Archaic (Other Keyword)
201-225 (452 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We discuss key insights into over 5,000 years of environmental change on the Georgia Coast derived from tree-ring analyses of a deposit of ancient bald cypress from the mouth of the Altamaha River, including changes in coastal forests through time. Human-environment interactions, such as the resilience of estuarine-based societies and ecosystems during periods...
Interpreting Lesser Antillean Island Domestic and Ritual Practices through Household and Ceramic Analysis at the Goddard Site, Barbados (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biggs analyzed data collected by Hackenberger and others in 1986 during an archaeological rescue on the Goddard Site, Barbados, West Indies. For this study, students redeveloped ceramic and shell spatial datasets, compiled site maps, and rendered new computer maps of house features and artifact distributions. The semi-circular house (with hearths and...
Introduction to Session: Recent Research and Future Objectives (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From Hard Rock to Heavy Metal: Metal Tool Production and Use by Indigenous Hunter-Gatherers in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery and development of metals as tool media is a topic of global interest. Although this phenomenon is generally associated with sedentary, agrarian-based societies, in North America there is regularly documented, albeit not widely known, use of metals by...
Introduction to the Headwaters Site, New Braunfels, Texas (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From mid October 2018 to early April 2019, archaeologists from AmaTerra Environmental, Inc., Texas State University and the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio conducted data recovery excavations at the Headwaters Site (41CM204), in New Braunfels, Texas. The Headwaters Site is located on a deeply stratified terrace...
Investigating a Projectile Point Typology for the Uncompahgre Plateau in West Central Colorado (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Uncompahgre Plateau has been utilized by humans for at least the last 10,000 year, based on dates from excavated sites in the region. Projectile point styles that have formally been defined and named from type sites throughout the Great Basin occur on the Plateau. However, many that have not been formally defined or named also occur on the Plateau....
Investigating the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico: New Dates and Isotopic Data (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dry caves and floodplain archaeological sites of the Tehuacan Valley in Puebla, Mexico, excavated by Richard S. MacNeish and his team in the 1960s, contained some of the earliest macrobotanical evidence for domesticated New World plants, including maize, avocados and chili peppers. While many studies have focused on the levels associated with these...
Investigation of Contracting Stem Points from the Great Basin and Northern Colorado Plateau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An investigation of over 300 images of contracting stem points from Nevada, Utah, and western Colorado was carried out using geometric morphometrics (GMM) techniques. The GMM analysis used over 150 landmarks on each of the 2D images. Examination of the principal components and landmarks with respect to geographic occurrence indicate these points changed...
An Investigation of Middle Archaic Maize at Site LA 112766 (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 provides evidence of the presence of maize in southeastern New Mexico radiocarbon dated to 1,000 years prior to any in a dataset of 30 known southeastern New Mexico “Old Maize” sites. The oldest maize site is Keystone Dam radiocarbon dated to 3540 cal BP. Site LA 112766 radiocarbon dates to 4825–4575 BP. An investigation of the macrobotanical,...
Investigations At the James Hatch Site and the Houserville Archaeological National Register District, Centre County, Pennsylvania: The Benefits of Collaboration between Institutes of Higher Learning and Government Agencies (2018)
In 2017, the coupling of a Federally funded transportation project with an undergraduate archaeological field school, and Applied Archaeology thesis research, produced an innovative approach to archaeological mitigation. The project funded a Phase III investigation of a lithic workshop site—the James W. Hatch Site. The site was occupied during the Early Archaic Period, and attracted occupations focused on jasper reduction at a location 1.2 kilometers from a quarry. The site produced over 9,000...
"Is This A Thing?": Opportunities and Results of the Rock Art Ranch NSF-REU Program (2018)
From 2011-2016 Dr. E. Charles Adams and Richard Lange have organized and directed the Rock Art Ranch field school, a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) Program from 2013-2016. Rock Art Ranch, located just southeast of Winslow, Arizona contains evidence of use/occupation from Paleoindian to Pueblo periods, and yielded a wealth of data that has inspired dissertations, masters theses, senior theses, and student projects. As a participant of the NSF-REU at...
Island societies during the Archaic Age in the Lesser Antilles : the issue of resources in Saint-Martin (2016)
During the 4th millennium before Christ, the Lesser Antilles archipelago witnessed the development of insular societies. These communities which combined shellfish collection, fishing, submarine and terrestrial hunting, a proto-agriculture and gathering, developed a culture there rather specific to the tropical insular context. A diachronic and detailed study of the settlements over close to 4 millennia allows detecting an evolution in the human practices although they appear quite homogeneous...
An Isolated Middle Archaic Bison Kill Site in the Northern Texas Panhandle (2018)
The discovery of a nearly complete, articulated Bison occidentalis in association with a Calf Creek projectile point in the northern Texas Panhandle in 2002 constitutes one of the few known Middle Archaic archaeological sites in the region. As the remains were found incidental to the construction of a new municipal swimming pool, documentation of the excavation and any subsequent analysis were less than ideal. A recently obtained AMS radiocarbon date of the remains at 5115 RCYBP falls within the...
Jaketown Re-Revisited (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the summer of 2018, we reopened two previously excavated units at the Jaketown site in Humphries County, Mississippi. We collected geoarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data from basal Poverty Point contexts. These deposits, dating to the Late Archaic (ca. 4000-3000 cal B.P.), represent the earliest and most intensive occupation at Jaketown. Analyses of...
