Cultural Transmission (Other Keyword)
101-121 (121 Records)
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. Multidisciplinary research suggests Marine Isotope Stage 5 (~130–74 ka) was an important evolutionary stage in African deep history. Population expansion and growth spurred changes in material culture and the exploration of previously unoccupied regions and...
Think Locally, Act Globally: How a Local Perspective Informs the Broader Narrative of Mississippianization in the American Midwest (2018)
The ‘Mississippianization’ of the Midwest unfolded during the late 11th and early 12th centuries as interactions with Cahokia influenced aspects of local community organization, ceremonialism, material culture, and access to exotic raw materials. For local peoples, these encounters and affiliations also facilitated interactions between Mississippian groups beyond Cahokia. The direct proximity of the Lower Illinois River Valley (LIRV) to the Greater Cahokia area enabled certain social, political,...
Tools of the Trade: An Analysis of Lithic Biface Variability in South Central Ontario (2019)
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 discuss the results and conclusions of my Masters thesis research, which addresses cultural interaction patterns and corresponding lithic hafted biface manufacturing traditions in the south-central portion of Ontario. It focuses on the analysis of morphometric and raw material variability in lithic hafted bifaces from the Middle Archaic...
Towards a Comparative Analysis of African-Influenced Ceramic Motifs in the Spanish Americas: Hispaniola and Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster we present a ceramic phenomenon occurring at two Spanish colonial sites of differing spatial and temporal provenience in the Spanish Americas. The appearance of various African influenced comb-dragged and wavy line motifs in Cotuí and Concepción de la Vega (early colonial Caribbean, 1495-1562) as well as at the haciendas of San Francisco Xavier...
Towards a Wave-of-Advance Model for Predicting the Spread of Prismatic Blade Technology in Mesoamerica (2018)
The diffusion and spread of material culture is a cornerstone of archaeological research, particularly understanding the variables which dictate the structure of dispersal. Recent evolutionary approaches have sought to address technological spread through mathematical modeling. One model, the reaction-diffusion model, suggests diffusion occurs at the population scale as a wave-of-dispersal. While previous researchers demonstrated the efficacy of this approach regarding the peopling of a...
Tracing Paleoindian Projectile Point Diversity in the American Southeast (2018)
Paleoindian projectile points occur in high incidences in the American Southeast, and compared to other regions in the East, the Southeast has the greatest projectile point diversity. One effective way to understand this diversity is by tracking broad-scale morphological variation in suites of point traits to build cultural lineages. In this paper, we take a more trait-specific approach. We trace changes in projectile point design to understand the evolution of specific point attributes that...
Trade networks and selective cultural transmission of ceramic technologies in Neolithic southern Vietnam (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New research on trade networks amongst early sedentary Neolithic communities, c. 4200-3000 BP, in southern Vietnam has shown that domesticated cereals and stone resources were imported to the coastal site of Rach Nui. While the stone likely came from quarry locales in the...
Tradition in Transition: New Data and New Insights on Mississippianization from the Audrey-North Site (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mississippianization of the Midwest unfolded during the late 11th and early 12th centuries as interactions with Cahokia influenced aspects of local community organization, ceremonialism, material culture, and access to exotic raw materials. For local peoples in the northern hinterland regions, these encounters and affiliations also facilitated interactions...
Two Recently-Discovered Early Historic Examples of Chili (Capsicum annuum) from Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Specimens of chili (Capsicum annuum) are absent from prehistoric sites in the southwestern United States, but they are common in Spanish Colonial contexts. Building on a relatively recent review of northern Mexican prehistoric chili cultivation by Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen, we examine two recent chili finds in Arizona. The two finds may provide hints of...
Understanding Early Societies and Investigating Early Interactions: Origin, Significance and Transmission of the Bronze Plaques from the Tianshan Beilu cemetery, Eastern Xinjiang (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tianshan Beilu cemetery – the largest and earliest Bronze Age funerary context in Eastern Xinjiang, including 705 graves dating to ca. 2000-1300 BCE – has been widely recognized as a key-point in the early interactions system throughout Eurasia – the ‘Prehistoric Silk Road’. However, due to the failure to publish the excavation report, research has been...
