North America: Great Plains (Geographic Keyword)

51-75 (212 Records)

Decoding Knudson’s Flintknappers: A 3D Model Analysis of the Plainview Bison Kill Projectile Points (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Stance Hurst. Eileen Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavated in the mid-1940s, the Plainview site on the Southern High Plains generated considerable interest and continues to do so today. After hours spent illustrating each flake scar of the Plainview (41HA1) bison kill site’s lithic assemblage, Knudson stated in her 1973 dissertation that “perhaps only one and at...


Discard, Stockpile, or Commemorative Cairn: Interpreting the Bison Skull Pile at the Ravenscroft Late Paleoindian Bison Kill, Oklahoma Panhandle (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Leland Bement. Kristen Carlson. Dakota Larrick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bison crania without mandibles form a vertical cluster in the earliest of two arroyos at the ~10,400 year old Ravenscroft bison kill site in the Oklahoma panhandle. The skulls were stacked on the arroyo floor, eventually forcing subsequent kills to relocate to an adjacent arroyo. A combined total of five winter kill events have been documented in the two...


Dismal River Housing: A Comparative Study of Apache Housing Structures (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Banks.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancestral Apache sites located in the eastern Central Plains of Kansas and Nebraska date to AD 1500-1800, and are frequently associated with small, circular wickiup house structures. A number of these localities have a high degree of preservation that allows for a detailed study of the architecture and construction techniques of these people. This poster will...


DNA-Based Determination of Microbial Community Structure in Soils from the La Prele Mammoth Site (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Macy Ricketts. Naomi Ward. Todd Surovell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleomicrobiology is probably best known as an approach that yields anthropological findings connected to human health and disease, such as long-term records of oral microbiomes recovered from ancient dental calculus. However, the tools of microbial ecology have been tested for their potential to address other anthropological questions, and aid in...


Documenting the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis at the Lynch Site (25BD1), Nebraska (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Bamforth. Kristen Carlson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maize farmers settled the Lynch site in northeastern Nebraska from the late 1200s through the 1300s during a period of significant drought and social, demographic, and economic changes linked to Cahokia’s decline. Oneota groups expanded westward into the central Great Plains during this time as indigenous Central Plains Tradition farmers abandoned the western...


Dog Diet Reconstruction as a Tool to Assess Forager Response to Introduction of Agriculture in the Northern Plains: Stable Isotope Analysis and Ancient DNA Data (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Fisher. Kelsey Witt.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to agriculture in the Great Plains of North America is generally assumed to have occurred through processes of migration and diffusion. But understanding the nuance of this transition at local and subregional scales requires a focus on different types of social interactions and community-level decision-making. One method is to use dogs...


Dr. Lynn Fredlund, Archaeologist of the Northwestern Plains (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer. Gene Munson.

This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lynn Fredlund was a product of the 1960s, the decade before women exploded onto the archaeological scene on the Northern Plains. She was one of the earliest archaeologists to earn her living as a contract archaeologist and one of the first in the region to earn a PhD while actively...


DStretch contributions to Sacred Sites Projects in Montana and Wyoming (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Harman.

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 2014 – 16 I participated in Sacred Sites Research rock art documentation projects in Montana and Wyoming, led by Larry Lowendorf. My contribution was my expertise with the DStretch program, which I created. DStretch proved to be an important resource in aiding the documentation of sites and recognizing...


An Early Archaic Melting Pot in the Southern Rocky Mountains: Early Holocene Mobility and Settlement Patterns in the Gunnison Basin, Colorado (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ankele.

In comparison to the Late Paleoindian Period (10,000-8,000 rcybp), the Early Archaic (8,000-6,500 rcybp) in the Gunnison Basin, Colorado is a poorly understood time because of its relatively light archaeological signature. Not only is the archaeological record more ephemeral, but we also see a change in technologies, such as projectile points types, in this transitional period. Some archaeologists explain these observations as a result of changing environments and shifting settlement processes...


Eastern Plains Land Management and Archaeological Site Discovery Methods at Fort Riley, Kansas (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Koerner. Eric Skov. Brett Giles.

The cultural resource program at Fort Riley manages 100k acres in the Flint Hills province of northeastern Kansas. Variations in the Flint Hills landscape influence the use of different archaeological site discovery methods. While floodplain settings with deep soil deposits necessitate regular subsurface testing, higher elevation settings with low soil accumulation require less intensive survey methods. Many prehistoric sites in higher elevation, upland landscapes are expressed largely by...


Ecology of Bison in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Cannon.

Bringing the geologically historic record to bear on questions of ecosystem evolution is a goal emphasized in recent National Research Council reports. Within this context one species has become significant, the bison of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Recent expansion of the population, and its subsequent migration outside federal lands, has created concern among federal managers, local ranchers, and conservation groups. However, much of what is known about pre-management herds is based...


Elk Hooves and Sharpening Grooves: Evaluating the Relationship between Three Rock Art Types on the Great Plains (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Van Alst.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hoofprint markings are a widespread macro tradition across the Plains and Great Lakes region but their relationship to elk imagery has not been fully explored. Along those lines, limited research has been done on what is known of track grooves or rock art imagery attributed to Indigenous women sharpening...


Engaging the Public: The Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrien Hannus.

