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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giovanni Castillejos González. Estela Martinez Mora. Daniel Valtierra Vega.

In this paper we present a synthesis of the osteological analysis of recovered individuals in this project, considering that social change can be studied on the basis of the biology of individuals in their social environment and lifestyle. Prehispanic social groups inhabited this region in northwest Mexico between 200 AD and 900 AD. The analyzed sample originates from funerary contexts excavated in two sites of a second order and one first order site. The samples are dissimilar, but correspond...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Cordova.

This project pretends to understand the process of social complexity by studying the strategies of landscape use and prehispanic resource management throughout the first millennium AD in a territory occupied today by the municipalities of Sombrerete and Chalchihuites, in the state of Zacatecas and Suchil, in the state of Durango. In our presentation we are going to evaluate and define the results of our research on topics as bioarchaeology of the ancient inhabitants, hierarchy and complexity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bridget Zavala. Selene Galindo Cumplido.

The relationship between people and plants is basic to all of human existence. Many archaeologists have considered this relationship as primarily economic, yet ethnographic accounts reveal important social aspects of human-plant interactions. In this paper we consider the long-term relationship between certain plant species (both wild and domesticated- beyond the triad of corn, beans and squash), botanic knowledge and memory in the Sextin valley. Here we present macrobotanical, phytolith and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfonso Grave.

Durante los trabajos arqueológicos de salvamento con motivo de la construcción de la carretera Durango-Mazatlán se reconoció el valle de Llano Grande, en la parte alta de la Sierra Madre Occidental en el estado de Durango. Diseminados a lo largo y ancho del valle hay nódulos pequeños de obsidiana, desde algunos de escasos tres centímetros hasta los más grandes que apenas rebasan los 10 centímetros; de hecho, por lo general los nódulos no sobrepasan el tamaño de un puño. En los cerros que rodean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Andrade. José Luis Punzo. Héctor Cabadas.

This paper introduces us to one of the most important lithic artifacts used by the chalchihuiteños in Guadiana valley, the spike scraper. This tool could be the only representative lithic piece for this cultural group on the area. This work presents an analysis and a typology, an approach about the source of the materials used to its elaboration and the possible uses of this tool for the prehispanic inhabitants in Durango. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Webster.

Since the first podcasts were available on Apple’s iTunes in June of 2005, podcasting has become a powerful way for anyone to deliver information to the world from the comfort of their home. Podcasts can be informal conversations to expensive productions from major networks. Archaeology podcasting has seen shows come and go and has had a rocky past. The only podcast focused on issues related to CRM Archaeology has been recording since February of 2013 and has tackled everything from ethics on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brenna Hassett. Suzanne Pilaar Birch. Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Victoria Herridge.

The TrowelBlazers project is a community-sourced digital archive of short biographies and images of women whose significant contributions to the fields of archaeology, geology, and paleontology have often been overlooked. Originating in a conversation on Twitter between four early-career researchers, the project began life as a tumblr blog designed to share inspirational images and stories of women researchers in the past. Different social media accounts allow us to interact with a number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Stott.

With the advent of technology and greater access to public lands, archaeological sites are more vulnerable now than ever before. With photos and site locations being shared across the internet, it is pertinent for us as archaeologists to pierce the veil between academics, professionals, and the general public. Visitation to archaeological sites often results in adverse effects including visitor footpaths, touching or climbing on cultural resources, presence of modern trash, and vandalism to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Crock.

A review of the last 15 years of the University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program’s public outreach activities suggests that projects with experiential learning components and strong community partnerships have had the greatest impact. Efforts that combine visits by school groups to the field, excavations open to the public and field work opportunities for volunteers generate the greatest participation and public interest and yield the most positive feedback. Handbook style publications...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Horton.

The National Park Service (NPS) pursues multiple opportunities to partner with community organizations and engage the public in our ongoing archaeological and historical research program at Fort Vancouver in southwest Washington. Our focus is to increase our understanding of the people who lived at this multicomponent historical archaeological site. The park forms a large portion of the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, which is significant for its role as the headquarters for Hudson’s Bay...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Reetz. Cynthia L. Peterson. Melody Pope.

Recent federally-funded flood relief compliance projects on the University of Iowa campus provided the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist with an opportunity to involve various publics in our work. It also provided us with an opportunity to reflect critically on how we represent our work and archaeology more broadly to the public and how our work is presented to even wider publics by the media. We first present an overview of the various approaches we took to engage the public...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Barrett. Linda Gorski. Richard Weinstein. Roger Moore.

The Dimond Knoll Screening Project has been one of the most successful Public Outreach efforts undertaken to date by the Texas Department of Transportation’s Archeological Studies Branch. Excavation of this small floodplain mound in northwestern Harris County was completed 2012, revealing a record of regular visitation by mobile foraging groups across nearly ten millennia. Once the upper sediments of the knoll were extensively sampled through meticulous hand excavation, the remaining sandy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Rieth.

Public engagement in compliance archaeology is inherent in Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act as well as many state historic preservation ordinances. Engagement in publically funded projects allows those who pay for the research to share in the project results but also provide information as stakeholders of the past. Although such regulations provide for public engagement, the process and type of involvement varies by project, geographic area, and archaeological resource. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Peterson.

