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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Sandweiss.

In 1997-98, the first mega-Niño of the internet age devastated vast regions of the equatorial Pacific basin and altered weather throughout the globe; El Niño became a household term. Within two years, Brian Fagan had published "Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations", calling global attention to potential impacts of the phenomenon in prehistory. The Peruvian coast is ground-zero for El Niño, and Fagan included a chapter on Peru in his book. Over the last 15 years,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Lindsay.

The Caucasus Mountain range is an exceptionally dynamic landscape whose diverse topographic, tectonic, hydrological, climatic, and pedological dimensions provided the backdrop to equally vibrant social transitions from the Neolithic through the Iron Age. The past two decades of intensive excavations and radiocarbon dates in the South Caucasus (particularly Armenia and Georgia) have resulted in important refinements to material culture sequences from the first farmers to the earliest political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Kennett.

Multi-year droughts in the American west have major impacts on water resources and agricultural systems that sustain growing populations. Environmental engineering projects (e.g., California Aqueduct or Hoover Dam) were designed within the context of instrumental climate records and historical knowledge of the last century. Archaeological and climatological records now provide a longer-term perspective on the severity and longevity of droughts and the impact of these droughts on human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Moore.

Brian Fagan has been a leader in illuminating the human past for students, and the public of all ages. From his writings and lectures thousands of people have come to understand how human societies have shaped the world in which we live. In recent years Fagan has built on these insights to bring a compelling message to his many audiences: that climate change has profoundly impacted human communities in the past and that it continues to do so in the present. He invites them to ponder these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Scarre.

Brian Fagan’s long fascination with the sea and sailing gives special resonance to his studies of coastal communities and human adaptation. In Before California he studied the Chumash peoples and the prehistoric settlement of the Channel Islands of the Santa Barbara Channel. In recognition of Brian’s evocation of broad-scale cross-cultural comparisons, the postglacial communities of the Californian Channel Islands are here contrasted with patterns of settlement and social change in the Channel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vernon Scarborough.

The ancient Maya and Khmer developed in semitropical environmental settings, both having not dissimilar chronologies. Tropical ecological rhythms dictated their respective dispersed land-use patterning. To cope with seasonal abundant precipitation followed by 4-5 months of drought-like conditions, the Maya accepted cropping designs based on the limitations of extended ground storage while the Khmer located resources to elevated reaches of stilted housing; approaches conditioned by accelerated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Elizalde Mendez. Salvador Figueroa Morales. Ximena Chávez Balderas.

After the discovery of the Tlaltecuhtli (earth goddess) monolith, the Templo Mayor Project explored an area known as the Mayorazgo de Nava Chávez, located at the foot of the Great Temple. Offering 125 was discovered west of the monolith and was deposited during the reign of Ahuitzotl (1486–1502 CE). Along with thousands of ritual items, two golden eagle skeletons were buried in this deposit. Commingled bones corresponding to at least three quail were found inside the keel of one of the eagles....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guilhem Olivier. Leonardo López Luján.

During recent excavations conducted in the Urban Archaeology Program (PAU) and the Templo Mayor Project of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), six offerings containing roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) skeletal remains were found at the foot of Tenochtitlan’s main pyramid. A careful analysis of these bones reveals that the Mexica buried not only complete individual birds in this important ritual scenario, but also their multicolor feathered skins. Although the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amaranta Arguelles.

In this paper I will present the study of five offering containers found during the seventh field season of Templo Mayor Project in Downtown Mexico City. The shape of these stone boxes buried in foundation of the main plaza of Tenochtitlan (around 1486 CE), is one of the most important aspects of this ritual complex. They were deposited in the shape of a cross: one was placed in the center, while the others were buried in the cardinal points, representing a Quincunx, a model of the universe. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Robles Cortés. Ximena Chávez Balderas. Alejandra Aguirre Molina. Michelle De Anda Rogel.

Offering 141 is one of the numerous deposits found at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan that contain the remains of decapitated individuals associated with the Mexica practice of human sacrifice. After the immolation of men, women, and children, their heads underwent various cultural treatments in order to be utilized by the city’s priests in specific rituals. Although some of these severed heads were buried shortly after death to consecrate the building, others were transformed into effigies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margarita Mancilla Medina. Laura Angélica Ortíz Tenorio. Mirsa Alejandra Islas Orozco.

The excavation of the Great Temple, one of the most important precincts in Mexica society, began more than thirty years ago. Since then, the examination of thousands of artifacts and organic materials has greatly increased our knowledge about Mexica cosmovision. During its seventh field season, the Templo Mayor Project has excavated thirty-six offerings. The flooded context of these oblatory deposits enabled the conservation of various organic materials that commonly degrade with the passage of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diego Matadamas Gómora. Martha Soto. Ángel González López. Michelle De Anda Rogel.

During the 1979 Templo Mayor Project excavations in the ruins of Tenochtitlan’s main pyramid, eleven basalt sculptures, ritually buried in a hitherto unseen manner, were exhumed from the fill covering Construction Stage III (1427–1440 CE). Their complex forms and iconographic elements have made ascertaining their function within the sacred precinct of the Mexica capital difficult. After their discovery, it was surmised that they represented Huitzilopochtli’s siblings, the centzonhuitznahuah, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Aguirre.

