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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirstie Haertel.

The relevancy of archaeology to contemporary social issues has become a topic of concern for many in the discipline. Zooarchaeologists in particular have focused some effort in highlighting how archeological interpretations can assist with wildlife management and conservation biology. While this work helps to amplify the social value of archaeology, the approach to date has been somewhat disparate. In order to implement the vision of integrating archaeological findings to wildlife management and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Mudar. Leah Burgin.

Despite the development of sophisticated online legal search engines and ready availability of certain types of court documents, the 35-year-old LOOT Clearinghouse continues to collect unique information about looting and vandalism of archeological sites on Federal lands. Comparison of LOOT data with data from other sources suggest that legal search engines provide more extensive information about litigated cases, while LOOT contains more information about non-ARPA cases and cultural resource...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman. Trica Oshant Hawkins.

Linking Hispanic Heritage Through Archaeology (LHHTA) is a program that connects Hispanic youth to their cultural history using regional archaeology as a bridge. The program highlights the role of the National Park Service in interpretation and cultural preservation. LHHTA involves high school students and teachers in archaeological field and lab work, visits to museums and National Parks, and experiential learning. Participants explored their personal and cultural histories through the use...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Furlong Minkoff. Teresa Moyer.

The Urban Archaeology Corps was created as a way to rethink youth employment, archaeological education, the contributions young people can make, but also how the National Park Service can more effectively serve the next generation of Americans. An experimental youth employment program in the National Capital Region, the UAC employs underserved and minority youth in the Washington, DC area. What has resulted is a program that is a mix of school, summer camp, and work unlike any of the youth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Collins. Travis Doering. Margo Schwadron.

Today, much of the world’s cultural heritage is at risk from natural and human-induced causes. New technologies such as terrestrial laser scanning, advances in imaging and photography, 3D printing, and other spatial and visualization techniques are greatly advancing capabilities for heritage preservation and research. These technologies are democratizing data access, and improving the ability to share and interpret archaeological information globally. The ability to rapidly and accurately...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Doering. Lori Collins. Margo Schwadron.

New strategies for archeological preservation and interpretation are emerging from collaborative research occurring within our Nation’s National Park Service (NPS) System. This paper shares results from a dangerous and challenging underground confined space archeological project documenting a Revolutionary War Era tunnel system as part of cooperative work between the University of South Florida and the NPS Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC). Using digital imaging, terrestrial laser scanning,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Swain.

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) was passed in 1979. ARPA requires archaeologists to calculate three different types of value to quantify the amount of loss in federal looting incidents – archaeological value, commercial value and cost of restoration and repair. In 2002, a section was added to the U. S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines to cover the damage, theft and trafficking of Cultural Heritage Resources. These guidelines also require archaeologists to calculate the amount of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Martin Seibert.

The National Register of Historic Places (NR) and the National Historic Landmarks (NHL) Programs create and maintain two of the few federal lists of important archeological places. While these programs are housed within the National Park Service’s preservation programs, the National Register and NHL Criteria for listing/designation are established by federal law and regulation and are tied to Sections 106 and 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Therefore, these Criteria are applied...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Gadsby.

Since it began exporting the national park idea nearly a century ago, the National Park Service (NPS) has become instrumental in the protection and preservation of cultural heritage throughout the world. Cultural heritage conservation activities conducted in partnership with other nations enable NPS to disseminate important messages about the dangers of looting and the importance of protecting heritage sites. They also help to spread contemporary preservation practices and technologies to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcy Rockman.

The US National Park Service (NPS) recognizes a two-fold relationship between cultural resources and climate change: climate change affects cultural resources, while in turn cultural resources contain invaluable information about long-term human capacity to adapt to changing climates. The NPS Climate Change Response Strategy (2010) set out four pillars of climate change response: science, adaptation, mitigation, and communication. Work is now underway to merge these two approaches, integrating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caven Clark.

Archeologists who have chosen a career with a Federal agency have many responsibilities that are different than those of academics, chief among which is to be the subject matter expert and/or champion/advocate for the protection of the non-renewable resource. It’s not a question of which is better, more relevant, or more important, but that we as Federal archeologists have a compelling need to be conversant in cultural resource law, to assist in investigations, and educate our peers, our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Carroll.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGRA) became law on November 16, 1990, requiring Federal agencies and museums to repatriate Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. During the 25 years since its enactment, the National Park Service (NPS) has been responsible for both implementation of the Act and compliance with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick O'Grady. Joe Collins. Michael Rondeau. Scott Thomas.

Rimrock Draw Rockshelter is located along a relict stream channel in southeastern Oregon. The lithic assemblage includes Western Stemmed (WST) points; Northern Side-notched (NSN) points; and artifacts associated with fluting technology, such as fluted bifaces, fluting flakes, overshot flakes, and bifaces with overshot flake scars. NSN and WST distributions within the rockshelter have vertical and horizontal separations, indicating temporal and areal differences in site use occurred that can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Carlson. George Crothers.

