Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu Lei.

Since the first archeological excavation in 1934, the site of Sanxingdui has been explored in 16 separate field projects, exploring an area of nearly 10000 m2. Due to various reasons, only the data of 5 excavations (Yueliangwan in 1934 and 1963, Sanxingdui in 1980, the Sanxingdui sacrificial pits in 1986, and Rensheng cemetery in 1998) have been published, reporting only on 3000 m2 of excavation surface containing mainly Bronze Age remains. Our understanding of the Neolithic period (Phase I) at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Jorge. James Conolly. Rick Knecht.

Explorations of human-environmental interactions in prehistoric Alaska tend to draw on biological, botanical and faunal data. Artefacts have often received much less attention beyond links to subsistence concerns and the gathering of additional paleoenvironmental information (e.g. wood and grass species). Pottery, in particular, has featured in such discussions only in regards to the processing of foodstuffs: both its suitability for particular cooking methods and the substances it may have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Farrell. Daniel Monteith. David Yesner.

The Moose Hill Site is a multi-component settlement along the Kvichak River in Bristol Bay Alaska. The site consists of ~40 semi-subterranean structures with archaeological assemblages representative of the Arctic Small Tool, Norton, Thule, and Koniag traditions. This research focuses on a late Norton tradition occupation at 840 +/- 30 BP and presents a refinement of the complex transition between the regional Norton and the Thule traditions. The timing and method of culture change during this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maanasa Raghavan. Eske Willerslev.

The New World Arctic, the last region of the Americas to be populated by humans, has a relatively well-researched archaeology. However, there is no consensus on how the different Arctic traditions were genetically related to one another. We present genome-wide sequence data from ancient and present-day humans from Greenland, Arctic Canada, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Siberia, contributing new perspectives to the debate of cultural versus genetic replacement in the New World Arctic. We show...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Warren Jones.

Qanirtuuq Incorporated and the village of Quinhagak have supported archaeology in our community since 2009. Thousands of our cultural artifacts have been saved from an eroding archaeological site, and are now being studied and preserved. Working with archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen is helping our people by protecting of our cultural heritage and also in helping to reconnect young people, elders and culture-bearers. In this presentation, I will speak about my community’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rick Knecht.

Significant elements of the artifact assemblage, architectural features as well as recent DNA analysis of human hair recovered from the Nunalleq site (GDN-248), all support the idea of Thule cultural expansion onto the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Other evidence points to strong links with the Alutiiq (a dialect of Yup’ik) speaking peoples on the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska Peninsula and Prince William Sound. There are clear similarities between late prehistoric Yup’ik and Alutiiq...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Forbes. Kate Britton. Rick Knecht.

Samples collected from the permafrost-preserved floors of 14-17th century Eskimo winter sod houses at Nunalleq, south-western Alaska, have yielded thousands of insect sub-fossils. These diverse and exceptionally well-preserved insects are invaluable indicators of the ecological conditions which prevailed inside the structures, but also of the activities that took place inside them. Indeed, while external parasites such as human lice, bird fleas and dog lice reveal details about hygienic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Farrell. Peter Jordan. Rick Knecht. Oliver Craig.

Despite major environmental challenges, pottery was manufactured and used by Palaeo- and Neo-Eskimos in Alaska for millennia. To better understand why pottery was used by Alaskan hunter-gatherers, the authors have undertaken a number of site-based organic residue analyses that provide direct biomolecular and isotopic evidence for the contents of past pots. The ubiquitous presence of aquatic biomarkers, along with compound specific isotope data, show that pottery use at the sites was consistently...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Britton. Ellen McManus. Rick Knecht. Olaf Nehlich. Mike Richards.

The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral to understanding past societies and human-environment interactions. Here we present stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data from non-mortuary human hair and faunal remains from the site of Nunalleq, Alaska. Spanning the Little Ice Age (c.1350 to 1650 AD), this large, complex and well-preserved site offers a near-unique opportunity to reconstruct the pre-contact Arctic food-web and to explore temporal and site-spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotta Hillerdal.

The Yup’ik, the Indigenous people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, have since the 19th century been in the centre of ethnographic research in the Arctic. Yup’ik customs and material culture have been collected and investigated with the pretext of preserving a ‘vanishing’ traditional lifeway. Today Yup’ik culture is vibrant with a strong connection to traditional subsistence strategies and ways of life. However, Yup’ik history is very much the history of the ‘Other’, retold and written from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Ledger. Veronique Forbes.

Anthropological studies of western Alaska consistently remark upon the substantial knowledge of the regional flora by local Eskimo groups. Despite the attritional impact of Western lifestyles on traditional ecological knowledge, the indigenous peoples of the region maintain a rich appreciation of the plant resources available in their local environment. Yet, archaeobotanical analyses from the region remain scarce and there rests a general opinion that plants did not play an important role in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Misha Miller-Sisson.

Interactions between commoners and elites is a poorly addressed area of study in the Maya region. Various excavations of ancient Maya palace structures and royal tombs, epigraphic studies of Maya hieroglyphs, and iconographic analyses of ancient Maya art have revealed a copious amount of information about ancient Maya elite. Similarly, excavations of ancient Maya commoner households and burials have revealed a great deal of information about ancient Maya commoners. However, there are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Salyers.