During the seventh field season of the Templo Mayor Project directed by archaeologist Leonardo López Luján, twenty-two ritual deposits were found in the west plaza at the foot of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. Eight of the deposits (Offerings 123, 125, 126, 136, 137, 138, 141, and 163, dating to Ahuitzotl’s reign, Stage VI, 1486–1502 CE) contained more than one hundred flint knives that were dressed with garments bearing the attributes of gods and deified warriors. Some of the knives were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Belem Zúñiga Arellano.

Of the approximately 175 offerings uncovered in the Templo Mayor Project excavations (1978–present) of Tenochtitlan’s sacred precinct led by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, 60 reportedly contained marine mollusks. Among them, 47 offerings, dating from 1440 to 1521 CE, were explored between 1978 and 2006, while 13, dating from the reign of Ahuitzotl (1486–1502), were recovered between 2007 and 2013. In the first group, 180 species were identified, including 119 endemic to the Caribbean, 41 to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel García González.

In 2009 a spectacular offering containing incense burners was excavated close to the area in which the Tlaltecuhtli monolith was located. Three of these artifacts preserved complex decoration, similar to the iconography that characterizes the incense burners discovered in 1900. Two of the handles of these ritual objects represent disarticulated eagle legs, while the other symbolize the segmented body of a mythical creature, the Xiuhcoatl. The eagle was an essential animal for the Mexica: it was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saburo Sugiyama. Leonardo López Luján.

The 3D map of the Great Temple complex has been elaborated in 2007-2014 with detailed features of thirteen overlapping architectural stages. We first analyze and describe visually each stage calculating dimensions and orientation of the main pyramid complex. Enlarging process gradually changing the spatial distribution and orientations of the temple complex will be discussed in terms of native perspective of cosmology and expanding political power. The E-W orientation and symbolic architecture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Guzmán.

Se describe el contenido ictiológico de tres ofrendas asociadas al monolito de Tlaltecuhtli (1486-1502 d. C.). y se dimensionan los resultados comparándolos con otras ofrendas del mismo sitio (Complejo A: 1440-1469 d. C.). La Ofrenda 120 contenía escasos elementos de siete taxa; la Ofrenda 125, ocho taxa con un individuo cada uno (excepto un caso), con ejemplares completos y taxidérmicos; y la Ofrenda 126, siete taxa con uno a dos ejemplares, tanto completos como taxidérmicos. Las ofrendas a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurora Montúfar López. Julia Pérez Pérez.

In this paper, botanical remains in sedimentological samples from offerings and fill are analyzed for biological identification. Seeds, fibers, resins, and other vegetal structures recovered using Struever’s floatation technique, modified by members of the Paleobotanical and Paleoenvironmental Laboratory, in the Institute of Anthropological Research (IIA), at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), yielded propagules, charred bits of textiles, copal, thorn fragments, splinters, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Marlene De Anda Rogel. Fernando Carrizosa. Valeria Hernández.

From historical sources we know that the religious buildings of Tenochtitlan (1325–1521 CE) were richly polychromed. Architectural remains of the sacred precinct corroborate this information, as they still contain important remnants of the mural painting on their façades and interiors. Unfortunately, their state of conservation is quite poor, owing, on the one hand, to the particular pictorial materials and techniques utilized by the Mexica during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Soto.

The excavations conducted during the seventh field season of the Templo Mayor Project have uncovered a large quantity of organic matter, thus the conservation team has dedicated a large part of their efforts to the treatment of these rare materials. During the cleaning of these materials, feathers associated with heron bones were identified. In a level below them were found more remains of feathers belonging to the headdresses of Tlaloc masks. The degree of their deterioration required us to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Chatters. Pilar Luna-Erreguerena. Dominique Rissolo. Patricia Beddows. Shanti Morell-Hart.

Hoyo Negro is an immense, underwater collapse chamber deep within the Sac Aktun Cave system, Quintana Roo, Mexico. On its floor lie data-rich calcite raft deposits, bat guano piles, scatters of wood and charcoal, skeletons of large animals, and the remains of one teen-age human female. These sediments and fossils lie in total darkness, >40 meters below sea level, creating major technical challenges for their study and recovery. Investigations by a team of divers and scientists from Mexico, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales. James C. Chatters. Blaine W. Schubert. H. Gregory McDonald. Pilar Luna.

The fauna from Hoyo Negro Cenote preserves a diverse fauna represented by a large amount of bones from both human and animals. To date eleven species of extinct and extant animals have been identified. Extinct animals include the highland gomphothere (Cuvieronius tropicalis), two species of giant ground sloth (the Shasta ground sloth Nothrotheriops shastensis and a previously unknown member of the Megalonychidae), and the sabertooth cat (Smilodon fatalis). Modern species, include taxa that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Collins. Eduard Reinhardt. Dominique Rissolo.

"Hoyo Negro" was discovered in the Sac Actun Cave system in the Yucatan Peninsula; Mexico which contained abundant fossil remains of Pleistocene animals including the remains of a young PaleoIndian woman. There are several cenotes of varying size and age which may have been used by Paleoamericans to access Hoyo Negro. The two closest cenotes are "Ich Balam" and "Oasis". To determine if these cenotes provided access to Hoyo Negro during occupation of the area, the paleoenvironmental evolution of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Kovacs. Eduard Reinhardt. Dominique Rissolo.

