Archaeometry & Materials Analysis (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asia Alsgaard. Erin Ray. Keith M. Prufer. Seth Newsome.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The impact of the agricultural transition in the Maya region is little understood. Excavations at two rockshelters in southern Belize, Mayahak Cab Pek and Saki Tzul, have uncovered intact deposits dating from Cal.12,000 to 1,100 BP with a continuous record of both human and fauna remains. Using carbon and nitrogen bulk tissue and carbon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plant and animal perishable remains are not uncommon in dry cave archaeological contexts, which have made significant contributions to archaeological knowledge in recent years. Textiles (including basketry, cordage, woven, knotted, or plaited products) make up a considerable portion of the perishable archaeological record in these contexts, much of which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the widespread Terminal Classic florescence that saw booming occupations at every site in the Cochuah region of west-central Quintana Roo, Mexico, many settlements were entirely abandoned. However, some sites possessed late Terminal Classic populations, living in novel architecture yet continuing other Classic Maya material practices. One such round...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Walshaw. Eréndira Quintana Morales.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Agropastoralists settled along eastern Africa’s coast in the first millennium, bringing with them domesticated sorghum and millets, cattle and ovi-caprids. The opportunities of the coastal environment led to marine resource exploitation and the adoption of rice and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Massey.

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paracas site of Tajahuana in the middle Ica Valley has been associated almost exclusively with the occupation of its summit known as La Peña. La Peña de Tajahuana was described by Menzel, Rowe, and Dawson as an important urban center corresponding to Phase 9 of the Ocucaje Sequence of Paracas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. A. Varney. Linda Scott Cummings.

This is an abstract from the "Quivira Revisited" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Taking scientific lab analyses into the field requires special equipment and planning. PaleoResearch arrived with our mobile field lab to support the archaeological field work. Remote analysis of pollen, phytoliths, seeds, charcoal, and protein residues all are possible, as are the more commonly employed portable XRF and even FTIR analyses. Protein residue analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherman Horn.

This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Preclassic (1000 – 400 B.C.) Maya Lowlands were peppered with autonomous communities connected by webs of socioeconomic interactions at the local and regional scales. Increasingly complex social relationships were forged in Middle Preclassic centers and later developed into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Lopez Bravo.

Research focused on El Lacandon, a rural community in the outer hinterland of the Late Classic Palenque polity, has allowed the understanding of shifting patterns of relationships between the urban and the rural realms in two specific times: 1) at the end of the Late Preclassic period, when Palenque developed from a rural village into a dynastic capital; and 2) at the end of the Late Classic period, when the ruling dynasty developed new political strategies for hinterland integration.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook Hale.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Submerged prehistoric archaeology by its nature depends intensively on natural science methods, particularly where topics such as submerged site formation processes are concerned. As such, it offers potential to advance the state of the art in both methodology and interpretation but must be applied with due care. I present here a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karin Frei. Samantha Reiter. Pernille Ladegaard-Pedersen. Marie-Louise Schjellerup Jørkov. Karin M. Frei.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tales of Bronze Age People is a three-year (2018-2021) interdisciplinary research project supported by a Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens grant (CF18-0005) led by Karin Margarita Frei, Research Professor in Archaeometry at the National Museum of Denmark. The project investigates the dynamic ways in which people navigated social lives in the Early Nordic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Chanteraud. Brandi MacDonald. Diego Garate. Hélène Salomon. Iñaki Intxaurbe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gravettian is a slice of human history that takes place during prehistory from 32 to 22 ka BP in Europe (from the Urals to the south of the Iberian Peninsula). This long period of our history was mostly built on lithic industries models with limited consideration for evidence of other technical and cultural practices, like coloring materials. Based on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Luis Ruvalcaba. Paulina Guzmán. Edgar Casanova. Miguel Angel Maynez. Isaac Rangel.

The discovery of numerous Maya-style mural painting fragments during the archaeological excavations in the Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan, sprouted debates concerning if these murals were drawn by a Maya artist. In order to compare the pigments composition and the pictorial technique of these paintings with mural paintings from the Maya area from the Classic Period, a non-invasive characterization of the thin ground layer of stucco and the pigments used in the painting discovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Kriss. Ellen Howe. Judith Levinson.