This is an abstract from the "Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village (39DV2), an Initial Middle Missouri site in the James River valley of southeastern South Dakota, serves as the platform for this presentation. The site boasts both a museum with a variety of exhibits relating to Plains Village cultures and a facility called the...


Engaging with the Hell Gap Digital Archives through the Lens of Ruthann Knudson's "The Early Expeditions" (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Lynch. Mary Lou Larson. Marcel Kornfeld.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruthann Knudson's chapter, "The Early Expeditions: University of Wyoming, Harvard University, and the Peabody Museum," in *Hell Gap: A Stratified Paleoindian Campsite at the Edge of the Rockies, pulls together a range of experiences from the earliest discovery of the site. The chapter unfolds like a road map through...


Equus caballus during the Protohistoric: Looking for the Horse in the Archaeological Record (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassidee A. Thornhill.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The introduction of Equus caballus (modern horse) into Native American life on the Plains during European-American contact has been associated with major cultural and ecological changes to native lifeways. The horse influenced a variety of cultural practices including the distance at which resources could be exploited, the number of material goods that could...


Establishing Provenance of Ochre from the La Prele Mammoth Site: A Geochemical Analysis (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Zarzycka. Todd Surovell. Madeline Mackie. Spencer Pelton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Red ochre is a ferrous iron oxide mineral used for cultural expression and utilitarian tasks by hominins beginning 250,000 years ago. The use of ochre continued into the New World. While its use by Paleoindians has been noted, the function and significance of ochre for these groups is not well understood. To conceive the importance of ochre to Paleoindians, it...


Estimating Orthoquartzite Quarry Production on The Llano Estacado (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Ozbun.

Morrison Formation red orthoquartzite was procured, reduced, and exported as large percussion flake blanks from a late pre-contact quarry and workshop (LA21699) near Tucumcari, New Mexico. Experimental flintknapping replication of the orthoquartzite reduction technology represented at the aboriginal quarry/workshop site produced data on the average frequency of various technologically diagnostic flake types per reduction event. Comparing these experimental flake type frequencies with...


Ethnogenesis at the Lynch Site (25BD1), Nebraska through Pottery Analysis (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Carlson. Haley Sherwood. Dagny Anderson. Amelia Cisar. Andrew Kracinski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lynch site occupied in the late 1200s saw substantial environmental and population shifts in the context of profound regional sociopolitical and demographic changes. Oneota groups expanded into the east-central Great Plains at the same time that indigenous Plains farmers abandoned the western parts of their ranges and moved east. Interactions between these...


Evaluating "Folsom" Points in the Blackwater Draw Museum’s Calvin Smith Collection (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph McConnell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Folsom projectile points are housed and displayed by museums around the country, but many are donated by collectors without the accompaniment of information documenting their original archaeological context. As a result, questions surrounding their authenticity hamper their ability to contribute to collections-based archaeological research of the Folsom time...


Evaluating Differential Animal Carcass Transport Decisions at Regional Scales using Bayesian Mixed-Effects Models (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Breslawski.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists frequently face the problem of explaining uneven skeletal element representation, with explanations involving either non-human taphonomic agents or differential carcass transport decisions made by humans. Existing statistical methods for evaluating these explanations are generally applicable at the...


Evaluating Potential Time Signatures within Extant Microbial Communities in Stratified Soils at the La Prele Mammoth Site (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Macy Ricketts. Naomi Ward. Todd Surovell. Maddie Mackie.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies of microbial communities in terrestrial environments have shown that an input of environmental "triggers" within soil substrate can activate dormant soil microorganisms. Additionally, deep within marine coal deposits, it has been discovered that forest soil microbes thrive, despite their oceanic surroundings. However, terrestrial microbial...


Experimental Recreation of Shell Fishing Implements at Mitchell Indian Village in South Dakota (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Behling. L. Adrien Hannus.

Over the years of excavation at the Prehistoric Indian Village at Mitchell, several similar shell artifacts were discovered. Excavators came to the hypothesis that the shell items had been fishing lures, and set out to test it. The shell artifacts were replicated and used as lures on several fishing expeditions. These shell items functioned as lures, and we are led to believe that the artifacts found at Mitchell could indeed have been fishing lures.


Fadeaway Environments and How Infrastructure Change Creates Ghost Towns and Societal Remnants (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Sando.

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. Infrastructure decisions influence human settlement and can leave archaeologic and geographic evidence for us to discover and decipher. Discovery in that much of this evidence has faded away into the environmental background of current human occupation and can be rediscovered by...


Four Horns Lake: Physical and Spiritual Interactions (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Soza. Evelyn Pickering. François Lanoë. María Nieves Zedeño.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Four Horns Lake, located on the southern end of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, was surveyed in July 2018 as part of the expansion and rehabilitation project for the Four Horns Dam. Built in the early 1900s, current focus on this dam has induced action to record resources that may be impacted by development. The sacredness of Four Horns Lake to...


A Fourteenth-Century Southern Plains Star Chart (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Vehik.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1978 excavations in the first of four houses at the Uncas site (34KA172) produced several pieces of a burned clay panel carrying multiple fingertip impressions. Uncas is a late fourteenth-century site north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and south of Arkansas City, Kansas overlooking the Arkansas River. Several pieces of this panel were reassembled at that time,...