North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Whitley. Michael Konzak. Bryan Mischke. Robert Watson. Paul Engel.

Geospatial analysts are now capable of developing increasingly accurate models of past and future ‘shorelines’ and the predicted impacts they might have on archaeological sites or cultural landscapes. But GIS alone cannot realistically simulate hydrodynamic effects, terrain displacements, or changes in vegetation communities, water bodies, and atmospheres. Funded by the NCPTT, this study combines GIS analysis of LiDAR terrain and bathymetric models with the photorealistic 3D modeling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Kraus.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 3D printing and scanning technologies may have progressed to a level where the interested public can start to affordably engage with agency archaeologists and artifacts in a new way. Simple 3D scanning applications for smartphones now allow for rendering print files of small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe. Edward Jolie.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excluding much younger examples of distinctive Fremont-era and Promontory Phase moccasins, footwear of any sort seems to be largely, if not entirely, absent from the archaeological record of the Eastern Great Basin during the preceding millennia. This apparent pattern stands in sharp contrast to the well attested and venerable woven sandal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Cassidy. David Robinson. Devlin Gandy.

This presentation showcases the contemporary value of Virtual Reality as a means to experience difficult to access, sensitive cultural sites for different stakeholder groups including researchers, land owners, and Native groups. Here, we show the enhanced virtual reality environment of Pleito Cave, a fragile world class rock art site with accessibility limitation. We discuss how scientific research can be translated into VR data sets to speak to diverse communities and different needs, providing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carly Whelan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though food storage is a crucial tool for avoiding subsistence shortfall in environments with seasonal resource disparities, it is costly relative to immediate consumption. Food stores are vulnerable to theft by animals and other people, and are susceptible to incremental loss from vermin and mold. To compensate for these anticipated losses, people must...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Contreras. Brian F. Codding. D. Craig Young. Paul E. Allgaier. Roxanne Lois Fajardo Lamson.

This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the imperatives driving reconstructions of past demography is the desire to analyze the impacts of past climate changes on human populations. An increasingly popular tool is the analysis of archaeological radiocarbon record, but the very paleoclimate changes that are of interest also have geomorphic effects—and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Harvey. Judson Byrd Finley. Erick Robinson. Edward Herrmann.

This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Utah’s Fremont archaeological complex is well-known as a transitional foraging-farming society from AD 300–1300. Individual Fremont systems included a set of bundled agricultural niches with associated foraging ranges. In a recent survey above Cub Creek in Dinosaur National Monument, we discovered many slab-lined stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Elliott Smith. Emily Whistler. René Vellanoweth. Todd Braje. Seth Newsome.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kelp forests are some of the most biodiverse and ubiquitous temperate marine ecosystems. Here, we employ d13C analysis of individual essential amino acids (EAA) from ancient top consumers to evaluate the dynamics of southern California kelp forests across a period of rapid cultural change and accelerating human impacts (~3500 ybp –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer DeGraffenried. Kaylee Barkett-Jones. Andrea Brunelle-Runburg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a case study that utilizes paleoecological data to further our understanding of the archaeological record in the Bonneville basin of western Utah. We report paleoecological data from Simpson Springs, including pollen, charcoal, and elemental data. We provide the first pollen record from cultural sediments at Camels Back Cave. The data from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Nowakowski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will show the results of XRF testing of obsidian artifacts from the Wurlitzer site in Butte County, California. The purpose of this testing is to create a better context from which to understand the site. Previous research has focused primarily on creating a chronology of the site using radiocarbon dating, point typologies, and comparison to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derick Juptner. Jordan Pratt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Weed Lake Ditch is an open-air site located on the relict shores of Pluvial Lake Malheur in the Harney Basin of southeastern Oregon. Excavations by the University of Nevada, Reno and the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA) have revealed multiple stemmed points and crescent lithic technology in buried contexts. Faunal remains from the site are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Grone. Roberta Jewett. Rob Cuthrell. Gabriel Sanchez. Kent Lightfoot.

