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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Saldaña. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dru McGill.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Go. Xu Zhang.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Jeffrey Frost.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Shelley. Nathan Montalvo.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Brown. Lisa Nagaoka. Feifei Pan. Steve Wolverton.

The abandonment of the Mesa Verde region at the end of the Pueblo III (PIII) period (AD 1150 to 1300) represents a complex synergy of causal processes, such as inter-village conflict, drought induced water and food resource stress, and high population density. Decisions to abandon a place, however, occurred at the scale of human interaction, that of the village. This study examines one factor that would have been important in those decisions, the location and properties of farmplots near...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Sawyer. Justin Holcomb.

Skagafjörður, northern Iceland is a fertile valley bottom where farms established during the Landnám in the late 9th century are still occupied today. In this study, we examin middens from three farms: Reynistaður, Syðra-Skördugil, and Stóra Seyla. The middens show deposition from the Landnám through the Medieval Period. This research answers four questions: What is the sediment composition of the midden fill? What are the main modes of deposition? How do these deposits contribute to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hayley Singleton.

In summer 2013, a platform mound and newly identified midden deposit were tested at the Garden Patch site, a Woodland multimound center located on the northern gulf coast of Florida. The subjects of this research study are the faunal remains from the dense midden of Area X and adjacent Mound II, a platform mound constructed of shell midden. Results indicate a highly marine based diet focused on the nearby marsh and shallow Gulf waters. A series of dates suggest the Area X village midden...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janling Fu.

Cultural appropriation of Levantine feasting forms by Neo-Assyria was an expression of agency that effectively subsumed, subverted and captured the dynamic of traditional Levantine polities. For those, the feast had represented an act of royal legitimation depicted iconographically by the figure of a king drinking from a cup. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire and the prominent appearance of this image, particularly in the 9th century BCE, deserves consideration as a probable co-opting of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal Geiger.

Historic material objects are the link between the choices that people make and their cultural values. This paper presents the results of glass bottle analysis from a nineteenth century pioneer camp site (Stranahan 8BD259) located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Glass analysis reveals patterns of use, as well as, social and temporal values. The comparison of cultural materials and historic documents provide important clues into the ways in which early settlers negotiated frontier life. SAA 2015...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Marsh.

The site of Chavín de Huántar, in the Peruvian Andes, exhibits an extraordinary amount of variability and complexity. In order to better understand this diversity, ceramic fragments from different contexts within the site were sampled, specifically for paste analysis. An initial macroscopic analysis suggested higher variability in pastes within the ceremonial center than within the residential area across the river. It also showed that the fragments from different contexts within the ceremonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M Thompson.

This paper addresses the social memories and identities of the spirits of the dead in the Prehispanic American Southeast and Southwest to consider their involvement in socio-political affairs. I argue that archaeology can begin to identify different kinds of spirits in the mortuary record, and that these spirits play different, unique roles in respective communities. I describe an effort to recognize ancestors, ancestral spirits, and/or collective groups of the dead in a Mississippian period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elise Widmayer. Joseph Gingerich. Harry Iceland.

Cobbles, natural rock, and unflaked lithics are rarely subjects of study at Paleoindian sites. The lack of available literature on this topic may be due to an absence of these artifacts in Paleoindian levels, insufficient sample sizes, or an over emphasis on more aesthetic flaked stone. Within the Smithsonian’s Shawnee-Minisink collection, there are a number of stones from the Paleoindian level that appear to be manuports. Considering these stones are isolated, not found in cobble clusters, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean McMurry. Opal Adams. Richard DeLong.

Visual analysis is one method used to assess indirect effects of an undertaking on cultural resources that are eligible or potentially eligible for the National Register. Viewshed analysis is commonly used to implement the visual analysis; however, to accurately assess the indirect effect, the overall scope of a project must be tied to the project activities. Perspective analysis can be used to determine the project’s visibility distance, or the maximum distance at which project activities are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Hora-Cook. Judson Finley.

Jones Hole Canyon, east of the Uinta Basin, experienced a population increase during the late Formative Period (between A.D. 1000 – 1300), roughly coincident with reductions in farming populations in the Uinta Basin. The subsistence economy of these Fremont-era occupants of Jones Hole remains unresolved: did they acquire food primarily through foraging like the canyon’s Archaic Period predecessors, or did they supplement foraged foods with horticultural products in a manner reminiscent of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pratt. David Brown. Dana Anthony. Patricia Mothes.

While Inka architecture is occasionally discussed as if it were a unified corpus of building styles, regional variation is great, with the Inka frequently adopting local techniques. Recent excavations is northern Ecuador have uncovered examples of a little documented Inka foundation style found at several sites in the region. At Hacienda Guachalá, where local legends maintain that the hacienda chapel, reportedly one of the oldest in Ecuador, was built atop an Inka temple, the early colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rissa Trachman. Savannah Bradley.