This paper reports on findings from the analysis on lithic collections from several Medio period small sites uncovered during the 2013/2014 summer excavations in the Casas Grades region of Chihuahua Mexico. While prior excavations within the region have placed focus on the large and medium sized site types found throughout the region, the summer 2013/2014 excavations focused solely upon the small, lesser-understood sites in order to evaluate their relation both specially and temporally to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Krug. Kyle Waller. Christine VanPool.

Previous studies of shell exchange in the Southwest have supported archaeological interpretations of competing regional networks in which the Hohokam, Sinagua, and Anasazi acquired shell from the Gulf of California, while the Casas Grandes, Mimbres, and Western Puebloan groups acquired shell from West Mexico. This study will build on previous analyses by integrating stylistic analysis with an expanded compositional database to further examine the role of shell exchange in the Animas phase region...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Topi. Philip Leflar.

Previous studies of the Casas Grandes region have suggested that several craft items, including ceramics and ground stone, were produced by part or full-time specialists. In this study, we build upon previous approaches to ceramic specialization by conducting geometric morphometric analysis on an extensive collection of scaled digital photographs of Viejo and Medio period whole vessels. Geometric morphometrics allows for the statistical analysis of shape as indicated by the relationship...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth McCarthy.

Faunal material has been recovered throughout the Casas Grandes world, from the cultural center of Paquime to the borderlands sites of Joyce Wells and 76 Draw. This study aims to compare the faunal assemblages of several Casas Grandes related sites to examine patterns of faunal utilization through time and space. Our results demonstrate that sites closer to Paquime (including Paquime itself) tend to have a more diverse faunal assemblage as well as having a higher percentage of high-ranked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Osterholtz. Kyle Waller.

Recent bioarchaeological analyses of human skeletal remains from the Medio Period Casas Grandes region (AD 1200-1450) have demonstrated taphonomic indicators variously interpreted as massacre, violent persecution of witches, or anthropophagy. In this presentation, we re-examine taphonomic data from Paquime and within a larger southwestern perspective. We combine new approaches to demography and individual well-being with taphonomic and mortuary datasets from Paquime to evaluate the causes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gordon Rakita. Michele Pierson.

The 76 Draw archaeological site (LA 156980) is located in southwestern New Mexico. This Medio period (A.D. 1200-1400) site is situated within the northern edge of the Casas Grandes interaction sphere just south of Deming, New Mexico. It includes the remains of pueblo-like adobe structures overlain with a scatter of thousands of artifacts including lithic and mixed ceramics. In the summer of 2013, the University of Missouri and University of North Florida surface sampled the site. One purpose of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Pitezel. Michael Searcy.

Much is known about political, social, economic, and ritual organization during the Casas Grandes Medio period (ca. A.D. 1200-1450). A looming question is, What are the roots of the Medio period? The preceding Viejo period, assumed to begin around A.D. 500, is poorly understood because so little work has been conducted at Viejo sites, and few sites from this time period are known. We recently conducted reconnaissance and systematic survey north and south of the Medio capital settlement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Britton.

This research, part of my dissertation, focuses on the mineralogical variability of Casas Grandes polychromes. Whereas past studies have suggested that some Casas Grandes polychrome types are more common in some geographic areas than others (see Brand 1935; De Atley 1980; Findlow and DeAtley 1982; Kelley et al. 1999; Larkin et al. 2004 for more complete discussions), these studies have been challenged as they assume polychromes recovered at sites are made locally, rather than imported (Douglas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thatcher Rogers.

This paper will present on the results of statistically-based analyses of architectural data relating to the Paquimé and Diablo Phases at the site of Paquimé collected and published by Charles Di Peso et al. in 1974. A re-examination of the architectural data is necessitated as, in a methodology dissimilar to standard procedure, Di Peso utilized architectural attributes as a basis for phase differentiation. While prior statistical analysis (Frost 2000) has been applied successfully to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caryn Tegtmeyer. Debra Martin. Kyle Waller.

Bioarcheologists have consistently explored the role that males play in warfare and raiding but the impact of warfare on women and children has been less of a focus. Other studies have shown that women sometimes play a role in fighting, and that women and children suffer from things such as declining resources, losing males from the household, and forced relocation. Casas Grandes provides a case study for the examination of women and children during what was likely to have been a period of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerimy Cunningham.

In this paper, I outline alternative hypotheses on the nature of the late-Viejo and early-Medio Period political economies in the Casas Grandes Regional System from what is now Chihuahua, Mexico. Recent research has described in impressive detail the productive base and the ideology that may have emerged at Paquimé during its late-Medio Period (AD 1350-1450) florescence. However, little is known about power in the Casas Grandes region either prior to Paquimé’s brief 14th Century expansion into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Loven.

The use of faunal remains for ritual purposes was an important part of Casas Grandes society throughout the Medio period (1200 – 1450 A.D.). The past inhabitants of this region utilized the bones of numerous animals for ritual and symbolic functions, as well as for personal adornment. Past archaeological and zooarchaeological research conducted within this region has focused significantly on the site of Paquimé and the artifacts/remains recovered from that site. This paper, although considering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Waller. Gordon Rakita.

The diversity of Casas Grandes mortuary practices has often been cited as strong evidence for hierarchy and political centralization at Paquimé. Initial mortuary analyses argued that variability in grave furniture, corpse treatment, and burial location represented the social identity of the deceased. A central finding of these analyses was that mortuary variability cross-cut age and sex categories, supporting inferences of ascribed vertical status differentiation. In this study, we use recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fabiola Silva. Jane H. Kelley.

