Taphonomy and Site Formation (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Antonio V. Herrera-Herrera. Carolina Mallol.

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. Molecular and isotopic analyses of sediments from archaeological combustion features is a relatively new area of study. Applications have the potential to inform us about ancient pyro-technologies and patterns of animal exploitation in a wide range of human contexts but may be particularly informative with regards to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mason Seymore. Reuven Yeshurun. Ruth Shahack-Gross. Dani Nadel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We explored the spatial organization of the Middle Epipaleolithic site of Neve David (Mt. Carmel, Israel) through macro and micro contextual taphonomy of ungulate bones. The Epipaleolithic (23,000-11,500 cal BP) of the southern Levant is renowned for its cultural diversity, culminating with the complex hunter-gather Natufian culture. Emerging research from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon Zinsious. Jonathan Haws. Michael Benedetti. Telmo Pereira.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Central Portugal is a critical area of study for addressing the replacement of Neanderthals by Anatomically Modern Humans in Iberia. This paper presents new data on lithic refitting and assemblage integrity from Lapa do Picareiro, a cave in central Portugal containing punctuated levels of occupation within a continuous sequence of deposition spanning the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Walker. Rachael Shimek.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Limited small mammal remains were recovered from Hell Gap during the early 1960s. Based on these remains, a lowering of "life zones" was proposed at Hell Gap around c.a. 10,800 yrs B.P. In 1997, the Early Holocene small mammal population of the Hell Gap site Locality One was reinvestigated. Flotation samples were collected by five...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Graf. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel. Nathan Shelley. Thomas Urban.

This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. McDonald Creek, located in the Tanana Flats ~55 km south of Fairbanks, Alaska, rests on an isolated remnant of an ancient alluvial terrace of the Tanana River that hugs the southeast corner of a monadnock rising from the flats. While testing the site, we discovered a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurence Ferland.

Tells are living places continuously constructed and transformed by their inhabitants through their actions on the matter and objects constituting these places. In effect, the accumulation of clay, rubble and refuse on which houses are built and lives lived reflects daily actions, cultural events happening on longer cycles as well as environmental considerations. Therefore, the blend of things and matter that transited from the riverbed to houses, pots, and aggregated rubble and rubbish requires...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Keller. Jamie Hodgkins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Few taphonomic experiments have considered Ostrich eggshell, despite its ubiquity at archaeological sites in Africa and Asia. This experiment seeks to fill some of the gaps in taphonomic knowledge by determining the effect of trampling on ostrich eggshell. Ostrich eggshell fragments were photographed, distributed across the surface of sand, soil, or gravel,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Keller. Fabio Negrino. Claudine Gravel-Miguel. Naomi Cleghorn. Jamie Hodgkins.

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. A driving question in paleoanthropology is the extent of behavioral divergence in hominin species, particularly Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens (AMH) and Neanderthals. Generally, direct comparisons are restricted to Europe, where both hominin species were interacting within the same environmental constraints....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Gonzales. Jeffrey Blomster. Ricardo Higelin Ponce de León.

Recent excavations at the Middle Formative (850 – 400 BCE) site of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca male bearing striking red stains on the anterior cranium. These findings may suggest alteration of remains associated with burial rituals. However, human remains may be modified through several post-mortem taphonomic effects, including: trauma, rodent activity, discoloring, staining, cultural modification, interment rituals, damage throughout archaeological investigation procedures, biological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata. Daniela Triadan.

Excavations at Aguateca and Ceibal revealed a series of dense deposits associated with the ritual destruction of buildings. At Aguateca, such deposits were found in and around Structures M7-22 and M7-32 of the Palace Group, probable royal administrative-residential buildings. Excavators also unearthed similar deposits around Structures L8-6 and L8-7, temple pyramids in the Main Plaza. These deposits date to c. AD 810 when enemies attacked Aguateca. At Ceibal, dense deposits of broken objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianne Boileau.

Identifying formation processes of shallow archaeological sites can be difficult. At Lamanai, Belize, the main problem consists of distinguishing between pre- and post-Spanish contact deposits buried at a depth of 10 to 60 cm. Evidence of interaction with the Spanish includes a few European objects and two Christian churches. However, identifying pre-contact deposits is more challenging. Maya archaeologists typically rely on ceramic typology to establish chronology, but the main pottery type in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Borrazzo.

An anthropocentric perspective governs most of archaeological research into lithic assemblages. Hence, spatial and morphological trends in the lithic record are interpreted primarily in terms of human technological behavior without a systematic assessment of unintentional and/or non-human factors as sources of variation. Surprisingly, controversies on the natural vs. anthropic character of several lithic assemblages or ‘industries’ did not prompt the adoption of taphonomic approaches by lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kappelman. Matthew Hill. Frank Huffman.

This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Larry Todd has played a central role in applying taphonomy to studies of prehistoric human behavior. He developed standardized and, most importantly, reproducible methods of observational quantification. We here present studies of Trinil (Java) and Hadar (Ethiopia), both of which figure prominently in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gosia Mahoney. Paul Hanson. Dawn Bringelson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The puzzling scarcity of archaeological sites on the Tolleston Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore prompted an investigation into the development of this dune field in an attempt to determine whether the distribution of known archaeological sites is governed by ancient human behaviors, or influenced by its dune setting, which can affect site preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McNeill. Bryna Hull. Teresa Steele.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell (OES) is common in archaeological sites throughout Africa and Asia and is often recovered with evidence of pre- and postdepositional burning. The physical nature of OES protects some isotopic data that remain locked away in the crystalline shell matrix, allowing researchers to use these data thousands of years later to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Binning. Jennifer Thatcher. Craig Skinner.

This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For a cultural resource to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, it must meet specific criteria. For significant archaeological sites, this usually means the resources can produce data that address important questions about the past (i.e., National Register Criterion D). The integrity of design is of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Ugalde. Calogero Santoro. Eugenia M. Gayo.

Surficial archaeological sites are widespread in arid environments. However, due to the difficulties in numerically dating them, they are usually considered as coarse indicators of past behaviors. Here, we explore the use of lithic weathering to develop local relative chronologies, and to better incorporate these assemblages into archaeological research. We test whether the most weathered artifacts should be considered the oldest; an assumption that has informally served to compare assemblages....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessi Halligan.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, research in the Aucilla River of northwestern Florida has focused upon understanding the geoarchaeological context of numerous formerly terrestrial, now inundated sinkhole spring sites and the landscapes surrounding them. Dozens of terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene-aged diagnostic artifacts have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarod Hutson. Anna K. Behrensmeyer. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez. Gary Haynes. Amanda Millhouse.

Taphonomy, the study of how organisms fossilize and information that is lost and gained along the way, has emerged as pivotal to reconstructing the paleoecology of animal communities and ancient human lifeways. Through taphonomic analysis, we can decipher the sources of bone accumulations at paleontological and archaeological sites and the processes involved in bone modification and preservation. Such inquiries rely upon well-documented reference collections that link certain bone modifications...