Obsidian (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Swoger.

Three dimensional (3D) imaging technologies are being increasingly utilized by archaeologists to improve the accuracy of material analysis. To facilitate the development of these technologies, it is crucial to determine the limits of different devices and materials. This project focused on the challenge of scanning obsidian blades with the Next Engine HD 3D Laser Scanner, a popular and inexpensive choice among researchers. The Next Engine device was used to scan six small obsidian blades from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Yacubic.

Lithic artifacts represent a major aspect of the archaeological record, and they are found in a wide variety of cultural settings. For the Maya lowlands, lithic analysis is particularly insightful for studying relationships between economics and society because stone was the dominant raw material used to produce tools at differing levels of social organization. The purpose of this presentation is to examine community connections at Tayasal using an interactionalist perspective. Through this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Ryan. Anna Prentiss.

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. This research uses obsidian data from a single site in the GYE to test existing land tenure and territoriality models based on the sourcing and subsequent movement of obsidian. While on a spectrum, existing studies have generally polarized between two major schools of thought. These perspectives diverge over whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Workinger. Stacie King.

Studies of obsidian tool manufacture in Mesoamerica typically focus on workshops located at source areas or at the major sites controlling them. In this paper, we explore production at the periphery, from the Nejapa/Tavela region of Oaxaca located roughly midway between the sources in Central Mexico and those in the Highlands of Guatemala. Rather than the thousands of artifacts representing the byproducts and errors of a single workshop, we are forced to rely upon the handful that found their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Freund. Tristan Carter.

The McMaster Archaeological X-ray Fluorescence Laboratory (MAX Lab) was established in 2010 with the goal of using compositional analyses of archaeological objects to engage with broad-level questions about past human behavior. In this context, obsidian has been the primary artifact type analyzed, taking form through the sourcing of artifacts to the geological sources from which they originated. As an example, this presentation focuses on prehistoric obsidian exploitation on the central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie B. Davis. Stephen A. Aaberg. James G. Schmitt.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roy A. Salls.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only John P. Cook.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Orville H Peets.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis L. Jenkins. Claude N. Warren.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mostafa Fayek. Brooke Milne. Ryan Sharpe. Rachel ten Bruggencate. Lawrence Anovitz.

Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) is based on the premise that when an obsidian artifact is manufactured, the fresh surface exposed immediately begins to hydrate. A state-of-the-art obsidian hydration dating technique utilizes secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to measure H diffusion profiles in obsidian artifacts and the depths of the resulting sputter pits by a stylus-type profilometer. The pit depths are matched with the SIMS H diffusion profiles, which are compared to diffusion profiles of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard H. Norwood.

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.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lekson. Catherine Cameron.

Payson Sheets has often been on the cutting/bleeding edge of obsidian research. We review current obsidian studies in the Southwest, as a proxy for social/economic interaction. We comment on confirmed or tentative sightings of Mexican obsidian in and around the region, also as a proxy for social/economic interaction.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Kaplan.

This paper examines the procurement and consumption of obsidian within the Wari capital (AD 600 – 1000) in the Ayacucho highlands of Peru. During the Middle Horizon, the Wari Empire expanded and controlled much of the Peruvian Andes, largely through the import, export and regulation of critical resources extracted from subject territories and populations. This project hypothesizes that obsidian may have operated as one such critical resource for imperial control and seeks to examine this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist. Xochitl Leon.

The Matacanela Archaeological Project (MAP) seeks to add to the greater understanding of the Classic to Postclassic transition, within the Gulf lowlands of Mesoamerica. Within the surface obsidian assemblage analyzed from the first season of this two-year project, distribution patterns and source frequencies delineate a definite Classic presence, reflecting certain hallmarks of surrounding established Classic period sites. In this paper, we present the obsidian recovered, and further consider...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dan Healan.

Technological classification of nearly 30,000 pieces of obsidian recovered from survey and excavation followed by attribute analysis of stratified random samples of some 3,400 specimens reveal several distinct modes of raw material acquisition, reduction technology, and utilization at Altica. The various modes are described from a technological perspective and their various logistical, social, economic, and political implications are considered.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Ferguson. James Allison.

Previous studies of obsidian from archaeological sites in Utah Valley and the Salt Lake Valley have used relatively small samples to document temporal shifts in obsidian procurement, with southern sources (especially Black Rock) dominating Fremont assemblages, while most post-Fremont obsidian comes from the Malad source to the north. Our greatly expanded XRF analysis of almost 4,000 obsidian artifacts from sites in Utah and Salt Lake Valleys confirms the temporal change noted by earlier...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Uploaded by: Chelsea Walter

Departing from the political economy perspective taken by the vast majority of volumes devoted to Mesoamerican obsidian, Obsidian Reflections is an examination of obsidian's sociocultural dimensions—particularly in regard to Mesoamerican world view, religion, and belief systems. Exploring the materiality of this volcanic glass rather than only its functionality, this book considers the interplay among people, obsidian, and meaning and how these relationships shaped patterns of procurement,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Morgan. Tristan Carter.

While the obsidian used by southern Aegean prehistoric communities has long been known to derive primarily from Melos, there has been little investigation regarding the relative importance of the two Melian quarries – Sta Nychia and Dhemenegaki. This study employed portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to investigate this question and begin to map regional traditions of obsidian source selection during the 3rd millennium BC. The 715 artifacts analyzed derive from 11 Early Bronze I - late...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Carmen Clayton. Raymond Kunselman.

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy was used to study obsidian artifacts collected from the Trappers Point Site, a multicomponent Early Archaic pronghorn processing site, located west of Pinedale, Wyoming in Sublette County. The trace element concentrations for artifacts were compared to trace element concentrations from known sources. The majority (80%) of the identified materials were from the closest sources in Jackson Hole. The rest came from Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone National Park and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Edmonds.

The behaviors discussed in ethnographic accounts of the western Great Basin valleys vary widely and unexpectedly. Although both Owens Valley and Fish Lake Valley were inhabited by Eastern Mono speaking groups in historic times, their population density, settlement, subsistence, and sociopolitical organization were markedly different. Archaeological debate centers on whether these differences result from historic contact or if they have some meaningful time depth into prehistory. Situated between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Erlick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Projectile points are one of the few artifacts present on the surface of archaeological sites that may also serve as a diagnostic of the site’s relative age. A shift in the archaeological record can be seen through changes in projectile point technologies between the Late Archaic and the Historic periods in northwest Wyoming. The exact causes of these changes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Speakman. Sergey Slobodin. Jeffrey Rasic.

Chemical sourcing of obsidian artifacts serves an important role in understanding prehistoric patterns of mobility, trade, exchange, resource exploitation, and cultural interaction. In Alaska and adjacent areas of Canada, more than 8,000 obsidian artifacts and geologic source samples have been analyzed by various analytical techniques resulting in the identification of more than 50 chemically discrete obsidian groups throughout this vast area. In contrast to Alaska, comparatively little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Elizabeth Grávalos. Patrick Ryan Williams. Lauren Monz. Erell Hubert.

Here we present a preliminary chaîne opératoire analysis of obsidian stone tools and associated debitage recovered from a single architectural compound at the site of Cerro Baúl. As the only known direct interaction sphere of the prehispanic Wari and Tiwanaku empires, research at Cerro Baúl in the Moquegua Valley, Peru offers a rare perspective of colonial encounters and intertwined political economies. During the 2015 excavation season we exposed a dense midden context consisting of various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda R Owen.

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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...