Trade and exchange (Other Keyword)
176-200 (271 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Projectile points are one of the few artifacts present on the surface of archaeological sites that may also serve as a diagnostic of the site’s relative age. A shift in the archaeological record can be seen through changes in projectile point technologies between the Late Archaic and the Historic periods in northwest Wyoming. The exact causes of these changes...
Obsidian Trade vs. Direct Acquisition: A View from Central California (2018)
Geochemical sourcing of lithic artifacts has proven to be a useful analytical tool for the studies of trade and mobility in the archaeological record. However, it is difficult to distinguish lithic material acquired through exchange from material acquired directly from the source. Economic models of lithic reduction suggest that material procured for the purpose of exchange may be treated differently than material procured for personal consumption. I compare obsidian source profiles and lithic...
Of Fish and Plague: Death as Economic Opportunity at the Medieval Fishing Station of Gufuskálar, Iceland (2018)
The high morbidity (50% or greater) of Iceland’s Black Death in 1404 C.E. disrupted a rigidly hierarchical Icelandic social order and led to an inability to enforce social and legal constraints on Iceland’s labor classes. This newly untethered and mobile lower class searched for avenues for wealth creation previously unavailable. One avenue, in the century following Iceland’s Black Death, was through fishing and fish exports. During this period, previously tightly restricted fish exports...
Olmec Asphalt Trade Revealed by Combined Biomarker and Chemometric Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within the Olmec region, resources such as basalt, asphalt, cacao, kaolin clay, and hematite pigment are available in discreet areas. This uneven distribution of raw materials has led some scholars to suggest that Olmec leaders controlled the sources of raw materials and regional trade, from which they derived their economic and political power. The...
Open Obsidian Geochemistry Visualization with an example from the Andes (2019)
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 open science movement is growing in archaeology, and raises fundamental questions about data and who it belongs to. In this talk, we outline a protocol for sharing data on obsidian sources to facilitate replicable research. While in obsidian sourcing a direct calibration is preferable (e.g., measuring source...
The Organization of Obsidian Exchange at Postclassic Sauce and its Hinterland in Veracruz, Mexico (2018)
I analyze residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland in combination with regional settlement data from Barbara Stark’s Proyecto Arqueológico La Mixtequilla (PALM I, II) to describe the structure of exchange, production, and consumption of obsidian chipped stone during the Middle Postclassic period (AD 1200-1350) in south-central Veracruz, Mexico. Previous research on obsidian production found a spatial association with Sauce, which could support political administration...
The Organization of Prismatic Blade Production at Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan, Central Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Systems of craft production and exchange in Mesoamerica are often correlated with the socio-political circumstances in which they formed, and such discussions are frequently applied to the organization of lithic industries, including the production of prismatic blades. Systems correlated with direct or centralized distribution networks are...
Origins and Movement of Tradeware Ceramics in the Bicol River, Philippines: Applying pXRF Technology to Trade and Interaction Research (2018)
The presence of tradeware ceramics (stoneware and porcelain) in the Philippines indicates interaction and exchange with foreign traders. Of particular interest is the spread of Ming (1368-1644) porcelain, which overlapped with the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. Ming ceramics are abundant in the archaeological record of the Philippines, spanning pre- and post-contact periods. These ceramics even became one of the major trade items during the Spanish Philippines. To establish the...
Over Land, Sea and the Space Between: Evidence for Multi-Scalar Interactions between Eastern Mediterranean and Central European Communities during the Bronze Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age in both the Mediterranean and Europe represents a period during which new socio-economic relationships were being forged that inextricably linked far-off communities. Within these discursive social networks, new commodities were traded over long-distances, new markets emerged, and along with novel...
Pacific Coastal Exchange in Postclassic Mexico: Wealth, Rituals, Feasts, and Marriages (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The pioneering fieldwork of Seler, Lumholtz, Saville, Sauer, Vaillant and Elkholm, the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología to officially recognize "Mixteca-Puebla" as the fourth and last major cultural horizon of the ancient Mexican World in 1945. By 1960 however, H.B. Nicholson had reduced Mixteca-Puebla to a provincial...
Petrographic Analysis of Ceramics from Umbro Greek, Southern Calabria, Italy (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 present the first results of petrographic analysis on ceramic sherds from Umbro Greek archaeological site, a Classical period farmhouse in Southern Calabria, Italy, dating from the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The site is located on the Umbro plateau, halfway between the Ionian Sea and the Aspromonte Massif, an area extensively researched by the Bova...
Petrography, Pots and People: Determining the source of Hohokam plainwares at Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora, Mexico. (2016)
Late prehistoric Sonora, Mexico was a dynamic landscape of warfare, mass migration and trade networks spanning modern international borders. At around AD1300 archaeologists have clear evidence of Hohokam populations moving from southern Arizona and displacing indigenous Trincheras populations in the Altar River Valley of Sonora. With a ceramic type called Sells Plain, Hohokam potters introduce a new ceramic manufacturing technology –paddle-and-anvil ceramics- to the region. In response to this...
