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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Newman.

In a certain sense, the Classic Maya royal court can be seen as an expanded, intensified household, a comparative model for which can be found in the "Great Households" of early medieval Europe and elsewhere. Closely linked to governing political structures and notable for their size, complexity, and levels of expenditure and waste, royal courts mimic the patterns of interaction that define the household as an archaeological unit, but on a grander scale. This paper examines ritual at the "Great...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Ditto.

At Chaco Canyon, clear indications of social differentiation in the Pueblo world first appeared during the 9th-11th centuries. One materialization of this is the contrast between two contemporaneous architectural forms: great houses, interpreted as populous communities or largely empty centers of seasonal ritual pilgrimage, and small houses, explained as multi-family households. Since ritual artifacts have been excavated from both house categories, analyzing inter- and intra-site variation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Piscitelli.

Throughout the Late Archaic Period (3000-1800 B.C.) communities along the north-central coast of Peru witnessed a dramatic increase in the material manifestations of ritual performance. During this time, the earliest monumental ceremonial architecture in South America was constructed at over 30 sites between the Huaura and Fortaleza River valleys in a region known as the Norte Chico. While considerable archaeological research has been conducted on the large-scale platform mounds and sunken...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe.

With an occupational history spanning nearly two millennia, the Maya site of Ceibal provides a rare opportunity to study the remains of ritual practices and domestic activities at household groups over a long scale of time. This study examines the zooarchaeological remains, both bones and shells, recovered from household caches, burials, and middens from several peripheral locations around the Ceibal site epicenter. The diversity of household types and extended time frame provides an opportunity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Bettinger.

Socio-political development in aboriginal California follows a trajectory quite different from that in much of western North America, culminating in very small socio-political units, in some places independent family groups approximating those characteristic of the Great Basin. The key development leading to this family-level organization was in both places the privatization of stored plant food, which incentivized the intensive use of plant foods (pinyon and acorn) that were abundant but costly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ankele. Bonnie L. Pitblado. Meghan J. Forney. Christopher W. Merriman.

For more than a decade, University of Oklahoma archaeologists have teamed with avocational archaeologist Mike Pearce to document Paleoindian use of the Lake Fork Valley (LFV), southwest Colorado. The Lake Fork of the Gunnison River flows from the town of Lake City approximately 50 km north to the Gunnison River in the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB). Interestingly, however, the Paleoindian record of the LFV differs markedly from that of the better-known UGB. We hypothesize that treating the LFV as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Reid. Ethan Morton.

Idaho’s position as a hub adjoining several culture areas gives its radiocarbon chronology more than local interest. The record of late Pleistocene and Holocene radiometric dates extends back more than fifty years and includes at least 800 known or reported assays, not all of which are on file at the Archaeological Survey of Idaho. As of mid-2014 more than 650 dates were available from 184 sites distributed across all ten of the Level 3 ecoregions intercepted by the state’s border. Not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alesha Marcum-Heiman. Leland C. Bement. Kristen Carlson.

The Black Mesa region of Oklahoma is located in northwestern Cimarron County, and constitutes the edge of the Chaquaqua Plateau. It is the easternmost finger of Colorado's Mesa de Maya. Situated along Oklahoma's western border, Black Mesa is the highest and largest in a system of mesas and valleys that extend westward to merge with the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The relief of this landscape is exaggerated by its juxtaposition with the high plains to the north, south, and east – it is thus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Puseman. Craig Lee.

While the unique plant and animal communities of the alpine are of clear ethnohistorical and modern significance to the indigenous communities of the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA), no histories regarding the use of ice patches have been identified. Information sharing with tribal groups and the public regarding the nature of ice patches, including the technical analysis of recovered materials, fosters understanding of and appreciation for these endangered features. This paper focuses on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Ballenger. Brandi Bethke. Maria Zedeno.