The Paracas culture and its impressive pottery tradition developed along the south coast of Peru in the Early Horizon period (approximately 800-100BC). A scientific study of manufacturing techniques and materials of post-fire painted Paracas ceramics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) found a correlation between changes in material use and iconography and vessel form across time. Differences between colorant composition in the Formative/Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Kaplan Emily Kaplan. Leah Bright.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Two mid-16th century Mexican pictographic documents in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, a codex on amate paper from the Valley of Mexico and a lienzo on a large cotton textile from Puebla, have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thania Ibarra. Aurelio López Corral.

Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estefanía Vidal-Montero. Itací Correa. Liz Vilches. Francisco Gallardo. Mauricio Uribe.

In the Atacama Desert, pottery is one of the main technological changes of the Formative Period (ca. 2700 BP). The initial industry (LCA type) is characterized by a stylistic homogeneity coupled with a wide geographical distribution. Compositional analyses, however, have shown a significant regularity in pastes, suggesting the use of localized sources of raw materials and/or specific production centers—indicative of a well-defined recipe and style. Provenance studies have identified a locus of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Odegaard. Kelsey Hanson.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The brilliant range of colors seen on painted media in the U.S. Southwest represents only one stage in an intricate sequence required to make paint. Capturing color from the natural world, harnessing it into a palette, and incorporating it into the material cultural repertoire represents a skillset with deep roots. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Hedman. Thomas Emerson. Timothy Pauketat. Matthew Fort.

This is an abstract from the "Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At its peak, Greater Cahokia had a population of over 30,000 people, and engaged in social, political, and religious interactions that covered the midcontinent. The factors that influenced the rise and dissolution of Greater Cahokia between ca A.D. 1000 and 1300 remain a focus of inquiry. Archaeobotanical and isotopic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) are often used to reconstruct ancient Maya diets. While these two isotopes provide us with a broad understanding of past subsistence practices, carbon and nitrogen are limited in their ability to differentiate freshwater and terrestrial based diets. Similar problems exist in other areas of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Samuelsen. Elizabeth Horton. Adriana Potra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of rivercane in ancient basketry and other ancient materials presents an opportunity to understand how culturally important objects were used and moved across the landscape. Examples of ritual and subsistence related basketry have been found at Spiro and in the Ozark Mountains, some of which are expected to come from other locations. Modern plant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Allan. Moira McMenemy. Kelly Brown. Matthew Baker. David Robinson.

For decades, debates have raged over the role of trance in the origination of rock-art. However, there remains almost no direct evidence of the ingestion of trance inducing material at any rock art site world-wide. The site of Pinwheel Cave has a large element thought to represent the opening of the flowering Datura. Dozens of quid, or 'chews' - i.e. masticated fibres of unidentified plant material - are found within the ceiling of the cave. A sample of this was taken and analysed to determine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Textiles are often given short thrift in archaeological research and reporting, due in large part to their rarity and thus limited depth of analysis. Recent studies have demonstrated a variety of new analytical techniques, revealing new potential in archaeological and anthropological textile studies. Unfortunately, over ten years into these developments, few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Dudgeon. Charles Speer. Beau Craner. Rebecca Hazard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thermal analysis (TGA/DTA/STA) has seen sporadic use as an archaeometric technique. Recent papers on archaeological mortars, plasters, ceramic pigments, and paints have sought to understand recipes or mineralogical components by thermal decomposition, especially where traditional chemical analysis by mass spectrometry is limited due to the multiple forms a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Herrmann. Nicholas Brown.

Archaeologists have long been fascinated with the exploitation and exchange of Spondylus spp. across the ancient world. This is especially true for the Andes, where the "thorny oyster" has been found far afield from its tropical breeding sites along the coasts of Ecuador and northern Peru. However, factors such as the uneven development of archaeology between Peru and Ecuador and the persistence of certain myths about Andean Spondylus have led to a "black-boxing" effect where exchange from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thania Ibarra. Lane Fargher. Aurelio Lopez Corral.

This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations undertaken by the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project have recovered an important sample of spindle whorls from Late Postclassic – Early Colonial (1420 -1540 A.D.) domestic contexts in Ocotelulco, a subsection of the urban site of Tlaxcallan, Mexico. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of identified whorl...