The looting of archaeological artifacts is a worldwide phenomenon prompting the destruction of our world heritage. Looting and the antiquities market across the U.S/Mexico border is a complex bi-national issue that has highly impacted the archaeological record. A previous examination of the history of looting in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico demonstrates three periods of looting: the Museum Period (1900-1939), the Private Collector Period (1940-1979), and the Present Period (1980-present)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ash Matchett.

Recent advancements in DNA sequencing has initiated a revolution in the field of Archaeogenetics. The results of these new studies have fundamentally affected our understanding of early human migration and peoples. Limitations, however, still exist, notably in tropical environments. These environments are believed to affect the preservation of DNA in human fossils, to the extent where DNA extraction and analysis is at the limit of even the newest technologies. A specialized facility has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sagrario Balladares. Donald Byers. Leonardo Lechado.

Este tema estará referido a la preocupación de algunos investigadores, arqueólogos y antropólogos, nacionales y extranjeros, que trabajamos en la región caribeña de Nicaragua por las implicancias que tendrá la construcción del canal interoceánico en el caribe. Siendo que el área geográfica que se verá afectada posee en la actualidad un patrimonio vivo (comunidades originarias y étnicas) asentado en Punta de Aguila, lugar donde se pretende la construcción del principal puerto que dará inicio al...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leonardo Lechado. Sagrario Balladares.

Los primeros datos arqueológicos obtenidos para la costa Caribe de Nicaragua, surgieron en la década de los setenta del pasado siglo con los trabajos del norteamericano, Richard Magnus, (1974, 1975 y 78) y el arqueólogo nicaragüense, Jorge Espinoza, 1974, sobre todo en la Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur (RAAS), ya que la norte RAAN, los estudios son muy escasos; entre 1998 y 2006, se desarrollaron estudios conjuntos entre la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona UAB y la Universidad Nacional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Yaremko.

For nearly half a millennium, Cuba served as an outpost, key to the defence of the Spanish American empire, and one of the first centres for slavery in the colonial Americas. At the same time, Cuba also served the interests of various continental and isthmian American Amerindian groups and individuals, many who, from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, journeyed to the island colony voluntarily for trade, diplomacy, and refuge. At the same time, thousands were also transported...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Smith.

Excavation at the site of Canímar Abajo, situated in northern Cuba, has yielded new data that contribute to our understanding of early populations in the Greater Antilles. AMS radiocarbon dates on human bone collagen provide a secure chronology for a mortuary context dating to the 2nd millennium BC. Analysis of starch grains recovered from human dental calculus demonstrates that common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was cultivated by at least 1200 BC. Stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Martinez-Cruzado. Edna Tascon-Penaranda. Francez Curbelo-Canabal. Taras Oleksyk. Esteban Burchard.

The biological origin of the Tainos is one of the most controversial issues regarding the population history of the Caribbean. The archaeological evidence suggests an early arrival from Mesoamerica and later arrivals of Arawak speaking groups from the Amazon to the Greater Antilles. We sequenced the control region of 171 Hondurans mtDNAs, 140 of which were of Native American origin, including 119 belonging to haplogroup A2, 20 to B2 and one to C1. We then chose Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Peros. Amy Daradich. Bill Buhay.

Our understanding of the Holocene sea level history of the Caribbean Sea is improving through the development and analysis of mangrove and coral-based relative sea level data. In this poster we present a time-series of maps showing how the paleotopography of the region changed throughout the Holocene. The maps were generated using a recently developed model of Caribbean sea level change that incorporates the effects of both eustasy and isostasy to model past sea level positions. The results show...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bill Buhay. Yadira Chinique de Armas. Mirjana Roksandic. Roberto Rodriguez Suarez. David Smith.

Bone collagen from thirty-two sub-adults (between 0 and 5 years old) and eighteen adult females, excavated from two cemeteries at Canimar Abajo, Cuba (occupied between 1130±110 BCE and 580±120 CE) were analyzed for carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions and then used in two open source Bayesian probability mixing models (Stable Isotope analysis in R, SIAR; Weaning Age Reconstruction with Nitrogen isotopes, WARN) to estimate weaning ages. The weaning age estimates are complimentary between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivan Roksandic.

This presentation examines the patterns of interaction in the Greater Antilles at the time of early migrations, the sources of those population movements and the reasons behind them, with a special focus on the probable links between Lower Central America and the Western Caribbean, in light of recent research results from several academic fields, such as archaeology; aDNA studies; physical anthropology; toponomastics. It investigates developments that made possible such long distance maritime...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirjana Roksandic. Sagrario Balladares. Leonardo Lechado. Donald Byers.

A recent discovery of a female skeleton from Monkey Point – a shell matrix site on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua – represents the earliest confirmed evidence of the occupation of the region. In 2014, the skeleton eroded from the profile (left unprotected after the excavations in the 1970s) prompting rescue excavations. The skeleton was not disturbed, and the excavations could follow proper archaeological procedures, allowing us to reconstruct the burial position and to attempt chronometric 14C...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheahan Bestel.

Evidence of subsistence and diet in the Carribean is examined using evidence from starch grains extracted from human dental calculus. This is compared with isotope data to examine distinct populations of humans in Cuba. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Carroll.

