North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Elston. Gloria Brown. Ryan Bradshaw. Martijn Kuypers. David Zeanah.

Current views of the Prearchaic draw heavily from investigations of sites near pluvial lakes in the eastern and western Great Basin. The record from the Central Great Basin remains impoverished, largely due to the limited number of stratified archaeological sites containing well preserved material suitable for faunal analysis and radiocarbon dating. Recent investigations of an open-air site (26La4434) along the northern shore of Pleistocene Lake Gilbert in Grass Valley, revealed a buried deposit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Holguin. Scott Sunell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We evaluate the process by which archaeologists have interpreted heat treatment of lithic raw materials in the Santa Barbara Channel region and present comparative examples of materials to work toward refinement of our understanding of production processes. Relatively little systematic work has been done, even though regional lithic materials are well-suited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt Wilson. Daniel Contreras. Joan Coltrain. D. Craig Young. Brian Codding.

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. Archaeological and paleoclimatological research increasingly reveal long-term impacts of past climate on human subsistence, settlement, and demography, yet positive results are debated and the underlying dynamics structuring these correlations remain questioned. Coupling a comprehensive dataset of radiocarbon-dated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaley Tucker. Lisbeth Louderback. Erick Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Green River Basin of Wyoming, archaeological sites dating from the Early Archaic to Late Prehistoric are often found associated with or adjacent to dense patches of *Cymopterus bulbosus, a nutritious geophyte that would have been an important food source for prehistoric humans living in the region. Experimental data have shown that the caloric return...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Abo.

Archaeologists widely argue that Fremont potters from the Parowan Valley, in southwestern Utah, manufactured Snake Valley pottery. I explore the distribution of Fremont Snake Valley Black-on-gray pottery using chemical analyses, metric data, and statistical methods. In my research, I compare neutron activation analysis data from Snake Valley Black-on-gray (SVBG) sherds found at archaeological sites within the Parowan Valley to SVBG sherds found at Fremont sites over 200 kilometers to the north....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Martindale Johnson. Daron Duke. Jennifer DeGraffenried. Bruce Kaiser.

Collaborating with multiple XRF instruments enables larger than normal datasets to be analyzed in a short period. The portability of instruments is important to analysts working together in one location as groups of specimens can be analyzed simultaneously. However, certain protocols must be followed so there are no discrepancies among instruments. We present our project’s methodological controls, such as shared source library and calibration, and preliminary results. The study consists of over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Lambert.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strontium isotope analysis has been used by archaeologists to track prehistoric human and animal migrations. Strontium isotope analysis can suggest which large game individuals were obtained locally by prehistoric hunters and which were brought to habitation sites through long-distance hunting or trade. This study explores the potential of using strontium...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karimah Kennedy Richardson. Hugh Radde. Wendy Teeter. Desiree Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several decades of field reconnaissance have identified nearly one thousand archaeological sites on Catalina Island. The relationship between these coastal bluff villages, interior occupations, and smaller ridgeline sites are recognized via pathways, but not fully explored. In our efforts to better understand settlement patterns on this island the Pimu...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Springer. Shannon Boomgarden.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations in Range Creek Canyon, in east-central Utah, have led to the identification of 500 prehistoric sites. The majority of sites that can be affiliated are linked to the Fremont Culture, semi-sedentary horticulturalists occupying the region 300–1175 CE. Sites range from long-term habitation sites, artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morgan. Dallin Webb. Kari Sprengeler. Marielle Black. Nicole George.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Temporal and caloric costs associated with building common hunter-gatherer residential features – housefloors, housepits, storage pits, rock rings, and various types of wickiups – are presented based on experimental construction of these types of features. For subsurface features, excavation rates and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Vernon. David Zeanah. D. Craig Young. Robert G. Elston. Brian F. Codding.

This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying the ecological drivers of Paleoindian settlement has broad implications for a host of related behaviors, including colonization, mobility, and subsistence. Unfortunately, important proxies like spatial site patterning suffer from well-known sampling biases, most notably, taphonomic decay, opportunistic survey,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryna Hull. Jelmer Eerkens. Reba Fuller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. δ34S can be used in conjunction with δ13C and δ15N to examine if people were accessing resources from within the same local area or were seasonally mobile to exploit foods from other regions. Here we apply this stable isotopic triad to investigate mobility of hunter-gatherers from the central Sierra Nevada region. The δ13C and δ15N results demonstrate a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Pratt.

