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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisa Mencos.

This paper is about the iconographic analysis of the stucco decoration that is part of the exterior facade of the Joint Trees, which shares certain characteristics with the structure of the site called El Diablo at El Zotz, Guatemala Petén, which is dated to the Early Classic. Likewise Structure 10L-26, whose different layers constitute constructive states within buildings housing royal tombs, shared with El Conjunto Los Árboles iconography and preservation technique by prehispanic Maya. To...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Poston.

Architecture shapes the subjective experience of those living in it as well as those simply interacting with it. The Maya continuously changed their environments to fit their needs and desires, thus these spaces mirror their everyday practices. This paper compares the overall architectural arrangement of Xultun to other Classic Period Lowland Maya urban centers, such as Tikal and Palenque, to determine how the reciprocal relationship between urban populations and their built environments reflect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

As both space and material are used to create interpretations or infer ancient ritual meanings concerning the Late Classic Maya, the consideration of caves and ceramic figurines provide interesting comparators as they evoke restrictions of intent and imagery within a regional setting. Opportunistic sampling of figurines from cave contexts for compositional analysis has resulted in chemically-based patterns from which one can glimpse directional patterns of movement from resource area to recovery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Clarke.

This paper reviews the scholarship regarding Mesoamerican sweatbaths and their role in performance, specifically choreographing locations for transformation and sympathetic transition in supernatural space. The recently discovered sweatbath at the site of Xultun in Guatemala, known as Los Sapos, will be inserted into this dialogue in conjunction with that regarding plazas and Maya theatricality more broadly. After both contextualizing Los Sapos and presenting interpretations regarding its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Daniels. Paul Goldstein.

Portable X-ray Florescence (pXRF)was used to analyze the chemical composition of 60 Tiwanaku and derived style ceramic sherds from different locations in the south central Andes. The results indicate that there are four distinct geochemical groups and that the local Cabuza style pottery from survey collections in the Azapa Valley in Chile has a distinct chemical composition from all other Tiwanaku tradition ceramics. The results also indicate that pXRF is a viable technique for distinguishing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Zovar.

There is often a discontinuity between studies of ‘collapse’ and studies of post-collapse periods. This can lead to the periods following collapse being defined by a "lack" of what came before. In the southern Titicaca basin, for example, the period following the collapse of the Tiwanaku state has been defined by a lack of monumental construction, raised fields, large-scale feasting events, or Tiwanaku-style iconography. Nevertheless, recent explorations have demonstrated that while "collapse"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Anderson.

This paper presents evidence from the Central Valley of Cochabamba, a key peripheral region of the Tiwanaku state. It addresses Tiwanaku expansion, state collapse and post-Tiwanaku transformation and continuity using data from ceramic styles and other material culture traditions. Also presented are new radio-carbon dates from the Central Valley site of Piñami covering Tiwanaku expansion and collapse and how these dates fit into the larger regional context and suggest that Tiwanaku influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Goldstein.

The Middle Moquegua Valley was home to between 10,000 and 20,000 Tiwanaku colonists during the Tiwanaku IV and V periods. This paper examines what became of these populations in Tiwanaku’s postcolonial period. Three decades ago, the name "Tiwanaku VI" was briefly proposed to describe Moquegua’s diverse "post-expansive" ceramic styles. Subsequent full coverage survey in the and excavations in the middle valley indicate that after Tiwanaku V settlements, temple, and cemeteries were largely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Villanueva.

Esta ponencia se centra en las poblaciones del Tiwanaku Terminal – Intermedio Tardío Temprano (ap. 900 – 1200 d.C.) en la región de Cohoni, en los valles orientales del río La Paz, en Bolivia. Se resumen los antecedentes investigativos de la región, y especialmente las excavaciones realizadas por nosotros en contextos habitacionales del sitio de Chullpa Loma, uno de los más grandes y complejos de Cohoni. Consideramos datos sobre la arquitectura habitacional y funeraria del sitio, así como los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sitek. Sarah Baitzel. Kathleen Huggins. Paul Goldstein.

The Tiwanaku colonies in Moquegua, Peru represent some of the best preserved archaeological remains left by this south central Andean polity. This has led to a detailed understanding of daily life and ceremonial practices of these Tiwanaku colonists. However, our understanding of how these lifestyles and practices were transformed during and after the disintegration the highland core is still relatively limited. This paper will take a site-specific approach to explore this enigmatic period of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicola Sharratt.

In the Moquegua Valley, Peru, the decline of the greater Tiwanaku system circa AD 1000 was accompanied by a shift to a more dispersed settlement pattern, as populations moved out of the large towns of the middle valley and established smaller sites on the coast and in the upper valley. In this paper I focus on the upper valley, where the longevity of occupation at post-expansive sites and the presence of secondary occupations offer an opportunity to examine the centuries’ long trajectory of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Augusto Cardona. María Cecilia Lozada. Hans Barnard.

Although Tiwanaku expansion outside the Titicaca Basin has been documented extensively in southern Peru, specifically in Moquegua, the influence and/or presence of this highland state in the Arequipa region is not well known. In this paper, we evaluate work in Arequipa over the past 15 years regarding Tiwanaku in light of our work in the Vitor valley about 40 km from the city of Arequipa as part of the Vitor Archaeological Project. In Arequipa, we have identified relatively small Tiwanaku...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antti Korpisaari.

