Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
176-200 (563 Records)
Recent dating projects have determined the oldest known date for copper smelting to appear around, 5000 BCE, associated with Vinča (Gradac phase) sites in the Morava Valley, Serbia. Recent Studies of Vinča metallurgy (Radivojevic 2010) were directed towards the characterisation of slags and associated minerals, and their provenance. This body of work has had important implications for theories relating to the beginnings of metal-using communities. Despite this important research, few studies...
Experimental Recreation of Shell Fishing Implements at Mitchell Indian Village in South Dakota (2018)
Over the years of excavation at the Prehistoric Indian Village at Mitchell, several similar shell artifacts were discovered. Excavators came to the hypothesis that the shell items had been fishing lures, and set out to test it. The shell artifacts were replicated and used as lures on several fishing expeditions. These shell items functioned as lures, and we are led to believe that the artifacts found at Mitchell could indeed have been fishing lures.
An Experimental Study of Arctic Ceramic Cooking Vessel Performance (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic vessels from the Norton (2800–1500 BP) and Thule (1350–250 BP) traditions often differ in wall thickness and the proportion and type of temper, suggesting they may have performed differently for cooking. This experimental study explores how technological choices (wall thickness, temper, and surface treatments) affected physical characteristics...
Experimental Study of Bronze Casting Molds for Reproduction of the Ancient Chinese Bronze (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To understand ancient casting technology in China, the non-destructive SEM-EDS technique was applied to casting molds from Anyang. Their grain sizes were various but some of the molds showed a layered structure with fine decorations. The finest layers composed of very fine mineral particles which is comparable to the loess...
Explaining Shifts in Dalton Paleoindian Adaptations at the End of the Pleistocene through Usewear and Technological Organization Analyses (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Late Paleoindian period in North America approximately 12,000 years ago, Dalton hunter-gatherers substantially altered their hunting technology by modifying their point blades with teeth-like serrations and bevels. The functions of these attributes have been the focus of a long-held debate. Some argue that the variation relates to use as knives and...
Exploring Interethnic Relations in Southern Ecuador through a Comparative Study of Ceramic Production Technologies in the Late Precolumbian Era (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An important component of Inca statecraft involved the practice of uprooting communities from their home territories and relocating them to distant locales. Ethnohistoric documents indicate that southern Ecuador was densely populated by such transplanted populations, among whom were included specialists dedicated to state...
Exploring Production Methods of Casting Molds and the Artisans who Made Them (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The production of Shang dynasty bronze vessels is based on the artisans’ mastery of loess material and how they manipulated them to produce the casting molds. From the beginning stage of raw material procurement to the firing of the molds, these steps all left marks in the molds’ microstructure and physical build up. The...
Exploring the Use of Multispectral Imaging in Ceramic Pigment Analysis (2018)
Multispectral imaging cameras are frequently used in art conservation for identifying pigments as well as monitoring change in pigments over time. Multispectral cameras take multiple images at 370nm 448nm, 476nm, 499nm, 519nm, 598nm, 636nm, 700nm, 735nm, 780nm, 870, and 940nm wavelengths with UV bandpass, visible bandpass, and long pass filters to increase the range of captured information to include UV reflectance and florescence emission images. This poster explores the ability to utilize this...
Exploring Toolstone Provisioning on the Nenana Valley Lithic Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Beringian record is critical to understanding human dispersals and adaptive behaviors of the earliest peoples in the Americas. Late Pleistocene and Holocene peoples subsisted on a dynamic and changing landscape that undoubtedly influenced technological organization, including toolstone procurement and selection patterns. The interior Alaskan record is...
Extracting Copper from Sulphidic Ores: The Jicalán Viejo Smelting Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Contrary to other Mesoamerican cultural and political entities, the Purépecha Empire is renowned for its remarkable development of metallurgical production. Ongoing research at the site of Jicalán Viejo involves the...
Exudates and Resins Used by the Maya as Potential Candidates for Natural Bioactive Adhesives, Gums, and Protective Coatings (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Both the ancient and modern Maya have employed a broad range of plant exudates, gums, resins, and other natural products for many centuries. Numerous plant species indigenous to Mesoamerica possess bioactive compounds that have served as medicine, pesticides, fish poisons, dyes, adhesives, unguents, tanning...
A Fabric and Spatial Analyses of the Artifacts Recovered from the Ryan-Harley Paleoindian Site (8JE1004) in North Florida (2018)
The Ryan-Harley site (8JE1004) is a Suwannee point site located in North Florida along the Wacissa River. Ryan-Harley is significant because it is the only archaeological site in the Southeast United States where diagnostic Suwannee material has been recovered in-situ within a discrete geological layer through extensive excavations. A broad faunal assemblage interpreted as dietary remains was also recovered from the same stratigraphic layer as the Suwannee material. Taxa identified include...
Fancy Threads and Tree-Ring Dates: New Chronometric Controls for the Development of Cotton Weaving Technologies and Ritual Textile Production in the San Juan Basin, A.D. 1150–1300 (2018)
The introduction of cotton tapestry weaving traditions transformed Ancestral Pueblo ritual costuming traditions in the San Juan Basin ever after. After its introduction, documenting developments and changes of cotton-weaving technologies and ceremonial garment fashions is difficult because most of the associated materials are perishable. Arid conditions at the numerous cliff dwellings occupied in the Pueblo III period (A.D. 1150-1300) have fostered the preservation of abundant evidence of...