Resource procurement is a topic traditionally approached from a geographic macro scale. In the Maya area, this refers to the scale of settlement patterns or the landscape, involving the territory inhabited by a large number of people living in different settlements. What this scale often misses is the role that commoner households play in these processes. This presentation will discuss how geographic setting and access to resources not only shaped the daily lives of Maya commoners but the role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Gallegos Gomora. Ricardo Armijo.

La variedad de atuendos que portan los individuos representados en las figurillas y los ladrillos decorados de Comalcalco, evidencian una actividad textil especializada que daba lugar a la indumentaria que caracterizaba los diferentes niveles de la sociedad local. No se observa en la iconografía existente la presencia de cuerpos desnudos. Por tanto, el hilado y tejido debieron constituir algunas de las actividades femeninas más frecuentes realizadas al interior de los grupos domésticos de esta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lilia Fernandez Souza. Socorro Jimenez Alvarez. Daniel Herklotz Balam. María Jesús Novelo Perez. Carlos Matos Llanes.

En el sitio arqueológico de Sihó, Yucatán, conjuntos habitacionales intervenidos arqueológicamente sugieren una marcada diferenciación socioeconómica entre los grupos domésticos, que se manifiesta materialmente incluso en la zona central del asentamiento. El objetivo de esta ponencia es, con base en arquitectura, artefactos y ecofactos, ofrecer información sobre similitudes y diferencias respecto a las actividades llevadas a cabo, así como acerca del uso de los espacios en tres contextos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barry Kidder. Daniel Vallejo-Cáliz. Shannon Plank. Jacob Welch. Scott Hutson.

Activities of all actors should be considered collectively given that communities were likely forged through a negotiation of needs and wants from the perspectives of rulers and subjects. Successful elite institutions would need to closely monitor these negotiations. If the needs of the general public were not met, elite institutions could be undermined. During the Terminal Preclassic, Ucanha, a secondary center connected to other monumental centers via an 18-km long causeway in the Northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Lytle.

Xunantunich Group D, an elite residential unit, has a fascinating history of construction and reuse between two temporally separated occupations. The group is set apart from other Xunantunich residential units by a sacbe connecting it to the site core and a large ancestor shrine acting as the architectural focal point of the group. The past three years of research at Group D has focused on the Late Classic ancestor shrine and the open courtyard directly in front of the structure with the goal of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ma Alejandra Espinosa.

Los vestigios de las primeras aldeas agrícolas muestran una sociedad que se caracteriza por la fabricación de un tipo de cerámica elaborada, la presencia de productos de intercambio y un modo de vida sedentario. De manera general, se ha considerado que la diferenciación de estatus social de estos grupos domésticos es poco perceptible o incluso inexistente. Sin embargo, el inicio del Preclásico se caracteriza por el surgimiento de innovaciones de importancia fundamental y el establecimiento de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beniamino Volta.

The physical remains of ancient buildings and activity areas provide an important archaeological window into the lives and practices of past households. In the Maya region, patio groups composed of multiple structures housing extended families have long been recognized as the fundamental units of settlement. At a very basic level, patio groups were both the primary locus and one of the most tangible material outcomes of household activities. Variations in their size and spatial configuration can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catharina Santasilia. Jaime Awe.

Between 2011 and 2014, the BVAR Project focused considerable attention on the excavation and preservation of the site’s Eastern Triadic Shrine (a.k.a E-Group). In addition to revealing important information on the evolution of the architectural complex, our investigations also uncovered a series of burials that span from the Preclassic to the Terminal Classic periods. The burials, particularly those discovered in Structure B1, the central structure of the eastern triadic complex, reflect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Peniche May. Jaime Awe.

Cahal Pech es una antigua comunidad Maya localizada en el Valle de Belice que mantuvo una ocupación continua por más de 2000 años (1200 a.C.-1100 d.C.). Múltiples exploraciones en la acrópolis y en la periferia del asentamiento han revelado que los grupos fundadores edificaron sus primeras residencias en el área de la Plaza B de la acrópolis. Para el Clásico Tardío, esta plaza llegó a funcionar como el principal espacio cívico del sitio. En años recientes, como parte del proyecto "Belize Valley...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheldon Skaggs. Duncan Balinger. Terry Powis.

The ancient Maya site of Pacbitun is centrally located between the major ecozones of the Belize River Valley and the Mountain Pine Ridge of West-Central Belize. Investigations in 2012 and 2013 began on a group of mounds, known as the Tzib Group, located outside of the core zone of Pacbitun in order to investigate what is now believed to be a ground stone tool workshop. The workshop produced grinding implements made from granite. Excavations in 2014 into the main mound of the group uncovered more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Harman.

The Great Mural rock art region of Baja California is unique in several ways. The content and style of the art is severely constrained and well differentiated from other nearby rock art styles. Within the Great Mural region there is some variation over time and space. This variation combined with the overall conservative nature of the art allows for inferences about the movement of people making the art. There are stylistic elements of Great Mural panels in the Sierra de San Borja that indicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angus Quinlan.

