North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
301-325 (374 Records)
Located on the Wind Wolves wildlife preserve in South Central California, there are several spectacular rock art sites. Created by the Native Californians who inhabited the landscape, they have been the focus of a number of studies over the years, but none of these studies concentrated on the sound quality of these spaces. The correlation between the placement of rock/cave art, and the acoustic properties of the space in which it is found, is increasingly being studied under the rubric of...
Sourcing Archaeological Textiles in the Northern Great Basin: Evaluation of Baseline Geochemical Data (2018)
Archaeological textiles are by nature ephemeral artifacts, leaving the development of analytical methodologies within the realm of culture history stylistic analysis until recently. Developments in geochemical sourcing methods have opened the window to new forms of analysis, including geographically sourcing the materials with which a textile is made. In particular, strontium isotope ratios with their long-term stability relating to archaeological time scales are well-suited for this type of...
Stable Isotope Analysis of Humans, Pine Nuts, and Acorns from the Central Sierra Nevada, CA (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In stable isotope analysis of human remains, δ13C enrichment is often interpreted as a marine or C4 contribution to the diet. There are instances when neither of these interpretations is supported by the archaeological evidence, such as in the central Sierra Nevada of California. Archaeological evidence for this region suggests that pine nuts and acorns...
Starch Grain Analysis of Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Coprolites and Ground Stone from Two Northern Great Basin Rockshelters (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent macrobotanical analyses of late Pleistocene rockshelters in the Great Basin have shown that plants have always made up a portion of Indigenous peoples’ diets. This is despite a relative lack of ground stone...
The State of the State of California Curation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Wendy Teeter, Stevy Hernandez, and Xochitl Aguinaga from the Fowler Museum at UCLA were part of an implementation committee initiating the California Curatorial Survey which was distributed to professionals from a variety of institutions. The 2018 Society of California...
Stature of Adult Human Remains from Point San Jose (2018)
Stature provides insights into the lives and wellbeing of individuals and populations. In living groups, stature is employed to evaluate differences associated with time (secular trend), geographic distribution, sexual dimorphism, socioeconomic differences, and from other living conditions. Poor living situations hinder growth and yield shortened statures; advantageous conditions enhance growth and result in greater heights. Similar influences are inferred for past populations and the skeletal...
Stemmed Points and Pluvial Lakes: Assessing the Manufacture and Distribution of Western Stemmed Points in the Harney Basin, 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 age and distribution of stemmed point technology in the Far West is important for a full understanding of late Pleistocene and Early Holocene archaeology in North America, especially for those interested in the initial settlement of the Americas. Despite the importance of stemmed points to debates surrounding the peopling process, there are still...
Stemmed Points from Nevada Caves (2019)
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. The lack of a comprehensive and sound geochronology of Paleoindian sites in the Great Basin has long been a stumbling block for explaining variability in Western Stemmed points and their relationship with Clovis. Open-air sites are often undatable or present conflicting radiocarbon dates, while...
A Stone in the Hand Is Worth How Many in the Bush? Applying the Marginal Value Theorem to Understand Optimal Toolstone Transportation, Processing, and Discard Decisions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obtaining and transporting material for manufacturing flaked stone tools comes at a cost. Numerous studies evaluate how processing may reduce transport costs, often using theory from optimal foraging theory such as central place foraging and field processing models. However, to date these studies do not adequately address the continued reuse of toolstone...
Stones and Standing Waves: Integrating Interpretation with Emergent Methods in Petroglyph Studies (2018)
Recent systematic study of petroglyphs and pictographs at select sites in the Great Basin and Mojave Desert explores archaeoacoustic connections between rock art and oral tradition. This project illustrates data collection procedures which integrate emergent, non-impacting methods, with interpretation facilitated by post-positivist thought. Research design is nonetheless framed within the scientific method. Systematic experiments incorporated into this study explore the viability of, and...
Stories from the Guadalasca: Changes in Land Use along the California Coast (2018)
California State University Channel Islands is known as the location of the former Camarillo State Mental Hospital. The campus also serves as a case study for examining changes in communities and land use in California throughout time. Archaeological surveys on campus, artifact analyses, and historic records together document shifts in human activities at this location. This presentation outlines the long term use of this area by a noteworthy variety of people: the Chumash and their ancestors,...
The Strength of Deep Ties: Obsidian Provenance Suggests Long-Distance Cooperation over Six Millennia in Numu Territory (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have suggested that economies of scale gained from cooperative hunting fueled the evolution of human sociality. This model anticipates inflated levels of cooperation during group-hunting events in comparison to other contexts. To evaluate this prediction, we examine the provenance of 395 obsidian projectile points from the large communal hunting...
