Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Reed. Shelby Anderson. Caelie Butler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We are conducting a multi-year (2009-2018), multi-disciplinary research project at Inuigniq (Cape Espenberg) to explore changing patterns of human occupation, culture change, and environmental conditions in Northwest Alaska. Our current focus is on the emergence of Birnirk archaeological culture ca. AD 1000, and the question of how Birnirk culture factored...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Mason.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A climate-driven eastward push of Thule migrants remains axiomatic to many arctic archaeologists, associated with presumed warming weather of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), by tradition dated ca. AD 1000. Thule researchers implicated a rapid migration by rapacious “over-killing” seal-hunters and whalers entering unoccupied landscapes—increasingly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Huckell.

Along the western edge of the Rio Grande Valley in Central New Mexico is a huge expanse of late Cenozoic volcanics, including a high-quality hydrothermally altered rhyolite. Colloquially known as Socorro jasper, at least one source of this material was exploited frequently by Clovis groups. This paper describes this source—the Black Canyon quarry—and the physical and geochemical properties of the "jasper" from it. Recent and continuing studies of its use by Clovis groups are reviewed, and its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Huckell. Nadine Navarro. Christopher Merriman. Joseph Birkmann. Steven Shackley.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Opportunities to learn more about Clovis technological behavior at lithic material procurement and workshop sites are rare, particularly in the Southwest. The Blue Canyon site is a rare example of such a site—an artifact scatter covering some 16,000 m2 and consisting of Clovis projectile points and preforms, end scrapers, bifaces, and lithic debitage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLeonardis. Dawn Kriss. Ellen Howe. Judith Levinson. Adriana Rizzo.

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. Indigo (*Indigofera) is a recognized plant exudate employed in cloth dyes to produce the color blue. In Andean South America, indigoid dyes have been identified in textiles as early as about 4200 BCE. While in other parts of the Americas the plant is utilized as a ceramic pigment (e.g., “Maya Blue”), in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rowe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thirty-five years ago, the turquoise mines of the Xvshuuk Mniish (Blue Scorpion) site in southern Arizona, were recorded for the first time. This Hohokam turquoise mining and processing site was operated for approximately 300 years before being abruptly abandoned. After 35 years we return for a fresh look at the site to reexamine the spatial layout of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Stanley.

Situated in Alaska’s eastern Aleutian Islands on Unalaska Island, the Summer Bay site dates to 2,000 years BP. Over 700 osseous objects representing various manufacture and use stages have been recovered. Among these are harpoons, fish hooks, labrets, points, wedges, awls, and needles. These are primarily made from sea mammals and avifauna. Although Summer Bay represents one of the most secure dates of the Amaknak Phase (3,000 to 1,000 years BP), minimal research has been done to better...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Margaris.

This is an abstract from the "The Far-Reaching Influence of Steven L. Kuhn" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When hired into the Oberlin College Department of Anthropology in 2008 I learned I was also de facto steward of two thousand cultural objects that were warehoused in a pair of campus custodial closets. The antiquated collection, with its objects hailing from around the world and uneven documentation, represented an intellectual conundrum and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Coutros. Brooke Luokkala.

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Worked bone has a long history across the African continent, occurring as early as the Middle Stone Age in eastern and southern Africa. However, since the beginning of the Holocene, barbed and un-barbed points – associated with the so-called ‘African Aqualithic’ peaking at 9,000 BP – have likewise been recovered from sites within Sahelian and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Myerscough.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through conducting a microwear analysis, I argue that the use wear of the bone tools examined will determine their functional use. The collections of bone tools for this study are from various Mimbres (AD 200–1130) and Chacoan (AD 850–1250) sites (located in the North American Southwest). Many bone artifacts with narrow, pointed distal ends are defined as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Wicker.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While interdisciplinarity in archaeology increasingly has blurred the borders between humanities and sciences, an additional boundary in archaeology exists between what is considered Iron Age and what is medieval. The terms have been defined largely from the Continental point of view. In the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Darmangeat. Jean-Marc Petillon.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nearly worldwide diffusion of the bow is often interpreted in terms of its superiority over other weapon systems. There is, however, at least one exception to this diffusion: Australia, where this weapon was never...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Donnermeyer. Brittney Cardarella. Bobby Saunters.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Logging was an economic and cultural pillar of the Pacific Northwest. The Bridal Veil Lumbering Company, a logging company operating in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon State, was the longest continuously operating early lumber mill west of the Mississippi River. The company spanned a timeframe that encompassed a wide range of technologies, immigration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Cutts.