Household economies have been addressed from several perspectives in northwestern Belize. The resource specialized community model (Scarborough and Valdez 2003; 2009) emphasizes locally available resources in production and consumption at the community scale. The model has great validity in the hinterland communities and is clearly evidenced in household investigations near Dos Hombres Belize in the form of the raw materials utilized in stone tool production. In addition, the function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Beck.

The potential for zooarchaeological data to inform modern conservation issues is unquestioned by archaeologists; however, with a few notable exceptions, such an approach has been underutilized. Zooarchaeological data are uniquely positioned to provide a long-term view on the population history and variation in foraging ecology of a species. Such information is paramount to conservation efforts for threatened taxa, particularly in addressing what has been called by conservation ecologists the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Laluk. Sarah Cowie. Ben Curry.

With the continued evolution of collaborative archaeological projects between American Indian communities and archaeologists in North America archaeologists are constantly speculating ways in which their research will benefit American Indian communities. However, do archaeological research goals and agendas truly and positively contribute to the wants and needs of tribal communities involved? This paper examines various case studies in reference to collaborative archaeological projects in North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kennedy.

Metal projectile points of the Protohistoric and early Historic periods are a somewhat rare, yet ubiquitous artifact type that has received little attention regarding synthetic research. Their roughly 300 years of use across the interior west coincided with perhaps the most profound and rapid culture changes experienced by native groups of North America during the entirety of their prehistory and history. A survey of 14 states across the interior west is currently underway to gather data on all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyson Brown. Eduard Reinhardt. Aubrey Cannon.

Pacific salmon has been a vital resource to the people of British Columbia as far back as 9,700 years before present (BP). Sediment cores collected from Namu Lake, British Columbia provide evidence for paleoenvironmental conditions that may have led to the decline of the pink salmon population ~3400 cal years BP. Archaeological evidence obtained from the Namu shell midden reveal fluctuating pink salmon populations at this time. Particle size analysis of the lake sediment cores indicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hubbe. Christina Torres-Rouff.

Catarpe tambo represents one of the clearest pieces of evidence for an Inca presence in north Chile’s Atacama oases. The tambo was built and used north of the oases, in the San Pedro river canyon. Catarpe was chosen by the Incas as the local administrative center, however the valley was already densely occupied since at least the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1400). Here, we study morphological affinities and the distribution of cranial vault modification among over 300 individuals from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darcy Mathews.

On the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, between 400–1500 calA.D., the Straits Salish peoples built distinctive funerary petroforms for their ancestral dead. These above ground features, constructed in a patterned array of sizes and shapes, were the material and spatial outcome of ritualized depositional practices. The Edye Point Cemetery, the largest funerary petroform cemetery in the region, has more than 300 of these features concentrated in a three hectare area. There is a recursive and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rory Becker. Jacob Jensen.

Recent advances technology allow digital cameras to be modified to record monochrome ultraviolet light at a high level of sensitivity. The ability to collect imagery on archaeological targets in short wave ultraviolet (wavelengths of 280 nanometers or less) reveals information previously hidden from view. Advances in camera technology, lens & filter types, and specialized lighting equipment needed to taking short wave ultraviolet images are discussed along with methodologies for collecting high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Fulkerson. Adam Rorabaugh.

A substantial amount of recent literature has re-examined the applicability of dart-arrow indices for hafted chipped stone tools from archaeological assemblages ranging from the Columbia Plateau to Californian Coast. As yet, these approaches have not been employed to examine variation in Coast Salish lithic traditions. We critically apply Hildebrandt and King's (2012) recent-dart arrow index and also employ a discriminant function analysis (DFA) to a data set of chipped and ground stone points...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Dennehy.

How do hunter-gatherers divide their landscape into territories? In this paper, I will delve into results from a prior study showing a significant difference in territory size between coastal and inland groups in California (Dennehy et al. 2014). I will first simulate territory sizes and locations using an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of hunter-gatherer bands. The model will draw on human behavioral ecology to simulate distribution of foraging groups under three different conditions of social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassidy Phillips. Jamie Clark. Lyn Wadley. Silje Bentsen.

This project utilized Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in an attempt to better understand fire use at the Middle Stone Age site of Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Our project focused on the Howiesons Poort deposits (HP; ~65-62 ka). Hand drawn maps of layers/features were digitized by S. Bentsen; these maps were combined with faunal data from each feature and 50 x50 cm quadrant. Using the kernel density tool, density maps were created which allowed for an assessment of the relationship of calcined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Gaspar. Daniela Klokler.

Systematic archaeological research focused for centuries on large scale shell mounds and now scholars turn their attention to smaller sites located on the southeastern coast of Brazil. Similarly to large mounds, these sites were built with mollusk and fish remains, have a complex stratigraphy and high numbers of burials. Researchers’ approach used data from formation processes and funerary contexts to establish comparisons between regions. Results indicate that small mounds located around the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Baumann. Gary Crites. Lynne Sullivan.