In 2013, a History Colorado Center presented an exhibit entitled "Collision: The Sand Creek Massacre 1860s to Today." It was soon closed due to a multitude of concerns from the Northern Cheyenne tribe including that fact was offensive to many tribal members, who believed the event was being portrayed as an inevitable clash of cultures rather than a isolated event. I intend to portray this event as a case study of the most recent in an ongoing clash over the portrayal of the event to the public...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Renteria. Ronald Towner. Anastasia Steffen. Galen McCloskey.

The Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico has been the site of many culture group activities from prehistoric to present times due to its exceptionally resource-rich environment. During the early 20th century, profit-driven ventures left the landscape that we see today. A few families during this period were critical participants in the development of the VCNP environment. The earliest of these families was the Oteros who used land in the VCNP primarily for grazing horses,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melonie Shier.

The fence is integral to the mythology of the American West, particularly the barb wire fence, such as in the battle between cattle and sheep raisers and between pastoralists and agriculturalists. The years of the open range were short lived in comparison to the decades of fence construction and maintenance. Serving as boundaries and divisions of landscape, fence lines can give valuable insight into how peoples shaped their landscapes in the past and continue to shape it in the present. Although...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen LaValley.

This paper reports on mid-20th century aspen dendroglyphs from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in extreme north-central New Mexico. A class III archaeological survey conducted by Envirosystems Management, Inc. in July 2014 recorded ten previously unknown historic sites between 10,400 and 11,000 feet in elevation on the Carson National Forest. Each contains at least two and up to twenty-one carved aspens that date from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Upon initial assessment, these sites appear to have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dale.

For the turn-of-the-century rural Chinese woodchoppers of Mineral County, Nevada, the construction of cabins, dugouts, corrals, and fences served myriad functions. Yet, architecture, even in its simplest forms, consistently goes beyond the functional. The orientation of and relationships between structures, material preferences, and diverse construction techniques demonstrate the choices made by the Chinese as they strove to make a living supplying firewood to nearby mining boomtowns. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Acebo.

Post European contact the historicity of the Santa Ana Mountain landscape of Orange County, California has been popularly constructed around the narratives of bucolic mission and ranch life, and that of the "wild frontier". The interplay between both histories has contributed to a memorialization of the Santa Ana Mountains as a borderland space during the Spanish, Mexican and American colonial eras that deemphasizes indigenous social life. This paper seeks to complicate the historical concept of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Pelto.

The western Upper Peninsula of Michigan was home to many mining boom towns, similar to those associated more commonly with the American West. Clifton, the town site of the first profitable Copper Mine in Michigan, attracted workers of diverse ethnic backgrounds: Cornish, German, Irish, Native American, and African American. Michigan Technological University has conducted five seasons of field work at Clifton and the Cliff Mine, and has uncovered material remains that aid in the remembrance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Hegberg.

In 19th century frontier New Mexico consumer relationships reflected important social networks that were essential to the survival of Hispanic settlements. These relationships played a vital role in the formation and maintenance of modern Hispanic identity during the Mexican and American Territorial Periods. Visually and functionally similar plainware ceramics were produced and used by many different cultural groups on the landscape in New Mexico in the 19th century. Hispanic residents were able...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Mooney Digrius.

In the twenty-first century, archaeology should be applied and should include scientists and engineers. Why? The reason is simple: because the discipline contributes to our understanding of contemporary issues such as global warming and environmental degradation as well as the past. As a paleoethnobotanist (and now historian of paleobotany), I saw a need for more collaborative work. Thus, in my classroom, I utilized a multi-disciplinary perspective, one that drew from anthropology, water...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Williams.

When teaching archaeology, it may sometimes be challenging to incorporate group work and interactive lesson plans. Due to the sensitive and time consuming nature of archaeological field and lab work, it is difficult to provide a true archaeological experience during allotted class periods. One way in which archaeological lesson plans can become more interactive is through the use of board games. Board games provide an interactive activity which causes students to work together, and the rules can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Stone.

Introduction to Archaeology is often included in the college/university wide core curriculum (social/behavioral science module), as well as being a required class for undergraduate majors. This inclusion allows us to introduce the SAA curricular goals to a larger community. At the University of Colorado Denver, multiple laboratory sections of 15 students each are attached to very large lecture sections. The laboratories provide hands on exercises tailored to the historic and prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Fie.

Efforts to simulate archaeological excavations typically include the seeding of objects in plastic tubs, sandboxes, and even cakes. Although these activities may spark excitement in students at the discovery of artifacts, they are often simple caricatures of the methods employed in actual archaeological investigations. Far worse, this treasure-hunting approach tends to reinforce the quest for "things", while also undermining key aspects of excavation that educators hope to instill, namely, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jenks.

In my introduction to archaeology class, one of the most difficult topics to make my students understand and care about is the role of stakeholders in shaping archaeological research. This subject is simply not engaging in a lecture format. So, instead of lecturing about diverse perspectives, I ask students to participate in a simulated stakeholder meeting. The recent controversy over the development of fracking at Chaco Canyon provided the inspiration for my hypothetical scenario, in which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Muckle.

Student participation in campus trash audits connects to multiple principles of curricular reform articulated by the the SAA, including making them aware of basic methodological and cognitive skills used by archaeologists, real-world problem solving, and becoming effective communicators. Their physical participation helps convey field and laboratory skills. Having them draw behavioral inferences from trash provides experience in cognitive skills of interpretation. Results of trash audits can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antolin Velasquez Lopez.

