Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)
151-175 (241 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While preparing a set of zooarchaeological materials for microscopic and high-resolution stable isotopic studies, we found ourselves gritting our teeth to produce a set of mounts that met the standards for the intended lab analyses. Our target specimens were camelid teeth from the Terminal Pleistocene levels of Cuncaicha, a highland rockshelter in Southern...
Of Monsters and Men: Material Culture, Movement, and Symbolism at Surtshellir, a Western Icelandic Viking Age Ritual Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of 850 years, Surtshellir—a massive lava cave in western Iceland’s rugged interior—was variously described as a geological wonder, a shelter for outlaws, an abode of ghosts and spirits, a tourist's dream, a place of torture, the wilderness, an archaeological...
Offerings in the Mogollon Underworld: Big-Eyed Beings and Birds (2018)
Three Classic Mimbres vessels depict similar ceremonial processions in which individuals carry effigies of animals and/or goggle-eyed beings. The goggle-eyed effigies are versions of a figure common in both Mimbres and Jornada Mogollon rock art that may represent the Mesoamerican rain deity Tlaloc. Similar effigies have been recovered from five cave shrines in southern New Mexico and Arizona: two wooden goggle-eyed figures and one of stone, and two wooden birds. However, modern Pueblo informants...
On the Persistence of Tradition: Caves, Ritual Performance, and Secrecy among Multi-Ethnic Communities in the U.S. Southwest (2018)
Discussions of ritual performance in the U.S. Southwest are often restricted to the analysis of architecture in residential settings, leaving the potential role of caves largely absent from regional discourse. As settings that are less accessible to the entire community, caves likely represent important venues for ritual performance whose participation is intended only for a select audience. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, through the reevaluation of select wooden ritual assemblages...
Only Murders in the Cavespace? Considering Archaeological Assumptions about Human Interments (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. As if by default, deposits of human remains in caves and cenotes in the southern Maya Lowlands dating to the Late and Terminal Classic periods have been interpreted by many archaeologists as sacrificial victims. The position seems predicated on...
Origins of Parietal Art: Evidence from the Archaeological Record (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interpretation of drawings and engravings rely on our unique ability to internally process visual information and identify recognizable patterns. This same ability processes imaginary patterns, such as animals and faces of people in geological formations, clouds, and stars. The phenomenon of identifying imaginary patterns, referred to as “pareidolia,”...
An Overview of the Mousterian and Final Epigravettian at Arma Veirana (Liguria, Northwestern Italy) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents preliminary results of the first four years of archaeological investigation at the cave site of Arma Veirana, located near Erli (Savona), in western Liguria. The site has yielded in situ Middle and Upper Paleolithic deposits containing a variety of artifacts. One of the project’s principal goals to...
Ozark Imagery: Documenting Rock Art in the Arkansas Highlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first published account of Arkansas rock art appeared in the late nineteenth century when public museums and other institutions relied on private citizens as well as professional scholars to report all manner of scientific facts and discoveries. The Arkansas state site files include reports of rock art...
Paleo-Indian Evidence from Rock Shelters of the Pains Region, Southeastern Brazil: Typology, Technology and Chronology of the Lithic Material and Its Classification in Three Horizons (2018)
This presentation describes the archaeological context and the lithic variability for the paleo-indian period of the Pains region, an extensive karst situated in the upper São Francisco river valley, state of Minas Gerais, Southeastern Brazil. It gives an overview of what is known for the region using evidence from four limestone rock shelter sites, with a total area of 28m² excavated, the most important site being the Gruta do Marinheiro cave (20m²), and propose the separation of the lithic...
Paleoindian and Archaic in North Centre and Western Mexico (2018)
The Highlands of North Center and Western Mexico were occupied from the lithic period as testify paleo Indian vestiges (Clovis and Agate Basin points) found in several sectors. From the beginning of Holocene, only the excavations of some sites allow to recognize typological characteristics and to know how the archaeological material change through time. In this presentation, I will examine the available data, in particular the cases of the States of Querétaro and Michoacan, to show the...
Paleoindian Cave and Rockshelter Use in the Fort Rock Basin, Oregon (2018)
The Fort Rock Basin’s (FRB) caves and rock shelters hold an important place in the history of Great Basin archaeology. Excavations at Fort Rock Cave by Luther Cressman in the late 1930’s led him to argue for a long-standing presence of humans in the region. The subsequent development of radiocarbon dating confirmed his ideas, providing firm evidence for a considerable human population in the FRB during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH). Although most caves and rock shelters...
Patterns of Precontact Lava Tube Cave Use at El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the field seasons of 2020 and 2021, the Cultural Resources Branch at El Malpais National Monument undertook an inventory of archaeological sites located within some of the monument’s more than 400 lava tube caves. While scores of caves containing cultural resources have been identified through an ongoing mapping initiative, few...
Photogrammetric Techniques for Digital Documentation of Subterranean Maya Architecture (2018)
Photogrammetric techniques are increasingly being used for documenting cultural heritage sites for digital preservation and analysis, but the challenges of working in constrained spaces with difficult lighting conditions have encumbered widespread adoption in subterranean environments. The Proyecto Arquitectura Subterranea de Quintana Roo, coordinated by the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI), at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional...
