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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Berquist. Edward Swenson.

A comparison of the agricultural reclamation projects and religious architectural programs of the Chimú, Inka, and Angkorian empires will serve to demonstrate that statecraft was an inherently technological pursuit in ancient societies. Supra-local political regimes were literally built by and through infrastructure that reconfigured different communities of practice. An important objective of the paper is to demonstrate that an analysis of the materials, temporalities, and technologies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Johansen. Andrew Bauer.

Water management and iron production were two socio-material practices deeply entangled with the politics of emerging social distinctions during the South Indian Iron Age. Beginning with small well-distributed modified rock pools and systematically dispersed iron-smithing facilities, Iron Age social actors laid specific claims to the materials, places and technologies of water management and iron production. This created and maintained a constellation of social differences and affiliations....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darryl Wilkinson.

Accounts of ancient infrastructure are very common. Almost every archaeologist who deals with complex polities regularly encounters infrastructure in some form - including roads, irrigation canals, bridges, harbors, aqueducts, recording systems and forts - just to name a few of the most common varieties. That said, the concept is rarely explicitly theorized or defined within the discipline - and is usually identified on the basis of "we know it when we see it". In contrast, this paper seeks to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Uzma Rizvi.

Hallmarks of the third millennium BCE Harappan civilization include baked bricks, weights and measures, and water wells, which index centralized control, civic management and urban planning. In this study, I aim to locate the Harappan in a Harappan urban environment. I will consider the ways in which the use of space, design, and architecture may inform the constructions of self. Furthermore, I will interrogate the ancient urban form by considering ratios and standardization as a means to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Huerta.

The use of volcanic ash as temper in Olmec pottery is generally known, unfortunately its temporal and spatial distribution at the site and regional levels remains poorly understood in the Gulf lowland regions. This paper presents the results of conventional microscopy and thin section petrographic analysis identifying the distribution of ash temper within the Los Soldados' pottery assemblage. This is done with an attempt to illustrate the relationship of ash temper in proportion to other paste...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Wendt.

Studies on the Olmec frequently focus on the ostentatious nature of the society such as large centers and monumental works of art, often ignoring the important role of smaller sites in regional hierarchies. In order to remedy this bias, we initiated the Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero, which is investigating sites in the Eastern Olmec Heartland. This project is unique in Olmec studies in that it takes a bottom-up approach to the study of the Middle Formative Olmec by collecting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Henry. Bryan Haley. Andrew Shensky. Carl J. Wendt.

Archaeological examinations of the Olmec civilization in the tropical lowlands of Mexico have focused largely on the elite and grandiose aspects of the society. Research conducted through the PAAP instead chose to explore non-monumental aspects of the Olmec. Investigations of the Los Soldados site in southern Veracruz included ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys of four areas. Although GPR is a geophysical method not often successful in tropical lowland settings, it proved successful in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henri Bernard.

There are many objects in olmec-style with iconography in public and private collections outside of Mexico attributed to the archaeological site of Arroyo Pesquero, a remarkable site known for its beautiful offerings on hard stones (jade, serpentine) especially masks, has been the subject of few campaigns of archaeological research in 1969 a short stay for the Archaeologist Manuel Torres and in recent years by the Arroyo Pesquero Archaeological Project directed by Carl Wendt, in that project, in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Higueras.

En el sitio arqueológico Los Soldados en el estado de Veracruz, México se recolectaron 450 fragmentos de figurillas de barro, fruto de 4 temporadas de investigación del Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero. El sitio Los Soldados pertenece al periodo Formativo Medio (900-500 a.C.), es un sitio Olmeca situado a 11km al suroeste de La Venta y a 5km al norte de la localización del sitio Arroyo Pesquero. Las figurillas de barro como material arqueológico han aportado información para poder observar...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Alvarado. Amber VanDerwarker.

There has been much speculation regarding the nature of agriculture and subsistence among the Formative Gulf Coastal Olmec, and regional subsistence reconstructions based on primary plant data are now beginning to bear fruit. Recent excavations in the rural Olmec heartland and the neighboring Sierra de los Tuxtlas have yielded pertinent archaeobotanical data that have revealed considerable local variation in plant foodways. We build on these studies by presenting archaeobotanical data from Los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hirokazu Kotegawa.

In 2010, a young man from the Ejido Diaz Ordáz found a Prehispanic clay cylinder eroding out of a road cut in the Olmec site of Los Soldados. Although the exact archaeological provenience is not secure, we consider the object belonging to the Olmec culture through other data obtained by the Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero-Los Soldados. The artifact is of particular importance because of the unique images presented on this artifact, which appears to constitute a domestic scene. We know of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Knight.

The use of chipped-stone in domestic Olmec contexts has only recently become a focus of archaeological investigation. With the publication of data on the chipped-stone assemblages from the Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes in the last few years, a picture emerges of great diversity in materials consumed and technologies used by commoners and non-commoners alike. The Middle to Late Formative household chipped-stone assemblage from the 2010 excavations at Los Soldados, in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helene Martinsson-Wallin. Paul Wallin.

