Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
251-275 (718 Records)
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...
Flint on Flesh: Creating an Experimental Comparative Collection for Use Wear Analysis of Holmul Region Lithics, Petén, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear studies have proven invaluable for understanding human interaction with lithic materials and organic materials that have not survived the archaeological record. Though recent investigations have begun to address gaps in Maya user-wear studies, archaeologists have not sufficiently explored stone tool use in the Maya area. This study includes an...
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...
A Foreign Ingredient in a Local Tradition: Chaco Canyon Pottery and the Chaco–Chuska Connection (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-twentieth century, Anna Shepard discovered that much of the pottery found in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was apparently produced in the Chuska mountain and slope area some 70 km to the west. Since then, Southwest archaeologists have studied the dynamics of Chaco–Chuska interaction and the intensity and complexity of Southwest exchange patterns. As...
Foreseeable Tools: Lithic Use-Wear and Technological Organizations in Evolutionary Perspectives (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paper explores some problems concerning the relationship between aspects of lithic technology and the cultural evolutionary theory. There are three fundamental realms in stone tool analysis, namely, typology, technology, and functional studies. These research phases are integrated into the study of "technological organizations" in the sense of Binford...
Formation of Early State in Highland Southwest China: Rethinking Yelang Culture (2018)
Recent archaeological discoveries in Guizhou, China have moved some scholars to describe and argue for the material existence of a legendary state, Yelang; roughly contemporary with Chinese powers from the late Eastern Zhou to the early Western Han dynasty. Except for precious objects reserved for high ranking people, traditionally-identified indicators of early urban civilizations are largely absent in Guizhou. If the appearance of luxury objects and their applications in well-regulated...
Foxes in Retrospect. Unraveling Human-Fox Relationships Through Fox Tooth Ornaments in the Swabian Jura (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Personal ornaments play an important role in our understanding of human cultural and behavioral change during the Upper Paleolithic. Although small, ornaments are often well-preserved, occur in large quantities, vary across space and time, and can shed light on intangible aspects of human lifeways (e.g., identity, relationships, movement, status). However,...
Fracture Mechanics, Virtual Knapper, and Controlled Experiments: Toward a Better Model of Flake Formation (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Insights into flake formation have come from fracture mechanics, controlled experiments, replication studies, and attribute analysis of lithic assemblages. Fracture mechanics would seem to offer great potential for offering insights into how the variables that knappers manipulate actually change flaking outcomes, and its strength is that it is based on...
From Clovis to Dalton: Key Differences in Hafted Biface Resharpening (2018)
In order to further understand Paleoindian lithic technological organization, we examined blade and haft elements of Clovis, Gainey, and Dalton hafted bifaces. Samples inspected were from across the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Northeast. Due to the rarity of these hafted bifaces, images of individual bifaces were used to take traditional linear measurements on the hafted bifaces in this study. Results indicate key differences in retouch and resharpening patterns throughout the Paleoindian...
From Formal to Efficient: Variation in Projectile Point Manufacture and Morphology from the Late Woodland to Fort Ancient Period in the Middle Ohio River Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural groups in the Middle Ohio River Valley experienced significant changes in mobility, subsistence, and social organization from the Late Woodland (AD 700 – 1000) to the Early Fort Ancient period (AD 1000 – 1300). Technology changed as well, particularly the production and morphology of projectile points. It is possible that constraints related to...
From Jalisco, Mexico, to Quimistán, Honduras: Analyzing Mesoamerican Metals from the Field Museum (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Copper artifacts were prominent in Mesoamerica during the last precolonial millennium, more widely distributed than silver and gold. Mesoamerican copper was formed into axes, axe-monies, rings, pendants, bells, and needles, among other artifacts. The most used alloy in this region was...
From Minerology to Monuments: Place-Making through Personal Ornamentation in mid-Holocene Turkana, Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beads play a prominent role in personal ornamentation in life and death: desired, exploited, and widely traded throughout prehistory. Although manufacture and use provide important social context, evaluating the materials used and their source locations is a crucial component of understanding how these industries arise. This paper features an...
From Stone to Iron: Effects of Colonial Materials on Beothuk Traditional Technology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From Hard Rock to Heavy Metal: Metal Tool Production and Use by Indigenous Hunter-Gatherers in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The impacts of colonialism on Indigenous groups’ technological traditions have often been viewed through acculturative lenses that only reach surface deep. While there have been more recent trends criticizing this methodology, acculturative approaches are still prevalent, and...
From Triangles to Rectangles: Exploring Change Over Time at the Epipalaeolithic Site of Kharaneh IV, Jordan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The multi-component Epipalaeolithic site of Kharaneh IV, located in the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan, documents ~1,000 years of occupation by hunter-gatherer groups late in the Last Glacial Maximum. Multiple lines of geomorphological, faunal, and archaeobotanical evidence indicate that the environs around the site were well-watered, lushly vegetated, and...
Function Follows Form, Part II: Experimental Archaeology with Formative Period Mesoamerican Greenstone Tagelus Shell Facsimiles as Textile Tools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many Formative period Mesoamerican greenstone artifacts are readily identifiable as ornaments, as they have clear counterparts in both form and function in later cultures. Other such artifacts, however, have proven puzzling to scholars, who initially categorized them as “miscellaneous objects,” “objects of unknown use,” or “implements for...
Functional Riddles, Chipped Stone Technologies, and Fiber Processing in the Late Sixth and Fifth Millennium BCE in Turkmenistan and Northwestern Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear and residue analysis draws attention to complexities of technological processes that otherwise remain out of reach archaeologically. Enigmatic wear traces described by microwear analysts as “polish 23,” “polish 10,” and “polis non familiar” occur on distinctive chipped stone tools from Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in...
Functioning at Full Capacity: The Role of Pottery in the Woodland Upper Great Lakes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. James Skibo’s seminal works on pottery function created a valuable model for assessing the role of pottery in the lives of past peoples. While this approach has broad applicability for ceramic assemblages worldwide, its efficacy has been demonstrated through a series of studies on ancient pottery assemblages...
Further Considerations of Tip Cross-Sectional Area for Determining Projectile Systems (2024)
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 origins and evolution of projectile technology have been a major research focus in paleoanthropology because projectiles are thought to have had crucial impacts on human adaptation and dispersal in the Pleistocene....
Gaining Insight into Lithic Technology in East-Central Pennsylvania through the Study of an Amateur Collection (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The farm fields of east-central Pennsylvania contain an abundance of artifacts that span much of regional prehistory. Not surprisingly, many of these artifacts have been collected by local amateurs. Here, we analyze an assemblage of projectile points collected from the Kramer Farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. We explore how morphometric attributes (e.g.,...
Game On: Ceramic Discoidals from the Lamar Site (2018)
Ceramic discoidals represent a commonplace but often overlooked artifact found at many Mississippian sites. Generally, these important cultural objects are classified by archaeologists as gaming pieces. This assumption is based on European descriptions of Native American games. However, uncertainty remains regarding the function and significance of this class of artifact with no conclusive evidence that discoidals were used exclusively for games. Additionally, comparing ceramic discoidals with...
Gaming Pieces in the US Southwest (2018)
Tabular pieces of worked bone, commonly referred to as gaming pieces, have been found in archaeological sites throughout North America and the US Southwest. This project focuses on gaming pieces in Southwestern archaeological sites, with an emphasis on the Gila River basin. Data on gaming pieces in this area are compared to the Great Basin and surrounding regions, where much of the current research on these items has been focused. The analysis and comparison of context and other characteristics...