Paleoindian and Paleoamerican (Other Keyword)
126-150 (596 Records)
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. Recent University of Oregon investigations at the Paisley and Connley Caves have resulted in 300+ radiocarbon ages including coprolites with human DNA. Earliest human occupations have been established at the Paisley Caves by stone tool cut marks on bone dated to 12,380 ± 70 14C yr B.P. Western Stemmed...
Decoding Knudson’s Flintknappers: A 3D Model Analysis of the Plainview Bison Kill Projectile Points (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavated in the mid-1940s, the Plainview site on the Southern High Plains generated considerable interest and continues to do so today. After hours spent illustrating each flake scar of the Plainview (41HA1) bison kill site’s lithic assemblage, Knudson stated in her 1973 dissertation that “perhaps only one and at...
Degrees of Change: The Transition from Paleoindian to Archaic (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition between the Paleoindian (13,000–8000) and Archaic (8000–1000) periods continues to elude North American archaeologists. It is inferred from archaeological evidence that human populations were nomadic hunter-gatherers during both periods. The creation of storage pits, however, provides...
Dennis Stanford's Legacy in Latin America (2018)
The influence that Dennis Stanford has had on archaeologists (and others) working in Latin America on the topic of early peopling is discussed, with specific reference to lithic technology, migratory models, and logistical/academic support.
Dennis Stanford: The Alaska Years and Beyond (2018)
Dennis Stanford was first introduced to Alaskan archaeology in 1966 as a field assistant to Robert L Humphrey during an archaeological survey in the Utukok River valley in the western Brooks Range. At the urging of John M. ("Jack") Campbell he began work near Point Barrow in 1968 to investigate controversial questions about the origins of Thule culture. Following brief investigations at the Utkiavik site, he focused his excavations south of Barrow at Walakpa, where he discovered more than 20...
Developing a Geomorphic and Archaeological History of Painters Flat (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Painters Flat is a small basin along the California/Nevada border and has never been described in literature. This past summer, the Far Western Anthropological Research Group recorded numerous sites spanning the entire chronological sequence for the region. Along with archaeological data, I collected information on landforms, profiles, and outcrops to...
The Diet of Dogs: Dental Microwear Texture Analysis to Interpret the Human-Canine Connection in Prehistoric North America (2018)
The archaeology of dog-keeping by indigenous Native North Americans enriches our understanding of ways people conceptualized their environments in the past. Finding new ways to investigate this topic contributes to broader anthropological knowledge about relationships among humans and the natural world. In this paper, I present exploratory research to examine ways that domestic dogs were maintained and the assumed value of dogs among Native Americans who lived in the Ohio River valley, in Plains...
Dietary Variation, Population Aggregation, and Foraging Strategies on Santa Rosa Island during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We examine dietary change on northern Santa Rosa Island, California, at the mouth of Cañada Verde, the location of the historically documented village of Silimihi, the third-largest village on the island by baptisms. There is evidence of a human presence at this location from the middle Holocene (4560–4140 95% cal BP) through the period of Spanish contact....
Digitizing the Collections from the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark Excavations 1960 to Present (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2019, we began a three-year project to digitize the collections from the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark. The site is well-known for its archaeological integrity and preservation of some of the earliest human activities in the Plains and the Rocky Mountains. The goal of the Hell Gap Archaeological Records Digital Archive Project (HGARDA) is to...
Dillehay’s Legacy: Modeling Interdisciplinary and International Scholarship in Archaeology of the Americas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With this paper, we reflect on Tom Dillehay’s contribution to archaeology by highlighting several facets of his approach to interdisciplinary research and scholarship that have heavily influenced our own work and careers, and those of many others. We do so in part by exploring our collective hemispherical...
Discard, Stockpile, or Commemorative Cairn: Interpreting the Bison Skull Pile at the Ravenscroft Late Paleoindian Bison Kill, Oklahoma Panhandle (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bison crania without mandibles form a vertical cluster in the earliest of two arroyos at the ~10,400 year old Ravenscroft bison kill site in the Oklahoma panhandle. The skulls were stacked on the arroyo floor, eventually forcing subsequent kills to relocate to an adjacent arroyo. A combined total of five winter kill events have been documented in the two...
Discerning Paleoindian Mobility in the Eastern Great Basin: A Geochemical Analysis of Lithic Artifacts from Bonneville Estates Rockshelter and Smith Creek Cave (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic technological organization studies and geochemical analyses provide a useful way for archaeologists to examine prehistoric forager mobility. In the Great Basin, these methods, when applied to assemblages from multi-component sites, have revealed diachronic changes in lithic raw material procurement patterns between the Paleoindian and Early Archaic...
