North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugh Radde.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pelagic fishing entails substantial risks and investments in fishing equipment, including sturdy boats, paddles, hooks, lines, nets, and spears. In the context of Indigenous California, this fishing practice has been linked to population growth and the evolution of fishing technologies over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Gamble.

The Chumash Indians of southern California made and used beads of stone, bone, and a variety of species of shell for over 8,000 years. A noted shift in shell beads occurred about 800 years ago with the appearance of a new bead type, cupped beads, made from the thick callus of the Callianax biplicata, a portion of the shell that had previously not been used. These types of beads were common throughout the Chumash region and elsewhere during the Late period and have been identified as money beads...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Banke. Christopher Jazwa. Jennifer Perry.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we synthesize the body of previous and continuing research of chert quarries on the East End and Isthmus of Santa Cruz Island, CA since 1985. Santa Cruz Island chert quarries have been integral to interpretations of craft specialization, the development of social complexity, and material conveyance among peoples on the Northern Channel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Harvey. Heather Atherton. Amy MacKinnon. Brett Rushing.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) is responsible for planning, designing, building and operation of the nation’s first high-speed rail system. The high-speed rail system is being built through a series of design-build contracts. Construction Package 1 (CP-1) runs 32 miles from Avenue 19 in Madera County to East American Avenue in Fresno...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josephine McDonald.

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lincoln County Rock Art Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) Inventory Project in Nevada focused on the rock art from the Mount Irish, Shooting Gallery and Pahroc ACECs. All three of these areas form part of a distinctive style region within the Great Basin. This is defined by the presence of the Patterned Bodied and Solid Bodied Figures which were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Adams. Danny Mullins.

Within west central Utah, site locations dating to the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (PHT) are generally associated with specific geographical features; such as, the Old River Bed (ORB), inverted stream beds/channels, and the barren playas of the Great Salt Lake Desert (Dugway). Over decades of cultural resource management inventories, numerous PHT-aged archaeological sites have been identified along the maximum extent, and subsequent shorelines and resulting feeder streams, of receding Lake...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard-Patrick Cromwell. Erin Herring. Chantel Saban. Brianna Kendrick.

Coprolites recovered from archaeological context provide direct access to understanding past human interactions with their environments. The Paisley Caves of south-central Oregon are notable for the presence of hundreds of preserved coprolites, the oldest confirmed as being human in origin and approximately 14,350 cal. BP years old. Our project focused on analyzing a series of coprolites and their corresponding sediments to look for variabilities in the paleoenvironment in the area immediate to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katelyn McDonough. Jaime Kennedy.

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. Questions concerning human paleoecology and subsistence strategies continue to shape Paleoindian research in the Great Basin. Despite significant advances in our understanding of human lifeways during the terminal Pleistocene, the relationship between human populations and plant food communities is still unclear....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Reaux. Geoffrey Smith.

During the 2016 field season, the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (GBPRU [University of Nevada, Reno]) began investigating Guano Valley, Oregon for evidence of Paleoindian occupations. Our initial work revealed a rich record of Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH) archaeology that appeared strongly associated with an extensive delta system that brought fresh water into Guano Lake from the south. This past field season, the GBPRU returned to Guano Valley and recorded numerous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Jamaldin.

The Fort Rock Basin’s (FRB) caves and rock shelters hold an important place in the history of Great Basin archaeology. Excavations at Fort Rock Cave by Luther Cressman in the late 1930’s led him to argue for a long-standing presence of humans in the region. The subsequent development of radiocarbon dating confirmed his ideas, providing firm evidence for a considerable human population in the FRB during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH). Although most caves and rock shelters...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Jerrems. Richard Rosencrance.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some have suggested that osseous projectile weaponry preceded that of stone-that bone, antler and even ivory barbed points and sagaie (osseous rods) might have been the hunting and fishing weapons of choice for the earliest peoples. Early technology using meticulously fashioned barbed osseous materials for weaponry takes us back to Katanda, Zaire 95 kya, is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rondeau. Nicole George.

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. A review of selected fluted point and Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) studies are highlighted to present a series of intriguing results, implications, and interpretations. This wide ranging overview of themes and unanswered research questions offers a look at the past and present links between fluted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Allgaier. Craig Young. David Zeanah. Robert Elston. 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. Explaining Paleoindian settlement decisions in the Central Great Basin remains an important though controversial topic. Unfortunately, the limited archaeological and paleoenvironmental records from the region make progress on this issue challenging. To help address some of the problems of limited data in order to better...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Milligan. Eric Bartelink. Sarah Hall. Maria Cox. Alexandra Perrone.

