North America: Great Plains (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (236 Records)
Whiskey Flats, an archaeological site on the Llano Estacado (western Texas), is dated to the mid-18th century and represents Comanche occupation. Ongoing fieldwork has produced a vertebrate assemblage that includes coyote (Canis latrans) and a larger canid (Canis spp.) of a species that remains undetermined. The species of canids that may have been present at the time of deposition are grey wolf (C. lupus), coyote, domestic dog (C. lupus familiaris), and possibly red wolf (C. rufus). The Canis...
Adobe and Sod: Recent Results from a Multi-instrument Geophysical Survey at Fort Larned National Historic Site, Kansas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Geophysical and Geospatial Research in the National Parks" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2021 and 2023 archeologists at the Midwest Archeological Center conducted a multi-instrument geophysical survey at Fort Larned National Historic Site in Kansas. The survey sought to expand on previous archeological investigations and to provide baseline documentation of archeological resources across...
The Aftermath of Colonization: Wichita Subsistence Change in the Southern Plains (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. European colonization of North America had profound impacts on Native American populations. These include the introduction of European diseases and warfare, the consolidation and abandonment of traditional lands, and the eventual forced relocation to reservations. Previously, much archaeological focus has been on the demographic, social, and political...
The Ages of Stemmed and Fluted Points in the Northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains (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. While the relative and absolute ages of fluted and stemmed points remain unclear in the Great Basin, particularly in the earliest periods of prehistory, to the northeast in Wyoming the archaeological record is unambiguous. Fluted points are consistently older than stemmed points, an observation supported...
Alm Shelter: A Preliminary Report on a Deeply Stratified Rockshelter in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alm rockshelter, located at the mouth of Paintrock Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, contains a well-stratified cultural sequence spanning roughly 11,000 years (Late Paleoindian through the Late Prehistoric). Preliminary analyses demonstrate that the site was occupied and used variably over this time, particularly in periods of population growth and...
Ambrose Bierce’s Indian Inscriptions: Biographic Art Along the Bozeman Trail (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1866 Ambrose Bierce accompanied the Hazen expedition whose tour inspected military outposts in the Department of the Platte. During cartographic work, Bierce recorded two "Indian inscriptions," one petroglyph on the Powder River near Ft. Reno, and an arborglyph on the Yellowstone River upstream from Pompey’s...
Ancient DNA Analyses of Dental Calculus from Plains Village Collections (2018)
More than a generation since the implementation of NAGPRA, many museums continue forward with the process of repatriation. This creates a unique opportunity for active and collaborative engagement of Native American communities in both the inception and implementation of scientific research. Biomolecular analyses of dental calculus can be an attractive research avenue because they address questions of mutual interest to tribes and scientists, and the sampling techniques are non-destructive to...
Ancient Landscapes of the Rocky Mountain Front: A View from the Billy Big Springs Site, MT (2018)
The northern Rocky Mountain Front contains critical information regarding human exploration and colonization of the continent. Yet, reconstructed paleo-landscapes in the region extending from southern Alberta to northern Montana have focused almost exclusively on the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Billy Big Springs, a multi-component site located just east of East Glacier Park, provides new data on long-term natural (as old as 21,000 cal. BP) and cultural (post 14,000 to 700 cal. BP) landscape...
Apishapa Structures and Subsistence Strategies in Purgatoire Canyon Colorado (2018)
From 2002 to the present we excavated five Apishapa Structures in the Purgatoire Canyon. This presentation will provide a brief synthesis of structural types and food ways of the sites inhabitants. It appears that maize and a variety of wild plants made up a considerable portion of the Apishapa diet. Analysis of the floral remains from these sites indicate the sites inhabitants relied heavily on available edible plants but also consumed exotics such as pecans. This brief synthesis puts forth our...
Archaeological Collaboration in Northwest Wyoming: Recording BLM Sites with College Students (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community-Based Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports on a developing collaboration in northwest Wyoming between Northwest College (NWC) and the Bureau of Land Management, Cody Field Office (BLM). The collaboration began as an informal partnership where college students visited prehistoric archaeological sites on BLM land as part of an extra credit field trip. This past fall,...
Archaeological Excavation and Survey at Cherokee Ranch, Douglas County, Colorado (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In cooperation with the Cherokee Ranch and Castle Foundation, Metropolitan State University – Denver has conducted excavation and survey on the Foundation’s property near Sedalia, CO since 2014. Excavations have taken place at the Cherokee Mountain Rock Shelter (5DA1001) that was previously partly excavated in the 1970s. Artifacts and radiocarbon assays...
Archaeological Field Schools Beyond Buzzwords: Engaging with Critical Pedagogy while Connecting with Administrative Goals (2018)
Although archaeological field schools are widely accepted as a prerequisite for employment in the field, a disconnect has developed between universities sponsoring these courses and the instructors who teach them. Field schools are unique experiential learning opportunities, the value of which can be difficult to communicate to university administrators who set course minimum enrollments and summer tuition rates. Instead of just thinking of field schools as a means to teach skills necessary...
