Lithic Analysis: Obsidian (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years the rescues carried out in Guatemala City, specifically between zones 7 and 11, have uncovered several deposits containing huge amounts of obsidian artifacts. During the excavations of the Lake Miraflores project located on the San Juan causeway, zone 7, a huge deposit containing thousands of obsidian artifacts was uncovered. This deposit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Lacy.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, Northern New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The No Agua Peaks are a relative understudied obsidian source. An easily accessed and relatively large deposit area, one would expect No Agua obsidian to be frequently used and widely distributed. However, because of the source’s high silica content, desirability for and practicality of use of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paris Franklin. Mitchell E. McElwain. Bradford W. Andrews. Amanda K. Taylor. Dennis Lewarch.

This poster presents a technological analysis of obsidian artifacts from two Aztec-period surface collections in the Coatlan del Rio Valley, located in what is now the modern state of Morelos, Mexico. The deposits are from residential terraces collected in 4 x 4 m units. Designs on ceramics collected with the lithics indicate primary occupation after 1400 CE. This study has two primary objectives: first, we technologically classify the artifacts in the collections; second, we evaluate whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Nowakowski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will show the results of XRF testing of obsidian artifacts from the Wurlitzer site in Butte County, California. The purpose of this testing is to create a better context from which to understand the site. Previous research has focused primarily on creating a chronology of the site using radiocarbon dating, point typologies, and comparison to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Miltimore. Chris Caseldine. Sean G. Dolan.

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Polvorón phase (ca. A.D. 1350–1500), which occurred after the Hohokam Classic Period, was a time of cultural paradigm shifts. There are cultural continuities with the preceding Civano phase, like the use of Salado Polychromes, but people during the Polvorón practiced different cultural traditions, most notably the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

El valle de Maltrata se ubica en un punto intermedio de una importante ruta de comunicación, comercio e intercambio entre la Costa del Golfo y el Altiplano Central. Esto permitió que los asentamientos prehispánicos asentados en el valle contaran con la posibilidad de disponer de algunos tipos de artefactos y materiales que no se encontraban en la región cercana. En cuanto a la obsidiana se refiere, la cercanía con los yacimientos del Pico de Orizaba permiten suponer que durante todo el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David McCormick. Gilberto Cruz. Erika Gómez. Oswaldo Chinchilla.

This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various contexts in the sector of El Baúl, at the site of Cotzumalhuapa have been the subject of recent excavations to better understand the lithic industries of this urban center. These sectors were chosen for excavation due to the large surface scatters of lithic material indicating areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marissa King.

This is an abstract from the "From Channel Flakes to Bison Jumps: Current Investigations of the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene Archaeological Record in Southern Idaho" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the evidence suggests bison were consistently taken by indigenous hunters on the eastern Snake River Plain throughout the Holocene, quantitative faunal analyses indicate that bison were taken in modest numbers. Contrasting this pattern,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Fugitt.

This is an abstract from the "From Channel Flakes to Bison Jumps: Current Investigations of the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene Archaeological Record in Southern Idaho" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study investigates whether Buffalo’s Little Brother Hill (10BT2303) functioned as a bison jump using GIS analysis. To assess whether the site could have been utilized as a jump we examined the upland topography and conducted a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Dudgeon. Pamela Pascali. Rebecca Hazard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 20 archaeologically-identified obsidian sources occur as inter-bedded surface exposures and stream-transported alluvial deposits within and along the margins of Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Previous research has documented the differential frequency of source use through time and variation in material transport distance for southern Idaho obsidians,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Knight.

One result of the intensive, 5-m interval surface survey of the Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian source area in Puebla, Mexico was the recovery of several artifact classes suggestive of prolonged habitation. Ceramic and ground stone artifacts recovered indicate that domestic activities were an important component of the obsidian procurement and production economy. Ceramics tended to concentrate in areas that also contained higher quantities of ground stone, but did not correlate with any one stage of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford. Brigitte Kovacevich.