The Plains of Northern Montana contain a uniquely preserved record of rock circles (tipi rings), rock piles (cairns), and other rock configurations that communicate resident, transient, and permanent aspects of prehistoric Native American life in the modern Blackfeet Indian Reservation. This paper relies on the long-term recordation of several thousand of such features to articulate a continuous architectural landscape that represents leadership, planning, seasonality, demography, and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas MacDonald. Justin Pfau. Matthew Nelson.

Over the last eight years, the University of Montana has conducted archaeological research at various sites in Yellowstone National Park and vicinity. One aspect of our research is to study variation in hunter-gatherer lithic raw material procurement and use. From north to south and east to west within the region, there are extreme variations in hunter-gatherer use of a number of distinct volcanic and non-volcanic lithic raw materials. This variation can be used to evaluate geographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu.

All-male hunting parties of the Middle Holocene are an important concept in the archaeology of America’s western mountains. The dichotomy of later high mountain family villages (repeat occupations of high density and diversity) versus specialized hunting sites and ‘man caves’ (sensu Thomas) are cited to argue that Archaic women never saw, or ventured into, remote high mountain landscapes. Yet the ethnographic literature of mobile foragers contains interesting evidence of women, usually young...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Brunswig. James Doerner. David Diggs.

More than eighty high altitude game drives are known along north central Colorado’s continental divide, but until recently there has been limited understanding of the interactive effect of cyclical climate and ecosystem change on Holocene alpine tundra hunting systems. University of Northern Colorado researchers, after fifteen years of high altitude archaeological and paleoclimate research, have produced an early phase reconstruction of game drive use and elevation-specific environmental zone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Neeley.

Communal bison kills are among the most visible archaeological sites in the northwestern plains. They can originate from a variety of hunting practices, including jumps, pounds, corrals, traps, etc. Because of the group nature of the activities, these sites can be rich in archaeologically interpretable materials and behaviors. The Beaucoup site (24PH188/189) is a large Late Prehistoric site on the Milk River in northeastern Montana consisting of a kill, drive lines, cairns, and tipi rings. First...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Forney. John W. Fisher, Jr.. Lawerence Todd.

Conducting research in montane settings, while rewarding, comes with a set of challenges which can result in a relative paucity of data from these locations. However, this problem can be mitigated by various analytical techniques. One approach is to employ a multi-scalar analysis on available data, a method that has produced richer results from limited data in other archaeological contexts. We have applied a multi-scalar analysis to the Pre-Contact era archaeological record of the Bridger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel White.

An assemblage of lithic and osseous artifacts, associated with the fragmentary remains of a child was discovered in Montana at the Anzick Site (24PA506). The remains and assemblage, all covered with red ochre, are thought to represent the only known burial from the Clovis Culture. Found on several lithic artifacts in the assemblage are unique flaking patterns which form "margin scrapers", possibly utilized as an integral part of an osseous tool crafting technology overlooked in western Clovis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Scott.

Pictograph Cave (24YL0001) located in south-central Montana was excavated by Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews between 1937 and 1941. Excavations extended to depths of 23 feet, yet no radiocarbon dates for the site were available until recently. Efforts to re-catalog and process the artifact collection to professional standards were undertaken along with the creation of three-dimensional models of the excavations rendered from WPA stratigraphy maps. Newly created databases allowed for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Smith. Patricia Stavish. Iraida Rodriguez. Brandon Mauk.

Ongoing archaeological survey of Colorado National Monument, located on the eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau, reveals that much of the area is a continuous landscape of non-discrete lithic scatters with light to dense concentrations of artifacts. The ephemerality of many of the sites, coupled with their lack of distinct boundaries, poses a challenge for understanding landscape use and mobility patterns of the hunting and gathering people who utilized the area. To circumvent this issue we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Merriman. Caroline Gabe.

Archaeologists contend with palimpsests and multicomponent surface sites on a regular basis. Although it is interesting to know that one spot on the landscape repeatedly attracted people, these sites present interpretive and methodological problems. Specifically, how can we interpret the behaviors behind non-diagnostic artifacts from multicomponent sites? In this presentation we discuss using a combination of GIS modeling and lithic analysis to better articulate the relationship between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Harris.