Finds of Polynesian rat in the earliest dated cultural layer on Rapa Nui give evidence to that the initial settlers to the island came from the Polynesian area. However, recent research and dating of ceremonial sites by us in Rapa Nui and the Society Islands have indicated that the Rapa Nui monuments are at least 100 year earlier and more elaborated than the ones in the Society island. In this paper we discuss that various interactions, historical trajectories, and the arrival of the sweet...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamara Maric.

Since the pionneering studies of Kenneth Pike Emory in the begining of the 20th centyry, the ancient temples, marae, have been considered as good markers of social status, revealing the research focus on the complexification processes of polynesian societies. Despite the lack of substantial chronological data on marae of the island of Tahiti, crossing architectural components of marae with their spatial context and ethnohistoric sources, provided an evolutive spatial model that might be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Morrison. Carl Lipo.

Despite, its small size and marginal environment, Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) boasts some of the world’s most impressive monumental ceremonial architecture. While the production of ahu and moai have been linked to an assumed collapse of Rapa Nui society, we suggest instead that the construction of these stone monuments contributed to social stability by reducing inter-group violence and endemic warfare. To examine this hypothesis, we develop a theoretical agent-based model using concepts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillaume Molle.

The Tuamotu Archipelago consists of one of the largest concentrations of atolls in the world. However, the archaeological history of these islands remains much less documented in comparison with the other high islands of French Polynesia. The harsh environmental conditions of the atolls have not favored the preservation of archaeological structures, with the exception of the coral-built marae. Since the pioneering works of K.P. Emory in the 1930s, around six hundred of these ceremonial sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Flexner. Mark McCoy.

Hawai‘i occupies a somewhat unique position as one of two Polynesian archipelagos thought to have been the location of "primary" or "archaic" states in the time before European contact (the other possible example being Tonga). Hawaiian people created an elaborate ritual hierarchy that accompanied the emergence of state religion, which was associated with the construction of monumental stone temple complexes known as heiau. Heiau have long been a staple of archaeological investigation in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn.

Most studies of East Polynesia religion focus on the largest monumental sites, those related to the "marae complex". Yet ethnohistoric documents indicate that a wide range of site types had ritual importance, including specialized structures within monumental ritual centers that had diverse functions. Priest houses form one element of the architecture of ideology. Can we identify the houses of full time ritual specialists in the archaeological record of East Polynesian in order to enrich our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Baer.

In the early 18th century, competing archaic states on the islands of Maui and Hawai’i were engaged in a long-standing conflict to establish primacy over the Hawaiian Archipelago. To better oversee preparations for war, Maui’s King Kekaulike moved his entire royal court to the fertile, but politically peripheral district of Kaupo. Oral traditions speak of Kekaulike expanding a network of ritual structures throughout the region, resulting today in a landscape covered with some the largest heiau...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Hanselka. Leslie Bush. Phil Dering.

Sheltered sites in the Lower Pecos region of Texas are renowned for their spectacular plant preservation. Recent excavations in Kelley Cave (41VV164) in Eagle Nest Canyon yielded abundant well-preserved plant remains within Feature 4, a large pit thought to represent an earth oven facility with a complex history of use and abandonment. Most of the plant materials from Feature 4 probably represent the accumulation of waste products of plant foods prepared in other nearby earth ovens, intermingled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Black.

Feature 4 is a complex, well-preserved feature documented in Kelley Cave, a dry rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon that was investigated in 2013-2014 by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University. What we first recorded and still habitually refer to as "a feature" is a stratigraphically complex set of deposits and interfaces that formed near the mouth of the rockshelter over time. We think it represents an earth oven facility reused many times to bake agave lechuguilla, wild...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Nielsen.

Eagle Cave (41VV167) is a large dry rockshelter with deep stratified deposits spanning the Early Archaic through the Late Prehistoric periods. My thesis research focuses on the deposits in the northern sector of the shelter sampled during the 1963 excavations by UT-Austin and again a half century later by Texas State University in 2014. My goal is to use multiple lines of evidence to evaluate the natural and cultural formation processes that resulted in the complexly stratified, culturally rich...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Panagiotakopulu.

The desiccating conditions in desert caves provide a unique opportunity for detailed research on organic materials. Previous examples of insect studies from the desert edge in Egypt, from Akhenaten’s city at Amarna, have indicated the potential of research with fossil insects, both for understanding environmental change and the nature of agriculture, and also for evidence of the early biogeography of insect borne diseases. However, there is limited information on hunter gatherer societies and ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Lawrence. Charles Frederick. Jacob Sullivan. Christina Nielsen.

This presentation summarizes the 2014 geoarchaeological investigations conducted at Kelley Cave (41VV164), Skiles Shelter (41VV165), and Eagle Cave (41VV167) and highlights elements of the ongoing analyses. Research begun in 2013 at Kelley Cave and Skiles Shelter was expanded and new work was begun in Eagle Cave. The geoarchaeological investigations have encountered new problems, opportunities, and several surprises. The data obtained from each site includes micromorphological samples,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Koenig.

Skiles Shelter (41VV165) is a "wet" rockshelter situated approximately ½ kilometer upstream from the confluence of Eagle Nest Canyon and the Rio Grande in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. Due to the threat of inundation and damage due to extreme flooding events when Rio Grande flooding backs up from Amistad Reservoir, Skiles Shelter is the most-threatened site within Eagle Nest Canyon. Initial testing of Skiles was conducted during the 2013 Texas State field school. In 2014, the Ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Frederick. Mark Willis. Ken Lawrence. George R. Hermann. Jacob Sullivan.