Approximately 1,500 rock art sites that broadly span the Archaic have been identified in Nevada. Regional and temporal differences in site structure, rock art styles, landscape settings, and associated archaeological contexts are discernible in these data, offering insights into Great Basin culture history and the categorization of the environment as a social landscape by prehistoric populations. Traditional approaches to Nevada rock art have often emphasized interpretation at the expense of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

Abstract In this paper we propose a line of interpretation referred to the symbolism attributed to the zoomorphic figures, present in the rock art of the Sonoran Desert. We confront the results of rock art analysis and classification with a systematic study of the myths and legends of the Uto-aztecan cultural groups that lived in the region, when Europeans arrived. We pay special attention to the traditions of the O’odham, who inhabited the Sonoran Desert where we can find the rock art that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Garfinkel Gold. Geron Marcom. Don Austin.

There exists multi-colored, historic Native American rock paintings found throughout eastern California. In a minimum of 21 locations, Native, indigenous, polychromatic rock paintings have been documented that apparently date to a time period between 1870 and 1900 (Schiffman et al. 1983; Garfinkel 1978, 1982, 2005, 2007). These rock painting sites exhibit subject matter that may relate to revitalistic religious movements popular during this short 30 year time frame. Such paintings have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hayward. Frank Schieppati. Michael Cinquino.

Dubelar's 1995 compendium of rock art sites including sketches and photographs of the petroglyphs from the Lesser Antilles remains a critical resource for the study of the region's prehistoric images. The work has been supplemented in recent years with additional documentation efforts of known and newly discovered sites. The focus of this paper is on the characterization of Lesser Antillean rock art by detailing site and image distributional patterns across the arc of various islands. The Hofman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elanie Moore.

The Great Murals of Sierra de San Francisco, Baja California, Mexico, have been the subject of in-depth study (Guttierez 2013; Hyland 1997; Rubio 2013; religiVinas 2013). The latter include recordation of major sites and reconstruction of age, cultural affiliation, and hypotheses as to meaning and function. Growing evidence supports that these sites display light patterns correlating with winter / summer solstice timings. Arguments have been presented that light manifestations exhibit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Fuller.

Working hypotheses link selected rock art sites in Missouri with the religious and political ideologies of the Mississippian tradition. For example, petroglyph sites such as the Bushnell Ceremonial Cave (23SG89), Washington State Park (23WA01), Madden Creek (23WA26), and the Commerce Site (23ST255) have been linked with the Mississippian tradition. Likewise, a cluster of three pictograph sites preserve Mississippian iconography: Rattlesnake Bluff (23FR95), Willenberg Shelter (23FR96), and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Rafferty.

Valley of Fire is one of the gems of Nevada archaeology known as an area rich in archaeological resources. Yet little work had been undertaken in the area. Since 2003 the College of Southern Nevada (CSN) has conducted five survey field schools in Valley of Fire designed to teach students survey and site recording. The results so far demonstrate that Valley of Fire is an area rich in rock art and other cultural resources, with new rock art sites being recorded and data from earlier recorded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leigh Marymor. Amy Marymor.

A particularly enigmatic form of rock art referred to as "Western Message Petroglyphs" has been identified at thirty locations in the American West scattered between no fewer than eight western states. Relying on standard rock art research approaches, this body of work is assigned to the historic mining boom years of the mid to late nineteenth century based on geographic distribution, symbol typology, and style analysis. A significant number of the sites are associated with the Mormon Trail and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Musser-Lopez.

The "archaic" abstract rock art style in the midst of the revered, fiercely defended cultural sanctuary of the Yuman-Hokan speaking tribes in the Mohave Valley along the lower Colorado River links culture with style, particularly when considering the absence of styles associated with linguistic family branches later expanding into surrounding areas. Further, that an archaic abstract style regionally associated with historic period Hokan speakers is also found throughout the Mojave Desert,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Mountjoy.

The Huichol are not known to have inhabited the western sierra of Jalisco in historic times. However, it has been possible to use Huichol symbolism to interpret rock art at several locations in this region. This was first done with the large pictograph panel at La Peña Pintada in the Tomatlan river valley, indicating the use of the sun’s position on the eastern horizon as a dry season/wet season calendar and individual pictographs depicting plants and animals important for native subsistence. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Riley.

Polly Schaafsma was among the first to recognize the many stylistic elements shared between Utah's Barrier Canyon rock art and the Pecos River style along the Lower Pecos Canyonlands in Texas. While the Barrier Canyon murals are markedly simpler in execution, common elements include anthropomorph shape and torso decoration, composed sets of zoomorphs, and the depiction of wild plants. During this initial study, Schaafsma (1971) defined the Barrier Canyon style based on nineteen sites located in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Freers.

Pictograph hand impressions (n=288) from 42 rock art loci in southern California were analyzed to infer the physical stature and gender of the most likely Native American participants against contemporary assertions of regional rock art style and function. The analytical underpinnings were as follows: anthropometric data of Mission Indians (Boas 1895); ethnographic accounts of young adolescent female participation (e.g., Oxendine 1980:39) and the statistical difference in female adult stature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Gorden. Devlin Gandy.

Rock art research by Grant (1965) and Heizer and Clewlow (1973) revealed the prolific number of painted images that Chumash and Yokuts cultures produced in South Central California. Previous research (ibid; Lee 1991; Grant 1979) often focused on defining distinctive stylistic components and elements that characterize and differentiate these respective traditions, and define their cultural boundaries. Borderland rock art sites such as Carneros Rocks and Painted Rock have become continued points...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reinaldo Morales.

