Paleoindian and Paleoamerican (Other Keyword)
1-25 (596 Records)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1999 to 2013, members of the Rocky Mountain Paleoindian Research Program (RMPRP) conducted extensive survey and numerous test excavations of very ancient sites in the Gunnison Basin, southwestern Colorado. During that period, researchers learned much about the timing of initial human use of the Basin and how...
A 3D Geometric Morphometric Comparison of Bone Surface Modifications on Proboscidean Assemblages from the Western Great Lakes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently, an alarming number of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss caused by human activities and climate change. Though numerically unprecedented, this may not be the first instance of a human-driven mass extinction. For decades, scholars have hypothesized that human predation led to the...
About Peopling and Rivers: Connections and Boundaries in the Early Peopling of Eastern South America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several papers have discussed the role of rivers in the process of knowledge, occupation, and dispersion of human groups in unfamiliar or inhabited landscapes. Most of the time the rivers are seen as displacement axes, facilitating the connection between distant points in a short time. However, at the same time as connecting elements, rivers can play the role...
Adding to the Paleoenvironmental Framework for Early Settlement of Interior Alaska: New Perspectives on Local Changes in Vegetation and Hydrology from Plant Wax N-Alkanes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many paleoenvironmental reconstructions from interior Alaska are based on pollen assemblages from lacustrine cores, which are sometimes challenging to relate directly to terrestrial conditions experienced by early human occupants. Here we use compound-specific stable isotope analysis of plant wax n-alkanes (δ13C wax and δDwax values) to...
Addressing Taphonomic Complications in the Use of Archaeological Radiocarbon Assemblages as Population Proxies: A Case Study in the Bonneville Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the imperatives driving reconstructions of past demography is the desire to analyze the impacts of past climate changes on human populations. An increasingly popular tool is the analysis of archaeological radiocarbon record, but the very paleoclimate changes that are of interest also have geomorphic effects—and the...
Advanced AMS 14C Dating of Contaminated Bones Associated with North American Clovis and Pre-Clovis Butchering Sites (2018)
When humans first colonized the Americas is becoming better understood by the addition of aDNA studies; however, the absolute dating of these late Pleistocene sites is crucial and depends upon accurate 14C dating of the fossils (i.e. bones, teeth and ivory). We re-dated vertebrate fossils associated with the North American butchering sites Wally’s Beach (Canada), La Prele, also known as Fetterman (Wyoming), Lindsay (Montana) and Dent (Colorado). Our work demonstrates the crucial importance of...
Adzes in Focus: A 2D vs. 3D Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Dalton Artifacts. (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geometric morphometrics (GM) is a method of digitizing objects in a way that controls for variables, such as size and scale so that the shape of objects can be compared to determine differences and similarities. This method has become increasingly abundant in archaeological investigations of lithic tool assemblages. In studies regarding prehistoric...
Aerial Mapping Approaches for Long-Term Monitoring of Heritage Landscapes Impacted by Climate Change (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a strong need to document heritage landscapes impacted due to rapidly changing climates in Canada. This paper presents two case studies about using UAV-based technology to better understand landscapes impacted by climate change. Both examples use UAV photogrammetric methods to monitor large and complex archaeological heritage sites. The first case...
After the Ice Age in the Ozarks (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fluted point techno-complexes of the Ozarks include Clovis, Gainey, Folsom, and Dalton. Folsom point-making people are comparatively less well represented in the interior Ozarks possibly because of the lack of grasslands and bison. In this presentation, we explain the origins and evolution of Clovis technology and the exploitation of lithic resources from...
An Agate Basin Point from Michoacán, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Late Pleistocene Stemmed Points across North America: Continental Questions and Regional Concerns" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A complete black obsidian Agate Basin Point was found in a rockshelter in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, during the excavations realized by the CEMCA team. Despite the fact that the stratigraphy of the shelter had been completely disturbed, this point was found associated with a complete...
The Ages of Stemmed and Fluted Points in the Northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains (2019)
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. While the relative and absolute ages of fluted and stemmed points remain unclear in the Great Basin, particularly in the earliest periods of prehistory, to the northeast in Wyoming the archaeological record is unambiguous. Fluted points are consistently older than stemmed points, an observation supported...
Allometry, Modularity, and Integration: Applying Biological Concepts and Statistical Tests to Stone Tool Shapes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most landmark-based geometric morphometric statistical analyses of stone tools are lifted from biological applications. The concepts are not always directly applicable, leading to unfounded interpretations of statistical results. Sometimes the problem is an imprecise definition of terms, but often the problem is an imperfect translation of a...
Amazonian Palm and Tree Fruits Fed Residents during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thirty years after its first excavations, Caverna da Pedra Pintada continues to be one of the only sites in the Brazilian Amazon that dates to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (over 12,000 cal BP). As such, understanding this site is pivotal to the interpretation of early human occupations and transformations of the tropical forest. Archaeobotanical...
Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates on Terminal Pleistocene Horses from North America Shows Synchronous Local Extirpation and Overlap with Paleoindian Technocomplexes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Absolute dating in archaeology is dominated by radiocarbon dating, a method that is frequently conducted on zooarchaeological material, creating a large and diverse global dataset that is readily accessible. Though radiocarbon dates are certainly valuable on their own, their value extends...
Analysis of the Faunal Distribution at the Weed Lake Ditch site (35HA341), Southeastern Oregon (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Weed Lake Ditch is an open-air site located on the relict shores of Pluvial Lake Malheur in the Harney Basin of southeastern Oregon. Excavations by the University of Nevada, Reno and the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA) have revealed multiple stemmed points and crescent lithic technology in buried contexts. Faunal remains from the site are...
Analysis of the Fenley Hunter Obsidian Flake from the Tule Springs Archaeological Site, Las Vegas, NV (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster concerns the Tule Springs Archaeological Site (79001461/26CK4) in Clark County, Nevada, and new analyses of the obsidian flake discovered there in 1933. The importance of the flake rests in its then-postulated association with the fossil remains of extinct Pleistocene megafauna and the long-term research endeavors that have happened since....
Analysis of Western Stemmed Tradition Stone Tool Patterns and Faunal Remains from Pit Feature 95 at the Cooper’s Ferry Site (10IH73), Idaho (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) reveal unique insights about the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). Previous studies at the site presented information on WST pit cache features; here specifically, I present a study of Feature 95 (F95), which provides an archaeological snapshot of site occupation at ~9679 ± 33 BP (11,190–11,093 cal...
Ancient Landscapes of the Rocky Mountain Front: A View from the Billy Big Springs Site, MT (2018)
The northern Rocky Mountain Front contains critical information regarding human exploration and colonization of the continent. Yet, reconstructed paleo-landscapes in the region extending from southern Alberta to northern Montana have focused almost exclusively on the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Billy Big Springs, a multi-component site located just east of East Glacier Park, provides new data on long-term natural (as old as 21,000 cal. BP) and cultural (post 14,000 to 700 cal. BP) landscape...
Ancient Lifeways but Not Archaic Approaches: Theoretical and Methodological Contributions from Researching the Earliest Record of the American Southeast (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We review contributions of archaeologists studying the Pleistocene and Early Holocene records in the American Southeast. Researchers expand on a variety of theoretical approaches, including the evolutionary theories of human behavioral ecology and cultural transmission, technological organization, and gender archaeology. While still...
Anthropology Underwater: Landscape archaeology above and below water in the Great Lakes (2018)
Submerged prehistoric landscapes have unique traits which make them invaluable to archaeologists – increased preservation of organic remains, Pompeii-like snap shots in time, and data that either do not exist on land or are deeply buried. These attributes make the few challenges that remain for conducting archaeology underwater more than worth the effort. Early human occupation in the Great Lakes has been difficult to investigate as acidic soils and dynamic water levels left many archaeological...
An Application of Surovell’s Behavioral Ecology Models of Site Occupation Length in the Peruvian Andes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In his monograph, Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology (2009), Todd Surovell models mathematically the economics of prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ production, use, and discard of lithic technologies. Although we see great potential in these models to extend our understanding of hunter-gatherer mobility patterns and landscape use, they have received...
The Archaeofaunal Dimension of Preceramic Human-Environment Dynamics in the Highlands of Southwestern Honduras (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Preceramic period (ca. 11,000–5,000 cal BP) in Mesoamerica has focused on the transition from a foraging way of life toward agriculture, plant domestication, and sedentism. Yet we know little about the processes and contexts that drove this transition, particularly the relationship between foragers and animal prey. In this paper I present...
Archaeological Evidence in the Caves and Cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since prehistoric times, the caves of the Yucatán Peninsula have been the locus of regular visit by animals but as well by the first humans populating the continent. Thousands of years later, the Maya culture would establish its cities around the cenotes and the few bodies of surface water. The Maya culture has developed over the...
Archaeological Evidence of Human Hunting and North American Megafauna Extinctions: A Statistical Reassessment of the Fenske Bone Surface Modifications (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists continue to debate what caused the mass extinction of North American megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene—human hunting, climate change, or a combination of both. This debate persists because archaeologists lack standardized methodologies to relate unobservable human hunting behaviors with fossilized animal remains. Some...
Archaeological GIS Approaches to a Regional Analysis in São Paulo State, Southeastern Brazil (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Being a science that intends to understand the past through artifacts, Archaeology tends to make inferences about human behavior assessing historical events with reference with time and space. Considering that the results of archaeological studies are rich in spatial information, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) seems to be an excellent...