The Study of Indigenous Landscape and Seascape Management Practices in Central California: A Synthesis of Recent Findings (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. This paper synthesizes the results of our recent investigation of indigenous landscape and seascape management practices in Central California in ancient and historical times. The project involves a collaborative team of scholars from the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, Amah Mutsun Land Trust,...
Subsistence Diversity During the Western Stemmed Tradition in the Intermountain West (2019)
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. We have learned more about Western Stemmed subsistence patterns in the Intermountain West over the past decade than we learned during the previous half century. Remarkable subsistence assemblages recovered from sites such as Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Paisley Cave 2, Weed Lake Ditch, Little...
Successful Partnerships: The Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (2023)
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. The Oregon Chinese Diaspora Project (OCDP) is a multi-agency partnership engaged in studying and sharing the history of Oregon’s immigrant Chinese communities. Partners include the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology, the Malheur National Forest, and the Kam Wah...
Successful Sourcing of Plant Material from Paisley Caves, Oregon: Results (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant and animal perishable remains are not uncommon in dry cave archaeological contexts, which have made significant contributions to archaeological knowledge in recent years. Textiles (including basketry, cordage, woven, knotted, or plaited products) make up a considerable portion of the perishable archaeological record in these contexts, much of which...
The Suitability of Dry-Farming and Its Impact on Fremont Paleodemography in the Northern Uinta Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent work in Utah’s northern Uinta Basin shows close relationships between precipitation variability and population dynamics during the Fremont period, AD 300-1350. In this study, we evaluate the role that changes in the suitability of local dry-farming conditions had on observed regional settlement...
A Tale of Two Projects: Geoarchaeological Investigations along the Shores of Pleistocene Lake Waring in Elko County, Nevada, and the Importance of Early Planning and Collaboration between Public Land Managers, Project Proponents, and Stakeholders (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations conducted between 2015 and 2021 along the margins of a Great Basin pluvial lake applied multidisciplinary methods that resulted in the identification of significant deeply stratified sites. A geoarchaeological approach that entailed detailed mapping and modeling of the...
Technological Investment and Subsistence Strategy Flexibility within the Uinta Basin Fremont (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cub Creek area of Dinosaur National Monument has a Fremont occupation spanning from AD 300-1350 that shows variable reliance on maize agriculture depending on environmental conditions. Settlement data indicate a stable upland occupation throughout the sequence characterized by ~120 roasting features, but an intensive lowland pithouse occupation that lasted...
Technological Organization of Two Prearchaic Sites in Grass Valley, Nevada (2018)
The research presented here works from the proposition that patterns in lithic assemblages reflect human organizational strategies. Preliminary investigations of 26La4434, a single component Prearchaic site in Grass Valley, reveal a pattern of large game exploitation in proximity to a Pleistocene shoreline. Standard metric, morphological, and edge-wear analysis of the flaked stone assemblage is used to evaluate whether the site facilitated access to local wetland resources and large game...
Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene Exploitation of Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the Bonneville Basin (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive study of prehistoric human foraging behavior in the Bonneville basin, little is known about human exploitation of birds, as many of these analyses focus on the hunting of mammalian prey and present models of diet breadth that are limited to artiodactyls and lagomorphs. This study uses the prey choice model of foraging theory to...
Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene Adaptive Strategies at the Paisley Caves, Oregon (2018)
There are key questions about the timing of the initial settlement of the northern Great Basin, how settlers adapted to the pluvial lake and wetland landscape they encountered upon arrival, and how these adaptations changed in response to Holocene climate change. The Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon provide a unique opportunity to investigate these questions. The caves produced the earliest evidence for human settlement of the Great Basin including coprolites containing human DNA dating to...
Testing Multiple Geophysical Methods at Fremont Archaeological Sites (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ephemeral nature of many Fremont habitation sites has made site identification extremely difficult for Fremont archaeologists today. Unlike the standing and partially exposed ruins of their ancestral Puebloan neighbors, the Fremont left little evidence of their habitation across the region. Those that remain include structures now buried below the...
Testing the Efficacy of Methodologies for the Estimation of Body Size of California Mussel Based on Shell Fragments (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decades, archaeologists have developed regression formulae to estimate animal body size based on shell fragments. In this study, we tested the efficacy of five different methods by measuring over 1200 mussel (Mytilus californianus) shells excavated from an archaeological site (CA-VEN-395) in the Santa Monica Mountains, located about 9 km from the...
Testing the Trance Hypothesis: Identifying Hallucinogenic Compounds from Quids at Pinwheel Cave, California (2018)
For decades, debates have raged over the role of trance in the origination of rock-art. However, there remains almost no direct evidence of the ingestion of trance inducing material at any rock art site world-wide. The site of Pinwheel Cave has a large element thought to represent the opening of the flowering Datura. Dozens of quid, or 'chews' - i.e. masticated fibres of unidentified plant material - are found within the ceiling of the cave. A sample of this was taken and analysed to determine...