Located in the Sac Actun cave system on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Hoyo Negro pit (HN) has proven to be a very important pre-Maya archeological site as human (Naia, dated between approx. 13 000 - 12 000 calendar years ago) and faunal remains have been discovered (Chatters et al., 2014). Reconstructing the flooding history (accessibly when the cave system was dry) and water chemistry of HN is critical to our understanding of the movement of humans and fauna into and through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only PATRICIA QUINTANA. Vera Tiesler. Diana Arano. Dominique Rissolo. James Chatters.

This paper examines the macroscopic taphonomy and the diagenesis of a partially lifted preceramic skeleton of a female juvenile (called "Naia"), dated approximately between 13,000 and 12,000 yrs. AP. Naia was recovered at 41 meters below sea level in a submerged karstic cave. Despite the good general preservation of Naia’s remains, the bone segments are brittle, showing changes attributable to time, weathering, changing salinity and micro-organisms. The external bone layer is only loosely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Chi. James C. Chatters. Andrea Cucina. Pilar Luna Erreguerena3. Vera Tiesler.

This paper explores the histological preservation, metabolic history and living conditions in rib sections of a submerged female youngster, macroscopically determined to have died during her mid teens. This partially preserved skeleton counts among the most ancient individuals securely dated in the Americas. For the purposes of the study, we studied an undecalcified mid-shaft section of the twelfth rib and quantified osteo density (OPD), formation processeds, cortical and total bone area and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Nava. Alex Alvarez. Franco Attolini. Susan Bird. Roberto Chavez.

The Underwater Caves of the Yucatan Peninsula have become central to understanding the climate, paleontological and anthropological records from the Late Pleistocene in Central America. Archeological recording of those hostile environments is extremely complex and requires innovative techniques. In Hoyo Negro, remains of a human, gomphotheres, two giant ground sloths, cave bears, and, sabertooths have been found directly associated by depth and/or position, all in unburied contexts. Over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alysia Fischer.

What are some of the potential pitfalls archaeologists can avoid when dealing with glass on their sites? First and foremost, archaeologists need to recognize the importance of glass as an artifact class and what it can do for them if examined and interpreted competently. This presentation will focus on glass from Old World sites, especially the Mediterranean region, but many of the concerns are universal in nature and can be applied to any site with glass. Drawing upon the experience of many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Swan.

Hisn al-Tinat is a small, fortified port settlement in what is now southern Turkey. The site was occupied over the course of the 8th-12th centuries CE, during which time the region served as a border zone between Byzantium to the north and the Islamic caliphates to the south. Recent study has suggested that this frontier (al-thugūr) was not a militarized "no man’s land," but rather a multi-cultural, populated area that was part of an interconnected economic trade network. An examination of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn.

The study of ancient glass in Africa has undergone a resurgence in the past 10+ years, particularly with regards to the integration of new and varied analytical approaches. Glass from Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Era contexts are increasingly undergoing scrutiny to explore modes of manufacture, access to raw materials, provenance of raw materials and finished glass goods, and the role that glass production and consumption played in those societies, to name a few. Advances in instrumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Ganio. Nicholas Barbi. Marc Walton.

To investigate raw materials provenance, date and models of production of archaeological glass it is essential to characterize and define compositional groups based on the elemental composition. However, obtaining such information traditionally requires performing micro-destructive analysis on micro-samples. Here, the use of hyperspectral X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) is investigated as alternative tool for the examination of Roman natron glass. The full multichannel analyzer (MCA) data of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Cole.

The Yale University Art Gallery’s ancient glass collection has never been the subject of a dedicated exhibition, despite being one of the most extensive of its kind in the United States. As a YUAG Graduate Curatorial Intern (2012-2014), I curated a future exhibition of this collection. Numerous pieces will be available for public view for the first time, drawing together examples covering a timespan of over 2,000 years and a geographical range from the Levant to the western Roman provinces. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Christie.

The most prevalent theory concerning intercultural interaction demands a dominant-subordinate relationship in which the subordinate group passively accepts the culture imposed on them by the dominant population. This argument is often applied to Scotland in the first millennium AD, where the transferred cultures are the Irish, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Norse, and others from continental Europe. Studies of beads in Scotland are particularly affected by these theories: very few beads are seen as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Jones.

Glass vessels recovered from over sixty years of archaeological investigation at Gordion (central Turkey), the capital of ancient Phrygia, range in date from the eighth century BCE through the Roman period and represent nearly all techniques of glassworking. Several groups of luxury glass from Gordion illuminate key moments in the transmission of cultural influence and of glassmaking technology, production, and utilization from the Near East into the Mediterranean basin in the first millennium...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shinu Abraham. Praveena Gullapalli. K.P. Rao.

The contemporary glass bead making village of Papanaidupet in southern Andhra Pradesh has long served as the ethnographic model for understanding ancient South Indian glass working. Recent surveys, conducted as part of the project Production Landscapes of Southern Andhra Pradesh (PLoSAP), have yielded new data about contemporary and recent glass working in this region of south India. These data include a modern glass bangle making community with production links to Papanaidupet as well as an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Larson.