La investigaciones sobre el patrón de asentamiento en la región arqueológica de Holmul, analiza el relieve terrestre y los cambios en el paisaje observados en el registro arqueológico, a través de la comparación de los emplazamientos, de los distintos tipos de grupos arquitectónicos y la relación entre sus distintos componentes naturales y culturales. La topografía de la región es de naturaleza caliza con abundancia de fenómenos kársticos, localizada en un amplio terreno de bajos rodeada por...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Morales-Aguilar.

The Northern Peten is composed by a complex network of monumental sites that proliferated in the Preclassic during a time period that witnessed the maximal centralization of power in the area. Afterward, during the Classic period, this region experimented a cultural shift and a reoccupation forming a different political panorama. However, little is still known about the Classic Maya settlements of Northern Peten especially about their households. Recent archaeological investigations at Naachtun...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Céline C. Lamb. Daniel Vallejo-Caliz. Shannon Plank.

Traditionally, settlement archeology of the Classic Maya Lowlands recognizes several intermediate residential units between the house and the site. For over 50 years, the concept of neighborhood has been mentioned occasionally, but conclusive case studies are still rare. Yet the concept raises the important issue of the internal social structures of communities and their relationships. After briefly describing the methods that have helped identify intermediate units in the recently studied sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Huchim.

¿QUIEN OCUPÓ MI CASA? Arqlgos José Huchim H. Lourdes Toscano H. Gustavo Novelo R. Centro INAH Yucatán Durante 1998 en Uxmal, ciudad localizada en el Puuc yucateco, se inició el estudio de estructuras de carácter doméstico que fueron construidas en los principales espacios abiertos del asentamiento, patios, plazas y explanadas, obstaculizando sus funciones originales. Además el patrón de organización del espacio interno difería grandemente de los observados en los períodos anteriores. Como...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Burgos. Brent Woodfill.

Salinas de los Nueve Cerros was a large Prehispanic center located at the edge of the Maya lowlands. It was founded atop the only non-coastal salt source in the lowlands and because of this was one of the most important cities during the Classic period. The site covered an area of over 30 km2 with an occupation that spanned the Middle Preclassic (ca. 800 BC) through the Postclassic (ca. AD 1200). Previous archaeological projects focused on salt production in the site core, while the present...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Toscano. Gustavo Novelo Rincón.

Una de las partes más importantes dentro del espacio residencial, ya sea que se trate de la gente común o de la elite, es sin duda alguna el área donde se preparan los alimentos (K’óoben). En este trabajo hablaremos sobre la cocina encontrada en el Grupo Este de Kabah, el cual interpretamos como el complejo palaciego donde residió la familia gobernante al menos durante el Clásico Tardío-Terminal. Un análisis de las características del espacio construido, así como la presencia de 30 metates y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Barry Kidder. Céline Lamb. Shannon Plank. David Medina-Arona.

Soil chemistry in the Northern Maya Lowlands has been an effective method at a variety of sites and in a range of contexts such as households, ballcourts, causeways, and ceremonial plazas. Recent chemical analyses of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional integration Project (UCRIP) also revealed that the soils of the Yucatán, México, are testable using the in-field Olsen bicarbonate method to measure levels of extractable inorganic phosphate. When supplemented with distributional analyses of artifacts on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raquel Macario.

When one visits the archaeological site of Q'umarkaj, they enter through a large open space covered by numerous platforms of different shapes from 1 to 2 m high. Closer to the Main Plaza are larger mounds, some over 40 m in length. At the edges of the plateau, beyond the cliffs that surround and limit access to the site, one is able to see three settlements, also on promontories, a few hundred meters from Q'umarkaj: to the north the site Mukwits Pa 'Ilokab-Chisalin, to the south Pa'Ismachi,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Schwarz.

Fragmentation theory is premised on the notion that actors purposefully broke valued goods, deposited fragments of them in meaningful places, and enchained other social beings in relationships with gifts and exchange of them. They also accumulated whole objects in caches. This presentation examines the fragmentation premise for censers and non-slipped utilitarian ceramics in and around architectural spaces at the Quexil Islands, Guatemala. The site is a Terminal Classic-Late Postclassic Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase. Arlen Chase. Diane Chase.

During the Classic Period (A.D. 550-900), the ancient Maya inhabitants of Caracol resided in formally constructed residential groups comprised of a series of buildings. These residential groups are believed to have been occupied by extended families. Some of the structures constituted formal residences, but other structures served a variety of functions, ranging from cooking to storage. Additionally, over two-thirds of Caracol’s residential groups had at least one eastern building that was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wolf.

An obvious foundation of archaeology is that of the often mundane-seeming house. Insights into any culture are most recognizable at the intimate house level. Simultaneously, this focused view is simply a snapshot into the multi-scalar chain that links the individual with an activity, an activity with a house, the house as an integral component of an architectural compound, etc., etc. These linkages continue into the neighborhood, community, regional and global scales. Other concepts become...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Moriarty. Ellen Moriarty.

Although the largest Classic Maya political capitals are frequently assumed to have served as the critical nodes in long-distance trade networks, empirical data from decades of research suggest that ancient Maya trade was more nuanced in its organization. This paper presents a view on Maya trade from the perspective of Trinidad de Nosotros, a port on Guatemala's Lake Petén Itzá. Trinidad's position, astride overland trade routes and intermediate between these routes and a major political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Freidel. Mary Jane Acuña. Carlos Chiriboga.