In the Mammoth Cave Plateau and the Sinkhole Plain of Central Kentucky, caves and rockshelters are the primary site type. The Plateau contains little arable bottom land, but cliff overhangs, caves, and perennial streams and springs are abundant. The Sinkhole Plain has abundant arable land, but surface water is quickly diverted to underground streams and permanent water sources are limited to caves and karst windows. We compare the archaeology of two important cave sites—Salts Cave in the Plateau...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Breslawski. David Byers.

Although caves are often excellent for organic preservation, they also attract carnivores and introduce the potential for rock fall. Carnivores systematically remove spongy long bone ends from assemblages, while experimental studies have shown that rock fall can fragment dense long bone shafts. As a result, these processes may bias faunal assemblages in opposing directions. This has implications for the interpretation of correlations between bone density and skeletal element frequencies in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judson Finley. Matthew Rowe.

Rockshelters in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains have a long history of archaeological research resulting in a rich dataset of geological and paleoecological information that provides a context for the region’s 12,000 year cultural record. In this study we focus on three deeply stratified and well-dated rockshelters to meet three primary objectives. First, we apply Bayesian statistics to each record to create an age model that contextualizes stratigraphic variability and contrasts autogenic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Naudinot. Grégor Marchand.

In some areas of France, the first archaeological investigations were conducted in rock-shelters, and allowed archaeologists to establish the Paleolithic chronology. Later, in other regions, and influenced by Leroi-Gourhan’s research, archaeologists focused on open-air sites, using spatial organization to create "paleoethnography." In Western France, even if the first excavation of a Palaeolithic site, in 1874, was that of a rockshelter, later, all the investigations focused on coastal open air...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ames. Benjamin Collins.

Grassridge rockshelter is located at the base of the Stormberg Mountains approximately 200 km inland in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Previous excavation by Dr. Hermanus Opperman in 1979 focused primarily on the Later Stone Age (LSA) and Holocene occupations at Grassridge, but he also identified an underlying Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~300-30 ka) sequence containing abundant typologically MSA lithic material, well-preserved faunal remains, and charcoal. With particular interest in the MSA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Herrmann. Matthew Rowe.

Recorded within the sediments of Rockhouse Hollow rockshelter in the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana is a rich history of prehistoric occupation spanning 10,000 years. Unlike any other site in Indiana, Rockhouse Hollow has produced artifacts from all prehistoric cultural time periods, with the notable exception of the Paleoindian Period. Although the site had already been looted for decades, excavations in 1961 produced a wealth of lithic and faunal data that have not yet been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Marks.

The shifts in land and site use strategies that occurred over the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA to LSA) transition remain poorly understood across the full diversity of environments in Southern Africa. In the Central Namib Desert of Namibia, two rockshelters, Erb Tanks and Mirabib, provide insights into these dynamics within the context of a persistent arid to hyper-arid climate. Employing data from an ongoing lithic sourcing survey, we argue that groups equipped with MSA-type lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Jarry. François Bon. Laurent Bruxelles. Céline Pallier. Lars Anderson.

Mas d’Azil cave is one of the most important karstic landmarks in southwestern France. This prehistoric research hotspot is mainly famous for evidence of Magdalenian and Epipaleolithic cultures, but recent researches were confirmed the existence of traces of the oldest occupations of the Upper Palaeolithic, poorly documented so far. In this case, the discovery of an in situ cultural sequence containing older and recent Aurignacian opens up largely new possibilities. First, because the cave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Andrews. Metin Eren. Susan Mentzer. David Meltzer.

Goodson Shelter was discovered by an amateur artifact collector and was first brought to our attention in 2012. The site is an approximately 20 x 7 meter eroded sandstone rockshelter situated about 5 meters above a small tributary. Work in 2013 and 2014 consisted of excavation of a 1x7 meter trench running from outside the dripline to the back wall of the shelter. Deposits are approximately 2 meters deep, and appear to be largely stratigraphically intact. Over 300 projectile points/preforms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe.

The Late Woodland Period in the Midwest of North America shows a marked shift in diet from mixed hunting, gathering and farming a few indigenous crops to a predominance of maize in the diet, indicated by radical changes is stable isotope ratios. The sumptuary displays of elite trade goods of the Adena and Hopewell Interaction Sphere in the Early and Middle Woodland were replaced by more egalitarian burial practices. Farming villages in the major river valleys underwent a major reorganization in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Rowe. Judson Finley.

Archaeologists have investigated many aspects of rockshelters in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, but questions remain about the role of these sites within regional settlement patterns. It is clear that the Bighorn Basin is a moisture-controlled ecosystem and that variability in environmental moisture levels produces dramatic changes in both animal and plant populations. Changes in environmental moisture also appear to affect human population levels, and past settlement and subsistence patterns. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Kolb.

The geomorphology and archaeology of four Balkh River Valley sites near the bazaar town of Aq Kupruk (36º05’0"N 66º50’0"E) spanning the Upper Palaeolithic through Contemporary Nomadic cultures are detailed and compared. This valley served as a significant north-south corridor through the Hindu Kush Mountains, a western extension of the Himalayas, and a caravan route from the Turkestan Plain to the Bamiyan Valley and on to the Kabul River Valley, Indus and the Subcontinent. Major excavations were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Goldberg. Vera Aldeias. Dennis Sandgathe. Alain Turq. Laurent Bruxelles.