For over three millennia after its discovery in the early Bronze Age, glass in the Near East was used almost exclusively in palatial, religious, and funerary contexts, ascribed with high status reflecting the intrinsic or perceived value of the material. But during the last few centuries BCE this pattern changed, as glass cups and bowls began to appear in domestic and other urban areas in greater quantities. This transition occurs before the discovery and diffusion of glass blowing in the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Susak Pitzer.

This multi-disciplinary study comprising archaeological, scientific, and morphological analyses as well as ethnoarchaeology and textual analysis, interrogates how value was assessed in the ancient world by examining Roman glass from Karanis, Egypt. Onsite portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) analysis of recently excavated glass was conducted since the Egyptian government prohibits the export of artifacts for further analysis. This research, combined with pXRF and electron microprobe...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Geurds.

This paper argues that improving understanding of exchange in Central American prehistory is hampered by static cultural taxonomies, and traditions of thinking and publishing that are limited in terms of the 'archaeology of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama', dividing the field to the point where scholars are uncomfortable discussing Pre-Hispanic Central America as such. This has put an unsatisfactory halt to the discussion about how to understand and conceptualize this isthmian region. If ethnic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Berrey. Scott Palumbo.

Interregional exchange has long played a prominent role in explanations of hierarchical development among early complex societies in lower Central America and throughout the Intermediate Area. It is argued to have been a primary basis of social power among highly developed chiefdoms of the sixteenth century, and to have played a vital role in the onset of inequality approximately 1000 years earlier. However, while interregional exchange was undoubtedly an important element of early inequality in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Gonzalez-Velez.

Cultures in the Intermediate Area served as the catalyst for the potential connections that exist between north and south. Maritime trading routes were the most probable form of contact and dissemination of information and styles. Iconographic evidence points to contact between various people from Chupícuaro to San Agustin Their styles are but a few of the missing links for the interaction between cultures from north and south. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Herrera.

Recent work at the mid to late Formative site of El Cholo reveals that from at least the 3rd century AD, occupants of this mound complex interacted with Costa Rican Caribbean watershed social groups as well as western Panamanian Chiriquí societies. Evidence also demonstrates contact from as far north as the Guanacaste Nicoya region in place by the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Further analysis of the site suggests that interaction was likely initially predicated on trans-cordilleran ethnic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roosmarie Vlaskamp.

Archaeological research in Central Nicaragua has traditionally focused on the recognition of different ethnic groups in pre-Hispanic times and their interaction through the evidence of trade wares. However, a reconsideration of the available data has revealed that there is an absence of knowledge on the habitus of these groups, a central concept in the recent discussion on ethnicities. Therefore, over the next four years a pre-Hispanic habitational site in Central Nicaragua will be investigated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Lowry. Jason Paling. Colin Quinn.

The 2013 and 2014 seasons at Chiquilistagua archaeological project included survey, description and excavations of archaeological remains west of Managua. The site of Chiquilistagua was chosen because of its proximity to potential trade networks. Lithic and ceramic materials have been found in these excavations that point to production and trade. This paper will show analyses of trade networks connecting Nicaragua with southern Honduras and contextualizing those trade networks within the larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty.

In 1989, John Hoopes and I presented a paper at the SAA conference in which we attempted an archaeological evaluation of ethnohistorical models for Mexican migrations into the Greater Nicoya region of Central America. Although the paper was never published, it became the foundation for my current research in Pacific Nicaragua. Colonial chronicles describe ‘Mexican’ cultural practices of the Nahua-speaking Nicarao and, to a lesser extent, the Oto-Manguean-speaking Chorotega. Linguists and art...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yajaira Núñez-Cortés.

Evidence of trading between Greater Nicoya and the Central region of Costa Rica increases in the later Pre-Columbian periods (AD 800-1550), likely tied to the expansion of commercial networks from more complex chiefdoms. Different trading routes have been proposed, including the Central Pacific as one the possible gateways to the Central Valley. The feasibility of trade routes in that region is explored and evaluated here taking into account the known archaeological sites and routes followed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Donner.

Pre-Hispanic Central Nicaraguan pottery has often been addressed as "poorly studied", or "problematic". Therefore, researchers still have a lot of questions regarding the region’s development and specially its interactions with other areas. Even though a ceramic sequence was established at the end of the 1980’s (Gorin 1990, Espinoza and Rigat 1994), analyses have traditionally focused on type-variety and modal traits, often concentrating on decoration techniques and motifs. As a result, we lack...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Steinbrenner.

This presentation continues the discussion of Managua Polychrome I began in a paper presented at the 2014 SAA general meeting. While Part I of this paper focused on early attempts to describe and define Managua Polychrome (a distinctive Late Postclassic ceramic type characteristically found in the Managua-Masaya region of Pacific Nicaragua that has been largely neglected by archaeologists working in Greater Nicoya) and discussed the connections between the type and Nimbalari Trichrome (a ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Benfer. Róger Mesén.

In the lowland tropics of southern Central America during the later pre-Hispanic periods, the oceans, lakes, and rivers were interregional highways that linked dispersed societies for purposes of trade and communication. Using ethnohistoric sources, archaeological finds, and ethnographic data, we review the types and varieties of indigenous watercraft that might have been used to navigate these natural transport networks. Along the way, we consider the lifeways of these pre-Hispanic boatmen and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johnny Bogle.

