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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lana Martin.

This paper examines patterns in plant and animal remains excavated from midden contexts at Sitio Drago, a 1400-year-old village site located on a Caribbean island in Panama. To date, most studies of farming and foraging in ancient Panama have focused on villages located in the central highlands and Pacific foothills – regions with a cooler, drier tropical climate that better facilitates agricultural productivity. Although highly informative, these studies alone do not provide us with a complete...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Palumbo.

This paper reviews the evidence for mortuary ranking in pre-Columbian Costa Rica and Panama, specifically as it relates to participation in broader trade and exchange networks. An interpretative approach originally developed by Halstead and O'Shea is evaluated against the Binford-Saxe model. 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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Wake.

Sitio Drago is a large (18 ha) pre-Columbian settlement strategically located on the NW corner of Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama. Prior to the 21st Century Bocas del Toro had been characterized as recently colonized, poorly populated, having a relatively low degree of sociopolitical elaboration and isolated. Continuing research over the last 10 years on Isla Colon, focusing on Sitio Drago, illustrates that the site and by extension, the region, has a much longer population history, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Mendizabal. Jordi Tresserras. Javier Laviña. Ricardo Piqueras. Marta Hidalgo.

The first free African peoples of the Americas were the inhabitants of the town of La Villa de Santiago del Príncipe, founded in 1579 when Don Luis de Mozambique and his followers became the first group of cimarrones (escaped slaves) to negotiate a peace with the Spanish Crown, after decades of what came to be known as the "Cimarron wars". These were a conflict in which cimarrones would predate upon Spanish isthmian trade routes and even support foreign attacks on the mainland. Weary of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe.

In a series of articles published in the 1980’s, and in the subsequent volume "A Forest of Kings", David Freidel, and Linda Schele and Freidel demonstrated that the institution of kingship had been firmly established in the Maya lowlands by the Late Preclassic period. Twenty five years later, ongoing research in Belize and the Peten now suggests that this level of cultural complexity may have actually arisen by the Middle Preclassic period. One line of evidence that strongly supports this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Guenter.

"A Forest of Kings" was groundbreaking for its integration of epigraphy, archaeology, and ethnohistory. In their book, Schele and Freidel discussed the Early Classic Teotihuacan-Maya cultural and political interaction as well as the fall of Copan, and the larger issue of the collapse of Classic Maya cities, and even the fall of Postclassic Mayapan. In this presentation I wish to expand on and integrate these disparate themes in an effort to answer the question of why the Colonial era Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto.

Over the past 25 years, epigraphic research on the Classic Maya has demonstrated that political alliances and warfare were not only widespread but also structured in such a manner to suggest a greater degree of political centralization than originally contemplated. Texts carved on ancient monuments suggest that lowland Maya society of the Classic period (AD 250-850) was characterized by a rivalry between two major capital cities, Calakmul and Tikal, who sought to dominate the Maya lowlands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rich.

More than 10 years of research at El Perú-Waka’, carried out under the co-direction of David Freidel and several Guatemalan collaborators, has resulted in a wealth of information about this ancient city and the role its rulers and residents played in the Classic Maya world. Enhanced through his work with Linda Schele, Freidel’s persistent focus on the interplay between ancient history and archaeology—on stelae, buildings, and people—has shaped research at Waka’, located in Guatemala’s Laguna del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annabeth Headrick.

In the chapter on Chichen Itza within the Forest of Kings, Schele and Freidel masterfully redirected a half century of research that had largely pressed the foreignness of the site. Instead, they revealed the city’s Maya impulses and explored how Classic period strategies of conquest warfare transformed to integrate a type of inclusive diversity. Their suggestions of Chichen’s willingness to incorporate their enemies into a grander regional system redefined Epiclassic conversations over Maya or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Julia Guernsey.

In this paper, we situate A Forest of Kings, which combined archaeological and art historical data, within the genre of ethnographic fiction. We consider its waxing and waning throughout time as a popular narrative form and its legacy that continues to this day. A Forest of Kings was conceived and written at a significant moment within the history of ethnographic fiction. While it is strongly grounded in the reflexive and representational practices of the late 1980s and early 90s, A Forest of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli.

Research in the Holmul region of northeastern Peten has focused on Cival as its major political center during the Middle and Late Preclassic period since its rediscovery in 2001. The goals of this research continue to be inspired by several ideas expressed in Forest of Kings in 1990. Mainly, the rise of kingship in the Late Preclassic period, the interpretation of giant 'mask' sculptures on the facade of pyramids as backdrop for royal rituals as well as the interpretation of ritual caches. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Reilly. David Freidel.

Stela are standing stones, incised or carved with iconographic or hieroglyphic information. Stelae vary in size from the portable to monumental stones. Some of the earliest examples of stelae were erected at the middle formative period site of La Venta. Undoubtedly, these La Venta stela, like their Maya counterparts, are linked to concepts of rulership and sacred cycles of time. A close iconographic analysis supports an interpretation that finds the origin of these early stela firmly rooted in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Navarro-Farr. Francisco Castaneda. Griselda Perez. Juan Carlos Perez.