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) studies in the Great Basin often emphasize results from cave or rockshelter sites; however, these sites present a very specific occupation type. Studying open-air sites provides a different line of evidence used to expand interpretations of WST lithic technology and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Cannon. Houston Martin. Molly Cannon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Immigrant Chinese workers represented the dominant work force in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad (1863-1869). The archaeological record they left behind provides an important snapshot of the lives of these largely male work camps in the isolated desert of northwestern Utah. Funded by the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Pratt. Ted Goebel.

First American archaeologists are increasingly interested in the relationship between Western stemmed point technology (WST) and other Paleoindian lithic technologies, including Clovis. While there is some evidence of WST dating as early as 14,000 14C years before present, most sites lack reliable geoarchaeological and geochronological evidence. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the University of Nevada Reno excavated several stratified open-air WST sites in Oregon along the southern shoreline...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rondeau.

The CalFLUTED project has studied hundreds of Far Western fluted points allowing for a wide ranging recognition of the variability and trends in fluted point morphology, manufacturing technology, use breakage, repair and hafting techniques in the region. Conclusions are supported by study data. Discussion of the implications of those conclusions is provided.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blake Georgouses.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The area within Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve is one of the most important and interesting historic sites in San Diego County, containing 68 recorded archaeological sites. The location, which represents a small portion of the original Mexican land grant given to Francisco Maria Ruiz in 1823, has been the focus for numerous archaeological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Kelsie Hart.

The analysis of butchered archaeofaunal specimens from historic sites can lend important insight into diet, food preparation, discard practices, and socioeconomic status. In this study, we examine faunal specimens found commingled with human remains from a pit associated with a 19th century historic army hospital located in Point San Jose, California. The specific aim of this study is to relate observed butchery patterns on the faunal remains to diet and socioeconomic status at the site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Kallenbach.

This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant fiber identifications were made for a subset of Oregon’s Paisley Caves cordage and netting in order to explore plant selection for fiber technologies. Fiber artifacts from this assemblage include basketry, matting, netting, cordage, and rope, with the oldest braided rope dating to ca. 12,000 years ago....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Kallenbach.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early foraging communities in the Northern Great Basin engaged with a diverse and changing landscape over millennia. Archaeologists have developed settlement-subsistence models in relation to climatic shifts based on tool assemblages, dietary studies, and other datasets. In the current study, textiles from Paisley Caves are examined within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strontium sourcing is a technique often used in sourcing the origin or migration patterns of animal and human remains but also used occasionally to source the growing location of plant material. While these studies are uncommon, they are not new. Here I will be presenting the eagerly awaited results of the sourcing data from Terminal Pleistocene and Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaila Akina.

In this paper, I investigate the intersections between ritual, belief, and practice at Iosepa, Utah, a historic townsite built by diasporic Polynesian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). In 1889, the LDS Church assisted approximately 50 Polynesian LDS to establish and relocate to Iosepa for 28 years before disbanding the settlement in 1917. I explore how the Church leadership and the Polynesian LDS created and actively negotiated the landscape of Iosepa into a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Newland. Alex DeGeorgey. Lynne Englebert. Adela Morris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On October 9, 2017, a firestorm swept through northern California. Eventually reaching over 180,000-acres, the wildfire destroyed more than 8,400 buildings and killed 42 people. Thousands of families lost their homes and all their possessions. In many instances, the cremated remains of previously deceased family members were stored in urns within the home. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Lindsay.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As California wildfires increase in intensity and frequency across the state, archaeologists and land managers work to update fire management strategies and reassess fire risks to sensitive cultural resources. Existing literature indicates that while some buried archaeological resources are fairly protected, rock art sites are particularly susceptible to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years the number of researchers who argue that the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) marks the descendants of colonizing populations who traveled along the Pacific Coast before moving inland has increased. The Paisley Caves and Cooper’s Ferry sites have provided compelling evidence that groups in...