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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Colaninno.

Late Archaic (2250-1800 cal B.C.) shell rings, found along the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States, are large, ring-like structures composed of shell. Sometimes shell rings are complexes with two or more rings in close proximity, while others are singular rings. Rarely are two rings found on an island system without the rings forming a complex. Two shell rings on St. Catherines Island, GA, have been documented and excavated on opposite sides of the island and do not form a complex....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Dobereiner. Andrew K. Scherer. Charles Golden. Whittaker Schroder.

This paper explores the many sides of the natural and supernatural landscape surrounding the Classic period Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan with a particular focus on how the rulers of these polities struggled with one another for control of movement across the broken terrain of hills, cliffs, valleys, swamps, and rivers that define the Middle Usumacinta River basin. The standard image of a rather homogenous landscape in the Maya lowlands is quickly dispensed with in the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Wolverton. Laura Ellyson.

The northern San Juan (NSJ) region of the United States contains a high density of archaeological sites. Ancestral Puebloan people lived in small hamlets (ca. AD 1000) prior to aggregating into large pueblo villages (ca. AD 1150). Periods of drought occurred prior to the abandonment of this sub-region (ca. AD 1300), influencing the availability of animal resources. Zooarchaeological studies of subsistence in the NSJ region have focused on a decline in availability of large game concurrent with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Shott.

In survey, we collect what lies on the surface. But so have others, for decades or more. Ignoring private collections risks neglecting a selective but informative part of the accumulated record. One way to gauge collector effects is to compare what archaeologists found in survey to private collections from the same places. In 1975-77 the University of Michigan surveyed the River Raisin watershed in southeastern Michigan. I compare Michigan’s results to what collectors had found already and,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saul Hedquist.

Archaeological and ethnographic evidence demonstrate the importance of turquoise among past and present Pueblo groups. In this paper I examine the social uses of turquoise and other blue-green minerals at Homol’ovi I, a late prehispanic Hopi village and the most intensively excavated site within the Homol’ovi Settlement Cluster. I explore intra-site patterns of deposition (i.e., the content and context of turquoise deposits) and stylistic variation among objects in an effort to identify...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Heather Walder.

Through LA-ICP-MS elemental analyses of 874 glass trade beads from 31 early colonial-era archaeological sites in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America, and from late 17th century contexts historically associated with French exploration of the Gulf Coast of Texas, I identify patterning in the spatial and temporal distribution of European glass-bead recipe groups. Trading relationships among Indigenous peoples and outsiders in this French "Upper Country" took place on a complex "middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Burgos. Cameron McNeil. Edy Barrios.

Rio Amarillo, an ancient town, rests 20 km east of the great Maya city of Copan in Honduras. In the last four years residences from the Late Classic and Postclassic period have been excavated at the site. Investigations of the residential buildings from Río Amarillo have allowed us to better understand the influences and allegiances of the inhabitants of this community resting on the margins of the Maya world. The architecture of the structures reflects ties to both Copan and to areas in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Rhodes. Antonio López-Jiménez. Mariano López-Martinez. Maria Haber-Uriarte. Michael J. Walker.

Cueva Negra, an upland rock-shelter in southeastern Spain, has revealed a delineated ash feature containing burnt macrofauna and chert within Early Pleistocene deposits (>0.78 Ma). This paper details a novel methodology utilizing heat-altered micromammal remains to identify opportunistic fire-use by the inhabitants of this site. We hypothesize that micromammal bones deposited in the by non-human predators were unintentionally modified by anthropogenic fire, and may be used as proxy evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristine Martirosyan - Olshansky.

Over the past two decades, provenance research on obsidian from Armenia has been on the rise, primarily for provenience purposes, however, with only few studies on obsidian archaeological artifacts. In these studies, the geochemical characterization of obsidian artifacts and geological sources was carried out using different laboratory-based techniques such as INAA, ICP-MS and XRF. The current project presents preliminary results obtained with a portable XRF (pXRF) on the chemical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Zimpel. Francisco Pugliese. Thiago Hermenegildo. Gabriela Carneiro. Myrtle Shock.

Localized in the Amazon Southwest, the Guaporé River defines the border between Brazil and Bolívia, being a significant route of movement of goods, values and ideas since ancient times. This is attested by the occurrence of diferent archaeological sites (shell monds, geogliphs, ceramics associated to terra preta, rock art) that occurs since 8,000 BP to colonial times, historical evidence from colonial documents, linguistic and ethnological information, and hypotheses raised by anthropology. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Schmalle.

The Pleistocene-Holocene climate change had a global effect on the patterns and variations of river channels. Following the Last Glacial Maximum there was site specific variability regarding fluvial reactions, including vegetation, fluvial discharge, dominant sediment transport systems, and climate. This project will investigate and compare the various inputs and routing of sediment in two Midwest watersheds in response to the changing climate of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Knabb. Matthew Howland. Tammy Rittenour. Yigal Erel. Thomas Levy.

The human impact on marginal environments is an issue that has especially affected societies in the Middle East during the past 8,000 years, a time when some of the most significant political and economic developments in the history of human societies took place. Such development often permanently altered the character of these fragile ecosystems. Landscape degradation, especially heavy metal pollution, is a poignant example of the deleterious effects that humans can have on the environment. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Carroll.