La Ferrassie is one of the best-known Middle and Upper Paleolithic sequences in Europe, playing a key role in the question of Neandertal mortuary behavior. Until now, geoarchaeologically-oriented research has focused on the long sequence exposed during the original excavations of Capitan/Peyrony and Delporte (early 20th century and 1968-1973, respectively) in the easternmost part of the site. Our research has exposed intact layers several meters away in the extreme western area of the site, next...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Smith. Madeline Van der Woort. Aaron Ollivier.

For the past five years, a crew from the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, University of Nevada, Reno, has excavated in the LSP-1 Rockshelter in Warner Valley, Oregon. Our work has identified a modest record of pre-Mazama (~7,700 cal BP) occupation comprised of lithic tools and debitage, a well-preserved faunal assemblage, shell beads, and hearth features. In this paper, we highlight major trends in the LSP-1 assemblage and place it within the broader context of northern Great Basin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken-ichi Sasaki.

A practice of horse-riding was introduced to Japan from the late fourth century and after. Since horses were not native to Japan, Korean specialists of raising and producing hoses were invited. Recently, fifth century evidence for raising horses has been excavated at various places in Japan. In the central Osaka Prefecture near where the central polity was located, horses were carefully buried at the foot of small fifth- and sixth-century circular burial mounds, and Korean ceramics were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tetsuo Hishida.

Religion played an essential role in the state formation process in seventh century Japan. After Buddhism was introduced from Korea in the sixth century, more than 600 Buddhist temples were erected by the middle eighth century. There are some distinctive layouts of temple complexes, and the central authority greatly contributed to temporal change in the layouts. A considerable change took place in the middle seventh century, which marks the beginning of the national policy to adopt Buddhism as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masaki SHIBATA.

This paper reviews the history of research and archaeological investigations into the transition from the Jomon to Yayoi Periods. This transition signifies a transition from a hunting-gathering economy to food-producing economy. Traditionally, Japanese archaeology has been characterized by building up relative chronologies of various regions based on pottery. From the 1930’s to 1970’s, the Yayoi Period was defined as a time period when the Yayoi pottery was used. However, rice paddies were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masanori Kawano.

This paper discusses an aspect of the social change that took place in Kofun Period western Japan as a result of evolution of digging tools. The iron blades of such digging tools changes from rectangular plates with bent edges to U-shaped edges in the fifth century A.D. This change was not merely morphological but technological as well. Background to this change was the introduction of highly advanced smith technique from the Korean peninsula. This technological innovation diffused to all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kunihiko Wakabayashi.

Several lines of archaeological evidence indicate that numerous battles took place during the Yayoi Period or Japanese Bronze and Early Iron Age. So far, Japanese archaeologists have argued that these battles occurred as results of competition for agricultural lands or taking initiatives over exchange system. Many of the Japanese archeologists have speculated that wars were a part of the social process for evolving toward an early state society. However, archaeological evidence for wars, such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazunori Misaka.

In Japan a transition from the hunting-gathering Jomon economy to the food producing Yayoi economy took place at some point in the first millennium B.C., and this transition resulted in considerable cultural change. It is widely accepted among Japanese archaeologists that this transition was greatly facilitated by immigration from the southern Korean peninsula who had already practiced agriculture, including wet rice cultivation. In order to approach relationships between the Korean immigrants...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yutaka Tanaka.

In Japan, pottery of various regions was transported for long distances in different directions at the same time and was incorporated into local pottery assemblages from the late second to third centuries A.D. This happened prior to the appearance of the highly-standardized keyhole-shaped burial mounds all over Japan and, in western Japan, local adoption of the type of pottery typical of the Kinki region where the central polity emerged. In eastern Japan, the type of pottery under the influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gen Miyoshi.

The beginning of the Kofun Period in the middle third century A.D. in Japan is often explained in terms of the class distinction of chiefs from ordinary members of the society. This explanation is widely accepted because of the appearance of giant keyhole-shaped burial mounds of more than 270 meters and of "elite mansion." Japanese archaeologists discuss the social complexity of the Kofun Period with reference to social stratification with the chief at the top. In this paper, I apply...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Atsushi UEMINE.

This paper intends to explain how a small number of small-scale Jomon societies in western Japan evolved to large-scale agricultural societies that characterized the Yayoi Period. Traditionally, Japanese archaeologists have approached this issue from the standpoint of settlement archaeology. This paper contributes to understanding this phenomenon based on lithics and their contexts of discoveries. By analyzing the assemblages of chipped stone tools and debitage, it becomes possible to approach...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Ryan.

In addition to their functional role as military implements, weapons can also serve as material representations of martial ideology. Research on weapons burials must therefore take into consideration the multifaceted nature of weaponry within a society. During the majority of Japan's Kofun period (mid-3rd century to early-7th century), the archipelago relied on the importation of finished iron products and raw iron materials from the Korean Peninsula. This formed an intimate connection between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart.

The recognition that similarities exist between the form of agricultural systems and the form of society is a fundamental archaeological contribution to the social sciences. This view of socio-spatial isomorphism is especially notable in research on irrigation. The spatial and temporal properties of water require particular forms of cooperation. Organizational configurations are contingent upon scale, integration, and number of users. In the Basin of Mexico during the Postclassic period, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kanika Kalra.

