Multi-regional/comparative (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Emerson. Nancy Hoffman.

Managing collections means ensuring the data about them are useful, available, and accurate. In addition to the technical aspects of data management, there are layers of political and social structure that direct the construction and use of collections data. The Minnesota Historical Society employs a set of data standards that allows us to gather electronic cataloging data from a wide community of archaeology researchers depositing collections at MNHS. Though met with initial resistance, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael E. Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Ephemeral Aggregated Settlements: Fluidity, Failure or Resilience?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research suggests that temporary aggregation sites were more common in the past than many traditional models would predict. Why have scholars failed to recognize these sites? Why do they seem so strange? Beyond the development of more refined methods of settlement analysis, a major reason is a pervasive conflation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Klessig.

This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tools used in the creation of textiles can be made of numerous materials, including stone, clay, metal, wood, bone, and anther, just to name a few. Numerous experiments in creating tools, such as spindle whorls, loom weights, needles, combs, and weaving battens have been carried...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Esteban Rangel. Heather Edgar.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of three-dimensional (3D) models for skeletal analysis has become common practice for osteological research. However, current methods for obtaining the 3D models are either too costly, such as computer tomography (CT), or require time-consuming post-processing such as scanners or cameras. Recent advances in technology have resulted in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randall McGuire.

This is an abstract from the "In Defense of Everything! Constructive Engagements with Graeber and Wengrow’s Provocative Contribution" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “The Dawn of Everything" urges us to rethink the most basic concepts of culture and cultural evolution. Waving the black flag of anarchism, Graeber and Wengrow question the widespread idea that inequality and exploitation were unavoidable consequences of human technological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shauna Latosky. Pascale de Robert.

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This chapter offers a comparative look at the labrets of the Mebêngôkre (Brazil) and Mursi (Ethiopia) with a special emphasis on how lip-plates are made, worn, valued, and evaluated at a normative level. By normative, we mean the historical, technical, symbolic, and discursive ways in which such practices are understood by the Mursi and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kappelman. Matthew Hill. Frank Huffman.

This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Larry Todd has played a central role in applying taphonomy to studies of prehistoric human behavior. He developed standardized and, most importantly, reproducible methods of observational quantification. We here present studies of Trinil (Java) and Hadar (Ethiopia), both of which figure prominently in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Hamilton.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date, the “Bayesian Revolution” in archaeology has focused primarily on statistical inference: the move from hypothesis testing to credence building. Bayesian thinking extends far beyond the practicalities of statistical inference. Bayesian theory is about epistemology; it describes how we acquire knowledge of the world by reducing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ventura Pérez.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his article, Bioarchaeology as Anthropology (2003:27), George Armelagos noted that, "scientists’ perceptions of their discipline clearly influence how they frame their research agenda." This paper will illustrate how all such agendas are politicized. To engage with violence in the past from the safety of your labs and computer screens is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlieke Ernst. Brendan J. M. Weaver.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster we present a ceramic phenomenon occurring at two Spanish colonial sites of differing spatial and temporal provenience in the Spanish Americas. The appearance of various African influenced comb-dragged and wavy line motifs in Cotuí and Concepción de la Vega (early colonial Caribbean, 1495-1562) as well as at the haciendas of San Francisco Xavier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Cameron Monroe.

The Archaeology of the African Diaspora has long privileged the analysis of the everyday lives of enslaved Africans living on plantation sites in the New World. Notwithstanding the political and intellectual importance of this approach to our understanding of the emergence of the colonial world and its contemporary legacies, recent scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic has examined the new political entities that arose across the Black Atlantic World in dynamic tension with broader Atlantic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Fauvelle. Peter Jordan.

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One critical aspect of complex watercraft is their transformative power to amplify the impacts of social connections with distant places by allowing for longer, larger, and more frequent interactions. In many small-scale and indigenous societies, the use of advanced boats allowed for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Dolan.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The movement of people, objects, and ideas between the American Southwest/Northwest Mexico (SW/NW) and Mesoamerica is one of the most enduring and debated research topics in American archaeology. Pueblo and Mesoamerican groups prominently used obsidian for hunting, warfare, and ceremony, but is there Mesoamerican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zev Cossin.

This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through European colonization, plantations and haciendas became infrastructures that “settled.” These colonial infrastructures transformed social and ecological relations throughout the Americas as they displaced Indigenous peoples from the land. Later, other forms of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I describe a new approach to understanding life and social dynamics in premodern cities around the world. Early cities varied considerably in their political and economic organization and dynamics. My approach is transdisciplinary in scope, scientific in epistemology, and anchored in the urban literature of the social sciences. The central concept is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shevan Wilkin.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biomolecular analyses (proteins, stable isotopes, lipids, and DNA) have been integral in identifying the economic roles of domesticated animals in archaeological contexts. Materials such as human remains, dental calculus, ceramic matrices, and archaeological residues can provide valuable information on which animals were used for primary and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of the dynamics and stability of human systems cannot be uncoupled from their environmental and ecological contexts. Archaeological knowledge can deeply inform, enhance and transform our understanding of socio-ecological dynamics and sustainability, if we can only quantitatively assess these interactions. One...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin McBride.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Metal detectors are rarely employed in CRM research yet their utility in locating historic sites of low visibility and artifact density have been effectively demonstrated in Battlefield Archaeology studies. This paper will argue for the importance and utility of metal detector surveys in CRM through several case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) are one of the extremely rich and varied crop genetic resources of the Americas. The independent domestication of five chili pepper species (C. annuum, C. baccatum, C. chinense, C. frutescens, and C. pubescens) across the Neotropics beginning around 10,000 BP was an intricate co-evolutionary process between these piquant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Leppard. Sarah Murray.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Characteristic of many states is a legal monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Conversely, in small-scale normatively egalitarian societies entitlements to wield violent force are often diffuse and informally adjudicated. State formation thus frequently involves the formalization...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Phipps. Lucy Commoner. Nobuko Shibayama.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long distance trade of precious materials such as spondylus shell or turquoise took place in the Precolumbian world. However, at the same time, the associations between particularly local materials and their long-term...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Sterling.

This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What do archaeologists mean when we talk about heritage? That depends in large part on our often-shifting positionality within broader heritage discourses. Western archaeologists often investigate what we might describe as our own heritage as well as that of others, both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Cameron.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Raiding and captive-taking were common activities in small-scale societies prior to the modern era. A majority of captives were women and children; some were enslaved while others were incorporated into the societies they joined. Ethnohistoric accounts make it clear that regardless of their social position, captives created power for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Stone.

This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Engaging social theory with bioarchaeological analyses offers provocative ways of re-examining (pre) historic populations. With regards to violence and conflict, the research continues to be driven by androcentric notions that this is a man’s arena, and that females, when associated with violence, are only victims....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Paige. Charles Perreault.

Acheulean large cutting tools were made across Africa and Eurasia for ~1.5 million years, and show surprisingly little variation for a technology so spatiotemporally vast. One explanation for this puzzling degree of conservatism is that Acheulean tools were not culturally transmitted but rather genetically determined. If this hypothesis is true, then Acheulean tools are more akin to animal technologies such as bird nests than to modern human tools. Here we examine the extent to which the...