Archaeometry & Materials Analysis (Other Keyword)
101-125 (357 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. δ34S can be used in conjunction with δ13C and δ15N to examine if people were accessing resources from within the same local area or were seasonally mobile to exploit foods from other regions. Here we apply this stable isotopic triad to investigate mobility of hunter-gatherers from the central Sierra Nevada region. The δ13C and δ15N results demonstrate a...
Exploring Production Methods of Casting Molds and the Artisans who Made Them (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The production of Shang dynasty bronze vessels is based on the artisans’ mastery of loess material and how they manipulated them to produce the casting molds. From the beginning stage of raw material procurement to the firing of the molds, these steps all left marks in the molds’ microstructure and physical build up. The...
Exploring the Economic Sphere of Prestige Items through the Lens of Ancient Maya Greenstone Mosaic Masks (300–750 CE) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the aim of exploring the economic system surrounding prestige Maya items during precolumbian times, we present research focused on greenstone mosaic masks (GMM) found in funerary precincts of high elite individuals in the Guatemalan Maya Lowlands. Through microarchaeological analyses of a select number of tesserae (n = 249) that form sections of 13...
Exploring the Engagement, Imagination, and Alignment of Potters and their Practices in Neolithic S. Calabria, Italy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Mediterranean Archaeology: Connections, Interactions, Objects, and Theory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation we use the results of a raw materials survey, replicative experiments in the field and the laboratory, and physicochemical and mineralogical analyses of local geological clays and archaeological ceramics from the sites of Umbro Neolithic and Penitenzeria in Southern Calabria, Italy to ask 3...
The External Connections of the Yingpanshan Site Cluster in Western Sichuan, China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous studies suggest that both painted pottery vessels and certain kinds of cereals, such as millets, were introduced to the Upper Min River from the north due to the expansion of the Neolithic cultures in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, during the fourth millennium BC. By investigating related ceramic samples and human and animal teeth and bones...
Fiber-Perishables Sourcing in the Northern Great Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strontium sourcing is a technique often used in sourcing the origin or migration patterns of animal and human remains but also used occasionally to source the growing location of plant material. While these studies are uncommon, they are not new. Here I will be presenting the eagerly awaited results of the sourcing data from Terminal Pleistocene and Early...
Fine-Scale Investigation of Changes in the Ceramic Production Using Sherd Temper in the Mt. Trumbull Area of the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument, Arizona (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study is a part of an investigation into the adaptation patterns among the small-scale farmers who lived in a very marginal environment in the American Southwest. The examination of the changes in the ceramic production and distribution in the Mt. Trumbull and adjacent areas was conducted using LA-ICP-MS and optically stimulated luminescence...
First Insights into the Life of Menocucho: Results of the Archaeological Excavations at Huaca Menocucho, Peru (2023)
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),...
The First Quarantine: Lessons from Past Epidemics (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a world changed by COVID-19, it is valuable to look at past reactions to epidemics and learn from them. Modern economies and political systems are designed with the assumption that such events cannot happen. The real risks in food and staples production and distribution in America and Europe or the inability to protect the work force for just a few months...
Flint Artifacts in Salinas de los Nueve Cerros: An Approach to Production and Consumption (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary data from a study that has been carried out on a considerable collection of flint artifacts from Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, Guatemala. These were uncovered during the excavations of the site over eight field seasons. Flint is a local resource in Salinas and it was widely used to produce many objects mainly used as cutting...
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,...
Foodways and Diet in the Prehispanic Mixteca Alta : Ceramic and Isotope Analyses in the Specific Case of the Tomb 1 Burial in Nduatiucu (San Felipe Ixtapa, Teposcolula) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines the archaeological possibilities for investigating prehispanic foodways and diet. We do this through the analysis of a burial recovered in Tomb 1 at Nduatiucu, in the Teposcolula valley in the Mixteca Alta. The burial first excavated in the 1970s by Winter et al. (1975) and later re-assessed and radiocarbon dated by Saumur...
For Fiber or Fiber: Paleoarchaic Desert Plant Baking as Calories or Raw Material? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The West Texas–Big Bend region preserves some of the earliest examples of hot rock cooking in North America. These smaller early thermal features are thought to be the remnants of early plant baking subsistence events....