In 2012 archaeologists discovered Waka’s main civic-ceremonial temple was enshrined by numerous offerings as well as the construction of a monumental hearth and the placement of various fragments of carved stelae adorning the final platform phase. These fragments included previously unknown Stela 43 mentioning an ancestress and royal woman of Calakmul origin, Lady Ikoom. Excavations in the interior of the fronting platform revealed the tomb of Waka’s renowned Late Classic queen, Lady K’abel,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

Twenty five years have passed since Linda Schele and David Friedel presented their thoughts on the origins and establishment of the institution of kingship in their book "A Forest of Kings." Their historical reconstruction of Cerros illustrates the steps taken by early rulers to establish and institutionalize a hierarchical social system. Through the empirical data from Cerros, they artfully illuminate how the construction and display of symbols of royal power on monumental buildings coupled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Walker.

Ours is the first generation of Maya archaeologists to be fully rooted in Maya history. Thanks to our mentors, and especially cooperation between epigraphers and archaeologists, we have come to know the faces, names and life stories of important figures in our own New World history, epics that rival those of the Old World. The telling of these stories is a work in progress, however, our mentors, Linda Schele and David Freidel, provided a courageous and insightful first effort at embodying the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

The council house (popol nah or nim ja in Maya languages) is found from North Mexico to southern Mesoamerica. With roots in Classic-period architecture and enduring until after the Conquest in some regions, the council house typically was located in central areas of civic-ceremonial centers and featured a rectangular colonnade and built-in benches. In situ glyphs and ethnohistory indicate that lineages used these buildings for ritual-administrative purposes, and perhaps also as dwellings. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Faugere.

In the North-Center region of Mexico, the Bajio knew its peak of populating during Epiclassic period. From the Preclassic background of the Chupicuaro Culture, emerges a rich ceramic and architectural tradition. Following the fall of Teotihucan, the Bajio covers itself with extensive networks of sites organized around ceremonial centers where appear frequently sunken patios and I shape ballcourts. The ceramic is nevertheless far from being uniform, denoting a will of cultural assertion for each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López.

The ways in which human societies create a sense of history and incorporate it into daily life varies through time. In the Late Postclassic Basin of Mexico for example, cultural groups perpetuated, but also abandoned aspects of the stories of their ancestors. The uses, causes and reasons for this practice depends on a combination of several factors. The use of the past and how it was conceived and incorporated into the perspective of the Mexica is of particular interest. Previous studies have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Halperin.

Previous theoretical considerations of the Mesoamerican Epiclassic period have situated social change as part of social evolutionary processes of state collapse, the networking of a few religious and political-elites (e.g., cult of Quetzalcoatl), the proliferation of market economies, and the beginning of an "International Style". This paper considers notions of cosmopolitanism as a new theoretical framework for thinking about Epiclassic processes. It has long been suggested that Epiclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesper Nielsen. Christophe Helmke.

Whereas the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) has long been recognized as a period characterized by increased conflict and warfare between the dominant city-states of central Mexico, concrete evidence for actual military actions has been rather limited. Here we discuss epigraphic and iconographic evidence that suggest that two of the major Epiclassic powers, namely Cacaxtla and Xochicalco, were involved in a violent conflict, and that Cacaxtla succeeded in capturing several prominent individuals from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Helmke. Jesper Nielsen. Ángel Iván Rivera Guzmán.

More than four decades ago H.B. Nicholson compared the so-called Palace Stone from Xochicalco to a page in a Late Postclassic or Early Colonial manuscript. Showing numerous calendrical dates and toponymic signs connected by a path marked by footprints the monument readily recalls the mapa tradition that is so well documented in the central Mexican highlands at the time of the Spanish conquest. In this paper we explore the Epiclassic evidence of this tradition, discussing not only central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Turner.

Studies of the visual systems of the major sites of Epiclassic Highland Mexico have tended to focus on their common writing system and similarity in art styles. There is much to be gained from these lines of inquiry, but relatively few works have investigated the shared religious content conveyed in Epiclassic artwork. This paper evaluates preexisting theories concerning Epiclassic pan-Mesoamerican cults and argues that religious and ideological beliefs concerning Flower World, a solar paradise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Just.

During the Epiclassic period, several discrete iconographic motifs and technical qualities were adopted by peoples of South-Central Veracruz that have close affinities to art of the greater Maya area. For example, some Rio Blanco modelled-carved bowls mimic the iconography of Tiquisate wares of Escuintla, Guatemala. Nopiloa figurines bare well-known ties to figurines from Campeche, Mexico. Apparently indicating an alternate direction of artistic influence, decorative motifs common on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Heath Anderson.

In recent years, scholars interested in the processes and events involved in the formation of the Toltec state have turned their interest toward links that might have existed between the area immediately surrounding Tula Grande, the civic-ceremonial center of the Toltec state, and sites in the Bajío region to the northwest. Although several material culture affinities have been proposed to demonstrate possible ethnic and economic ties between these areas, investigators have not arrived at a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arleyn Simon. Darsita North.

A recently completed NAGPRA documentation project for the Chavez Pass Burial Collections at Arizona State University facilitated a multi-faceted reassessment of the expansive collections of the site, originally recovered from 1976 through 1982 by ASU archaeologists. In the reassessment, teams of physical anthropologists and archaeologist used original site records, maps, specimen logs, museum catalogs, photographs and reports to reexamine contextual identification of burials and associated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruiz Y Costello. Sarah Striker.