Caribbean archaeology has provided us with evidence of a cultural mosaic that united diverse ecologies, ideologies and identities in sophisticated networks of art and ritual. Caves and cave art were fundamental to these networks. This paper outlines a complex of cave-related ritual activity across the Antilles, supported by art-historical, archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence. This proposed "Cave Art Ritual Complex" may turn out to have far-reaching implications for issues of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baer.

In 2014, SWCA, in collaboration with Crescent Point Energy U.S. Corp and Sunrise Engineering, completed detailed analysis, laser 3D scanning, mapping, monitoring, and dust mitigation of a rock art site in the Uinta Basin, Utah. Detailed analysis of the rock art figures—characteristic of the Archaic, Fremont, Ute, and Historic periods—gives us insight into possible movement of peoples between the Tavaputs Plateau and Uinta Basin. Importantly, the interest in the project lies not only with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Carlson.

The use of reconstruction illustrations, or artist’s renderings of the past, offers a unique and informed method of communicating continuity and change between two successive occupations of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River Village site, located in the Mid-Fraser Region of British Columbia, Canada. Based on archaeological data and analysis from recent excavations of the large, multifamily housepit, visual representations can effectively integrate a variety of information and interpretation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorena Craig.

While the Bridge River settlement in the Middle Fraser Canyon of British Columbia is located in one of the richest salmon producing areas on the Fraser River, occupants of the site had limited direct access to many sources of raw material critical for production of chipped stone tools. Current excavations by Dr. Anna Prentiss at Bridge River Housepit 54 focus on an estimated 15 housepit occupation floors dating in the range of 1000 to 1500 cal. B.P. This allows for a unique study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Castro. Nathan Goodale. David Bailey. Anna Prentiss. Alissa Nauman.

Previous research utilizing energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectroscopy and isotope ratio mass spectroscopy (IRMS) identified geochemical patterns in Housepit 54 sediments that might be attributable to human occupation. In this study we conduct additional geological analysis of Housepit 54 sediments in order to more fully understand the observed geochemical variation. In addition to grain size analysis, detailed mineralogical analysis of fourteen sediment samples from a single...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Rodrigues. Camilla Speller. Anna Prentiss. Dongya Yang.

DNA recovered from ancient coprolites can provide an important source of dietary and host information. In this study, ancient DNA techniques were applied to dog coprolites recovered from two pithouses at Bridge River, a complex hunter-gatherer village on the Fraser River, British Columbia. Dog mitochondrial DNA was targeted to assess the genetic relationship between the domestic dogs of Bridge River and other ancient and modern dog populations both locally and worldwide. Multiple Canis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Ryan. Thomas A. Foor. Kristen D. Barnett. Pei-Lin Yu. Matthew Schmader.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Eimers.

The people of the Middle Fraser Canyon traditionally used groundstone to accomplish a wide range of tasks spanning food processing to weaponry and ornamentation. Excavations of Housepit (HP) 54 at the Bridge River Site, British Columbia, in 2014 revealed an unexpectedly large sample of groundstone tools. Many items were apparently used, broken, and recycled as cooking rocks on select floors. This study draws from multiple data sources to define variability in the nature of groundstone tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nowell. Anna Prentiss.

The degree of preservation of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River site located in south-central British Columbia provides a rare look at a long series of intact occupational floors within a single pithouse. As data collection continues, a vast number of opportunities emerge to examine behavioral variation at the household level. During the 2014 field season, excavation revealed a household transition that reflected shifts in the organization of space within the household. Changes included...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Barnett.

Data collection and analysis at Housepit (HP) 54 Bridge River Site, British Columbia, has provided an opportunity for a range of studies emphasizing (but not limited to) questions of subsistence, inheritance, lithic technological adaptations and spatial organization of the ancient occupations of this household during the BR3 period (ca. 1300-1000 cal. B.P.). This poster draws upon data acquired through the systematic analysis of artifacts and ecofacts and is further enhanced through the use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Lyons. Anna Marie Prentiss. Naoko Endo. Dana Lepofsky. Kristen Barnett.

This poster focuses on the interpretation of archaeobotanical macroremains from Housepit 54 occupations at the Bridge River site, on the British Columbia Plateau, dating 1100-1500 cal. B.P. Recent excavations have revealed living floors spanning a critical period when this village reached peak size and then began to decline during a period of climate transition. Previous research at Bridge River suggests that access to salmon and deer may have declined after ca. 1200-1300 cal. B.P., triggering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Howerton. Anna Prentiss. Thomas Foor. Kristen Barnett. Matthew Walsh.

Demographic change can have significant impacts on socio-economic and political strategies employed by complex foraging and fishing peoples. Recent research at the Bridge River housepit village, located near Lillooet, British Columbia, has demonstrated that two short periods of rapid demographic growth followed by a period of decline led to significant changes in food acquisition and storage, settlement arrangements, and social relationships. While these patterns are well understood on a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilia Tifental. Hannah Cail.