Although presently a desert environment, extreme flood events are part of life in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. This paper examines two such flood events, one preserved in the deposits of Skiles Shelter and Kelly Cave, and another that occurred on June 20th 2014. These events provide examples of catastrophic floods that punctuate the sedimentary records in the shelters and contrast with the more incrementally formed deposits that occur in association with human activity in these settings. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Ragsdale. Corey S Ragsdale. Heather JH Edgar.

The people of the Huasteca region have a shared language history with the Maya region. This connection has long been of interest to Mesoamerican archaeologists and linguists. They also traded with other populations along the Gulf Coast, such as those in Veracruz. To date, biological evidence for these connections remains limited. We compared Huastec (n= 62), Veracruz (n= 47), highland (n= 29) and lowland Maya (n= 63) groups to evaluate the effects of shared language and economic exchange on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Valtierra Vega. Emiliano Melgar. Reyna Beatríz Solís Ciriaco.

At Tamtoc, an archaeological site located at the Huastec region in San Luis Potosi, the archaeologists found hundreds of lapidary objects in the offerings and burials. Some of them were crafted in raw materials that were available locally, like the calcite, while others came from distant áreas, like the jadeite. But, their provenance was the same of their production? The purpose of this paper is to show how the technological analysis with Experimental Archaeology and the characterization of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abel Mercado Pérez.

In Tamtoc, an archaeological site, located in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, skeletal remains of a Megatherium sp., commonly called Giant Sloth, were found. One of the objectives of the investigation to be presented is to develop appropriate techniques for the conservation and restoration of these residues. In addition, we aim to slow down the gradual deterioration due to various degradation factors in the region such as temperature, RH, PH, light and biological activity. The conservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Denia Berenice Villanueva Ruiz.

From the beginning, man has always tried to understand nature. Mostly because their survival depended on it, the Prehispanic societies conceived it as one of their best allies. The perception of animals was always influenced by the mysticism and the belief that every living thing belonged to an order, which at the same time harmonized a universal context. Tamtoc, was not the exception. Along all the excavations that had been performed, various distinct representations of zoomorphic figurines...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estela Martínez. Patricia Olga Hernández Espinoza.

Archaeological information confirms that between the second and fifteenth centuries AD Tamtoc evolved into a complex urban society that left evidence of their cultural identity through the vestiges of their ancient city. Testimony to this is the architectural complex designed for the preparation of complex funeral rituals, currently known as La Noria. In this area we have 67 burial mounds dug Postclassic (900-1500 AD), recovering 92 graves with the remains of 147 individuals of different ages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Ontiveros. Desiree Martinez.

In October 2010, human remains were uncovered during the development of Los Angeles County land leased to the La Plaza De Cultura y Artes located in the heart of Los Angeles, California. The remains, which were within the well-known Camp Santo historic cemetery, were that of Los Pobladores, Native Americans, indigenous Mexicans, and the Gente de Razon, the very people who founded and built the Pueblo of Los Angeles during the early and mid 1800's. Over 90 individuals were removed, unbeknownst to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Pasqual. Kurt Dongoske.

Under federal historic preservation legislation, mitigating adverse effects to archaeological sites commonly involves treating the site as a materialistic entity from which scientific information about the past is retrieved through systematic data recovery. Native American associative values associated with archaeological sites that view these places as sacred because they are home of ancestors that exhibit physical affirmations of oral histories and collective cultural identities are rarely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nina Swidler. Johna Hutira. Joyce Francis.

In 2011, a portion of Amity Pueblo, located in northeastern Arizona on State land, was extensively damaged by a federally-funded development project. After heavy equipment disturbed features and burials, exposing over 40,000 cultural items, it was no surprise that Arizona permanently cancelled the project. While archaeologists previously evaluated the Pueblo as eligible for listing on the National Register under criterion d for its scientific research potential, four tribes countered that Amity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shereen Lerner.

In 2001, the SAA received a National Science Foundation grant to revise undergraduate archaeology curriculum to reflect the needs of archaeologists in today’s world. As part of this grant, seven principles were developed: (1) discuss the importance of stewardship, (2) take into account the diverse pasts of stakeholders, (3) articulate the social relevance of the past, (4) include a consideration of archaeological ethics and values, (5) teach effective written and oral communication, (6) provide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Desiree Martinez. Cindi Alvitre.

While conducting necessary structural upgrades to the electrical system in the City of Avalon on Catalina Island, Southern California Edison (SCE) came upon Gabrielino (Tongva) ancestral remains. The ancestral remains were considered a possibility since the work was within the boundaries of a known village site (CA-SCAI-29) and the location had produced ancestral remains in the past. Prior to the start of the project, SCE consulted and worked with the Most Likely Descendant (MLD), as identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin McAllister.

Criminal and civil prosecutions under ARPA require archaeological value and cost of restoration and repair determinations for unauthorized damage to archaeological resources on federal and Indian lands. These determinations also are necessary for archaeological damage cases prosecuted under other applicable federal and state statutes in order to provide monetary measures of the severity of harm. They must be done correctly to meet both the statutory requirements and the legal standards for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas.