Although the timing of the Tiwanaku collapse is debated and probably varied somewhat from one region to another, this process probably took place in the 10th and 11th centuries AD. In 1998-2006, I worked at two Tiwanaku heartland sites which produced long series of radiocarbon dates corresponding to this critical period. At the cemetery site of Tiraska, ceramic grave goods in a style closely resembling Tiwanaku V were present from the early 10th until the mid-13th century AD. On the island of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Owen.

Some refugees from the collapsing Tiwanaku province in Moquegua settled in the coastal Osmore valley, where they appear to have integrated peacefully with the Chiribaya population, living in seemingly undefended settlements closely intermixed with their ethnically distinct neighbors. Others moved into the upper valleys of the Osmore drainage, where they apparently experienced a competitive, fearful social environment, living on defensible high points, some with vestiges of what may have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Uribe.

A partir de nuestros estudios de la cerámica de Arica en la década de 1990, propusimos la existencia de dos tradiciones de producción local que se desarrollaron a lo largo del período Medio, en mayor o menor grado, por el impacto de Tiwanaku en los Valles Occidentales. En aquella oportunidad, definimos una Tradición Altiplánica tecnológica, estilística y contextualmente integrada a Tiwanaku, por lo que llegó a desaparecer junto con esa entidad. En gran medida paralela, aunque un poco más tardía,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Friedel. Sonia Alconini. Maria Bruno.

In the Tiwanaku era, the Kallawaya territory was part of a web of an inter-ecologic exchange networks that provided altiplanic polities with a myriad of resources flowing from the valleys and tropical Yunga mountains. In this context, Tiwanaku centers were important places of exchange, storage, and ritual celebrations. By looking at the botanical remains, this paper will explore the changes in feasting and consumption patterns, and the ways in which various resources were utilized in funerary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Russo.

Archaeologists have used metal probes for centuries, and, more recently, their digitized descendant, the penetrometer, to locate artifacts and features that yield greater resistance in the soil. Most recently, geological miners and agricultural technologists have added additional instrumentality to the penetrometer to measure both resistance and friction. To determine if archeological soils and other midden features could be distinguished using a penetrometer employing both resistance and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marvin Rowe. Eric Blinman. Jeffrey Cox. John Martin. Mark MacKenzie.

A decade ago, with partial funding from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, marvin Rowe and his students at TexasA&M University developed a cold plasma oxidation method for"nondestructive" radiocarbon sampling of organic materials. This sampling approach is applied to the whole artifact, is carried out under vacuum, plasma temperatures can be maintained below 100C, only organic carbon is oxidized (carbonate and oxalate are not sampled), and sampling leaves the artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kvamme.

Before the turn of the millennium there were few practitioners of geophysical prospecting in American archaeology. In this relative vacuum NCPTT came into being at the right time, situated to support and promote these methods for site exploration, documentation and, in effect, preservation of site structural information because vast areas of the subsurface and its archeological content could finally be mapped. In the late 1990s NCPTT was an early supporter of research into the integration or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daria Merwin. Roger Flood.

Remote sensing technologies have long played an important role in underwater archaeological survey, and among the most recent (and increasingly used) additions to the toolkit is multibeam swath bathymetry, which operates by transmitting sound beams perpendicular to a research vessel's track and then processing the returned sonar data to produce a three-dimensional image of the sea floor. Multibeam survey can be particularly useful in water bodies where conditions are not conducive to other forms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tommy Hailey.

After considering a number of alternatives for acquiring aerial images, in 2002 the Cultural Resource Office at Northwestern State University of Louisiana received a National Center for Technology and Training Research Grant to assess the suitability of the powered parachute as an archaeological aerial reconnaissance vehicle for site discovery, for detailed site investigation, and for cultural landscape studies. Since that time, this unique aerial platform has been successfully employed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tad Britt. Lindsey Cochran.

Predictive Modeling of Archeological Sites in Death Valley National Park Lindsey Cochran and Tad Britt. Archeologists have long worked to develop predictive modeling tools, techniques, and methods, as it is well known that human habitation locations are patterned and often align with environmental constraints. The National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) and the National Park Service (NPS) have developed methods to move a database with over 2,000 archaeological sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Peacock.

Shell artifacts and shell-tempered ceramics can be chemically sourced to point of origin because shellfish are in approximate chemical equilibrium with the waterways they inhabit. Analyzing artifacts or shell temper via Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry is attractive due to the minimally destructive nature of the method. A pilot study in Mississippi funded by the NCPTT verified the potential of the method for sourcing shell-tempered pottery. Subsequent work includes the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rinita Dalan.

A 1997 NCPTT grant to develop a prototype down-hole magnetic susceptibility instrument arose out of frustration with existing technology and a desire to expand archeological field studies of magnetic susceptibility. This instrument allowed high-resolution vertical investigations of susceptibility within a small diameter (ca. 2.5 cm) hole made with a push-tube corer. An NSF grant supported improvement of the prototype via robust laboratory and field testing, resulting in a final engineered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chandra Reedy.

In 2002, our laboratory received a grant from NCPTT to research digital image analysis of petrographic thin sections. Two years previously we published our first paper on the application of image analysis to thin-section studies; the enormous potential of this line of research was apparent, but to fully pursue it would require a period of dedicated time and effort. The NCPTT grant gave us this time, and allowed us to purchase new software packages and upgrade our computer and microscope digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joe Artz. William Whittaker. Emilia Bristow.