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. Experiments quantifying the thermal curved-fragment (TCF) model (Cutts et al. 2019) unsurprisingly yielded considerable numbers of fire-cracked rocks (FCR; yet not strictly conforming to TCF definitions). Many exhibited characteristics commonly described in FCR—e.g., broken, cracked, crazed, crenated, crenulated, pocked,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaoge He.

This is an abstract from the "Technology, Production, and Social Changes in Chinese Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research explores the development of bronze technology in Sanxingdui Culture and its impact on ritual practices and political strategies in Southwest China (ca. 1300-1000 BC). By integrating recent excavation findings and testing results, the study examines the distinctive casting techniques and decorative methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tianlong Jiao.

This is an abstract from the "Technology, Production, and Social Changes in Chinese Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence and transformation of the Sanxingdui culture are closely connected with the social and cultural changes of Bronze Age China. The concept of bronzization provides a dynamic framework to understand the formation and transformation process of the Sanxingdui culture. The introduction of bronze metallurgy to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ying Yang.

This is an abstract from the "New materials and new insights for our understanding of the First Emperor's Mausoleum and early imperial China" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The First Qin Emperor's Mausoleum is invaluable for understanding the very first dynasty of Imperial China – the Qin Empire. Except for the well-known Terracotta Army pits, over 180 ancillary pits containing different objects with unique meanings have been discovered within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Carpiaux. Alicia Boswell. Jessica Walthew. Gabriel Prieto.

The site of Pampa la Cruz, located in Peru’s northern coast in Huanchaco, is situated just north of the ancient Chimu capital of Chan Chan. A multi-component site with occupations from the Salinar, Gallinazo, and Chimu eras (400 BC – AD 1470), excavations in 2016 recovered Chimu child sacrifices. Each body was interred wearing multiple garments, including mantles, loincloths, and tunics. Environmental and soil conditions enabled the preservation of these textiles. In July 2017 students in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rhiana Ward.

This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Practices and Material Culture: Seventy Years of Mission Life" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2019 and 2020, archaeologist conducted a series of test excavations within the footprint of the former Mission San Antonio de Valero – known today as the Alamo. Excavations were completed to assist preservationists in completing a series of architectural assessments for the two remaining structures of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yue Li.

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Archaeological Research in Neolithic and Bronze Age China" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we analyzed the chariot-horse pit No.2 (CMK2) at the site of Yaoheyuan in northwestern China. We reconstructed the sequence of horse interments based on on-site extraction of horse remains and zooarchaeological analysis. We also explored the human behaviors and related ritual practices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Harris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground stone disk beads represented a tangible signal of wealth within the Salish Sea archaeological record; they appeared continuously from 7,000 – 500 BP across the region in scattered frequencies to massive caches. The massive caches were often observed in a burial context, despite non-burial contexts being more frequent and wide-spread. The differences in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Fisher. Lewanne French.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs were an important resource for many Plains peoples, especially for the transportation of materials (e.g., timber, meat, water). The use of dogs for traction may have even facilitated high mobility in early North and South American populations. This high mobility eventually decreased with the introduction of agriculture across the northern Plains. Did...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Iseminger.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cahokia Birdman Tablet is the iconic example of what defines this artifact category, with engraved graphics on the obverse and crosshatching on the reverse of a rectangular stone tablet. Other tablets from Mississippian contexts have similar combinations or variations of these three features. Some may only exhibit crosshatching on one or both sides....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Valentine Wauters. Aurore Mathys.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels gathers more than 377 pre-Columbian objects from Ecuador. Among these are twenty wind musical instruments (flutes and ocarinas) in ceramic from the Carchi-Nariño culture. These objects, which joined the collections in the 1990s, had remained dormant in the museum’s storage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chun Yu. Ya Wei Dong.

This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The four-footed base is a specific structural feature of bronze statues of Buddha in China during the fourth to ninth century BC. This feature appears to have been made using the lost wax method, but experimental methods indicate that the four-footed base was made with the sand mold...