The encounter between the Americas and Europe has been extensively studied. In these studies, gold and silver, its looting, mining and trading are usually the focus of attention. However, the characteristics of metalwork after the conquest have inspired fewer investigations. In this paper I present the results of analyses of samples of metallic and ceramic artifacts, using portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (pXRF). These artifacts belong to past metallurgical activities, and were found in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Gunter. Nathan Goodale. David Bailey. Ian Kuijt. Ryan Lash.

Western Ireland’s early medieval (700-1200 AD) landscape—dotted with stone cemeteries and structures—provides an ideal setting for studying ecclesiastical lifeways through methods of raw materials characterization. Archaeological analyses and oral history suggest that people living in small ecclesiastical communities between the 6th and the 12th centuries exchanged and transported gravestones. While traditional archaeological analysis of the shape and stylistic design of gravestones from five...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cory Look. Erin Friedman. Matthew Brown. Reg Murphy.

This paper reports on a preliminary study assessing the applicability for pXRF analysis of soils within a Pre-Columbian context. The data generated for this discussion comes from the site of Indian Creek, Antigua; an Amerindian site bound by a series of middens forming a concentric ring around the perimeter of the site. This settlement is the result of over 1300 years of continuous occupation, before it was abandoned just prior to contact in the New World. Aside from the excavations conducted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Ohman.

Current research in portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) applications for archaeological research constantly attempts to push the boundaries of what this technology can accomplish. Although research involving lithics, glass, metals and ceramics remain the most common venues of investigation, bone has also become an innovative focus of inquiry. However, because it has been studied significantly less than these other forms of material culture there is still much that is unknown in terms of how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Goudge.

Excavations at the early contact Native American site on Hatteras Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina has yielded a number of copper artefacts in the course of the past six years of excavation. The excavations were run in conjunction with the University of Bristol and the Croatoan Archaeology Society in order to examine historic environment and settlement patterns of the island, as well as analyse the site’s material culture of both the local Croatoan natives and the European imports. Analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Horton.

The process of archaeological excavation is in itself destructive and excavators can and do cause irreparable damage and the demolition of site context. Archaeological ethics reacts to protect artefacts and sites that are in danger of destruction or loss. The desire to protect cultural heritage causes many ethical theorists to suggest that artefacts must not be recovered at all from their contexts. However to allow the find to remain in the ground opens it up to theft, destruction and loss just...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Birge. Cassandra Koontz.

Human trophy heads appear in the iconography of prehistoric Andean ceramics, weavings, and statuary as early as the Late Formative (400 BC – AD 100), and actual trophy heads are not uncommon bioarchaeological finds in south-coastal Peru. Human trophy heads were prepared by cleaving the head from the body, cutting the occipital and parietal bones to remove the brain, drilling holes in the frontal bone, and threading that hole with a carrying cord for display. At the Middle Horizon cemetery of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Allen.

Textiles were a major economic component in the prehistoric Andes. Mortuary evidence indicates an association between women and textile production. While spinning may have been an activity undertaken by both men and women, women dominated the produced domestic textiles and therefore were often buried with textile related tools. Spindle whorls from mortuary contexts can be used to determine the quality of the final cloth. Smaller spindle whorls produce a finer quality of yarn for elite products...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aric Archebelle-Smith. Cassandra S. Koontz. Lisseth Rojas Pelayo. Manuel Angel Mamani.

Cranial vault modification was a prevalent type of body modification practiced throughout the ancient Andes. It was achieved by binding the head during childhood, which left the crania permanently altered into adulthood. Different methods of binding led to visually different forms of modification, which likely marked membership in different ethnic groups. Researchers have documented three major modification styles in the Andes: tabular oblique, tabular erect, and circumferential. Recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Seyler.

This poster examines belt fragments recovered from the mortuary site of Uraca in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru. The textiles utilized in this analysis were recovered during excavations in Sector I to the south, where interments were placed on a high bluff, and Sector II to the north, where interments were placed closer to the valley bottom. These sectors are not only defined by their geographical separation but also the variation in artifact and skeletal assemblages present between the two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassandra Koontz.

The Middle Horizon (600 - 1000 AD) is known as a period of increased social hierarchization, changing mortuary customs, and high rates of interpersonal violence in many regions of the prehistoric Peruvian Andes. This project compares rates and types of violent practices (antemortem, peri-mortem, and postmortem violent dismemberment) between the northern and southern sectors at the recently excavated Middle Horizon cemetery site of Uraca in the middle Majes Valley to skeletal data from the early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti.

In the Tadrart Acacus (SW Libya), ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003-2011 has shown that its current inhabitants, the Kel Tadrart Tuareg, are a successful example of adaptation to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Their exceptional resilience, characterized by high degree of variability and opportunism, escapes some of the traditional assumptions often done in ethnography and archaeology regarding the classification and identification of societies, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Stahl.

The Banda area of west central Ghana is a quintessential example of what Igor Kopytoff (1987) long-ago dubbed the Internal African Frontier—an ‘interstitial’ region between ‘established societies’ that is home to a dynamic composition of people, languages and practice forged by newcomers and autochthones alike. In presumed contrast with their ‘established’ neighbors, frontier societies are ones in which processes of improvisation and the negotiation of social boundaries seem more apparent. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Goldstein.

