North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (374 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the dissolution of the Reconstruction Era, black Americans were faced with the legislative and social constraints of the Jim Crow Era. These limitations on life spurred a call to action to create black settlements free of white supremacy and anti-black sentiments, such as the settlement of Allensworth. The town of Allensworth, located in Tulare County of...
High Altitude Settlement as Evolutionary Process (2018)
The peopling of high altitudes and altitude’s ecological analog, high latitude, are critical to understanding worldwide human dispersals and the diversity of human adaptation but are still quite poorly understood. Within this context, this paper presents a model for the initiation, establishment, and maintenance of permanent high altitude settlements, especially in middle latitudes. This model takes into account the limiting factors found in such settings, the costs and benefits of different...
High-Altitude Settlement as Evolutionary Process in Mid-Latitude North and South America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite many similarities, aboriginal high-altitude occupations in the middle latitudes of North and South America differ in several ways. This paper compares and contrasts the behaviors that have been reconstructed in these locales and explores the principal drivers of high-altitude intensification—population pressure, climate change, and social...
The Honda Ridge Pilot Project: Microscopy and Stratigraphy at the Honda Ridge Rock Art Site, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (2018)
The Honda Ridge pictograph panel contains highly stratified elements painted on a smooth, reflective surface, offering a unique opportunity to explore prehistoric rock art production. We adapted non-invasive, digital microscopy methods from the Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center to apply stratigraphic analysis within a 1m x 1m section of this superimposed, monochromatic panel. The reflective host rock preserves observable characteristics of prehistoric painting techniques, from...
Hot Spots of Cobblestone Tool Reduction Incidents and Potential Chronological Staging of the Technology along California's Lower Colorado River Shorelines (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial autocorrelation software for the Moran I statistic in ArcGIS v10.6 was used to combine archaeological site location data with “intensity” or weight defined by the number of artifacts in each of the 280 loci contained within an 80-acre portion of CA-SBr-1456 along the California side of the Lower Colorado River. That data was then processed to...
Human Adaptation to Middle Holocene Aridity in the Northwestern Great Basin: Coprolites and Season of Occupation at the Paisley Caves, Oregon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The middle Holocene (9000–6000 cal BP) in the northwestern Great Basin is marked by warmer and drier conditions resulting in significant ecological change. There is archaeological evidence for population decline, highly mobile groups occupying temporary camps, and a focus on seasonally productive resources. Most sites are located on dunes or lake margins...
Human Adaptations to Environmental Change on the California Channel Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides an overview of human adaptations to environmental change during 13,000 years of human occupation on the California Channel Islands. In particular, I consider how the range of economically important species shifted with changing environmental conditions and how different foraging...
Hunter-Gatherer Intensification and Long-Term Demography: A SW Wyoming Case Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The intensification of production by human groups has occurred at various times around the globe. Intensification correlates with increases in population size, increased labor investment in food production, and decreased residential mobility; the opposite (de-intensification) correlates with decreases in population size, decreased labor investments in food...
Hunters, Soldiers, and Holy Men: Exploring the Gendered Politics of Mission Landscapes in Alta California (2018)
Space was paramount to Spanish missionary work in 18th and 19th century Alta California. This mission system was designed to irreparably reshape the Indigenous conceptual universe into that of a Christo-European worldview, to transform Native peoples into gente de razón. In addition, missions were the setting against which ecclesiastical and military colonists were in constant contact, and missionaries also used space as a moralizing tool, in an attempt to reform the lax morals of soldiers...
Identifying Fremont Large Game Hunting Practices through the Modified General Utility Index and Strontium Isotope Analysis (2018)
The analysis of faunal bones from several Fremont sites have resulted in complications when compared to the Modified General Utility Index (MGUI). In this research, I explore the processing and transportation techniques of Fremont hunters at Wolf Village by comparing skeletal frequencies to the MGUI. Then, I compare these frequencies with results of strontium isotope analysis on small artiodactyl teeth from Wolf Village to determine which species were obtained locally. I also identify the...
Illuminating Event-Based Significance at Three Rock Art Sites on Vandenberg AFB, CA (2018)
Although we now have highly technical equipment that allows analyses and observations of rock art in new ways, this should in no way diminish pursuing our personal sense of curiosity, ability to develop hypotheses out of hunches, and test those hypotheses as best we can, to discover layers of significance for a rock art site that no piece of equipment would ever be capable of detecting. One such area of inquiry is consideration of ephemeral, event-based ways rock art interplays with the...
Impacts of Abrupt Climate Change Events on Human Paleodemography in the Great Basin (2021)
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. A central question of research on prehistoric human-environment interaction concerns the role of abrupt versus gradual climate and environmental changes on human demography. This research requires high resolution, regional-scale paleoenvironmental records that provide researchers with the ability to discern variable spatial...