Northwestern Petén is characterized by an extensive wetland system subject to flooding during the annual rains, connecting what appear as isolated bajos in the dry periods of the year into larger, intermittent drainage networks. The San Juan, Chocop and Xan rivers drain these flooded areas into the San Pedro Martir River, which flows west, ultimately joining the Usumacinta River. We hypothesize that El Achiotal, a Preclassic center located within these seasonally occurring flood lands, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest. Chloe Andrieu. Ronald Bishop. Paola Torres. Melanie Forne.

The Classic period archaeology and history of the Pasion River "highway" and its connecting land routes demonstrate the vital role of riverine exchange systems and also register major changes in routes, agents, and economies. The riverine port city of Cancuen held a critical position at the intersection of both river and land routes that connected the southwest Classic Maya cities to other Peten centers, to southern highland trading partners, and to the more distant realms of Tabasco and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Prudence Rice. Don Rice.

Ixlú, occupied from pre-Mamom times through the late seventeenth century, is a relatively small site on the isthmus between Lakes Petén Itzá and Salpetén. This siting conferred a strategic advantage for monitoring movements of goods and people. Just southwest of Ixlú, pairs of raised jetties or wharfs modified the lower courses of the Ríos Ixlú and Ixpop and extended into the eastern end of the main body of Lake Petén Itzá. These large, wide channels likely served as port facilities and could...

DOCUMENT Citation Only THELMA NOEMI SIERRA SOSA.

El sitio de Xcambó ha sido definido como el puerto comercial y administrativo de los períodos Clásico Temprano y Clásico Tardío, a la fecha, el principal o quizá el único a lo largo de la costa de la península de Yucatán. Debido a su carácter, es lógico encontrar en él un amplio cúmulo de información con respecto de la llegada a la península, de materiales foráneos, además en él está la respuesta a otras interrogantes como, el manejo de la sal y su distribución, el control de otros productos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Ortega. T. Douglas Price. James E. Burton. Andrea Cucina. Vera Tiesler.

Different hypotheses exist for explaining population development and replacement on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula after the so-called Maya collapse, one involving the presence of the Putun-Chontal folk fringing the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Here we examine these proposals through the lenses of conventional paleodemography, dental morphology, body modifications (dental decorations and head shaping) of human skeletal series from the Postclassic coastal trader settlements of El Meco, El Rey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Collin Gillenwater. Marilyn Masson.

Late Postclassic Mayapán formed the nucleus of a complex system of trade routes in northwest Yucatán, some of which endured into the Contact Period. The importance of ports and overland trade routes to commerce in late Maya history has long been acknowledged, but landlocked Mayapan’s specific connections to towns and exchange facilities has not been systematically considered from an archaeological perspective. Our analysis draws on Postclassic-to-Contact Period historical and archaeological data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Robertson. Debra Walker.

Cerro Maya, located on Lowry’s Point at the southern edge of Chetumal Bay in northern Belize, sits at a strategic intersection between riverine and coastal transportation routes used by the Maya from Preclassic times onward. Evidence suggests a major dock facility was the first monumental construction undertaken during the initial Late Preclassic occupation, indicating the site was intentionally founded to mediate access to interior sites on the two principal river drainages in the region for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan.

Riverine routes from the Caribbean coast from Belize River north to Laguna Bacalar are examined in the context of the major centers, intensive agricultural fields, and patterns of production, transport and centers of power. By contextualizing our understanding of major sites in terms of the opportunities and limitations offered by the riverine transport systems, we can better understand the economic basis of how and why various important centers rose to prominence. Further, these trade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Linda Howie. Heather McKillop.

The Paynes Creek salt works of southern Belize were a massive industry for the production of salt for trade with inland Maya consumers during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900). The salt workers lived elsewhere, perhaps at the nearby trading port of Wild Cane Cay, which was a large contemporary settlement. The infrastructure of production includes wooden buildings preserved below the sea floor. The majority of artifacts recovered from survey and excavations consist of briquetage—locally-made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Rissolo. Jeffrey B. Glover.

In the northern lowlands, there is strong evidence for a coastal Maya presence since at least the Middle Preclassic, and scholars have long discussed how inland-coastal connections served as a catalyst for the development of social complexity. The scope and scale, however, of maritime commerce and interaction was closely linked to the ever-changing political and economic landscape. The work of the Proyecto Costa Escondida at the neighboring port sites of Conil and Vista Alegre highlight the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Graham. Scott Simmons.

The Caribbean sea, like the Mediterranean, was a facilitator of travel and communication. In the case of Belize, the relatively shallow waters of the coastal shelf sheltered water-borne Caribbean traffic, and the bevy of coral islands or cayes served as way stations for far-flung coastal trade. Essential to communities in the Maya area, however, was the transfer of goods from the coast to river and lake ports for inland distribution. In this presentation, we endeavour to summarise information...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Andrews. Fernando Robles.

Archaeological and historical research along the northwest coast of the Yucatán peninsula during the last half century have led to a preliminary reconstruction of a 200 km-long navigable intracoastal waterway between the Celestun estuary and Dzilám de Bravo during the Classic period. Along this waterway are remains of settlements, ports, and port complexes that supported an extensive trade network that connected northern Yucatan to more distant trade networks to the south, via the coast of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop.