Despite recent advances in characterizing the socio-economic mosaics associated with early pastoralism in East Africa, how this diversity affected social boundaries and manifested identities remain underexplored. Exclusive exploitation of a single obsidian source on the upper slopes of Mr. Eburru in the Central Rift Valley by communities associated with "Elmenteitan" material culture is a strong line of evidence for dimensions of shared identity linking some of these herding communities in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman.

The relationship between Leokwe and Leopard’s Kopje people represents the first known ethnic interaction in pre-colonial southern Africa. As the subordinate partner, Leokwe had roles befitting their ‘first people’ status. Salvage excavations at the Leokwe Main Rest Camp uncovered ‘extra’ cattle kraals, while Leokwe faunal assemblages there and elsewhere contain high percentages of low-status cattle bones. Thus, Leokwe herdsmen were probably tending the cattle of K2 elite. Two sites on Schroda...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott MacEachern.

To this point, most analyses of Boko Haram have stressed its origins in Salafi/Wahhabi radicalism in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. Equally important to the development of this organisation, however, has been its utilisation of frontier zones in the Lake Chad Basin, as refuges and areas for the development of political and military power. In this paper, I will argue that aspects of Boko Haram activities can be profitably understood through the deep-time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Stone.

In the Sahel, the Fulani are considered the archetypal cattle herders. Although their spread across West Africa is poorly understood, their arrival had profound effects on local populations. In Mali’s Inland Niger Delta, historical sources and isotopic analysis of archaeological cattle, sheep, and goat teeth from the site of Jenné-jeno and the modern town of Djenné suggest that specialized Fulani pastoralists arrived in the Delta between the 13th and 15th centuries AD. This coincided with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daphne Gallagher.

In several regions of the West African savanna, the pre-colonial complex polities described in oral and written histories have left a minimal archaeological signature on the landscape. One such region is the Gobnangou escarpment of southeastern Burkina Faso, where from the early second millennium CE, the archaeological record consists almost entirely of small, ephemeral sites, likely resulting from short term occupations of household compounds. Broadly dispersed on the landscape, and almost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Louise Iles.

Participation in technological activity in sub-Saharan Africa is often discussed in terms of identity, whether that is framed by gender, kinship, status or ethnicity. In particular, social distinctions between iron producers and iron users are well known from the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records of numerous African regions, providing important information as to the social organisation and values of a particular society. However, recognising these identities in the archaeological remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen.

Located at the intersection between Voltaic and Mande historical traditions, contemporary western Burkina Faso (West Africa) is a complex cultural mosaic in which local identities transcend linguistic boundaries and cultural practices, exemplifying the difficulties of employing bounded social categorizations in anthropological archaeology. The site of Kirikongo, located in this region and occupied continuously between 100 and 1700 CE provides an important case study to explore the changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dil Basanti.

Aksum was the capital of northern Ethiopian kingdom that is famous for its numerous pre-Christian funerary stelae dating to the first four centuries A.D. The six largest stelae employ a peculiar "house" symbolism carved into their surfaces. Art historians have also noted that later Christian churches in the Ethiopian highlands, also sites for burial, mimic the layouts of old Aksumite elite houses. Beyond this, there has been little serious interpretation on what the "house" symbolism indicates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee.

Over the past century, archaeological reconnaissance and survey in the Senegambia region of West Africa has identified more than 2000 megalithic cemetery sites dating to the Iron Age (circa 500 BC – AD 1500). Although a number of research programs have explored the histories of individual sites, it remains unclear how these related to one another within a regional tradition of mortuary practice and monument construction. This paper begins to address this issue through integrated geospatial and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Folan. Terance L. Winemiller. Lynda Florey Folan.

In 1982, fifty years after the Carnegie Institution of Washington surveyed and mapped sections of Calakmul, a project under the direction of William J. Folan began mapping the site. The completed map published in 2001 covers 30 square kilometers of the ancient site. Many printed maps or datasets like those from Calakmul created with laser total stations or conventional surveying equipment can provide the essential geospatial information to produce accurate topographic maps and 3D map objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller. Terance Winemiller.

Since 2009, the 3D Scanning of Molded and Modeled Artifacts Project has collected a sample of approximately 100 specimens. The main goals of our project include the assessment of mold and stamp use as methods of standardized mass production of clay artifacts in prehistoric Mesoamerica and beyond, as well as, digitally archiving images housed in various collections. In this presentation, we aim to introduce a virtual catalogue of clay artifacts that contains digital raw 3D data. The Digital 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Blair.

Excavation information at Cahal Pech structure B-4 present some of the most complete data on the Maya formative period in the Western Belize River Valley. Structure B-4 contains fourteen floors which represent increasingly complex and chronological construction events. Excavated floor level information contains architectural and construction material elements which can be stored and analyzed in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database. Using available excavation and publication data,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yumi Huntington.

The term "Cupisnique" is applied to the culture and artifacts found in the Cupisnique ravine located between the Jequetepeque and Chicama valleys of northern Peru. Most Cupisnique-style ceramics were created between approximately 1200 and 200 BCE. These artifacts are characterized by stirrup spouts, dark black or brown hues, and engraved head motifs on well-polished surfaces. Previous scholars have emphasized religious interpretations of these ceramics, arguing that Cupisnique head motifs depict...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Bardolph. Dana Bardolph.