Harris’ 2011 Master’s thesis sourced obsidian artifacts from the Kyle Canyon Spring site (10-BT-8). Obsidian source characterization suggested a large circulation range for the prehistoric people using site 10-BT-8, with strong emphasis placed on the American Falls obsidian source. This result was unexpected, given that it is 120km from 10-BT-8 and a nearer, arguably higher quality obsidian source is only 50km away. In my thesis, I concluded that the people occupying 10-BT-8 over the last 3,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer.

Ethnohistorical sources in our region are mainly used for rock art explanation relative to warfare scenes, but they are equally important for tribal demographics and travel patterns and often more detailed than other sources. Ethnohistory can also provide support for theories about gender and age of rock art production and use when no other information is available. Such references supply details regarding religious practices and beliefs as they actually happened, not as they were later...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Mongelluzzo.

Peter Harrison's work in Maya archaeology was important in many ways. One of the most important, and perhaps overlooked, was the scale of focus at which he often worked. Single features, single rooms, single buildings, and single plazas: all of these are commonly uncovered when digging in Maya site centers. However, due to a lack of artifacts, analyses at these scales are not often conducted. Harrison's work exemplifies that much can be learned from small-scale architectural analyses and in that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Powis.

Most Maya archaeologists never take advantage of excavating into plazas. The perception might be that there isn’t much information other than recovering artifacts to date successive constructive phases associated with the buildings they are investigating along the edges of the plaza. Over the years, some archaeologists have seen the utility of this approach – one that emphasizes locating early Maya buildings, even entire communities - beneath plaza surfaces in site centers. The amount of data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fedick. Jennifer Chmilar. Daniel Leonard.

Two major freshwater wetland systems of the eastern Maya Lowlands are the riverine-associated wetlands around the New and Hondo Rivers of northern Belize, and the wetlands of the Yalahau region of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, which are found in karstic depressions associated with the Holbox fracture zone. Both of these wetland systems are linked directly to the freshwater aquifers of the respective regions. In northern Belize the nature and timing of ancient Maya manipulation of the wetlands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norman Hammond.

In 1979, the Pulltrouser Swamp project led by Peter Harrison and B.L.Turner II shared a field camp with the Cuello Project. With one group investigating a ridge-top Preclassic Maya community exploiting some wetland resources, and the other studying Maya wetland use and the nature of swamp-edge settlements, there was ample opportunity to compare and contrast fieldwork results. With overlaps in research interests, and some ad hoc sharing of expertise, the synergism was both social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only H Loten.

Two issues arise in compiling Tikal Report 15 posthumously. Between 1960's field-work and current museum policy illustration formats have changed so that drawings previously inked for photo-reduction are now useless. Secondly, Tikal Report 15 presents data collected under Peter Harrison's direction. But all figure items have been redrawn digitally with inescapable interpretation, so a question of authorship cannot be avoided. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Kosakowsky. David Pendergast.

After Peter Harrison’s forays at Tikal, Guatemala and in Quintana Roo, Mexico he turned his attentions to archaeological research in Belize in the late 1970’s. Thus began his multi-year project at Pulltrouser Swamp, with his colleague Billie Lee Turner, which resulted in a series of foundational publications on Prehispanic Maya agriculture. In this paper we reflect on Peter’s contributions to Belize archaeology and to the discipline as a whole, as we celebrate his many interests in Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw. Jennifer Mathews.

The CRAS and Yalahau Projects of Quintana Roo have shared a similar trajectory for many years: although both projects have focused several seasons on individual sites with detailed mapping, excavations, and artifact analysis, the broader goal has been to address large areas of coverage, with relatively few excavations conducted into buildings. Both projects have focused on site location, with the use of local peoples as consultants and guides. Both projects are in regions that are generally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only B Turner.

