North America: Midwest (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (363 Records)
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. Currently, an alarming number of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss caused by human activities and climate change. Though numerically unprecedented, this may not be the first instance of a human-driven mass extinction. For decades, scholars have hypothesized that human predation led to the...
The 700-Year-Old Guth Dugout: From Arkansas to Cahokia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Guth dugout is named for the finder Matt Guth, who found the dugout on a sandbar in a meander portion of the St. Francois River in 2008. The dugout was exposed after floodwaters receded and due to the find location, Guth was determined to be the rightful owner. The dugout was over 6 m long and in remarkable shape given its age. In 2009, the...
An Analysis of 3D Mapping Methods of Historic Burials at Bethel Cemetery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2018, cultural resource management professionals in collaboration with local universities excavated a nineteenth-century cemetery as part of planned infrastructure expansion by the Indianapolis International Airport. Project...
Analyzing Stress, Discovering Cooperation: A case study of a Late Archaic sample from the Green River region of Kentucky (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable portions of bioarchaeological work have been dedicated to examining evidence of violence and conflict, little research has been devoted to understanding collaboration in the past. Analysis of stress biomarkers, particularly that which utilizes an osteobiographical approach, provides one potential avenue for...
Ancient Indigenous Cuisine: Multiproxy Investigations of Food Choice and Cooking (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of pottery function analysis alongside analysis of adhered food residues on ancient pottery offers new insights into past foodstuff selection and cooking methods, aka cuisine. Identification of phytoliths and starches present in carbonized food residues provides evidence of specific plant species processed in ceramic cooking vessels, while...
Approaching Monument Diversity in the Woodland Societies of the Central Scioto Valley (2018)
The Woodland societies of the central Scioto Valley are renowned for various aspects of their ceremonial practices. Among the better known are craft production of ornate works from exotic materials and the erection of vast monumental landscapes. Those construction practices led to monuments with an incredible diversity of form, scale, and organization. This variability is yet difficult to explain, with the existing explanations differing widely and being inter-related with various other social...
Archaeological Evidence of Human Hunting and North American Megafauna Extinctions: A Statistical Reassessment of the Fenske Bone Surface Modifications (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists continue to debate what caused the mass extinction of North American megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene—human hunting, climate change, or a combination of both. This debate persists because archaeologists lack standardized methodologies to relate unobservable human hunting behaviors with fossilized animal remains. Some...
Archaeology for the People: Community-Based Research, Hands-On Education, and their Place in Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology has long captured the minds of the public, but it has not always been as open to community involvement as it could be. How could the field change if our research was run by, with, and for communities? How can archaeology shape the minds of young people through educational programs? When used in a hands-on educational manner,...
Archaeology in Public Schools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper, focused in Bloomington, Indiana public schools, discusses how students understand and how students experience classroom interactions with objects. This research was conducted in an attempt to increase STEM skills and involvement with archaeology museums. Using collections and archaeology kits, I brought interactive experiences to classrooms to...
Archaic Copper Economy and Exchange in the Western Great Lakes: A Comparative Study from Two Wisconsin Localities (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research presents the results of an analysis of a large privately curated collection of Archaic period (Old Copper Complex) copper from the Western Great Lakes. Results from metric, LA-ICP-MS chemical characterization, and radiometric dating analyses will be presented. The data set is drawn from a collection of over 2000 formal copper tools recovered by a...
Archeobotany of the Lower Illinois Valley: The Legacy of Stuart Struever (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Village, the Region, and Beyond: Stuart Struever (1931–2022) and the Lower Illinois River Valley Research Program" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1960 Stuart Struever initiated an “Illinois Valley Archaeological Program” and devoted his research over the next decade to study of Middle Western Hopewell manifestations. He set out to test a hypothesis that the adoption of a simple mudflat agriculture conducted on...
Artifact Highlights from the Yeo Site (23CL199): A Kansas City Hopewell Site (2018)
The St. Louis Veterans Curation Program has close to 50 investigations currently being processed in our lab. One of these investigations is from the Smithville Lake Project area in the Kansas City District. This investigation alone contains materials from 27 different sites including the Yeo Site (23CL199) and dates from the late 6th to 7th century A.D. The site was excavated by Kansas State University archaeologists ca. July 1976 and this past year, veteran technicians began processing the...
Assessing Complexity through Architectural Analysis at Angel Mounds (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Angel Mounds (12VG1) is a fortified Mississippian multi-mound center on the Ohio River in Vanderburgh County, Indiana. With 11 mounds, hundreds of residential structures, a prepared plaza, and massive daubed palisade wall, previous researchers have suggested Angel is at the top of a complex regional settlement hierarchy in the Ohio Valley. However, to-date,...
