Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Viola Schmid. Irini Sifogeorgaki. Gerrit Dusseldorp. Wei Chu.

This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Raw materials are the lowest common denominator of any debitage analysis. And yet, the fracture mechanics of eccentric raw materials are not always fully considered when performing inter-/intra-assemblage comparisons. The fracture mechanics as one constraint to be respected by the knappers greatly influence archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only G. Logan Miller.

Prepared core and blade industries emerge in various times and places throughout the prehistory of North America. One of these is in association with the Hopewell phenomenon of the Eastern Woodlands. As such, they are often recognized as a Middle Woodland "index fossil" and a key materialized indication of Hopewell ceremonialism. However, few formal tests of their occurrence across space and time exist. Drawing on published reports, as well as an extensive review of the unpublished gray...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Torvinen.

Situated in the Malpaso Valley of Zacatecas, Mexico, the site of La Quemada was one of a series of polities that developed along the northern frontier of Mesoamerica during the Epiclassic period (A.D. 500-900). Widely distributed ceramic wares suggest interaction among northern frontier polities, but it remains unknown whether they are the product of widely recognized social categories (i.e., shared style) or direct, face-to-face interaction among individuals (i.e., shared composition)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Weir.

This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will explore the development of the locally produced Plain and Monochrome ware pottery at the Protohistoric Bronze Age (1700-1200 BC) sites of Episkopi-Phaneromeni and Episkopi-Bamboula in Southwestern Cyprus. The Protohistoric Bronze Age is a dynamic time for pottery production on Cyprus. It is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brady Kelsey. Steven Brandt. Elisabeth Hildebrand. Gary Stinchcomb.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations of the Late Pleistocene levels at Mochena Borago Rockshelter in SW Ethiopia, dating >50–35ka, have revealed one of the densest concentrations of modified ochre in eastern Africa. Here we consider technological variations of ochre and associated processing tools through studies of use-wear, trace elemental signatures, and artifact spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Williams. Calogero Santoro.

This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Based on Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA), we tried to decode Inka polychrome ceramics from northern Chile valleys, traditionally assumed of having been introduced by the Inka State from the Lake Titicaca region (more than 500 km away). The results show that these conspicuous Inka...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carmen Ting. Athanasios Vionis. Vasiliki Kassianidou. Thilo Rehren.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite marking the beginning of glazed ware production in Cyprus in the 13th century, the Paphos-Lemba production was a short-lived one and was replaced by other productions in the Famagusta, Lapithos, and Nicosia region. However, we know very little about the glaze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharina Zinn.

This paper explores the possibility to extract information about sensory experiences inherent in the material culture of ancient Egypt which are often overlooked due to the difficulty to track them in the material. By implementing new intellectual frameworks like New Materialism and the consequent application of methodologies from archaeology and anthropology we gain insight in the actions of ancient bodies. Taking inspiration from Latour’s actants (2005), Barad’s agential realism (2007) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Tomaskova. Muzi Msimanga.

Our 2017 fieldwork in the Northern Cape, South Africa presented us with a dilemma: how do methods of rock art research aimed at studying image making help us understand petroglyphs that may not be "images". The site Wildebeest Kuil near Kimberley, Northern Cape has two discrete areas of engravings: an area covered with distinct images of animals, humans, "geometric patterns" (80% of engravings), and a second adjacent area covered with peckings and stone modifications that do not easily translate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Mentzer. Ivo Verheijen. Britt Starkovich. Jordi Serangeli. Nicholas Conard.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When conducting micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) analyses of archaeological and geological materials, diffraction peaks, which are produced by crystalline materials, are typically unwanted and methods are devised to minimize their impact on the sample spectrum. Here, we explore the intentional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yoli Ngandali. Michael Lewis.

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. Recent discussions in the Historic Preservation Office of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have focused on the interpretation of the use-life of decorated ground stone bowls in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon. Historically, these belongings have been looted, sold off, gifted, or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Diaz-Guardamino.

Formal approaches to rock art traditionally focused on meaning and representation. Rock art images and panels were treated as static representations of symbolic frameworks while their materiality and active role in cultural production were overlooked. Rock art is the product of the dynamic interplay between people, tools and the rock surface. The properties of the rock panel have the capacity to shape rock art production as much as the skill and knowledge held by the engraver/painter and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Roldan. Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Abby Barrios.