Although Isla Palenque is an important Panamanian archaeological site that has been investigated several times from the 1960s through the 80s, there remain important questions associated with the human occupation of the settlement. Current changes in Panama’s tourism growth make this emergent study important, because while this site has remained relatively "unchanged" for decades, current construction projects are beginning to limit study of the island that has been notoriously difficult to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Haller.

Through the Parita Archaeological Research Project (PARP), we have investigated socioeconomic change in Central Region of Panama using several different scales of analysis. More specifically, we examined the relationship between episodes of social change and the following factors: sociopolitical organization, craft specialization and economic interdependence, and control and manipulation of trade goods, subsistence resources and ritual space. Despite the presence of some long-distance trade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Colón. Jimmy Daniels. Lana Ruck. Clifford T. Brown.

We performed morphotechnical and trace element analysis of 2871 obsidian artifacts recovered during survey and excavation from 12 archaeological sites in the Department of Chinandega, in northwest Nicaragua. The elemental analysis was conducted using the Bruker Tracer III-V portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer. The pXRF spectra and elemental concentrations of artifacts were compared with those of known source provenience. The results show 98 percent of the specimens match the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbs.

Discussions of variation over time in early Near Eastern pottery production often focus on linking changes in form or surface treatment to shifts in how pots were being used, either as a functional cooking or storage container or, in some cases, as a symbolic object. More rarely, compositional characteristics (clay, temper) are examined and these too have been considered in terms of vessel use. Some tempers, for example, are thought to be beneficial for the production of cooking pots because of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gillian Juleff.

No smelter of iron, industrial or pre-industrial, expends energy in gathering raw materials, designing, building and running a furnace without the intention of producing useable metallic iron at the end of the process. Therefore their work is ultimately driven by a success imperative. At a macro, cultural-scale technological development may be readily discernable through indicators such as material/alloy properties, artefact traits and production levels. However, change is brought about by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marija Radovic. Kevan Edinborough.

Technological knowledge and task-related activities of past populations are known mostly by analyses of material culture remains. Here we use a new line of evidence for reconstructing habitual behavior by investigating paramasticatory use of human teeth. Paramasticatory dental modifications (chipping, notching, occlusal and interproximal grooving) are examined on 89 individuals' dentitions (1308 teeth) from three sites of the Lepenski Vir culture: Vlasac, Lepenski Vir and Padina in the Danube...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett Kaufman.

Some cultures do not just adopt or develop innovative technologies, but actually define themselves based on their technological acumen. The Phoenicians were such a culture, whose economic reliance on metallurgical and maritime knowledge went further in defining their long-term communal cohesion than did other factors. Lacking historical texts written by Phoenicians, it is only through archaeology and archaeometric analyses that such a resource-based ideology can be reconstructed. Compositional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Freestone.

Glass has a number of distinct chemical types which are restricted in space and time and reflect several processes including (1) the spread of a dominant glass-making technology from an inferred single place of invention by the transfer knowledge and skill through the movement of people; (2) modification of the parent technology due to restricted availability of materials or selective improvement; (3) the re-invention of glass making due to stimulus diffusion in the form of exposure to imported...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haris Procopiou. Roberto Vargiolu. Hassan Zahouani.

An archaeological object: raw material, volume, form, but also texture, temperature, sensation. It is the intention of the craftsman that we tried to attend, by studying Bronze Age polished objects of the Eastern Mediterranean (Crete, Egypt, Near East; 3000-1000 BC). By applying an interdisciplinary approach that combines ethnography, archaeology and tribology (science of wear, friction and lubrication), we studied traditional stone polishing at Mahabalipuram (India, Tamil Nadu) and Tenos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Sahlen.

Studies of technological changes in non-ferrous casting during the shift between the Bronze and the Iron Age in Europe have particularly looked at changes of crucible manufacture or the use of different alloys, while technology of the casting mold has not been studied to the same extent. Mainly three types of molds were used during the prehistoric period – single piece, two-piece, and investment. The first two types were made in clay, stone and occasionally metal, while investment molds were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Martinon-Torres. Andrew Bevan. Xiuzhen Janice Li. Yin Xia. Kun Zhao.

Built in the 3rd century BC, the Terracotta Army constitutes an unprecedented investment of technological resources as well as a huge work of art. An icon of a much larger mausoleum, the army of thousands of heavily armed warriors materialised in just a few decades under the command of the man who would become China’s first emperor. This paper presents some aspects of an ongoing project that investigates this logistical feat, paying particular attention to craft organisation, quality control and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Amicone. Patrick Quinn. Miljana Radivojevic. Thilo Rehren.

This paper focuses on the reconstruction of pottery recipes and their transmission in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic sites of Belovode and Pločnik (c. 5350-4650 BC; c. 5200-4650 BC). These two Vinča culture sites, located respectively in north-east and south Serbia, have recently yielded some of the earliest known copper artefacts in Eurasia. The rich material culture of these two sites, therefore, offers a unique opportunity for the study of the evolution of pottery craft technology during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Charlton.

