Caves and Rockshelters (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryon Schroeder.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a long history of engaged amateurs providing the professional community with productive field efforts and artifact collections and of equal length is the controversy surrounding this work. The controversy, from the perspective of this talk, focuses on the issue of artifact context and the gap between the professional and amateur communities’ stances...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean-Michel Chazine.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The discovery during the 1990’s of an unexpected large rock art field in East Kalimantan, East Borneo, containing more than 2000 negative hand prints, has led to a different approach of the possible function(s) of this materialization of specific procedures. It has permitted researchers to look for practical interpretations of decipherment of sex gender on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke. Jon Spenard.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the Maya area, caves are recognized as unambiguous ritual contexts that provide scholars with a glimpse into the ritual life of ancient people. Religious ritual was not epiphenomenal as some theoretical stances would argue, but was intertwined with the social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey, working for three seasons from 1990 – 1993, was the largest cave project ever conducted in the Maya area. While investigating 22 caves and 11 km of passage, the survey collected a large assemblage of human skeletal material that had the potential for clarifying the nature of human remains in caves....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Smith. Racheal Johnsen. Jayde Hirniak. Minghua Ren. Curtis Marean.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing archaeological sites on the same timeline across the African continent is essential for determining the initial appearance of key human behaviors and cultural features. Analytical error associated with traditional dating techniques makes these determinations difficult. Cryptotephra, which are small (<80 micron)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fabiana María Martin. Francisco Juan Prevosti. Luis Alberto Borrero.

Cueva Nordensjkold is a cave located in the Cerro Benitez, at Ultima Esperanza, Chile, above 150 masl, and accordingly beyond the highest stand of the Late Glacial Consuelo paleolake. The study of its Late Pleistocene faunal remains -Mylodontinae, Hippidion saldiasi, Camelidae, Panthera onca mesembrina and a large undetermined carnivore- is crucial for the understanding of the process of biological colonization of the Cerro Benitez area, where ephemeral Late Pleistocene human occupations were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Giovas. Michiel Kappers. Kelsey Lowe. Yoshi Maezumi. Claudia Kraan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project (CCLP) initiated a long-term field investigation on the ecological legacy of Indigenous and European colonial occupation of Curaçao, in the southern Caribbean. Excavation at a recently identified rockshelter site along the inland bay of Rif St. Marie (RSMA) identified significant archaeological deposits...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reid Farmer. Jon Kent. Allan Koch.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1971, excavations were conducted by avocational archaeologists at Cherokee Mountain Rock Shelter (5DA1001) in Douglas County Colorado. A 1973 published report showed an assemblage indicating three Late Prehistoric components. The middle component contained what was interpreted as Shoshonean ceramics likely from outside of the region. The collection was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rincon Mautner.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rectilinear planes cut into one of the gypsum outcrops near the base of the north face of Cerro Mequitongo, the hillock that rises above the south end of the massive Purrón Dam, created a subterranean space. The labor invested in excavating this man-made cave (Tc-511), its walls plastered with a thin veneer of stucco and decorated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Bedford. David Robinson.

The composition of background substrate, overpainted layers and admixtures can influence the data acquired from portable instrumentation at rock art sites. An understanding of the extent and impact of this influence is crucial when comparing in situ rock art pigments with potential source materials. This study uses an experimental process to assess the impact of factors such as a pigment thickness, overpainting, and addition of organic binders on the readings acquired using portable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Cobb. James Brady. Guillermo De Anda Alaniz.

One of the most enigmatic publications in Maya cave archaeology has been Edward H. Thompson investigation of the High Priest’s Grave at Chichen Itza in 1896. Thompson discovered a masonry shaft running down the center of the pyramid that gave access to a cave/cenote beneath the structure. This was the first account of a cave with a pyramid built over it and Thompson suggested that the cave contained seven chambers, hinting at the possibility of a Chicomoztoc. J. Eric Thompson in editing and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Zerboni. Guido S. Mariani. Sahra Talamo. Fabio Negrino. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

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. The reconstruction of Pleistocene human peopling along the Tyrrhenian coastline of Liguria is of critical importance. This region has yielded among the most recent evidence of Neanderthal occupation and the most ancient traces of modern humans in southern Europe. The reconstruction of the subsistence strategies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Ahern. Rory Becker. Ivor Jankovic. Lia Vidas.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conducting archaeological investigations in cave and rockshelters presents researchers with multiple unique challenges as compared to typical open-air sites. Reduced space, low light, and complex stratigraphic sequences are frequently the norm. Additionally, the nature of limestone cave walls and floors is an undulating,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Franklin. Frédéric Surmely. Sandrine Costamagno. Maureen Hays. Lauren Woelkers.

