Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlen Garnica. Ramiro Edmundo Martinez Lemus. Eugenia Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological investigations in the eastern zone of Guatemala have reported many sites with painted rock art or petroglyphs. There are other similar representations in rock shelters in Guatemala especially at La Casa de las Golondrinas in the Antigua Valley. At these sites, the representation of serpents is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elanor Sonderman.

The Lower Pecos region of Texas is a remarkable study area, primarily because perishable artifacts (those made of plant materials, bone, and leather) survive in near pristine conditions in its very dry caves and rockshelters. Vaughn Bryant was among the first researchers in the region to use pollen data to build paleoclimatic and ecological chronologies from this region, his dissertation is still one of the most comprehensive analyses of this region’s ecological past. Following this path, my...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Greer.

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 some of the preliminary results from two seasons of excavation work at Spirit Eye Cave, a prehistorically occupied site near Presidio, Texas. Despite being heavily impacted by decades of collecting, the Center for Big Bend Studies began excavations in the cave in 2017 and recovered thousands of artifacts discarded by collectors as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Ogaz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1950, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) graduate student Georgiana Guthrie excavated Dry Lake Cave (CA-INY-1898). Located in Inyo County, California, the rock shelter is near Little Lake, the Stahl site, the Rose Spring site, and the Borden site. Dry Lake Cave is an east-facing basalt rock shelter that overlooks Rose Valley, providing occupants...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Angelica Romero Padilla.

This is an abstract from the "Preclassic Maya Social Transformations along the Usumacinta: Views from Ceibal and Aguada Fénix" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of the Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project, I conducted reconnaissance in three caves with archaeological remains, named Santo Tomás, San Marcos, and Corregidora. The three caves are located in the Tenosique municipality in Tabasco, Mexico near the border with Guatemala. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Kohanski. Jeffery Rosa Figueroa.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1966 a cave near Chichen Itza was reported to the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) by Maya living in the area. The cave was investigated by Victor Segovia Pinto, after which the sinkhole entrance was filled with rocks. When archaeologists from the Gran Acuífero Maya opened the cave 52 years later, workers on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ciprian Ardelean. Juan Ignacio Macías-Quintero.

Caves and rockshelters throughout the highlands and sierras of Central-Northern Mexico have always represented an important point of reference for prehistoric archaeology and were traditionally targeted as the most reliable contexts for the understanding of hunter-gatherer societies and the establishment of cultural-historical models. However, the paradigms created on basis of the excavation of such sites affected rather negatively the archaeological thinking in Mexican archaeology. Caves and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Bueno.

Because of Maya religion’s heavy focus on the sacred Earth, subterranean spaces tend to be seen as sacred landmarks. Caves in particular have been shown to be the most promising context for the archaeological study of Maya religion (Brady and Prufer 2005). Rockshelters, however, have received less attention and appear to have identities and meanings that are negotiable across the lowlands. Recent rockshelter excavations have uncovered skeletal remains (Bonor 1995; Glassman et al. 2005; Saul et...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Gorden.

Yokuts and Western Mono tribes of central California had close cultural ties. While the Yokuts were the most numerous and the dominant culture, many people were bilingual. They shared themes in their pictographs, petroglyphs, and cupules, which are cultural traits of a ceremonial nature that are archaeologically identifiable, and are generally agreed to have magico-religious significance. Forty-one percent of the paintings in their territory occur in shallow caves and rockshelters, which vary in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen L. Black. Charles Koenig.

Eagle Nest Canyon, a box canyon draining into the Rio Grande in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas, houses Bonfire Shelter, the oldest and southernmost bison jump site in North America. Bonfire was excavated in 1963-64 and again in 1983-1984, leaving open a 3m-deep excavation block. Nearby Eagle Cave was excavated in the 1930s and again in 1963, leaving the central trench unfilled. In 2015-2016, the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University re-excavated the 4-meter...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Antelope Cave is a large limestone cavern sunk beneath the undulation hills of the Uinkaret Plateau in Northwestern Arizona. Native Americans lived in the cave intermittently for 4000 years during the Archaic and Puebloan periods. This paper focuses on the Basketmaker materials, particularly the sandals, recovered by UCLA archaeologists at Antelope Cave in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Riordan. Julie Field. John Dudgeon.

This poster reports on field-work and laboratory investigations conducted on geoarchaeological samples from Naihehe Cave, located in the Sigatoka river valley of Viti Levu, Fiji. This research employs novel and exploratory methods, including Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the elemental content of sediment samples and for detailed imagery useful in grain size and shape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. James Brady. Guillermo de Anda.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In June 2022, the Gran Acuífero Maya resumed investigations initiated in 2018 of Las Monjas Sascabera 2 (LMS2), one of 11 sascaberas located south and west of the Las Monjas complex at Chichén Itzá. In the intervening years, rain washed out accumulated soil that had blocked access to the circular, constructed entrance and exposed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Kandel. Boris Gasparyan. Angela Bruch. Anneke ter Schure. Sanne Boessenkool.