Archaeological Investigations of the Archaic and Paleoindian Occupations at Hall’s Cave, Texas (2018)
Hall’s Cave is a well-studied paleontological site that has provided a detailed climatic record for the Texas Hill-country from the late Pleistocene through the Holocene. There have been no discussions, however, of the archaeological record of the cave deposits. Archaeological excavations at Hall’s Cave conducted in 2017 revealed a 3 m thick, well-stratified sequence of sediments derived from the watershed outside the cave. Early deposits ranging from 18,000 to14,000 cal yr B.P. contain the...
An Archaeological Perspective on Oral Traditions, Regarding Migration, of the Northern Caddoan Speaking Tribes (2018)
Affiliating prehistoric archaeological sites with contemporary indigenous communities in American archaeology is often met with skepticism and criticism. As a means for overcoming the inherent criticism; I utilize the oral traditions, regarding migration, of the Northern Caddoan speaking tribes as a means to construct a relative chronology for which these populations moved across the landscape in prehistory. Then I compare the relative chronology with the archaeological record. By comparing site...
The Archaeological Repository of Colorado State University: Expanding Opportunities for Accessibility and Research (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. Colorado State University is one of many universities and museums with extensive collections of archaeological material. Each institution has unique and noteworthy collections with material specific to the region and to the research interests of faculty and curators. The...
Archaeological, Paleoenvironmental, and Geoarchaeological Investigations of Hall’s Cave, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hall’s Cave, located in central Texas, contains a 4 m thick geological record extending back to 20,000 cal yr B.P. Within these sediments is an archaeological record dating from the historic period to approximately 10,500 cal yr B.P. with living surfaces containing artifacts and animal bones associated with hearths. Over 60 hearth features, including over 40...
Archaic Period Obsidian Use in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: The 48PA551 Assemblage in Regional Context (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In comparison to other Archaic sites in the eastern portions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), the Dead Indian Creek site (48PA551) has an unusually high number of obsidian projectile points (N=29). Geochemical source characterization of 23 of the 48PA551 obsidian points...
Architecture and Human Behavior at a Folsom Period Residential Camp (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mountaineer Folsom site, located in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, contains evidence of at least four substantial habitation structures occupied over the course of at least one winter residence. The structures required significant energetic investment in their construction and were...
Arriving at a Meaningful Rock Art Interpretation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Knowing the past through rock art interpretation has been a hallmark of Polly Schaafsma’s rock art studies. She has advocated and practiced her stance that the meaning of rock art is not a guessing game but is instead the result of data collection and analysis completed within a theoretical...
Assessing Cortex at the Beaucoup Site (24PH188/189) in Northern Montana (2018)
Although archaeological analyses of lithic assemblages generate large quantities of data, it can be difficult to equate the observations with past behaviors. One variable state regularly recorded is that of cortex. The presence/absence of cortex is often linked to reduction intensity with variable cortical frequencies linked to early or late stage reduction and potentially reflective of residential mobility. However, we lack reliable markers or values to support our interpretations. Recently,...
An Assessment of Central Plains Tradition Ceramic Variation in the Flint Hills Region of the Eastern Plains, USA (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Central Plains tradition (CPt) encompasses a variety of Late Prehistoric adaptations in the eastern Plains between AD 1100 and 1400. Cultural taxa within the CPt often are defined by certain pottery types within defined areas along the Kansas and Missouri River valleys. The Smoky Hill phase is a CPt taxon for the Flint Hills region in the Kansas River...
Assessment of Late Quaternary Bison Diminution Using Linear Discriminant Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The proximate cause of reduction in the overall size of late Quaternary bison is the focus of continued debate. Some researchers contend that size reduction did not occur despite well-documented changes in climate and vegetation, while others link directional change in body size to changes in forage quality and availability or human predation. Historically,...
Athapaskans on the Plains: A Glimpse of Dismal River Lithic Technology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent interest in early Athapaskan population movements has led to the reconsideration of Dismal River sites on the Central Plains during the mid-16th to 18th centuries. Although most archaeologists recognize Dismal River people as ancestral Apache, an unclear archaeological record and outdated evidence has led...
Bayesian Analysis of the Chronology of the Lynch Site (25BD1) and Comparisons to the Central Plains Tradition and Central Plains Oneota (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper uses a Bayesian approach to existing and new radiocarbon dates to examine the chronology of three distinct 13th through 15th-century occupations on the Central Plains. First, we present new dates from the Lynch Site (25BD1) on Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska and examine them in relation to dates on related sites along Ponca Creek. Second, we...
Bayesian Multilevel Models of Diachronic Dietary Trajectories (DDTs) from 13,000 years of Great Plains Faunal Exploitation (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. Zooarchaeologists rely on long-term records of faunal remains to study significant diachronic changes in human-environmental interactions, including foraging-farming transitions, human-driven extinctions, animal translocations, and the development of complex societies. Here, we define the magnitude and direction of change observed in the...