Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
76-100 (563 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It is now well recognized that Late Classic Maya communities were highly variable politically, economically, and environmentally. Researchers often assume that community and household variation are corollary with the broader political climate— and this remains under problematized. Thus, research that explores differences in...
Ceramic Use and Production at Iron Age Bashtepe, Uzbekistan: A Preliminary Petrographic Study (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ceramic corpus at Bashtepe, Uzbekistan, is a complex mix of pottery forms, fabrics, and technology. Some vessels are hand-made, while others are wheel-made. Transport vessels, cooking pots, and fine ware are all present. To better understand the acquisition and local production of this corpus, a preliminary...
Ceramics and Community: A Yucuita Phase Ceramic Cache at Etlatongo (2018)
Feasting is a well-documented phenomenon in Mesoamerica as a means of community integration and interaction. Ceramic analysis of Op. B, Pozo 20, Feature 1 from the site of Etlatongo may point to one such feasting event at the site. This Yucuita phase (500-300 BC) feature was a primary refuse deposit of ceramic, lithic, and faunal artifacts intermixed with extremely ashy sediment, probably from a specific event. An overview of the stratigraphy of the feature and an inventory of the assemblage...
Ceremonial Spaces and Public Events at the Preclassic Maya Centers of Ceibal, Guatemala, and Aguada Fénix, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Jerry Moore’s work has been highly influential not only in Andean archaeology but also in the archaeology of Mesoamerica and other parts of the world. Dr. Moore’s pioneering analysis of the lived experience of the built environment has inspired us to examine ceremonial spaces at Maya sites, including plazas...
Challenges in the Identification of Fresh Volcanic Glass Shards in Ancient Maya Pottery Sherds (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The major components of ceramics consist of clay and temper. It is assumed that these components are local. The Maya lowlands are dominated by limestone, and its use as temper is ubiquitous. Therefore, the distinct presence of fresh volcanic ash in the Late Classic period pottery is noteworthy. Efforts to identify a local volcanic source closer than...
Change and Adaptation in Stone Tool Technology in Jordan ca. 1000 BCE (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The decline and replacement of stone tools with their metal counterparts in regions with traditions of metallurgy has been shown to have been a slow and variable process that involved specific types of tools marking the metallurgic transition at different times and in specific contexts. For example, in the region of the southern Levant (Jordan, Palestine,...
A Change of Hearth: Stages of Production in Hot-Rock Technology at a Late Woodland Rockshelter (2018)
This paper applies the chaîne opératoire analytical framework to hearth maintenance behavior. There are distinct phases of production involved in creating and maintaining a hearth, as new hearthstones are introduced, exhausted, and discarded. These stages may be identified through spatial distribution of new and exhausted hearthstones. The authors argue that these stages may also be identified geochemically. We use pXRF to compare a series of experimental burnings to those from a hearth feature...
Changing Times, Changing Ways? Evidence for Metallurgy at the Cividade de Bagunte (2018)
The Iberian Peninsula has been a rich source of metallic ores for millennia, and the quest for control of those resources has profoundly impacted the history of the Peninsula. Iberia has followed a unique trajectory in the development of metallurgy, with a case for the independent invention of copper smelting in the southwest, and small-scale production of bronze and other metals across the Peninsula until Roman occupation. The advent of Roman imperial control of labour and mines constituted a...
Characterization of the Binder Used for Late Intermediate Period Ica Painted Wooden Boards (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. Wooden objects excavated by Max Uhle and others from LIP sites in Ica, Peru, have been identified variously as *guares (steering boards for sailing rafts) and ceremonial agricultural implements. Rather than examining the function of these items, we have to date focused on their manufacturing components. These...
Chaîne Opératoire in Jade Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since Wu Da-cheng’s Catalogue of Ancient Jades in the Qing Period, research of Chinese jades has largely focused on analyses of their social and ritual significances. In latter half of the 20th century, excavations in Liangzhu, Hongshan, and Xinglongwa culture sites discovered many prehistoric jades. These important discoveries...
The Chaîne Opératoire Meets Colonial Transformations: A GIS Network Analysis of Quicklime Production in the Colca Valley, 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 the sixteenth century the Spanish introduced new building technologies such as masonry arches, ceramic roof tiles, and quicklime-based products to Andean architectural traditions. The incorporation of these technologies changed the day-to-day experience of building construction, as local laborers created new routines in order to source, produce, and...
Child Disability and Prostheses in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2018)
Introduction of dedicated paediatric medicine, was an advancement arriving in Britain late compared to its neighbours such as France’s ‘Enfant Malades’ in 1802. Paediatric hospitals were a consequence of physicians' financial aspirations rather than falsely portrayed ‘community need’ (Lomax, 1998). Their establishment contradicted longstanding attitudes surrounding children as ‘incomplete beings…whom it was wasteful to devote attention to’ (Porter, 1989). Oddly, amputation saw children harness...
