contact period (Other Keyword)
276-300 (327 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historically, archaeological research in northern Sinaloa, Mexico, focused on the coastal plains, with minimal attempts to comprehend the adjacent archaeological groups scattered in the hinterlands of the Sierra Madre along major water systems. These regions are most often interpreted through the lens of ethnohistorical accounts that provide a window on...
The Spirit from the Seed: New Microfossil Evidence of Wild Rice in the Upper Great Lakes (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 Great Lakes and the Northeastern United States, microfossil research has primarily focused on maize (Zea mays). Further, direct evidence of starch beyond maize is equally limited. The importance of wild rice (Manoomin) as a food source, an aspect of spirituality, and other-than-human being is well known to the archaeologists of the region....
The Spurious Claim of “Human Sacrifice” (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Almost without question, “human sacrifice” is held as a legitimate concept by archaeologists—and the public. The concept is widely employed to explain aspects of Mesoamerican behavior. In this presentation, I argue that human sacrifice was never...
Stone Rings, Stone Piles, and Native Americans in Far Southeastern New Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of the Permian Basin Mitigation Program, the Bureau of Land Management created a project to investigate sites that may be traditional cultural properties of interest to the Mescalero Apache tribe. The project was awarded to SWCA Environmental Consultant’s Albuquerque office. Most of the 18 targeted sites have stone-ring features, commonly assumed to...
Strategies for Exploring the Protohistoric Period on the Southern Maine Coast (2018)
As investigations of the Protohistoric period move away from a reliance on the reliable material culture recovery found in burial contexts, our basis for investigation of protohistoric sites and landscapes in the Far Northeast often begins with European historical records. Recent excavations in the area described in 1607 by Champlain as the village of Chouacoet in Saco Bay, Maine highlight the fact that many of the equivalencies drawn between the archaeological record of the protohistoric and...
A Study of the Temporal Sequence and Global Spatial Distribution of Cranial Modification (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Intentional cranial modification (ICM) represents one of the most outstanding biocultural practices of the past in the Americas, resulting from a millennial evolution within distinct cultural territories. When the Europeans first arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, ICM was a widespread tradition among most of the native populations of the continent. Here we...
Tales of Extinction: Natives in the Narratives of Early Colonial Panama, Historical Representations, and Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous historical and archaeological narratives on colonial Panama emphasize the annihilation of indigenous communities after European conquest. Although the Spanish occupation in Panama had devastating consequences on the local population through epidemic diseases, war, and slavery, the documentary evidence provides insights on different ways local...
The Technical Study of Two 16th Century Mexican Pictographic Documents in the NMAI Collection (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two mid-16th century Mexican pictographic documents in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, a codex on amate paper from the Valley of Mexico and a lienzo on a large cotton textile from Puebla, have...
Telling Localized Indigenous Histories of Trade through AMS Dating and Bayesian Chronological Modeling in Southern Ontario, Canada (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late sixteenth-century chronology of Indigenous sites in Southern Ontario has, until recently, relied upon relative means such as ceramic seriation and trade good chronologies. Bayesian chronological modeling of high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates is increasingly being applied to sites believed to date to...
Testing Geophysical Anomalies Using In Situ Shallow Subsurface Spectroscopy and Soil Magnetic Susceptibility Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Quivira Revisited" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015 the National Park Service’s Archaeological Prospection Workshop was held at the Tobias Site (14RC8). Students and instructors evaluated the site using a variety of non-invasive prospection methods ranging from landscape-level LiDAR analysis to high sample density subsurface geophysical survey. The evaluation identified buried features and patterning within the...
"They came to loot our treasures": Indigenous, Pirates, and Indigenous-Pirates on the Mexican Pacific Coast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies show that the Spanish conquest of the Oaxacan Pacific Coast was shaped, and even orchestrated, by indigenous kingdoms (Zapotecs, Mixtecs) and allied groups (Pochutecs, Chontal) that vied for control over key trading ports. These same indigenous players continued their cycles of conflicts,...
"They Had So Many Stones to Hurl": Evidence of Inter-Indigenous Conflict on the Vázquez de Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542 (2015)
In 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led one of the largest expeditions ever assembled by the Spanish crown into the present-day American southwest. The expedition had 375 European men and was supported by a large contingent of at least 1,300 native Méxican soldiers from various ethnic groups. The native Méxican soldiers likely did much of the advance work, hand-to-hand fighting, guarding, and other military detail. The whole expedition was not well-equipped with European military technology...
