Taphonomy and Site Formation (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Blatt. Amy Michael. John Dudgeon. Rebekah Rakowski. Kateea Peterson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teeth are the most likely skeletal elements to survive taphonomic insult, but are not impervious to diagenetic changes. The bulk of dietary, migratory, and climatic studies pursued by bioarchaeologists are reliant on unaltered preservation of dental tissue. Yet, contextual value of depositional environments is often overlooked. Though study of the physical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Peters. Jessica Curry. Eric Bartelink.

During a 2010 National Park Service project to remove lead contaminated soils from behind a historic hospital at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason), San Francisco, a medical waste pit containing commingled human and faunal remains was discovered. From 1864-1903, several military surgeons were posted at the Point San Jose Hospital to treat military personnel. Analysis of the human remains revealed evidence of anatomical dissection indicated by numerous incised cut marks, saw cut marks, and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Dice.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many locations in Southern California where ephemeral lakes formed during the Late Pleistocene, then desiccated during the latter part of the Holocene: the Cronese Lakes, Lake Manly in Death Valley, Lake Thompson near Lancaster, and many others. Some geological studies have shown that prevailing winds become turbulent over desert flats and as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Levy. Patty Jo Watson.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Julie Stein joined the Shell Mound Archaeological Project (SMAP) in western Kentucky in 1977 when Patty Jo Watson and William Marquardt, leaders of the project initiated in 1971, recognized the need to add geoarchaeology to the already interdisciplinary project. I started as a graduate student at Washington University–St. Louis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby A. Jones. Eric Blinman. Jon Lohse. J. Royce Cox.

This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Directional archaeomagnetic techniques were used to propose use-history models for two burned rock features at archaeological site 41AN162, in Anderson County, Texas, USA. While common in the region, such burned rock features are rarely associated with cultural artifacts that indicate their function. Archaeologists have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Shelley.

This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project assesses the research utility of curated sediment samples excavated at Mesa Portales, New Mexico. These archaeological deposits date to the Pueblo III period (1150-1300 AD) and contain evidence suggesting two traditionally estranged cultures, Gallina and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Crothers. Justin Carlson. Karen Stevens. Alexander Metz. Katharine Alexander.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although it has been 40 years since Julie Stein’s dissertation research in Kentucky, her geoarchaeological work laid the foundation for and inspired much of the interdisciplinary work that continues in the Green River today. This research includes new excavations of shell midden sites in both the lower and upper Green River,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Devlin. Lee Jantz. Michelle Hamilton.

The impact of Walter Klippel’s teaching has provided his students the tools necessary to answer several critical questions faced by forensic anthropologists. Through his classroom tutelage countless numbers of graduates have the skills to recognize and categorize non-human bones. Beyond this zooarchaeological training, his research influence and guidance has also afforded both students and practitioners alike with knowledge to identify and document particular signatures of postmortem damage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Norman. Rolfe Mandel. Lauriane Bourgeon. Caronline Kisielinski. Justin Holcomb.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Originally excavated by Jacques Cinq-Mars in the 1970s and 1980s, Bluefish Caves, Yukon Territory, yielded artifacts and faunal remains. Cinq-Mars’s chronology for human occupation at the site dates to as early as ca. 24 ka and has been corroborated by AMS 14C-dated cut-marked bones. These findings support the genetic “Beringian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hallett. Jacopo Niccolo Cerasoni.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone has been used as a raw material for a range of activities for at least two million years. The criteria for determining whether a bone was used—or shaped and then used—have been established by archaeologists following decades of experimental research. In contrast, the antiquity of using bone for pressure flaking stone is less well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Synstelien. Heli Maijanen.

Bone modifications by chewing insects and their larvae have been described for several families. We report extensive bone damage due to feeding of the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana), a close relative of termites. Roaches were seen feeding on thawing vertebrate remains in a processing room, in which skeletons were being prepared for entry into a comparative collection. A study of roach gnawing was initiated after a number of defleshed mammal bones were discovered extensively modified....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Gutierrez. Nahuel Scheifler. Cristian Kaufmann. Daniel Rafuse. Agustina Massigoge.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study is part of an actualistic taphonomic project designed to characterize the bone modification patterns generated by native South American carnivores. We present the results of the bone modifications (skeletal representation, breakage, and tooth marks) produced by a captive lesser grison (Mustelidae: *Galictis cuja) that was fed 10 wild guinea pigs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Merritt. Monica Avilez. Jonathan Reeves.

