Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
576-600 (718 Records)
The paper focuses on the characterization of material from fragmented pieces of the imperial lacquered wooden coffin excavated in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province，whose owner was the empress of Jiangdu State in Western Han Dynasty. The samples were analyzed by scientific techniques including optical and electron microscopy, XRD, FT-IR and GS-MS. The laquer film outside consists of a seven-layer structure, which includes (from the top): a red pigmented layer, two laquer finish layers, three ground...
The Reshaped Sherd: A Comparative Study of Ancestral Pueblo Worked Sherd Assemblages (2018)
Every site has at least one: the worked sherd. Game piece? Scraper? Spindle whorl? Miscellaneous ceramic object? Different analysts categorize these easily recognized but not always easily interpreted artifacts in different ways. In this presentation, we examine worked sherd assemblages from three 13th-15th century Ancestral Puebloan villages. Differences among these assemblages attest to variable contexts of use and meaning for worked sherds. We argue that individual worked sherds should be...
Rethinking Ceramic Attribute Technology during the Late Woodland Period in Southwest Ohio (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The focus of this research is the variability of ceramics from Late Woodland (A.D. 400-1000) sites in the Little Miami River Valley in Hamilton County, Ohio. Few Late Woodland features have been recovered and little is known about the ceramic technology in southwest Ohio, but these artifacts still play a major role in understanding prehistoric societies. The...
Revising Empire: Chimú and Inka Ceramic Morphology at Santa Rita B (Chao Valley, Peru) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Populations in the Chao Valley of coastal Peru experienced successive waves of imperial expansion from about AD 1350 to the mid-sixteenth century. In relatively short order, the Chimú, Inka, and Spanish empires each established varying degrees of control over the valley. The site of Santa Rita B offers...
Revisiting Bipolar Technology‘s African Distribution and Diversity (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bipolar reduction is a central strategy in Pleistocene archaeology, recognized as an archetypal “expedient” technology. It entails hammer and anvil flake production, suitable for stabilizing smaller cores during miniaturized flake production. Despite its widespread occurrence and decades of study, debates...
Revisiting Clay Smoking Pipes (2018)
An assemblage of 280 white clay smoking pipe fragments were recovered from a disturbed context during the construction of a marine basin and wharf at Barcelona Harbor, New York, on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie. Apparently packed in a wooden box or crate, this collection represents one of the largest unique and homogeneous collections fabricated during a brief period in a single manufactory from only a few molds. I summarize descriptive and quantitative analyses, probable provenance, and...
Revisiting the Function of Humboldt Points: Reflections from the Late Prehistoric Hackney Site in Mariposa County, California (2018)
CA-MRP-283, the Hackney Site, is a late prehistoric/protohistoric site in Mariposa County, California. Excavated by California State University, Los Angeles in 1972, the flaked-stone assemblage includes debitage, projectile points, and flake tools. A reanalysis of the debitage shows that late stage biface production, expedient flake-tool production, and the production, repair, and replacement of projectile points were all common activities at the Hackney site. A recent analysis of the projectile...
The Road More Traveled: ‘Ain Ghazal and the Peopling of the Black Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late Pleistocene and early Holocene Neolithic connections over the maritime routes from the eastern Mediterranean shores to Cyprus have been fruitfully investigated, and those links clearly involved more than the simple movement of ideas. Another development in the...
Rocks through the Ages: A 360° Geometric Morphometric Approach to Middle Pleistocene Bifacial Technological Variability in Central Armenia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study applies a three-dimensional landmark-based geometric morphometric (GM) technique to evaluate chronological variation in Acheulian bifacial technology during the Middle Pleistocene of Armenia. This analysis utilizes 360° documentation of biface shape to supplement more commonly used single-surface and outline GM approaches. Furthermore, traditional...
Rocky Refuse or Useful Utensil? (2018)
What is the value of an expedient lithic tool? By what standard is its performance judged? Analysis of lithic debitage has long focused on morphological characteristics of flakes to determine fracture mechanics and other technological aspects of the flintknapping process. As such, most lithic flake termination types are seen as the result of misdirected force as opposed to techniques producing a mechanistically ideal flake type. What does this mean for past humans who did not follow the...
The Role of Fire-Processed Limestone at the Shivwits Plateau, Arizona (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of the Virgin Branch Puebloan Region" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study explores the role of limestone as a potential element in hide working among the Virgin Puebloan Branch people who inhabited the Shivwits Plateau, Arizona, in precontact times (~ 300 BC–AD 1200). Hide working is generally a female related activity that is lacking research in archaeology. This study demonstrates the importance of...
The Role of Isometric Scaling on Stone Projectile Point Durability: An Experimental Assessment (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The experimental study of stone projectile points created via flintknapping has shed light on issues of culture, penetration, durability, aerodynamics, resharpening, among several other topics. Here, we present an experiment that systematically assesses the role that isometric scaling, i.e., size, plays in stone point durability. Thirty obsidian projectile...
The Roman, Medieval, and Early Modern Potting Site of Dieburg South of Frankfurt/Main, Hesse, Germany, and Its Geochemical Pattern with a Stable Heavy Mineral Anomaly (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of an extended ceramic settlement analysis with ten medieval find complexes in the lower Main depression, we studied Roman and late medieval to early modern pottery from Dieburg (district of Darmstadt), which is the only site with workshop wasters in the larger region. The Dieburg wares exhibit a characteristic anomaly of Ti, Nb, and Zr,...
