Taphonomy and Site Formation (Other Keyword)
51-75 (119 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Accurately identifying bone fragments and the agents that broke them is essential to site reconstruction and improving our understanding of human evolution and behavior. Here we implement geometric invariants and machine learning on digital 3D models of experimentally derived bone fragments to classify them by breakage agent. We characterize the surface with...
Interpreting a Mid-Eighteenth-Century Vertebrate Assemblage from a Probable Comanche Site on the Southern High Plains of Texas (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whiskey Flats is a mid-eighteenth-century probable Comanche site on the Southern High Plains in Midland County, Texas. Ongoing excavation in Mustang Draw of the now dry Mustang Pond uncovered evidence of occupation along a terrace and a bone bed within the pond basin. A modern bison periotic from the bone bed dates to the mid-1700s. Artifacts from both areas...
Intrusive Taxa Identified in the Re-excavation of Room 28 in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (2018)
Archaeological sites are attractive places for burrowing rodents, but determining which specimens are intrusive can be a challenge. The fauna from the 2013 re-excavation of Room 28, due to its complex depositional history and rich rodent assemblage, provides an opportunity to explore different methods of identifying intrusive rodents in archaeological sites. In this paper, we use four lines of evidence to identify intrusive remains from human subsistence activity: 1) frequency of surface...
Investigating the Formation History of Surface Archaeology in the Doring River Valley, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Africa’s Late Pleistocene archaeology is pursued through the lens of rockshelter deposits. However, their spatial coverage is small and geographically biased, distorting our understanding of human behavioral evolution. To overcome this, researchers are...
Investigating the Impact of a Recent Wildfire on Tortoises at Cape Point, South Africa: Implications for Our Understanding of Ancient Pyrotechnology and Its Uses (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists commonly interpret burnt materials at archaeological sites as relicts of human fire use activities, but processes other than human fire use may create burnt materials. Here, we examine if wildfires would leave specific heating signatures regarding the temperature or heating pattern on the skeleton that would be different from...
Is the Wenas Creek Mammoth Site Anthropogenic? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Wenas Creek Mammoth Site was excavated 2005-2010 near Selah, Washington, USA, yielding bones of mammoth and bison dating ~17 ka, and two lithics resembling chipped stone debitage. Prior publications have reported on some aspects of the project and this poster summarizes those as well as subsequent analyses. The bones were disarticulated and scattered...
It’s the Faunal Countdown! Analysis of Faunal Remains from the 2017 Excavations at the Ryan-Harley Site, Wacissa River, Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017, the Florida State University underwater field school conducted excavations of the middle-Paleoindian Ryan-Harley site (8JE1004) in the Wacissa River in northwest Florida. These excavations recovered significant faunal remains from three one-meter units in association with lithic artifacts, potentially representing a...
Kind of a Pig Deal: The Taphonomic Effects of Chemically Enhanced Fertilizer on Adult Pig Bones (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pig bones have historically been used as a proxy for human skeletal remains because of the similarities in cell structure and soft tissue texture. Using pig elements, and continuing the work of previously completed research on the taphonomic effects of fertilizer on faunal bone conducted by the Northern Arizona University Faunal Analysis Laboratory...
"Left for the Tide to Take Back": Specialized Taphonomic Mechanisms at Play in a Coastal Maine Seal Hunting Camp (2018)
Archaeological investigations at Holmes Point West (Maine site 62-8) on the eastern Maine coast have yielded potential indicators of cultural treatment of seal remains that vary between two primary species: harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) and gray seal (Halichoerus grypus). Analyses of these patterns required development of element-specific speciation factors for best represented elements for each species, the temporal bone of the skull, including the auditory bulla and mastoid process. Holmes...
Let's Cut to the Chase: An Analysis of Experimental and Archaeological Data in the Process of Butchery (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research identifies where taphonomic effects, specifically cut marks are found on zooarchaeological materials from both the archaeological and experimental contexts. Analysis of such taphonomic effects include identification of similar patterning, placement of those marks between the archaeological record, and experimental research. This allows...
Looters Can’t Steal Everything: Salvage Archaeology at the San Giuliano Necropolis (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Etruscan cemetery around the San Giuliano Plateau has been looted extensively, but salvage excavations of several emptied tombs have yielded results that increase our understanding of the funerary landscape. In the 2018 and 2019 field seasons, two vertically...
Low and Slow: Landscape Taphonomy of High-Altitude Landscapes within the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado (2023)
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. Over the past 10 years, survey crews from CSU’s Center for Mountain and Plains Archaeology examined the alpine ecosystem of the Colorado Front Range, recording a variety of sites such as game drives, lithic and ceramic scatters, and ice patches within Rocky Mountain National Park and adjacent wilderness areas. We...
Luminescence Age Calculation Models, Termites, and Dune History in the Northern Kalahari Desert, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe (2023)
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. Archaeologists often accept optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages with less critical review than those derived from the more commonly used radiocarbon dating methods. This is largely because of an incomplete understanding of optical dating techniques and the modeling assumptions used to calculate these ages....