Understanding the socioeconomic demise and depopulation of much of the Maya lowlands from the eighth to tenth centuries has been influenced historically by environmental evidence and human-environment frameworks emanating from beyond archaeology. Climate change was involved as early as 1917, but subsequently muted by the excesses of environmental determinism. The role of environment was subsequently reinstated in the latter parts of the 20th century, especially influenced by compelling evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hattula Moholy-Nagy.

The long hiatus of AD 557-692 in the sequence of dates on Tikal's carved stone monuments is widely assumed to indicate a period of decline and troubled times for the city. This assumption, however, is clearly contradicted by archaeological evidence, which demonstrates a high level of material prosperity and cultural innovation during this period. An archaeological approach to the study of stone monuments as items of portable material culture can provide cultural context for recent exciting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Fry.

As his first major project following his dissertation research on the Central Acropolis at Tikal, Peter Harrison chose a challenging topic: a site reconnaissance and survey in the recently accessible territory of south-central Quintana Roo. In this paper I will discuss the genesis of the project, the challenges of fieldwork in this at that time remote region, and the results of this reconnaissance and survey. I will place the project in the context of the often tumultuous debates, and new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers.

Peter Harrison introduced himself to me immediately after I presented my first SAA paper in 1991. We shared an interest in architecture, and I was then attending Trent University where he had taught. From that moment until his death Peter was extremely supportive personally and professionally. In this paper I introduce this session with reference to Peter’s support for me and other (then) young archaeologists, both personally and through his Ahau Foundation. I will highlight his work related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McAnany.

An epitaph for the death of Classic Maya rulers, "he entered the water" is an apt descriptor for a Maya archaeologist whose career spanned the royal and the watery. Peter D. Harrison—whose email address contained the word ahau (ruler, using a Colonial orthography)—was a master of scalar contrast. He attended to the small-scale details of a dynastic headquarters within the Tikal Central Acropolis and also theorized grandly about the role of wetlands in Classic Maya society. He became an advocate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Vernon Scarborough. David Lentz.

Through the lens of Tikal, Peter Harrison developed an interest in how the ancient Maya thrived in the seasonally arid central Maya Lowlands. Initially this interest stemmed from his investigations of Tikal’s Central Palace and its adjacent reservoir. However, soon his interest spread beyond the elite center to questions of basic subsistence and the potential use of wetlands (bajos) for intensive agriculture. Our work at Tikal, the Bajo de Santa Fe, and smaller bajos benefitted from some of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

As a dirt archaeologist, Peter D. Harrison was both intrigued by and skeptical of hieroglyphic interpretations about the ancient Maya, especially relating to Tikal, Guatemala and its political context. However, at the same time he was particularly interested in site emblem glyphs and their significance, centering first on Tikal and next on Tikal’s political enemies. One of his published contributions to the field was a well-documented paper in which he critiqued the way in which epigraphers had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert OBoyle. Conrad Fisher. Erich Longie.

Federal Agencies have long been required to consult with Tribal Nations; however, true consultation has been lacking. The table was tilted in favor of local land managers who have been free to make decisions on consultation and resource management, often with little or no insight from the descendant communities; however, that is changing. Coinciding with the rise of Tribal Higher Education, Tribal Nations on the Great Plains have begun to take charge of the consultation process, and change the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Herbert. Sean P. Connaughton.

This paper discusses recent results from an anthropological research program within a large archaeological consulting firm, highlighting some key ideological differences between consulting archaeologists and Indigenous archaeologists. Using interviews with a cross-section of archaeologists, the study combines results with previous research to illuminate the gap between these two groups with a focus on goals, practises and concerns. We attempt to shed light on areas for improvement and we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Huddlestan. Amanda Marshall. Jenny Lewis.

First Nation’s heritage concerns are at the forefront of many large-scale and controversial development projects across the province of British Columbia. How developers and Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Archaeologists choose to address these concerns can significantly impact working and political relationships. CRM archaeologists are on the front lines balancing and navigating complex, and sensitive socio-political heritage issues. Our small CRM company, Kleanza Consulting Ltd. (Kleanza),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lewis.