Archaeologists often decline to work with artifact assemblages considered too small to analyze in favor of working with larger assemblages that ostensibly allow for more confident statements about the past. This paper discusses the role of Agent Based Modeling (ABM) and the potential it holds as an important new analytic tool through which to explore small artifact assemblages in a meaningful way. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Jon Hauser.

Were the Wichita consuming Ilex vomitoria in a ritual context while living in the Arkansas River Basin in Kansas? Prior to moving into the Arkansas river basin the Caddoan speaking tribes of Wichita were located further south in Oklahoma and Texas where Ilex vomitoria grows naturally and was consumed, however it is not a plant that naturally thrives in Kansas. To determine if there is evidence of Ilex vomitoria use FTIR Testing was performed on pottery shreds around one small vessel found at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Epstein.

Excavations of a house floor located in North America’s Great Basin resulted in hundreds of bone and stone artifacts. We present a spatial analysis of the recovered household artifacts. Identified raw materials provide evidence for connections to communities farther afield. Results indicate a diverse and complex suite of social goals. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Javi Vasquez. Kaleb Taluban. R.M McCoy.

A comprehensive landscape survey covering 2,000 acres of private property was conducted this past May in the Sierra Diablo Mountains of far west Texas. The survey targeted a previously unsurveyed portion of the mountain range and surrounding alluvial fan environments adjacent to Sierra Diablo Cave with the goal of assessing the relationship between settlement and landform. The landforms included wooded juniper pine uplands at nearly 6,000 ft AMSL to the lower foothills and basin margins at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sloan Williams. Lindsey Proctor. Chapurukha Kusimba. Janet Monge. Alan Morris.

Our project examines the role of migration in the development of the large autonomous Swahili towns and city-states that grew out of small fishing, agrarian, and pastoral settlements on the East African coast in the late first millennium CE. Our sample is comprised of 97 individuals from three sites on the Kenya coast: Mtwapa (N=72; 900-1732 BCE) near Mombasa, and two sites in the Lamu archipelago, Manda (N=16; 800-1400 BCE), and Shanga (N=9; 800-1400 BCE). The teeth were well preserved and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mini Sharma Ogle. Jamie Young. Amanda Childs.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) in response to a request from the Alaska Department of Transportation for funding and other approvals for a new land-based airport near the community of Angoon in Southeast Alaska. With multiple 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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Parker. Megan Perry. Drew Coleman. David Dettman.

Qasr Hallabat, a luxurious Umayyad (7th – 8th century A.D.) desert retreat in Jordan, declined after the mid-8th century due to political destabilization and earthquakes. Despite official abandonment, the qasr’s extensive hydraulic resources were utilized by local groups. Excavation and restoration of the qasr by the Spanish Archaeological Mission discovered the remains of six individuals at the bottom of an internal cistern, a precious regional water source. These individuals, who perished...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Kathleen Pitirri.

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection recently acquired a collection of Great Lakes First Nations clothing (c. 1770-1780), which represents one of only four surviving Chief ceremonial regalia gifted to European diplomats and worn during negotiations (Brasser 2012, 13-33; Roloff 2012, 8). Included in this rare anthology of Woodlands culture are: a pair of men’s deer skin leggings, a pair of moccasins, two finger weaved sashes, a pair of garter pendants, a short strap, armbands, a Wampum belt, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Mitchell. Gordon Noble.

During the 5th and 6th centuries the dead become more visible in the landscapes of eastern Scotland. Elaborate square and circular burial mounds were constructed to commemorate certain members of society, possibly a newly emerging elite. These barrows are often sited along ridges and form grouped, sometimes linear distributions in the landscape. Few have been excavated and most are known through aerial photography alone.This paper presents some of the results from a project that consolidated and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krystle Kelley.

Open plaza spaces are a commonality among Maya sites. Excavating through the sealed contexts of these plaza surfaces can yield reliable data on the construction history of the site and how the space may have changed over time. This paper details the results from two seasons of excavations, which took place in May-June of 2012 and 2013 at the Maya site of Chan Chich in Northwestern Belize. Our investigations focused on the Upper Plaza, located at the acropolis of the site. Our investigations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Harkleroad.

Lines of evidence, such as weapons, skeletal remains of victims of trauma, iconography, fortifications, etc., that are typically used to argue for the presence or absence of warfare in a society are often ambiguous. As a result researchers frequently reach contradicting conclusions from the same data. In situations where there are few material remains this problem is magnified making conclusions about warfare hard to come to. I put forward a new approach to the discussion of warfare that shifts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meradeth Snow. Kathleen Hauther. Ashley McKeown.

Five burials were excavated from a small Colonial cemetery at the Elkins site in New Castle County, Delaware by Hunter Research, Inc. for Delaware DOT. The remains were analyzed for mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in conjunction with a standard skeletal biological assessment. Analysis of the mtDNA demonstrated European maternal lineages for all of the individuals. Additionally, an infant and an elderly male shared a derived haplogroup T haplotype, suggesting a matrilineal relationship between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Laffey.

Ethnoarchaeological chicha brewing was conducted on modern ceramic sherd samples for organic residue analysis. The goal was to identify botanical biomarkers that can evidence the use of Schinus molle L., Erythroxylaceae coca, and Echinopsis pachanoi (San Pedro cactus) for ancient brewing in the Middle Horizon (MH) era (c. 600-1100 CE). There is strong evidence that during this period socio-political influence was inexorably linked to the ability to provide chicha in exchange for labor, goods,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Meredith. Daniel Turner.