Known to the Hopi as Nuvakwewtaqa, the Chavez Pass pueblo complex (13th-15th CAD) was excavated in part by researchers from Arizona State University from 1976 through 1982. Before these excavations, the site had been subjected to decades of looting, especially in burial contexts. A recently completed Forest Service sponsored NAGPRA project provided the opportunity to photograph and analyze the exceptional artifacts found in burial contexts prior to repatriation. This poster discusses new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Wilson.

This poster presents a discussion of the various data recording methods implemented in the NAGPRA Repatriation of materials from Nuvakwewtaqa, Chavez Pass, Arizona. A number of different artifact types were analyzed in processing this collection, and artifact analysis associated with this project used a multi-stage approach. As this analysis required data recording following each stage, a well-organized, comprehensive multi-stage data recording strategy was constructed. This strategy, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Pilles. Kimberly Spurr.

The highland country of central Arizona has historically been interpreted as a region peripheral to the more dominant Hohokam, Kayenta, and Mogollon traditions that surrounded it. However, peripheries are defined by ones perception of where the center is located. Our case in point is the prehistoric Sinagua, which has been the subject of a five-year long study and documentation of more than1500 human remains and 4000 funerary objects that have been repatriated to the Hopi Tribe by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Caseldine.

Long ago, Southwestern archaeologists realized the value of non-decorated pottery as a source of cultural information. The fundamental work of Colton and others (e.g., Pilles and Wood) have established the examination of non-decorated pottery as a key aspect for understanding the Sinagua Culture of central Arizona. This poster represents a continuation of the work began by Henderson (1978, 1990) and later refined by Henss (1990) on the non-decorated pottery excavated from Chavez Pass Ruin (13th...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Gardner. Eric J. Bartelink. Antoinette Martinez. Alan Leventhal. Rosemary Cambra.

The Yukisma Mound (CA-SCL-38), located in Santa Clara County, California, was used by the ancestral Ohlone as a mortuary site between approximately 940 and 230 years BP. Analysis of mortuary contexts within the mound revealed evidence of social differentiation in wealth, prestige, moiety affiliation and power. Special mortuary treatment, artifact abundance, and association with costly artifacts or culturally significant wealth items suggested that some individuals held higher status than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Beasley.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, distinct dietary niches were exploited in prehistory, and these different food economies are most readily distinguished in terms of their primary protein sources. This paper highlights the use of external auditory exostoses (EAE), a pathology linked to the exploitation of marine resources in cold water, to evaluate varying economic complexity in acquisition of marine protein food sources between different sites around the Bay Area. The high occurrence of EAE in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Bartelink. Jelmer Eerkens. Melanie Beasley. Karen Gardner.

The analysis of ancient hunter-gatherer diet in the San Francisco Bay Area has been the subject of enormous research effort over the past century. Hundreds of "shell mounds" that once dotted the landscape around the bayshore provide evidence for significant population growth during the Late Holocene. Resource intensification models link population increase to a shift away from exploitation of low-cost, high-ranked prey toward greater use of high-cost, low-ranked prey at a number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dwight Simons. Tom Wake.

During approximately the last thousand years people were at CA-CCO-297 focused upon taking small schools of fishes, aquatic and marine ducks and sea otters. These were obtained from estuarine habitats immediately adjacent to the site. Seasonality profiles for fish/bird/mammal species indicate procurement occurred throughout the year. Harvesting of these taxa was facilitated by the use of watercraft and nets and hunting tactics including mass collection, prey switching and coharvesting....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Broughton.

Prehistoric resource depression has been widely documented in many late Holocene contexts characterized by expanding human population densities and some of the most detailed records of this phenomenon have been derived from the San Francisco Bay area of California. I summarize here recent analyses focusing on tule elk, waterfowl, and sturgeon from multiple regional sites using traditional zooarchaeological measures of resource depression but also those drawing on allometric size relationships,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sally Evans.

The formation of auditory exostosis in prehistoric populations living along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay is due to participation in cold water subsistence behavior. Rates of auditory exostosis in populations from previously excavated archaeological sites located along the Bay Shore were compared with those located in the interior East Bay. A sample population of 1,291 individuals dating from the Early Period (3500 – 200 B.C.) to the Late Period (A.D. 1050 – 1769) was employed to address...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Brink. Jelmer Eerkens. Alex DeGeorgey. Jeff Rosenthal.

Stable isotope analysis can reconstruct individual mobility of prehistoric California on a scale that can distinguish movement between different parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. This study uses strontium and oxygen isotope analysis to compare individual mobility patterns of two Late Period sites, CA-CCO-297 and CA-SCL-919. Three life stages are used for comparison, including early childhood from first molars, early adolescence from third molars, and adulthood/time of death from bone....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Talcott. Jelmer Eerkens. Eric Bartelink. Ken Gobalet.

Isotopic variation in individuals allows us to track differences in diet, mobility, and migration between various demographic categories including age, status, and sex. We use stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to analyze diet and oxygen to examine human mobility from a range of sites in Yolo and Solano counties, with a focus on how marine vs. freshwater aquatic resources were exploited. Stable isotope results are compared to faunal remains from the same sites to establish baseline data for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Gobalet. Robert Leidy.