All metallurgical systems conform to the scientific laws defined for chemical, physical and thermodynamic interactions. These laws place clear limitations on the range of technological possibility, but, more importantly, create technological opportunity. Some metallurgical opportunities will be better suited to particular socioeconomic and natural environments than others. Models derived jointly from Materials science and Geology on one hand and evolutionary sciences on the other can offer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miljana Radivojevic.

This study integrates archaeological, microstructural and compositional data of c. 7000 years old metallurgical production evidence with an aim to address the how and why of the world’s earliest metallurgy. The main focus is set on copper ores and metal production debris coming from four Vinča culture settlements in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all dated between c. 5400 – 4400 BC. Chemical study of copper minerals throughout all sites points at striking uniformity in selecting black and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Gjesfjeld.

Traditional archaeological analysis of pottery remains in East Asia has often emphasized macroscopic features of pottery including decoration, vessel form and paste composition. While these features are important in characterizing the cultural and technological aspects of pottery, microscopic and archaeometric analyses have the potential for enhancing traditional pottery research in this region by developing novel insights into social processes such as the transmission of information and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Cross.

Archaeological fieldwork in the Northeast over the last 20 years has resulted in a significant increase in the number of known pre-Contact sites with radiocarbon-dated components; we no longer speculate on whether or not people occupied the region during the Early and Middle Archaic periods. However, the emphasis has largely been on fitting new data into an existing framework of anthropological and evolutionary generality, rather than on exploring the historical specificity of the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah.

In 2003 the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) completed survey and data recovery excavations at the East Pasture Site, located immediately east of Menemsha Pond on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The investigations revealed a multi-component site dating from the Early Archaic to Late Woodland/Contact Period, and recovered a total of 19,679 artifacts and 24 cultural features. The artifact assemblage was dominated (99%) by lithics, including debitage, projectile points, groundstone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Donta.

Small Stemmed projectile points were made and utilized across a wide area of eastern North America, and are one of the most frequent point types found in Archaic contexts in New England. Recent excavations have shed new light on associations with features, dated contexts, and other artifact types. This paper looks at radiocarbon dating of Small Stemmed features across southern New England to document the connections between this point type and others during this complex time period. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Flynn. Dianna Doucette.

The Halls Swamp Site represents a newly identified Middle and Late Archaic multi-component occupation in Kingston, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Community interest and insight in archaeology through the local historical commission, along with dedicated Native American monitors, prompted a professional archaeological survey resulting in an overwhelming municipal response to the importance of preserving a unique cultural landscape. The Halls Swamp Site is also yet another piece of an ever...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Goodby.

Sites in Swanzey and Hinsdale, New Hampshire illustrate the dynamism of the Late Archaic period in the Connecticut River drainage of southwestern New Hampshire. Longstanding economic patterns centered around the hunting of timber rattlesnakes at the Wantastiquet Mountain site and the harvesting of anadromous fish at the Swanzey Fish Dam begin during this period, establishing practices that continue throughout the Woodland and even survive the tumult of the early decades of European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Beamer. Joseph N. Waller, Jr..

The impact of Hurricane Sandy on the southern New England coast has brought attention to the delicate nature of our coastal landscapes. Just as we are beginning to utilize new insights into climate change for urban (re)development, we must also consider coastal archaeological sites at risk in areas of high erosion. The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) surveyed 28.2 km of Rhode Island's coastline to evaluate the effects of Hurricane Sandy on coastal archaeological sites. Using GIS, PAL...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Jones. Brianna Rae.

Archaeological and Historical Services Inc. recently excavated a rich Snook Kill phase site in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Dated features and diagnostic tools from the site indicate a radiocarbon age of 3500 years ago. Artifacts were recovered beneath a horizon of peat that had formed over the past 1500 years in this near-coastal setting. The strikingly pristine site documents a complete lithic artifact production, use and discard sequence, from the reduction of rhyolite cobbles into carefully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Elquist.

Models of estuarine resource use in the Lower Hudson Valley, particularly fishing, have typically been based on a limited set of archaeological materials and ethnohistoric information. Key issues include early evidence of estuarine resource use, the range of resources exploited, and their role in settlement and subsistence patterns. Recent investigations at the Old Place Neck Site involved using various residue analyses that contributed important new information beyond what artifacts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ort. Dianna L. Ducette.

PAL, Inc (the Public Archaeology Laboratory) conducted archaeological investigations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island in preparation for upcoming modifications to an existing pipeline. The project in particular crossed large areas of Eastern, Central and Western Connecticut that have not previously been systematically surveyed. This paper will focus on those sites identified in Eastern Connecticut, specifically those found along the Susquetonscut Brook, a tributary of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dianna Doucette. Elizabeth Chilton. Katie Kirakosian. Deena Duranleau. David Foster.

This paper summarizes preliminary data and interpretations of Archaic Period land use patterns in relation to environmental dynamics within Massachusetts. This analysis is a component of a larger NSF-funded research project intended to analyze the drivers of and responses to ecosystem dynamics in the New England region. This project aims to better understand the dialectical relationship among human activity (fire, land clearance, horticulture), vegetational dynamics, and climate. The following...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felipe Rojas.

For the inhabitants of Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia, nearly every feature in the landscape was a god: rivers and springs, trees and rocks, lakes and mountains—mountains above all. Kings in Hattusas swore oaths by them. Luwian rulers claimed mountains as their own with conspicuous rock-cut reliefs and inscriptions. According to ancient sources, a mountain was among the earliest Lydian kings; that very mountain once acted as judge in a musical duel between Apollo and Pan! But how did people in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Rutz.