Agricultural intensification and water management are widely studied in the context of changing political complexity. My research, centered on semi-arid southern India, addresses this theme through a survey of three areas that exemplify the diversity of archaeological sites and trajectories of change in the Raichur region. Irrigation played a significant role in the expansion and intensification of agriculture in this region, achieved through the construction of reservoirs that conserved surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Alejandra Korstanje. Marcos Quesada. Mariana Maloberti.

Traditionally, the Agriculture of the Formative Period (1000 BC-100 AD), was conceived as technologically simple and spatially reduced. However, this simplicity is reconsidered when we take into account that these technologies made possible the practice of agriculture in desert environments with eroded and underdeveloped soils, during millennia. Our research in El Bolsón valley, which is a high basin in western Catamarca, allowed us to know in detail some peasant practice as the irrigation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Albeck.

Quebrada de Humahuaca is an important gorge in northwest Argentina, which lies between the altiplano-like puna to the west and the forested lowlands to the east. It has a long and interesting agricultural history spanning nearly three millennia from the settlement of the first farmers to the present. The prehispanic archaeological landscapes are best preserved in the northern part of Quebrada de Humahuaca, due to the strong erosional processes that cut deep into geological sediments. On the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frances Hayashida. Andrés Troncoso. Diego Salazar. César Parcero-Oubiña. Pastor Fábrega-Álvarez.

How did prehispanic farmers make a living in the hyperarid, high-altitude Atacama Desert, and how did their lives and landscapes change under different political regimes? In this paper, we discuss our ongoing project on irrigated landscapes in the interfluvial region between the Upper Loa and Salado rivers in northern Chile. Research has focused on two sites (Paniri and Topaín) with remarkably well preserved spring-fed canal and terrace systems and a residential and administrative center...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelio Lopez Corral.

The development of agricultural technologies is a key element in theory concerning the growth of Mesoamerican state societies. Cultivation of species under improved environmental conditions suggests intensification oriented strategies for the finance of political institutions, and to attend auto-consumption needs of households at the subsistence level. During the Late Postclassic, the Puebla-Tlaxcala region witnessed the rise and consolidation of various rival state-level polities known locally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphen Rostain.

Modern archaeology must diversify its scientific approaches. First, it is essential to get various viewpoints and different scales to understand better the artifact. Moreover, the interdisciplinary methodology improves considerably the interpretation. The Amazonian raised fields study is a good example of such multiple scientific approaches. While raised field agriculture is no longer widely practiced today, it was quite widespread in the past. These structures are frequently found on the coast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Graves. Joseph Birkmann.

The Hawaiian Islands are known for extensive irrigation complexes that covered coastal areas of large valleys and were recognized for their high productivity. Hawaii Island, however, had limited areas devoted to irrigated cultivation. In the study area of windward Kohala with its narrow valleys and moderately sloping ridges, the landscape for irrigated farming presented challenges that our work explores. Between AD 1300 and 1850 dispersed fields were established as much as 5-10 km inland within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Sandor. Jeffrey Homburg.

Farming alters and can wholly transform landscapes and soil properties, through both deliberate management and unintentional trajectories. The archaeological record of agriculture holds important long-term evidence about land management and change relevant to archaeology and current agriculture. Quantitative assessments of soil change in ancient fields are relatively few because of methodological challenges, soil’s dynamic nature, and post-agricultural imprints of environmental change and land...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maryann Wasiolek.

Physical evidence that ancient people manipulated their environment in order to better manage water resources for the purpose of facilitating agriculture has long been recognized. Remnants of canal systems indicate diversion of the flow of streams and springs and the direct application of surface water to irrigated fields. Terraces and check dams provide evidence of the diversion of overland runoff, while mulched fields, pumice patches, and dune fields imply that early farmers sited fields so as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Luna Golya.

Recent historic imagery analysis combined with 1960-70s archaeological surface survey data in a geographic information system (GIS) has generated a detailed spatial model of chinampa beds, canals, and settlement mounds for a 1,010 hectare area of Lake Xochimilco distinct from remnant Xochimilco chinampas that persisted into historic and modern times. The delineated agricultural waterscape was characterized by an approximately 1:1 land to water ratio with narrow raised agricultural beds (3.75 x...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Acabado. Marlon Martin.

Local wisdom and nationalist sentiments would have us uphold the long-held belief in the age of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, pegged at ca. 2,000 years old. Recent findings by the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP), however, indicate that landscape modification (terraced wet-rice cultivation) intensified between c. AD 1600 and AD 1800, suggesting increased demand for food, which could indicate population growth, a period that coincided with the arrival and subsequent occupation of the Spanish of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Nuñez.

From a macro regional perspective, ancient Maya mortuary practices seem to be highly variable in many features, like skeletal position, head orientation, type of grave, offerings and successive reentering events. But, from a closer view, micro-regional similarities can be found suggesting the use of common burial rituals, practices and believes. The Palenque region is an interesting example of this. The available burial data from Palenque, El Lacandón and Chinikihá are discussed to show the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Liendo. Esteban Miron.