Timing the Circulation of Nonlocal Materials in Seneca- and Onondaga-Region Sites (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I evaluate newly acquired AMS radiocarbon dates for Seneca- and Onondaga-region sites, focusing on what these new dates can tell us about the regional exchange of non-local materials in the circa fourteenth- to seventeenth- century ancestral Haudenosaunee homeland (what is today central New...
“To Kill” or “To Sacrifice?” Sahagún and the Translation of Mortal Violence (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanish accounts from sixteenth-century colonial New Spain tell us that the Aztecs “sacrificed” humans, a notion that has been corroborated and expanded by scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology,...
Tom Dillehay, Texas, and Identity (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tom Dillehay is best known for his tremendous contributions to the archaeology of the Americas and rightly so. In terms of quality, impact, and scope, the combined body of his work is phenomenal. His interdisciplinary holistic anthropological approach frequently casts the archaeology of the Western...
Toward a Nim (Mono) Archeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster is a collaboration in an attempt to create a new archeology rooted in a Native American tradition of the people who created the archeological deposits, based in a Nim sense of time, space and values. Archeologists must get away from the artificial concept of sites, which divides rather than looks for interconnections. We must show respect for...
Toward an Archaeology of Indigenous Conquerors: Household Ritual Life at Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of its two excavation field seasons in 2017 and 2022, the community-collaborative Proyecto de Arqueología Cotidiana de Tepeticpac has shifted its focus from the Postclassic period, when the Tlaxcallans formed a state that maintained its independence from the Aztec empire, to the early colonial period, when residents allied with...
Toyah Mitotes: Feasting in the Terminal Late Pre-Hispanic Southern Plains (2018)
The proto-historic period within North America provides a framework for assessing the transformations brought on by contact and conflict between indigenous peoples and European colonizers. In central and south Texas, a distinct archaeological culture, Toyah, spans some 400 years, 1250-1650 CE. The hallmark projectile point and first systemic, locally-produced ceramic tradition in the area have intrigued archaeologists for over a hundred years; interpretations of the phenomena have been...
The Toyah Phase Paradox: In Three Dimensions (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Toyah Phase has been the subject of debate since J. Charles Kelly first defined it in 1947. Known widely as the Toyah Phase Paradox, research has struggled to reconcile the homogenous expression of this protohistoric to historic archaeological record in central Texas and the high levels of ethnic diversity witnessed by French and Spanish...
Traces of Integration: A Study of Early Colonial Ware by Imagenology Methods (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The capital of the Tarascan empire was located in Tzintzuntzan (Michoacán, Mexico), which reached its peak during the Late Postclassic (AD 1350–1525). At the time of contact, there was an almost unique continuous transition, showing a historical process of long duration, where different traditions converged. Among the...
Tracing Cannabis in the Historic Past: New Insights from Chemical Residue Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today, marijuana consumption is becoming decriminalized across the Western world. This legal change is often followed by increased research activity, specifically regarding crop ‘improvement’ and the concentration of the plant’s psychoactive compounds. This situation resembles the process characterizing the commodification of tobacco during the Colonial...
Tracing Sixteenth-Century Beads in South America to Understand Their Impact on Indigenous Ritual Practices and Material Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest (2018)
Studying beads and changes in use of beads in a given population provide insight into the impact of outside influences on people in a given population. This research identifies bead types that were valued by indigenous cultures in South America prior to the Spanish Conquest in the Sixteenth-Century, and compares their frequency in six geographic regions within Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia with the frequency of glass beads brought by the Spanish to the same regions. This study examines...
The Trade Bead Assemblage from the Chinook Middle Village at the Station Camp Site: Western Terminus of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Pacific County, Washington (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation discusses a trade bead assemblage excavated from the Chinook Middle Village at the Station Camp/McGowan Site (45PC106), a location that can be considered the western terminus of the historic Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803–1806. The camp was situated at the likely site of a seasonally occupied Chinook...
Trailing Lewis & Clark: Inventorying Prehistory at the Point of Contact (2018)
During their 1803-05 westward journey, the Lewis and Clark Expedition described the presence of native graves, mounds, abandoned villages, and rock art. Previous archaeological research, centered around the 2005 Bicentennial, focused on the verification of campsites used by the members of the Corps of Discovery. Public interpretation of their Trail has likewise focused on the explorers themselves, neglecting both the Native context in which they traveled as well as the deeper history of their...
Trans-regional Agricultural Deintensification: An AI-Assisted Survey of Agricultural Infrastructure in the South-Central Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since late prehispanic times, peoples throughout the central Andean highlands have created highly productive anthropogenic agricultural landscapes on a monumental scale through terracing. Yet a large proportion of these terrace systems fell into disrepair and abandonment through the Spanish colonial period, even in the face of food shortages. The...