Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)
126-150 (188 Records)
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...
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...
Radiocarbon Dating of Land Snail Shell and the Chronology of MSA-Neolithic Human Activity in the Haua Fteah, Libya (2018)
Land snails have a radiocarbon ecology which leads to offsets in shell radiocarbon age, relative to contemporary biogenic carbon. We describe new methods for evaluating and calculating this offset. We radiocarbon date and apply the new methods to land snail food debris, from the deep MSA to Neolithic sequence in the Haua Fteah cave, NE Libya. Oxcal modelling of the resulting 136 dates over ~45000 years shows the site was used for short episodes separated by long periods of abandonment. The...
Re-documenting the Pleistocene–Holocene Occupations of Arma dello Stefanin in Liguria, Italy (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. In 2022, our team started work at the Arma dello Stefanin to document the stratigraphy that had been unearthed in the 1960s and 1980s. In this presentation, we will summarize the results of our attempts to date the stratigraphy of the site to place it within its proper temporal context. This is the second conference...
Re-evaluation of the Archaeology of the Pali Aike Lava Field (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Patagonian Evolutionary Archaeology and Human Paleoecology: Commending the Legacy (Still in the Making) of Luis Alberto Borrero in the Interpretation of Hunter-Gatherer Studies of the Southern Cone" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new research project will focus on the archaeology of the Pali Aike Lava Field, Patagonia, Chile by a restudy of the collections obtained by Junius Bird between 1936 and 1970. These objects...
Reanalyzing Dry Creek Rockshelter: A New Path Forward for Idaho Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dry Creek Rockshelter provides important evidence for the deep history of human occupation in the Boise foothills. Our recent reinvestigation of this site suggests a reinterpretation of its occupation history. This work provides a new model for collaboration between archaeologists and Native American...
Recent Insights and Research on Paleolithic of Istria: Examples from Romuald’s Cave (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent decade saw a rapid rise in the research on Paleolithic sites in Istria. This renewed interest started with field surveys and continued with new research projects aimed at better understanding of biocultural patterns and adaptations of hunter-gatherers in the region during the Pleistocene. The research included new...
Recent Investigations in Rock Art Dating in Several Cuban Caves (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cuba has many karst caves with pictographs, but there has been uncertainty about who created the rock art. The prehistoric population, historic indigenous groups pushed to the margins by the Spanish, and maroons or escaped African slaves are all possibilities. Cuban archaeologists have debated for decades which groups were...
Recent Radiocarbon Dates from the Shaft and Cave under the Osario at Chichén Itzá: Rethinking the High Priest's Grave (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the archaeological literature, the Osario at Chichén Itzá has been defined by the 998 A.D. long-count date inscribed on a pillar at the top of the pyramid. Although the pillar could have been added long after the construction of the pyramid, the complex is, nevertheless, consistently treated as a late construction. From the outset,...
Reconceptualizing Chichen Itza: The Gran Acuífero Maya Project (2018)
During the summer of 2017, the Gran Aquífero Maya (GAM) project initiated an investigation at Chichen Itza designed to define the site around its aquatic resources. The project is based on my previous work at Cenote Holtun, located 1.6 miles west of Chichen Itza, which found that a line drawn between Holtun and Cenote Kanjuyum on the east pasted through the center of El Castillo. It has long been known that El Castillo is bisected by a line drawn between the Sacred Cenote on the north and the...
Recreation, Rockshelters, and Resource Management (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, New Mexico State University (NMSU) staff and students surveyed 120 acres on the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. The New Mexico Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages this monument, provided funding for this project. The survey occurred in seven high-priority parcels near Bishop’s Cap, where frequent recreational...
The Reemergence of Balamku as a First Order Sacred Landmark at 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 2018 season, the Gran Aquífero Maya project began exploration of the cave of Balamku, located some 2.4 km east of Chichen Itza's site center. The cave is noteworthy in containing incensarios, manos and metates, and other artifacts identical to those in the back passage of Balankanche, only in greater numbers. The similarity...
A Reexamination of Postclassic Maya Cave Altars along the Central Coast of Quintana Roo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The construction and ceremonial use of miniature temples, or shrines, in caves across the central coastal zone of Quintana Roo, Mexico is a well-documented tradition and one that has received recent scholarly attention. Also common in caves throughout the region was the siting of unenclosed altars in a range of different forms and styles....
Reinterpreting a Sacrificial Ossuary at 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 widening of the air strip at Chichen Itza in 1967, a small subterranean chamber, located some 300 m north of the Cenote of Sacrifice, was discovered. The feature, variably called a cave or a chultun, contained two small chambers, the larger of which was only 4 x 5 m. These chambers contained human skeletal material, a portion...
Renewed Investigations at Leonard Rockshelter (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Leonard Rockshelter is located in Pershing County, Nevada. Initially mined for bat guano, workers discovered artifacts in 1938, prompting a visit by Robert Heizer. Heizer returned to excavate the site in 1950 and reported more than 2 m of stratified deposits from which he recovered a modest assemblage of perishable and...