Traditional studies of health and stress in archaeological samples use several categories of skeletal alterations: linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH), adult stature, scars of anemia, dental disease, osteoarthritis, trauma, and infection. Skeletal remains from a late 19th century military hospital at Point San Jose (PSJ), San Francisco, represent a commingled assemblage, complicating paleopathological observations on the bones. Unlike bony changes, dental pathologies are often studied by individual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Broehl. Colleen Milligan. Kelsie Hart. Karin Wells. Vanessa Reeves.

Paleopathology encompasses the understanding of disease processes that affect skeletal remains as well as the timeframe and context in which they occur. Although most such studies focus on changes observed at an individual level, the Point San Jose assemblage provides a challenging perspective on paleopathology because it consists of separate skeletal elements lacking association with whole individuals. Consequently, our focus is on the types of bony changes seen rather than specific diagnoses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Brian Codding. Tyler Faith. Randall Irmis.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As human impacts on ecosystems accelerate, there is a growing emphasis in conservation planning toward maximizing the capacity of ecosystems to respond to anticipated changes in the near future. Doing so requires understanding how ecosystems responded to past changes (e.g., human impacts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jun Sunseri.

This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stereotypes and concomitant expectations for priority setting in archaeological careerism exist in tension with deep anthropological drives to understand and embody family ideals. Archaeologists, long confronted with the idea that “engendering archaeology” (cf. Conkey and Gero 1991)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haley Dougherty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently, there is no single, easily accessible source for researchers studying the Virgin Branch ceramic typology. The absence of such a source makes it difficult for researchers to consistently type ceramic artifacts. One solution to this problem is making access to these typological collections more accessible by utilizing the internet. This research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Clark. James Potter.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Research by PaleoWest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the ranchería at Mission Santa Clara de Asís (CA-SCL-30H) yielded a large and well-preserved faunal assemblage. Using data from the analysis of these remains, this poster explores the domestic subsistence behaviors of the Native Americans who occupied the adobe structures at the mission. Although the predominance of cattle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich. Tsim Schneider.

A cornerstone of recent pragmatic approaches to archaeology is the notion that our efforts can be judged by their practical outcomes. This may take the form of illuminating historical silences, and for those archaeologists working in post-contact or colonial contexts this often means working with indigenous groups seeking governmental or popular recognition. In this paper, we explore our collaborative efforts to discover and characterize archaeological sites dating to the early historic era in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Stoner. Geoffrey Cunnar.

In a 1995 study of the chronological patterning of Elko Series and Split-stemmed projectile points, Bryan Hockett concluded that neither type entirely matches the patterns of the Bonneville or Lahontan Basins; and the neither area represents good chronological analogues for northeastern Nevada. Dart points recently found in the well dated context of a stratified open site in the northern Goshute Valley exhibit characteristics of both early side-notched and corner-notched types. Comparison of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Boehm.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dry caves of central Oregon provide exceptional preservation of Paleoindian-aged perishable artifacts. Excavations at Fort Rock Cave, Oregon by Luther Cressman, Stephen Bedwell, and, most recently, Thomas Connolly and colleagues have produced a sizeable number of perishable and rare artifacts, as well as large faunal and lithic assemblages. Notably, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trace Fleeman Garcia.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1990s, spectral thematics have grown increasingly present in the humanities, stressing the persistence of memory, traces, and absences in the cultural sphere. Anthropologists likewise have contributed to this moment, as with Justin Armstrong’s spectral ethnography and Theo Kindynis’s' graffiti archaeology. This emerging methodology is promising...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Lawlor.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analysis of the plant fiber from eastern Great Basin sites show a pattern of continuity in their selection and use over time, suggesting they were regularly preferred for specific tools. Archaeologists currently have no quantitative explanation of what may have influenced forager fiber choices. Explaining why a forager has chosen a particular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rhode.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonneville Estates Rockshelter is a stratified multicomponent site located on the former highstand of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville in the eastern Great Basin. It contains well-dated and well-preserved record of human occupation through the last 13,000 years. Here I report on dietary plant remains retrieved from nearly 140 dated archaeological features...