Since 2003 the excavations at the Bridge River site have exponentially expanded our understanding of the communities that inhabited the Fraser River Canyon over 1,000 years ago. The most current excavations at Housepit 54 have provided further evidence of the many facets of Fraser River life, among these is the role of dogs. The possession and use of dogs in the Fraser River Canyon is well documented through excavations and traditional knowledge. Remains of domesticated dogs in Bridge River...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Prentiss. Kristen Barnett.

The Bridge River Archaeological Project is a long-term partnership between The University of Montana and X’wisten, the Bridge River Indian Band. The focus of the project is on understanding the historical development of this large housepit village, located near Lillooet, British Columbia. Previous research has emphasized village-wide demographic, technological, and socio-economic and political change during the Bridge River 2 (1600-1300 cal. B.P.), 3 (1300-1000 cal. B.P.), and 4 (post 600 cal....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathaniel Perhay. Anna Prentiss. Thomas Foor. Nathan Goodale. Matthew Walsh.

The Bridge River housepit village, located in south-central British Columbia, features 80 housepits with radiocarbon dates spanning the past 2000 years. Many of these house structures include stratigraphic records indicating multiple generations of household re-occupation. Housepit 54 offers a particularly impressive record with an estimated 15 superimposed anthropogenic floors, the majority of which date to the period of ca. 1100-1500 cal. B.P. Extensive excavations undertaken in 2013 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walsh.

Late Holocene occupants of Housepit 54 at Bridge River participated in complex strategies of food acquisition that were much more varied than the oft-cited reliance on storable anadromous fish resources practiced throughout much of the Pacific and inland/riverine Northwest of North America. While acquisition and storage of fish, particularly salmon, was (and is) a vital part of aboriginal subsistence, permeating many aspects of Native life, seasonal and spatial variations in animal procurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Scheiber.

Zooarchaeological research is nearly impossible without comprehensive comparative collections that aid in the identification and analysis of archaeofauna. Throughout her career, Diane Gifford Gonzalez has been a strong proponent of developing and maintaining comparative research collections of modern and ancient vertebrate specimens. In this paper, I discuss the current state of zooarchaeological collections in twenty-first century scholarship. I highlight the William R. Adams Zooarchaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jun Sunseri.

Taking on graduate students and shepherding them through the harrowing process of becoming PhD’s is something few faculty take lightly. Within the rigorous methodological sub-discipline of Zooarchaeology, even fewer would commit to the requisite long and close apprenticeship with students whose backgrounds lay "outside of the box" of faunal-focused research. Yet, Diane populated her research cluster with a dynamic mixture of scholars from disparate backgrounds, just as she kept the famous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katheryn Twiss.

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez has written numerous zooarchaeological papers that wonderfully balance attention to both the ecosystemic and the cultural influences that shape how humans interact with animals. In a 2008 essay exploring zooarchaeology’s potential contributions to the study of daily life, she wrote that pastoralists’ herd management strategies are constructed in the contexts not only of regional ecosystems and animal biologies, but also of human economies, ideologies and politics. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Lupo.

Although ethnoarchaeology is viewed as an important tool of analogy for the archaeological record, it has been criticized as being too descriptive, context bound, and limited by the generation of cautionary tales. These and other criticisms have inadvertently led to a sharp decline in ethnoarchaeological research in recent times. In this paper I argue that ethnoarchaeology is an underutilized methodology that can be expanded with new technologies to test and shed light on the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Jones. Ken Gobalet.

In much of Native western North America fish and the aquatic technologies used to exploit them were associated with intensive hunter-gatherer economies and heightened levels of socio-political complexity. Central California, however, is more commonly associated with exploitation of acorns, a resource that also encouraged dense, sedentary, storage-dependent populations The relative significance of fish to these less populous foraging groups has only recently become a focus of systematic study....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noah Thomas.

As a scholar, novelist and poet, Diane Gifford Gonzalez’s contribution to archaeology is proof that the pursuit of the arts as a personal endeavor enriches practice. Artistic practice fosters perception of associative relationships, develops a trust in the intuitive, and cultivates personal skill sets linking material media, form and meaning. In engaging in such parallel practices Gifford Gonzalez has fostered an approach to archaeology that has bridged the gap between positivist and post-modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anneke Janzen. Marie Balasse.

Specialized pastoralism emerged in Kenya around 3000 years ago and has adapted with changes in the social and ecological landscape to this day. Ethnographic research has documented significant changes in herding strategies among pastoral groups throughout colonial and post-colonial periods. Stable isotope analysis sheds light on how crucial mobility was in maintaining herds before the appearance of iron-using and –producing peoples in the region. Intra-tooth sequential sampling of livestock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvana Rosenfeld.

Chavín de Huantar (1000-500 BC Peru) has long has been considered a major center in the central Andes given its complex architecture and art. Mostly based on art depiction, ritual at Chavín has long been associated with psychoactive plant ingestion. Stone sculptures show the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus, as well as the representation of monstrous animals and supernatural beings interpreted as priests transforming into animals during hallucinogen consumption. Inspired by Diane...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Brown.

The distinction between generalized hunter-gatherers and economic specialists has long interested archaeologists reliant on faunal and floral remains. Resource-processing features provide another line of evidence to address the topic, though specialized facilities do not necessarily imply patterns of specialized subsistence. Chumash inhabitants of the Santa Monica Mountains provide a case in point. Earth ovens interpreted as specialized resource-processing facilities are commonly excavated, yet...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristie Boone.