Digital tools, such as photogrammetry and virtual environments have been around for decades. However, it was not until the past decade that the academic community introduced such tools into their work and have taken such discipline seriously. For this reason, the practice, management, teaching and potential of digital archaeology has remained a lagging field. As a response, this paper will provide a guide for traditional archaeologists to assist in the transition to the digital medium. An...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Zetz. Marisol Cortes-Rincon Ph.D.. Kristen Harrison. Raylene Borrego. Hannah Vizcarra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A wealth of digital data is produced during an archaeological excavation and because so much of the fieldwork is unrepeatable, once the site is fully excavated, the digital records must be archived in a manner that best facilitates reuse. This paper presents the ongoing undertaking of digitizing data for the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan White.

Although the archaeology of marginalized groups has been increasingly discussed in recent scholarship, people with disabilities remain largely unstudied. Recent works on this topic have paved the way for a dedicated examination of people with disabilities in the archaeological record. This paper reviews published material to critically examine physical evidence for disability and accommodation in New Kingdom Egypt and Classical Greece, both areas and periods with rich material culture, extensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Semon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chaco Collection at the American Museum of Natural History has more than 1,900 catalogued ceramic objects. Ceramic research in this collection tends to focus on the full-sized vessels, such as cylinder jars, pitchers, corrugated jars, and bowls, while less attention is given to the miniature vessels. In this poster, I present a breakdown of miniature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Iceland was settled by the Norse in the late ninth century and Greenland was settled from Iceland around AD 1000. Although these countries are quite dissimilar in landscape and geology, they have a similar flora in which the only forest-forming tree is birch. Birch alone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than mere accessories, the earflares that ancient Maya peoples donned were essential. Nothing indicates this more than the fact that their ornamental use was not limited ears; indeed, elite bodies dripped with them. Stelae from Tikal and Cobá depict rulers with long strings of them around their necks. Some earflares, as with an example from Pomona, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathaniel Erb-Satullo.

In the study of technological transformations, there is often much discussion of how innovations are conditioned by earlier systems of technical knowledge. Identification of transitional features is often challenging, however, particularly for questions about the origins of iron smelting and its relationship with copper-base metallurgy. This paper discusses some unusual technological features in iron metallurgical debris (circa 8th-6th c. BC) from a fortified hilltop site in the Caucasus,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Anderson. Sonia Harmand.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Pleistocene (0.77-0.13 Ma) was a crucial time in the evolution of the human brain. Homo heidelbergensis cranial fossils and endocasts provide evidence of brain size increases and structural changes during this time, which resulted in brains more like our own. The analysis of Acheulean lithic assemblages provides a means of exploring how these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Norris. Metin Eren.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Goodson Rockshelter in Oklahoma has provided strong chronometric evidence that early- and middle-stage fluted stone tool bases found there date to the Late Archaic. These results further indicate that such specimens are not necessarily diagnostic of the Clovis culture. Here, we present additional evidence that early- and middle-stage fluted bases do not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alvaro Brizuela Casimir. Gloria Biffano Marcial.

We present a review of the data obtained during the "Proyecto de Rescate Arqueológico Estí (PRAE)" that took place between 2000-2003 in the context of the environmental mitigations of the Estí hydroelectric project; and with special attention to the Barrigón site. Barrigón is a cemetery site from prehispanic times localized near to the Gualaca city in Chiriqui province (Panamá). This kind of "necropolis" was placed in the flat top of a little hill a few meters from the Barrigón river. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Saul Alcantara Salinas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La propuesta de trabajo abordará el uso del adobe en el Occidente Mesoamericano durante el periodo comprendido entre los años 600-900 dC, el cual representó para los habitantes del Valle de Colima, un movimiento transformador que modificó de manera radical la ideología y costumbres que hasta el año 600 dC fueron utilizadas alrededor de mil años; lo cual se...

DOCUMENT Citation Only S. Joey LaValley.

While Great Basin archaeologists use projectile points as time-sensitive markers, these typologies are based on the morphological characteristics of the finished artifacts. In most cases, points were produced elsewhere and curated to their final destination or they are found within a palimpsest containing a mixed bag of flaked stone tools and debitage. Seldom are archaeologists able to analyze debitage specific to the production of points. In 2016, Logan Simpson archaeologists recorded a small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Bankuti.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In antiquity, the use of prestige objects and adornment made of jade was a key aspect of Maya elite life which carried over from the Preclassic to the Classic period. The establishment of jade indicating high social status has shown to have begun in Mesoamerica with the Olmec, however the scope of this dissertation will focus only on the 1,800-year span of...