North America: Great Plains (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (236 Records)
The late 1200s and 1300s saw substantial population shifts in the eastern Plains and Midwest. These occurred in the context of profound sociopolitical and demographic changes, particularly the political decline and depopulation of Cahokia, and regional climatic variation, including significant changes in northern hemisphere temperatures and severe regional droughts. Oneota groups expanded into the east-central Great Plains during this time, at the same time that indigenous Plains farmers...
Oral Metagenomes from Native American Ancestors Reveal Distinct Microbial Lineages in the Precontact Era (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Disruption of the microbial community in the oral cavity, by diet, host genetics, or environmental factors, can lead to dysbiosis, promoting preferential growth of pathogenic microorganisms leading to a diseased state. The calcified matrix of dental calculus is a good source for ancient biomolecules belonging to bacterial species, allowing researchers to...
Paleoecology of the Late Pleistocene Fauna from the Lamb Spring Site, Colorado (2018)
The Lamb Spring site located in central Colorado is a late Quaternary locality with stratified Pleistocene and Holocene faunal remains. The late Pleistocene component is dominated by mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) but contains other grazing taxa like horse, bison, American camel, Harlan’s ground sloth, etc. The general lack of microfauna from this horizon makes detailed paleoecological interpretations difficult. However, the megafauna point to a dominance of grassland with the possibility of...
Paleoindian Activity in the Washakie Wilderness, Absaroka Range, Wyoming (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. More than 15 years of systematic surveys in the Washakie Wilderness area by the GRSLE archaeology project in the Shoshone National Forest, northwest Wyoming, has yielded a sample of over 30 Paleoindian projectile points at a mean elevation of 2885m. These specimens provide clues about early prehistoric activity at...
Paleoindian Intercept Hunting in the Bethel Locality, Western Oklahoma (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The narrow divide between the Canadian and Washita rivers in west central Oklahoma is the location of multiple historic transportation routes. The Rock Island Railroad, U.S. Highway 66 and Interstate Highway 40 all parallel the route of the early historic California Road. These routes followed a game trail which was a focus for prehistoric hunting. Prominent...
Paracosmic Play Areas in Western Plains Boarding and Day Schools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood play areas represent a complete departure from the landscapes that archaeologists often examine in that they exist within adults’ domestic, logistic, and/or sacred spaces yet simultaneously outside of any of these spatial ideals. The difficulty in analyzing these areas is further compounded when Indigenous ontologies are considered, especially...
Paracosmic Play Areas in Western Plains Boarding and Day Schools (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood play areas represent a complete departure from the landscapes that archaeologists often examine in that they physically exist within adult domestic, logistic, and/or sacred spaces yet simultaneously outside of any of these spatial ideals. The difficulty in analyzing these areas is further compounded when the implications of Indigenous ontologies...
Passing Through or Settling Down? Paleoindian Occupation of Colorado’s Southern Rocky Mountains, USA (2018)
Colorado is well known for dense concentrations of Paleoindian sites found within its eastern plains and in multiple high altitude basins (Middle Park, Gunnison Basin, San Luis Valley) to the west. Prominent mountain ranges separate these clusters of sites, and the question remains, when were these mountains first crossed and/or utilized? These high altitude settings (elevations routinely topping 3000-4400 m) would have presented both challenges and opportunities for the earliest inhabitants of...
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Reading the Past and (Digital) Interpretation in the 21st Century, a Case Study from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming (2018)
During 2016 and 2017, Bighorn Archaeology participants used on-the-ground photogrammetric methods and aerial photography to document features at archaeological sites throughout the Bighorn Basin and surrounding foothills in northwestern Wyoming. The sample includes both horizontal and vertical features such as stone circles (tipi rings), a hunting driveline, defensive rock bulwarks, and pictograph rock shelter overhang panels. In this presentation, we discuss our evolving methodology and the...
Plains and Mountain Settlement Systems Change During the Earliest Holocene at the Sisters Hill Paleoindian Site (48JO314) (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. The Sisters Hill Paleoindian site is located between the Bighorn Mountains and the High Plains of the Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, two regions with largely distinct ecologies and chipped stone raw material sources. Accordingly, the site is an ideal place to research the causes of settlement system...
Pocket Gophers as Food? The Zooarchaeological Investigation of An Unusual Woodland Period Assemblage (2018)
The Rainbow site (13PM91) is a multi-component Middle to Late Woodland period site situated within the tallgrass prairie of northwest Iowa. Excavated in the late 1970’s, the site remains an important example due to its well excavated and substantial faunal collection. The current study focuses on the reanalysis of a concentration of pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) remains found within the Early-Late Woodland horizon C (AD 550-620). The surprising number and spatial concentration of pocket...
Polychrome Perplexities: The Painted Rock Art of the Southern Black Hills (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. Infrared, ultraviolet, and D-Stretch imaging has provided a more complete view of a complex set of black and red painted rock from the southern Black Hills of South Dakota. The painted designs include bison, bears, other quadrupeds, humans, net-, web-, and gridlike figures, atlatl darts, hand- and...