This is a preliminary study of beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) recovered from late prehistoric and historic Native American sites in East Tennessee. Beans are known to be the last domesticated plant that was adopted by late prehistoric cultures in the Eastern Woodlands. In the Southeast, the emergence of beans is not clearly understood because no regional studies have been done and very few samples have been directly dated to establish a chronology. This problem is addressed by analyzing the spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Somerville. Margaret Schoeninger.

This study investigates the utility of stable isotope analysis (δ13C apatite, δ18O apatite, δ13C collagen and δ15N collagen) of leporid (rabbit and hare) bones to monitor the environmental conditions in which the animals lived. Since leporids were one of the most commonly consumed vertebrates in the pre-Hispanic New World, their skeletal remains are frequently found at archaeological sites. The relatively small home ranges and short lifespans of leporids, moreover, make them an ideal species to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Barry. Gyles Iannone. James Conolly. Dan Savage.

Settlement patterns studies in archaeology have shown that a myriad of environmental, political, social, and ideological factors influenced where ancient people chose to settle on the landscape. In efforts to better understand these complex behaviors, archaeologists have increasingly turned to GIS-based modeling approaches including viewshed and least cost path analyses. This study draws upon these techniques to explore visibility and movement across the north Vaca Plateau of west-central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Swantek.

For at least the last 5,000 years, competition for social and economic control led to the acquisition of social power and wealth by some individuals or groups and the emergence of complex social systems. This paper will present the preliminary results of a larger study intended to identify the changing network structures that underlie society at the household, village and regional scales and led to the emergence of social complexity as a system level phenomenon during the Prehistoric Bronze Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Brandl. Teresa Steele.

Investigating the socioeconomic status of occupants in 19th century historical sites has long been a goal of archaeological investigations; more recently, analyses of the animal bones preserved in these sites (zooarchaeology) have been used to compliment conclusions drawn from other lines of evidence. Following in this tradition, we will use faunal remains to examine changes in socioeconomic status of the inhabitants of the Stanford Mansion in Sacramento, California. The Stanford Mansion was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joao Cascalheira. Nuno Bicho.

Clusters of sites in particular regions of Southwestern Europe seem to reveal that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) settlement patterns form a scenario of relatively isolated refugia that may have contracted and expanded their cultural influence as climate fluctuated. Similarities between each of these niches have been long argued, based on the distribution of specific types of lithic weaponry. This paper will focus on a study of lithic technological organization during the LGM in Southwestern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loretta Dibble.

A detailed study of the variation in Holocene worked bone harpoons from the Lake Turkana/Omo Basin (Northern Kenya/Southwest Ethiopia) has been conducted. Bone harpoon sites in this basin span a more than 6,000 year period (approximately 9,000 or 10,000 bp through 3,000 bp). A review of the dates associated with these archaeological assemblages (and the dating of sedimentary features correlated with the changing lake levels in the basin) is presented along with new dates 00000000and new material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall McGill.

Settlement pattern analyses published by Matson, Lipe, and Haase (1988) contributed basic understandings of the distribution of the many small dispersed sites in the Cedar Mesa area of SE Utah, and of the environmental factors that influenced these settlement behaviors. This project applies geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing techniques to supplement their settlement pattern study and gain additional insight into Ancestral Pueblo occupation of the region. Processing and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Harrod.

The discussion of elite leaders in the Greater Southwest has primarily focused on Chaco Canyon. This project extends that discussion to the later site to the north called Aztec Ruins. Because of its size and some architectural similarities to sites in Chaco Canyon, it has also been suggested to be a regional center with considerable political-economic power. Morris recovered a number of human skeletal remains from Aztec Ruins between 1916 and 1922. One burial in particular is of interest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Love. Andrew Vaughan.

Artifact collections and skeletal remains curated in multiple facilities and stored in variable conditions across the globe contain a wealth of archaeological knowledge. Access to data about these collections, much less the collections themselves, can be restricted both by policy concerns and practical considerations. Recent technological advancements have made creating high quality digital representations of both artifact and skeletal material possible. In this paper we compare two methods of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Johnson.

Archaeobotanical research can provide archaeologists with insights into what plant resources past peoples were consuming and utilizing as well as the spatial organization of resource use and other activities within a site. Investigations at the Johnston Site, a large ring village located in Western Pennsylvania date back to the 1950s, yet until recently, relatively little research has been completed with archaeobotanical samples. This Late Prehistoric site is categorized in literature as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Scott Cardinal. Jennifer Loughmiller-Cardinal.

A recent study illuminated the bias toward publishing significantly positive results by researchers in the social sciences, raising substantive questions regarding the treatment and dissemination of null or statistically non-significant data. In archaeology, we also tend towards emphasizing the latest discovery, the big site, or the conclusive analysis. While it is satisfying to be able to present the latest and greatest in one’s field, what then becomes of the rest of the data? Typically, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman. Torben Rick. Antonia Rodrigues. Dongya Yang.