This is an abstract from the "Holtun: Investigations at a Preclassic Maya Center" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Imported obsidian is often representative of regional trade patterns in Meosamerica. Such patterns for the Central Lowland Maya have been documented and allow for comparisons between sites and between periods within a single site. In this paper we compare the procurement and use patterns of obsidian between the Preclassic and Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Suarez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-distance trade was a key factor in the development of complex Maya sociopolitical systems. Exotic goods were used for quotidian and ceremonial purposes, and controlling trade has been hypothesized as one way that elites gained and maintained their influence. While geochemical analysis of obsidian is a key method for examining its exchange, prior...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cores for the production of prismatic obsidian blades have different sizes and production techniques in each of the obsidian sources of the Mayan area. Therefore, a comparison is made to find out if these differences are related to the type of knife that is intended to be produced and also to the trade of these artifacts because the size and weight...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Venice Jakowchuk.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses a comparative stylistic analysis of projectile points from the Postclassic (1130 – 1530 AD) Aztec city of Calixtlahuaca, located in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. Chemical sourcing of Calixtlahuacan obsidian has illustrated that the site was primarily supplied with obsidian from both West and Central Mexico. However, evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felicia Avendano. Mika Woods.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This is an investigation of obsidian chipping waste from the Grandad site, located in the Central Sierra near Mariposa, California based on point types found in deposits that have shown evidence of continuous occupation from 9000 BP to European contact. We searched for evidence of a changing reduction sequence from biface blank characteristics of large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rapson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thirteen AMS bone dates based on MNI from 9 hearth and dump features at the Bugas-Holding site establish the contemporaneity of all deposits within the main block area (mean = A.D. 1658). This chronological framework provides an opportunity to evaluate high-resolution behavioral models of social organization and land use at multiple analytical scales,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas MacDonald.

The University of Montana conducted an archaeological survey of the Cougar Creek valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in 2017. We mapped Cougar Creek obsidian outcrops, procurement areas, and secondary processing sites. XRF analysis of natural and cultural samples of the snowflake obsidian show a distinct chemical composition, even though its creation event is coeval with the famous Obsidian Cliff ca. 180,000 years ago (ca. 30 miles northeast). Due to its highly variable quality, Native...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Fuld. Terry Ozbun.

Located on the northern fringe of the Great Basin, in Lake County, Oregon, the Glass Buttes volcanic complex is the most important obsidian toolstone source in North America. Glass Buttes obsidian is world renowned because it is colorful, abundant, available in large pieces, and of extremely high quality for making flaked stone tools. Throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene, Native Americans have continuously used Glass Buttes obsidian, and it was widely traded in the Pacific Northwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Ebert. John Walden. Victor Gonzales Avendano. Rafael Guerra. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Households composed the most basic unit of economic production and consumption in ancient Maya societies, and articulated directly with broader social and political processes. In addition to organizing daily tasks and agricultural production, households served as a point of engagement in the domestic economy for the acquisition...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Gabriel Vicencio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study uses data from multiple excavation projects to examine the procurement and production strategies of obsidian artifacts in Mexico’s Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, focusing on the socioeconomic dynamics between different groups from the Middle Formative (900–500 BC) to the Late Postclassic (AD 1250–1519) periods. Geochemical and spatial analyses reveal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Sjodahl.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Huancasancos region in the south-central highlands of Ayacucho, Peru, is an archaeologically rich yet relatively understudied area. This poster will detail the results of excavation and material analysis from the Early Horizon (800-200 BCE) site of Arpiri, and the identification of a contemporaneous site, Qallopampa. The presence of Paracas and Nazca...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Ferguson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian procurement studies in West-Central New Mexico have proven valuable in characterizing changes in social connections over time. Previous research into the obsidian procurement patterns in the Lion Mountain area focused on the Pueblo II through Pueblo III periods represented by the majority of archaeological sites in the area. Recent in-field XRF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dean Blumenfeld.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study examines the flaked stone economy at the Epiclassic site of Los Mogotes, located north of the Basin of Mexico in central Mexico. We quantified obsidian and chert artifacts based on form and material in order to examine the nature of the regional lithic economy during this time. The findings suggest were dependent on long-distance exchange for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daron Duke.

This is an abstract from the "From Channel Flakes to Bison Jumps: Current Investigations of the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene Archaeological Record in Southern Idaho" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Idaho’s Folsom record has received relatively little attention for lack of bonafide site assemblages. That recently changed with a reexamination of the Layer 18 component at Owl Cave and a newly examined open-air site named It Still Breathes....