Craft Production (Other Keyword)
26-50 (451 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Shang Dynasty-era site of Taijiasi was excavated from 2014 to 2017. Excavations revealed many remains of bronze casting and bone-tool manufacture. This paper focuses on the arrangement of the two different kinds of handicraft. Along with analysis of other house and sacrificial remains, archaeologists can investigate the...
Arrggghhh Braaaaiiiins: The Zooarchaeology of a Mid-19th Century Privy in New Orleans’ Historic French Quarter (2018)
In this paper we present analysis of faunal remains recovered from a mid-19th century privy at 936 St. Peter Street, an archaeological site in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter. Although the faunal assemblage includes domestic trash related to meals eaten by the site occupants, it is dominated by a tremendous number of caprine cranial elements. These cranial bones show a consistent butchery pattern indicating that site occupants were harvesting caprine brains in large numbers, presumably for...
Artisan Communities, Regional Interaction, and Identity in Eastern Honduras (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the role that two distinctive artisan communities from Eastern Honduras, El Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within local and interregional exchange networks. Analysis of pottery, obsidian, and settlement patterns from both...
Artisanal Diversification or “Multi-crafting” as Economic Strategy among Upper-Class Extra-household Groups at Cotzumalhuapa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various contexts in the sector of El Baúl, at the site of Cotzumalhuapa have been the subject of recent excavations to better understand the lithic industries of this urban center. These sectors were chosen for excavation due to the large surface scatters of lithic material indicating areas...
Artisans on the Landscape: Bronze Foundry Organization and Specialization in the Late Shang Dynasty (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bronze vessels in ancient China are a significant topic of interest in understanding the ancient elites, writing, religion, and culture. However, learning about the casting of bronze vessels speaks to the artisans who produced these artifacts. The various foundries discovered at the Anyang site are not only the location where the bronze vessels were...
Assessing the Effectiveness of Various Scanning Technologies in Digitally Capturing Fingerprints on Corrugated Wares (2018)
Methodological advances in the study of fingerprints by criminologists have revived an interest in using dermatoglyphic evidence to conduct archaeological research. The analysis of fingerprint impressions left in ceramics is being used to investigate topics such as craft specialization and social organization. While most impressions left in ceramics lack the completeness needed to identify individual potters, fragmentary prints can be used to analyze things such as ridge density. Given a large...
Awl Mighty Tools: Comparing Experimentally Created Animal Bone Tools to Archaeological Examples (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Experimental archaeology supports our understanding of past lifeways and how artifactual materials were created. In zooarchaeology, its use in interpreting how previous populations may have crafted animal bone tools is imperative to identifying preforms and other stages of the manufacture process. The Northern Arizona University Faunal...
Baked In: Remnant Production Gestures from Potters in the Tarascan State (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine the traces of production gestures that ceramics producers left behind on the surface of 100 sherds excavated at Urichu, a minor administrative center for the Tarascan (P’urépecha) state (1350–1524 CE), in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, México. These sherds represent the Early and Late Postclassic time periods at the site,...
Bark Beaters and Cloth Production in the Classic Maya Area (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While bark cloth and paper are well known in the ethnographic and artistic records of Pacific and African cultures, due to preservation concerns these important plant based products have been challenging to investigate in the precolumbian cultures of the New World. Often our only proxy for bark...
Basin Enterprise: the Next Generations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico book elucidated for a broader audience the work and philosophy of William Sanders and his first generation of collaborators and students and has influenced many generations of Mesoamerican scholars since. We draw on the broad studies of long-term work carried out...
Bead Production of the Later Stone Age in Northern Malawi (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Later Stone Age (LSA) bead production is typically reported with ostrich eggshell (OES) as the primary raw material. In south central Africa, land snail shell (LSS) was also used, but most sites have uncertain and poorly dated associations. The Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project has now recovered both...
Beading a Nation, Beading a People: The Role of Métis Women’s Beadwork in Crafting Culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The embodied act of crafting can bring into being a physical representation of relations and ways of being in the world. In 1945, ethnologist John C. Ewers reported that the Sioux word for the Métis in Canada translates as "the flower beadwork people". With influences from their First Nations and settler ancestors, Métis beadwork has...
Being and Becoming: Learning, Skill, and Cognition as Exhibited on Painted White Ware Pottery at Sand Canyon Pueblo (5MT765), a Pueblo III Era Community Center in Southwestern Colorado (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 reports on the presenter's master's thesis research which examined painted white ware vessels from the Sand Canyon Pueblo site using an adapted 18-point attribute analysis developed by Patricia Crown for determining the age and skill level of producers of painted designs of pre-Hispanic southwestern ceramics. The thesis attempted to understand...