Pre-contact whaling on the northern Oregon coast is an issue that has received limited attention from archaeologists. The discovery of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalanx with an embedded elk (Cervus elaphus) bone point from the Par-Tee Site (35CLT20) in Seaside, OR precipitated a discussion of ethnographic and archaeological evidence for whaling in the area. Previous genetic and archaeological research suggested that opportunistic whaling may have occurred in this region. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Dumas.

The French established Fort Tombecbe in 1736, in part, to secure their relationship with the eastern Choctaw. Over the following twenty-seven years, thousands of Choctaws visited the fort to trade, and, by 1763, a large town was located nearby. Choctaw pottery recently excavated from French components at the fort adds to a regional and offers insights into the relationship between the Choctaw and French during the middle of the eighteenth century at a remote frontier fort. SAA 2015 abstracts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Szumilewicz. Izumi Shimada. Carlos Elera Alvarado. César Samillán Torres.

Simple cotton cloths primed as canvases and painted with complex imagery are the rarest group of fiber arts found in the Andes. Long-term excavations of Middle Sicán (900-1100 CE) elite cemeteries at the site of Sicán on the North Coast of Peru, however, have shown that high quantities of these paintings, often in polychrome and over 10m in length, decorated the interior surfaces of elite tombs. In this paper we present evidence for their manufacture and use, as well as approaches to preserving...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omur Harmansah. Peri Johnson.

Since 2010, Yalburt Yaylasi Archaeological Landscape Research Project has been investigating the politics of Hittite borderlands in a region known as Pedassa in antiquity, currently located within the Turkish province of Konya. In 2013 and 2014 seasons, the project focused on the Kuru Gol Basin, a dried lake basin within the survey region, where Turkey's largest coal operated power plant and its open pit mine is planned in the next few years. Due to recent marginalization of this waterless...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sadie Weber.

Chavín de Huántar is well-known for its ritual significance in the Andean world, however the nature of both subsistence and temple offerings remain unclear. Though previous research has been carried out on the Chavín de Huántar botanical assemblages, much remains a mystery due to poor overall preservation of carbonized remains. In order to obtain a more complete understanding of Formative Period subsistence, residues extracted from potsherds from sealed Chavín contexts were analyzed for starch...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Schwartz. Hannah Zanotto. Ben Nelson. David Abbott.

Material evidence of interaction between prehispanic peoples in the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica is first detected ca. 2000 BCE with the introduction of maize, figurines, and ceramics. Such markers of long-distance interaction increase in diversity and abundance in later periods, including copper bells, scarlet macaws, and other objects and symbols. These objects and symbols moved up to 2000 km by social actions and mechanisms that remain obscure. Although the Hohokam had the strongest ties to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Kincaid. Ryan Harrod. Aaron Woods.

The discovery of disarticulated and processed human remains at several archaeological sites has provided evidence of extreme violence in the pre-contact American Southwest. Several theories have been presented to explain the presence of these traumatic injuries, including witchcraft executions, ancestor veneration, and cannibalism. The research being presented consists of a detailed reexamination of a small sample of human remains recovered from two neighboring Fremont sites and one nearby...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Greaves. Karen Kramer.

Children’s activities represent an under-appreciated aspect of the formation of the archaeological record. Unlike many adult behaviors of interest such as hunting, gathering, agricultural work, pastoral activities, trading, or raw material extraction that have significant components performed away from archaeologically visible habitation locations, most of children’s effects on the record occur within the confines or camps or villages. Children use and discard a wide variety of toys that shift...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayur Mehta. David Abbott.

In 2014, the Carson Mounds Archaeological Project (CMAP) excavated a structure on the summit of Mound D. In addition to a cache of Mississippian chisels, or woodworking tools, excavations revealed several rebuilding episodes associated with this structure. Furthermore, a well-fired and compact earthen floor was discovered underneath the daub fall. This presentation focuses on excavations and findings, radiocarbon dates from the structure and Mound D, and also includes a discussion on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Haggard. Casey Hegel.

This poster examines burial construction in relation to landscape modifications in the Rio Bravo region of northwestern Belize. A geospatial analysis was conducted on burials and surrounding features, such as shrines, to determine the Maya social hierarchical system established during the Middle Preclassic, Late Preclassic, and Late Classic periods. This research addresses the interrelationship between altered landscapes and burial locations, which can yield insight into social control. Poor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Loughmiller-Cardinal.

Various systems of vessel classification have evolved through the need to address specific research questions from disparate sub-fields within Mayan studies. Recent work, however, has shown that these classificatory categories may be inadvertently biasing the interpretation of Mayan ceramics by presupposing aspects of use, function, and social context. Instead, these aspects should be matters of empirical study and validation derived from the vessels and their contexts rather than imposition by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Smith. William Pestle. Francisco Gallardo. Christina Torres-Rouff.

