Mortuary archaeology (Other Keyword)

1-25 (217 Records)

$1.87 Each, Four Feet Long and Over; $0.87 Each, Less than Four Feet: A Spatial Analysis of Coffin Type and Coffin Hardware from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Kubicek. Patricia Richards.

Excavations at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 1991 and 1992 recovered 1649 individuals associated with Milwaukee County’s practice from the mid-1800s through 1974 of providing burial for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals sent from the Coroner’s Office, and community poor. In 2013, Historic Resource Management Services of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee recovered an additional 632 individual coffin burials representing...


An Accounting of the Dead: Historical Epidemiology and Big Data in the Arch Street Project (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Bonneau.

As of the beginning of September 2017, the remains of over 250 individuals were recovered from the building site at 218 Arch Street. While the presence of bodies in what was once the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia burial ground should not surprise us, contemporary documents and written histories of the congregation state that all burials had been moved to the Mount Mariah Cemetery in the mid-nineteenth century. The abundance of human remains left on the original site raises questions for...


Amber Runs through It: The Centralization of Wealth and Power in Late Prehistoric Lika, Croatia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Zavodny.

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric cultural and sociopolitical development in the mountainous region of Lika, Croatia is still poorly understood despite over a century of archaeological excavations. Traditional cultural-historical narratives based on grave good typologies suggest that a unified regional culture, the Iapodians, emerged at the end of the...


Analysis of Entheses Development and Implications on Labor in Late Medieval Poland (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydia Wegel. Corey Ragsdale.

This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of human behavior and habitual muscle use through analysis of entheses, or muscle insertion sites on the skeleton, continue to be an important way of examining labor among people in the past. In this study, we analyze entheses development on the skeletons of individuals from the recently discovered and excavated late medieval site of Gać in...


Ancestor Veneration or Funeral Practices? An Examination of Recuay Mortuary Variability in the Basin of Puccha (Ancash) between AD 200-900 (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Bebel Ibarra Asencios.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary studies have followed different perspectives, such as ancestor veneration mostly based on intrasite analysis. This paper examines the regional distribution of Recuay's funeral practices and its implications for ancestor worship studies. Radiocarbon dates available for the valley show an occupation between AD 200-900, and it correlates with the...


The Ancestral Remains of the Cheslatta T'en: A Rare Burial Site from the Middle Holocene in Central British Columbia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Keli Watson. Dana Evaschuk. Marina Elliott. Mike Robertson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the fall of 2020, human ancestral remains were discovered eroding out of the bank of a lake within the traditional territory of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, at the northern end of the Canadian Plateau. In 2021 more remains were found at the same location. At the request of the Cheslatta t’en archaeologists conducted salvage excavations to protect and...


Ancient Manganism in the Andes: A Bioarchaeological View (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernardo Arriaza. Juan Pablo Ogalde. Leonardo Figueroa. Vivien Standen. Sian Halcrow.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Chinchorro people of northern Chile used manganese as part of their mortuary rites (7000–3000 BP). Chinchorro artifacts (n = 12) reveals the presence of manganese up to 64% measured with portable X-ray fluorescence. In addition, bone chemistry analysis from Chinchorro mummies (n = 68) using atomic absorption spectrometry reveals for the first...


Animals for the Ancestors: Comparing Animal Use in Funerary Rites at Ancient Hualcayán, Peru (AD 1–1000) (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Dahl. Catriona Semple. Erin Crowley. Rebecca Bria.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents recent analysis of faunal materials from three distinct funerary structures at Hualcayán, Ancash, Peru, in order to assess differences in taphonomic environments and funerary practices through interred faunal remains. This study compares species representation, bone modifications, and fragmentation from Early Intermediate Period and Middle...


Applying Geophysical Prospection to Interpret Historical Burial Practices at Two Cemeteries on St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Rodriguez. Nicholas Herrmann.

This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research examines the relationship between the Old Church Cemetery and the Jewish Cemetery on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius. These cemeteries are located near each other, yet the people buried in them had different religious ideologies and social positions....