Beneath the Surface: Steps toward Resolving Gallinazo-Mochica Debates in Peru’s Northern North Coast (2018)
Understanding the role of the widespread yet under-recognized art style known as Gallinazo, its persistence alongside the more conspicuous Mochica art style, and the social factors that facilitated their long-term coexistence on Peru’s North Coast during the first millennium, are primary concerns of this work. Investigation of the Songoy-Cojal site in the mid-Zaña Valley shows that Gallinazo-Mochica coexistence persisted at least until the 8th century CE (based on new C-14 dates). Many...
Beyond Styles and Modes: Taking a Closer Look at Ceramic Changes in the Greater Antilles (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Undoubtedly, one of the most important developments in human history is the invention pottery. In archaeology alone, it is difficult to imagine how much the discipline would have learned without it. Thanks to pottery we have been able to advance studies in diet, production, chronology, religion, long and short distance interaction, aspects of identity,...
Bigote & Birkenstocks: A Mentor for the Ages (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Crafting a Legacy in Archaeology: Papers Celebrating the Career of Ken Hirth" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We open this symposium with a tribute to Ken Hirth’s illustrious career, celebrating his significant contributions as a scholar and applied scientist in archaeology over the last five decades. As two of Dr. Hirth’s final students at Penn State, we honor our mentor for his invaluable guidance that helped launch...
Bioarchaeological Evidence of Occupational Stress and Specialized Task Activity at Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Spiro Mounds was a ceremonial complex with an associated village of artisans and priests. Located on the Arkansas River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, the site is situated in a natural corridor between the Southeast, the Plains, and the Southwestern United States. Long considered a quintessential Mississippian site (AD...
Bit by bit: Olivella bead production during the Middle Period on Santa Cruz Island (2016)
Beads made from the Olivella biplicata shell were used as both decoration and a form of currency by the Chumash living in the Santa Barbara Channel region, and large quantities have been recovered from many prehistoric sites throughout Western North America. Many of the bead types were made from different portions of the shell and conform to standardized shapes and sizes. A number of these types have distinctive spatial and temporal distributions in the archaeological record, and based on...
Bone Craft Product and Economies in the Late Shang Period at Anyang, China (2016)
This paper will discuss recent analysis of worked animal bone discovered at the late Shang Xinanzhuang site, and the manufacture strategies and raw materials manipulations within different locations in Anyang, Henan. Xinanzhuang is considered to be associated with the industrial-scale boneworkshop at Tiesanlu site because of the close proximity between the two sites. Previous studies on bone artifacts from Tiesanlu provide some understanding of craft production systems during the late Shang...
Broken Edges: Investigating Jewelry Damage by Violence and Fatigue (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many Scandinavian Migration Period gold bracteate pendants of the 5th and 6th centuries show evidence of pre- or post-depositional damage. Impressions of broken edges of the jewelry were made with polyvinyl siloxane (PVS), and the impressions were then analyzed as part of a larger project to...
Bronze Age Crucibles in China: A Unique Technological Tradition and its Cultural Implications (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most studies of early metallurgy in China have focused on style, manufacturing techniques and alloy compositions of bronze artefacts. In rare circumstances, other sections of the bronze production Chaîne opératoire such mining, smelting and metal processing are considered. This research concentrates on early bronze...
The Buffalo Hill Quarries Site: Investigations of an Ancestral Maya Quarryscape in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Belize (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Rio Frio Regional Archaeological Project (RiFRAP) 2022 Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve regional survey resulted in documentation of the Buffalo Hill Quarries (BHQ), the first recorded ancestral Maya granitic rock quarry with a ground stone implement workshop site. Preliminary investigations indicate a complex multicomponent quarryscape with...
Building a Statistical Model to Evaluate the Sexes of Ancient Greek Fingerprints (2018)
While fingerprint impressions have been used archaeologically to approach a range of cultural questions, the methodologies developed to date tend to be labor intensive, statistically unsophisticated, or require large numbers of complete prints. Recently, numerous quantitative print attributes that correlate with sex in modern populations have been discovered, almost always from two-dimensional data. It is probable that there are additional, yet-unrecognized features that correlate with producer...
Burial Excavations in Plaza 1 of Los Pilarillos, Zacatecas, Mexico, 1997 Season (1998)
Fieldwork from the 1997 season at Los Pilarillos.
Burning Questions: The Ogata Archaeological Site and Kofun Period Ironworking (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ogata archaeological site in modern Osaka Prefecture, Japan, has come to be seen as representative of large-scale blacksmithing sites and technology of the Middle and Late Kofun Period, and many artifacts related to ironworking have been unearthed from hearth features there. Accordingly, many of these hearth features are typically interpreted as...