
Exploring Comparability of Archaic Period Faunal Datasets for the Interior Eastern United States (2017)
The Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group uploaded nearly 60 faunal datasets for 21 archaeological sites in the interior Eastern United States into the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) to address hypotheses about changing human reliance on aquatic resources during the Archaic Period. As an important prerequisite for our integrative study, we examined comparability of data. To ensure comparability of datasets developed by different researchers, we addressed variable structure and mapped key...
Exploring Potential Ancient Human-Proboscidea Interaction at Lake Red Rock, Marion County, Iowa (2017)
Discoveries of juxtaposed proboscidean remains from a single individual are rare in the Midwest and there are no known human-occupied pre-Holocene sites in Iowa with good preservation. The Lake Red Rock (Marion County, Iowa) discovery locale has yielded preserved mammoth remains—a clear indicator of late Pleistocene (> 10,000 years ago) context—and the suggestion of possible human interaction. If validated such a site will be a first in the state and among only a few in the nation. The...
Exploring Taphonomic and Contextual Comparability in Eastern Archaic Faunal Datasets (2016)
The Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG), established with funding from NSF, is preserving Archaic period faunal databases from interior portions of the Eastern Woodlands in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record) in order to undertake data integration at multiple scales that examines the use of aquatic resources across time and space during the Archaic. A major initial question about our existing datasets is how comparable they are taphonomically and contextually. Protocols for...
Exploring the Effects of Stabilizing Riverine and Lacustrine Environments on Archaic Faunal Exploitation in the Great Lakes and Prairie Peninsula (2017)
The interplay among changing environmental forces affected the configuration of lake and river drainage systems after 6,000 BP and the abundance, composition, and productivity of aquatic animal communities available to Early, Middle, and Late Archaic groups of the interior Eastern Woodlands. These environmental changes have long been suggested as powerful influences on selection strategies of animal resources during the Archaic period. Using the integrative applications of the Digital...
Faunal Database Preservation and Collaborative Zooarchaeology by the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (2016)
The newly formed Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has brought zooarchaeologists together with funding from the US National Science Foundation. Our group is seeking to preserve Archaic period faunal databases from the interior portions of the Eastern Woodlands in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), an international digital repository for archaeological databases and records of investigations. Members of the EAFWG have uploaded over 28 separate datasets representing more than 14...
Faunal Remains at Collier Lodge and Their Implications for Our Understanding of the Lodger Diet (2015)
Since the Collier Lodge Project commenced in 2003, excavations from the Porter County, Indiana site have yielded substantial amounts of faunal remains. The goal of my research is to examine particular collections of remains, which date to the nineteenth century, and construct a clearer picture of life at Collier Lodge. The remains being analyzed offer a unique look at diet and the interaction between fauna and residents of the lodge. Specifically, I am comparing the amount of domesticated...
Feminst Theory: The Missing Link in Archaeology (2017)
Historically, archaeology has been viewed in an androcentric way. Minorities, including women, have been essentially invisible. Therefore, the missing link of the feminist view lends itself to telling their stories. The purpose of this poster is to describe key findings of prominent researchers addressing gender issues in the field. Key findings by Deagan (1974, 1983), recognized the importance of gender while studying the Spanish colonies. The archaeologist introduced the St. Augustine Pattern,...
Field and Forest, Pond and Stream: Experimental Taphonomic Research in West-Central Illinois (2016)
Established in 2015, the Western Illinois Taphonomic Research Sites provide access to a variety of environmental contexts for experimental research in skeletal and molecular taphonomy. These secluded, rural sites include deciduous wooded and open areas along a creek in a deep valley, and a hilltop coniferous forest bordering an upland pond. Equipped with several game cameras, these unfenced sites afford unique opportunities to observe the responses and effects of local wildlife as they encounter...
Filling the Built Environment: Using Ceramic Characteristics to Examine Fort Ancient Village Life (2016)
In the Middle Ohio Valley, the Early Fort Ancient period (AD 1000 – 1200) saw significant changes to social organization reflected in the built environment. Among the most archaeologically visible of these developments was a new style of settlement – the formal village – typically consisting of spatially differentiated zones arranged in concentric circles. This study selects two Early Fort Ancient village sites from the Cincinnati area, Guard (12D29) and Turpin (33HA19); each site displays...