Northern Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the driest environments on Earth. In fact, it has been suggested that the region serves as a good model for living conditions on Mars. By employing a number of resource management strategies including complex systems of trade, humans have lived in the inhospitable region for millennia. Here we present the results of stable isotope analysis of seven Formative Period (1500 B.C.-A.D. 500) humans from the Ancachi site near the modern town of Quillagua....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Hitchings. Edward Banning.

In 2012 and 2013, a team from University of Toronto surveyed the Wadi Quseiba drainage in northwest Jordan. The survey had two goals. The first was to discover evidence of Late Neolithic habitation and landscape use. Many large villages declined or were abandoned at the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and we sought to augment our knowledge of Late Neolithic sites to help learn why this might be. The second was to increase the efficiency and reliability with which sites are located. To this end...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hillary Jones. Judson Finley. Tammy Rittenour. Kenneth Cannon.

Wave action along the Lima Reservoir in Centennial Valley, Montana has exposed three adjacent Paleoindian sites along the north shore cutbank. While these sites date to the same period and are near each other (within 1.5 miles), they possess markedly different geologic contexts. The westernmost site, 24BE43, is a surface scatter resting on an old soil with a very well-developed Btk horizon. The eastern site, 24BE52, is also a surface manifestation but it sits on a very thin soil capping what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nichole Keener.

Of the three basic necessities humans need to survive – food, clothing, and shelter – clothing is often underrepresented archaeologically as fibers do not typically survive due to environmental challenges. Although often under-analyzed, these small commonly-found artifacts are valuable parts of the archaeological record. Through decorative and utilitarian buttons and fasteners, patterns can be identified to address questions regarding daily life during an occupation of a site. Patterns in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Lee.

In the Jinju area of South Korea, social inequality first emerged during the Mumun Period (1060 – 340 cal. B.C.), during which permanent agricultural villages were also established. Excavations in the last two decades have uncovered close to 15 of these settlements, but the process of emergent inequality during the Mumun Period is just beginning to be understood. This poster provides results from the first systematic study of households from the Jinju area that intersects this important period....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Sampson.

The Weeden Island site (8PI1) is perhaps best known for its connection to the eponymous Woodland period culture, found in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and characterized in part by the use of a specialized class of decorated mortuary wares. In the Tampa Bay area, both the regional movement and local production of pottery contributed to the adoption of new ceremonial practices in the late Woodland period. I present here a study of ceramic collections from early 20th century work at the Weeden...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tony Fitzpatrick. Leslie Brown.

Stature estimation formulae for native populations in North America have historically been problematic, utilizing incorrect reference samples, for example; however recent research has allowed for the creation of more precise formula for evaluation of adult remains. Incomplete bones, however, can hinder stature estimation. There are a number of methods which can provide estimates of the overall length of the bone, or of stature, based on segments of a bone. A method that uses a simple to collect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Kilby. George Crawford. Stacey Bennett.

Intensive investigation of an area of Blackwater Draw Locality 1 known as "Isequilla’s Pit" has revealed a well-preserved stratigraphic sequence and the remains of a Late Paleoindian-age bison kill. The work constitutes a resumption of excavation in this area of the South Bank, as Alberto Isequilla abruptly abandoned his fieldwork in 1969, leaving behind an open excavation pit and few field records. Over the past 6 years, the ENMU Archaeological Field School has successfully relocated and mapped...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra Rodgers.

Place, space, and movement are core concepts for analyzing how cultural behaviors of traditional hunting societies shape a landscape. Sites mark the use of a landscape and connect people to particular events, movements, or places on this landscape. Analysis of rock art must consider who created and used this art and the roles it played in shaping landscape use. Panels depicting hunting scenes have been recorded at communal hunting sites, in rockshelters that served as habitation areas, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Phillips. Norma Crumbley. Paul Burnett.

Cultural material-bearing sand dune deposits are common across the intermountain basins of southern Wyoming, dating from the region’s Archaic through Late Prehistoric periods in particular. Investigations there have sought correlations between dune field occupations and plant processing activities in explaining the density of sites in these settings. The abundance of groundstone and fire-affected rock concentrations has led researchers to suggest that the unique plant communities associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Lodge.

Since 2012, nearly 200 earth oven facilities have been recorded within the Sheep Range on the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in southern Nevada. The identification of these features was aided by the use of Google Earth due to a chemical reaction that occurs in the local limestone when exposed to extended periods of heat. Also known as roasting pits, the widespread use of these features in southern Nevada has not been previously addressed, resulting in a dearth of knowledge regarding their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Hart. Jack Broughton. Ruth Gruhn.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a major source of climatic variation worldwide, with significant impacts on modern human and animal populations. However, few detailed records exist on the long-term effects of ENSO on prehistoric vertebrate populations. Here we examine how lagomorph deposition rate, population age structure and taxonomic composition from Abrigo de los Escorpiones, a well-dated, trans-Holocene vertebrate fauna from northern Baja California, Mexico, vary as a function of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph DeAngelis.