Sacred Colors and Nomadic Design: The Hand-Formed Slip-Painted Pottery of the Medieval (Eighth–Twelfth Century CE) Central Asian Highlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Identity, Interpretation, and Innovation: The Worlds of Islamic Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses how social identity, as reflected in networks represented through pottery decoration, served as a means of mediating and buffering against the social uncertainties generated by shifting political and religious landscapes of medieval Central Asia. My project examines the decoration and...
Sacred Landscapes, Spaces, and Ritual Offerings as the Materialization of Environmental Narratives at the Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
Material culture studies allow archaeologists to examine the social implications of the physical world in which people are embedded. Sacred landscapes, for example, inspire social narratives regarding how people should interact with the environment. Components of those landscapes, such as caves and mountains, become active participants in the establishment, maintenance, and mobilization of environmental narratives. They serve as hegemonic tools for conveying morality and proper behavior, and as...
Sacred Stone, Sacred Land: A Traditional Native American Quarry Cultural Landscape (2018)
The Pipestone National Monument, created August 25, 1937, attracts people to mine its catlinite rock containing traces of iron-rich hematite giving it a red hue. The living cultural landscape preserved as a National Monument in southwestern Minnesota is 301 acres, but its modern constituency extends far beyond these borders. In ancient times, raw material from the Sioux Quartzite Formation traveled long distances as well. Archaeological research in combination with ethnography and descendent...
Salado Projectile Point Technology at the Gila River Farm Site, Southwestern New Mexico (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. This research examines the projectile point assemblage from the Gila River Farm site, a Cliff phase (AD 1300–1450) Salado site excavated by the Archaeology Southwest and University of Arizona Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school from 2016 to 2022. The projectile point assemblage was recovered...
San Jacinto and the Origins of Pottery Making in the Americas: A Technological Perspective (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at various archaeological sites located in the northern coast of Colombia have yielded evidence of early ceramic production and, in the case of San Jacinto, the earliest so far unearthed in the Americas, dating back to 6000 years BP. San Jacinto ceramics are characterized by the use of an organic-tempered clay and the presence of highly...
Scientific Analysis of Metals from the Yinsuodao Site, Yunnan Province (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Early Chinese Borderland Cultures and Archaeological Materials" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Up to now, the Yinsuodao site is one of the earliest Bronze Age sites known in Yunnan Province. This work will present the results of metallographic and lead isotope analyses of a number of metals discovered at this site. The metallographic studies suggest that the metal technology at Yinsuodao represents...
Scottish Whisky: A Community's Development and Global Impact (2018)
For millennial alcohol has played a prevalent role in the development of communities and human interaction. Scotland is well known for the creation of whisky that made its way to America during the Colonial Period. The goal of this research is to identify the influence alcohol has had on the development of Scotland. Scotland whisky distribution has caused a change in laws, economics, health perspective, and tradition. According to Bill Walker, "Scotch whisky is more than a whisky. It is part of...
The Search for Paleo Dog and the Recognition of Ancient Art (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During archaeological field schools in 1976-1978, unfamiliar chert objects and tools were recovered from a sandy/clay deposit at the Container Corporation of America site (CCA 8MR154), Marion County, Florida. This deposit, the Alachua Clays, was traditionally considered "culturally sterile." The specimens from the sandy/clay deposit did not resemble in any way...
Seeing Red: An Analysis of Archaeological Ochre in East Central Missouri (2018)
The Truman Road Site (23SC924), St. Charles County, Missouri, features a diversity of material remains and a long periods of occupation mostly occurring during the Late Archaic (3000 – 2500 BC) and Middle Woodland (100 BC – AD 500). For this region of prehistoric Missouri, ceramics and chert constitute the main evidence for understanding trade and cultural dynamics. Despite its relative ubiquity among sites, ochre has rarely been considered in such studies. Recognizing that this material is a...
Shake, Rattle, and Roll: Continuity of Rattling Ceramic Vessels and Adornos in the Caribbean (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic rattles and rattle vessel adornos have received little attention in current Caribbean archaeology literature. These rattles may be overlooked or misidentified in Caribbean ceramic collections due to their minimal audibility or “failure” during the construction process due to their technical complexity. Here, we evaluate existing reports of rattle...
Shaping Hominin Cognition: A Comparative Three-dimensional Shape Analysis of LCTs and Cores from the Early Acheulean at Kokiselei 4, West Turkana, Kenya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of ‘shaping’ abilities in hominin lithic technology involved increases in higher-order cognition including forward planning, working memory, and spatial reasoning. Longstanding assumptions engrained in lithic typologies claimed that "Long Core Tools" (LCTs), such as "handaxes", were the earliest shaped lithics....
Shark Teeth Research Opportunities Broadened by Innovations in Materials Science (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of sharks in the archaeological record provides plentiful research opportunities within the lenses of social zooarchaeology and materials science. The convergence of these two themes when analyzing artifact shark teeth presents unique advantages and challenges to understanding how past people perceived sharks and made use of their physical...