Assessing Continuity and Change in Paleoindian Landscape use through Time in Indiana: Implications for site Predictive Modeling (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent completion of the Indiana State Historic Preservation Office’s SHAARD database provides researchers with a comprehensive site archive that includes site locations, projectile point typologies, raw material types, and a marginal record of site details. We use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze the distribution of over six hundred Early, Middle, and...
Assessing Our Impact: An Examination of the Role of Historic Preservation in the Gentrification of Urban Centers in the Midwestern United States (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 few decades urban centers, especially in the Midwestern United States, have experienced "revitalizations" that have completely altered the socio-political and ethnic make-ups of these cities. While historic preservation does not always play a role in the gentrification of cities—especially in urban locations were the emphasis has been placed on...
Assessing the Distribution of Limestone Temper in Southern Ohio (2018)
The earliest known occurrence of limestone temper usage in Ohio began sometime during the Middle Woodland Period, and becomes common in Late Woodland cave sites in the southern part of the state. However, little is known about the overall temporal and geographic distribution of this temper type. Toward this end, we analyze pottery throughout the southern Ohio Woodland period by assessing it with hydrochloric acid (HCl) for the presence or absence of limestone. The results of this examination...
Aztalan from the Perspective of Institutions of Social Relatedness (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Aztalan is located between the modern cities of Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, and is commonly identified as Mississippian, dating to about AD 1000. The site has been known since the 1800s, and many amateur and professional archaeologists have excavated there. Much of...
A Bayesian Approach to the Emergence and Decline of Cahokia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence and decline of Cahokia, the largest Indigenous settlement north of Mexico, have long captivated archaeologists. Population reconstructions are a major line of evidence for unraveling the story of Cahokia. Current models hinge upon reconstructions derived from architectural data which estimate population by tracking the quantity of observed...
Beer, Bologna, and Beaux-Esprits: A Legacy of John R. White (2018)
This paper discusses the public engagement of the late Dr. John R White through stories, observations, and news media. White, who passed away in 2009, had been an archaeologist at Youngstown State University, where he led excavations, gave interviews, and presented the past since 1971. For many residents of the Mahoning Valley, White was a fixture, often teaching archaeology to his students, then later their children, and finally the grandchildren over the course of four decades. Not content to...
Bethel Cemetery Reburial, Agency, and Stakeholder Coordination (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bethel Cemetery excavation required extensive coordination with a number of agencies. Both the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology (SHPO) and the State Revolving Fund provided regulatory oversight. The scientific investigation was...
The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Academic Collaboration, Archaeological Science, and CRM (2019)
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. The Bethel Cemetery project combined the best of what the CRM and University communities have to offer, while documenting, exhuming, and relocating over 500 graves from a 19th century cemetery in Indianapolis, IN on an aggressive schedule. Over 30 professionals from the University of Indianapolis and IUPUI were...
Bethel Cemetery: Photogrammetric Field Methods in Burial Excavation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2018, cultural resource management professionals, in collaboration with local universities, relocated a nineteenth-century cemetery from an urban setting, as a component of planned infrastructure expansion by the Indianapolis...
Beyond the Big Valley: Expanding the Temporal, Spatial, and Cultural Context of Red Wing’s Silvernale Phase (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Red Wing Region in the northern Mississippi valley is best known for the Silvernale phase characterized by extensive but ambiguous evidence of some kind of relationship to Middle Mississippian communities downriver. The last two decades of research here have greatly clarified the nature of Red Wing communities during this phase as...
Bones at the End of River Street: A Graphic Ethnography of a Bridge in Lansing, Michigan (2018)
There are bones of a bridge in Lansing exposed on the muddy banks of the Grand. In this cityscape, a "Sortatropolis", a once urban space now emaciated and exhausted. There would have been nothing special about this bridge to make its 1987 demolition, its absence, a remarkable tragedy, except that its disappearance can be directly connected to the long exhale of this once thriving capital. The Sortatropolis is haunted by the ghosts of auto industry moguls, lumber barons, and boot-strapping...
Bound to the Western Waters: Searching for Lewis and Clark at Ft. Kaskaskia, Illinois (2018)
Lewis and Clark recruited 11 soldiers from the small US Army outpost of Ft. Kaskaskia (1802-1807), Illinois, in 1803 to join their expedition to explore the American west. This event traditionally has been identified as having occurred at a 1750s French fort of the same name. The 2017 SIU summer field school investigations within the fort walls including the use of LIDAR, GPR, and hand excavations revealed that the fort is primarily a single component French construction dating to the mid-1700s...