It has been a decade since Gobalet et al. (2004: Trans. Am. Fish. Soc. 133:801-833) summarized the fishes found in archaeological sites on San Francisco Bay. Numerous additional excavations have been completed in the last ten years and this report adds 32,000 bones to the totals from 23 archaeological sites from seven counties. By number of specimens found at the sites collectively, bat ray, sturgeons, herrings and sardines, northern anchovies, salmon and trout, New World silversides,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Luby. Kent G. Lightfoot.

The purpose of this paper is to examine diachronic changes in the long-term use of the Ellis Landing site (CA-CCO-295), a large shell mound on the San Francisco Bay whose chronology spans more than 3000 years. Originally excavated in 1906-1908 by Nels Nelson, recent investigations of museum materials housed in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley are providing new insights into the harvesting practices, mortuary patterns, and community dynamics of the people who resided at Ellis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Kaijankoski. Jack Meyer.

The effects of landscape evolution on the archaeological record of the San Francisco Bay Area have been profound, primarily due to rising sea levels. These changes are illustrated through a trans-Holocene "tour" of the bay that incorporates the landscape context of many sites featured in subsequent papers. For the regions first inhabitants this area was a vast inland valley, rather than the state’s largest estuary. The Holocene transgression is illustrated utilizing a new sea-level curve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Leventhal. Rosemary Cambra.

Prior to the time of European contact ancestral Ohlone tribal groups of the San Francisco Bay region buried their dead within many "shellmound" sites located near the bayshore. Archaeological inquiry over the past century has revealed that many of these burials had rich grave associations. Even so, the prevailing assumptions held by the scientific community has been that these bayshore mounds were the result from the refuse of habitation/village activities focused around the exploitation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hylkema.

Early historic accounts describe the use of tule balsa boats throughout the San Francisco Bay region. The advantages attendant to this technology, ranging from increased access to estuarine food resources and the transportation of materials and people over a large geographic area is as monumental as the many mounded sites that once surrounded the Bay Shoreline. This presentation will review descriptions of these boats and propose a possible connection between maritime travel, mounded sites and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Whitaker. Brian Byrd.

We present an Ideal Free Distribution Model to explore the successful establishment and spread of hunter-gatherer residential settlements around the perimeter of San Francisco Bay, California. Our objective is to illuminate underlying ecological and social factors that best explain the spatial distribution of occupation in the region. Our model determines relative habitat suitability based on a series of environmental factors including drainage catchment size, rainfall, terrestrial productivity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex DeGeorgey. Dwight Simons.

Site CA-CCO-297 (a Stege Mound) is a prehistoric shell mound located on the northeastern margin of the San Francisco Bay. Recent archaeological investigations at CA-CCO-297 suggest that fish, water fowl and sea otters were exploited as commodities for exchange rather than purely subsistence items. Emphasized production of locally available resources for participation in inter-regional exchange systems appears linked to demographic pressures and reduced foraging efficiency. This paper explores...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Watkins.

Construction, operation, and maintenance of the extensive prehistoric irrigation systems of the Phoenix Basin required a significant input of labor. The ethnographic record suggests that the organization of agricultural labor among smallholder irrigation farmers can be varied and complex. Hohokam householders had a variety of labor arrangements at their disposal, and were flexible in their application of different strategies to meet changing environmental and cultural conditions. Hohokam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T Kathleen Henderson.

Recently, Desert Archaeology, Inc. has had opportunity to conduct several archaeological projects for the City of Phoenix west and northwest of the Park of Four Waters, near where the main trunk canals that fed prehistoric Canal System 2 originate and diverge from the Salt River. Seven of these trunk canals have been encountered, along with numerous distribution and lateral canals, water control and catchment structures, seasonal and semi-permanent habitations, and the first irrigated Hohokam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry Howard.

A great deal of progress has been made in understanding the physical layout, paleohydraulics and sociopolitical organization of Hohokam Irrigation systems. A relatively comprehensive database now exists for Canal System 2 identifying the location of main canals and the configuration and size of canal channels. Models of the available discharge, or the quantity of water available at points along the main canals, have been constructed. However, our understanding of the sequencing and nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Watts.

While ceramic analysts now report with some confidence where most Phoenix Basin Hohokam pottery was manufactured and where it was eventually discarded, we simply cannot use those two data points on their own to describe the exchange rules and distribution networks that moved pottery from specialist producers to consumers throughout the region. Agent-based modeling methods provide a powerful toolkit for interpreting complex spatial and distributional patterns in the archaeological record, and for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lindeman. Connie Darby.

For roughly 400 years after La Villa was founded, around A.D. 500, the village would have been one of the largest in the Phoenix Basin, rivaling, perhaps, the great centers of Snaketown and Grewe on the Middle Gila River. Recent excavations at the site by Desert Archaeology Inc. combined with a series of previous investigations provide intriguing new information about the organization of settlement at Hohokam villages. The work at La Villa has resulted in the identification of two large plazas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Garraty.