Between 2009 and 2012, researchers at the the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) conducted a number of pilot studies in the application of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to find and map prehistoric burial mounds. Studies were conducted in Iowa and Minnesota, two states that have invested in high quality, statewide LiDAR data. These studies began with the master's thesis research of OSA GIS specialist, Melanie Riley, and included the NCPTT-funded development...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt Dongoske.

The Arizona Archaeological Council received funding from the NCPTT during its inaugural granting cycle to conduct a two day training workshop between Native Americans and archaeologists. The goal of the workshop was to promote a productive dialogue between Native Americans, Federal agency archaeologists, academic archaeologists, and archaeologists from the contracting community. Three issues were the focus of that workshop: consultation, oral tradition and archaeological interpretation, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Allan.

The unprecedented growth of San Francisco during the California Gold-rush was fueled in part by the ingenuity and ambitions of entrepreneurs who recognized and exploited economic opportunities unrelated to the activities in the gold fields. This paper will discuss several maritime enterprises whose remains have been discovered and documented during archaeological investigations William Self Associates has conducted along and within the former confines of early San Francisco’s Yerba Buena...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Skowronek. Ronald Bishop.

In the late eighteenth century Spain occupied the San Francisco Bay Area and rapidly transformed the region through the introduction of agriculture, animal husbandry, Roman Catholicism, the Spanish language and the use of pottery. This presentation focuses on the latter, and considers the questions surrounding local manufacture, importation, and exchange of ceramics among the missions, presidio and pueblos of the San Francisco Presidio Jurisdiction. Through the application of instrumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Jones.

Archaeological research at El Polín Spring in the Presidio of San Francisco illuminates the early history of the city before San Francisco and Yerba Buena. Initial historic research and archaeological excavation at El Polín revealed what was interpreted to be the home and associated refuse midden of two intermarried colonial families. This is the first known Spanish-colonial occupation outside the walls of El Presidio de San Francisco, dating to sometime after 1812. More recent excavation at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Vanderslice. Randall Dean.

The San Francisco Planning Department archaeological staff reviews hundreds of projects for archaeological sensitivity each year as part of the California Environmental Quality Act review process. To aid this review, the Department has begun a long-term GIS project creating thematic maps and related datasets to inform archeological site identification, to determine interrelationships between archeological sites and historical land uses, and to direct research designs. Over the last 8 years the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randall Dean.

It is very probably the case that more archeology is done in San Francisco than in any other major city in the U.S. Yet this archeological work is done without the benefit of any archeological ordinance or adopted archeological guidance but rather through the City’s implementation of State environmental laws. To overcome the vagueness and generality of these regulations, the City Planning Planning Department has initiated an Archeological District Project (ADP), with the aim of creating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Ballard. Elena Reese.

During the mid to late 19th Century, Hayes Valley was a San Francisco neighborhood transitioning from working to middle class. Residents included European immigrants and transplants from other parts of the US. Many families rented the single and multifamily residences that lined the streets. In 2013, Pacific Legacy, Inc. conducted testing and archaeological monitoring excavations for the construction of a multistory building on Grove Street in the Hayes Valley. These investigations unearthed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schlagheck. Dave Casebolt. Eloise Warren.

In 2013, WSA recovered a well-preserved Gold Rush Era lighter from the original shore of Yerba Buena Cove. This class of boat, used to load and unload ships where there is no adequate harbor, was used extensively in San Francisco prior to the completion of sufficient deep-water wharfs in the 1860s. This paper contextualizes the use of lighters in frontier San Francisco and presents new insights into the construction of the recovered lighter gained from the creation of a 1:12 scale model. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nazih Fino.

This article demonstrates how to build historical data sets from the 1800-1900 San Francisco census/city directories, using GIS model to enhance the meaning of the census data and add a micro-depth, and to enable researchers to depict and analyze the spatial pattern of their study. The raw data of the census/city directories is organized according to addresses (parcels). The historic census GIS model integrates the city parcels to the census/city directories to spatially process and map the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Cross.

The historic south access road to the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, was known as Doyle Drive. It was identified as structurally and seismically deficient in the early 2000's and construction on its replacement began in 2009 by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). The Doyle Drive Project was unique in that it spanned the Presidio of San Francisco, a National Historical Landmark District, and that it involved several agency landholdings and stakeholders including the Presidio...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Gavette. Leo Barker.

The United States Army reactivated Point San Jose, a military base established by Spanish in 1776, during the Civil War to protect the San Francisco Bay from Confederate threats. In 2010, the Nation Park Service undertook rehabilitation of several historic buildings dating back to the late nineteenth century. This paper examines a significant feature discovered during the refurbishment of the army hospital that was active from 1863 to 1903. Archaeological monitors discovered an ossuary pit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Praetzellis. Mary Praetzellis.

Archaeological collections from San Francisco’s South-of-Market area speak to the lives of 19th century Jews. We take the position that archaeology can help us understand the effects of the haskalah (the Jewish "enlightenment") on European immigrants’ efforts to divest themselves of their sociological ambivalence. In this way, archaeology can help illuminate one of the most enduring and controversial issues in contemporary Jewish studies: the relationship between identity and religious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Delgado.