This is an abstract from the "Pleistocene Landscapes and Hominin Behavior in the Armenian Highlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our knowledge of plants used by Upper Paleolithic humans is limited by the survival of identifiable plant parts. In this study, we present the results of ancient DNA studies of cave sediments from Aghitu-3 Cave in the Armenian Highlands. The cave contains a detailed record of human settlement and environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubree Marshall. Gabriela Murphy. Gabriel Wrobel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caves Branch Rockshelter (CBR) is a large cemetery site in Central Belize used for burial by a rural Maya community during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods (~300 BC–AD 400). The CBR skeletal series is unusual in the region as it is large and appears to comprise a relatively complete mortality profile. However, due to poor preservation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlys Nicolás Batalla. Astolfo Araujo. Mercedes Okumura. Casimiro Munita.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maximiano archaeological site consists of a limestone rockshelter embedded in the Brazilian tropical Atlantic Forest of SE Brazil. Excavated in the late 1970s by an amateur archaeologist, this 40 × 5 × 3 m rockshelter setting contains lithics, bone artifacts, and faunal and human remains dating between ~11,712 and 6796 cal yr BP. Located in a region...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Skeens.

Woodpecker Cave (13JH202) provides a unique opportunity to study variation in ceramic technology and resource allocation during the ceramic production process at a Late Woodland East-Central Iowa site. Excavations by the University of Iowa field school spanning six seasons have recovered hundreds of ceramic pottery sherds from Woodpecker Cave, including a modest amount of decorated rim pieces and a large number of undecorated body sherds. Previous typological analyses of the ceramic assemblage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Benedetti. Jonathan Haws. Lukas Friedl.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paleolithic cave site of Lapa do Picareiro is located on the upper slopes of the Serra de Aire limestone massif (571 m asl) about 100 km northeast of Lisbon, Portugal. The cave is a single chamber (15 × 15 m) with >10 m of sedimentary fill, mostly limestone éboulis clasts and muddy sediment in pore spaces. During the last glacial stage, the cave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Heisinger.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skiles Shelter (41VV165) is located at the mouth of Eagle Nest Canyon, roughly 250 meters northwest from the Rio Grande in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. Skiles Shelter is characterized by a fading panel of Pecos River Style rock art, numerous bedrock milling features, and a massive burned rock midden (BRM) accumulation of fire cracked rock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Dominique Rissolo.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mapping is one of the most fundamental and important enterprises for cave archaeologists not only for research but also integral to cave management and heritage preservation. Using traditional cartography techniques is often a tedious and long-term project involving numerous field seasons and thousands of measurements. Capturing 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Ward. David Robinson.

Located on the Wind Wolves wildlife preserve in South Central California, there are several spectacular rock art sites. Created by the Native Californians who inhabited the landscape, they have been the focus of a number of studies over the years, but none of these studies concentrated on the sound quality of these spaces. The correlation between the placement of rock/cave art, and the acoustic properties of the space in which it is found, is increasingly being studied under the rubric of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Kelsey Hanson. Erin Ray.

Performance theory recognizes that the boundaries between ritual and theatrical performances are often quite blurred, allowing shared methods of analysis between the two. While many have argued for a theater-state among the ancient Maya, few have ventured beyond the large ceremonies conducted in great plazas to consider the more esoteric nature of public, semi-public, and private rites taking place in the natural landscape. Ancient Maya caves were used exclusively as ritual spaces, yet there has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster examines the implications of imagery identified as relating to Mesaomerican “Flower Worlds” on spindle whorls left in situ in Balankanche’ Caverns by actors who used the caverns in the Terminal Classic period (ninth and tenth centuries) to invoke ritual-mythic time within this underworld space that was seen as the place of human creation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ted Goebel. Joshua Lynch. Caitlin Doherty.

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lack of a comprehensive and sound geochronology of Paleoindian sites in the Great Basin has long been a stumbling block for explaining variability in Western Stemmed points and their relationship with Clovis. Open-air sites are often undatable or present conflicting radiocarbon dates, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant and animal perishable remains are not uncommon in dry cave archaeological contexts, which have made significant contributions to archaeological knowledge in recent years. Textiles (including basketry, cordage, woven, knotted, or plaited products) make up a considerable portion of the perishable archaeological record in these contexts, much of which...