Implications of Stable Isotope Values from the Skyrocket Site (CA-Cal-629/630) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster summarizes the analysis of 60 AMS 14C dates, including the associated stable isotopes of delta 13C, delta 15N, and delta 34S for human burials from the Skyrocket archaeological site (CA-Cal-629/630). Located 40 miles east of Stockton, California, these burials span a period in which there was a change in subsistence, as evidenced by material...
The Importance of Restoring Indigenous Knowledge (2019)
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. The Creation Story of the Amah Mutsun clearly delineates our traditional territory and asserts our responsibility to take care of Mother Earth and all living things. For thousands of years and many hundreds of generations the Amah Mutsun accumulated knowledge of how to ensure balance in their...
Importation of Salted Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) into San Francisco, California during the Gold Rush-Era (ca. 1849-1855) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Records from the Gold Rush San Francisco Bay Area indicate that food items were imported to offset the depletion of once abundant wild food sources. Fish were a large part of human diets during the Gold Rush, and while we know that Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) were fished later in the 19th century, it is unclear whether they were fished during the Gold...
Imprisoned Orphans: Community Archaeology at Children’s Village, Manzanar War Relocation Center (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There were ten War Relocation Centers established during World War II to incarcerate over 120,000 Japanese American citizens and immigrants, but only one had an orphanage. Manzanar's “Children’s Village” housed 101 orphans, from newborns to teenagers. The entire mass incarceration was unconstitutional, tragic, costly, and unnecessary, but imprisoning...
In a Shade of Colonial Expansion: The Subsistence Strategies and Consumption Practices in Black Star Canyon, Southern California (2021)
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. Puhu (Ca-Ora-132), a Native American settlement located in the Santa Ana mountains of California, has been remembered as a unique place of conflict centered around animal utilization. In 1831, Puhu was attacked and defeated by American fur trappers after the...
In-Situ pXRF Analysis of Episodic Pictograph Production (2018)
Yokuts ethnography indicates that pictograph sites passed from father to son to grandson within shamanic lineages, suggesting episodic painting at these locations. This practice is archaeologically supported by motif superimpositions and minor stylistic differences at sites. An in-situ pXRF study of red motifs was conducted at site CA-TUL-2871, Springville, CA, in the hopes of analytically distinguishing painting episodes, based on the assumption that chemically dissimilar pigments may have been...
Indigenous Archaeological Involvement in Front of Suppression Reduces Mitigation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During early suppression efforts of two wildland fires, indigenous firefighters reduced damage by sharing unrecorded cultural site polygons created from oral tradition aligned to dozer lines ahead of the fire’s predictive path. During the Detwiler Fire (2017), and the Ferguson Fire (2018), the Tribal Archaeologists from two tribes, and the Cultural Officers...
Indigenous Archaeology: California’s AB52 and Its Impact (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. NAGPRA empowered tribes to repatriate the remains and sacred objects of their ancestors. As a result, a movement developed and Indigenous archaeology was born. It has been with us for nearly 30 years now and some important benefits have resulted, especially in terms of interpreting archaeological data through an Indigenous lens. An amendment to the...
Indigenous Refusals of Settler Territoriality: A Case from the Tolay Valley in Central California (2018)
Spanish, Mexican and American waves of colonialism in Central California changed the lives of California Indian peoples in very drastic ways. California Indians were removed from their homes, forced to perform labor, and were moved into poor living conditions that contributed to declines in health and the loss of many California Indian lives. The physical removal of California Indians from their homes was also an attempt by Spanish missionaries and soldiers to re-imagine the indigenous world....
Indigenous Stewardship, Comanagement, and Knowledge Production: A Perspective from the California Coast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Resource management and academic disciplines focused on the study of cultural heritage and the environment have historically trained practitioners and hired for positions focused on either cultural or ecological aspects of the landscape. This dichotomy may be a...
Integrating Portable Spectroscopy into Rock Art Investigations (2018)
Molecular spectroscopy is an information rich technique that is rapid, non-destructive and easy to operate. These qualities combined with a mature market in handheld spectrometers makes molecular spectroscopy an ideal technique for on-site analysis which is suitable for austere environments. This paper will discuss the use of Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy to in the Gordian knot project based upon the Californian polychrome rock art site Pleito in order to provide a...
Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Archaeological Practice (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ann F. Ramenofsky: Papers in Honor of a Non-Normative Career" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As Heritage Program Manager for Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, I have worked closely with the Karuk Tribe and other partners on the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (WKRP). WKRP is an initiative designed to utilize traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to restore cultural burning on a landscape at...
Integrative Approaches to Anthropology Degree Marketability: Resources and Testimonials for Nonacademic Career Fields (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Future of Education and Training in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cultural Resources Facility at Cal Poly Humboldt integrates training and employment in cultural resource management with the more traditional academic-themed archaeology courses. The CRF trains undergraduate students in project compliance with historic preservation laws and regulations under federal, state, and local jurisdiction....