Often construction of transportation features from the 19th Century or later is considered to be destructive to earlier archaeological components. The excavation of an 11th Century site in north central Alabama has demonstrated that a 19th Century railroad bed has enhanced preservation of several features that preceded its construction by 800 years. This poster will present a comparison of features found beneath the railroad bed with those located outside of that area. SAA 2015 abstracts made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Herlich.

This paper explores how coastal Algonquian and shell midden sites in Tidewater Virginia relate to the greater Virginia Algonquian landscape. Through archaeological plant remains (including macrobotanical, starch grains, and phytoliths), ethnographic records, and historical documents, I am exploring landscape and garden designs along the shores of the coastal plain. The project’s archaeological sites span a combined 1,600 years (early Middle Woodland period to the early Colonial era), and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wade Campbell.

This paper presents a model to determine potential archaeological site locations in far southeastern Mauritania (known as the Hodh ech Chargui). Although sustained archaeological research has been carried out throughout West Africa since the 1940s, the 81,000 km2 Hodh ech Chargui region has been poorly examined, with two regional surveys constituting the majority of the archaeological record for the area. It has been proposed that the Hodh ech Chargui served as a place of passage between the two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Gomez-Gastelum.

En esta ponencia se presenta un análisis del trato que se dio a individuos pre adultos en el sitio arqueológico de Chupícuaro, Guanajuato, México. A partir de la recuperación y análisis de la información disponible y publicada, se observan las características de la población pre adulta y utilizando los marcos teóricos para el estudio de la niñez se ofrecen conclusiones que abordan las particularidades que se dieron a estos individuos según pasaban por las distintas edades. El estudio se enmarca...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana María Díaz Rocha.

The establishment of a trade route between Asia, the New World, and Europe during the sixteenth century allowed admiration, exchange, and adaptation of different motifs, materials, and artistic techniques. The study of lacquer arts offers unique evidence of the transculturation that defines the arts of Spanish America during the viceregal period. This poster explores the use of unique American lacquer traditions that combine indigenous techniques and European forms with designs borrowed from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna Aubert.

While museum education is often thought of as a guided tour or a pre-booked arrangement with museum staff, scholarship on the interpretation of visual culture delves into pedagogical possibilities that render museum displays and exhibits an important platform for learning. While the museum collection is an important element of the gallery experience, this project draws from theoretical perspectives that implicate the learner themselves as the key component for the learning experience. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Burnett. Armando Abeyta. Amber Fankhauser.

Fort Irwin is a United States Army installation located approximately 37 miles northeast of Barstow in San Bernardino County, California. Covering an area of 1,193 square miles, Fort Irwin is roughly the size of Rhode Island. This large installation has a wide variety of archaeological resources, including two large, multi-component sites that were re-recorded by the Fort Irwin Cultural Resources Program in 2014. Bitter Spring (CA-SBR-2659/H) is a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margo Schwadron.

Massive shell midden mounds were once common in the Canaveral region, but since the 1880s an estimated 68% of these sites have been destroyed. The shell mounds preserved within Canaveral National Seashore include one of North America’s tallest shell mounds (Turtle Mound), one of the last remaining vestiges of an extensive shell mound culture that inhabited the region. Recent investigations of Turtle Mound, Castle Windy and Seminole Rest inform about interactions and influences between people,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Marinkovich. Ty Swavely. Sarah Nicole Boudreaux.

Satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are invaluable noninvasive archaeological tools. The combination of remotely sensed datasets with GIS, geomorphological and ecological factors, and environmental variables associated with known archaeological features can produce a multivariate statistical predictive model. The authors will test the utility of integrating high resolution multispectral satellite imagery, lower resolution multitemporal satellite imagery, georeferenced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyson Caine.

Background. The presence of limited settlements has limited the understanding of prehistoric occupation in the Arabian Peninsula (Potts 1990). Interest and research of Arabia during the Bronze (3200-1200 BC) and Iron Age (1200-400 BC) has increased producing a greater understanding of the people from the region and their culture. Methods. A total of sixty-four tombs were excavated with twenty-seven yielding human remains. These twenty-seven tombs originated from various periods of the Bronze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David M. Hyde.

A significant amount of recent study has been directed to what have been termed "problematical deposits." Although superficially similar to middens, they tend to have a ritual component that makes them distinct from simple trash pits, and as Houk (2000) indicates, they are often located at the centerline of monumental, ceremonial architecture ( Clayton et al. 2005; Houk 2000). The Tapir Group of the Medicinal Trail Community has an Early Classic "problematic deposit" that is located in the base...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Greenlee. Rinita Dalan. Thurman Allen.

Poverty Point, recently inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List, is a monumental earthworks site built ca. 3700-3100 BP by hunter-fisher-gatherers. Until very recently, the original Late Archaic configuration was believed to include four mounds; six concentric, semi-elliptical, earthen ridges; and a large interior plaza. A fifth mound was added about 1800 years later. In August 2013, a small, suspicious rise in the woods on the northeast edge of the Poverty Point monumental core was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Betz.

To better understand diet, oral health, and physiological stress loads of historic 19th century mobile pastoralists from Central Asia, the frequency of caries, ante-mortem tooth loss (AMTL), and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) were assessed macroscopically from a skeletal sample (n=40) of a pastoralist population from Urga (Ulaanbaatar), Mongolia. Results show a low percentage of individuals affected by caries (11.4%) consistent with a diet low in sugars and carbohydrates but high in animal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Trigg. Stephanie Hallinan.

