Worldwide (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (388 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Synthesis in archaeology has traditionally been the province of the lone scholar, requiring heroic efforts of finding, integrating, and interpreting the results of published and unpublished reports. Such an approach is no longer tenable. The advent of CRM has led to a mountain of documented but only partially interpreted data....
Collecting Colonialism: Disembodied Culture at the Temple Anthropology Laboratory and Museum (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ideas, Ethical Ideals, and Museum Practice in North American Archaeological Collections" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many small- to medium-sized anthropology departments in North America, Temple University houses a collections repository with a complex and poorly documented past. Beginning in the 1950s, more than 200 collections accumulated with limited direction, including ethnographic collections,...
CollectionSpace at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology: A Strategic Information Platform for Cultural Heritage Collections (2018)
Museums use collection management systems to manage metadata about objects in their collection and track transactions such as loans and exhibitions. At UC Berkeley however, museums are turning the open source CollectionSpace system into a strategic platform for research, education, and public service. The Hearst Museum of Anthropology is in the midst of a major effort to improve the quality of the data documenting its collection of approximately 3.8 million objects. With this improved...
A Common Analytical Language: Compound-Specific Isotope Analysis as a Means for Collaboration between Archaeology and Ecology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists first embraced stable isotope analysis decades ago and have used this tool to study many aspects of human ecology, including diet, movement patterns, and the domestication of plants and animals (to name a few). In comparison to bulk tissue isotope analysis, technological advances in the analysis of individual compounds such...
Community-based Economic Development: Is it Pragmatic? Should it Be? (2018)
Does pragmatism work in practice? More particularly, does pragmatic philosophy actually contribute to the well being of stakeholders, especially those from the local community who have historically been marginzalized and have not benefitted from archaeological practice? Can archaeological practice be expanded beyond the production of knowledge to include the needs and desires of community members as they themselves express them? This paper will explore these questions, utilizing the...
Competition for Resources: How Commensal Competition Informs Us of Past Human Activity (2018)
Humans have a dramatic impact on environments around them. They augment, manipulate and engineer local environments to their own benefit, often resulting in a concentration of easily available food and nest sites. These anthropogenic resources and environments are readily exploited by a myriad of other organisms. These organisms, in local and neighbouring environments, engage in a range of different relationships with humans, reflecting the level of interaction and dependence. Due to the...
The Complexities of Managing Global Forensic Archaeology with Differing Archaeological Entities, including CRM Firms, Private NGOs, University Researchers, and Field Schools in the Search for Missing US Servicemen. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is a US DoD organization that has the awesome responsibility of conducting and managing world-wide forensic archaeological excavations to recover missing US military servicemen from past conflicts. The DPAA-Lab (which traces back to 1947) has the sole forensic authority to make positive identifications of...
Conflict and Heritage (2018)
During recent years cultural heritage has moved into public awareness as part of contemporary conflicts. Destructions of sites and monuments in The Middle East and North Africa, and in the former Yugoslavia have given us blatant examples also of targeted destruction. However this is nothing new. Throughout history monuments and heritage have played their part in conflict between people. A recent conflict in the United States over monuments relating to the Civil War and its aftermath has further...
Considering Seascapes, Waterscapes and the Relational (2018)
This paper introduces some key themes for this session, and considers how seascapes and waterscapes relate to the many and varied people, things, and places with which humans live. While many aspects of the archaeological record can be interpreted as referencing the watery realm through association (e.g. shell middens) or visual cues (e.g. rock art), our goal with this session is not to focus on simply identifying these connections, but to interrogate the nature of these relationships – to...
Contribuyendo a la Viabilidad y a la Calidad en la Práctica Arqueológica desde la Sociedad sin Fronteras del Patrimonio Cultural A.C. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Actualmente identificamos problemáticas críticas que inciden directamente en la viabilidad y la calidad de la práctica arqueológica en México: (1) presupuesto nacional recortado a la cultura, la investigación, la protección y la conservación del patrimonio cultural...
Converging or Contradictory Ways of Knowing: Assessing the Scientific Nature of Traditional Knowledge in Archaeological Contexts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional knowledge (TK) has become a familiar element of ethnobiology and anthropology but only recently has it gained the attention of the "harder" sciences (e.g., archaeology, biology, climatology). However, many archaeologists have an uneasy alliance with TK...
Coprolite Analysis: The Early Years (2018)
Volney Jones was one of the first to examine coprolites found in Eastern Kentucky caves. By today’s standards, his technique was primitive, but it did provide information about early human diets. During the mid-1950s Eric Callen pioneered the study of coprolites when he looked at coprolites from the site of Huaca Prieta de Chicama in the coastal region of Peru. Later, in the early 1960s Callen worked in Mexico with Richard MacNeish at Tehuacan. Callen worked in isolation at McGill University in...
