Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
551-563 (563 Records)
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. There is compelling evidence that people throughout the Americas adapted to the cold Younger Dryas winters by manufacturing tight-fitting, sewn clothing. Ethnographic observations of Arctic peoples indicate that they harvested hide animals and manufactured clothing during residential aggregation events in the fall....
What’s Hot in Beringia? Cooking during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition in Central Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The subsistence traditions of the early Americans residing in Beringia have played a key role in debates surrounding the spread of people across the continent. Hunting and related technologies have garnered the most...
What’s in a Hammerstone? Insights on Core Technology at a Neolithic Quarry in Southern Germany (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone shaping tools and hammerstones are among the most ancient and ubiquitous of stone implements in the archaeological record, but they are not commonly studied in detail in archaeological context. This poster presents results of a comparative study of chert objects that show percussion scars at a Neolithic chert quarry in southern Germany. Variation in the...
What’s in a Name: Caches, Offerings, and Problematic Deposits from the Medicinal Trail Hinterland Community, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations between 2004 and 2019 at the Medicinal Trail Hinterland Community in northwestern Belize have uncovered numerous special deposits from a variety of contexts including caches, termination offerings, exposed offerings, and problematic deposits (PDs). Caches and the offerings have been reported on extensively and are generally understood to have...
What’s the Deal with Corrugated Whitewares? An Analysis of the Corrugated Whitewares from the Haynie Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Corrugated exterior whitewares in the Ancestral Puebloan world are often thought of as a rarity. While these ceramics are not as common as gray ware corrugated or regular black-on-white ceramics, they are an important blending of pottery manufacture. Corrugated whiteware ceramics can also help us begin to understand symbolism and meaning of corrugation...
When Technological Analysis Becomes a Setback: The Case of the Points in the Interior of São Paulo State, Brazil (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historically, the shift from the study of form to the study of techniques was guided by the transition from the Cultural History approach to the New Archeology. This theoretical readjustment was incorporated into Brazilian archeology decades later, strongly impacting the way that the collections was studied. Today the reality is that, although lithic...
Where-felines? An XRF-Based Sourcing of Tiwanaku's Chachapuma Sculptures (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Turnovers in political and religious authority in the ancient Titicaca Basin correspond with significant, intentional shifts in material procurement practices. During the 5th century AD, the developing Tiwanaku elite asserted a new ideological hegemony through a novel monumental and iconographic tradition. Tiwanaku masons also...
White Hot Polymorphs of Quartz Minerals in Archaeological and Experimental Heating Contexts (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 potential range of behaviors represented in heating stone assemblages is enormous. This paper is an attempt to identify targets for hot rock sampling and analyses that can develop our understanding of ancient global technologies in a day-to-day context. Hot rocks are ubiquitous in archaeological assemblages, yet the...
Whose Lime Is It Anyway? Burnt Lime as Commodity in the Classic Period Northern Lowlands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burnt lime (calcium hydroxide) has been crucial for architectural, dietary, and other purposes in Maya society since as far back as the Formative period. The recent identification of hundreds of pit-kilns used for lime production in the Puuc region of the Yucatán Peninsula allows for an investigation of the socioeconomic...
Why So Blue? Color Symbolism in Ancestral Pueblo Lithics (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While both lithics and color have a long history in archaeological research, archaeologists rarely address the importance of color in lithic artifacts. The ethnography of the American Southwest indicates that both color and lithics can play a critical role in indigenous ritual and ceremony. To explore the relationship between lithic artifacts and color...
Why Wasn’t the Ceramic Arrowhead Invented? (2018)
In biology the concept of theoretical morphology has been used as a heuristic device for better understanding the evolutionary trajectories of organisms. Theoretical morphology proceeds by creating and examining hypothetical specimens not actually found in nature. So instead of asking "why does feature X exist", a theoretical morphological approach asks "why doesn’t feature Y exist?". Here, we use this approach to address the question of why ceramic technology did not evolve to replace stone...
Woven Traces: Evidence of Basketry from Masis Blur (Armenia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Evidence of woven materials such as baskets, mats, cordage, string, and rope rarely preserve in archaeological contexts, but when these plant-based artifacts do preserve, they provide important insight into the social, technological, and environmental practices involved in the creation and use of such objects. At many...
You Spin Me Right Round: Reading Southwest Indented Corrugated Pottery for Movement and Directionality (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Corrugated vessels are ubiquitous in the northern U.S. Southwest, and yet their research potential is often overlooked. This study examines corrugated pottery to determine how much uniformity or variability goes into the process of manufacturing these everyday, utilitarian objects. The sample comprises Ancestral Puebloan and Mogollon corrugated vessels from...