Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
676-700 (718 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in archaeological microwear analysis provide new tools to examine bone “objects” created and used by past peoples. Non-destructive microscopy techniques can be employed to study bone objects, preserving the integrity of archaeological materials and minding stakeholder concerns regarding destructive analyses. This poster presents preliminary...
Under the Scope: Nondestructive Methods of Analyzing Perishable Artifacts in Legacy Collections (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research presents the macroscopic and microscopic attributes of hair and feathers from the artifact assemblage of North Fork Cave #1, better known as Mummy Cave (48PA201) in Park County, Wyoming. The results of this research enable us to better understand the mammalian and avian resources exploited during the Archaic and Prehistoric periods in the Greater...
Understanding Textile Production at Cividade de Bagunte (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Iron Age of Northwest Portugal: Leftovers of Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Textiles are a near ubiquitous feature of human society from antiquity through present-day. Unfortunately, most places around the world do not have the environmental conditions that allow for the preservation of textiles and the many tools associated with textile production. At Cividade de Bagunte, the only evidence for textile...
Undiscovered Country: The Ground Stone Tools Assemblage from Hell Gap National Historical Landmark (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most complete records of human activity on the North American Plains, between 13,000 and 8500 years ago, is found at the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark in Wyoming. The area was inhabited continuously during this period as evidenced by the five main site localities. While we know a good deal about the activities on site from chipped stone...
An Undisturbed Earlier Stone Age Locality on the Southern Coast of South Africa, Exposed by Fire (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Knysna Estuary and River Basin on the southern coast of South Africa provided attractive resources for Pleistocene foragers. Isolated Earlier Stone Age (ESA) finds, including large bifacially flaked core tools, are commonly found in upland areas around the basin, particularly during construction projects, but dense vegetation cover has thus far prevented...
Unearthing a Pipeline: An Archaeological Investigation into Line 3 in Northern Minnesota (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological studies have shown how the methods and sensibilities of the discipline can be usefully drawn on to explore the history and relations of the Anthropocene—our current epoch of cultural and environmental instability. However, certain massively spatio-temporally distributed objects that define this era, what Timothy Morton calls...
Unexpected Expertise: Archaeological Science and the Creative Skills of Indus Craftspeople (2018)
Wright’s doctoral and subsequent work brilliantly employed archaeological science to show how relatively simple technological tools (single-chamber kilns) were used by skilled craftspeople in clever ways to create surprisingly technologically complex objects (black-on-grey pottery, resulting from several different cycles of atmospheric conditions during firing), objects which also provided information about patterns of social boundaries and technological style. In homage to this work, we will...
A United Europe of Things: Similarities and Differences in Small Finds across Later Medieval Europe (2024)
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. The idea of “unity of culture” in medieval Latin Europe is well known in historical texts, especially when it concerns the so-called “Europe north of the Alps.” Scholars have often suggested that due to long-distance trade, widespread knowledge of Latin, and shared religious ideas, we can...
Unresolved Questions in the Study of *Mopa Mopa: History, Geography, and Chemistry (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. *Mopa mopa is the collective name given to the resin from species of the plant genus *Elaeagia (family Rubiaceae) that grows in regions of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. The resin has been used from prehispanic times to the present day to decorate a range of objects from colonial Inka *qeros to highly decorated and...
Unsung Heroes of Cahokian Cuisine: The Materials and Methods for Nixtamalization in the American Bottom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People who rely on corn for significant portions of their diets must process it to improve its nutritional quality, or risk severe malnutrition. A common method historically employed throughout Mesoamerica and North America consisted of soaking corn kernels in an alkaline solution created from wood ash or burned limestone, a technique referred to as...
Unveiling the Artisan Secrets of the Lapidary Goods from the Great Temple of the Aztecs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies have demonstrated that the cultural provenance and diversity of the goods found in the offerings from the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan are more complex than the archaeologists thought, overlapping their acquisition by tribute, exchange, war prizes, or looting. In the case of the...
The Use of Iron Meteorites for Hopewell Beads (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. Iron meteorites are among the most exotic raw materials used for Hopewell ceremonial objects. The sourcing of these meteorites via chemical comparison to known meteorites has implications for acquisition and exchange. Some large meteorites (e.g., Brenham, KS; 4 tons in hundreds...
The Use of Shell Ornaments at Early Agricultural Period Sites in the Tucson Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations of Early Agricultural Period (circa 1200BC-AD 50) sites in the Tucson Basin of southern Arizona have produced a number of ornaments of personal adornment manufactured from marine shells that are found in either the Gulf of California or the Pacific coastal region of southern California. Thriving shell ornament manufacturing industries in...