Creative Problem-Solving for Unconventional Conditions: Archaeological Recovery of a WWII Aircraft Crash Site, Ko’olau Mountain Range, Island of O’ahu, State of Hawaii, U.S.A. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional archaeological sites, with their relatively level topography and wide-open spaces to accommodate excavations, are not typically encountered by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) Archaeologist. The majority of sites encountered by DPAA field...
Crossroads of Disciplines: Precipitating Causes and Latent Causal Conditions (2018)
Historians and archaeologists are habitually drawn to one or the other of two very different types of causal explanation. Those habits arise in great measure from the two distinctly different kinds of data that the two disciplines deal with. Archaeological causal explanations are frequently limited to "latent causal conditions," that is, environmental and cultural (thus anonymous and collective) vulnerabilities or proclivities, broad-scale physical and societal pushes and pulls that set the...
Cultural Resource Management at an USACE Research Laboratory: Methodology Development in CPP Rapid Response (2019)
This is an abstract from the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A National Perspective on CRM, Research, and Consultation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The CRM team at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) provides research in archaeology, Native American issues, historic buildings and landscapes as well as environmental planning. Our team provides direct technical and subject matter expert...
Cultural Transitions through the Centuries in the South Caucasus (New Archaeological Data from Samshvilde) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Samshvilde in the South Caucasus (Southern Georgia), is a complex and multi-period archaeological site. The historical city occupies an impregnable location on a basalt cape flanked by the deep gorges. This distinctive landscape, combined with environmental conditions and abundant natural resources, have attracted humans for millennia. Samshvilde and its...
Current Trends in Archaeoacoustics (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, archaeological research has trended toward the exploration of the experiences of past people, particularly through engagement with the senses, seeking new methodologies and associated theories to develop this understanding. Sounds and auditory experiences occurred ubiquitously throughout time and within all...
Cut Mark Size Does Not Change during Butchery: Implications for Reconstructing Tool Use and Carcass Processing (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal carcass butchery occurs when technological factors (tool attributes) and butchery behavior (distinct actions like defleshing, disarticulation) intersect with animal anatomy (morphology of musculoskeletal tissues or regions), and potentially encodes information about these contexts via bone surface modifications. This study examines cut mark...
Cut Marks and Decaying Bodies: An Experimental Study (2018)
It has been suggested that cutting into decaying bodies occurred in the past, for instance during the cleaning or dismemberment of corpses during protracted funerary rituals. However it can be difficult to confirm the timings of such interactions, particularly for secondarily deposited bones. An experimental study was therefore conceived to test whether the frequency, location and micro-morphometric characteristics of cut marks might differ on fresh compared to decaying bodies. In order words,...
Data Literacy and Public Engagement in Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will explore the need to cultivate deeper and broader data literacy in archaeology. Data and algorithms shape the actions of virtually every institution in modern society. In archaeology, data involve significant conceptual, modeling, and ethical challenges (including cross-cultural...
Dates Too Old?: Mixed Carbon Reservoirs Integrate Carbon from Freshwater Reservoirs and the Atmosphere (2018)
Sources of carbon in wetlands and calcareous areas represent unique challenges for interpreting the archaeological radiocarbon record. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is assumed to be the only carbon source for photosynthesis. However, dating modern and historic reference fish and modern reference wild rice indicates the presence of ancient carbon in bones and plant material. Dating four historic reference fish obtained from the Mississippi River in 1939 in southeastern Minnesota yielded four...
Deep Learning and Pollen Detection in the Open World (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pollen-based paleoecological reconstructions rely on visual identifications that can be automated using computer vision. To date, most automated approaches have focused on taxonomic classification of pollen in cropped images. There are fewer protocols for pollen detection (i.e., localization) in whole-slide images. New...
Differential Access for the Ethical Stewardship of Cultural and Digital Heritage through Mukurtu.net (2016)
This is a pdf copy of the PPT slides used for this presentation in the SAA symposium. In July, 2015, the number of federally recognized tribes increased to 567 with the inclusion of the Pamunkey tribe in Virginia. Among other benefits, Tribal Nations have the right to self govern, and as such, the right to determine how best to curate and manage their own heritage and histories. To put this number into perspective, there are currently only 193 member states (countries) in the United Nations,...
Differentiating Ecological Contexts of Plant Cultivation and Animal Herding: Implications for Culture Process (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last few decades archaeologists around the globe have documented a much more variable pattern of prehistoric foraging and food production than was previously imagined. We have also made great progress understanding the macroecology related to variation in hunting-gathering subsistence and social...
Diffraction Peaks as Tools for Distinguishing Chert from Quartz: Applications on Experimental Materials and Paleolithic Retouchers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When conducting micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) analyses of archaeological and geological materials, diffraction peaks, which are produced by crystalline materials, are typically unwanted and methods are devised to minimize their impact on the sample spectrum. Here, we explore the intentional...