Kaillachuro: The Emergence of Burial Mounds in an Egalitarian Community of the Titicaca Basin, South-Central Andes, 5.0 Ka (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The extent to which emergent complexity involved hierarchical organization in small-scale societies remains an unresolved anthropological question. The research presented here examines inequality among individuals buried some 5,000 years ago at the Kaillachuro burial mound site in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. This is the earliest known mound...
Kaskisebook Tett L’nuk - People on the Edge of the Riverbank: New Perspectives of the Transitional Archaic from the Annapolis River, Nova Scotia (2016)
Recent excavations at the Boswell Site (BfDf-08) in southwestern Nova Scotia have yielded a unique assemblage of Transitional Archaic artifacts. Dating to 3,630 ± 30 BP, the Boswell Site provides important insights into population movements during this period in Maine and the Maritime Peninsula. Previous archaeological investigations have led to debate concerning the relative importance of cultural diffusion and migration in the southern origins of broadpoint technology. By comparing artifacts...
Know Before You Dig: Using Comparative Geophysical Exploration and Ground-Truthing for Surgical Excavation (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. This poster presents the results of geophysical exploration and excavation from new research at 48PA551, a Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) site in the Sunlight Basin of NW Wyoming. In the field season of 2017, total field magnetic survey was conducted at the site to identify and...
Landscape and Elements: A Comparison of Four Rock Art Sites in the Bennett Hills, Idaho (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A number of sizable rock art sites occur along the ephemeral drainages of the Bennett Hills located in the Snake River Plain of south central Idaho. The Bennett Hills are a range of tangled ridges, canyons and drainages that trend east-west for over 60 miles. This poster session will highlight four of those rock art sites (Thorn Creek, Grasshopper Cave, Hidden...
Landscapes, Landforms, and Landform Elements: Putting the "Land" Back into Landscape Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chuska Mountains are a landform that extends north-south for approximately 70 kilometers, marking the western boundary of the San Juan Basin. The low mountains, broad piedmont, and sluggish drainages grade towards Chaco Wash, the main drainage in the area. Alluvial and eolian...
Late Archaic (San Pedro Phase) Occupation in Niagara Canyon, Chiricahua National Monument: Results of the 2017 UNM/NPS Excavations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Partners at Work: Promoting Archaeology and Collaboration in the Chiricahua Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the summer of 2017 a joint crew of UNM/NPS researchers undertook test excavations at two Late Archaic loci within Niagara Canyon, a small watershed in the northwestern corner of Chiricahua National Monument. Located 0.6 kilometers from one another, both sites (CHIR00032 and CHIR00040) have yielded...
Late Archaic Maize in the Trans-Pecos of West Texas: Implications and Future Research (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recovery of Late Archaic maize from the Trans-Pecos, peripheral to the American Southwest, adds to an expanding list of primary crop acquisition by foragers that occupied the arid region. The region, however, lacks clear demographic and settlement patterns diagnostic of this period from adjacent regions. Lacking key similarities, local...
Late Archaic Southern Plains Bison Kills: Accumulated Analysis Results at the Certain Site, Western Oklahoma (2018)
The Certain site is a 2000-year-old Late Archaic bison kill site consisting of multiple arroyo localities in western Oklahoma. Analysis of the site’s excavated faunal assemblage identified an MNI of several hundred bison, although an MNI around 1000 is expected for the entire site. At least nine distinct kill events are represented at Certain, including multiple seasonalities, though largely targeting calf/cow herds. We present the culmination of our analysis to date, including seasonality, herd...
Late Holocene Climate Change and the Emergence of Hunter-gatherer Territoriality in the Late Archaic Texas Coastal Plains: An Analysis using Bioavailable Strontium (2018)
The Late Holocene was a time of sea level stability, increased moisture, and abundant resources. Existing models suggest that this environment set the stage for population packing and territoriality. In this presentation, strontium isotope ratios from the Loma Sandia mortuary site (2800-2600 BP) are used to evaluate the emergence of territoriality among hunter-gatherer populations on the Texas Coastal Plain. Assessing territoriality with human strontium data is facilitated by determining the...
Late Preceramic Peruvian Effigy Mound Imagery (2018)
Here I report the use of multiple imagery for understanding the coastal valley site studied most intensively, El Paraíso. Photographs of carved bone figures, plane table maps, Total Station maps, kite orthophoto maps, aerial photos, Google Earth satellite maps, and planetarium maps provide images that, taken together, permit identification of the effigies. Identities of both arms of the El Paraíso complex can be recognized: One is a bird. The other resembles the three mythical figures Bischof...
Leveraging Longitudinal Data for Lithic Technological Organization Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic technological organization research depends on multiscalar perspectives connecting macroscales of land use and raw material economics to microscales of individual sites. Surface sites comprise a major source of data in many lithic technological organization studies. These sites are often recorded one time and rarely monitored. This can lead to...
Light, Sharp, Lethal: Functional and Social Implications of Cienega Point Technology in Early Agricultural Period Southern Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cienega phase (800 BC-AD 50) of the Early Agricultural period in southern Arizona is marked by an abrupt shift in projectile point technology from the large, heavy, side-notched San Pedro dart points of the preceding San Pedro phase (1200-800 BC) to significantly smaller, deeply corner-notched Cienega points. Investigations over the past two decades at...