Fossil bone surface assemblages include differential specimen preservation (weathering stage, cortical surface exfoliation, polish, roundedness, fracture type) and identifiability (taxonomic or anatomical precision). Three 1x1 meter inventory squares placed on steep, moderate, and minimally sloping areas of a fossiliferous outcrop test whether outcrop shape is a megabias that influences assemblage attributes. A digital elevation model created from drone-captured aerial imagery describes outcrop...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Jacobson.

Until recently, highly fragmented bone assemblages in Texas were almost all attributed to poor preservation. A review of assemblages, however, indicates that while there are a high percentage of heavily fragmented medium-sized and larger mammal bone at many of these sites, bones associated with small mammals, reptiles, avian, and fish have only minimal fragmentation. A review of bone from a variety of sites with deep temporal and well-stratified context and of varying degree of preservation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Alveshere.

The Orendorf site (11F107), located on a bluff overlooking the central Illinois River valley, comprises a mound group and a series of Late Woodland and Mississippian habitations. The occupation of the site is characterized by a gradual migration of the community to the west through successive abandonment and rebuilding. Burned structures have been found in all Orendorf settlements, and at least two of the abandonments followed complete burning of all structures. Intensive salvage excavations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Haynes. Janis Klimowicz. Piotr Wojtal.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The characteristics of human-killed and human-scavenged elephant carcasses differ in important ways. The bones of an elephant butchered immediately after humans killed it are identifiably distinct from bones taken from a "ripened" carcasses that was scavenged by humans. With newly killed carcasses, the butchering may be light to full, resulting in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Skosey-LaLonde. Jonathan Reeves. Matt Douglass. David Braun. Emmanuel Ndiema.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any inference of behavior based upon the spatial distribution of archaeological material requires an understanding of site formation processes. Natural agents, such as water flow, may be responsible for post-depositional alteration of buried materials and can result in spatial patterns which mask the behavioral processes associated with the initial deposition...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mareike C. Stahlschmidt. Christopher Miller. Susan M. Mentzer.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Middle and Later Stone caves and rockshelters in South Africa are commonly rich in organic matter. The formation history of the organic component in the archaeological deposits is still unclear and several natural and anthropogenic processes can be considered. This paper will focus on a discussion of possible anthropogenic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolina Mallol. Margarita Jambrina-Enríquez. Gilliane Monnier. Gilbert Tostevin. Goran Pajovic.

This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A trend in the past few decades of archaeological research is to apply different microstratigraphic techniques, which provide clues about behavioral and paleoenvironmental aspects of past societies. At Crvena Stijena (Montenegro), a Middle Paleolithic site under current...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Atilio Zangrando. Angélica Tivoli.

This is an abstract from the "Patagonian Evolutionary Archaeology and Human Paleoecology: Commending the Legacy (Still in the Making) of Luis Alberto Borrero in the Interpretation of Hunter-Gatherer Studies of the Southern Cone" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last years of the 1980s, Luis Borrero elaborated an archaeological model of the peopling of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego which still prevails. In particular, this model provides...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyra Johnson. Emily Sponsel. Gilliane Monnier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burned and weathered bones play an important role in understanding the taphonomy and possible behavior of an archaeological site. The processes can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from one another due to the similarities in the overall degradation of the bone. This study attempts to further develop methods of quantifying surface texture variation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Rankin.

This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing geoarchaeological research studying the relationship between urbanism and environmental change at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cahokia Mounds has begun to unravel a pre-contact landscape concealed by historic land-use practices. Archaeological excavations and sediment coring conducted to understand the environmental conditions during the construction and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wright. Jeong-Heon Choi. Jessica Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in understanding the Pleistocene archaeology of Africa depend on well-dated models of human behavioral change. Portions of southern Africa with limestone caves and eastern Africa with volcanic tephra have datable materials (uranium and argon, respectively) beyond the limit of the radiocarbon clock (50ka)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Rothenberg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July of 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano began a series of eruptions that would fundamentally alter the communities and landscapes of the small Caribbean island of Montserrat. By the turn of the millennium, two-thirds of the island had been abandoned or destroyed, and a comparable proportion of the population had relocated abroad. This paper presents the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolette Edwards.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The pre- and post-depositional processes that impacted the faunal assemblage associated with the Ipiutak component at the Croxton site, Alaska, have not been adequately studied/documented (see Gerlach 1989). This study focuses not only on the pre- and post-depositional disturbances that may have occurred, but also on how the burial environment may have played...