This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While extensive archaeological investigation regarding indigenous landscape management practices has been conducted in this region, little work has been done regarding shoreline management practices affecting intertidal and wetland regions, such as kelp harvesting and the exploitation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Yoder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For almost a century, clay figurines have been described as one of the defining traits of the Fremont culture of the eastern Great Basin and northern Colorado Plateau. But surprisingly, many questions about the figurines’ basic characteristics, distribution, chronology, and meaning have remained unanswered. In this presentation I discuss the results of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Cuthrell.

This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our research team’s ongoing work on the Central Coast of California explores spatial and temporal changes in the use of natural resources by Native peoples and considers how archaeobiological data can be used to understand the history of traditional resource stewardship practices such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Mallios.

Joseph W. Ball spent a highly successful and influential career identifying archaeological insights into the Maya through detailed, rigorous, and creative ceramic analyses. In honor of his many contributions, this paper draws on Dr. Ball’s methodological and theoretical approaches by using ceramics as a springboard for deeper anthropological discussions into daily life at Jamestown Island, Virginia during the first half century of English settlement (1607-1657). Distinctions in artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Haverstock.

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) of 1979 was partially intended to address shortcomings in previous federal antiquities law. While the act corrected constitutional deficiencies with the Antiquities Act, federal land management agencies still grapple with a number of practical, cultural, and institutional barriers in carrying out archaeological law enforcement. This paper examines issues facing ARPA enforcement from the perspective of a land management agency. Case studies and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Dice.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many locations in Southern California where ephemeral lakes formed during the Late Pleistocene, then desiccated during the latter part of the Holocene: the Cronese Lakes, Lake Manly in Death Valley, Lake Thompson near Lancaster, and many others. Some geological studies have shown that prevailing winds become turbulent over desert flats and as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nick Angeloff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cannabis industry in Humboldt County, California has driven archaeological work over the past three years. The Cultural Resources Facility at Humboldt State University in collaboration with Archaeological Research and Supply Company strive to garner research value from the exponential increase in workload created by regulatory requirements. Several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social expectations regarding normative abilities, behavior, and bodies have changed through time. Archaeology lends itself well to the study of disability because social expectations about normative ability and behavior are embedded into the built environment, landscape, artifacts, material culture and daily practices. Archaeologists are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Johnson. Thomas Stafford. G. James West. Heather Thakar. Katherine Bradford.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What may be the earliest dated human skeletal remains so far discovered in North America come from the Arlington Springs Site on Santa Rosa Island, California. To corroborate the 13,077-12,656 2-sigma cal BP age of this ancient Native American, stratigraphic investigations were undertaken to place this discovery in its chronological and paleoenvironmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Claassen.

Following the analysis of Newt Kash Kentucky shelter and other ash and sandal shrines in the eastern US as menstrual retreats, the author examines a number of caves and shelters around the Great Basin paying particular attention to their ash and sandal content. Both items may constitute fertility petitions left at retreat and medicine shelters such as Cowboy Cave, Hogup Cave, and High Rolls. The ash may represent the burning of fertility offerings, including menstrual pads and diapers.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby Saper. Richard Rosencrance. Katelyn McDonough. Geoffrey Smith. Dennis Jenkins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some researchers support a “long” chronology for corner-notched points in the northern and eastern Great Basin, with some points dating as old as 8500 cal BP. Other researchers support a “short” chronology and argue that corner-notched points almost exclusively postdate 5000 cal BP. This debate suffers from the use of a variety of typological schemes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Wolfe.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating 20 Years of Support: Current Work by Recipients of the Dienje Kenyon Memorial Fellowship for Zooarchaeologists" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The final regression of Lake Bonneville during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition resulted in dramatic environmental changes in the Bonneville basin, followed by further environmental fluctuations throughout the Holocene. Recent research of faunal and floral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Santos Ceniceros-Rodríguez. Paul Collins. Amira Ainis. René Vellanoweth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-cultural deposits and animal accumulations have been important for reconstructing past environmental conditions. In western North America, packrat middens have been analyzed to infer past vegetation communities, precipitation rates, and other environmental variables. In this poster, we analyze owl-generated pellets deposited over a 1,500-year period at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Wyatt.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Every spring, the Battle Mountain BLM, Mount Lewis Field Office, puts on a presentation for 6th graders from the local elementary school. The presentations are conducted at the Mill Creek Campground, approximately 30 minutes south of Battle Mountain. It is an all-day event, and...