A Possible New Paleoindian Area of the Hell Gap Site: The 2018 Shovel Test at Locality IV (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 field season, a fluted preform was recovered during surface survey at Hell Gap Locality IV. A shovel test was dug at the location of the preform to investigate the stratigraphy, landform characteristics, and assess the possible age of the deposit. The test uncovered 675 very tightly vertically clustered artifacts,...
Postmarital Residence Patterns of Late Archaic Hunter-Gatherers from the Loma Sandia (41LK28) Site, Live Oak County, Texas: An Analysis Using 87Sr/86Sr (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists researching hunter-gatherers in the Texas Coastal Plains (TCP) and Central Texas have noted differences between sexes in carbon and nitrogen isotope studies. One explanation offered for these differences is due to mate exchange, specifically patrilocality. Evidence for hunter-gatherer patrilocality in Texas also comes from the ethnographic...
Prehistoric Use of the Wind Creek Locality at Fort Riley, Kansas (2018)
Fort Riley Army Installation in northeastern Kansas is bordered by Wildcat Creek, a tributary of the Kansas River that has a high density of prehistoric sites, including Smoky Hill hamlets and base camps. We review the CEMML surveys and site exams along Wind Creek - a tributary of Wildcat Creek - that have produced an unexpected density of upland prehistoric sites. In this context, we discuss the prehistoric sites types found along Wind Creek and explore how they are part of settlement...
A Preliminary Analysis of Bijou Hills Quartzite Blades from Site 21RK82 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents a preliminary analysis of blades derived from Bijou Hills quartzite, also known as Ogallala orthoquartzite, recovered from site 21RK82, a newly-identified multicompent site located within Lone Tree Heritage Farm in Rock County, MN. This study aimed to identify the geological attributes, function, and chronology of these artifacts...
A Preliminary Assessment of Athapaskan Land-Use Strategies in the Central High Plains (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Athapaskans entered the Central High Plains as part of a large migration from the Yukon River Basin. As these populations left the basin and moved south, they encountered new resources, resource distributions, landforms, and competition with local communities that would have challenged their existing land-use strategies, including settlement and mobility. This...
A Preliminary Assessment of Prehistoric-Contact Period Blackfoot Camp Demographics (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. The weakest link in reconstructing patterns of organizational complexity among Late Prehistoric Blackfoot ancestors known archaeologically as the Old Women’s Phase (1000-250 BP) is the dearth of population estimates that would explain the need to adopt institutions of social control such as esoteric societies and...
Prey and Predators on the Late Pleistocene Llano Estacado (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans are among the major predators on the Llano Estacado (Southern High Plains, USA) during the late Pleistocene in competition with a diverse carnivore guild that included the now-extinct giant short-faced bear, saber-tooth cat, American lion, and dire wolf. Direct evidence on bone in the form of cut marks and bone fracture patterns are used in...
Proboscideans, Drought, and Cyanobacteria: Natural Death Events both Present and Past (2023)
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. Lawrence Todd has made substantial contributions to the studies of taphonomy, Paleoindians, and megafauna, among other topics. His foundational research provides the basis for important questions to be asked about megafaunal extinctions. Drawing first on data on elephant deaths in northern Botswana in 2020 that...
Public Archaeology and Geophysical Survey of a Cemetery in North Dakota (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND) recently acquired a suite of geophysical survey equipment in preparation for collaboration with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation. At the same time, a small community cemetery contacted the SHSND for information on locating unmarked burials, as the descendant community...
Quantifying the Qualitative: Locating North-Central Kansas Burial Mounds (2018)
Scattered through parts of northeastern and north-central Kansas are prehistoric burial sites in the form of low rock and earthen mounds located atop bluffs overlooking stream valleys. In Kansas, the Unmarked Burial Sites Preservation Act exists to protect these sites, but this law is only effective if the location of these features is known. Most prehistoric mounds in this region are subtle in appearance, making them difficult to recognize. If sites are not recorded and protected, they may be...
The Quivira Connections (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although it was visited by three Spanish expeditions, knowledge of Quivira quickly became enshrouded in myth. Nevertheless, early documentary evidence suggests that the land of the ancestral Wichita was extensive, heavily populated, and an important source of bison products for both the Greater Southwest and the Southeast. At the western end, a...
Quivira in a New Light (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Quivira Revisited" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The identification of the "great settlement" visited by Juan de Oñate in 1601 has led to a wholesale revision of our understanding of protohistoric archaeology in Kansas. Instead of clusters of villages, the habitation sites of the Great Bend Aspect are large towns that contained thousands of residents. Sites of this scale require the use of remote sensing...
Raw Material Use though the Archaic at the Aught-Six Site: Northwestern Colorado (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we examine the data from a cultural resource management excavation of the Aught-Six site in northwestern Colorado. We utilize an expedited version of Minimum Analytical Nodule Analysis (MANA) to address the changes in lithic raw material use and acquisition during a 2,000 year period of the Middle Archaic (6400–4450 cal B.P.). We assign individual...