In 17th-century New Mexico, Spanish colonists’ households were an important location for ethnogenesis as colonists and indigenous Pueblo peoples together labored at basic subsistence activities. LA 20,000, a Spanish ranch located about 12 mi southwest of Santa Fe, has the potential to shed light on colonists’ activities and their interactions with indigenous Pueblo and Plains peoples. This site is the most complex rural ranch of the period, with extensive architecture and material culture. Using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Navas. Franz Scaramelli. Kay Scaramelli.

La alusión a la tecnología metalúrgica del hierro en las construcciones narrativas (relatos, mitos) y prácticas rituales es un fenómeno común de muchas sociedades alrededor del mundo. La importacia de esta tecnología se evidencia en los diversos significados otorgados a las etapas del proceso productivo y en las representaciones de deidades o personajes legendarios vinculados a la herrería en los relatos provenientes de África o Europa, pero qué ocurrió en aquellas sociedades en las que el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Striker.

This study takes a new approach to Iroquoian ceramics, considering decorative style as evidence for categorical identification. Categorical identity is a shared association with a category such as an ethnic or religious group. Along with relational identification – direct interpersonal relationships – categorical identification is a key element of collective identity. Historical sociologists study these elements of collective identity to understand how individual and collective social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rolando Silva.

Remote Sensing as a Method of Promoting Group Identity: Rediscovering Edinburg’s African-American Cemetery Roland Silva, Anthro Graduate-University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Edinburg, Texas was founded in 1909 some fifteen miles north of the Rio Grande in the then newly irrigated "Magic Valley." A decade later Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery was established, with a remote corner of the burial ground allocated for African-Americans. Many of the earliest people interred hailed from rural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Melton.

Communities cannot be fully identified by their built landscapes; they must also be understood in terms of mundane activities that enact communal bonds. In this paper I use plant remains and pit features to examine communal food processing events at two Protohistoric sites in Hillsborough, North Carolina: Wall (A.D. 1400-1600) and Jenrette (A.D. 1650-1680). By combining a functional analysis of features with a spatial analysis of plants, I have identified two types of discard patterns: larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight.

Teotihuacan was a major cosmopolitan city located in the Basin of Mexico during the Classic Period (100-700 CE). The artwork has long fascinated but bewildered scholars, and despite the emulation of Teotihuacan’s recognizable artistic styles across Mesoamerica, we still understand relatively little about their artistic styles today. This paper aims to examine the conch shell motif from artwork at Teotihuacan, particularly visible in extant mural paintings. It will focus on investigating the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Hechler. William Pratt.

This paper will review iconographic representations of physical disabilities and differences from several Andean societies from different time periods, such as the Inka, Chimú, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Moche. People with physical disabilities were actively included in many societies throughout the Pre-Columbian Andes. Many cultures developed their own social perceptions that benefited people with physical disabilities and differences and they often thought the disabled were more intimately connected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Owens.

The use of kites in capturing aerial images of archaeological sites has been used by archaeologists in the past, but is quickly becoming overshadowed by the use of drone aircraft. Despite the obvious advantages of drone vehicles, kites still offer practical solutions in capturing aerial site imagery. Kites present affordable, durable, and easily deployed methods of capturing a bird’s-eye view of sites without the need for cumbersome and expensive drone technology. The poster is designed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Hauer. Sean McMurry.

In 2012-2014, AMEC successfully balanced the needs of the National Park Service (NPS), the Presidio Trust, and regulators to preserve historic resources, maintain public relations, engineer safe and effective solutions, and address environmental concerns during remediation activities to remove contaminated soil at the Presidio of San Francisco, a NHLD and NRHP-listed property. For over 150 years, the Presidio, located near the Golden Gate Bridge, was used by the U.S. Army to protect San...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Lints.

While numerous ethnographic accounts indicate the use of plants in the creation of ceremonial bison skull altars within many areas of the Great Plains, few examples of this practice has been identified from archaeological contexts. Analysis of phytoliths from soils (n=2) obtained from within and beneath a ceremonial bison skull (AD 1339 and 1397) recovered from the Crepeele site (DiMe-29), southwestern Manitoba, led to the identification of phytolith assemblages dominated by C4 grasses. Samples...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenny Riley. Kevin Hunt.

Between 2005 and 2010, Indiana University dive teams performed surface collections of the entrance chamber to Padre Nuestro Cavern, a submerged limestone cavern located in the East National Park in the southeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic. They extracted Taino ceramics, Casimiroid lithics, and many faunal remains including two extinct sloth species (Acrotocnus ye and Parocnus serus), an extinct platyrrhine monkey (Antillothris bernensis), and other commingled bones including sloth,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Katz.

Just as there was a formal class of scribes in Maya courts, there was also a class of formal musicians. This paper will focus primarily on analyzing the position and social status held by musicians in the Classic Maya area. To begin, the paper will discuss musicians as a formal class within the Maya courts. Musicians are frequently depicted in iconographic portrayals of political events, and based on the garb they are shown wearing, it appears they formed cohesive groups. By analyzing the role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Stapleton.

Late Classic conceptualizations of sacred space, cosmologies, calendrical systems, and religious symbols combined to form a powerful and enduring core of indigenous religious beliefs that persisted well into the Early Colonial period in the central highlands of Mexico. Indigenous builders and artisans reconstructed their temples, now Christian, within pre-existing Aztec sacred space, often following indigenous alignments of cosmological significance. The elaborate facades of these churches were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Blong.