While behavioral ecology approaches to human subsistence in archaeology often focus on calories, nutritional content is another aspect that can influence a resource’s desirability. In particular, fats are an important dietary source of easily digestible calories for hunter-gatherers. Proximate composition (fat, protein, moisture, and ash) is presented here for several fish species commonly found in archaeological sites along the central California coast, and combined with data drawn from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Ambrose. Fiona Marshall. Steven Goldstein.

Negative impacts of pastoralists on African savannas have been debated but creation of nutrient hotspots may have significant positive effects. African savanna productivity is largely nutrient limited, however, ecologists show corrals in abandoned Maasai pastoral settlements have high nitrogen and phosphate levels, and distinctive vegetation and grazing successions. Such hotspots may drive ecosystem structure and function, but little is known about how long-term or how widespread they may be....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Frachetti.

Love, money, success, purpose, identity, companionship, family, enlightenment: these 'things' and more have been proposed as measurable indexes of happiness. Recent scholarship on the theme of happiness presents it paradoxically as something seemingly tangible and sensory -- a common-sensical object of pursuit -- and something ethereal and subject to existential contemplation. Does one choose "the red pill or blue pill" (to quote the film "The Matrix"). Yet setting its existential reality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shankari Patel.

This paper queries models of Mesoamerican fertility that define women’s social roles in terms of dependency, and interrogates narratives that link gender relations to nature where they are beyond critique. The problem with the category women is that it is often thought of as an ahistorical and eternal facet of biology hidden within an implicit model of human nature. Biology becomes a metaphor for social relations and wifehood or motherhood is then characterized as a relation of dependency...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Daehnke.

Over the course of the last few decades Indigenous and descendant communities have increasingly made calls for control of their own heritage, both in terms of material objects and historical narratives. While these efforts have resulted in at least some measure of success, these communities continue to occasionally face challenges from researchers, scholars, and other agents who are in positions of power that allow them to control and define what heritage consist of. In my paper I interrogate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Kakaliouras.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, U.S. museums and universities amassed massive stores of the skeletons of Native American people. These collections eventually became the source-base for bioarchaeology, a subfield of both physical anthropology and archaeology that emerged in the 1970’s and continues producing interpretations about past Native American identities from the study of skeletal remains. Over the last few decades, the reburial movement and the passage of NAGPRA has slowed—or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Zimmerman.

If we want archaeology to matter we need to get back to some basics. Processual archaeology got archaeologists drunk on theory. Post-Processual archaeology offered what appeared to be a hangover cure, but was really just the "hair-of-the-dog." In its theory addiction, the discipline seems to be hooked on a "philosophy du jour," stimulating in the classroom, a dissertation, or a monograph, but which quickly gets stale and unsatisfying. Academic archaeologists in particular seem to lose sight of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Geller.

In this talk, I examine the contemporary commonsensical thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality that informs study of bioarchaeological remains. To this end, I focus on double burials whose decedents appear to be embracing—their discovery, investigation, and presentation in scholarly and popular settings. Images of and stories about these ancient embracers garner significant and often sensationalized attention in myriad, global spaces. Here I deliberate about their representation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason De Leon.

Since the 1990’s Border Patrol has employed a strategy known as "Prevention Through Deterrence." This policy emphasizes heightened security around urban ports of entry so that undocumented migrants will attempt to cross the border in more remote areas that are difficult to traverse but easy for law enforcement to patrol. Rather than deterring migration, hundreds of thousands of people each year now spend days in the desert attempting to walk across one of the most extreme environments in North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Patterson.

This paper explores two different views about common sense--those of Clifford Geertz and Antonio Gramsci. It examines their presuppositions, their utility for archaeologists, and considers the implications of current common-sense explanations of the past SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Mason. Claire Alix. Nancy Bigelow.

Around AD 1000, from near Barrow, the Birnirk culture expanded southward across northwest Alaska, with settlements arising at Point Hope, Cape Krusenstern and Cape Espenberg. The motivation and successful adaptations of Birnirk were furthered by the stormy weather associated with upwelling and glacial expansion, correlative with tree ring, beach ridge and varve sequences across northern Alaska. New interdisciplinary data sets, archaeological and paleoecological, from Cape Espenberg elucidate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Foin.

The Thule expansion was the extremely swift colonization of the eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland by Thule Inuit moving east out of Alaska ca. AD 1000-1300. The rapid pace of the migration implies that it may have taken these pioneering Thule groups some time to "settle in" to their new environment. Poor familiarity with local conditions should be reflected in the zooarchaeological record as highly uneven, low-diversity faunal assemblages, with a heavy bias toward small phocids in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Eldridge. John Darwent. Christyann Darwent.

Historical documents note that the Shaktoolik Peninsula, located in Norton Sound, Alaska, was a nexus of interaction among local Yup’ik, Inupiat from the north, Athabaskans from the east, and Russian and American traders in the 1800s. Yup’ik populations were displaced from the area and replaced by Inupiaq groups during this time; however, limited archival, ethnographic and oral history accounts make it difficult to disentangle the local history. The archaeological record may be able to fill in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Potter.