This paper examines politics of representation of Native North American communities, past and present, through the use of photographs in academic and museum settings. We consider how photographs of people and objects have been used to naturalize precepts of colonialism, as well as how they have been used to empower indigenous subjects. The implementation of NAGPRA has provided a framework for museums to determine if they should display certain objects deemed culturally sensitive; however, there...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Sullivan. Michaelyn Harle.

An often-made presumption is that an archaeological phase (defined mainly by pottery or projectile point types) represents a social group with shared identity. This perspective can conceal other types of cultural variation and practices that may be more significant for presenting and representing group identity. The broadly–defined Dallas Phase in the Upper Tennessee Valley provides a late Mississippian-period example of this type of presumption. While there are broad similarities in pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Smith. Juana Lazo. Alan Coogan. Maria Cecilia Lozada.

Textiles from the Ramada culture of southern Peru are currently understudied and poorly understood. Recent research in the Vitor Valley suggests that the Ramada culture was a regional Early Intermediate-to-Middle Horizon cultural manifestation, contemporary with both Nazca, to the northwest, and the Wari traditions, but with its own distinct expressions of cultural identity. This paper presents preliminary analyses, using archaeological textiles from a cemetery dated to 550AD, which suggest that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Hurtubise. Haagen Klaus. José Pinilla. Carlos Elera.

Typically, burials are laden with symbols of social identity such as age, sex, and wealth of grave goods. However, conceptualizing individual or group identity can become problematic when examining non-modal or deviant burials. During the 2011-2013 field seasons, the National Sicán Museum and the Lambayeque Valley Biohistory Project recovered over 200 individuals from a Late Middle Sicán (A.D 1050 - 1100) sacrificial context designated Matrix 101. Constructed in three separate phases during a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Vazquez.

For the Wari civilization of the ancient Andes, the production and distribution of prestigious ceramics painted with religious and secular iconography likely functioned as a type of materialized ideology that contributed to the Wari agenda of imperial expansion. One particular ceramic form favored by the Wari was the faceneck vessel: a tall-necked globular vessel with a human face sculpted onto the base of the neck. These anthropomorphic vessels have been found in elite tombs and offering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Peters.

Does a Paracas Necropolis mortuary bundle represent the identity of the individual at its core, those who honored that person, or a broader social network? Extraordinary aspects of these mortuary bundles include the quantity and quality of the layered garments and their diverse styles and imagery. Data related to their production indicates their origin in many different communities directly engaged in textile production, agriculture and herding, as well as the management of natural resources...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erell Hubert.

Material culture used in daily practices plays a crucial role in mediating personal experiences, social identities, and wider socio-political phenomena. Based on my doctoral dissertation, I more specifically explore the ways miniature anthropomorphic figures used mostly in domestic contexts participated in the negotiation of the identities of Moche colonists settling in the Santa Valley (north coast of Peru) between the fifth and the ninth century AD. Figurines in particular seem to have played...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarahh Scher.

Dress can be a key aspect of stating a cultural or ethnic identity. Garment shapes, textile techniques, and accessories all contribute to creating a particular ensemble that can define a group identity. This effect can be heightened in the representation of dress, as the artist and patrons decide what are the essential elements that are worth depicting, and as the medium of representation dictates what can and cannot be conveyed visually. This paper examines the similarities and differences in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billie Follensbee.

The murals within the Pinturas structure at the site of San Bartolo, Guatemala have provided invaluable information for understanding the Late Formative period Maya, as well as for understanding their emulation, adoption, and adaptation of Epi-Olmec culture, religion, and iconography. As noted by a number of scholars, the figures depicted in the murals have the distinctive, graceful, and relatively naturalistic body forms of early Maya images, but the facial types, clothing, and adornments...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lois Martin.

Co-regents led the Aztec state: the principal Tlatoani, "supreme speaker," and his second, the Cihuacoatl, "Woman Snake," also the name of a fearsome goddess. The complementary rulers reflected Aztec notions of cosmic balance between opposites: while the male king directed external military campaigns during the dry season ("the day sun"), the Cihuacoatl managed internal affairs, especially agriculture, during the rainy season, or "night sun." A ruthless and visionary individual named Tlacaelel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Levy.

Archaeological evidence from the southeastern and mid-south regions of the U.S. suggest that dress, personal ornamentation, and body modification were key strategies for presenting the self during later prehistory. These markers were apparently deployed to designate multiple and intersecting aspects of identity, including gender, age, community affiliation, and leadership status. Evidence comes from recovered artifacts, human burials, and representational images of humans. Some archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giles Spence-Morrow.

Following Descola’s "modes of identification", Andean ontology has recently been suggested to represent a combination of animism and analogism that establishes strong intersubjective relationships wherein humans, objects and places are intrinsically linked while simultaneously creating a highly hierarchical scale based on the properties of each autonomous entity. In order to operationalize this animistic-analogical ontology, mimetic processes of imitation and transformation serve to link and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Juengst.