Upland landscapes in the central Alaska Range play an important role in understanding prehistoric hunter-gatherer settlement organization, subsistence activities, and lithic assemblage variability in interior Alaska. Previous research hypothesizes that late Pleistocene and early Holocene seasonal upland hunting conditioned lithic assemblages in the interior, and that seasonally available upland resources grew in importance through the middle and late Holocene, as interior foragers shifted to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Olson. Justin Dodd. Mario Rivera.

The Ramaditas archaeological site in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile provides evidence for cultural adaptations during wetter environmental conditions in an otherwise arid environment. From 2.0 – 2.5 kyr B.P., regional population increased and a cultural shift toward agricultural based communities occurred. Tree samples collected from the site provide a high-resolution record of increased water availability as recorded by tree ring oxygen and carbon isotopes. Prosopis tamarugo logs from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Schober.

Missionary and explorer accounts document status differences in adornment, possession of ceremonial items, and body proportions in the marine foraging populations of the Cape Region, Baja California Sur, Mexico. The antecedent and concurrent Las Palmas Culture (ca. A.D. 1200 to 1700) was originally defined by William Massey based on excavation of small exclusive-use mortuary caves. Each cave held one or two primary interments and several secondary bundle burials representing both sexes and all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anabella Coronado. Adriana Linares.

Esta ponencia detalla la reciente investigación participativa en las comunidades de Santa María Nebaj, San Juan Cotzal y San Gaspar Chajul, localizadas en el Departamento de El Quiché, Guatemala. La investigación socialmente comprometida comienza con la elaboración de un atlas regional que reconozca y actualice el listado "oficial" de sitios arqueológicos para su protección. Entre las herramientas metodológicas más valiosas destacan los datos provenientes de historias orales que sobreviven...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Carito Tavera Medina.

This work seeks to characterize the presence of the Gallinazo component in the lower Jequetepeque valley during the Middle Moche period through an analysis of funerary contexts from the sites of San José de Moro, Mazanca, Dos Cabezas and Pacatnamú. Using bibliographic sources and excavation data, this project searches for indicators within burial traditions of interaction between two different cultural groups that coexisted spatially on the north coast of Peru. Through an analysis of a number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Whitaker.

This paper is a summary of recent archaeological investigations at the San Lorenzo settlement cluster in the Mopan River Valley of Western Belize. The primary objective of current research at this ancient hinterland settlement is to better understand the dynamics of ancient Maya household economic organization and integration during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (A.D. 670-890). Households are fundamental units of economic organization in both past and present societies. The examination...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jairo Avila.

Previous studies on material exchange have provided valuable insights about the complexity of long-distance networks once established by prehistoric cultures. Fueled by the presence of middlemen throughout the region, these elaborate and intricate networks of interaction and trade allowed easier acquisition and exchange of materials (local and non-local) over the years. Given the extensiveness of materials (i.e. lithics, beads, ochre) repeatedly entering and exiting Southern California by land...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Antonio Pugliese Jr.. Carlos Augusto Zimpel Neto. Thiago Berlanga Trindade. Tiago Hermenegildo. Laura Pereira Furquim.

The central area of Sol de Campinas site is composed by fifteen mounds, disposed at an elliptic arch, surrounding a plaza with an area of almost 15.000m². The site is geographically related to other earthworks of southwestern Amazon, known as geoglyphs in Acre, Rondonia and Amazonas Brazilian states. Although it shows similar attributes to other places in the region, such as its geometrical forms and "roads" structured from the peripherical portions of the site, its main structures are composed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Barzilai.

Located near the Silver Creek in the Illinois uplands of the midcontinent of the United States, the Emerald Site (11S1) in Lebanon, IL is a constructed Mississippian mound center where everyday practices were entangled with the performance of Mississippian religion. Recent excavations at the Emerald Site by Indiana University and the University of Illinois have unearthed high densities of non-domestic structures dating to the Terminal Late Woodland (TLW) Edelhardt (AD 950-1000) and Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Baker.

Over the last 20 years, a number of studies have provided evidence for a "drought" in the Maya Lowlands between the 8th and 10th centuries. Researchers have argued that a higher water table in the northern lowlands allowed agricultural practices to continue in the north, while sites in the south suffered from the drought. This paper will examine the relationship between population changes and climatic changes in the Maya Lowlands. The nature of the water table and the agricultural practices of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashton Satterlee. Andrew Duff.

Examining rim sherds and identifying ceramic vessels size is one method of investigating feasting practices. Larger vessels may indicate larger scale food preparation and consumption than found at normal households. Chacoan Great Houses are thought to have been used as gathering places for local communities to serve as the locus of ritual and feasting activities. The temporal element is expanding the research by using general ware types as temporal indicators on the ceramics recovered from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Holtkamp. Sandi Copeland. Alan Madsen. LeAnn Purtzer. Jennifer Payne.

The Pajarito Plateau of northern New Mexico has been a place of significant archaeological study for over one hundred years. Situated just north of Bandelier National Monument, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is situated on 25,395 acres of the northern Pajarito Plateau, 90.9% of which has been surveyed for heritage resources, LANL manages over 2,000 archaeological sites, 1,505 of which are affiliated with the Ancestral Pueblo culture. This study has two primary objectives: the first is to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Hacker. Howard Cyr.