Archaeological research conducted in the former, now land-filled Gold Rush waterfront of San Francisco has defined a rapidly developed port infrastructure and substantial remains of discarded material culture that comprises a several block wide and deep macro-site. Buried ships, collapsed buildings, pilings from wharves and piers, and discarded cargoes buried by urban expansion and the filling of the are have emerged periodically due to redevelopment since 1907 and discoveries continue well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Walker. Whitney McClellan.

In its work in the neighborhoods in the South of Market area of San Francisco the Anthropological Studies Center of Sonoma State University acquired a database of 14 assemblages from households associated with the maritime sector of San Francisco’s economy. Because of this sector’s centrality within the city’s economy, maritime workers are a dominant element in social and labor histories of the city. They are not, however, so visible in the archaeological record. In this paper, we present recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Bulger.

Popular images of the maritime industry in places like San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Cove often focus on men — whether working on docks or ships, or on land at iron works and carpenter’s shops. Less visible in the historical record of these spaces are the women and children also living, and often working, along the waterfront. Historical research on the neighborhood that bordered Yerba Buena Cove in the late-19th-century suggests that most residences were occupied by families, rather than by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Lentz.

During the second half of the nineteenth century thousands of travelers embarked on voyages aboard steamships headed for San Francisco that could last weeks or months. In the past decade, William Self Associates has conducted multiple excavations within the vicinity of the original coastline of Yerba Buena Cove that have yielded an abundance of artifacts. This paper focuses on dinnerware pieces employed for meals aboard vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that were recovered from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Watts.

Owing to a plethora of recent and ever more divergent scholarship on materiality, the lens through which we view the ontological status of things has become increasingly opaque. New thinking about the ways in which materials are always and already in flux compels us to consider how seemingly obdurate things can, paradoxically, transcend their own solidity. To this we may add a budding concern with the immaterial – regimes of light and sound, for example, and their mutability – and the extent to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Bauer.

Archaeologists have long documented how humans have historically responded to climate changes. With broad scholarly debate over the adoption of the "Anthropocene" to describe the current period of Earth history, they are also contributing to evaluations of how land-use practices historically influenced Earth's climate, arguably since at least the mid-Holocene. While archaeological approaches to past climate changes have much to contribute to the Anthropocene debate, they often uncritically leave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Arjona.

This paper examines late nineteenth and early twentieth century jook joints as sites that generated queer African-American intimacies and animacies. Emerging in the 1880s throughout much of the rural United States, jook joints crafted a performatively queer medium within African-American communities. Particularly in the rural south, these jooks offered a haven for black music, dance, gambling, prostitution, and alcohol consumption that disoriented expectations of temperance and frugality. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Johnson. Arlen Chase. Diane Chase.

This paper considers how people and things come together in a ritual setting and attempts to break down the division between the human participants and the materials engaged. Using contemporary perspectives surrounding post-Marxian materialism, it is argued that archaeology has the means to explore the ways in which materials exhibit their active nature in particular contexts. With this in mind, this study will reassess small bar-shaped limestone artifacts that have been recovered from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi.

The colonial Maya community of San Pedro Aguacatepeque, located in Pacific piedmont Guatemala, sits on the eastern flank of the Volcan de Fuego, a long-active stratovolcano. The interventions of new materialist approaches, in particular Bennett’s notion of the "vibrancy" and influence of nonhumans in the unfolding of history, are brought into relief when considering the abundant historical entanglements between the Volcan de Fuego and Aguacatepeque. The regular flows and bursts emanating from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noa Corcoran-Tadd.

Several theorists under the broad umbrella of a new materialism have argued that our accounts of the social-natural world proceed too quickly, skating over rich complexities and contradictions in favor of simple ontological impressions. In response, they suggest, we need to slow down our analytical movements in order to track the complex articulations of a world that becomes difficult to resolve at higher speeds. Here I argue that this issue is particularly relevant for archaeologists for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan De Vynck. Kim Hill. Robert Anderson. Richard Cowling. Curtis Marean.

The south coast of South Africa has the oldest and best studied evidence for early use of coastal resources, and various researchers have argued that coastal resource use was significant for cognition, social complexity, and the maintenance of population refugia. To date there has been little consensus on the foraging returns and sustainability for inter-tidal resources in this coastal environment. Here we present the first net return and regeneration rate estimates for inter-tidal foraging in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Sealy. Navashni Naidoo. Julia Lee-Thorp. Emma Loftus. Tyler Faith.

The Pleistocene palaeoclimates and palaeoenvironments of southernmost Africa are important in both global climate studies and studies of human evolution, but remain poorly documented through time and space. In order to contribute to this project, we have analysed δ13C and δ18O in approximately 350 samples of faunal tooth enamel from Boomplaas Cave and Nelson Bay Cave, in the southern Cape, South Africa. The Boomplaas samples span the last ca. 70 kya, and show fluctuations in δ13C indicating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alastair Potts. Richard Cowling. Simon Scheiter. Steven Higgins. Janet Franklin.

The Cape has a rich archaeological record that spans the Quaternary. Understanding shifts and changes of vegetation across this landscape will help to contextualise this record and understand the prehistoric resource paleoscape. In order to do this we couple high-resolution regionally downscaled climate simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum, landscape features (e.g. geology, aspect, slope) and two different approaches to modelling vegetation: species distribution modelling (SDM) and dynamic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hayley Cawthra. John Compton. Erich Fisher. Zenobia Jacobs. Curtis Marean.