Recent developments in Western subarctic archaeology have transformed our perspectives on technological, subsistence, and land use strategies implemented during the Pleistocene - Holocene transition and into the later Holocene. This talk encompasses my intersite and intrasite investigations at Upward Sun River, Mead, and other sites in the middle Tanana River basin geared towards explanatory model construction and testing. Athabaskan ethnographic data provide robust frameworks to evaluate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kale Bruner. Hannah Owens.

This study explores human/environment interactions in the Aleutian archipelago by pairing eco-niche modeling of cod (Gaddus sp.), a primary subsistence species, with prehistoric archaeological site distribution using a GIS platform. The distributions of site locations and cod habitat simulated using GARP software at multiple time slices through the Holocene show strong spatial and temporal correlation. Both site location and cod distribution are time transgressive with a pattern of westward...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Hatfield. Kale Bruner. Dixie West.

Archaeologists with the NSF-funded research project "Geological Hazards, Climate Change, and Human Resilience in the Islands of the Four Mountains" conducted their first season of fieldwork on Chuginadak and Carlisle Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, in 2014. Preliminary results identified multiple component village sites. These include the Ulyagan site on Carlisle, with a Russian period and one or more prehistoric period occupation. Large, rectangular houses and metal artifacts represent the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Yesner. Michael Farrell. Daniel Monteith.

Late Thule occupation of the Kvichak/Naknek River drainage systems has been attributed to northward migrating human populations deriving from the Kodiak archipelago region, assumed to be salmon fishers and sea mammal hunters displaced by human population growth at the end of the Medieval Climatic Optimum and beginning of the Little Ice Age (LIA). However, caribou hunting seems also to have played an important role in some areas, particularly at the intersection of appropriate habitat and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Stern.

Northern Land Use Research Alaska, LLC (NLURA) investigated 20 locations in northern Alaska during the last 5 years. Research included survey and excavation for oil and gas development projects, pipelines, roads, community infrastructure, mining, and transportation. This paper provides an overview of the work accomplished, highlighting significant discoveries made and contributions of CRM to our understanding of northern Alaska prehistory and history. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Martin. Kathryn E. Krasinski. Brian T. Wygal. Fran Seager-Boss.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have long been a standard tool for mapping or depicting archaeological features and sites in the circumpolar north. Recently, remote sensing techniques including Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) have provided extremely high resolution datasets for landscape level survey and site detection from the GIS platform. Initial applications have proven useful for identifying temple complexes and other large scale archaeological sites in the Central American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Hodgetts. Colleen Haukaas. Laura Kelvin.

Partnerships between local communities and academics are becoming increasingly important in addressing a range of research questions in a warming Arctic. These approaches hold great promise for archaeology, but community participation in research demands that archaeologists rethink the aims and outcomes of our work. Here, we reflect on the ways in which our efforts to engage the Inuvialuit community of Sachs Harbour in our archaeological research project on Banks Island, NWT have shaped the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Miraglia.

This paper presents results of recent Section 106 fieldwork undertaken by archaeologists with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Region, in 2013 and 2014. Results from work on sites along the Unalakleet River, the Agulokwak River, and Little Lake Louise in central, southwestern and southeastern Alaska, respectively, are presented. The problem of producing research that represents a contribution to the field of archaeology, within the constraints of agency mandates, the Section 106 process,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Freeburg.

A group of recently discovered features from Cape Krusenstern, Alaska have yielded radiocarbon ages within both the Western Thule and Kotzebue culture periods. Results of preliminary faunal analyses indicate the presence of fish bone in proportions higher than have been previously reported for other Cape Krusenstern settlements. This paper reviews and assesses the zooarchaeological data from these features and provides comparisons to known archaeological subsistence practices of the region....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Zutter.

Over past decade, I have assembled a reasonable variety of archaeobotanical data sets from 17th and 18th century Labrador Inuit sites, which includes both macro- (seeds, wood) and micro-botanicals (phytoliths and starches). The recovery and interpretation of these remains, however, has met with many challenges. I will discuss a number of these challenges along with the successes of this work and provide some guidelines to further archaeobotanical research and other work of this type in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Jensen.

These are all classic sites, but many of them were last excavated a half century or more ago. New questions and new methods require types of data that was not collected back then; additional excavation with finer provenience control is also needed. Such work has been undertaken at sites like Cape Espenberg, but only at the Nuvuk cemetery in North Alaska. The apparent assumption by those not working in the area has been that the sites were stable, and that there was no hurry. That is no longer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Tremayne. John Darwent. Christyann Darwent. Kelly Eldridge.

This paper presents the results of our reinvestigation of Iyatayet, a multicomponent mid-late Holocene site located in northwest Alaska. Iyatayet is well known as the type site for both the Denbigh Flint Complex and the Norton Tradition in Alaska. Originally, excavated by J. L. Giddings from 1948-1952, this national historic landmark was retested in 2012 and 2013 to assess site condition, threats and disturbances, its current research potential, and to re-evaluate Giddings’ interpretations by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby Anderson. Shannon Tushingham. Christopher Yarnes.

Archaeologists have put forth various hypotheses to explain the adoption of pottery technology by hunter-gatherer groups. These include the efficiency of ceramics over other container technology, rising population pressure and related increased need for storage, and a change in food processing practices. Food processing shifts could include diet breadth expansion, particularly increased use of aquatic resources. The late adoption of pottery technology in the North American Arctic between 2500...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Tremblay Critcher.