Over 15 years of archaeological research at the University of Tennessee’s East Tennessee Research and Education Center, Blount County, Tennessee, has uncovered a number of archaeological sites that range in age from Early Archaic to Mississippian. Located within a complex alluvial system at the confluence of Ellejoy Creek and the Little River, the study area was part of a prehistoric trail system through the Great Smoky Mountains. Research at the University of Tennessee’s Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhuowei Tang. Lixin Wang. Pauline Sebillaud. Duan Tian-jing. Gyoung-Ah Lee.

Dongbei region, an inclusive name for three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning in Northeast China developed Neolithic succession, distinguished from the better known Huanghe culture (Yellow River) from the Early Holocene. Compared to Liaoning region, which is better known outside China, Jilin, a border province with North Korea has been left mostly unknown in international archaeological communities despite of its critical geo-political importance throughout prehistory and history....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Ochoa. Danielle Kurin.

In the Andahuaylas region located in the southern central highlands of Peru, archaeologists have documented the presence of three critical cultural occupations: Wari, Chanka, and Inka (ca. AD 700-1400). Previous investigations claim that environmental change may have influenced collapse and played a decisive role in resettlement patterns. Using spatial data from 86 surveyed sites, this study investigates how state collapse, reorganization, and environmental transformations influenced settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Garner. H. Thomas Foster, II.

Historic documents are a useful tool in understanding post contact archaeological sites. Documents can show different forms of interaction between Europeans and Native Americans and chronicle events that are invisible in the archaeological record. Notations in archaeological reports often refer back to letters, journals, orders, laws, treaties, reports, newspaper articles and trade records, to support findings and give credence to interpretations of the past. However, use of historic documents...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Younie. Tom Gillispie. Ted Goebel.

Under the collective organization of the Healy Lake Working Group, renewed investigations into the prehistory of the Healy Lake region over the past five years have allowed for new insights into terminal Pleistocene human activity in the Alaskan interior. This paper reports the detailed assessment of curated materials from the Village site, originally excavated in the 1960s and 1970s. Using original field notes, drawings, and photographs, the lowest component was stratigraphically separated from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe. Joshua Keene.

Charcoal identification is a crucial part of proper AMS dating archaeological sites, particularly in the Great Basin and Snake River Plain, where issues of old wood and root contamination can yield inaccurate dates. In addition to fuel, humans in the Great Basin and Snake River Plain have used wood from trees and large shrubs to construct spear and arrow shafts, bows, digging sticks, cradleboards, baskets, promontory pegs, and a variety of other artifacts. Wood identification is also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Lambert. Patrick Livingood.

This paper explores the benefits of using compositional analysis in order to investigate whether post-removal Choctaw-made ceramics were locally made in southeastern Oklahoma and/or were transported from their original homeland in east-central Mississippi. A total of 20 sherds were analyzed using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) to determine their chemical composition. 10 sherds are from two post-removal Choctaw sites, 34MC544 and 34MC399 and were compared with 10 sherds from the Pevey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Cline.

St Bees Man was discovered in 1981 during an archaeological excavation of the south chancel aisle of St Bees Priory in Cumbria, England. His body was extremely well-preserved with pink tissue, blood present, and intact organs all observed during a forensic autopsy. This ‘cold case’ review shows the importance of balancing both archaeological and forensic techniques. In forensic archaeology, the handling of potential evidence, overall sampling strategy, and opportunity for further analysis are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Simon. Adam Wiewel. Eileen Ernenwein. Kristin Safi. Carla Klehm.

From dense ground cover to subtle geophysical signatures, researchers utilizing ground-based geophysical methods often encounter a variety of challenges limiting their potential for successful interpretation. With two case studies, we demonstrate the utility of augmenting near-surface geophysics with thermal and color photogrammetric models generated from aerial imagery. These studies include two projects supported through the SPARC program: the late Pueblo II great house at Largo Gap in New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Howell.

Increasing intensity and frequency of conflict over time is a noted characteristic of the Mississippian Period in the southeastern United States. To examine the question of why violence increases, researchers have examined many cultural institutions and environmental mechanisms that can defuse tensions as well as those that exacerbate chances for warfare. A key theoretical construct is the use of bufferzones that help to lower tensions by creating separation between competing groups. However...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jess Whalen.

The Early Bronze Age II-III in Anatolia (2700-2000 BC) is a period of intensifying personal distinction. New tin-bronze metallurgy yields exquisitely crafted jewelry, ceremonial weapons, and drinking vessels, sumptuary activities appropriate to an emerging elite class. Yet it is difficult to characterize the structure of EBA settlements; a lack of writing and sealing practices suggest that there was no central administration. This contrasts with contemporaneous sites in southeastern Turkey and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia M. O'Boyle. Erich Longie. Conrad Fisher. Jason Brown. Robert O'Boyle.

Federal Agencies have long been required to consult with Tribal Nations; however, true consultation has been lacking. The table was tilted in favor of local land managers who have been free to make decisions on consultation and resource management, often with little or no insight from the descendant communities; however, that is changing. Coinciding with the rise of Tribal Higher Education, Tribal Nations on the Great Plains have begun to take charge of the consultation process, and change the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Hughes. Lindsay Johansson.