Microanalysis of Taphonomic Alteration on Skeletal Material - A Novel Approach to Identifying Damaging Sulfur Compounds (2018)
The geochemistry of taphonomic alterations affecting buried bone has been little studied, yet has vast implications for scientific interpretation of archaeological and paleontological specimens in a world now embracing chemical methods in geoarchaeology. This investigative study of black surface staining on mammalian sub-fossil bone excavated from the bed of the Santa Fe River in northern Florida exemplifies the need to carefully evaluate post-depositional alteration. Such stains typically are...
Microarchaeological Approaches to the Identification of the Younger Dryas in the Northern Great Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Younger Dryas Chronozone (YDC) is a cooling event occurring 12,900–11,600 years ago (cal BP) marked by rapid changes in plant and animal communities, subsequently affecting late Pleistocene human population organization and settlement dynamics across the globe. In North America’s Northern Great Basin, these changes...
Micromorphological Analysis of Deposition, Pedogenesis, and Stratigraphic Integrity at the McDonald Creek Site, Central Alaska (2021)
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. Despite the fact that archaeologists have long turned to the Alaskan archaeological record to answer questions about the first Americans, little is certain about the peopling of Beringia. The poor preservation of faunal remains in many central Alaskan archaeological sites has...
Microstratigraphic and Geochemical Contributions to the Study of the Burial Practices and Taphonomy of the Mycenaean Shaft Grave of the ‘Griffin Warrior’, Pylos, Greece (2018)
Results of a microstratigraphic and geochemical approach are presented here in reference to study of the Mycenaean ‘Griffin Warrior’ shaft grave at ancient Pylos. Soil and sediment micromorphology are used to address questions concerning the preparation of the tomb, the mode of corpse deposition, and taphonomy of the burial. Processes and activities such as the preparation and configuration of the floor and other earthen constructions inside the tomb are considered, as well as the rapidity of...
Middeningly Difficult: Methodological Advances in the Identification and Analysis of Submerged Midden Sites (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Middens are one of the most prevalent site types in coastal environments being found across the globe. They are also vital sources of information about past human behaviour, being records of, amongst many thing, human dietary practices and environmental change. In terrestrial contexts the identification of these sites is often a relatively straightforward...
Minimally-Invasive Geoarchaeological Investigation of a Sub-marsh and Intertidal Precontact Site in New Hampshire (2018)
Many precontact archaeological sites in New England exhibit poor preservation of organic materials but they occupy relatively stable upland landforms. Conversely, intertidal and submerged sites often contain exceptional organic preservation but exist in or near high-energy and erosive environments. This paper describes minimally-invasive geoarchaeological investigations of an Archaic to Terminal Archaic site in New Hampshire that is buried by salt marsh peat, exposed at a rapidly-eroding...
Missing Metapodials: New Analysis of the Protohistoric Period Fauna from the Scott County Pueblo site in Western Kansas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Dismal River Aspect sites, located within Lake Scott State Park in western Kansas, represent long-term settlement of the area during the AD 1500s-1700s by a mixture of Puebloan migrants and local Apache groups. This study uses faunal material from the protohistoric period to begin to understand the nature and...
Mixing and Moving Earth: The Geoarchaeology of a Newly Rediscovered Middle Woodland Earthen Enclosure in Central Kentucky (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Earthwalker Circle is a small Middle Woodland era (ca. 200 BCE–CE 500) ceremonial ditch and embankment enclosure located on privately-owned land at the border of Kentucky’s Bluegrass and Knobs physiographic regions. This enclosure was recently rediscovered as part of a regional assessment of LiDAR-derived visualizations and drought-based aerial...
More Than Just Pretty Things: Taphonomic and Behavioral Observations from the Unworked Ostrich Eggshell Assemblage Recovered from Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grassridge Rockshelter demonstrates one of the largest assemblages of ostrich eggshell beads and preforms in southern Africa that dates to the mid-Holocene. The site, located in the interior of the Eastern Cape of South Africa, therefore reflects an intensive use of ostrich eggshell as a raw material source for the production of...
Morphometric Comparison of Early Hominin Butchery Evidence to Carnivore Modifications within a Bayesian Framework (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Bayesian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of stone tool use for butchery by early hominins is a contested topic due to the rarity of early tool evidence. In the absence of tools, the primary trace evidence for their use as butchery implements is bone surface modifications (BSM). However, current BSM recognition protocols are subjective. They can lead to conflicting identifications—for example,...
Neotaphonomy of a "Common Amenity" on the Grasslands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying the variables that influence the deposition, preservation, and spatial distribution of faunal material across landscapes remains a key goal of taphonomic research. Here, we report on the results of pedestrian surveys for faunal material around a seasonal waterhole surrounded by woodland within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). All visible...
New Excavations at Border Cave: Preliminary Reflections on Stratigraphy and Site Formation Processes (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Border Cave rock shelter, formed in Early Jurassic fragmental rocks of the Jozini Formation on the western scarp of the Lebombo Mountains, KwaZulu-Natal, has a long history of archaeological investigation starting with Raymond Dart in 1934. Phases of informal and formal excavations have yielded remarkable archaeological assemblages including five hominin...