Classic Period Projectile Point Traditions in Southeastern Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Local Development and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Pre-Hispanic Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Similar projectile point types were used by people in central and southern Arizona during the Classic Period (A.D. 1150-1450), a time when considerable changes occurred within the region. An analysis of over 600 points was conducted to examine how social, technological, and...
Classification of Fremont Ceramics Using a Neural Network (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic classification is central to archaeological analysis, but without systematic and objective quantification, archaeologists cannot determine the definitive number of types or what they represent, despite decades of research. Recently archaeologists have applied machine learning models to improve the effectiveness of ceramic classification and extend...
A Clean Break: A Departure from Standard Typologies through an Investigation of Pottery Temper at Joshua Tree National Park (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster will focus on my current master’s research and is in joint partnership between the University of New Mexico, Joshua Tree National Park, and the descendant communities from the California Desert. The project developed through consultation with the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and Agua...
Clovis Points Were Likely Knives: An Evaluation of the Evidence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Clovis projectile point attached to the end of a spear or dart is an iconic symbol of North America’s late Pleistocene hunter, but the point’s use is more assumed than demonstrated. We find evidence for the "point-as-projectile" inference equivocal, because that same evidence also supports "point-as-knife". We present new experimental data that demonstrate...
Clovis Use of Obsidian in the Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The role of obsidian in Clovis technological organization in the US Southwest and northwestern Mexico is investigated. The distribution and typology of obsidian artifacts from excavated sites as well as surface contexts is reviewed. Projectile points appear to be the principal, and nearly only, tool for which obsidian...
Cobble Reduction and Tool Manufacturing along the Atlantic Coastal Plain: An Example from Prince George's County, Maryland (2018)
Cobble extraction and systematic lithic reduction activity areas are commonly found along the Atlantic coastal plain from the Early Archaic through Woodland periods. This process, typically involving the collection of high quality quartz and quartzite cobbles for processing, was documented 100 years ago by William Henry Holmes for the Piney Branch quarries in Washington, D.C. Excavations conducted by TRC at the Accokeek sand and gravel mine in 2014 identified 12 archaeological sites, two of...
Colonial Glass Production in Mexico City: A Study on Technology Transfer and Adaptation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The technology to make glass was brought to Mexico by Spanish glass artisans shortly after the Conquest in the sixteenth century. In the process of transferring their technological knowledge to the New World, these glass artisans encountered several challenges as they established workshops in Mexico City and Puebla, but were able to adapt the technology to the...
Colors and Chants of the Flower World: The Use of Organic Colors in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Codex Painting Traditions. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Flower World: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The performance of non-destructive chemical analyses on Mesoamerican codices has provided an unprecedented understanding of the technological diversity of pre-Hispanic codex-painting traditions, as well as of their patterns of change in early colonial times. One of the most striking results...
Come Together Over Olcott: Recent Collaborative Investigations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Research into the Old Cordilleran" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Olcott Site, 45SN14, was first recorded nearly 60 years ago by Butler, and was fundamental in defining the Old Cordilleran Culture. Situated upstream from two named Stillaguamish villages, the Olcott site was a heavily utilized hunting area for thousands of years. Although the site has been disturbed through the years from farming and domestic...
Commemoration and Consumption in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cemeteries of Cazenovia, New York (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cemeteries and grave monuments serve as important elements in the construction of personal and community identities, contributing to the shaping of public memory. This research utilizes historic documents, site surveys, and GIS mapping to explore the prevalence and significance of nineteenth century grave monuments signed with makers’ marks within the...
Communicating in Three Dimensions: Questions of Audience and Reuse in 3D Excavation Documentation Practice (2018)
After excavating the Praedia of Iulia Felix at Pompeii in 1755, architect Karl Weber published the building with an axionometric illustration that showed the remains in three-dimensional perspective. In doing so, Weber communicated additional information about the form of the building in a manner that was both accessible to a lay audience and sufficiently "scientific" for a scholarly one. By contrast, digital 3D documentation methods in current archaeological practice often reinforce a division...
Communities of Art Practices on the Lower Columbia River: Technical Photography Using Infrared, UV, and Visible Light (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recovered from strata, stolen, sold off to feed their families, gifted, or commissioned for museum display Lower Columbia River or Chinookan carved stone effigies and artifacts are currently scattered across numerous collections and repositories. Previous analyses of Chinookan art styles have been limited to classifying motif attributes, but this research...
Comparative Distribution of Kayenta Ground Stone in Hohokam and Mogollon Salado Sites (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Mogollon, Mimbres, and Salado Archaeology in Southwest New Mexico and Beyond" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground stone is a ubiquitous artifact type throughout the Southwest after the advent of agriculture, and a useful indicator of technology, cultural variation, and individual preference. During the Salado phenomenon in southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona (~AD 1300–1450), it became a distinguishing...