This work was undertaken to understand the evolution of the terrestrial landscape now submerged by high sea levels offshore of Mossel Bay. Two marine geophysical surveys and scuba diving were used to examine evidence of past sea-level fluctuations and interpret seafloor geological deposits. Eight seismic sequences characterise the shelf, extending from the Mid-Cretaceous to the Holocene time. Geological mapping dating by Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) revealed that the most prominent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerstin Braun. Miryam Bar-Matthews. Curtis Marean. Alan Matthews. Rainer Zahn.

South African climate is determined by the alternating influence of subtropical trade-winds bringing rainfall to the east coast during summer and temperate westerlies causing rainfall in the south-west during winter. High growth season temperatures favor C4 grasses in the summer rainfall region whereas C3 grasses dominate the winter rainfall region. Pinnacle Point on the central south coast has mixed summer-winter rainfall and C3-C4 vegetation. Millennial and longer time-scale changes in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Lee-Thorp. Kirsty Penkman. Curtis Marean.

Even when interior regions experienced depopulation during the last glacial, the Southern Cape apparently remained attractive to Middle Stone hunter-gatherers for millennia. The region’s year-round rainfall and generally mesic conditions may have contributed to its attractiveness. Although seasonality and vegetation shifts have been observed in the nearby Crevice Cave stalagmite isotope record, indications for possible shifts in aridity are few. We apply oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa-Maria Albert. Irene Esteban. Curtis Marean.

Climatic conditions played a key role in the evolution of modern human linage and South Africa has been considered, based on genetics and fossil evidence, a suitable area. South Africa hosts the smallest of all-known biomes (Fynbos), characterized by hyper diversity with high species richness and large presence of edible plants. We present the phytolith record from the archaeological sites Pinnacle Point caves 13B and 5/6 spanning from ∼160 to ∼50 ka. This study aims at reconstructing the past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leesha Richardson.

Marine bird remains are common in late Holocene coastal sites in South Africa. The Pinnacle Point Shell Midden Complex (PPSMC) is such a site. Marine bird remains from the PPSMC were studied to better understand their role in the foraging and mobility patterns of late Holocene stone age people on the Mossel Bay coast. The PPSMC has four separate excavation areas and marine bird remains are present and were studied in each. Microscopic analyses for signs of surface modification proved to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloe Atwater. Jan de Vynck. Alastair Potts. Jayne Wilkins. Kim Hill.

Wood is an essential resource for hunter-gatherers. It is necessary for cooking fuel, heat, and potentially safety, and hence influences site location choice and group size. Due to a low diversity and abundance of trees, wood may have been a limited resource for early humans in the Cape Floral Region (CFR) of South Africa. Drawing from behavior ecology foraging models, experiments with modern wood foragers were conducted to test this hypothesis. Foragers were observed collecting indigenous wood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Hill. Marco Janssen. Eric Fisher. Curtis Marean.

We show using detailed environmental and behavioral data from the Ache of Paraguay that agent based modeling can simulate correctly many aspects of human foraging behavior. We then show how this modeling technique can be used on projected paleolandscapes in the Cape Coastal Region between Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point to predict diet, movement patterns, group size, population density, and other aspects of the behavioral ecology of human foragers in the region. SAA 2015 abstracts made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Smith. Amber Ciravolo. Minghua Ren. Panagiotis Karkanas. Curtis Marean.

Cryptotephra was identified in a sediment stack at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa, and occur as small glass shards (less than 100 µm in size). Shards are found in sediment from the Shelly Ashy Dark Brown Sand (SADBS) and the Ashy Light Brown Sand (ALBS) layers with weighted mean OSL dates of 70.6 ± 2.3 and 71.1 ± 2.3 ka respectively. The shards are intimately mixed with sediment and are rare. A preliminary shard distribution profile shows that shards are distributed continuously through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandi Copeland. Hayley Cawthra. Richard Cowling. Julia Lee-Thorp. Petrus LeRoux.

In contrast to Holocene sites, late Pleistocene sites along the South African south coast are dominated by large and medium-sized ungulates, many of which are typical of open-habitat grasslands and migration ecosystems. During much of the late Pleistocene, sea levels were substantially lower, exposing the Paleo-Agulhas Plain up to 100 km south of the modern coastline. The Migration Ecosystem hypothesis proposes that the Paleo-Agulhas Plain supported a migration ecosystem driven by summer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elzanne Singels. Karen Esler. Richard Cowling. Alastair Potts. Jan de Vynck.

Underground storage organs (USOs) serve as a staple source of carbohydrates for many hunter-gatherer societies. While the way of life of hunter-gatherers in South Africa’s Cape is no longer in existence, there is extensive historical and archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherers’ use of such plants as foodstuffs. This is to be expected, given that the Cape supports the largest concentration of plants with USOs globally. To meet the goals of the Paleoscape project, the importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hope Williams. Curtis Marean. Thalassa Matthews. Andy I.R. Herries.

Paleoenvironmental proxies sample past environments at a number of geographic scales including regional, sub-regional, and local. Given species’ small home ranges and often-specific habitat requirements, isotopic data from micromammal fossil teeth are increasingly recognized as abundant potential reservoirs of local-scale paleoenvironmental proxy data. Elucidating differences between local and regional vegetation provides a context for understanding landscape-scale environmental variation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Pagels.