To date, archaeologists working in the Northwestern Maya Lowlands, specifically in the Upper Usumacinta region have focused their attention to ceramic variability and regional distributions trying to "picture" the degree of variability in the role of local centers in regional ceramic exchange systems. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to territorial variability-for example, the distinction between contiguous and non contiguous territorial formations highlighted by recent regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Aliphat.

Los estudios de las relaciones entre la Cultura y la Naturaleza son un aspecto importante en las relaciones espaciales entre recursos naturales y asentamientos humanos. En investigaciones sobre la distribución espacial de recursos y sitios arqueológicos es primordial definir los parámetros del mundo natural que establecen el potencial para que las comunidades humanas logren florecer. Esto se alcanza mediante la construcción, al nivel del paisaje natural, de unidades espaciales básicas de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigitte Kovacevich.

Distributions of jade in the Upper Usumacinta basin suggest that the movement of jade followed political connections and were not purely instances of down-the-line trade motivated by economic gain. Jade objects were likely gifted between elites to solidify political relationships. Some sites along the Usumacinta River received a wealth of jade, while others were relatively impoverished and turned to replicas or other forms of symbolic capital. The materiality of jade during the Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitry Belyaev. Alexander Safronov. Alexandre Tokovinine.

This presentation reviews references to travel in Classic Maya inscriptions at the archaeological sites of the Upper Usumacinta region. Although direct accounts of going to or coming from specific places are few, many texts and captioned images mention non-local individuals or describe events at other sites. The vast majority of such contexts involve warfare, but there are also references to visiting dignitaries, exiles, artisans, messengers, pilgrims, and, above all, brides from other royal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Canter.

Like other major rivers the Usumacinta had parallel land routes. Unlike most rivers the Usumacinta lies bound within whitewater canyons below Yaxchilan, cut off from its flanking trails except at gaps dictated by the geography. In the Classic Period, the river and its trails formed a ladder-like grid offering great mobility, but requiring tradeoffs between speed and safety. For both the ancient Maya and modern boatmen the Usu’ was a fast, efficient, and dangerous route to the lowlands. Two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Bishop. Socorro Jiménez. Erin Sears.

Knowledge about the movement of pottery with volcanic constituents throughout the northwestern Maya Lowlands, from Preclassic through Postclassic times is closely tied to sub-regionally specific resources of the Usumacinta Drainage—from its origin in the highland to the Gulf delta. Following pioneering work in the region by Blom, Berlin, Ochoa, and Rands, we focus on sites in the greater Palenque subregion and their links to sites along the Usumacinta and in the Chiapas Sierras. Although Karl...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flavio Silva De La Mora. Rodrigo Liendo.

The region known as the Northwestern Maya Lowlands encloses a large geographic and cultural area that included and was part of a large system of exchange of goods, people and ideas. Archaeological evidence recovered in the region serve as evidence of the complex system of communication routes and local settlements that were part of local communities and practices. The communication routes and archaeological sites localized between the Usumacinta River and Tulija River serve as a case study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicoletta Maestri. Arianna Campiani.

For the Classic period, recent regional studies in the Usumacinta basin have proposed a mixed system of communication involving both waterborne and inland routes. Circulation of people and things along these routes depended on physiographic features as well as political boundaries. Several settlements located on strategic points along these itineraries could have controlled and/or facilitated the transit. Some of these sites, due to their proximity to the river course, might have been ports and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Bernal. Sara Isabel García Juárez.

Esta ponencia describe las interacciones bélicas y vínculos políticos de las unidades políticas mayas del área occidental durante el periodo Clásico. La fuente esencial de información son las inscripciones jeroglíficas. En términos generales, señala la correlación amplia de tensiones políticas y militares en el cuadrángulo geopolítico cuyas puntas son la región de Palenque, el Bajo Usumacinta (Moral Reforma, Pomoná, Piedras Negras), el Usumacinta Medio (Sak Tz´i, Yaxchilán, Bonampak y Lakamha) y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Anaya Hernandez. Pascual Izquierdo Egea.

Walking, although commonly seen as a simple activity, represents in fact, a very important aspect of the relationship that develops between human groups and the physical environment on which they live. In this way, the nature of this environment will bestow the singularities of the political, social and economic organization of societies. We can approach human mobility through the application of GIS in terms of the estimation of cost of movement. Various algorithms have been developed that allow...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Edmonds.

The behaviors discussed in ethnographic accounts of the western Great Basin valleys vary widely and unexpectedly. Although both Owens Valley and Fish Lake Valley were inhabited by Eastern Mono speaking groups in historic times, their population density, settlement, subsistence, and sociopolitical organization were markedly different. Archaeological debate centers on whether these differences result from historic contact or if they have some meaningful time depth into prehistory. Situated between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Hughes.

Until recently, most of what was known about the prehistoric use and conveyance of obsidian in the Great Basin was derived from analysis of time-sensitive artifacts recovered from caves and rockshelters. Over the past 35 years, however, archaeological research conducted in high-altitude settings has provided new insights about synchronic and diachronic patterning unique from many lowland assemblages. This paper will present the results of obsidian provenance analysis from sites in the White...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Goshen. Jacob L. Fisher.

