Formation Processes (Other Keyword)
1-19 (19 Records)
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. Located at the eastern edge of the Ozarks, the Greenbrier site is in a unique ecotonal location in close proximity to a diversity of lithic resources in the middle White River Basin. Ceramics at Greenbrier indicate that people here were closely connected to towns on the upper and lower White River and also to occupants in...
Archaeological Site Distribution in Relation to Soils and Geomorphic Characteristics in Dune Landscapes in Northeastern Arizona (2016)
The Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona contains abundant archaeology sites located in dune settings. Archaeological research in the area has shown apparent correlation between archaeological site locations and dune geomorphology, suggesting that prehistoric inhabitants frequently targeted dunes for habitation sites. It has been proposed that this relationship may be due to extensive use of dune soils for agriculture. This paper investigates soils and geomorphology of dune...
Coins In The Fountain: Finding Meaning in Everyday Votive Offerings (2017)
There is a very long history of people throwing valuable objects into bodies of water or fountains, and the practice has long been widespread. Today children ask for, and are often given, small-denomination coins to "make a wish" by tossing them into a fountain or pool. What are the origins and history of this behavior, and what beliefs and social motivations lie behind it, from ancient times to today? The social and physical formation processes that affect these "votive offerings" will be...
Conjoinable Pieces and Site Formation Processes (1982)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Critical Analysis of Documented Evidence or Disturbance of Archaeological Remains Due to the Historic Agricultural Practice of Tillage (1989)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Data Recovery at Site 16VN794: Investigations into Site Formation Processes and the Cultural Squence of West Central Louisiana (1993)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Ethiopia's Peripatetic Royal Capitals and Prospects for Their Study (2016)
From the 13th to 17th centuries, emperors of Ethiopia, attended by the royal court, largely abandoned rule from fixed capitals in favor of a migratory lifestyle suited to projecting imperial power across an unruly collection of subjugated states and territories. At its peak, this system of administration was formalized into a highly regulated assembly of people with the visual and functional attributes of a royal urban center, though it lacked the spatial permanency of a conventional city. The...
Finding, Analyzing and Interpreting Organic Matter in Archaeology: A Complex Subject (2017)
Reconstructing the history of organic matter in archaeological context presents a challenge. Organic chemical signatures are the consequence of complex natural and anthropic processes that must be decoded in order to understand their hypothetical significations. This task follows different epistemological, methodological, and practical choices and needs to integrate knowledge from different disciplines. As a consequence, the characterization of the different molecules is related to the original...
Five Centuries of Post-occupation Formation Processes: Excavations at the Dim Bay Site, Bahamas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. SS-5, the Dim Bay site, is a prehistoric Lucayan site on the east side of San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Ongoing research reveals intricate stratigraphy in comparison to other sites on the island. While most sites on San Salvador are in protected locations on the leeward sides of dunes, SS-5 is on a low transverse dune by the beach between the ocean and an...
The Formation of a West African Maritime Seascape: Atlantic Trade, Shipwrecks, and Formation Processes on the Coast of Ghana (2013)
Vessels engaged in the Atlantic trade with West Africa contended with rough seas and dangerous shorelines that offered few natural harbors. To combat this, ships generally anchored offshore in deeper water and used small vessels for trade and communication with trading establishments on shore. While the underwater seascape was a determining factor in navigation, the surface landscape was both fashioned by, and played dramatic roles in, the development of trade and navigation. The intersection...
Formation Processes and Biases in Big Data (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of Harold Dibble’s career was focused on the formation processes of the archaeological record. Initially, formation theory encompassed both natural and cultural formation processes; however, in the last few decades most scholars have focused on natural biases in the formation of the...
Formation Processes in Curecanti Archeology: The Elk Creek Site (1996)
Mitigative archeological investigations were conducted in 1983 at the southern end of the important Elk Creek site, 5GN204/205, within Curecanti National Recreation Area prior to construction of a park apartment complex. That portion of the site extended onto a rocky promontory overlooking Blue Mesa Lake. Archeological activities undertaken at the site in 1982 focused upon the western half of the promontory (Jones 1986), while the eastern half of the point was investigated the following year....
Household Hearth-Centered Activity Areas at the Bridge River Site, British Columbia: Formation Processes and Site Structure (2015)
Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have identified approximately 15 discrete floors dating between 1500 and 100 years ago. In this poster we draw data from a Bridge River 3 (ca. 1300-1000 cal. B.P.) period floor to examine the formation of activity areas with a larger goal of reconstructing "site structure" in a constrained space. We address questions specifically directed at formation processes as well as potential relationships between at least two...
An Investigation Of Surface Assemblages Related To Contemporary Immigration In Southern Arizona (2015)
For the last twenty years an archaeological record of immigration has taken shape in Arizona’s wilderness. This material record results from millions of undocumented men, women and children who have entered the U.S. without authorization by walking across the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. Along the way these people eat, rest, and deposit a variety of objects (e.g., water bottles, clothes, personal effects) at ad-hoc resting areas known as migrant sites. These surface assemblages are...
New Approaches to Sambaqui Archaeology in Brazil (2017)
MaDu Gaspar and Paulo DeBlasis Sambaquis (shellmounds) have attracted attention since colonial times due to their monumentality, and to the presence of human burials and stone sculptures. Discussions on their natural or human origin dominated up to the 1960s, when debate shifted to cultural history and diet, and moundbuilders were taken as nomadic bands with shellfish-based subsistence. The 1990s, a time of changing paradigms in sambaqui archaeology, coincides with the coming of Suzy and Paul...
Test Excavation of the 17th Century Provintia, a Dutch Fort in the Southwest Taiwan (2017)
In the 17th century, Taiwan was considered as an outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company to trade with China and Japan, and to compete with its European counterparts in the region. Located in the contemporary Tainan City, Taiwan, Provintia stood as the Island’s first planned city by the Dutch in AD 1625, the second year when they traded the city land with 15 cangan cloth from the indigenous Siraya. In AD 1653, a fort, called Fort Provintia was constructed as a result of Han Chinese rebels...
Understanding Formation Processes of Archaeological Sites in Eolian Settings in the Petrified Forest National Park (2015)
Located on the southern edge of the Tusayan Dune Field in northeastern Arizona, the Petrified Forest National Park contains abundant archaeology sites located in dune settings. Past and recent archaeological survey has shown an apparent correlation between archaeological site locations and eroded dune blowouts. It is likely that sites are located in dune settings due to their favorable environmental setting; however, it is not clear if the apparent distribution of visible sites in relation to...
Warfare, Fortifications, and Archaeological Formation Processes: The Case of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper musters archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data to highlight that a greater focus on formation processes and sampling bias is necessary in the archaeology of warfare and study of martial architecture. Fortifications are some of the most important archaeological indicators of past warfare. For example, the myth of a peaceful Maya...
You're Going to Carry that Weight a Long Time (2018)
Mobility is a phenomenon of importance across all past and present societies. For hunter-gatherers, mobility structures ecological strategies, social organization, and response to environmental change. For prehistoric societies, we cannot observe mobility but it is possible to study it through a proxy record of discarded material items and biological remains that form the archaeological record. Increasingly archaeological practice has shifted from proposing intuitive links between mobility and...