Recent excavations at La Ciudad highlight settlement and socioeconomic changes along the margins of the larger village during the Pre-Classic period, especially the Pioneer-Colonial period transition. High-resolution chronological evidence was obtained based on a combination of radiocarbon, archaeomagnetic, and luminescence assays, including an unprecedented 34 optically and thermally stimulated luminescence assays from ceramic sherds. In addition, 36 archaeomagnetic assays from an early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Kelly.

As one of the largest canal systems in the Phoenix Basin, Canal System 2 likely served as the economic, social, and political center of life for thousands of people residing on the north side of the Salt River. Canal System 2 capitalized on a fortuitous geographic location that permitted irrigation systems and associated fields to extend miles from the river. Despite the large size of the canal infrastructure, the low population density relative to the size of the system indicates that local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Huckleberry.

Recent excavations conducted downstream from Park of Four Waters have provided new evidence of damaging floods within System 2 between AD 1050-1400. Two main canals contain stratigraphic evidence of uncontrolled Salt River. One canal (Hagenstad) contains evidence for two floods, the last one causing the alignment to be abandoned. The other canal (Woodbury's North), contains a flood deposit that filled the channel and led to its abandonment. A combination of ceramic, 14C, and luminescence ages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Craig. John Marshall. Brent Kober.

Most studies of the organization of Canal System 2 have taken a "top-down" approach and focused on the degree to which a centralized management structure was required to operate and maintain the canal system. In this paper, we take a "bottom-up" approach and focus on the interests and concerns of the irrigators themselves. Architectural data from several pre-Classic sites along the canal system are examined in an attempt to reconstruct the organizational strategies of multi-household, corporate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Aragon.

It has long been thought that large Hohokam villages, once established, were long-lived and fixed in a single location. La Villa, a pre-Classic Hohokam village on Canal System 2, was one of the largest in the area. It has roots that stretch as far back as the Red Mountain phase and had achieved village status by Vahki times. The village continued to grow through the Pioneer Period, and much of the Colonial Period. Toward the end of the Colonial however, we see a sharp drop-off in both ceramics...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Glen Rice.

From A.D. 900 to 1400 Hohokam populations frequently used both corporate and household cemeteries within the same village. The practice became more visible following A.D. 1200, when burial was by inhumation in household cemeteries and by cremation in corporate cemeteries. The choice of cemeteries gave households flexibility in dealing with the tension between Hohokam sociopolitical ideology and religious beliefs. Burial in the privacy of household cemeteries served their egalitarian ideology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hackbarth.

Recent excavations at Pueblo Patricio and La Ciudad have uncovered Pioneer Period components that provide new insight about early Hohokam chronology, settlement, and irrigation in Phoenix. Red Mountain phase occupation at Pueblo Patricio began before the fifth century A.D. with seasonal use of small structures exhibiting highly variable architectural forms and small groupings of structures. A dramatic change in Pueblo Patricio settlement patterns occurred by the middle of the mid-sixth century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hunt. Scott Ingram.

A food production calendar for the Lower Salt River Valley would amplify our understanding of the largest prehistoric irrigation system in the New World. Hunt and Ingram have assembled a food production calendar for the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Hohokam of the Middle Gila River valley (Kiva 2014). A question is whether this calendar can be extended to the Lower Salt River valley. The environmental variable for which we have the most information is air temperature. The historical records of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

This research looks at the institutional desecration of graves at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds as overseen by Superintendent Ferdinand Bark, the reaction of the surrounding community to that disturbance, and the ensuing investigation. The paper also explores the relationship of this historical event to the evidence from the 1990s and 2013 archaeological excavations conducted at the location of the cemetery. The event will be viewed within the historical context in which it happened...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Jones.

From the mid-1800s to its abandonment in 1974, the MCIG Poor Farm Cemetery in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin served as a burial place for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals from the Coroner's Office, and the community poor and indigent. Previous excavations at the cemetery in 1991 and 1992 recovered 1649 individuals in predominantly single interments with an occasional extraneous body part representing incidental amputation or autopsy. The 2013 excavations at the site yielded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Drew.

Since its discovery during the original 1990s excavations, the Register of Burials at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery has been the foundation for most historical and archaeological research involving the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. Until recently the register was considered a complete listing of most, if not all, burials on the Milwaukee County Grounds between 1882 and the final burial in 1974. However, new excavations during the summer of 2013 as well as comprehensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Werner.

Whether or not the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in skeletal remains is possible has been a debated topic for many years. In order to shed more light on the issue, a study has been carried out on the remains from the 1991 and 1992 excavations of the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Cemetery, a collection of skeletons ranging from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, of various ages and sexes. To show the utility of the previously discussed methods of osteological identification of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Richards.

The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project was initiated in 2008 and is a collaborative effort of the UW-Milwaukee Archaeological Research Laboratory, UW-Milwaukee Anthropology Department graduate students, UW-Milwaukee Undergraduate Research Opportunity Students, and the staff of Historic Resource Management Services (now UWM-CRM). In 2008 UWM Archaeological Research Laboratory applied for and was granted by the Wisconsin Historical Society final disposition of all human remains, personal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Burant.

The Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) Cemetery is located in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. This historic cemetery was in use from 1878 to 1974 and interred Milwaukee County’s indigent. The individuals represented consist mostly of poor European immigrants, subsequent generations, institutionalized residents, and the unclaimed deceased. The material culture associated with the 2013 MCIG cemetery excavations recovered from 685 individual graves, was stabilized, inventoried and accessioned....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrienne Frie. Patricia Richards.

The Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (MCIG) served as the burial ground for county institutions, including the coroner’s office and the Milwaukee County Hospital. This paper describes craniotomy practices in particular, and autopsy practices more generally, evidenced by the population from the MCIG Cemetery. In addition, this research attempts to distinguish between craniotomies and autopsies carried out by the coroner’s office versus the Milwaukee County Hospital to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Jordan. Catherine Jones. Shannon Freire.

Excavations in 2013 at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds cemetery recovered 650 burials from one of four locations used by Milwaukee County officials for burial of more than 7000 individuals from the mid-1800s through 1925. Of those recovered during the 2013 excavations, at least 25% have been identified as multiple interments. The diverse depositional contexts of several of these burials are indicative of a variety of mortuary behaviors atypical for a historic cemetery during this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brianne Charles. Emily Epstein.

Outstanding preservation of the juvenile dentition of individualsrecovered during the 2013 Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) Poor Farm Cemetery project allowed for the application of four separate dental age assessments. We present the results of a pilot study that attempts to broaden the utility of the Moorrees et al. (1963a, b) tooth formation stages through their application to maxillary dentition and mandibular incisors from a sample of sub-adults from the MCIG cemetery. Tooth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Richards. Catherine Jones.

Excavation and analysis of human remains from the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (MCIG) provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) as both a field and laboratory tool. During the fieldwork portion of the project, excavations exposed soils that visual inspection suggested might harbor a concentration of toxic materials. PXRF was used on site to determine the nature of the potential toxins and determine the risk factor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Epstein. Brianne Charles. Brooke Drew.

A sample of perinatal individuals recovered from MCIG Cemetery (ca. 1890-1920) included broken teeth. We evaluate these teeth for the presence of the neonatal line to differentiate stillborn individuals from those that died as postnatal individuals. Our research is nondestructive. We compare the results of the dental analysis to the distribution of stillborns and live births documented in the MCIG burial record and City of Milwaukee vital records. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Strange.

2013 excavations at the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds (MCIG) cemetery resulted in the recovery of approximately 685 burials containing over 700 individuals, adding to the existing collection of 1649 individuals excavated in 1991 and 1992. The individuals from the 2013 excavations were inventoried and examined macroscopically for evidence of pathology and trauma. Sean P. Dougherty (2011) observed that the pattern of traumatic fractures among the 1991 and 1992 collection reflect not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Skinner.

The analysis of the features that mark tendon and muscle insertion sites on bone has been used in an attempt to reconstruct past life activity patterns of individuals and populations represented by skeletal remains. Many of these analyses have focused on comparing evidence from these individuals with known musculoskeletal and biomechanical data. Recent experimental tests have illustrated that defining these correlations is more complex than expected (Mariotti et al., 2007). Modern clinical data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Richards.

The Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Cemetery in Wauwatosa, WI, operated under the administration of the Milwaukee County Institutions, which prepared official reports for submission to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. These primary documents survive in varying degrees of completeness at repositories across Milwaukee and include evidence of the mortuary activities of County institutions that may have buried individuals under institutional care at the MCIG cemetery. Submitted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Britta Spaulding.

Rural forms of life and their material remains are rich sources of information for archaeologists on what was the largest economic demographic in the Western world until around 1900. Distressingly, influences from popular imagination and culture, with their many simplistic notions about the rural individual as either an idiotic bumpkin or a noble, humble tiller of the soil, continue to plague interest in, and conclusions about, rural remains and identity. Historical archaeologists have to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Whalen.

The ethnic relationships found in colonial settings are complicated and varied negotiations that are hard to decipher in the present, much less in the past. Performance of ethnic allegiance may be influenced by oppressive legal structures, systemic racism, reformation or resistance movements, and personal taste. As archaeologists have adopted more nuanced readings of material culture and its relationship to ethnic performance, such as the use of Homi Bhabha’s concept of the third space and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Shaffer Foster. T.L. Thurston.

In America, millions of people claim Irish ancestry and celebrate their heritage in myriad ways. Many actively embrace the identity of Irish-American generations after their family members became U.S. citizens in the aftermath of the famine and socio-political turmoil of the mid-19th to early 20th century. Over the past two decades, the tourism industry in Ireland has flourished with Americans among the most numerous visitors each year. Several of the top destinations are those connected to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin McDonald.

There are innumerable examples throughout prehistory (and history) of ancient monuments repurposed for a variety of reasons, such as the legitimation of power, land ownership and ancestry, among others. Today, many people, in particular Neo-Pagans, attempt to identify with past peoples and to incorporate ancient sites into their modern day religious beliefs. Although not inherently bad, interpretations of ancient sites through a Neo-Pagan lens tend to gloss over archaeological evidence and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Heath. David Witt.

Archaeological artifacts can be used to foster a powerful feeling of national pride, or they can be held up as a sign of previous degeneracy and destroyed to 'purify' a populace. For example, artifacts such as Egyptian pyramids, Mesopotamian Lammasu, Afghani Buddhas, and Malian Sufi Shrines represent cultures and conditions that do not fit the fundamentalist identity of Islamists groups. While modern states have often—and rightfully—raised these artifacts as evidence of equality with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily McClung De Tapia.