In the 19th century, mental institutions were created in the United States to provide care for the mentally ill. These state institutions of care were designed to serve as cultural buffers to protect mentally ill individuals from the harsh conditions that they would have otherwise been exposed to in other state institutions, such prisons or poorhouses. In this paper, I examine whether and to what extent Tilley’s (2012) "Bioarchaeology of Care" methodological approach provides a means to evaluate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Wilson. Keith Manchester. Jo Buckberry. Rebecca Storm. Karina Croucher.

Digitised Diseases is a major web-based 3D resource of chronic disease conditions that manifest change to the human skeleton. The resource was established through funds from Jisc, the University of Bradford and Bradford Visualisation. The multi-disciplinary team involving project partners MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and the Royal College of Surgeons of England undertook a programme of mass digitisation of pathological type specimens from world-renowned archaeological, historic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Roberts.

Everybody suffered ill health at some point during their lives in the past. In late medieval England (12th-16th centuries AD) historical data suggest the availability of care and treatment of disease, but it is unknown how many, and which, people got access to care. There is also little direct evidence of specific care seen in skeletal remains beyond trepanation, amputation, and dentistry. Using the ‘Index of Care’ (IoC; Tilley and Cameron 2014), this paper describes bone changes of leprosy in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerald Conlogue. Mark Viner. Ronald Beckett. Jelena Bekvalac.

Since 2010, the Bioanthropology Research Institute at Quinnipiac University, in collaboration with the Inforce Foundation, Cranfield Forensic Institute at Cranfield University and the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, have established a temporary field radiographic facility under St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street London in order to conduct a radiographic survey of the skeletal remains of 227 individuals from the 18th and 19th century interred in the crypt and retained in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Willett. Ryan Harrod.

This project focuses on the assessment of individuals who appear to have held a lower status, worked harder, and been at more risk for trauma then other members of the same community. The West Ruin site of Aztec Ruins is an important site in the U.S. Southwest that came into prominence after the decline of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. Within this site there are two individuals who appear to have suffered significant traumatic injuries that healed. Both individuals were young adults; one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Doat.

The aim of this presentation is to submit for discussion a proposition of an 'orientation map in Ethics' which may be useful for scholars engaged in Bioarchaeology of care. To this end, I present as a first step the main objections that have been raised in the literature to any attempt of inferring care toward disabled persons in prehistory. I suggest that most of these objections comes from two different ethical backgrounds: a number of them are motivated by the defense of a set of values which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Boutin.

Since 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has been studying and publishing the materials from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1940-41 expedition to Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, which now reside in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. By analyzing these skeletal and artifactual remains, our multi-disciplinary team is adding to anthropologists’ understanding of how life was experienced and death commemorated in Dilmun. One of the most exceptional skeletons belongs to a young woman who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Nystrom. Niels Lynnerup. Dario Piombino-Mascali.

Evidence of care in the bioarchaeological record has focused on two broad circumstances; (1) long term survival with disability in which functional independence is impossible and (2) healed/healing trauma or illness that would have necessitated intervention or care to ensure recovery and survival. These conditions reflect relatively extreme, life-or-death circumstances and thus provide the clearest opportunity to observe care. The preservation of soft tissue, however, not only affords the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alecia Schrenk. Debra Martin.

Bioarchaeology has come a long way in using differential diagnosis, attending to the Osteological Paradox, using biocultural frameworks to integrate different levels of analysis, and developing ways to work with small sample sizes and fragmentary remains. Designed by Lorna Tilley (U. Aukland), the Index of Care offers a new scientifically-based and systematic tool to collect and integrate a range of information in life history, disease processes, and cultural context. This online tool tests...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jolly. Danielle Kurin.

The political instability that characterizes the early Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000—1250) in Andean prehistory had widespread impacts on how people lived, ranging from changes in settlement patterns to an increase in skeletal trauma and infectious disease. This paper explores the social experiences of violence and its implications for healthcare, primarily through the analysis of a notable case study: a young male from Andahuaylas, Peru, whose skeleton evinces multiple lesions and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorna Tilley.

The bioarchaeology of care is a case-study-based, contextualised approach for inferring and interpreting the experience of disability and health-related care response in the past that is based on evidence for experience of disease found in human remains. It is supported by the Index of Care, a non-prescriptive on-line instrument intended to assist researchers work systematically through the four stages of bioarchaeology of care analysis. This presentation opens with an overview of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Wesp.

During the early 16th century, the recent appearance of institutions specializing in care in Europe spread to the Americas. Unlike our modern perceptions of these healthcare institutions where you can seek help for illnesses that affect the body, the colonial period institutions were primarily run by religious groups and may have been more preoccupied with providing spiritual care for the indigenous populations. While this divergence of caring for bodies to caring for the souls may seem...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Milella.

Questions about the timing and modalities of the evolution of care-giving behaviors have a direct impact on our understanding of human cultural evolution and early social dynamics. Hypotheses on care-giving behaviors in Prehistory are usually developed on skeletal evidences documenting survival to seriously debilitating conditions. However, a theoretical framework to test these hypotheses is still missing. Therefore, we propose a model for care-giving behaviors in Prehistory starting from data...