Previous research in the eastern Great Basin using stable isotope analysis of faunal remains suggests that bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) responded to climate change by shifting their ranges to higher elevations during warm intervals. A shift in sheep ranges would have increased travel and transportation costs for central place foragers based in lower elevation valleys. We expect that hunters responded to the increased costs in a number of ways, including altering settlement strategies and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thomas.

Why did some Great Basin foraging families spend their summers atop the very highest place in their world? Julian Steward briefly considered this question in the 1930s, but the issue resurfaced with the chance discovery of Alta Toquima, a 31-pithouse residential site at 11,000 feet. More than 150 14C determinations from Alta Toquima and nearby Gatecliff Shelter permit fine-tuned comparisons of cultural and paleoclimatic change spanning the last 7000 years. The Alta Toquima residences track both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tod Hildebrandt.

Alpine villages are extremely rare in the Great Basin. To date, villages located at elevations above 10,000 ft. are only known to occur in the White Mountains and the Toquima Range. Demographic forcing and climatic change has been used to explain the existence of these villages, but these propositions do not identify more specific selective pressures that led to the establishment of high-elevation villages in some ranges but not others. Comparison of artifact distributions and environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Hildebrandt. Kelly McGuire.

Several researchers have hypothesized that high elevation habitats were not intensively used until after 4000 cal BP when lowland settlements became more stable and logistical hunting organization emerged. This paper evaluates this hypothesis by comparing the relative frequency of Pinto versus Elko/Humboldt series projectile points across a variety of lowland and upland settings in the White Mountains/Owens Valley area. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Basgall. Bridget Wall.

In the years since Bettinger's seminal studies in the White Mountains of eastern California, there have been projects completed at high elevations in two adjacent ranges, the Inyo Mountains to the south and the Sierra Nevada to the west of Owens Valley. These efforts have been of limited scope, but seem to show similarities as well as important differences in patterns of land use over time. Some extensive surface collections from the Inyo range have recently become available for examination,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Delacorte. Mark E. Basgall.

The role of Great Basin alpine/upland habitats within broader land-use strategies has long been debated. We explore upland and lowland data from either side of the White Mountain highlands to reconstruct late Middle Archaic (~1350-2500 B.P.) use of regional landscapes. This information suggests that regionally wide-ranging, logistically organized patrilineal groups made seasonal use of alpine and other uplands for late summer/fall hunting and gathering prior to winter encampment in valley...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Bettinger.

The alpine zone (above 10,000 feet) of White Mountains of eastern California is the most extensive, and by far the most intensively occupied by aboriginal groups, in the Great Basin. The earliest consistent use, beginning about 5500 BP, is by hunting parties. Beginning sometime after A.D. 600, the White Mountains village residential pattern is distinctive, featuring one or more well-built dwellings, well-developed middens, and extensive assemblages of chipped and ground stone. While hunting was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morgan. Mark Giambastiani. Robert Bettinger. Marielle Black.

Recent investigations in the extremely remote and previously unsurveyed northern White Mountains have identified a pattern of alpine land use consistent with many other alpine regions in and around the Great Basin: one focused mainly on artiodactyl hunting. But sites similar to the alpine villages in the southern portion of the range were discovered at the subalpine-alpine ecotone. GIS analyses suggest the relative dearth of high elevation villages in the north is explained by environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rhode.

Prehistoric high altitude occupation sites in the White Mountains and Toquima Range contain archaeobotanical assemblages that inform on the use of plant resources both alpine in origin and imported from lower altitudes. Plant assemblages from the two areas show many similarities in the range of plant resources represented, as well as evident differences that reflect variable modes of high altitude living across the Great Basin. This presentation compares the plant materials from the White...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Fincham.

The Federal Government has taken a more active approach to the illicit trade in looted and stolen antiquities. In some cases this Federal role has produced increased awareness and produced some notable seizures and returns. However the Federal intervention in a dispute between Egypt and the St. Louis Art Museum over an ancient Egyptian mask known as the Ka Nefer Nefer offers a cautionary tale. The Museum purchased the mask in 1998, after a cursory examination of the object's history. Egypt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Mackenzie.

The illicit trade in looted cultural property has been observed to be an example of a ‘transnational criminal market’. Other examples of transnational criminal markets are given in the non-exhaustive list in the title. These markets function in respect of a variety of goods – some are ‘collectibles’ markets (eg. antiquities; wildlife), some trade ‘consumables’ (eg. drugs; diamonds; counterfeit/pirated goods), while others move non-consumer goods that are not collectibles (eg. guns; radiological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Brodie.

International ‘cultural property protection’ policy is structured around two UNESCO Conventions: the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Together, these conventions encourage a policy which aims at cultural site protection at source and the recovery and restitution of stolen or otherwise illicitly-traded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Duncan Chappell. damien huffer.

Within the global antiquities trade, especially that (significant) portion of it conducted online, the size and scope of the trade in archaeological and ethnographic human remains continues to be poorly known. In 2014, the authors researched and published the first comprehensive update of what is known about the online component of this trade c. 2013, conducting common search engine queries over two months to creating a database to record recent or ongoing sales, and then explore questions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alvaro Higueras.