Pitchstone in Prehistory: New Insights into the Mesolithic and Neolithic use of Pitchstone in Scotland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pitchstone is a glassy volcanic rock similar to obsidian but in Europe, its geological occurrence and its use as a raw material for prehistoric chipped-stone assemblages are much more restricted. In northern Britain where good quality flint is scarce, pitchstone circulated widely in the Neolithic with artifacts made from this...
Possible Evidence for Mimbres Integration into Jornada Mogollon Villages: Introducing the Eastern Mimbres San Andres Aspect in South-Central New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research at Jornada Mogollon Sites in South-Central New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Mesilla and Doña Ana phase villages within and adjacent to the Tularosa Basin have identified a set of cultural traits associated with the Mimbres culture. Extraordinarily high frequencies of Mogollon pottery, as well as similar mortuary patterns, agricultural practices, and possible evidence of...
A Post-Chacoan Cylindrical Vessel from Northern Black Mesa, Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recently identified Tusayan Polychrome (A.D. 1125–1290) jar from northern Black Mesa, Arizona, represents the only known Post-Chacoan cylindrical vessel. Identified within the midden of a small late Pueblo II-early Pueblo III period habitation site, the jar circumstantially connects Ancestral Puebloan groups in the Kayenta area to Chaco Canyon and the...
Pre-Colonial Hokkaido and East Asian Trade: Exchange and Identity Formation of the Okhotsk Culture (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research explores ways precontact commodities trade networks, originating in distant nation-states and empires, can create the conditions to trigger changing social relations and novel identities far from market centers. I argue that a shift in the functional role of trade from...
Preclassic and Classic Maya Exchange, Craft Production and Ritual Practices: A Diachronic Analysis of Lithic Artifacts around Ceibal, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I discuss the results of a diachronic analysis of lithic artifacts collected from Ceibal, Guatemala, in order to elucidate long-term patterns and changes in the Preclassic and Classic Maya exchange, craft production and ritual practices. The interregional exchange of large polyhedral cores of...
Prehistoric Obsidian Use in Southern Italy: Primary Acquisition and Down-the-line Exchange in Calabria, Basilicata, and Campania (2018)
Obsidian was a significant component of daily life in southern Italy during the Neolithic period (ca. 6000-3000 BC). Intensive surveys by Ammerman and colleagues in the 1970s identified a widespread presence of Neolithic obsidian in Calabria, generally thought to have come from the island of Lipari, mostly on the basis of its being the closest, along with general visual characteristics. While it was also thought possible to have small amounts of obsidian from the further away tiny island of...
Preliminary Results of Petrographic and Chemical Analyses of Lapita Pottery Assemblage Excavated from Kurin Site, Mare Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we will illustrate the number of possible pottery-making locations that we have identified so far from the Lapita pottery assemblage excavated at Kurin site, Mare Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. We first examined the non-plastic inclusions to determine whether minerals and rock fragments identified through a petrographic microscope may...
Procurement and Use of Obsidian at the Middle Horizon – Late Intermediate Site of Quilcapampa, Valle de Siguas, Arequipa, Peru (2018)
This poster highlights emerging results of our ongoing study to further characterize the procurement networks and use strategies of obsidian sources in the south-central Andes during the Middle Horizon (600 CE – 1000 CE) and Late Intermediate Periods (1000 CE – 1476 CE). We present archaeometric analyses and provenience studies of excavated obsidian objects from the Middle Horizon – Late Intermediate site of Quilcapampa, located in the Valle de Siguas, Arequipa, Peru. In total, 70 objects were...
The Production and Exchange of Obsidian in the Monumental Zone of Tenam Puente, Chiapas, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents an analysis of obsidian artifacts from the ancient Maya city of Tenam Puente. The site is located in the eastern Chiapas highlands, and was occupied from approximately AD 500 to 1100. We analyze a sample of 859 obsidian artifacts from the site’s monumental zone, which were excavated by the Proyecto Tenam Puente,...
The Production and Exchange of Perishable Goods at Salinas de los Nueve Cerros and atop the Coban Plateau (2018)
Investigations at Cancuen, Sebol, Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, and other sites at the base of the Guatemalan highlands since the late 1990s have shown the importance of the region for importing and refining a variety of highland goods for the lowland market. While most of the emphasis has been placed on the goods for which there is direct evidence of production and exchange—obsidian, jade, iron pyrite, and other lithic commodities present in abundance at these and other sites—Demarest, Dillon,...
Pulling Abundance out of Thin Air: The Role of Pastoralism in 1000 BC Peru (2018)
Andean camelid pastoralism – with its origins in the puna of the South-Central Andes – plays a key role in risk management and transformation of low-energy, high-abundance resources. Camelids not only help pastoralists mitigate risk by acting as literal "wealth on the hoof," but they also maintain cohesion of intergroup relationships across vast distances by facilitating mobility within and among diverse environmental zones. Here, I examine intensified camelid pastoral systems as an adaptation...
Quispi Rumi: Geochemically Sourcing Obsidian from the Patipampa Sector of Huari (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2017-2018, over 1,000 obsidian artifacts were excavated from the Patipampa sector of Huari, once the administrative capital of the Wari state. During the 2018 season, over 350 artifacts were analyzed via portable X-ray fluorescence (PXRF) and then fingerprinted to Andean obsidian sources when...
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...