Textual sources from southern Iraq’s early historical periods constitute a surprisingly rich body of material for exploring highland-lowland interactions in ancient southwest Asia. Cuneiform inscriptions typically convey only one perspective on these interactions, namely, that of the elite inhabitants of city-states and territorial polities of the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. However, these decidedly one-sided representations were hardly monolithic, and in this paper I explore the various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Glatz.

The Middle East and surrounding areas are among the most mountainous regions of the world, where a combination of material and written records provides a unique opportunity to explore highland-lowland interaction in the distant past and over the long-term. This includes issues of relevance to current efforts to document, preserve and protect mountain regions and ways of life, such as the movement of people, goods and ideas, the environmental and resource contexts and consequences of such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stamos Abatis.

"On the move" is a pan-Mediterranean project on transhumance implemented by the Mediterranean Consortium on Nature and Culture. As part of this project, I have produced a documentary that illustrates the life and experiences of transhumant pastoralists in Northern? Pindos, Greece. The seasonal movement of these people with their flocks from the valleys to the alpine meadows of Pindos, although a practice currently in decline, has for centuries been the backbone of the economy of Greece and many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kalliopi Stara. Rigas Tsiakiris.

In various parts of the world local societies have effectively maintained mature groves through religious rules. A network of such sacred groves characterize the mountainous cultural landscapes of Epirus. These serve as protective wood belts above villages or form groups of veteran trees around churches. Except of settlements protection against natural hazards as also aesthetic functions, these locally-adapted management systems could regulate the use of natural resources for the community....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liza Zogib.

The small Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan is in itself a high land. However within the country there exist many unarticulated highland-lowland dynamics and dichotomies: economic power of the lowlands versus spiritual power of the highlands; modernization and opening of the lowlands versus tradition and closure of the highlands, and so forth. Establishing the right balance between these and others is critical as the country opens up into the 21st Century. This presentation will discuss some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aphrodite Sorotou.

In the European Landscape Convention ‘landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors. This view approaches landscape as an integrated and integrating concept, requiring a holistic approach to the investigation, protection, management, and planning of space, consistent with the objective of sustainable development. Landscapes are dynamic socio-ecological systems emerging from long-term historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toby Wilkinson.

From an archaeological point of view, interconnectivity between highlands and lowlands of the ancient Near East is undeniable. The differential distribution of natural resources (particularly metals and precious stones which are sourced predominantly in highland regions), and the evidence for circulation of these resources from at least the Neolithic, is the most obvious sign of this interdependence. Too often, however, our models of this interdependence have tended to create abstract zones –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hammer.

In Turkey and other mountainous parts of Eurasia, archaeologists have primarily targeted lowland sites for investigation, leaving highland areas relatively unexplored. Drawing on ethnography of twentieth-century tribes, scholars have assumed that mobile pastoralists were one of the major agents connecting lowlands and highlands in all post-Neolithic periods. However, little data has been collected on such people or on mobility practices. In this paper I briefly review empirical evidence for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aimee Plourde. Elizabeth Arkush.

The florescence of the pre-Columbian Andean cultural sphere presents a classic, almost trite counter example to the development of highland-lowland relations seen in other areas. Far from marginal, the highlands are where the Inca empire emerged, following the earlier Wari and Tiwanaku states. However, highland-lowland relations were complex and varied; urban societies also developed independently on the Pacific coast, while eastern Amazonian lowlands were often cast as marginal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marijke Stoll.

There is little argument that the Mesoamerican ballgame was a ritualized and politicized communal sport with great geographical breadth and incredible time-depth. It is also commonly accepted that the ballgame, as a cultural institution, was intimately linked to a political, elite-centered ideology based on cosmology, sacrifice, and agriculture, related to sociocultural themes of conflict, competition, and the resolution or negotiation of both. This interpretation of the ballgame as ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Daniels.

In this paper, I approach religion and ideology in the archaeological record through an analysis of iconographic symbols, one that centres on the dialectic between longstanding meanings of symbols as they are transmitted across space and time and the local social, political, and intellectual contexts in which they appear. I situate my analysis within recent models from cultural evolutionary psychology, which see religion, along with its attendant rituals and symbolisms, as an adaptive mechanism...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Johannesson.

This paper examines the intersection of mortuary ritual and beliefs, at the edge between funerary ideology and religion. The formation of the Xiongnu polity in the 3rd century BCE in what today is Mongolia included the introduction of new funerary regimes that conspicuously upended previous mortuary traditions. Xiongnu mortuary practice breaks a millennium-long convention of east-west orientation of funerary monuments and accompanying inhumations, the creation of visibly prominent and highly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Beach. K. Bryce Lowry.

In 1954, Hawkes warned that the intangible aspects of social life are the most difficult for archaeologists to comment on due to distance between object and ideology, the material and the mental world. Certainly, there is an epistemological slippage that can occur when moving between categories of social life that rely on objects to legitimize claims or complete tasks, and those aspects of society which can be veiled within larger, and immaterial, structures or norms—religious beliefs,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kus. Victor Raharijaoana.