The Discovery of California Megalithic Structures: The Geology and Geomorphology of the Artificial (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent discovery of megalithic structures on the central coast of California was accomplished by geologic analysis of mounds and stone piles on the crest of Tomales Point in the Point Reyes National Seashore. These features were generally ignored by both geologists and archaeologists because at a distance they look like bedrock outcrops. However, the...
Dispatches from an Archaeological "Backwater": Microwear as a Proxy Measure of Paleoindian Landscape Use in the Far Northeast (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have been examining and publishing on the fluted point period for over a century. However, the northeastern United States has received comparably less attention from the professional discipline, with one colleague describing prehistoric archaeology in New England as an archaeological backwater. This...
Disregarded Ritual: A Critical Reassessment of North American Subterranean Features (2018)
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...
Distinct Types? A Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Paleoindian Age Mojave Desert Lake Mohave and Silver Lake Projectile Points (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior univariate and multivariate morphometric analysis of Paleoindian age Lake Mohave and Silver Lake projectile points from the Mojave Desert, California, revealed these types are distinguishable 80% of the time. Building on the prior study, we use landmark-based Geometric Morphometric (LGM) analyses and complementary non-LGM variables to assess whether...
DNA-Based Determination of Microbial Community Structure in Soils from the La Prele Mammoth Site (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleomicrobiology is probably best known as an approach that yields anthropological findings connected to human health and disease, such as long-term records of oral microbiomes recovered from ancient dental calculus. However, the tools of microbial ecology have been tested for their potential to address other anthropological questions, and aid in...
Doc Holliday Goes to Tombstone (2018)
In 2002 Vance won the role of Executive Director for the Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund (AARF) at the University of Arizona. The program provided immediate funding for a number of graduate students working on the archaeology and Quaternary geology of the Desert Southwest. A renewed investigation of the upper San Pedro Basin was among those projects. Vance endured every possible graduate student misstep, some of which are reviewed here, to assemble new information about long-term and hotly...
Dog Domestication and the Dual Dispersal of People and Dogs into the Americas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in the isolation and sequencing of ancient DNA have begun to reveal the population histories of both people and dogs. Over the last 10,000 years, the genetic signatures of ancient dog remains have been linked with known human dispersals in regions such as the Arctic and the remote Pacific. It is suspected, however, that this relationship has a...
Domestic Space and Food Production in the Mesoamerican Neotropics During the Early Holocene (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discussions on the peopling of the tropics have tended to characterize tropical forests as barriers to early human foragers due to the difficulties in obtaining sufficient nutrition from hunting and foraging activities. New research on these pioneering settlers is transforming our understanding of...
Dr. Dennis J. Stanford: A Legacy of Research in Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology (2018)
I began my graduate studies in 1990, knowing I wanted to learn about the earliest human use of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. It became immediately clear that two decades of work by Dennis Stanford, much conducted with his research- and life-partner Pegi Jodry, contributed myriad bricks to the platform upon which I would construct my own body of work. Stanford’s research at early sites in Colorado spanned the chronological spectrum, from potentially pre-Clovis (Lamb Spring, Dutton and Selby), to...
Early Forager Responses to Ecological Changes in Southeastern North America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The timing and process of initial human colonization of the Americas has been at the forefront of archaeological inquiry for more than a century. Today we have moved beyond simply asking “when?” and “from where?” did the first Americans arrive and are now able to investigate more nuanced questions about what life...
Early Holocene Site Structure at the Little Steamboat Point 1 Rockshelter, Oregon (2021)
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...
Early Human Biology, Ecology, and Archaeology in the Lowland Tropics of Central America (2018)
Renewed focus on Paleoamerican and archaic peoples across Mesoamerica have broadened our understanding of those time periods. However, few stratified sites have been documented. We present new data from two multi-component rockshelters located in the Bladen Nature Reserve in the Maya Mountains of Belize. We document persistent use of these rockshelters from the late Pleistocene through the Maya collapse and suggest these spaces were used for animal processing, tool reduction, and as...
Early Occupations of the Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene in the Northern Highlands of the Semiarid North of Chile (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here, we present the results of archaeological surveys and excavations carried out in the Pedernales Salt Flat and the upper course of the Jorquera River (26°–27° S, 3,000–4,500 m asl). Environmentally, they are characterized by an Andean steppe with biotic resources distributed in patches. Surveys were directed toward specific geoforms such as river terraces,...