The Field Museum’s Colonial Period Polychrome Tiana: A Conservation Study of Materials and Techniques (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Field Museum’s collection holds the only known Colonial era tiana, or carved wooden stool, from Peru. This important object was among the inaugural collections at the Museum, entering the collection at its founding in...
Fifty Years with Baskets (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of my first publication on prehistoric basketry. Over the past half century, the field of perishable artifact analysis has evolved dramatically. Though this evolution has not resulted in a geometric increase in the number of practitioners of this still arcane specialty, it has witnessed numerous transformations and...
Fine-Scale Investigation of Changes in the Ceramic Production Using Sherd Temper in the Mt. Trumbull Area of the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument, Arizona (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study is a part of an investigation into the adaptation patterns among the small-scale farmers who lived in a very marginal environment in the American Southwest. The examination of the changes in the ceramic production and distribution in the Mt. Trumbull and adjacent areas was conducted using LA-ICP-MS and optically stimulated luminescence...
Fire in the Early Pleistocene: Evidence for the Use of Fire by Hominins at the 1.5 mya Site of FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora, Kenya (2018)
The Cooking Hypothesis contends that fire use became common in the Early Pleistocene and was part of a suite of characters that were associated with the appearance of Homo erectus. The morphological changes associated with H. erectus support this hypothesis. Archaeological evidence for the control of fire in this time period is generally sparse, and arguments for controlled fire at early sites have been controversial. Here we present evidence for fire use by early hominins at the open-air site...
Fire-Cracked Rock in the Mesolithic Shell Midden of Cabeço da Amoreira (Muge, Central Portugal) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Muge Mesolithic shell mounds (Central Portugal) are known worldwide for their monumentality and extremely rich archaeological and paleoanthropological records. Although these sites have been studied for over 150 years, one (particularly numerous) category of artifacts has been repeatedly ignored: fire-cracked rock (FCR)....
The First East-West Dichotomy? (2018)
Hallam Movius proposed that the Lower Palaeolithic cultures of East Asia and SE Asia were derived from a different cultural trajectory than that of Europe and Africa. The chopper-chopping tool complex of East and SE Asia was argued to be more primitive in many aspects. The type-site assemblages of the Pacitanian and Tampanian cultures are two out of only five assemblages that Movius initially used to define the chopper-chopping tool complex. The Pacitanian was first discovered by Michael Tweedie...
First Insights into the Life of Menocucho: Results of the Archaeological Excavations at Huaca Menocucho, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, the authors will present the results of their first excavation season at Huaca Menocucho, in the Moche Valley on the north coast of Peru, exposing the political, religious, and economic activities carried out by the people who lived at the site. This excavation revealed the site was first occupied during the Initial period (1800–500 BC),...
A First Look at Western Stemmed Tradition Lithic Reduction and Procurement Strategies at Connley Cave 4, Oregon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Western Stemmed Tradition lithic assemblages are typically small at buried, Younger-Dryas aged sites throughout the Great Basin. Recent work at the Connley Caves, in the Fort Rock Basin of south-central Oregon, has uncovered a rich cultural assemblage containing projectile points, scrapers, flake tools, cores, abraders, gravers, and thousands of lithic...
Floors, an Archaeological Material: The Case of the Plaza de la Piramide del Sol, Teotihuacan, Mexico (2018)
Human beings have modified surfaces to make them habitable, with time they made other floors to give it a better finish. The process was recorded in the floors interiors; we can observe the materials used in its elaboration and how they changed through time. Additionally, we can conduct other studies which help us understand the time-frame between structures. Floors are a complex material and their study helps us identify social aspects seen in past studies of other materials such as ceramics,...
Florida’s Fluted Paleoindian Points: A Reassessment of the Typology (2018)
Paleoindian points from Florida are different from the rest of the Southeast. Instrument-assisted fluting was never adopted, and Florida produced some apparently post-Clovis forms that are unlike any elsewhere. Several attempts have been made to sort out the myriad forms. This attempt uses landmark-based geometric morphometrics to more objectively distinguish fluted point forms.
The Flow of Lithic Production: Debitage Analysis in the Mogollon Highlands, AD550-1000 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pithouse Period (AD550-1000) was a time of significant material development and social change in the Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. Intensive research has been devoted to explaining these changes. These approaches have resulted in a wealth of data concerning architecture, site layout, ceramic design, and incipient hierarchical social...
Fluted Point Variation in Glaciated Northeastern North America (2018)
Recent syntheses for the adjacent glaciated regions of the eastern Great Lakes (EGL) and New England-Maritimes (NEM) document similar fluted point sequences associated with early and middle Paleoindian populations. Current consensus holds that these fluted biface sequences fall within a time range of 13,000-11,600 calendar years before present, and probably derive from Clovis populations (or their immediate descendants) that colonized the glaciated landscapes of the Northeast from west and...