For “Wood” Measure: Exploring the Applicability of Elemental Analysis in the Study of Charred Wood (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, archaeologists have embraced the compositional and elemental analysis of archaeological materials—primarily ceramic, metallic, and lithic objects—drawing new conclusions about the circumstances surrounding their production, such as the geographic origins of their raw components or the processes by which they were made. To explore the...
The Force Awakens: The Nature and Chronology of Wari Presence in the Huarmey Valley (2018)
Since the fundamental work of Dorothy Menzel, it has been suggested that a new center of power and prestige arose on the North-Central Coast of Peru during the late Middle Horizon, and that its focal point was probably located in the Huarmey Valley. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has not been empirically confirmed for more than 40 years, due to the lack of strong evidence based on systematic archaeological research. Since 2010 an international team of scholars performs multidisciplinary research...
The Forest through the Trees: Using Vivifacts to Analyze How Native American Landscapes Shaped Colonial Encounter (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1836, after centuries of occupation, Native Americans signed over 13 million acres of Northern Michigan land to the U.S. in an attempt to curtail complete removal from their ancestral homeland. This research project examines the transitional period of land loss in the mid-19th century to analyze to what extent Native Americans utilized the landscape before,...
Forgery of the Past: The Scientific Analysis of the Codex Cardona and the Assumed Lost Relaciones Geográficas of Coyoacán and other Villas of Mexico City during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiple fragments of the so-called Codex Cardona began to circulate among street markets, boutique bookstores, and art galleries of Mexico City, the USA, and Europe between 1970 and 1980. It is estimated that this large format manuscript has 800 pages and 300 colorful plates...
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 Near and Far: Application of Archaeometric Techniques to Characterize Regional and Long-Distance Interaction at the Formative Period Center of Atalla, Peru (2018)
This paper investigates the role of interregional interaction in the development of social complexity in the Central Andes during the Late Initial (c.1100-800 BC) and Early Horizon (c.800-200 BC) periods at the archaeological site of Atalla, a regional ceremonial center located in highlands of Huancavelica, Peru. Methodologically, this research integrates radiocarbon dating with stylistic, technical, and geochemical analyses of a range of materials to examine exchange and interaction on multiple...
From Soil to Society: Local Variability in Inferred Climatic and Environmental Change and Landuse in the Valencian Community, Spain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Climatic and environmental factors are ‘creeping’ phenomena with rapid thresholds, and there is a disjuncture between product and best-practice in terms of landuse. The ways in which people engage with their environment are necessarily influenced by the nature of the given region, but the form of that engagement is contingent on cultural and historical...
From the Sea to the Mountains: Dave Killick’s Impact on Archaeological Science Advances in Northwest Mexico (2023)
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. The borderlands setting of the University of Arizona has made it an epicenter for research focused on Northwest Mexico. This geographical proximity combined with the unfailing collaborative spirit of Dave Killick resulted in his students (official and honorary) having an outsized impact on the...
Funerary Transitions in the Chu State during the Warring States Period (480-221 BC) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Warring States Period has been regarded as an essential period in terms of the transition of political structure. This transition leaves its influence on the forms of burials and tombs. This study aims to provide a new perspective on the political transition by studying the changes of remains of the elite tombs of Chu State during the Warring State Period....
Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Inca *Aríbalos from the Bandelier Collection, American Museum of Natural History (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Found from highland Ecuador to northwest Argentina, the Inca narrow-mouth jar, or *aríbalo, is the most widely distributed marker of the period of imperial expansion across the Andes (ca. 1400–1530s). Hiram Bingham made the first formal description of the *aríbalo more than a century ago, as part of the first formal classification of Inca pottery....
Geometric Morphometric Perspectives on Vessel Shape Hybridity in Inka-Chimú Ceramics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Inka conquest of the Chimú Empire on what is today the north coast of Peru brought a region with well-established economic and political practices under the rule of a highland polity that developed under distinct social and ecological conditions. Many aspects of Inka rule in Chimú territory were...
Glaze-Paint Pigmenting Strategies in the Upper Little Colorado and Western Zuni Regions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report on research that uses LA-ICP-MS to examine glaze-paint pigmenting strategies and lead isotopes to investigate lead sources used during the Pueblo IV period in the Upper Little Colorado and Western Zuni Regions of the American Southwest. Pigment data suggest that...