North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
351-375 (452 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines traditional, contemporary, and experimental methods of illustration and photography in rock art recording. Addressed accordingly are the processes and problems unique to pictographs (painted) and petroglyphs (pecked) parietal imagery, superimposition and dating. As a rock art researcher, photographer, and artist, many examples will...
Sequencing the Gordian Knot: Implications of the Pleito Main Cave Superimposition Analyses (2018)
The over-painting sequences at the elaborate rock-art site of Pleito, South-Central California, is one of most complex in the Americas. In a region famous for its polychromatic traditions, including Chumash, Yokuts, Kitanemuk, and other Californian native groups, Pleito stands out as the richest in terms of variety of colours, iconography, and over-painting. This over-painting, or superimposition, offers the 'deepest' data rich relative sequence in the region. Integrated work employing...
Settlement-Subsistence Strategies and Economic Stress among the Sevier Desert Fremont (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations at four Fremont sites in the Sevier Desert indicate settlement-subsistence strategies changed after AD 1000, shifting from short-term processing camps associated with logistical exploitation of resources to residential occupation and intensive processing of rabbits. These changes may have resulted from population growth and...
Sex-Biased Differences in Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy at Síi Túupentak, an Ancestral Ohlone Village in Central California (ca. 540–145 cal BP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Síi Túupentak (CA-SCA-565/H) is a late precontact ancestral Ohlone village/cemetery site in central California (ca. 540–145 cal BP). Integration of proteomic, genomic, and osteological analyses provided highly confident biological sex estimates for remains of most individuals at this site (65 of 76) spanning all age groups—from perinatal infants to aged...
Sexual Division of Labor and Technological Change at the Pleistocene to Holocene Transition in the Great Basin. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent reinterpretation of global ethnography challenges the "men hunt, women gather" stereotype, finding cross-cultural evidence that women regularly hunted in foraging societies. Another study finds bioarchaeological evidence of women's role in hunting large game during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Americas. Although provocative, these...
"Shadow of the Whale:" West Coast Rituals Associated with Luring Whales (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Native peoples along the Pacific Coast of North America exploited stranded whales that washed ashore, providing abundant meat and oil for consumption. Many rock art sites along the coast between Alaska and Acapulco contain images of whales and other cetaceans, and portable effigies also depict these marine...
Shards of Medical History: Artifacts from the Point San Jose Hospital Medical Waste Pit (2018)
While monitoring lead remediation activities around historic buildings at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason) in 2010, National Park Service archaeologists discovered thousands of human bones in a medical waste pit behind the former hospital. Large numbers of medical artifacts, primarily medicinal bottle shards, were also recovered from the pit. Many of these medicinal bottles were produced by the U.S. Army Hospital Department for a limited time during the Civil War (1862-1865). Such precise...
Shattered: Conducting Experimental Archaeology to Better Diagnose Contact Period Lithics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Contact period studies tend to focus on the interactions between indigenous peoples and non-native peoples and the commerce produced from said interactions. As such, a plethora of information can be gleaned from the study of tools and materials procured during this time period with a focus on changes in tool form or material choice, if any. As a result of...
Shellfish Variability and Its Role in the Adaptation to Fishing Economies on the California Channel Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we utilize rocky intertidal data from long-term marine biology surveys coupled with targeted archaeological sites on the California Channel Islands to explain the timing of intensified fishing strategies. The Ideal Free Distribution Model (IFD) offers a framework to test predictions relating to human decision making in varying ecological...
A Shoshonean Prayerstone Hypothesis: Ritual Cartography of Great Basin Incised Stones (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prayerstone hypothesis, grounded in Southern Paiute oral history, holds that selected incised stone artifacts were votive offerings deliberately emplaced where spiritual power (puha) was known to reside, accompanying prayers for personal power and expressing thanks for prayers answered. Proposing significant and long-term linkages between Great Basin...
Silenced Undertakers (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chumash undertakers were third gender persons and postmenopausal women. The Spanish Mission system significantly disrupted traditional practices, especially through sexual violence as a silencing tool. I examine the impacts of the Spanish colonial effort on Chumash mortuary rituals, with regard to the concept of gendercide.
A Silver Lining at the Failed Hardin City Mine: An Opportunity for Public Land Stewardship through Archaeology (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. ncouraging the public to invest in resource conservation, education, and exploration is an ongoing priority for the Nevada BLM, Black Rock Field Office. Black Rock Rendezvous (BRR), an annual event hosted on the Black Rock Playa, is one such effort. The event introduces a wide...
Simmons at DRI: Years of Famine and Triumph (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to his long and distinguished professorial career at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Alan Simmons spent eight years in Reno at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), an independent soft-money component of Nevada’s university system. For a young Near Eastern...
Small Mammal Isotopes as Proxies for Climate over the Holocene Period on the Eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing the prehistoric environment is vital to our understanding of past human use and occupation of a landscape. While many reconstructions, typically based on chemical and biological signatures found in sediment and ice cores, are available, we currently lack suitable records for Idaho’s eastern Snake River Plain. This is mainly due to the scarcity...
Smith Creek Cave Revisited: An Analysis of Western Stemmed Tradition Raw-Material Procurement Strategies and Lithic Technological Organization in the Bonneville Basin (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the time of its initial discovery by Alan Bryan nearly fifty years ago, the Mount Moriah occupation at Smith Creek Cave was one of the oldest in the Great Basin and played a critical role in establishing the terminal-Pleistocene age of stemmed-point technology in western North America. Today, what is now known as the Western Stemmed Tradition has been...
Sonic Landscapes, Past and Present: An Archaeoacoustical Study of Pleito (2018)
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...
Source Analysis of Cascade Points from the Connley Caves, Oregon (35LK50) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Researchers commonly use X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to source lithic tools and their associated byproducts made on obsidian and fine-grained volcanic toolstone. The results of such studies can be used to reconstruct lithic conveyance patterns, which in turn can tell us about hunter-gatherer mobility, territoriality, and/or exchange. In this study, we report...
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...