This paper examines the possibility of using the narrative form to expand the ways by which the archaeological record can be interpreted. Narrative archaeology has become a prominent mode of academic communication within the discipline. The acceptance of this stylistic format creates a space where narrations alienating effect can be used as a tool so to better understand the alienation colonial encounters produce in the past. This is not to say that all standard manner of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Gonzalez.

North-American ethnic archaeologies abound. The last several decades have seen the emergence of African-American and Asian-American archaeologies alongside the initiation of efforts to decolonize the archaeology of Native America. Considering the proliferation of ethnic and revisionist archaeologies, the current absence of any archaeology of Latinos in the historical and contemporary United States is a striking thing. Why has no such field yet been developed? How might such a field come to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra McCleary.

An increasing number of archaeologists are arguing against the separation of ritual and religion as separate fields of study, favoring pragmatic combinations of theoretical criteria to advance more holistic understandings of the theory and practice of religion. Advancements in the archaeological study of religion have been spearheaded by archaeologists of ancient and pre-historic societies. In this paper, I will outline the potential contributions of historical archaeology to anthropological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naphtalie Jeanty.

The historic archaeology of US cavalry forts in the 19th century allows for exploration of a wide range of social issues and historical questions. Using examples from Fort Davis, Texas, this study analyzes Buffalo Soldier troops stationed there from 1867-1891. It presents results of an investigation of male identified homosociality within black communities by tracing male relationships within 19th century gendered labor spaces. A queer perspective allows this research to focus on the bonds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Lowman.

Close examination of Ainu objects in American museums reveals patterns of use-wear, re-use, and intentional marking. These marks draw attention to the life of the object, an avenue of research when depositional data or documents are absent. In colonial contexts, modification as a form of individual or cultural ownership can be used to oppose assumptions of assimilation by revealing ways materials were appropriated or were part of cultural hybridization. Ainu artifacts drawn from multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah Grant.

This paper explores the ways that Queer Theory can be used in the archaeological study of foodways using materials from Fort Davis, Texas. At this nineteenth century military outpost, a racially, ethnically and economically diverse community sidestepped normative notions of foodstuffs. By engaging a queer framework, this research investigates how consumption practices on the American frontier were less regulated and more fluid than previously interpreted. Fort Davis’ foodways - including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrina Eichner.

This paper investigates how racial identity impacted the creation and maintenance of an American frontier and border community using an assemblage from a 19th century American Army encampment from Fort Davis, Texas as a case study. By engaging a queer theoretical framework, this research focuses on how Black, Mexican, and immigrant bodies challenged ideals of normative White citizenship during a period of great social upheaval and racial tension. With thousands of European immigrants and newly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Riggs. Andrew Reagan. Matt Riggs.

Through the growth and development of satellite imagery and panoramic street photography championed by Google Earth, a mass archive of accessible imagery has been created documenting intimate material worlds frozen in space and time. Utilizing these newly available forms of public data, our team (built of one historical archaeologist, one GIS technician, and one statistician) conducted a virtual pedestrian survey of 1000 randomly selected home fronts in Oakland, California, implementing a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Georgia Fox.

Plantation archaeology in the Caribbean region has been grappling with the complexities of plantation life through studying asymmetrical power relationships, spatial organization, and other important avenues of research. As there is no one "size fits all," this provides an opportunity to explore new approaches and methodologies in plantation research. For my presentation, I propose that Betty’s Hope—a 300-year-old sugar estate located on the island of Antigua—serves as a laboratory to test new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Rodriguez.

Microscale geoarchaeology, specifically soil micromorphology, has incredible potential for enriching archaeological understandings of the materiality of past experience through detailed information on the events, actions, and processes which create archaeological sites. Soil micromorphological analysis can parallel the strict time scales available through historic documentation with material evidence of specific human, non-human, and natural events. This paper shows how micromorphological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jocelyn Bernatchez. James McGrath.

In recent years, southern Africa has figured prominently in the modern human origins debate due to increasing evidence for precocious behaviors considered to be unique to our species. These significant findings have included bone tools, shell beads, engraved ostrich eggshell, and heavily ground and engraved ochre fragments. The presence of ochre in Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~250-40kya) archaeological sites in southern Africa is often proposed as indirect evidence for the emergence of symbolic or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Hodgkins.

The archaeological assemblage and long stratigraphic sequence at the site of Pinnacle Point 5-6 in Western Cape, South Africa affords the opportunity to explore temporal (and possibly environmentally-mediated) changes in human behavioral regimes in the late Pleistocene. Here, examination of butchering intensity is used as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that humans would have intensified the processing of terrestrial prey in times of cooler, dryer climates, when sea levels were low and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson. Jordan Towers. Christopher Henshilwood.

Tortoises are one of the most common faunal components at many Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites on the southern coast of South Africa. They provide protein, fat, and other ‘animal’ resources in a ‘collectable’ package, which gives rare insight into the collected component of MSA diet. At most MSA sites, tortoise assemblages are dominated by Chersina angulata, a medium-sized tortoise with sufficient calories to provide approximately 20 – 30% of the daily energetic requirements for an active adult...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Panagiotis Karkanas.