In this presentation I aim to address two issues: first, the state of looting and trafficking of monumental and portable heritage in Peru today, and, second, to propose new strategies to contribute to solving the problem of looting and trafficking. The novel strategies I propose are only part of the solution: they should be compounded and should help strengthen the effectiveness of old, tried and partially successful enforcement strategies. The diversification of options is urgent amidst...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Felch.

Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor faces trial in India as the alleged mastermind of an international idol smuggling network. A year-long investigation by researchers, journalists, art aficionados and law enforcement on three continents established the illicit origins for more than a dozen ancient objects allegedly trafficked by Kapoor. In September 2014, Australian museums returned two of those objects to India -- a 10th century Shiva Nataraja purchased by the National Gallery of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Yates.

For 40 years the trafficking of Maya antiquities has been at the forefront of debate over the most effective way to discourage the illicit antiquities trade. Images of mutilated Maya stela and jungle-covered temples pitted by looters' trenches epitomize the effects of the global demand for looted artifacts. National and international measures have been introduced to protect Maya sites on the ground, prevent looted artefacts from crossing borders, or effect the repatriation of stolen cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Parcak.

This paper will focus on the use of innovative new tools and technologies for the mapping of archaeological site destruction. Post Arab Spring, the Middle East has seen an increasing amount of looting and general site destruction, yet how is it possible to locate, map, and quantify these activities to save the sites? The author used a series of high resolution satellites images as well as Google Earth to map looting in Egypt from 2002-2013. The methodology is one that can easily be replicated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Von Hagen.

The art style of the people who occupied the territory called "Chachapoyas" by sixteenth century chroniclers and modern scholars reflects the region’s location straddling the eastern slope of Peru’s northern Andes and Amazonia. At various times in Andean prehistory the Chachapoya interacted with cultures to the north, east and west of their territory, while at other times they seem to have flourished in relative isolation. Given Chachapoyas’ location and apparent sporadic contacts, especially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Warren Church.

To answer the query "what was Chachapoyas?" we must think in terms of time, space and identity. Chachapoyas scholars have encountered documentary and/or archaeological evidence of a mosaic of social identities, all undergoing transformations during successive pre-Inca, Inca, and Colonial times within a truly vast Andean region. In this paper, I consider notions of Chachapoyas internal and external boundaries as they have been conceived in the southern area where I conduct my research....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfredo Narvaez.

Nuestros trabajos en Kuélap han permitido la excavación de un centenar de estructuras circulares, densos rellenos, estructuras ceremoniales y secciones de la muralla exterior y la muralla del Pueblo Alto. Estas excavaciones han afinado una secuencia estratigráfica apoyada en una veintena de fechados de radiocarbono y permitido el hallazgo de diversos contextos que sustentan una nueva hipótesis respecto del rol del monumento. Estos estudios han concluido en lo siguiente: a) el monumento comenzó...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Inge Schjellerup.

The Chachapoya and the Incas had different perceptions of the landscape concerning settlement, agriculture and communication and each of them transformed the olriginal landscape into a cultural landscape with the construction of monumental architecture and enormous investment in agricultural intensification in the form of various types of terraces. The objective is to illustrate how historical sources and archaeological investigations together contribute to the understanding of the nature and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Anzellini. J. Marla Toyne.

The Chachapoya of the eastern Peruvian highlands utilized various methods for disposing of their dead, but almost all involve highly visible spaces. While some regional variation is found among what are typically considered Chachapoya mortuary spaces, there is evidence for social cohesion within each site. While few mortuary complexes of the Chachapoya have been excavated, La Petaca provides the opportunity to scientifically study intrasite variation. On only half of the ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Guillen. Gilmer Medina. Agustín Rodríguez.

The number of studies in the ancient Chachapoya territory increased tremendously in the last two decades. It is clear that the concept of a Chachapoya unit does not have a strong basis. This is not a new idea, ethnohistorial documents refer to the differentiated communities included in the common denomination introduced since the time of the Inka conquest. This presentation reviews the distribution of sites referred in the literature, introducing new data based on speleological studies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Crandall.

The Chachapoya have come to be seen as a peripheral cultural entity in relation to the broader pre-Columbian Andes, yet little work has addressed how these ‘peripheral’ communities developed in relation to each other. While it is clear that the material culture that is manifestly associated with the Chachapoya developed prior to AD 1000, it is unclear how uniform this process was on a regional level. In the pre-Columbian Andes the development of centralized and partitioned monumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Marla Toyne. J. Marla Toyne. L. Alfredo Narvaez.

In early 17th century historical descriptions, Garcilaso de la Vega describes the Chachapoya people of Peru as "very brave", "the men well-formed and the women extremely beautiful". While the archaeological remains cannot address the veracity of these statements, the analysis of the skeletal remains from important Chachapoya complexes, such as Kuelap, provide the only direct means of reconstructing a biological profile of these ancient people, including aspects of their physical morphology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evelyn Guevara. Antti Sajantila. Jukka Palo. Sonia Guillén.

The aim of the study is to elucidate the origin and population history of the human communities from northeastern Peru, with both contemporary and ancient DNA data. For the first phase of the study, contemporary Y-chromosomal (23 STRs) and mitochondrial (HVR1 and HVR2 sequences) data from four populations (Chachapoya=276; Jivaro=47; Huancas=21 and Cajamarca=34) distributed in the northeastern region of Amazonas (Peru), was assessed. At haplogroup level, the markers showed differential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Guengerich.