We present the discovery of a new Middle Magdalenian site at Enval, a rock shelter site in the Massif Central of France. Radiocarbon dates indicate a tight chronology at 17,000 years ago. The site is significant for several reasons. Faunal elements indicate the site is largely intact and not a palimpsest. Faunal studies also indicate the site was occupied during the winter. This is important because it demonstrates that late Pleistocene humans occupied the Massif Central during harsh conditions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Orozco.

This paper critically reassesses the use of subterranean features among prehistoric Native Americans of North America. A survey of the archaeological and ethnographic literature suggests that pre-historic Native Americans used subterranean features in a ritual context, although the ritual component is rarely acknowledged directly. The significance of the features becomes apparent when the context, mainly construction and artifact deposition, is considered. Many of these subterranean features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geun Tae Park.

This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines several cave sites on Jeju Island during the Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene. Subsistence economy, occupation patterns, and cave usage durations are studied and compared. From 1.8 mya, the Jeju Island began to be formed through hydro volcanic activities. Since then, the continuous activities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Harman.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2014 – 16 I participated in Sacred Sites Research rock art documentation projects in Montana and Wyoming, led by Larry Lowendorf. My contribution was my expertise with the DStretch program, which I created. DStretch proved to be an important resource in aiding the documentation of sites and recognizing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Black. David Kilby.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Eagle Nest Canyon joins the Rio Grande at Langtry, Texas, in the western Lower Pecos Canyonlands. Despite its relatively short length, this storied box canyon contains a dense archaeological record representing at least thirteen millennia of human activity and has seen intermittent archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joelle Nivens.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Castel-Merle Valley (Dordogne, France) bears three of the most important Aurignacian (40-28 ka) sites: the Abris Blanchard, Castanet, and de la Souquette. Together, these sites offer strong evidence for the shifting social dynamics reflected in the period’s characteristic innovations. The best explored of this evidence are their atypically large and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Bradley. Geoffrey Smith. Christopher Jazwa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Holocene component at Little Steamboat Point 1 (LSP-1) Rockshelter consists of flaked stone tools, debitage, ground stone, fire-affected rock, and abundant animal bones. It indicates suggest that people systematically butchered ~1,000 rabbits and hares, constructed cooking features, occasionally processed plants, and manufactured and discarded stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reniel Rodriguez Ramos.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations conducted in three cave sites in north-central Puerto Rico have revealed that human occupation of the mountainous interior of the island took place much earlier than previously thought. The available evidence, recovered from Cueva del Abono, Cueva Matos,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Cutrone. Madalyn Bills.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A long-standing goal of Southwestern archaeology is to understand the reason behind settlement location and why some locations seem to be given elevated status. The Spirit Bird Cave Model presented at the 2003 SAA Annual Meeting pointed to the fact that sacred geography incorporating features of the physical geography played an important role in settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Puente. Sarah Kurnick. Ethan Abbe.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As rainwater seeps into caves over millions of years, it creates calcium carbonate formations known as speleothems. Ancient Maya peoples associated speleothems with the Earth Monster’s fangs, the Serpent Deity, and caves from which Chahk, the rain god, brings rain. As such, speleothems are animate embodiments of fertility and ritually...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Mack.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern flanks of Mt. Adams, Washington, contain numerous lava tube caves. These lava tubes can be quite complex, containing narrow passages on multiple levels. In the course of exploring these lava tubes, modern cavers have inadvertently discovered a total of sixteen projectile points and a flake tool, within twelve different lava tubes. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Verdugo. James Brady. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental modification in Mesoamerica dates to the Early Preclassic Period and persisted into the 16th century. Investigations have suggested a number of possible explanations, generally aesthetic or ritual, for the practice. There is little consensus in the field. A total of 1194 teeth were recovered from Midnight Terror Cave (MTC), Belize,...