The Use-Life of Spanish Colonial Metal Artifacts from Carnué, New Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The acquisition of metal tools on the Spanish Colonial frontier of New Mexico was a rare occurrence, but it is an activity we may be able to better understand through analysis of their production, modification, and utilization as well as sourcing their elemental makeup through XRF. Metals of various types were utilized by settlers for agriculture, cooking,...
Use-Wear Analysis on Shell Artifacts (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shells feature prominently in prehistoric archaeological assemblages in the southeastern United States. However, serrated freshwater mussel shells, of the type found at a Late Woodland site in North Carolina and other area sites, have not been studied and their use been unknown. These freshwater mussel shells were given a serrated edge, with evenly spaced...
Using Computer Vision and Deep Learning Algorithms to Predict Pottery Types: An Example Using Ancestral Pueblo Pottery from the Central Mesa Verde Region (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence techniques have made much progress in the past several years. Cloud computing has rendered these tools more accessible than ever to researchers in a wide range of fields. Here we explore applications of these models to classify Ancestral Pueblo pottery types in the central Mesa Verde region of...
Using Petrography to Fine-Tune Temper and Fabric Recognition of Indigenous Pottery in Florida (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Petrographic studies of archaeological pottery from Florida have contributed to our understanding of the range of variability in pottery tempers (prominent aplastics that may have been intentionally added to clay in pottery-making) and fabrics (characteristics of clay resources themselves). From the many...
Using Surface Roughness to Identify Heat Treatment in Lithic Technology (2018)
The heat treatment of stone to enhance flaking attributes was an important advancement in the adaptive toolkit of early humans. The earliest evidence for this is the heat treatment of silcrete 164 ka at the Middle Stone Age site Pinnacle Point 13B in South Africa. Heating stone prior to knapping alters the physical and chemical composition of the stone, and it has long been recognized that flaked heat-treated stone has a glossier surface. We expect this glossiness to result from a smoother...
Using Ungulate Bones to Retouch and (Re)Sharpen Middle Stone Age End-Scrapers at Bushman Rock Shelter, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone retouchers were first recognized in European Paleolithic assemblages at the turn of the nineteenth century. They have since been documented from sites across Eurasia, from Lower Paleolithic to Neolithic contexts. Notwithstanding their abundance in the archaeological record, the association between the characteristics of the retouch on...
Variability in Site Usage: a Comparison of Sites 16RA1758 and 16RA1811 in Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2020, unauthorized excavations and Hurricanes Laura and Delta extensively damaged sites 16RA1758 and 16RA1811 on the Calcasieu Ranger District of Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana. To address the adverse impacts and gain a deeper understanding of pre-contact lifeways, Kisatchie National Forest initiated comprehensive excavations at both sites....
Variation in Response to Heat-Treatment in Jasper from the Perkinsville Valley, Arizona (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The heat treatment of lithic raw material is a globally dispersed technology that improves the flaking quality of toolstone. While not all types of stone respond to heat treatment, many forms of microcrystalline silicates do, including jasper. Here, we aim to better understand how Perkinsville jasper responds to...
The Viking Great Army: Weighing Up Reuse (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on reuse of material culture looted by the Viking Great Army when it raided England in the late ninth century CE. This material included gold, silver, and copper alloy, which was sometimes melted down to turn into other artifacts and also cut up for use in exchange in the form of...
Virgin Branch Puebloan Adaptations on the Colorado Plateau: Recent Excavations at Granary House (AZ A:14:46) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The upper reaches of the Virgin Branch Puebloan region—particularly, the western Colorado Plateau—has largely remained understudied, partly resulting from difficulties accessing many areas yielding cultural activity. While the majority of data collection has been amassed through surveys, excavations on the western Colorado Plateau have significantly broadened...
Visualizing Salt Production below, above, and on the Ground in Ixtapa, Chiapas, Mexico: Insights from Ethnography, Aerial Photogrammetry, and Geochemistry (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ixtapa saltworks in highland Chiapas have the distinction of being one of the last Precolumbian saltworks in the interior Maya world that is still in use, and members of Proyecto Arqueológico Sak B’alam y Salinas del Interior de Chiapas and Winthrop University’s Environmental Studies Program have been conducting investigations...
Wari Textiles for the Everyday and the Afterlife (2018)
Some pre-Hispanic textiles were complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple and without any decoration. This study will present a comparative analysis between a sample of plain weaves obtained from domestic contexts and a sample of high quality textiles excavated in an elaborated Wari tomb, all of them registered at the pre-Hispanic settlement of...