North America (Other Keyword)
1-15 (15 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites in the United States are governed by a complex network of state and federal regulations, sovereign tribal governments, and private landowners. This often leads to difficulties managing access to heritage sites and their research potential. In contrast, extant literature describes the efforts of the Belize Institute of Archaeology and...
Beaver River Complex Contribution to Folsom Archaeology: An Update and Future Directions (2015)
The Beaver River Complex (NW Oklahoma) of early Paleoindian (Clovis and Folsom) large-scale bison kill sites began contributing to our knowledge of Folsom hunting organization two decades ago with the identification, excavation, and analysis of the Cooper site. Since then a total of five Folsom kill components have been identified at three arroyo kill sites within a 700 m reach of the Beaver River. The most recently discovered site, Badger Hole, contains the youngest Folsom kill component of the...
Big (Pre)History in North America:a view from the Southwest (2017)
While there are hopeful signs of change, for most of the last half-century American Anthropological Archaeology has been highly skeptical or openly hostile to continental-scale dynamics, particularly north of Mexico. Why was that? This paper briefly explores the history of our discipline, contrasts it to Europe and Latin America, and remarks on emerging, more realistic frames-of-reference for the prehistory of Native agricultural societies in North America. Examples begin with old chestnuts in...
Charles Conrad Abbott and the Evolution of Humankind (2016)
Charles Conrad Abbott is most well known for his participation in the "Great Paleolithic Debate" of the late 19th century, in which he used archaeological evidence to propose an independent evolution of humans in the New World and the Old World. His theories were soon dismissed as incorrect, but for a brief time, he gained scientific renown for his scholarly publications. However, his theories must be examined within the framework of scientific thought during this time. In 1859, Charles Darwin...
Commemoration and Contestation: New methodologies in archaeological heritage interpretation at the W.E.B. Du Bois Homesite (2013)
Today, the former homeplace of William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois is a National Historic Landmark administered by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which assumed stewardship of the property in 1987 after more than seventy years of relative abandonment. Nondescript and overgrown, the space appears to be little more than a vacant parking lot and accompanying sign alongside Route 23 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Indeed, ongoing efforts to commemorate Du Bois and to interpret the...
The Domestication and Migration of Zea mays L. in Association with Holocene Climatic Variance (2015)
Maize is known to have originated in Mesoamerica from which it spread north and south adapting to many varied climatic and environmental conditions. This study details the origin of the species Zea mays L. The teosinte hypothesis and the concepts of seasonality and scheduling are used to discuss the domestication of maize by means of human selection. This information is used to highlight the basic circumstances necessary within a human population for maize agriculture to be adopted. Furthermore,...
The dynamics of stylistic change in Arikara ceramics (1965)
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The History of "Laundry Lists" in North American Zooarchaeology (2015)
North American zooarchaeologists believe that prior to 1970, most zooarchaeological reports were laundry lists—lists of taxa identified, perhaps with abundance data. Laundry lists make up 68 percent of titles published between 1900 and 1959; 24 percent of titles published between 1960 and 1979 are laundry lists. Some laundry lists concern samples so small that one should not expect more than a list of identified species; other laundry lists were produced by zoologists who had no knowledge of...
Introduction to Numismatic Archaeology of North America. (2017)
An introduction to the session highlight the array of scholarship on numismatics and an exploration of the significance of mumismatics to the field of historical archaeology.
Making Communities Work: Organizational Diversity in the Eastern Woodlands of North America (2015)
Stephen Kowalewski has advanced a number of conceptual frameworks for the comparative study of organizational complexity. His multiscalar, cross-cultural approach permits the recognition of broad patterns while incorporating meaningful variation. In a 2013 paper, Steve explores the "work" involved in the formation of large, co-residential communities. He suggests that we might productively focus on the labor process, as community members purposefully redirected people’s time, energy, and...
Media Portrayals of Viking Rune Stones in North America (2015)
In North America, rune stones of purported Viking origin have been the subjects of excitement, scrutiny, and dispute. The stones have been called hoaxes, and archaeologists and other workers remain unconvinced about the stones’ Viking origin and validity; nevertheless, claims have appeared over time that rune stones, which have turned up in such diverse locations as underwater and on hillsides, contain the inscriptions of Scandinavian explorers in North America, including inland areas, long...
Micro-regional Archaeology Underwater: Approaches to Documenting Submerged Prehistoric Sites. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Love That Dirty Water: Submerged Landscapes and Precontact Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. It is now widely recognized that key portions of the global archaeological record can only be found underwater. While submerged prehistoric sites can yield crucial evidence and often preserve organic remains and other features rarely encountered on land, they pose unique challenges. To investigate these...
Museum archaeology in the United States: refocusing research questions and updating methodologies alongside NAGPRA (2016)
Collections in museums are components of refocusing and revising archaeological interpretation in the United States alongside the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Review of collections as prompted by NAGPRA is improving documentation and interpretation of those collections subject to the Act and beyond, across sites and regions. Previously incomplete archaeological contexts may be refined and these bring potential for updated research questions and methodologies. A...
NCPTT and the Growth of American Archeogeophysics (2015)
Before the turn of the millennium there were few practitioners of geophysical prospecting in American archaeology. In this relative vacuum NCPTT came into being at the right time, situated to support and promote these methods for site exploration, documentation and, in effect, preservation of site structural information because vast areas of the subsurface and its archeological content could finally be mapped. In the late 1990s NCPTT was an early supporter of research into the integration or...
Transient Labor and the North American West (2015)
The organization of labor is a defining element of society. In the case of the North American West this defining element is often marked by a reliance on seasonal and transient rural labor. In this paper I briefly characterize the transient workforce, discuss its archaeological signatures, and how we might incorporate these marginalized histories into our work. For all its historical importance, rural labor is not an easy topic of study, for reasons ranging from the structures and practices of...