Using simultaneously fine and coarse resolution sedimentary studies of the deposits of the MSA site of PP5-6 at Pinnacle Point, Mossel Bay, South Africa, it was able to reveal different patterns of anthropogenic input and behavior and how these changed through time. Through the microfacies approach using micromorphology it was documented that the PP5-6 sequence shows occupations characterized by small groups and short visits during MIS5. This part of the sediments is dominated by numerous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Schoville. Kyle Brown. Jayne Wilkins.

Much of our understanding of the South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) comes from deep sequences recovered from caves and rockshelters. These discreet, enclosed contexts represent one aspect of a foraging continuum; where many other activities take place on the continuous, open landscape. A different suite of taphonomic processes are also more likely to occur on open landscapes, complicating comparisons between site contexts. Developing meaningful inferences regarding past human behaviors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayne Wilkins. Kyle S. Brown. Simen Oestmo. Telmo Pereira. Kathryn L. Ranhorn.

The Pinnacle Point sites on the south coast of South Africa preserve a long, high-resolution sequence of human occupation spanning 162-51 ka. The lithic assemblages provide a unique opportunity for examining Pleistocene technological change because they are linked to robust age estimates and multiple proxies for paleoenvironmental change. Recent lithic technological investigations aim to standardize analytical procedures across the complex of Pinnacle Point sites, and maximize comparability to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Shelton.

The Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage at the Pinnacle Point site (Western Cape, South Africa) fluctuates between local, coarse-grained material and exotic, fine-grained, heat treated material throughout the human occupation layers. By understanding raw material choice, the first step in the chaîne opératoire, we can better understand these shifts in raw material representation. Quantifying the mechanical characteristics associated with knapability and comparing these ranked benefits to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsty Penkman. Molly Crisp. Beatrice Demarchi. Matthew Collins. Julia Lee-Thorp.

Chronology underpins our understanding of the past, but beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating (~50 ka), sites become more difficult to date. Amino acid geochronology, which uses the time-dependent breakdown of proteins in biominerals, has the potential to date the whole of the Quaternary. Ostrich eggshell (OES) is often associated with archaeological sites in Africa, as early humans utilised them as a food source, water carriers and for artistic purposes. OES’s calcitic structure potentially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zenobia Jacobs.

Single grain optically stimulated luminescence (SG-OSL) dating has made a major contribution to our understanding of the chronology of the Middle Stone Age of Africa. The accuracy of many of the SG-OSL chronologies has been verified by other independent dating techniques. Diepkloof Rockshelter (DRS), however, has produced disparate chronologies that have resulted in a dating controversy. Criticisms raised have been used to cast doubt on and, in some cases, dismiss the chronology for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James McGrath.

Surveys identified a series of Holocene Later Stone Age shell middens along the westernmost extent of the Pinnacle Point estate near Mossel Bay, Western Cape, South Africa. Excavations during 2006 and 2007 revealed a well-preserved record of human activity ranging from 3000 ± 75 BP to 890 ± 30 BP across six spatially and temporally distinct shell middens. Dubbed Areas 1 - 4 of the Pinnacle Point Shell Midden Complex (PPSMC), each midden presents a picture of human subsistence patterns that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hallett-Desguez. Curtis Marean.

Our lineage evolved in Africa when the earth was in the MIS 6 glacial phase, ~190 thousand years ago (kya). At the continent scale, it has been demonstrated that Africa became arid during glacial phases. However, Mediterranean climates within Africa offered humid refugia during past glacial phases. There are two regions within Africa that are characterized by Mediterranean climate: the Cape Floral Region (CFR) of South Africa and the Maghreb of northwest Africa. These two regions also have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Armstrong.

Our capacity to detect the utilization of small prey resources by MSA humans can help shed light on subsistence strategies, cognition, and social organization during this critical period in human evolution. Recent analyses of South African MSA faunas suggest an expansion of dietary breadth after ~100 ka with the increase in the exploitation of small mammals (<5 kg) during MIS 4, but until now there has been little taphonomic evidence to support these conclusions. I present the results of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erich Fisher. Hayley Cawthra. Justin Pargeter. Jan Venter.

South African sea caves preserve evidence for early modern humans’ longstanding interest in coastal resources. However, changes in coastlines location throughout the Pleistocene prevented the development of long-term and continuous records of coastal foraging and there are still many outstanding questions about when, where, and how coastal foraging developed. Pondoland (Eastern Cape Province) is one of the few places where we may be able to fill in these gaps. An exceptionally narrow...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Brown.

South African Middle Stone Age tool makers were skilled at the production of fine, symmetric points and blades on quartzite, a material that is known for its toughness and durability but not for its ease of flaking. The accurate replication of MSA tools on quartzite proved to be almost impossible during a replication and experimentation program that spanned over ten years. Heat treatment was the ‘trick’ that unlocked the potential of silcrete and it became clear that there must also be a trick...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simen Oestmo. Benjamin Schoville. Jayne Wilkins. Curtis Marean.

MSA caves/rock shelters can provide long sequences of early human residential activities in circumscribed contexts, but most resource procurement activities occurred on the landscape in uncircumscribed space. We have a limited understanding of these resource procurement activities at present, making studies of open-air sites crucial. To alleviate this bias, we report on a series of MSA open-air assemblages that are exposed on ancient land surfaces suggestive of intact paleosols at Vleesbaai and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Dixon.