This contribution involves a re-examination of assertions we have made in the past concerning "religion", "belief" and "ideology: jettisoning some, reasserting others, and offering "refinements" where appropriate. Often limited cultural exposure to a circumscript terrain of contemporary religions in service of the state contributes significantly to the initial framing of our questions (and attendant expectation of answers). One of our lives, embedded in context in rural and urban Madagascar,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland.

Culturally diverse peoples variously glossed as Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu lived in northern central Eurasia throughout the Iron Age (ca. 1,000-100 BCE). Archaeological sites of this time period range from kurgans (burial tumuli), mortuary complexes called khirigsuur, standing stelae termed "deer stones," settlements, and metallurgical centers. There is a long-term life history within the places in which these structures and monuments were built, general patterns in their spatial distribution....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Anderson.

This paper examines the formulation of an early iconographic tradition on late third-early second millennium BCE Crete as a means of gaining insight on the development of a novel scale and variety of community ideology. During this period stamp seals began to be crafted from imported ivory and engraved with figural motifs involving lions, each belonging to a highly distinctive iconography reproduced across the island. These changes coincide with evidence of other social developments, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krista Gilliland. Robin Woywitka.

Archaeological sites in Canada’s boreal forest are frequently difficult to interpret due to several factors, including (1) shallow archaeological stratigraphies, (2) non-diagnostic lithics dominate artifact assemblages, (3) low abundances of preserved organic materials, and (4) high potential for disturbance (cryoturbation and bioturbation). These difficulties can contribute to interpretations based on insufficient understandings of site formation processes, producing conclusions that undervalue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Ostahowski.

The environmental processes of erosion and subsidence are key post-depositional factors affecting the formation of the archaeological record along coastal Louisiana. These factors contribute to terrestrial archaeological site loss and present researchers with a unique set of challenges for understanding past human behavior at both local and regional scales. From 2010 to 2014, HDR visited a total of 212 sites across 5,293 km during a survey of the Louisiana coast. This paper provides new insights...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Buvit.

Remnants of perennially frozen ground can serve as indicators of past climate changes. Evidence of ground ice like pseudomorphs, or solifluction lobes, for example, has helped us identify cooling events such as the last glacial maximum or the Younger Dryas. Cryogenic activity can also have wide ranging affects on the behavioral context of archaeological sites displacing material from its original location a few millimeters to many meters. Here I illustrate some common types of cryogenic features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerald Kelso.

The pollen spectra of archaeological sites in the temperate zone are subject to post-deposition modifications in the form of earthworms mixing the pollen in the humus zone.They are subsequently percolated downward in rainwater, at rates that vary with the location and nature of the matrix, and are physically degraded by aerobic fungi, by groundwater oxygen, and by repeated hydration and dehydration.These processes produce a profile with the highest pollen concentrations at the top and quantities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only F. Scott Worman. Anastasia Steffen. Jeffrey W. Hall.

The Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico encompasses a diverse landscape of grassy valleys, forested mountainsides, and rocky peaks, almost entirely more than 2600 m (8500 ft) above sea level. People have visited the area regularly for millennia to access large obsidian quarries and other resources. The long history of human activities has left us a rich archaeological record, but interpreting that record is complicated by the dynamism of the landscape; physical and biological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carly Whelan.

Though optimal foraging theory is useful for examining hunter-gatherer subsistence decisions, food storage falls outside the scope of traditional models, because it separates foraging effort from consumption. The time that foragers spend accumulating a surplus for storage has the potential to conflict with the time they need for other activities during seasons of abundance, creating opportunity costs to storage. Changes in settlement strategies can alter these opportunity costs and affect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Overly.

The overall symposium provides a series of case examples that demonstrate the important role the BLM plays in promoting proactive non-compliance related archaeological research. This introductory paper sets the frame by offering direct experience from multiple perspectives working on BLM land as a field school student, graduate student researcher, volunteer, contractor, and agency archaeologist. This is done to provide additional context for how the BLM has typically supported archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Catacora. Jo McDonald.

A BLM-funded rock art recordation project recently undertaken in Lincoln County, Southern Nevada has focused on three Areas of Environmental Concern: Mount Irish, Shooting Gallery and Pahroc. The overall Project was designed to be a comprehensive heritage inventory of all archaeological evidence in these Areas, and based on a systematic sample there are close to 700 recorded sites in these areas of which around 200 contain rock art. Building on earlier work by the Nevada Rock Art Foundation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josephine McDonald. Gregory Haverstock. David Lee.

The Volcanic Tableland north of Bishop, California has been the focus of significant previous research (e.g. Bettinger, Basgall, Giambastiani), which has been mobilized by proactive BLM Archaeologists (E. Levy, K. Halford, and G. Haverstock) to generate a predictive model for managing cultural sensitivity against recreational impacts. Further innovation has been the use of specialized rock art recorders (represented by Western Rock Art Research) to document the petroglyphs and petroglyphs of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

Rock art is landscape art, but what may be inferred from its setting and associations? It is commonly believed that function directly follows from setting and locational association, but the assumptions underlying this inference are not examined. The Lincoln County Class III rock art inventory is partly directed at the landscape implications of the Pahranagat Valley, NV, petroglyphs, providing an opportunity to consider this question. Associational inference, appropriately applied, combined with...