The Formative Period (1500 BC-AD 200) in the Titicaca Basin was a time of important social and economic changes, such as the establishment of sedentary settlements and long distance trade routes, increasing horticultural investment, and an emerging regional ritual tradition, Yaya-Mama. However, while archaeologists have documented and described these changes, less is understood about how they impacted local communities. In particular, Yaya-Mama has been interpreted in a variety of ways: as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Farmer.

For nearly 5000 years, between c.4,000 BCE and 500 CE, a continuous tradition of figurative ceramics evolved in ancient present-day Ecuador. Though known only through now-anonymous archaeological remains, this tradition represents some of the earliest dated sculptural and ceramic art forms in all of ancient America. At least five distinct, chronologically sequential styles have long been recognized in this tradition, beginning with the earliest Valdivia style and continuing with subsequent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chin-hsin Liu. John Krigbaum.

In Mainland Southeast Asia, rice agriculture and consumption has been a factor frequently tested for changes in population, biological and socio-cultural dynamics in prehistory. For Khao Wong Prachan Valley (KWPV) in central Thailand, Weber et al. (2010) indicated that rice did not enter the stratigraphy until the 1st millennium B.C., while millet seeds were encountered as early as the 3rd millennium B.C. and persisted throughout. Factors such as climate fluctuation, population expansion, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna De Boer. Zara Steinhart. Ben Marwick. David Bulbeck. Sue O'Connor.

We report on the stone artefact assemblages and geoarchaeological contexts from two recently excavated rockshelters in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Human occupation starts at 19,000 BP. We find low density occupation during the Pleistocene, followed by a major increase in discard and change in local environmental conditions in the early Holocene. Striking changes in artefact discard rates occur during the middle Holocene, and distinctive retouched forms appear. We discuss the implications for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seungki Kwak.

This study attempts to understand prehistoric human subsistence in Korean peninsula using organic geochemical analyses on potsherds. Organic geochemical analyses strive to be precise about the types of food groups that were processed within a pot by attempting to isolate and identify the specific organic compounds trapped in the fabric of its wall or adhering to its surface in residues. Traditionally, the transition from foragers to farmers in the central part of the Korean peninsula has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Michael. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

Whole assemblage analyses have revealed that Late Pleistocene foragers in Western Eurasia show land use strategies that fall on an expedient-curated continuum of lithic organization linked to shifts between residential and logistical mobility. Here, we apply this model to reconstruct mobility strategies in tropical SE Asia to see whether it works in non-temperate settings. Data from over 42 lithic assemblages from across SE Asia indicate that they appear to reflect a distinct environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyler Conrad.

On the Thai-Malay Peninsula the Pleistocene to Holocene transition was accompanied by significant post-glacial sea level rise, new environmental conditions, and increased human population densities. How did foragers adapt to these changes? In this region, the BSR has been the primary framework for understanding forager response to these conditions since Gorman’s analysis of the fauna from Spirit Cave (1971). Gorman suggested, following Flannery’s in the Near East, that at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Puangtip Kerdsap.

This paper will address the question of "What impact would cultivation, and possible domestication, of native and introduced fiber plants have on the local environment and people’s lives in prehistoric Thailand?" This study begins by considering artifacts such as spindle whorls but will also discuss what fiber plants we have evidence of? How many are native? Where do the introduced species come from and when do they first appear in Thailand? Moreover, as well as growing the fiber plants, it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Gold.

1970, the year of the Lon Nol coup, marks the beginning of the contemporary era in Cambodian habitat politics. This rupture fundamentally upset the "balance of power" between two edgily symbiotic systems of human-habitat regime. While the Khmer propagated "srok," with its high-yield agriculture and large sedentary populations, the Kuy and other ethnic groups exploited "prey", the forest, furnishing the Khmer empire, along with a regional Chinese mercantile network, with a wide range of valuable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Van Vlack.

Human behavioral adaptation to environmental change (i.e., sea level rise, monsoonal events) in Southern Thailand is an area of archaeology that has not yielded much study due to the preservation issues or sampling techniques. In a case study approach, geoscience and archaeological methods were utilized to trace environmental and cultural shifts at a rockshelter site occupied throughout the late-Pleistocene and Holocene. Results from this case study begin to answer questions about the foraging...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Supalak Mithong.

A study of animal in species are very few especially reptiles bone when compared to mammal bone in Thailand. And considering the amount of reptile bones found in archaeological sites in southern Thailand were plenty. About half of all animal bones in a site such as the amount of Reptiles bone an excavation at Lang Rongrian rockshelter, Thailand by Douglas Anderson (Mudar and Anderson, 2007) and from Moh-Khiew cave, Krabi province, Thailand analysis by Dr. Prasit Auetrakulvit (Auetrakulvit, 2004)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nigel Chang.

Recent excavations have shown that mining for copper ore in upland Savannakhet Province, south-central Laos, began at least 2500 years ago. We suspect that it may have begun even earlier. This paper considers who might have been living in this area prior to the introduction of mining and smelting technology and how the relationship between these prior occupants and their environment might have changed with this new technology. The scale and nature of the impact would have differed, depending on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Youping Wang.

There are more Paleolithic remains have been found in South China during the last two decades. Those provide much more new information on Pleistocene human adapatations in this region, especially some Late Pleistocene sites unearthed recently, from the Valley of Changjiang River to Lingnan region. New studies on those excavations indicate that pebble tool industries had been dominated this huge region before the MIS3. However, small flake tool assemblages emerged suddently during the MIS2 time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Dega. Kyle Latinis.