Environmental studies associated with prehispanic settlements in the Basin of Mexico were originally focussed on studies of agricultural potential and productivity, based on ethnographic assessments of essentially modern conditions. However, archaeologists were limited in their access to techniques developed in earth and biological sciences. Niederberger's research at Zohapilco in the southern Basin represents one of the earliest "geoarchaeological" approaches in which a concerted effort to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ximena Ulloa-Montemayor. Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales. Eduardo Corona-M.. José Alberto Cruz. Diana Karina Blancas.

Uno de los sitios del Precerámico tardío más explorados en los últimos 25 años es San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, Distrito Federal, México. En el mismo se han realizado varias temporadas de excavación por diversos grupos de investigadores y entre los materiales que se han estudiado están los arqueozoológicos. La más reciente excavación no fue la excepción, se obtuvo una colección de animales que nos permiten tener una idea más clara de lo que fue el paisaje y el paleoambiente hace 6200...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iran Rivera. Sergey Sedov.

During 2013 - 2014 archaeological research was undertaken in San Gregorio (Xochimilco) and Tepexpan, Basin of Mexico, to recover evidence for human activity associated to the preceramic period in the lakebed area of Chalco-Xochimilco and Texcoco. One of the specific objectives of this research is to characterize soil conditions north and south of modern Mexico City, during the early agriculture period (6500-4000 BP) by means of paleopedological analysis, and evaluate environmental and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Víctor Hugo García Gómez. Guillermo Acosta Ochoa.

Se caracterizó mediante análisis de Fluorescencia de Rayos X (XRF) un conjunto de obsidianas obtenidas en las excavaciones en el sitio de Tepexpan, Edo. de México y San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco, D.F. (n=149), procedentes de los niveles precerámicos de ambos sitios, através del análisis de diversos elementos (Na, K, Ti, Mn, Fe, RB, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb y Ba); esto nos permitió conocer la composición química de cada uno de los artefactos líticos para posteriormente efectuar comparaciones con...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Acosta Ochoa. Emily McClung de Tapia.

Over the past three decades, there have been very few studies of the earliest agrarian communities in the Basin of Mexico in comparison with other periods. In this paper, we introduce the symposium with an evaluation of the state of knowledge concerning preceramic, archaic communities up to the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico, with particular emphasis on the dearth of information available concerning paleoenvironment and subsistence. We review some of the recent investigations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Georgina Ibarra. Felipe Ramírez. Elizabeth Solleiro. Sergey Sedov.

First societies based on agriculture settled Mexico Basin around 3000 years ago (from BC 1500 to AD 100), during Formative period, according to Mesoamerican chronology. Cuicuilco is one and probably the first of these Formative sites in Mexico Basin and is located in the southern part of Mexico City, in an area covered by lava flows from the Xitle volcano, named as El Pedregal. The age of the eruption has been established around 1,670+/- 35 years B.P. It is considered that Cuicuilco was probably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dan Healan.

Preliminary analysis of obsidian artifacts recovered from survey and excavation at the Early/Middle Formative site of Altica in the Teotihuacan Valley indicate the presence of several distinct modes of raw material acquisition, reduction, and utilization. These various modes are described from a technological perspective and possible logistical, social, economic, and political correlates are considered. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Martinez-Yrizar. Carmen Cristina Adriano Morán. Emilio Ibarra-Morales. Isay Alan Martínez-Flores.

El sitio de San Gregorio Atlapulco (conocido como El Japón) se localiza al sureste de la Cuenca de México en la delegación Xochimilco. Su estudio se inició en la década de los 90´s reportándose montículos ocupacionales y chinampas asociadas al Postclásico Tardío (1450-1521). En años recientes se retoma la investigación en el lugar en el marco del proyecto Poblamiento, Agricultura inicial y Sociedades Aldeanas en la Cuenca de México (PAPIIT IG400513-3). Uno de sus objetivos es aportar nuevos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Milideo.

In North America, rune stones of purported Viking origin have been the subjects of excitement, scrutiny, and dispute. The stones have been called hoaxes, and archaeologists and other workers remain unconvinced about the stones’ Viking origin and validity; nevertheless, claims have appeared over time that rune stones, which have turned up in such diverse locations as underwater and on hillsides, contain the inscriptions of Scandinavian explorers in North America, including inland areas, long...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krystal Hammond.

Young Earth creationists view the natural world in a manner far different from the average anthropologist. Very little secular media support a Young Earth creationist perspective. Therefore, pursuant to conveying the world in a manner that is in keeping with their worldview, Young Earth creationists have produced magazines and other forms of media that specifically address science and theological topics relating to the age of the earth as well as archaeological finds relevant to the veracity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gina Buckley-Yost.

Genesis tells us a story about a man cast out by God to build an ark during a great storm sent to cleanse the earth of all that was corrupt. "Noah’s Ark" is a biblical narrative that has captured the attention of people, both religious and agnostic, for hundreds of years. Hollywood producers, recognizing an enduring tale of destruction and rebirth, have spent decades recreating this story, most recently in the 2014 blockbuster Noah starring Russell Crowe. Additionally, renewed interest among the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Messer.