Understanding Stylistic and Technical Variation in Middle Chalcolithic Painted Pottery Decoration—A Test from Tel Tsaf (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research explores the social interaction between Tel Tsaf and northern Mesopotamia through pottery decoration similarities. This ongoing research questions another possible connection between northern Mesopotamia and Tel Tsaf in the central Jordan Valley, representing one of the most southern sites discovered. The Middle Chalcolithic (5600-4500 BC) site...
Using Agent-Based Modeling to Study Constraints on the Social Learning of Lithic Technology (2018)
Social learning is universally believed to be critical to the hominin adaptation. Yet when this becomes evident in our oldest cultural proxy, lithic artifacts, is hotly debated. Much of the variation in how archaeologists study this question is caused by differing assumptions related to the constraints on the performance, and thus the learning, of the flintknapping process. This paper explores the consequences of the physical constraints within lithic technology on its cultural transmission,...
Utopia through the Kaleidoscope: The Colors of Silk in Colonial Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the arrival of Europeans to the New World, one of the most fascinating early exchanges of knowledge and technology that ensued was the introduction of the silk industry to Mexico. While in some places this was unsuccessful and/or short-lived, particularly in Oaxaca, it flourished for the better part of a...
Violent Conflict and a Ritual of Memory in the Puebloan Southwest. (2018)
Among Puebloan groups of the American Southwest, oral traditions record mythical-historical stories of the often-catastrophic or violent ends of some of the pueblo ruins that dot the landscape (e.g., Hopi Ruin Legends, by Michael Lomatuway’ma, et al., 1993). In other cases, archaeological evidence points to the continued importance of ruins across centuries of time as repositories of meaning across the landscape (Snead 2008). One small feature from a burned pueblo from Central New Mexico records...
Was Acheulean Technology Genetically Transmitted? Comparing Variation in Acheulean Tools to Variation in North American Bird Nests (2018)
Acheulean large cutting tools were made across Africa and Eurasia for ~1.5 million years, and show surprisingly little variation for a technology so spatiotemporally vast. One explanation for this puzzling degree of conservatism is that Acheulean tools were not culturally transmitted but rather genetically determined. If this hypothesis is true, then Acheulean tools are more akin to animal technologies such as bird nests than to modern human tools. Here we examine the extent to which the...
Were the Lucayans a Creole Society? (2018)
"Were the Lucayans a creole society?" Can creolization be inferred from Lucayan material culture during the Early and Late Lucayan Periods? Through the examination of ceramics and other remains, such as duhos and shell and stone artifacts, we will attempt to determine whether this was the case. Can Lucayan cultural expressions, unique to the Bahama archipelago, be viewed as byproducts of the processes of creolization, and if so, why?
The Western Connection: Using Comparative NAA Data to Source Glaze Wares from Tijeras Pueblo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-local glaze-painted pottery types, such as Heshotautla and Kwakina polychromes, comprise more than 20% of the decorated ceramic assemblage at Tijeras Pueblo (LA581). Despite Tijeras Pueblo’s location at the eastern edge of the Albuquerque basin in the central Rio Grande region, these pottery types...
Which Serpent Are We Talking About? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many parts of the world including the Americas, snakes are incorporated into symbolic and metaphorical constructs in order to better describe and understand natural and social components of various cosmologies. As a result, their depictions are often enhanced with attributes that depart from...
White, Red, and Plain Wares in the Tonto Basin: Precursor Correlate of Culture Change (2019)
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. We present a consideration of Roosevelt Black-on-white, recovered from archaeological sites in Arizona's Tonto Basin, as a correlate for Tonto Basin populations’ changing exchange relations as well as emulation through production of locally-produced copies of non-local wares. Implications of broad-scale ceramic exchange,...
Ychsma Cultural Identity in Armatambo during Inca's Occupation, Peruvian Central Coast (2018)
This paper presents the results of a typology and iconographic analysis made on ceramic and textiles artifacts recovered at the Ychsma settlement of Armatambo. The Ychsma cultural affiliation of this archaeological site, which is located on a dense urban area south of Lima, is recognized in the literature (especially with the aerial photographs published by Kosok in 1965) but little detail has been published on the evidence of its affiliation and character of occupation. We can confirm that...
You Come from Where? Ceramics and Cultural Exchange at Palmetto Junction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Palmetto Junction site on Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands provides an abundant and diverse ceramic assemblage. These artifacts help describe movements of people, goods, and ideas among Lucayan Taino groups in the Bahama archipelago and affiliated Greater Antillean settlements to the south. The assemblage includes...