The debate regarding early Paleoindians as megafaunal specialists or subsistence generalists has had a long and contentious history in Americanist archaeology. A quantitative reanalysis of the early Paleoindian zooarchaeological record in the continental United States is presented. Previous analyses of the faunal record focused only on taxonomic richness and have not utilized other measurements of taxonomic diversity. My analyses of the faunal record include measurements of taxonomic richness,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray.

The entrance chamber of the Cave at Las Cuevas, Belize prominently features many platforms, staircases, and terraces. To date 72 platforms, seven staircases, and two sets of terraces have been mapped and recorded. Geochemical analyses of the plastered surfaces were conducted in situ and in the lab in order to understand the technology used to create the platforms within the cave. Geochemical analyses were conducted in situ using portable XRF (pXRF) and additional samples were collected for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Connie "Destiny" Colocho. Andrew Garrison. Nancy "Anastasia" Wiley.

Debris attributed to the manufacture of groundstone implements are not always identified or collected. This can make groundstone production difficult to quantify through debitage analysis. Therefore, the identification of groundstone production often rests on the analysis of hammerstones. Recently Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., conducted an intensive technological analysis on the lithic assemblage from a well-known Millingstone Horizon site, located on the Bolsa Chica mesa, in Orange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Geiger.

Stories of brutal cranial de-fleshing terrorized European settlers throughout colonial North America for centuries. Scalping was simultaneously dreaded by common settlers and promoted by European military leaders. In this context, scalping has often been viewed from a western, etic perspective. However, recent bioarchaeological studies of prehistoric scalping provide an opportunity to examine the cultural contexts of scalping and trophy-taking within American Indian culture, both before and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nicole Boudreaux.

Since 2009, investigative research for the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao (DH2GC) project has focused on an unsurveyed area in the immediate northeastern periphery of Dos Hombres and has expanded to include an area located two kilometers southeast from the La Milpa site core. The incorporation of a broad multiregional comparative dataset will facilitate a greater understanding of the sociopolitical dynamicity on multiple social and economic levels within the Three Rivers Region in Northwestern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dena Sedar.

Rock art hunting scenes are often ascribed as hunting magic or as part of a shamanistic ritual in which the rock art panel portrays the desired outcome of a hunt. However, it can be argued that there are petroglyph panels that depict what was actually occurring at a site. 26CK383 is a prehistoric site in Southern Nevada with numerous rock art panels, including one panel that shows two anthropomorphs directing desert bighorn sheep into what appears to be a corral. This could be a representation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Belkin. Jennifer Wildt.

Since 2009, an archaeological field program for high school students has conducted excavations at the Mary M.B. Wakefield Estate in Milton Massachusetts. Co-Directed by two graduate students in Boston University’s Department of Archaeology, this program has taught professional level excavation methods to dozens of local and non-local students for two two-week sessions each July. These students work alongside graduate volunteers as they learn to excavate small to large units, draw plan views and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karisa Terry. Masami Izuho. Noriyoshi Oda. Jefftery Ferguson. Ian Buvit.

Although Hokkaido Japan boasts a rich concentration of obsidian resources, studies focusing on its role within Paleolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence and territorial systems are in their infancy as high-quality geochemical analysis is just emerging. Combining XRF geochemical obsidian sourcing analysis coupled with qualitative and quantitative data on individual artifacts, we are able to conduct fine-grained exploration of tool stone procurement, consumption, and use of an entire artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Hansen. Steve Hackenberger.

Bioarchaeological studies have grown in sophistication and are now helping test assumptions about island garden agriculture (palm, cassava and/or maize) and the relative contributions of marine proteins. Bone and teeth samples from five sites on Barbados were processed by Center for Applied Isotopic Studies, University of Georgia and data are reported for δ13Cco, δ13Cca, δ15Nco, and δ18Oap. Stable isotope ratios, adjusted ratios, and apatite-collagen spacing correspond with results from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Green. Ashley McKeown. Rosanne Bongiovanni.

Mortuary patterns and practices change over time and it is the goal of this poster to present preliminary analysis of the evolution of mortuary behavior of the Maya. This poster examines different variables pertaining to mortuary practices of the Maya throughout the Classic and Terminal Classic time periods at the core site of Cahal Pech in San Ignacio, Cayo District, Belize. The analysis focuses on burial position, orientation, presence or absence of grave goods, temporal period, burial type,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Sosna. Lenka Brunclikova. Tomas Urban.