The exceptional preservation of the Classic Maya community of Cerén, El Salvador has afforded the opportunity to examine how one group of people constructed their built environment. The remarkably well- preserved site (public and domestic structures, earthen sacbe (road), agricultural fields, plant casts, and artifacts) greatly aids in our understanding of small-scale socio-political organization. This paper draws on data collected during the 2013 field season as well as earlier research. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb. Scott R. Hutson.

Long-standing research at sites like Cerén exemplifies the increased interest in rural households and settlements and the shift away from the elite-centric nature of many earlier projects in Maya archaeology. Our expanding knowledge of ancient Maya hinterlands has allowed us to consider the heterogeneity that these smaller settlements displayed and revise our western binary perspective of "urban versus rural". Recent investigations by members of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nan Gonlin.

The site of Cerén, El Salvador holds a unique place for Mesoamericanists conducting household archaeology. Its extraordinary preservation fuels the imagination like few other sites can. The fragile nature of this archaeological site requires hyper-alertness, combined with methods for properly extracting and preserving information. The material remains of this deep under-earth site come to light with only the most intensive of excavation methods, many of which are unlike those commonly used at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Venicia Slotten. David Lentz.

Paleoethnobotanical research conducted during the 2013 field season at Joya de Cerén in El Salvador focused on the analysis of plant remains found on the surface and associated features of an ancient Maya sacbe (causeway) that were well protected beneath tephra deposited by the volcanic eruption of Loma Caldera around AD 660. Plant remains were retrieved from the sacbe surface, adjacent drainage canals, and agricultural fields on either side of the sacbe. Because the plant remains found in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Lentz. Venicia Slotten.

Archaeological investigations at Cerén, a Classic period Maya site in western El Salvador, have unearthed an abundance of carbonized bean remains, both Phaseolus vulgaris and P. lunatus. Surprisingly, the Cerén P. vulgaris bean remains were derived from both wild and domesticated populations. This find reveals that the Late Classic inhabitants continued to draw upon wild food sources even though they had clear access, as seen in the Cerén paleoethnobotanical record, to a full array of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandria Halmbacher.

Around A.D. 650 the Loma Caldera eruption entombed the Classic Period Maya village of Cerén in 4-6 meters of volcanic ash. This resulted in the exceptional preservation of structures, artifacts and botanical remains, providing archaeologists with a unique opportunity to study the household complexes and their related activities. However, much of the previous research concerning the households at Cerén has primarily focused on its economic activities. As a result, archaeologists have yet to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Egan. Payson Sheets.

Built upon a fine white volcanic tephra from the eruption of the Ilopango caldera and buried under tephra from an eruption of Loma Caldera, the Maya village of Ceren affords a unique opportunity to explore geostratigraphy, volcanology, and chronology in relation to vulnerability and resilience. The sheer volume and scale of the eruption of Ilopango caldera, known as Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ), would have had decimated not only the Zapotitán valley in which Ceren is located, but also all of El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Research on ancient Maya agriculture has historically been focused on seed crop cultivation, but the recent discovery of a Classic period manioc field near the site of Ceren, El Salvador has shed new light on the possibility of intensive root crop cultivation by the ancient Maya. Another root crop, however, Xanthosoma violaceum (colloquially known as "malanga"), was also encountered in a household garden. Through the use of multiple lines of evidence, I have compiled a summation of malanga’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson.

This paper examines the foundational cultural infrastructure provided by seemingly quotidian objects in Classic Maya (ca. AD 250-900) contexts. These materials (things like ceramic vessels, stone benches, and mirrors) carry out prosaic tasks (e.g., containing, supporting, reflecting), but also higher-order relational work, taking on roles as non-human "persons," and as partners in social relationships. In this paper, I focus on these human-object relationships in order to recast our view of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Skousen.

Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that pilgrimage centers were vital to the infrastructure, politics, and religions of cities and civilizations throughout the ancient world. The pre-Columbian city of Cahokia was no different. In this paper, I argue that the Emerald site, a major pilgrimage center east of Cahokia, was integral to the formation of a new political-religious order circa A.D. 1050. Ceramic, architectural, and botanical data show that large groups periodically gathered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bria.

This paper examines how the construction of agricultural infrastructure was essential to the constitution of a new kind of community in the highland Andes after the collapse of the regional Chavín religion (500/200 BC). It presents recent excavation data from Hualcayán—a long occupied ceremonial center in Ancash, Peru—to discuss how local people reorganized their community when they abandoned a central Chavín mound and built segregated structures for agricultural production, such as terraces,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Hutson.

In the Maya lowlands, several polities oversaw the construction of long causeways that connected regional centers with smaller settlements. As infrastructure, such causeways have been shown to facilitate exchange of basic goods between people at different sites. Archaeologists also view these causeways as political statements that materialize the extent of a polity and emphasize hierarchical relations between settlements on the causeway. Recent research along the 18km long causeway between Uci...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victor Raharijaona. Susan Kus.

Over past centuries the landscape of the central highlands of Madagascar has been dramatically transformed. Draining, diking and terracing have created vast expanses of irrigated rice fields where forests once stood. The employ of this transformative technology depended on collective social labor; unsurprisingly the dikes that rendered the land productive also served in the political organization and unification of territory and populations. Yet, the destruction of these dikes was also a ploy...