"Community based" archaeology programs are all the rage in North America, as both academic and consulting archaeologists respond to descendant communities’ rights to management over their cultural heritage in the face of large-scale development and resource management. This movement is not yet applied in other regions facing similar challenges of economic development opportunities and access to heritage. The Khirbet al-Mukhayyat Community Archaeology Program (KMCAP) is inspired by North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Ellenberger.

Collaborative or community-based archaeology can involve a range of activities from modifying dissemination practices to shifting to writing research designs with a coalition including non-archaeologists. These approaches were built as responses to specific concerns by crafting research methods to the modern context of archaeology. Out of these myriad approaches has developed a social network of scholars whose professional interactions are consequential for understanding contemporary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Corbett. Edward DeCleva. Dara Glass. Alexandra Lindgren. Sherry Keim.

One of the more unusual provisions of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act allowed the 12 newly formed Alaska Regional Native Corporations to select significant historic and cemetery sites as part of their settlement. Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI), selected three sites at the confluence of the Russian River with the Kenai River. The two federal agencies managing the area protested the claims. Among many complications was the fact that the area is one of the most popular sport...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Higgins.

Gaining meaningful information from traditional community consultants can often be difficult. Furthermore, exactly what constitutes such information has changed over time. Recently the focus in archaeology has shifted from a point based search for specific locations to a landscape based approach aimed at information that can be used to define the attributes of traditional cultural properties, so that areas which could contain them can be managed. This paper explores the elements needed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Guilfoyle.

Collaborative heritage management projects requires adaptation to local customary protocols, local structures, and local community goals, and so necessitates a uniquely, localized focus. At the same time, developing, formalized approaches to collaboration that have universal elements – structures and processes - that are applicable in any context, is a goal in the continual evolution and development of a fully integrated collaborative, community archaeology. This means identifying those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Bello.

The concept of conducting research & historic preservation endeavors in effective partnerships with indigenous and local communities just makes sense and is only fair. Clearly, archaeology – heritage management impacts indigenous, local, and descendant communities. It is also clear that these groups often have relatively little input to what others are trying to accomplish. This paper addresses a few key concepts and recurring purposes and goals: The tangible and intangible aspects of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Bagwell.

The wooden portions of prehistoric and historic architecture are not always well preserved. However, when they are present they provide a wealth of information about construction techniques, labor effort, and other aspects of the lives of these people related to building construction. Some key attributes of analysis include: tree species, when the tree died, felling methods, branch and bark removal methods, and surface treatment. This paper summarizes some of Windes’ contributions to this area...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Kocer.

The morphology of a ceramic vessel is directly related to intended use, and potters consider function during manufacture. Functional types such as cooking vessels, ollas, water jars, seed jars, bowls, and pitchers, are common in our ceramic lexicon. However, the relationship between morphology and function is not always intuitive, especially when considering secondary function and special use. The Gallina (A.D. 1050-1300) produced a wide variety of utility wares, but archaeologists have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bustard. Dabney Ford.

Documenting field work has been standard archaeological practice for over a century. Long-term preservation and continuing use of those records has been less standard. Tom Windes’ documentary record of his work in Chaco Canyon is an example of what best practices can achieve. In particular, Windes developed a style of mapping archaeological sites that has proved invaluable in relocating, monitoring, and maintaining Chaco’s World Heritage resources. Standards for archaeological site documentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Mattson.

Ornaments are generally considered to be items of wealth, luxury, and value, and are often used as one of several indicators of social inequality. However, the value and meaning of ornaments is often assumed rather than demonstrated. Aside from power and wealth, jewelry may also relate to various aspects of social identity. It has been proposed that ornaments, turquoise, and shell may have been important symbols of status and ritual (or socially valuable goods) in Chacoan society, as they form...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Dean. Ronald Towner.

Tom Windes is virtually unique among archaeologists for his appreciation of the range of dendrochronology’s contribution to archaeology and of the preservation crisis that afflicts the integrity of wooden elements in Southwestern archaeological sites of all ages. Tom’s interest in dendrochronology as more than dating led him to develop sampling tools, techniques, and protocols that maximize the behavioral and chronological information in dendroarchaeological wood. His recognition of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only H. Toll.