In this paper, we examine the role of landfills in the construction of landscape. Landfills represent ambiguous spaces where material remains of human action are disposed and forgotten. They tend to be hidden from the view of persons passing by and only those who gone astray might encounter these blind spots on the map. Yet, landfills are well known to the professionals who plan and manage large amounts of waste to transform it into a new kind of assemblage that shapes landscape. In contrast to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Cromartie.

Interactions between Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia during the third and second millennium BCE are well documented with much written on this topic. I will expand on this scholarship by tracing long spouted Iranian vessels across these regions to investigate possible shared ideologies. These vessels are often associated with Iron Age context in northern Iran, but this characteristic trough spout has been present on vessels on the plateau since at least the 4th millennium BCE. This unique...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Vlemincq Mendieta.

The topic of this work is the anura, i.e. frogs and toads, in Moche iconography. Its primary aim is to establish if the anura were, in Moche cosmovision, associated with rains and agricultural fertility. During the early stages of this project, I gathered data and interpretations about the anura, while at the later stage, I built upon these findings to establish a classification system for these amphibians. The objectives of the classification are: first, to create a comprehensive database of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Elder. Shane Sparks.

Although the uneven distribution of precontact archaeological sites along the Puget Sound shoreline is widely recognized, limited research has been undertaken to systematically consider how this pattern may relate to local anthropogenic and geomorphic factors. In this study, we consider archaeological site distributions through the lens of shoreline geomorphology and discuss possible reasons for any observed relationships. Using publically available drift cell data, we categorized the shoreline...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Jerrems.

The Lahontan Basin, a huge Pleistocene lake, located in the western Great Basin, northwestern Nevada, has had a long history of rising and falling water levels dependent on heavy precipitation and decreased evapotranspiration of the Pleistocene Ice Age climatic regime. Three subbasins occupy the western side of the Lahontan Basin and include Pyramid Lake, Winnemucca Lake and the Black Rock Desert-Smoke Creek subbasins; the focus of this presentation. The climatic implications of a filling and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Banning. Sarah T Stewart. Philip Hitchings. Steven Edwards.

The Wadi Quseiba Survey in northern Jordan and Tremethos Valley Survey in Cyprus recently employed "calibration runs" by survey crews to calculate sweep widths in a variety of visibility contexts. The resulting sweep widths were a critical element in evaluating the coverage of spaces previously surveyed, and these coverages were integral to the planning of additional survey according to a Bayesian allocation algorithm. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Martin. Joan Brenner Coltrain. Brian F. Codding.

Utah’s Hogup Cave is an iconic example of the exceptional preservation and cultural depth present at Great Basin dry cave sites and has recently featured prominently in the debate related to the ascendancy of large game hunting in the late Holocene. However, concerns related to the stratigraphic integrity of the site has largely inhibited analysis of the cave’s assemblage since the site’s excavation and initial analysis in the late 1960’s. We utilize 15 new radiocarbon dates in conjunction with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Hronec. Jeremy Iliff. Philip Watts.

For most federal agencies using GIS has become standard practice. Hardware and software, such as mobile GPS units and ESRI products, are incorporated into archaeological work flows around the country. These are used to collect information pertaining to artifacts, sites, and surveys; however, this has not always been the case. Prior to these innovations, compasses and topographic maps were used to track this information. At the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Roswell Field Office (RFO), two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Reichardt.

The six year Chavez Pass Archaeological Project (Arizona State University - Chavez Pass Project 1976-1982) consisted of survey and excavation at the large Puebloan site of Nuvakwewtaqa. The burial assemblages that resulted from this project were recently reanalyzed in cooperation with the Coconino National Forest, as part of ASU’s Forest Service sponsored NAGPRA Documentation project. The initial project recorded and documented all features identified across the site. However, a comprehensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Garrison. Connie "Destiny" Colocho. Nancy "Anastasia" Wiley.

Cogged Stones are an ambiguous artifact often associated with Bolsa Chica in Orange County, California. Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., has been involved in the study of the Bolsa Chica mesa for over 30 years resulting in the longest privately funded cultural resource investigations in Southern California. This poster highlights one facet of SRSinc’s, current studies on the cogged stones. It has been purposed that the manufacture of cogged stones took place on the Bolsa Chica mesa at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Malpass.

Lomas formations in coastal Peru form when moisture off the Pacific Ocean condenses on hill slopes that rise between approximately 400-800 masl. These formations are distributed over broad regions in the southern part of Peru, but become more dispersed as one moves north. Depending on their extent, lomas formations can support a broad range of plant and animal life. As a major resource zone prior to the advent of agriculture, lomas were exploited by hunters and gatherers throughout this period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Wiley. Rezenet Moges.

Drawing on recent studies of cogged stones by Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., comparisons can be made between the artifacts found along coastal Southern California and morphologically similar artifacts unearthed in the Coquimbo region of Chile. This poster will describe a new method of calibrating typological shapes for describing both Californian and Chilean cogged stone artifacts. Several caches containing unconventionally shaped cogged stones were discovered by SRSinc during archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ciprian Ardelean. Juan Ignacio Macías-Quintero.

