Paleoindian and Paleoamerican (Other Keyword)
551-575 (596 Records)
This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite almost 200 years of debate, there are still crucial aspects that we do not fully understand in relation to the evolutionary history of South Americans. One of the major obstacles has been the limited number of available early...
Trek Up the River: A Cobble Tool Technology as Clue to Interior California's Antiquity (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An early quartzite cobble lithic technology is evidenced by a multi-site pattern of datasets including waste cores and tools with highly patinated flake scars on remains deeply embedded in the natural desert pavement of the Pleistocene shorelines along the Lower Colorado River (LCR). Reduction technology is represented at Vista del Lago (CA-SBr-1456) located...
Trends in Paleoindian Projectile Point Technology during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition at the Old River Bed Delta, UT (2018)
The fossil Old River Bed delta, located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, UT, contains one of the highest concentrations of Paleoindian archaeology within the Great Basin. Occupied from 13,000 cal B.P. until its desiccation around 9,500 cal B.P., this productive marshland provided a wide array of dietary resources utilized by the region’s inhabitants during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. However, changes in climate, local hydrology, and human populations during this dynamic period likely...
Tribal Agency and Federal Hegemony: NAGPRA in Action (2018)
Our knowledge and traditions tell us that the Ancient One is our Ancestor. We have requested repatriation for nearly twenty years only to be blocked at every turn. The final judgment made at the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit placed the Claimant Tribes in the status of "interested party" in the minds of the federal agency. This is the hegemonic framework the tribes found themselves in when the US Army of Engineers made the official determination that the Ancient One is Native...
The Trouble with the Curve: Reassessing the Gulf of Mexico Sea-Level Rise Model (2018)
During last glacial episode, a massive amount of water was locked within ice sheets, resulting in a reduction in global sea-levels by 134 meters. The reintroduction of freshwater into the oceans radically changed global sea-levels and littoral landscapes. Over the last 20,000 years, approximately 15-20 million km2 of landscape has been submerged worldwide. Sea-level rise explains the rarity of glacial period coastal archaeological sites. Understanding Florida’s Paleoindians’ interactions with...
UAV-Based Mapping and Public Outreach at Blackwater Draw (2018)
Remote sensing has dramatically changed the way we collect data at archaeological sites, and has added new and innovative methodologies to our fieldwork. It has also facilitated greater public engagement by making archaeology more accessible – this is especially true of sites that are considered remote or difficult to access because of challenging terrain. As part of the public outreach initiative of the new Blackwater Draw Museum and its associated website, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)...
Understanding Prearchaic Mobility and Settlement Patterns: The Role of Theory, Models, and Ethnographic Analogies (2018)
Most evidence suggests that Prearchaic hunter-gatherers were highly mobile, and equipped with a hunting oriented lithic technology that lacked milling equipment. Nonetheless, they acquired a broad spectrum of prey and tended to camp near wetlands rich in small game and plant resources. Archaeologists have questioned to what degree this evidence reflects an adaptation that fundamentally differed from ethnographically observed patterns in the Great Basin, as well as whether it was shaped primarily...
Undiscovered Country: The Ground Stone Tools Assemblage from Hell Gap National Historical Landmark (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most complete records of human activity on the North American Plains, between 13,000 and 8500 years ago, is found at the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark in Wyoming. The area was inhabited continuously during this period as evidenced by the five main site localities. While we know a good deal about the activities on site from chipped stone...
Unlikely Allies: Modern Wolves and the Diets of Pre-contact Domestic Dogs (2019)
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. Assumptions of prehistoric domestic dogs as scavengers has been pervasive in archaeology and beyond. This project clarifies these assumption by investigating the dietary behavior of prehistoric domestic dogs via dental microwear data or features on the tooth surface that indicate types of food consumed. In order...
Updates on the Geoarchaeology of the Latest Pleistocene and Earliest Holocene at the Page-Ladson site, Florida (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Page-Ladson site in the Aucilla River basin in northwestern Florida, a drowned terrestrial locality, contains strata with well-preserved organic materials in archaeological contexts, allowing us to create absolute cultural chronologies, recreate paleoenvironments, and discuss human subsistence strategies. For the past several years, we have been...
Updating the Late Pleistocene Record of the Willamette Valley, Oregon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Near the end of the Pleistocene, 35 genera of mostly large mammals became extinct in North America, yet the cause of these extinctions remains debated. The Willamette Valley in western Oregon boasts a robust record of up to nine megafaunal taxa (*Mammuthus, Mammut, Equus, Paramylodon, Megalonyx,...
The Use of Legacy Collections as Education Opportunities for Undergraduate Student Internships (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) offers semester long internships to undergraduate students from UTSA’s Anthropology Department. The internship program offers students an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in laboratory methods, independent research, curation standards, and collection...