Archaeological Relocation of Five Historic Cemeteries in North-Central Tennessee (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wampler. Steve Martin. Bridget Mohr. Allison Soergel. Nancy Ross-Stallings.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Spring of 2020 Wood E&IS embarked on the removal and relocation of graves associated with five late 19th- early 20th- century historic cemeteries located in rural north-central Tennessee. The cemeteries were deemed eligible for the National Register; therefore, graves were removed archaeologically. Each cemetery was mapped using noninvasive geophysical...


An Archaeology of Aesthetics: the Socio-Economic and Ideological Elements of Coffin Plate Selection at the Spring Street Presbyterian Church (2013)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Hicks.

Material shifts among decorative coffin fittings reflect how past populations conceptualized death, memory, and social status.  Coffin plates recovered during the excavation of four burial vaults (ca. 1820-1843) associated with the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, New York City, were simple and uniform in design, inscribed only with the names, ages, and death dates of the individuals with whom they were interred.  This paper examines the socio-economic and ideological elements that may have...


Archaeology of Death across the International Border: Research among the Hohokam and Trincheras Archaeological Groups (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cerezo-Román.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will explore similarities and differences between mortuary practices and concepts of embodiment of the dead from Hohokam Classic Period (AD 1150 to 1450/1500) sites in the Tucson Basin and from the Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora (ca. AD 1300 to 1450). I will discuss challenges and opportunities for conducting bioarchaeology...


Archaeothanatological Analysis of Mortuary Practices in the Prehistoric Sonoran Desert and Implications for Interpreting Sickness through Postmortem Processing (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Krummel. James Watson.

The La Playa archaeological site in the Sonoran Desert represents one of the earliest agricultural settlements in northwest Mexico. Over 310 mortuary features have been uncovered during salvage excavations since the site was discovered in 1930, revealing a wide variability in mortuary practices that may reflect specific treatments for pathological or transgressive individuals after death. This paper describes analyses of burials uncovered during the 2017 field season utilizing the...


Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust in Caddoan Mortuary Ritual (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Marvin Kay.

Sediment of varied textures and colors, ash among them, is highlighted from deliberately burnt Harlan-style charnel houses. These were erected in sub-mound pits. In one rendition that followed an earlier house burning, light gray ash alternates in the superior, or upward, position with the black charcoal layer of a collapsed burnt thatch and cane roof. The ash was levelled as a platform. This completed a mortuary cycle linked lineally to subsequent pyramidal mound construction. In other cases...


Beads, Burials, and African Diaspora Archaeology: Documenting a Pattern of Black and White Bead Use within African-American Mortuary Contexts (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Davidson.

African Diaspora Archaeology has its roots in Plantation Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s.    One artifact initially associated with enslaved contexts was the simple blue-glass bead (though other colors were recovered), recognized by some as signifying African-derived culture and beliefs, and by others as a controversial and potentially erroneous stereotype.  Simultaneously emerging in the 1970s was the field of historical mortuary archaeology, where graves of African-Americans as well as...


Believers in the Highlands: Burying the Muslim Dead at the Qarakhanid Site of Tashbulak (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Elissa Bullion. Michael Frachetti. Farhad Maksudov. Ann Merkle.

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Islam spread into Central Asia via the Arab invasions of the 7th century CE. According to current historical narratives, Islam’s first footholds were lowland urban centers, with Islam only slowly infiltrating the highlands. New research, presented here, challenges the idea that highland areas were a barrier to Islam. This paper...


Bioarchaeological Analysis of Preclassic Human Remains Recovered from a Lime Kiln, El Mirador, Guatemala (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Kollmann.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary findings pertaining to the exhumation and bioarchaeological examination of a collection of Preclassic period human remains recovered from a lime kiln in El Mirador Basin, Guatemala. The disarticulated and fragmented skeletal remains of nine individuals were compressed into a...


A Bioarchaeological Approach to the Social Construction of Community Identities in Mountain Landscapes (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Marsteller.

