Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard McClure. Eugene Hunn. Joana Jansen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archival collections of Native language oral histories are widely scattered among universities, museums, and tribal repositories throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Many of these oral histories are an important primary source of information relative to traditional Indigenous land-use practices, in turn critical to an understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Challis. Andrew Skinner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the South African colonial period, settler incursion was met by indigenous resistance, sparking a series of brushfire conflicts. In the borderlands of the colony, “Bushman” bandits conducted an insurgency against colonists, facing as they did so significant traumatic stress. Being horse-borne was part of their identity, as was their association with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenifer Lewis. David Witt.

This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Arthur Caswell Parker was one of the first of his kind as an indigenous archaeologist. As a Seneca scientist with roots on the Cattaraugus territory where his grandparents lived, he had a foot in two worlds that may have aided with collaboration and research. However, his career started at a time when the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judy Berryman. William H. Walker.

Magic and witchcraft, like many classic topics in the anthropology of religion, involve everyday things such as dogs, plant pollen, ashes, and arrow points. As such the archaeological record offers a rich source of ancient religious practices if we can link formation of its deposits to past ritual activities. For example, strata exhibiting ash and projectile points deposited on floors and in the fill of abandoned houses may derive from protective magic. Rather than haphazardly tossed hearth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Desjardins. Scott Rufolo. Martin Appelt.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in the early to mid-twentieth century at the multicomponent site Avvajja (Abverdjar) (NiHg-1), northern Foxe Basin, Nunavut, produced arguably some of the most iconic Tuniit (Late Dorset Paleo-Inuit) artifacts yet found in Inuit Nunangat (the traditional Inuit territories of Arctic Canada). Avvajja is also notable for being the site of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Ott.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twin-temple pyramids of the Late Postclassic in Central Mexico became a distinct symbol of Aztec ideology. Nowhere is this demonstrated more than with Templo Mayor, the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire. The deities worshiped and rituals conducted at Templo Mayor made it a beacon of ideological identity for the Mexica-Aztec,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee. Jason De León.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Federal agencies and news media often report undocumented migration across the US-Mexico border in gross terms of hundreds of thousands to millions of crossings and apprehensions—a scalar project that then plays into broader political discourse about national belonging. In this paper we draw on research by the Undocumented Migration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mari Carmen Serra Puche.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cuando llegó a nosotros el contenido The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization se nos abrió un horizonte nuevo para explorar una región fundamental de nuestro patrimonio arqueológico como es el sur de la cuenca de México. Guiados por las enseñanzas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Blanchard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1998, ornithologist John P. O'Neill donated a vast ethnographic collection of objects he was gifted from fellow researcher Charles Fugler or purchased from local persons in Pucallpa, Peru, during his time studying birds in the Peruvian Amazon. According to O'Neill, the cultures responsible for these items' creations are the Cashinahua, Aguaruna, Achual,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randy Haas. Todd Surovell. Matthew O'Brien.

Archaeologists commonly observe clear qualitative structure in the spatial distribution of artifacts deposited in archaeological sites. Quantification and interpretation of such structure remains a major challenge. Drawing on multiple field seasons of observation among the Dukha—residentially mobile reindeer herders of the Mongolian Taiga—we present a likelihood based method for quantifying site-level structure in the use of space. This ideal ethnographic case in which behavior-structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kacy Hollenback.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1970s, the "founding fathers" of Behavioral Archaeology (BA), Schiffer, Rathje, and Reid expanded the bounds of traditional archaeology to fully integrate ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, and modern material culture studies. Building on the foundations of processual archaeology, BA emphasized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Witelson.