Using Fish Remains from Paisley Caves, Oregon to Explore Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways and Lake Level History in the Chewaucan Basin over the Past 14,000+ Calendar Years (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paisley Caves holds some of the earliest evidence for human occupation in North America. The site’s fish remains have received only limited attention before now. Our pilot study sought to assess the potential for using a sample of the fish remains to help reconstruct lake level history, better understand regional paleoenvironments, and gain insights on forager...
Using Landscape Learning to Explore Diachronic Change within the Western Stemmed Tradition (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. The Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) spanned as much as 5,000 years in the Great Basin. However, due to deflationary erosion, more refined control within this wide temporal range remains elusive. Thus, temporally sequencing WST sites, subtypes, and their diagnostic artifacts is currently difficult, often unattainable, and...
Using Lithic Conveyance to Reconstruct Paleoindian Cultural Landscapes in the Great Basin (2018)
Archaeologists commonly use the geographic patterning of sourced artifacts to understand how prehistoric cultures used their landscapes, yet exactly what this patterning indicates remains unclear. The Paleoindian literature reflects a tendency to assume that toolstone conveyance reflects direct acquisition (i.e., mobility) motivated by subsistence and technological concerns, rather than acquisition (i.e., exchange) motivated by social concerns. Yet the challenge of actually distinguishing...
Using Predictive Modeling to Evaluate Changes in Great Basin Paleoindian Settlement Systems through Time (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Great Basin underwent considerable environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, such as lower precipitation, increased temperatures, and the diminishment of lakes and wetlands. Archaeologists have long hypothesized that people responded by altering their settlement-subsistence strategies. Some models outlining these responses...
Using Traditional and Nontraditional Isotopic Tracers of Diet and Mobility of Brazilian Shell Mound Populations (ca. 8000–1000 years BP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of shell mounds can shed light on human occupation and adaptations at coastal environments worldwide. In South America, human groups occupied the territory close to the Atlantic Ocean for millennium (ca. 8000 to ⁓1000 years BP), building hundreds of shell mounds, some with impressive dimensions. After 2000 BP, it is assumed that these populations...
Using ZooMS to Evaluate Targeted Species Harvest of Pacific Salmon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a large estuary off the central coast of eastern Vancouver Island lies a series of fish trap complexes, which were used for catching herring and salmon in the past. Nearby, the large Pentlatch Village site contains the zooarchaeological remains of these harvests and provides an opportunity for researchers to obtain species-level...
Utilizing Drone Modeling to Facilitate Targeted Pedestrian Survey in Central Western Patagonia (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. Regional archaeological survey is notably difficult in continental Aysén, Chile. Many researchers mark the difficult terrain and dense vegetation of forest and forest-steppe biomes of this region of Central Western Patagonia as major factors limiting our ability to identify new archaeological sites. Thus far, most...
Variability in Clovis Biface Morphology from the Type-site, Blackwater Draw Locality 1 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Blackwater Draw Locality 1 site provides one of the most unique perspectives of Paleoindian behavior in North America. Spatial evidence surrounding faunal and lithic assemblages have inspired researchers to hypothesize site function to represent kill, scavenging, caching, or domestic activities. Its setting relative to other localities of resource...
Variability of Clovis Lithic Assemblages from El Fin del Mundo and the San Pedro River Valley (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Clovis populations have been traditionally characterized as wide ranging, highly mobile foragers, as reflected most notably in the intense utilization of high quality, nonlocal cryptocrystalline lithic raw materials. However, in Sonora, Mexico, local non-cryptocrystalline tool stones dominate Clovis...
The View from the Trenches: Tying Paleoenvironment to Archaeology at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855) (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. The 2018 fieldwork emphasized trench excavation across the relict stream channel directly in front of the rockshelter. Sedimentary deposits comprise a well-stratified, five-part sequence of bedrock basalt overlain by a gravel bed of rounded cobbles and boulders; dark gray blocky to massive cienega...
Voices in Conversation: Assessing 36 Years of Demographics in a Professional Archaeology Newsletter (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic research is comparable to a conversation. As in all conversations, certain voices are amplified while others are underrepresented. Much of this academic conversation happens in peer-reviewed journals and academic books, but informal conversations outside of these arenas are often overlooked. We are studying the...
Western Stemmed Technology on California's Channel Islands (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. Paleocoastal sites on California's Northern Channel Islands have produced hundreds of stemmed points, crescents, foliate points or knives, and other bifaces dated between ~12,250 and 8200 years ago. Although uniquely maritime in nature, these island Paleocoastal assemblages are clearly related to the...
The Western Stemmed Tradition During the Younger Dryas: The Newest Evidence from Connley Caves, Oregon (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. Recent excavations at the Paisley and Connley Caves have uncovered coeval Younger Dryas occupations with different but complementary Western Stemmed Tradition artifact assemblages. Whereas the perishable artifact assemblage at Paisley Caves provides important health and subsistence data, the large lithic...