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Huarochirí Manuscript has made legendary the social relationships of pre-Columbian groups inhabiting the Andean mountain landscape that ascends steeply from the present-day coastal capital city of Lima, Peru, to the high-altitude Huarochirí Province. In this famous collection of ethnohistoric narratives, authored in the indigenous...


Bioarchaeology of Care in Three San Francisco Bay Area Muwekma Ohlone Ancestral Sites (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Brittany Hill. Laurel Engbring. David Grant. Monica V. Arellano. Alan Leventhal.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation applies Tilley and Cameron’s 2014 Index of Care to the mortuary population of three ancestral Muwekma Ohlone sites that were excavated in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2016- 2022 (CA-ALA-565/H, CA-ALA-677/H, and CA-ALA-704/H). These sites include the remains of 147 individuals dating between approximately 2200-110 cal BP. This...


The Bioarchaeology of Greater Chiriquí: Challenges, Finds, and Future Directions (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Smith-Guzmán.

Greater Chiriquí, the pre-Columbian cultural sphere encompassing western Panama and southern Costa Rica, has been subjected to intense looting activities since the mid-19th century. Nevertheless, archaeological exploration of the area to date has successfully contextualized the nature and transitions of non-perishable material culture. However, organic remains rarely survive in funerary contexts due to the high acidity of the soil, high humidity, and high precipitation in this region. Human...


The Bioarchaeology of None: Recovery and Analysis of an Historic Coffin from Fort McAllister State Park, Georgia. (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Black.

In the spring of 2013, the office of the Georgia State Archaeologist was contacted by personnel from Fort McAllister State Park in Richmond Hill, GA, concerning what appeared to be an historic coffin eroding out of the marsh edge. Emergency salvage excavation was conducted to recover the remaining portions of the coffin. Initial field analysis indicated a sharp shouldered, hexagonal style coffin. Neither the lid nor any mortuary hardware was recovered. The coffin’s location is within the...


Biocultural Analysis of Atypical Mortuary Pattern Symbolism in Three Medieval Transylvanian Millstone Burials (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Reinman. Katie Zejdlik. Nyárádi Zsolt. Andre Gonciar.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Unusual treatments of the dead frequently merit extensive archaeological attention as they provide windows on a society’s concepts of personhood, use and manipulation of symbolic representations, and cosmology. In this work, we examine the use of millstones placed atop funerary contexts at the Papdomb site located in Văleni, Romania (A.D. 1100-1800). The site...


A Biocultural Analysis of the Impacts of Interactions between West Africans and Europeans during the Transatlantic Trade at Elmina, Ghana (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Heidi Miller. Christopher DeCorse.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project utilizes a biocultural approach to assess the demographics and health of the West African population from Elmina, Ghana. Elmina, selected by the Portuguese in 1482 as the site of the first European trade fort in sub-Saharan Africa, grew from a small coastal fishing village to a large settlement over the course of more than 400 years. This...


Biological Kinship and Cemetery Organization in Eastern Zhou Period China (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Tommy Budd.

The social significance of large kinship structures such as clans and lineages has been demonstrated throughout Chinese history, and kinship has in part determined social ties and participation in various social activities. Clan emblems appear on artifacts from as early as the Shang Dynasty, and kinship remains an important element of social identities in modern China. In relation to mortuary practices, kinship identities may affect factors such as mortuary assemblages and burial location. This...


A Biological Profile of an Individual from Xultún Using Bioarchaeological, Starch, and Isotopic Analyses (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Hannigan. Shintaro Suzuki. Felipe Trabanino. Boris Beltran.

Micro and macroscopic bioarchaeological analyses enable archaeologists to generate biological profiles of past individuals, including characteristics such as diet, sex, age, occupational stress, pathologies, and social status, among others. In this paper, we discuss the significance of a Maya individual by constructing a biological profile from both micro and macroscopic analyses. The individual of interest was excavated during the 2012 field season at Xultún, Guatemala in a patio situated in...