December 21, 2012 was supposed to be the Maya apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it. In reality, it was only the end of one Maya calendar cycle of 5122 years -- the end of the 13th Baktun. Even at that, the Maya saw the ending of calendars as a renewal, not an end. But somehow, somewhere this event was interpreted as a coming cataclysm of immense proportion. In the popular press and online, the Maya apocalypse was imminent. How was the coming of this supposed event covered by the press...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Wismer-Lanoe. Zachary Nelson.

Supposedly originating from pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sites, the crystal skulls are one of the most iconic sets of fake artifacts which have graced museum shelves and the public’s imagination. The first crystal skulls appeared in collections during the late 1800’s, and well-known specimens are housed today as modern fakes at the Smithsonian and British Museums. Most media coverage of the skulls has revolved around the privately owned, so-called "Skull of Doom", claimed to be of Mayan origin and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nelson.

The enduring myth of Atlantis is an amazing example of probable history turned fable and developing a life of its own. While the subject is vast, a careful synopsis of new tales and discoveries will be presented and contrasted with the Hall of the Ancients - a purported repository of ancient documents believed to be located at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Belief systems and archaeological data will be examined to understand the interplay between fact and fiction. SAA 2015 abstracts made available...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renata Wolynec.

Some archaeologists remember reading articles which link rock art with alien or extraterrestrial visitors to earth. However, an examination of English language newspapers suggests that although rock art is a popular topic, the extraterrestrial connection is less commonly made. The World Wide Web, however, is full of entries which eagerly make this connection. There appears to be a niche audience which will believe what it wants to believe. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimball Banks.

Over a span of some 30 years, the Combined Prehistoric Expedition conducted investigations of Neolithic occupations at Nabta Playa in Egypt’s Western Desert. The most startling discovery was an elaborate expression of Late and Final Neolithic ceremonialism unprecedented in Africa. The expression included a "sacred mountain", tumuli burials, ceremonial burials, stellae and megaliths, and an astronomical calendar circle. The publication of the results has had unintended consequences: it not only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Zorzin.

In Japan, the relationship between archaeology and the presently dominant neoliberal political economy is now giving rise to ethical issues faced primarily by archaeologists. In this presentation, I illustrate the difficulties which may have arisen from these relations, and explore other avenues of reflection within the implementation of a ‘community archaeology’. The results of my investigation are based on interviews of a sample of Japanese archaeologists and community members involved in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Beaudoin.

Archaeologists in Canada are empowered by the Canadian state through licensing and/or permitting systems; as such, archaeological practices are intrinsically entangled with various levels of governance. While it would be convenient to argue for an archaeology either free entirely of state control, or entirely and purposefully guided to fulfill state mandates, the reality is more nuanced. Archaeology is often structured by interpretive conventions that act to replicate the dominant archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neal Ferris.

State control of archaeology has tended to originate from the agendas of archaeologists - altruistic, capitalistic, and entirely self-serving. This has framed practice as aiding and abetting State processes and societal differentials that play out over land and resource consumption. Despite this, a chronic phenomenon of this process is the need to resolve unmarked burial discoveries. These occurrences are typically achieved within vague regulatory frameworks, and often lack direct State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Dent.

The history of provincial heritage legislation and policy in the Canadian context has been infrequently studied and rarely theorized. Contemporary critical heritage and applied archaeological research are beginning to reverse this trend and the past that is coming to light has significant implications to future archaeological governance. Drawing from research conducted into British Columbia and Ontario, this paper highlights two important facets of archaeological governance, perception and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Hutchings.

In 1989, anthropologist Bruce G. Trigger (1937-2006) successfully showed archaeology to be a conduit for social power. What he did not elaborate on was that archaeology largely represents a racialized form of power insofar as most archaeologists are white and those whose past they "study" are largely minority Indigenous peoples. Further, while Trigger considered archaeology a bourgeois pursuit, he did not adequately account for the near wholesale commercialization of archaeology in the form of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marina La Salle.

Archaeology is perhaps now, more than ever before, a viable career choice for university students. Although academic positions seem to be dwindling, opportunities in contract, commercial, or compliance archaeology are skyrocketing as the development ethic of North American capitalism continues to expand. Armed with a field school and a handful of undergraduate courses, these new graduates represent the dominant practice of archaeology today. The question is, what are they practising? Who has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Graves. Sarah Herr.

In this paper we consider how the State, through law and practice, affects United States archaeologists’ abilities to conduct innovative, humanistic research in the context of cultural resource management (CRM) and may become an impediment to inclusive heritage-management practices. CRM is, perhaps, best known for its accumulation of collections and data and its ability to answer middle-range-theory questions that remain broadly ecological in scope. Here, we consider how CRM can better...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Bringelson.

The National Park Service takes pride in high caliber interpretation of natural and cultural resources, and is known as the major supplier of informal education in the United States. With the centennial of the NPS approaching in 2016, the Service is directing all parks and programs to intensify education efforts. In addition, the NPS Call to Action of 2012 establishes the increasing of NPS relevancy to young people as a priority. Maximizing educational products and impacts is of particular...