The Planned Conversion of a Sascabera into a Man-made Cave: Evidence from Chichen Itza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the construction of a plaza group on a 5 m high raised platform, a sascabera was excavated into the hill that formed the nucleus of the group. The original circular opening in the cap rock was carefully maintained. When the platform was completed, the northern end of the sascabera was filled with rubble and smoothed to form the...
Plant Use at Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Nevada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonneville Estates Rockshelter is a stratified multicomponent site located on the former highstand of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville in the eastern Great Basin. It contains well-dated and well-preserved record of human occupation through the last 13,000 years. Here I report on dietary plant remains retrieved from nearly 140 dated archaeological features...
Pleistocene–Holocene Transition at Arene Candide Cave, Liguria (Italy): A Geoarchaeological Approach (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Arene Candide is a cave located along the coast of Liguria and repeatedly excavated for scientific studies since the second half of the nineteenth century. The sedimentary sequence has been accumulated within the cavity from Pleistocene to Holocene, conferring to this site an essential role for the understanding of the...
Pollen, Contamination, and Interpretation at Paisley Caves Archaeological Site (2018)
In studying the early inhabitants of North America, some of the frequently revisited questions involve how they lived, what they ate, and what their world was like. Archaeological Palynology is a well understood method for addressing these questions. Because of the constant pollen rain and the purposeful and incidental ingestion of pollen and spores, well-preserved pollen is repeatedly found in association with human habitation sites and human artifacts. Paisley Caves, Oregon, established itself...
Postcards in the Landscape: Considering Lower Pecos Pictographs as Nahua Pilgrimage Destinations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chicomoztoc, the place of seven caves, from which the Nahua ancestors emerged, appears in many central Mexican pictorial manuscripts as a place of origin and one of pilgrimage. Like the mythical Aztlan, its location has not been confirmed; perhaps several such places served different groups of people. However, recent...
Pre-Clovis Evidence at Guano Mountain, Nevada (2018)
The Winnemucca Lake basin, one of many branches of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan in northwest Nevada, is again in the headline news for early human occupation of the Great Basin. Possible horse butchering at the end of the Pleistocene, fuel storage, grasshopper caching (14,195 cal. BP) and ancient rock art add to the intrigue of an ever developing mystery behind North Americas earliest ancestry. Most familiar are Fishbone and Crypt caves, a part of the Guano Mountain cave complex, where a...
The Pre-Mazama Occupation of the LSP-1 Rockshelter, Warner Valley, Oregon (2015)
For the past five years, a crew from the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, University of Nevada, Reno, has excavated in the LSP-1 Rockshelter in Warner Valley, Oregon. Our work has identified a modest record of pre-Mazama (~7,700 cal BP) occupation comprised of lithic tools and debitage, a well-preserved faunal assemblage, shell beads, and hearth features. In this paper, we highlight major trends in the LSP-1 assemblage and place it within the broader context of northern Great Basin...
Preliminary Observations on the Nature of the Balamkú Ceramic Assemblage (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gran Acuífero Maya conducted preliminary excavations in the entrance chamber of Balamkú yielding a small but interesting ceramic assemblage containing sherds of large incensarios and large numbers of miniature vessels that generally parallel the material documented at Balankanche cave. The high incidence of both incensarios and...
Preliminary Results of Geoarchaeological Investigations at the San Esteban Rockshelter (41PS20), Southwest Texas (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Esteban Rockshelter is located in the Alamito Creek drainage of the Big Bend region, southwest Texas. The site is associated with a perennial tinaja, which made it an attractive location for human occupation in this arid region for at least the past 10,000 years. The shelter has been subject to undocumented collecting since the early 1900s, yet...
Profiling the Past: About the Importance of Excavating Side View and Sieving with a Small Mesh for Retrieving Blade/Bladelet Production in Middle Paleolithic and Early Upper Paleolithic Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Developing Paleolithic Excavation Methods for the Twenty-First Century" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavation involves working both in side-view (i.e., with profiles), to recognize the stratigraphy, and in plan-view to excavate features and layers. Here we want to elaborate on the advantages of working mainly in side-view at Paleolithic sites with long, complex stratigraphies with high find densities. Sieving is...
Putting the Pieces Together: Paleogenomics and Bioarchaeology at Midnight Terror Cave (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2014, the Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) osteological assemblage has been subjected to archaeological, skeletal, isotopic, and paleogenomic analyses generating new insights regarding the use of the cave space as well as the individuals found within it. The thousands of human remains, animal bones, ceramics, and artifacts, have pushed us...
The Question of Sacrifice: Examining Maya Mortuary Practices through the Lens of Midnight Terror Cave (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As bioarchaeological interest in the question of ancient Maya ritual violence developed in the 1960s, it was generally recognized that sacrifice and related violent practices occurred within the social context of ritual. It should be expected, then, that caves would produce sacrificial osteological assemblages since they are...