Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)

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 Edward Knell. Erik Otárola-Castillo. Matthew Hill.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior univariate and multivariate morphometric analysis of Paleoindian age Lake Mohave and Silver Lake projectile points from the Mojave Desert, California, revealed these types are distinguishable 80% of the time. Building on the prior study, we use landmark-based Geometric Morphometric (LGM) analyses and complementary non-LGM variables to assess whether...

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 Joseph Werner. Flannery Surette.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first ostrich eggshell beads appeared across parts of Africa 50 ka and represent one of the earliest forms of ornamentation. Far from being uniform, research shows differences in bead diameter which cluster regionally and chronologically. These clusters are thought to represent distinct bead making traditions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ekaterina Menkina. Scott Macrae. Vo Thi Phuong Thuy. Le Ngoc Han.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The drone-imagery sub project uses drone based aerial photography and photogrammetry to document the water gates, walls, enclosures, canals, and shrines of Hoa Lu, supplementary to the IRAW@HoaLu settlement and survey research. Amidst the urban-landscape development, the cultural and natural features are subject to time....

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 Martijn Van Den Bel.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient ceramics (beyond 2000 BC) have been found in the western part of the Guianas, notably in the coastal swamp areas of Guyana from the 1950s onward (Alaka). They are also known from the Courantyne River in Suriname (Kauri) and have only recently come to light in...

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 Scott Dersam. Sari Dersam.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of high-elevation ecosystems by Early Paleoindian cultures using a Clovis-Techno complex has been known for decades. The earliest uses of North American mountain ecosystems have been hypothesized as transient forays by small groups focused on raw material acquisition and limited supplemental hunting. Between 2021 and 2023, the BEAAR Project...

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 Nysa Loudon.

This is an abstract from the "The Ties That Bind: Cordage, Its Sources, and the Artifacts of Its Creation and Use" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within the last 30 years of ancient textile and cordage research, new and revisited archaeological evidence and ethnographic studies have shown that prehistoric people in Europe were using a wider range of plant species to produce cordage, netting, mats, and textiles than previously thought. This...

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peiyu Chen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Why did people begin to use pottery vessels?” is one of the most compelling questions to archaeologists. As a site witnesses the transition from the Late Preceramic to the Initial Period occupation in the Virú Valley, north coast of Peru, Huaca Negra constitutes an ideal case study to investigate the utilitarian function, cultural traits, and possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Shantry.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Quartzite is a commonly identified material used in the past as heating stones. The quartz minerals in quartzite stones are stable to around 500 degrees Celsius, at which point the quartz mineral experiences a chemical transition or inversion. A second inversion occurs at around 1500 degrees Celsius, causing the morphology to appear similar to tooth enamel....