A natural harbor, strategic location in the mouth of a navigable river and opposite the Paynes Creek salt works, Wild Cane Cay developed from a fishing village in the Early Classic (A.D. 300-600) to a major trading port from the Late Classic (A.D. 600-900) through the Postclassic (A.D. 900-1500). As skilled mariners, the Wild Cane Cay Maya were familiar with the shoals, storms, and other hazards of the sea, as well as the endless opportunities for travel on the sea. During the Classic period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Cobos.

The ancient city of Chichén Itzá reached its apogee as a regional capital in the tenth century. Part of this apogee included the territorial hegemony that Chichén Itzá exerted over a vast area of the maritime coasts of the Yucatán peninsula and Belize. By controlling the coasts, Chichén Itzá maintained strict authority over the different objects and merchandise that were distributed and exchanged throughout the maya lowlands in the Terminal Classic period. In order to control the distribution...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Walker. Leah Minc. Christina Elson.

The site of Jalieza, during the Late Classic, was the second largest community in the Valley of Oaxaca. But in spite of its position in the regional settlement hierarchy, the position of this site in the regional economic system is largely unknown. To ascertain this, we have examined patterns of ceramic consumption and exchange utilizing three contexts of an elite house, a semi- elite house, and a systematic surface survey to obtain 250 samples of ceramics from household and ritual vessels....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Faulseit. Gary Feinman. Linda Nicholas.

Over four decades ago, economic anthropologists recognized the importance of marketplace exchanges in the contemporary Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, but the historic roots of this region’s exchange system were less clear. Was the Oaxaca market system a product of recent capitalism, Spanish Conquest, Aztec imperialism, or were underpinnings even deeper in the past? Here, we examine INAA studies of ceramic assemblages from two Classic-period (ca. AD 200-850) sites in the Tlacolula arm of the Valley of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremias Pink.

Many models of the Zapotec economy during the Classic Period (AD 200 – 850) have relied on an assumption of mutual dependence between rural farmers and urban craft specialists, yet little research has focused explicitly on the economic behavior of rural households. To address this assumption, over 300 archaeological ceramics from the rural site of Yaasuchi - including samples from two domestic structures and a ceramic firing feature - were characterized via INAA to establish provenance. Results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah Minc.

As an overall introduction to this session, this paper introduces our methodology for establishing ceramic provenance within the geologically complex Valley of Oaxaca. Natural clays have now been sampled from more than 300 locations throughout the valley, and their chemistry analyzed via INAA. Spatial averaging was used to create a series of smoothed contour maps showing how clay composition varies over space, and to generate a continuous reference grid of element concentrations against which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Markens. Cira Martínez López. Marcus Winter.

This paper explores the organization of ceramic production and distribution in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Late Classic period (650-850 CE) by considering the evidence for pottery manufacture as well as the results of neutron activation analysis of pottery samples at three valley sites: Monte Albán in the central part of the valley, El Trapiche in the Etla arm and Lambityeco in the Tlacolula arm. More specifically, we examine evidence bearing on the intensity and scale of pottery production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao. Peters Ann.

Until recently, our understanding of Paracas Necropolis was based on objects divorced form their contextual data. Research in archives and museum collections has allowed us to re-link object with context, and a complete restudy has been carried out for some gravelots. In these cases, systematic bioanthropological observations have provided more reliable and more detailed information on the persons at the center of the mortuary bundle. Age and biological sex have been re-evaluated based on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johny Isla. Markus Reindel.

En nuestras recientes investigaciones de la cultura Paracas en la vertiente occidental de los Andes del sur del Perú hemos encontrado un nuevo patrón arquitectónico, cuyo elemento básico lo constituye una estructura en forma de D, que se encuentra combinada en número de dos, tres y más elementos. En el caso ideal se forma un círculo perfecto, generalmente sobre una colina artificialmente modificada, y alrededor de un patio hundido. En el sitio de Cutamalla se han identificado doce complejos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Lane. David Beresford-Jones. Alexander Pullen. Charles French. Susana Arce.

The earliest evidence of human occupation on the Río Ica, south coast Peru are middens at the river’s mouth, accumulated through episodic fisher-hunter-gatherer occupations during the Middle Preceramic Period. We present results of ongoing investigations and dating of these sites to between 7,000 and 6,000 Cal yr BP. Apart from a variety of rich marine resources, the occupants of these middens also exploited the river estuary, riparian woodlands in the river floodplain and lomas (or ‘fog...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Conlee.

Presently evidence for the earliest domesticated maize in the Central Andes comes from the north coast of Peru. Dating to the Middle Preceramic this early maize consists of Proto-Confite Morocho and Confite Chavinense, which were primitive types of popcorn. In contrast, little is known about the early use of maize on the south coast. A cob of Confite Chavinense was found in a Preceramic context at the site of La Tiza in southern Nasca. Surrounding contexts, including a hearth, date the context...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcela Poirier. Kevin Vaughn.

In this paper we address the results of an Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) on a sample of sherds from Santa Luisa and Higosñoc, two Las Trancas Valley sites from the Southern Nasca Region (SNR), Perú. By sampling sherds dating from the Early to the Late Horizon, this study adds temporal depth to previous compositional work in the region. While results confirm previous analysis conducted in the SNR suggesting compositional uniformity during Early Nasca, results also reveal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Weaver.