On the basis of new excavations within the Promontory caves, archaeologists are beginning to gain a better understanding of when and how Promontory people lived (Ives et al. 2014; Johansson 2013). Some preliminary data also gives credence to Steward’s (1937, 1940) argument that Promontory people were Athapaskan and that the caves represented one stop on a route taken from Dene lands in Canada to the Plains and Northern Southwest where Athapaskan speakers (Apache and Navajo) were first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lambert. Thomas Loebel. Matthew Hill.

The area south Lake Superior was first colonized by Late Paleoindian groups during the Early Holocene after the final retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet from the region. As a result, Paleoindian sites in the area are ideal for testing ideas about the nature of hunter-gatherer adaptive responses to early postglacial environments. This project presents data from reanalysis of the lithic assemblages from a number of sites spread across northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Damour. Robert Church. Daniel Warren.

3D imaging creates a permanent digital record that allows scientists to study minute site details and also serves an important outreach role by allowing the public to virtually explore archaeological resources. While 3D imaging of archaeological sites using laser and lidar is a growing trend in terrestrial archaeology, its application in marine archaeology has only recently emerged. Marine archaeologists are now beginning to use 3D laser- and sonar-derived models as new tools for interpreting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Griffith. Brent Woodfill.

Ancient Maya rulers dramatically gave offerings to the gods and ancestors on behalf of the local population, and the spectacle was central to the maintenance of the social hierarchy. Some of these public ceremonies took place in in the subterranean realm of Xibalba, from the vantage point of visible, elevated areas within cave sites. The actors using the ritual stages described in this paper, whether from large urban centers or smaller villages in the countryside, would have used the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl La Favre.

The Lake Titicaca region of Peru and Bolivia has been extensively surveyed by a number of archaeologists over the past 3 decades, but the accumulated data await systematic synthesis and comparative analysis. This study places the settlement pattern data from a dozen different surveys into a uniform analytic framework that focuses on demographic dynamics and their relationship to political change. Substantial regional variation is apparent in characteristics such as the variability of total...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gypsy Price. Dr. Kim Shelton. Dr. George Kamenov. Dr. John Krigbaum.

This paper explores variation in the management and distribution of faunal resources recovered from disparate socio-economic spheres of consumption at the palatial settlement of Mycenae, Greece, during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC). It has long been acknowledged that early state economies comprise multiscalar, intertwining spheres of economic activity. Mechanisms driving these spheres of interaction are predicated on the modalities of exchange which connected nodes of production and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Ranhorn. Francys Subiaul. David Braun. Alison Brooks. Robert Kaplan.

The potential to detect signatures of cultural transmission in stone tool technology is quickly gaining traction in Paleolithic archaeology (e.g. Tostevin 2012). These methods, rooted in middle range theory, remain to be tested through controlled experiment. This project uses experimental flint knapping and a social learning framework to test the hypothesis that signatures of direct cultural transmission can be detected in core reduction strategies. The participant pool included experienced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Schach. Jane Buikstra.

The inclusion of foods and eating utensils within graves at Chiribaya Alta, a Late Intermediate site ~5 km from the mouth of the Osmore river, Peru suggests that "feeding the dead" during funerary rites was a common practice within the Chiribaya polity. Thus far, however, these foods have not been systematically considered in relation to funerary practices. This study examines food items placed within tombs at Chiribaya Alta (n=307) and considers their potential symbolic meanings within funerary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Menzer. Eileen Ernenwein. Jay Franklin.

The Pile Mound survey includes magnetometry paired with targeted ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electromagnetic induction (EMI), low-altitude aerial photogrammetry and test excavations over the ca. 6.5 ha site. The EMI survey focused on the mound proper and several distinct magnetometry anomalies to the south and east. The aerial imagery was used to create a photomosaic and digital elevation model (DEM) of the mound and immediate surroundings, and to topographically correct the GPR data. From...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Claudia Herrera López.

San José de Moro (SJM) is one of the most important Moche cemeteries studied in the North Coast of Peru. It is recognized by the presence of several elite tombs and strong evidence of rituals that took place along these burials. SJM also has a proper style of potter manufacture which is easily differentiated from southern styles. It is important to mention that the Moche society was divided in those who inhabited the north and south areas of their territory. In this context, during the last...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Grant. Tristan Carter. Vecihi Özkaya. Metin Kartal.

Located on the Upper Tigris, Körtik Tepe represents one of the earliest sedentary settlements in the Anatolian part of the Fertile Crescent (11th - 10th millennium BC), its occupation spanning the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Epi-Palaeolithic, i.e. a transitional sequence from hunter-gatherer to farming economies. While the site has a strong local character, there is also clear evidence for interaction with communities at the larger regional level in SE Anatolia. Using EDXRF to analyse >200...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thaddeus Bissett. Martin Walker.

This study examines the interplay of Holocene sea level change and the locations and timing of construction of Archaic coastal shell rings. Based on 161 radiocarbon dates from 32 shell rings located on the lower Atlantic and Gulf coasts, most shell ring construction took place from 5000—2750 cal BP, with the greatest intensity occurring during a roughly 1,000 year window between 3500 and 4500 cal BP. We use a high-resolution reconstruction of past sea levels (Balsillie and Donoghue 2004) and GIS...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Reedy. Leland Bement.