This paper moves discussion of prehistoric earthworks in Cambodia from normative archaeology into an ecological landscape structure, based on archaeological datasets. Discussions provide a synthesis of archaeological and newly borne out ecological explanations for original site construction, occupation, landscape use, sustainability of occupation for the earthwork culture over a c. 2000 year period, and terminal use of the sites. The paper moves discussion of the earthworks in the direction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tegan Hall. Dan Penny.

The Khmer Empire dominated Southeast Asia between the ninth and fifteenth century, but had all but collapsed by the time Portuguese explorers began documenting their discoveries of the jungle-strewn temple ruins over a century later. Historical sources, in conjunction with new palaeoclimatic evidence, suggests that the royal court abandoned the central and administrative city of Angkor sometime in the mid-fifteenth century and migrated south to the Phnom Penh region after (among other things) a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant Snitker.

One of the principle objectives of current archaeological research is to improve our understanding of the recursive relationship between humans and their environments through time. Following this objective, archaeological and paleoecological analyses have demonstrated that fire and humans have a coupled relationship in almost every biome on earth. The processes through which humans modify landscapes with fire reflect the complexities of human-environmental relationships, especially in the ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Norberg. John Anderies. Jon Sandor. Grant Snitker. Andrea Torvinen.

Ethnographic research suggests maintaining diverse subsistence strategies and extensive social networks help to mitigate various ecological risks (e.g., Cashdan 1985; Spielmann 1986; Wiessner 1982). The prehispanic agriculturalists of the semi-arid U.S. Southwest faced several ecological challenges and may have maintained social connections with ecologically diverse areas as a risk mitigation strategy. To test this hypothesis, we have developed a temporally and spatially explicit model of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier. Christina Luke. Christopher Roosevelt.

We analyze long-term community responses to extreme weather events in the Gediz River valley of western Anatolia. Today, as in antiquity, the valley is one of the most agriculturally productive in Turkey, and its agroecosystem is well-adapted to the seasonal variability of its Mediterranean environment. Nevertheless — and in spite of modern water-management infrastructure — unpredictable droughts, storms, and floods can still devastate the region’s food production. How were the valley’s ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Oas.

Investigations at varying scales have been undertaken to understand the role of maize in the diets and daily lives of prehistoric societies in the U.S. Southwest. In the Cibola region, around the modern Pueblo of Zuni, archaeological studies provide a detailed temporal and spatial picture of rapid settlement reorganization and aggregation in the Pueblo III and IV periods between A.D. 1150-1400. Less well understood, however, is how daily subsistence practices and interactions with local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hard. Jacob Freeman. Raymond Mauldin.

We analyze stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic data from over 200 foragers from inland, riverine, and coastal settings on the Texas Coastal Plain. Prehistoric foragers on the Texas Coastal Plain faced the challenge of maintaining a robust supply of food despite constant changes in their environments, including seasonal changes and changes that occurred over decades-to-centuries, like climate change and sea level rise. Given that coastal estuaries and inland river valleys had resources that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Freeman.

My work is motivated by the finding that the first farmers of the deserts of Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona formed settlements near and farmed reliable and productive flood plains. To understand why, I investigate to the processes that lead hunters and gatherers to invest in the low-level production of food in general. I use a dynamical systems model to investigate the effect of low-level food production on the ability of foragers to predictably allocate time to reaping the fitness...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Kyle Bocinsky. Keith Kintigh. Timothy A. Kohler. Margaret C. Nelson.

Understanding coupled human and natural systems is a major research focus for the social and natural sciences. Scholars interested in historic environmental conditions (including those of deep pre-history) cannot simply extrapolate the past from the present. Instead, they need environmental knowledge specific to their spatial-temporal problem contexts. However, in accounting for environmental change they are likely to find that state-of-the-art data on past environments are difficult to discover...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rudolf Cesaretti.

Ever since the falsification of Wittfogel’s thesis on the role of centralized irrigation construction and administration in ancient Near Eastern states, most scholars of Pharaonic Egypt have found it taboo to theorize a relationship between irrigation-based productive systems and the Pharaonic political economy. A wealth of geoarchaeological and paleoclimatological proxy data has enabled the reconstruction of long term trends in Nile flood levels, highlighting not only the considerable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Swords.

Established in the early 1880s, Sandpoint, Idaho became a bustling railroad and lumber town with commercial businesses sprouting up along the Northern Pacific railroad tracks. Overseas Chinese came through the town when building the railroad, but quickly moved on along with the construction. Who then, were the Overseas Chinese that came and settled, making Sandpoint their home? Archaeological investigations of the original town site uncovered a structure referred to as Sandpoint’s "Chinatown"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Rose.

The National Historic Landmark town of Jacksonville, Oregon is celebrated for its nineteenth century past. While saloons, hotels, and shops survive as testament to the days of the Oregon gold rush, the selective preservation of the built environment has created a romanticized frontier landscape. A sleepy park now covers the once bustling Chinese Quarter, which burned to the ground in 1888. Recent public archaeology excavations revealed the remains of a burned building, and led to a fruitful...