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock paintings of cattle raids are common in South Africa's southeastern mountains. Traditionally, such scenes are thought to illustrate some degree of conflict between two groups. The postures of the cattle depicted in the same scenes have been interpreted as showing movement such as walking or being driven from one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Goodwin. Lisa Hodgetts.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is often equated with sexuality research in archaeology (Blackmore 2011), but a queering of the archaeological record actually allows us to challenge all aspects of (hetero)normativity in archaeological practice (Croucher 2005; Blackmore 2011). Queer is "whatever is at odds with the normal, legitimate and the dominant" (Halperin 1995:62), and it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabina Cvecek.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While kinship studies based on ancient DNA (aDNA) data have been instrumental in reconstructing biological relationships in European prehistory, they often overlook the complex web of social interactions that shaped prehistoric communities. This interdisciplinary investigation delves into the rich tapestry of social dynamics that characterized European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Ware.

This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The basic building blocks of human communities are residential groups held together by ties of kinship. As communities increase in number and size during the Neolithic, residential kinship groups persist, of course, but new institutions may emerge that draw their members from multiple residential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miikka Tallavaara. Joseph Burger. Trevor Fristoe. Miska Luoto.

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For long, anthropologists have recognized latitudinal pattern in hunter-gatherer diet, where plant use increases toward tropics. However, causes of the dietary variability remain unclear reflecting the fact that ecology in general lacks robust theory for predicting geographical variation in the balance of plant and animal foods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mya McWilliam.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cycles of menstruating bodies have long been characterized in terms of impurity, pathology, and socio-spiritual threat both outside and within the field of archaeology. My research makes use of the archaeological record and existing literature to shed light on the experiences of women and menstruants in prehistory outside of these typically assumed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vibeke Viestad.

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Body modifications are a well-known aspect of various cultural practices among the historically and ethnographically known San hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa, but not until recently have such practices been analyzed within an interpretative framework that gives reason to suggest that they were mostly performed to ensure harmonious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Garrison.

There are bones of a bridge in Lansing exposed on the muddy banks of the Grand. In this cityscape, a "Sortatropolis", a once urban space now emaciated and exhausted. There would have been nothing special about this bridge to make its 1987 demolition, its absence, a remarkable tragedy, except that its disappearance can be directly connected to the long exhale of this once thriving capital. The Sortatropolis is haunted by the ghosts of auto industry moguls, lumber barons, and boot-strapping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sveta Yamin-Pasternak. Igor Pasternak.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nearly three decades after her dissertation fieldwork in the village of Sireniki, which she conducted in the late Soviet period, anthropologist Anna Kerttula de Echave continues to be closely entangled within the life and social relationships of the community. In many Sireniki households, Anna’s book 'Antler on the Sea: the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Darmangeat. Jean-Marc Petillon.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nearly worldwide diffusion of the bow is often interpreted in terms of its superiority over other weapon systems. There is, however, at least one exception to this diffusion: Australia, where this weapon was never...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Balanzategui. Marianne Sallum. Yacunã Tuxá. Natasha Gambrell. Stephen Silliman.

This is an abstract from the "Weaving Epistemes: Community-Based Research in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the first panel named “Indigenous Archaeologies, Territories, and Human Rights” as part of the seminar “Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in the Americas: Collaboration, Archaeology, Repatriation, and Heritage,” an inter-institutional collaboration between the Interdisciplinary Research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A small sandstone rockshelter overlooking Buffalo Creek in the southeastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains has been of interest to researchers since the 1960s due to its shield-bearing warriors, but they account for only a few images at the site. Several different animals here include elk, bears, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Diserens Morgan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the ways in which local government involvement in the restoration of historic structures and archaeological sites can change the ways in which they are valued and used by local communities. How do opinions surrounding heritage change when people are confronted with differing actors imposing differing values on historic properties? How do...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hruby.

While fingerprint impressions have been used archaeologically to approach a range of cultural questions, the methodologies developed to date tend to be labor intensive, statistically unsophisticated, or require large numbers of complete prints. Recently, numerous quantitative print attributes that correlate with sex in modern populations have been discovered, almost always from two-dimensional data. It is probable that there are additional, yet-unrecognized features that correlate with producer...