The Clary Ranch site in Southwestern Nebraska and the Bull Creek site in Northwestern Oklahoma are Late-Paleoindian camps that were used for processing the meat and bones from bison hunts. This is an experimental archaeological investigation involving Clary Ranch and Bull Creek, both of which contain evidence of spiral fracturing on bison phalanges resulting from the butchering and preparation process. This archaeological experiment investigates possible motives Paleoindian hunters would have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Williams-Beck.

The center, as the Maya universe’s fifth direction, is a little understood component of Colonial period Maya cosmos. This paper will explore a diachronic notion of function and form for center as umbilicus, placing particular emphasis on pre-Hispanic Canpech and Chakanputun provinces, and Early Colonial contexts at Dzaptun/Ceiba Cabecera, Campeche. Pre-Hispanic Dzaptun, renamed "la Zeiba" and Ceiba Cabecera in later Colonial sources, had served as central cog in a hypothesized regional ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Carlos Matos. Lilia Fernandez. Rafael Cobos.

Strucuture 2D6 is a gallery-patio type building situated within Chichen Itza’s site core right north of the Temple of the Warriors and the Temple of the Big Tables. Its gallery was excavated in 2009 and discoveries included a C-shaped bench following the buildings walls with just one exception – an altar right next to the passage that leads to the patio – as well as several column caches and a possible sacrificial stone. The removal of roof debris also freed up a well-preserved stucco floor that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francesca Neri.

This project presents data from a month long archaeological survey of refuse conducted on a university campus in New York City and uses it in conjunction with conventional theoretical methods applied to the analysis of the material culture. The previous archaeological analyses of secondary aggregates or deposit sites in which localized, high concentrations of refuse are examined, provide hypotheses regarding human behavioral patterns (Johnson 1999) and serve as a comparative model from which to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Popescu.

The research I will report in my paper has two main goals. The first is to learn something of the behavior of the hominids responsible for the production and accumulation of the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic assemblages at two multistratified sites in NE Romania, Middle Prut Valley region (Ripiceni-Izvor and Mitoc-Malu Galben). The second goal is methodologically related. Paleolithic assemblages recovered from the archaeological record are mostly interpreted as "typical" expressions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Saldaña. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.

San Jose de Moro, located in the North Coast of Peru, is a well-known ceremonial site where ritual practices were held over a span of 1000 years. This, in relation with the burial of high rank individuals whom are believed to have performed important roles within the Moche society, especially during the Late Moche Period, places this site as one of high importance for the understanding of the Moche society along its region. This paper will present the results of excavations held in 2013, when we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Fernandez. Lauren Klein. Donald Millar. Alexia De Loera.

Undergraduate Anthropology and Chemistry students at the University of San Diego (USD) collaborated on the application of analytical chemistry to archaeological ceramics. USD curates 1000’s of prehistoric Southwestern artifacts, all of which are available for student research. We examined some of the collections vessels for cacao, which is the raw form of chocolate. Patricia Crown and W. Jeffrey Hurst recently found it in cylinder jar fragments from Chaco Canyon. Crown’s methodology was adapted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dru McGill.

At the Mississippian site of Angel Mounds (12Vg1), people crafted both plain, utilitarian-appearing vessels, and a variety of highly decorated wares, including Negative Painted plates that are frequently associated with the site. Previous researchers have suggested that Negative Painted vessels were made by ceramic or ritual specialists, who were perhaps sponsored by a chief or other elite individual. These decorated vessels are indeed rare at Angel Mounds, but no evidence has been found to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Go. Xu Zhang.

There is growing international interest in Chinese archaeological research, which establishes a precedent to evaluate the current methods used by local scholars. In terms of Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD), which is used to estimate biological distances between groups, majority of recent Chinese publications have used the Grewal-Smith angular transformation method with Bartlett’s correction and an MMD formula with the correction factor 1/n_ik +1/n_jk. Most MMD studies in English...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt. Laura Scheiber. Lindsey Simmons.

Interpreting the use of mountainous regions by prehistoric and historic hunter-gatherers has been hampered through the years by difficult access, excessive ground vegetation, and wilderness restrictions. Archaeologists have benefited, however, from the regular occurrence of forest fires that burn thousands of acres and expose hundreds of archaeological sites every summer, as our knowledge of campsite structure and landscape use has dramatically improved. We now know that remote campsites often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Jeffrey Frost.

Contact era Spanish descriptions from central Costa Rica through western Panama offer compelling evidence that many indigenous settlements throughout the region were arranged as two spatially discrete parts, implying that these societies were similarly organized as two social groups. Documentary sources further indicate that there were at least three regionally distinct spatial arrangements of villages. Spatial patterns of settlements recorded in these documents closely resemble those identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Shelley. Nathan Montalvo.

There are numerous burned rock middens in the region around Fort Bliss. These sites are usually assumed to be agave processing locations, although it is possible that other types of plants, such as yucca, were being processed. Some of these sites have small quantities of artifacts, while others have fairly large numbers of artifacts, particularly modified flakes. We believe that this difference may relate to processing the plants for fiber, rather than food. We intend to replicate stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Hlubik. J.W.K. Harris. David Braun. Francesco Berna. Craig Feibel.

Identifying the control and use of fire in domestic spaces in the Early Pleistocene is contentious, due to the lack of physical evidence preserved in the record. The ephemeral nature of fires results in a sparse archaeological record. Further, the evidence for fire may degrade quickly depending on the depositional context of the burial environment. The potential for identifying fire in the early Pleistocene archaeological record, where accepted hearth features are unknown, relies heavily on...