Caves and rockshelters throughout the highlands and sierras of Central-Northern Mexico have always represented an important point of reference for prehistoric archaeology and were traditionally targeted as the most reliable contexts for the understanding of hunter-gatherer societies and the establishment of cultural-historical models. However, the paradigms created on basis of the excavation of such sites affected rather negatively the archaeological thinking in Mexican archaeology. Caves and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Clark.

This paper will discuss how historical, environmental, and social changes have effected archaeological site preservation in the mountains of the central Ethiopian Highlands, with implications for improving archaeological research in the region. Over the past decade, archaeological and historical research in the central highlands of Ethiopia has seen a growing interest to move beyond prominent Aksumite and Pre-Aksumite monumental sites to more ephemeral sites like medieval settlements and royal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Smith.

The Northern Fluted-Point Complex represents a paleoindian occupation in northern Alaska and the Canadian Yukon and appears to form part of an adaptive strategy similar to that of late paleoindians in the North American plains. This paper presents the results of a shape analysis that uses geometric morphometrics as a tool to identify major factors of variability in fluted projectile-point morphology across a continent by comparing artifacts from Alaska and more temperate regions in North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Marcum.

This paper attempts an analysis of the bucrania at Catalhoyuk from the perspective of Peirce's semiotic. The spatial situation of bucrania is one of entanglement. Peirce's triadic relation emphasizes the being-in-the-world-ness of the sign, and his synechism, the continuum of signs. Using this multidirectionality, the indexical nature of the skulls is explored, including the immediate contiguity of man and beast, the various interpretants and intersubjective effects of structural space, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hayley Mickleburgh.

Archaeothanatology is increasingly important in the study of mortuary practices, as it allows us to study aspects of mortuary behaviour that were traditionally hard to assess. However, the archaeothanatological approach entails a detailed and very time-consuming excavation and documentation methodology that requires thorough training. Increasingly refined excavation and documentation methods have clear advantages for our understanding of the mortuary record, but there is a danger of rendering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Parrish.

Artifacts can tell us stories, as long as we recognize that those stories include a reflection of us, the archaeologists, within those interpretations. This project comprises a theoretical approach to addressing these issues of reflexivity within archaeology as a practice. In particular, reflexivity is explored with regard to negotiations of feminine gender identity and how the agency of an unmarried, Victorian-era female homesteader parallels the agency of a female archaeologist studying her...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Borenstein.

The creative and diverse mortuary practices of the Chalcolithic period in the Southern Levant demonstrated a profound departure from the single-person, intramural interments of the earlier Neolithic periods. During the Chalcolithic, formalized structures and subterranean chambers were constructed for corpse depositions that were more complex in nature. Of particular interest, many of these structures exhibit innovative tendencies that allude to portraiture. Iconographic motifs are not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Herzog. Anne Thomas.

Starches preserved on prehistoric artifacts including ceramics, ground stone and other lithic tools have assisted archaeologists in better understanding the relationships between technologies and food products, food processing, activity areas and tool function. However, little research has been done to identify differential starch preservation across these artifact types. In order to test whether starch preservation is uniform across tool types, and to examine whether starch records are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Rumold.

The data presented in this poster provide novel and direct microfossil evidence for the exploitation of potato (Solanum tuberosum) approximately 5000 years ago at Jiskairumoko, an early village site in the south-central Andes. In the Andes, elucidating the trajectory of potato domestication is central to an overall understanding of the development of agriculture, as this crop was perhaps one of the most important of the autochthonous highland Andean suite. Nevertheless, efforts to elucidate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Martin. John Crandall. Ryan Harrod.

A survey of healed cranial depression fractures from Southwest collections revealed new information on the patterning of head wounds by age and sex. Head wounds demonstrate nuance and a non-linear trend over time. Thus suggests a much more complex picture than has been offered by recent scholarship that examined fracture rates based on published literature for select sites. This analysis is based on new data collected directly from Southwestern skeletal collections representing Ancestral Pueblo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Goldberg. Kenneth G. Kelly.

For centuries, European traders of human capital have impacted the African cultural landscape, resulting in significant consequences that have played a major role in shaping new identities, group memory, and trade relations. This influence did not end with the abolition of the slave trade by European and North American countries in the early nineteenth century; rather it simply prompted traders to explore new networks and more secluded trading establishments. This pattern is exemplified in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eileen Ernenwein. Katie Simon. Christopher Tuttle.

Petra is famous for the many tomb façades and complex water management systems carved in its surrounding mountains. The ancient city has been studied by traditional archaeological survey and excavation techniques for more than 100 years. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been previously used in several locations with excellent results, including in front of the al-Khazneh ("the Treasury"), near the Temple of the Winged Lions, on the "Upper Market" and the Garden and Pool Complex (the "Lower...