The fertile desert middle-valleys of South Coastal Peru’s Grande Basin offered resources for great productive potential which supported a large population since the Formative Period and attracted intense agro-industrial interests during Spanish colonization. Historical archaeology offers tools for understanding regional processes of population replacement, highland/coastal exchange and migration, and the radical transformation of social processes during the last five centuries of intense...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefanie Bautista.

This paper highlights how the study of ancient dwellings and the activities that occurred within them can help archaeologists better understand the dynamic and complex nature of people, their relationships to each other, and the broader society they live in. In the Rio Grande de Nasca Region, Perú, Andean archaeologists assume that the Nasca (A.D. 1–700) developed directly from the Paracas (800–100 B.C.) based on the continuity of some pottery traits and settlement. While there has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kerchusky.

During the Middle Horizon (AD 750-1000) the Wari Empire established at least three colonies (Pacheco, Pataraya, and Inkawasi) in the Nasca Valley and its tributaries. Archaeological survey of the Southern Nasca Region conducted by Katharina Schreiber and students in previous decades observed dramatic changes to the local settlement patterns during this period (Edwards 2010, Schreiber 1999). The number and size of habitation sites in the Nasca and Taruga Valleys decreased but increased in the Las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Tierney.

Studies of Nasca polychrome ceramic iconography from many phases identify shamans in various roles. In ceremonial scenes shamans drink from cups filled with the entheogenic pulp of the San Pedro cactus, dance, play instruments, don costumes as supernatural imitators, and preside over rituals related to agriculture. Rarely however, is less immediately understandable ceramic imagery interpreted through the lens of shamanism as a Nasca worldview. Shamanic thinking privileges ambiguousness, trance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masato Sakai. Jorge Olano. Yoichi Watanabe. Kaoru Honda.

The objective of this study is to discuss the social changes of the societies in the Nasca region, the south coast of Peru through the analysis of ceramic sherds distributed near the lines and line centers. In 1926 the Nasca lines had been discovered by Alfred Kroeber and was investigated archaeo-astronomically by Paul Kosok and María Reich. At the 1980' Anthony Aveni and his colleagues carried out investigation at the pampas and contributed to reveal the detail of the Nasca lines and centers....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Fernanda Boza Cuadros.

Social control, central to Spanish colonial rule, was exercised through the regimentation of everyday life, the design and construction of space, and the imposition of practices such as sleeping on beds and mode of dress. In this paper I examine the built space at Santa Cruz de Lancha, an eighteenth century Jesuit hacienda in the Pisco valley, and elucidate on the ways in which the site architecture structured everyday life at the estate. Further, I pose and evaluate questions for future...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Edwards.

The human and cultural geography of Andean South America has been seen as fundamentally divided between the coast and the highlands since the early days of Spanish colonization; a conceptual bifurcation that is assumed to have great antiquity and has subsequently shaped archaeological research in the region. Better settlement data from the foothills of the southern Nasca valley have demonstrated that the indigenous cultures of the Nasca valley extended much higher into the Andean uplands than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Gravalos. Kevin Vaughn.

Excavations in 2014 at Cerro Tortolita, an Early Intermediate Period (EIP; ca. 100 BCE-600 CE) site located in the Upper Ica Valley, Peru revealed it to be a local ceremonial center with a dense, residential component. Work at the site revealed a high quantity of Nasca polychrome ceramics from the residential sector, many of which feature technical characteristics (e.g. paint and paste) that are distinct from Southern Nasca Region (SNR) polychromes, suggesting that they are of local origin. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verity Whalen. Corina Kellner. Alejandra Figueroa Flores. Deborah Spivak.

Preliminary investigations of the La Marcha site have revealed a key residential, mortuary, and ceremonial locale in the Las Trancas Valley. While initial use of the site occurred during the late Formative, here we report on the considerable Late Nasca and Middle Horizon occupation. In addition to residential zones, we documented large plazas with huarango post features similar to those at Estaquería and Cahuachi. These include complexes of up to 9 posts, oriented in rectilinear clusters along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Vaughn. Michiel Zegarra. Beth Grávalos.

This paper reports on the 2014 field season at Cerro Tortolita, a predominantly Early Intermediate Period (EIP) site in the Upper Ica Valley. While the site has been known archaeologically for at least four decades, no systematic investigation has ever been undertaken there. Our work documented the numerous sectors of the site and through vertical excavations established a preliminary chronology. We found that the site has an extensive ceremonial/ritual component including a U-shaped platform...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Smith.

The Greek historian Herodotus, cribbing from Hecataeus of Miletus, famously wrote, "Any sensible person sees at once… that the Egypt to which the Greeks sail is land acquired by the Egyptians and a gift of the river…." Scholars today see the same basic landscape as Herodotus did before them in Egypt and northern Sudan, a narrow strip of green fed by the Nile and surrounded by an absolute desert. This distinctive ecology thus continues to play a central role in models for the origins of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlene Rosen.

In recent decades, studies of climate change and its impact on past societies have been colored by a veneer of political agenda and oversimplification of how ancient societies might have actually responded to changes in their environments. Although many of these climatic changes would have profoundly impacted economic systems of past societies, these social and economic systems have often demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of such changes. Other times, abrupt environmental changes...