Recent research among Chachapoya societies, who lived in Northeastern Peru between AD900-1500, has drawn attention to the diversity of material culture associated with different sub-regions spanning this large area. In the face of this diversity, one basis that archaeologists have consistently used for grouping these societies together is domestic architecture. Communities across the Chachapoya region built circular houses out of stone, adorning them with functional and decorative features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Urton.

In 2005, the author published a study of a large khipu found in the plundered remains at the rock overhang site at Laguna de los Cóndores. That publication focused on the calendrical features of this khipu, showing that it was composed of cord groupings that constituted a two-year calendar. Subsequent study of the large sample and other, smaller khipus also found at the site show evidence of a process of the collection of information from several smaller cord records (perhaps from subordinate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Klaus Koschmieder.

Hasta el momento dos aspectos importantes sobre los antiguos Chachapoya no fueron discutidos de manera satisfactoria. Se trata del orígen y de la organización social de este grupo prehistórico que pobló un territorio extenso al este del río Maranhon (Perú) antes de estar dominado por los inca y los espanholes. La aparición súbita de numerosas poblaciones Chachapoya durante el Intermedio Tardío deja suponer que fueron inmigrantes, los cuales dejaron su tierra natal por razones todavía...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rogers. Scott Stull.

Archaeogeophysical and 3D laser scanning at the Old Fort Johnson National Landmark site in Fort Johnson, New York provides a case study for creation of an integrated landscape. The ability to digitally image above and below ground features creates a new way of visualizing an integrated landscape. Above ground remains of historic structures often appear out of their original context. Defensive elements, outbuildings, agricultural areas, ceremonial areas, walkways, and shape of the ground surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card. Micayla Spiros.

Three-dimensional imaging is a quickly growing part of archaeological documentation, investigation, education, and public outreach. Cost and expertise barriers to using 3D software and equipment continue to drop. Nonetheless, many efforts in 3D archaeology are driven by graduate students or focused undergraduates who become part of dedicated 3D laboratories or projects. Since 2013, we have been working with a different approach of incorporating three-dimensional imaging and printing at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Killgrove. Mariana Zechini.

The faunal type collection at the University of West Florida’s Department of Anthropology, used for zooarchaeological reference, is composed primarily of specimens of local fauna donated by students, staff, and faculty. These crowdsourced contributions are stored in a lab facility and therefore are not readily available to archaeologists needing to make IDs in the field or to researchers working from afar. Using the department’s NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner and hand-held Sense 3D scanner, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Jared Wood.

Rapid technological advancements and increased availability of hardware and software are boons to archaeologists gathering and interpreting spatial data from anthropogenic landscapes. These datasets are increasingly unmatched in quality and quantity, allowing for visualization, analysis, and explication of built and modified environments reflecting human behavior. While these advancements are clearly well-received by individual archaeologists, the enduring question remains: When (and how) should...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernard Means. Lauren Volkers.

With support from the Department of Defense's Legacy Program, I am working with undergraduate students in the Virtual Curation Laboratory to create digital type collections of chipped stone tools and zooarchaeological elements. These efforts include scanning stone tools from classic projectile point guides at the New York State Museum (Ritchie's "Typology and Nomenclature of New York Projectile Points") and the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC-Chapel Hill (Coe's "Formative Cultures...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Selden. Timothy Campbell. Suzanne Eckert. Michael O'Brien. Mara Vasconcelos.

We demonstrate two quantitative methods for potential inter- and intra-group comparisons of archaeological ceramics. For 3D morphometrics, we define a single stable landmark that is consistent throughout our ceramic data, and employ opposing curves populated by semi-landmarks to capitalize on the shape variation that occurs in coil-built ceramics. Eight such curves are used to capture four complete profiles. The landmark data are then subjected to generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lance Greene.

The Confederate POW facility, Camp Lawton, was constructed in the summer of 1864 to relieve the horrendous conditions at Andersonville. Camp Lawton, a 42-acre stockade housing over 10,000 Union prisoners, was only open during October and November 1864. It was abandoned in late November as Sherman’s men marched towards Savannah. Recent archaeological excavations by Georgia Southern University (GSU) students and faculty located the prisoner encampment. The area includes intact prisoners’ hut...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Ashmore.

In A Forest of Kings, Linda Schele and David Freidel captivated readers with substance and inference about multiple Maya cities and their inhabitants. For Copan, they focused on long- and short-term developments culminating in the death of its last effective king, Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat, whose death effectively coincided with the end of both dynastic rule and social cohesion at Macaw Mountain, Copan. Extraordinary finds and ideas have come to light since that 1990 publication, things those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken.

As the site of many of the epigraphic breakthroughs that fully brought the Classic Maya into realm of history, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico holds an important place in Maya studies. In the Forest of Kings, Linda Schele and David Freidel brought together one of the first truly comprehensive descriptions of the history of a Classic period royal family. Perhaps more significantly, they put forth a narrative of dynastic legitimization through writing and monumental construction that has endured and...