Material Culture and Technology (Other Keyword)
526-550 (563 Records)
Trans-Himalayan archaeology was always neglected by the historians and Archaeologist. But some recent excavations and my Ph.D field work presented an interesting view of Trans-Himalayan culture. The burial culture of this region dated back to 600-200BCE. I found here the remains of Pyro-technological activities. Steatite bead was first time found in Trans-Himalaya. They are in size from 2 to 4 mm in diameter, 1to3 mm in height, and hole width is about 1 mm. The beads were examined by using SEM...
Transferable Skills: Crafts and Knowledge Transmission in the Ancient Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we examine the development of craftsmanship and knowledge transmission in the pre-colonial and early colonial Caribbean. By adopting a chaîne opératoire approach to different crafts, we aim to investigate processes of circulation of materials and knowledge...
Transferring Technological Knowledge: Becoming Craft Specialists and Craft Items through Ritual Reproduction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How do we identify the transfer of technological knowledge on the local scale and how it might change through time and in regional contexts? The Gamo of southern Ethiopia offer that their Indigenous way of knowing the world enlightens understanding of transformations in...
Treating Problems of Target Nonscalability in Archaeological Projectile Experiments (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many controlled archaeological weapons experiments have used homogenous target simulants to answer a variety of questions. Target simulants, however, must be shown to be scalable for the weapons we study; they must be shown to capture the same characteristics that make weapons effective in their original application. This paper presents original research...
Turquoise, Lead and Copper at Tijeras Pueblo and Environs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did the people of Tijeras Pueblo acquire and use non-lithic and non-ground stone mineral resources? What role did such resources play in communities in the region east of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains? Minerals addressed include turquoise, galena (lead ore), and various copper compounds....
Una perspectiva sobre el empleo del barro cocido en el beneficio del cobre: Caso de Jicalán Viejo, Michoacán (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jicalán Viejo, es uno de los sitios prehispánicos donde se han encontrado vestigios de escoria metálica asociada al proceso metalúrgico del cobre. Al igual que las escorias, el barro utilizado en la manufactura de...
Under Fire: An Experimental Examination of Heat on Lithic Microwear Evidence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic microwear analysis provides important insights into stone tool function by identifying various polishes, residues, and striations that ultimately represent microscopic evidence of how these tools were used. However, recent archaeological analyses have recognized an interesting pattern: burned lithic specimens do not appear to preserve microwear traces...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
Was the Elaborate Chert Eccentric from San Andres, El Salvador, made by the Rosalila Copan "El Maestro"? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many decades ago Stanley Boggs discovered a particularly elaborate chert eccentric from San Andres, El Salvador, yet he never published the find. Here we compare it to the set of more elaborate eccentrics manufactured by "El...
Weaving and Spinning Technologies from the Northern Southwest: Recent Research by the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Textile Tools and Technologies as Evidence for the Fiber Arts in Precolumbian Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Perishable materials that provide information about precontact weaving traditions rarely preserve in the archaeological record. One region where they have survived is the Four Corners region of the North American Southwest, where the arid environment and intensive use of dry caves allow for the...
Weichselian Climatic Fluctuations and Neanderthals’ Technical Behaviors in Central Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Weichselian (MIS 5d–MIS 3), the climatic deteriorations and the rapid decrease of the temperatures caused significant difficulties for Neanderthal groups that had to cope with an increased seasonality of resources and faunal turnover. Central European Neanderthals reacted to these new ecological conditions by designing a toolkit composed of...