Among Tom Windes’ huge list of accomplishments in archaeology, his work at Chaco Canyon and Pueblo Alto is especially noteworthy. The lasting nature of this contribution is clear in that Pueblo Alto and mounds at Greathouses continue to be discussed and interpreted. This paper further considers the Pueblo Alto mound stratigraphy and the use and occupation of the pueblo in the context of recent discussions of these data. The discussion ranges from the very specific to more general implications....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Akins. John Schelberg.

Part of the Chaco legacy includes early excavations that were under or unreported leaving large gaps in our knowledge of a considerable amount of work, especially during the University of New Mexico field school era. UNM constructed a research station with laboratory facilities and dormitories with the goal of training students and conducting long-term research on a concentration of small village sites opposite the great houses of Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl. One of these excavations was at Bc...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Lipe. RG Matson.

For the past decade Tom Windes and his volunteer band of merry beamsters--the Woodrats-- have been collecting dendrochronological samples from cliff dwellings in the Natural Bridges and Cedar Mesa areas of southeastern Utah. As a result, the number of dated sites has increased dramatically, and it has become clear that in the AD 1200s, building in these canyons declined before the onset of the "great drought" of 1276-1299. The meticulous maps and records made by the Woodrats also enable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Bellorado.

For over a dozen years, Tom Windes and his Woodrat crew have been scampering in and out of the canyons of the Cedar Mesa area, mapping hard to reach cliff dwellings and taking tree-ring samples from archaeological wood in intact structures. Beyond just obtaining tree-ring dates during this work, Tom has developed new dendroarchaeological sampling methods, trained a new generation of researchers in these techniques, and pushed the limits of standard tree-ring analysis and interpretative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cory Breternitz.

Tom Windes has been a leader of innovative research on the Colorado Plateau for over four decades. His early work as the archaeologist on the Manti-LaSalle National Forest in southern Utah lead to one of the first pot hunting prosecutions under ARPA. His Forest Service career was followed by work with the Zuni Tribe and then nearly three decades of association with the National Park Service’s Chaco Center. Tom has become synonymous with all things Chaco, serving as Project Director for the Chaco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Towner. Gaylen McCloskey. Benjamin Bellorado. Rebecca Renteria.

The 1970s were a period of intense activity in the Gallina heartland of north-central New Mexico. Excavations by James Mackey and Sally Holbrook and by Herb Dick documented dozens of Gallina sites and structures in the Llaves Valley alone. Unfortunately, analysis and publication did not always follow excavations, particularly in Herb Dick’s case. His untimely death in 1993 left much of his excavated material in disarray. Through the efforts of several individuals and institutions, however, his...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Vivian.

Chaco Matters because Windes Matters. There are few subjects in Chacoan prehistory for which Tom has not contributed thoughtful analysis - from ants to Zuni spotted chert. His insights regarding agriculture in the Chaco Core are basic to understanding the long history of farming in this area. Some of those insights are reviewed. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Van Dyke. R. Kyle Bocinsky. Tucker Robinson.

In the 1970s, Tom Windes began documenting shrines and stone circles around Chaco Canyon. Decades before landscape archaeologists spoke of viewsheds, Tom recognized the significance of visibility at Chaco. He observed that J-shaped Windes’ shrines create intervisible connections among great houses, and he pointed out that stone circles in Chaco are always within sight of one or more great kivas. Today, GIS is a useful tool for examining intervisibility across large areas. Inspired by Tom, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Wilshusen. Mark Tobias.

The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 and the conferring of Tom Windes’s M.A. in Anthropology in 1967 appear to be causally independent, but thereafter the arc of historic preservation and Windes’s archaeological career are intertwined. We distinguish three major stages in cultural resource management over the last 50 years, each of which tracks almost seamlessly with the changing focus of Windes’s work. The challenges of defining the intent of the act, enforcing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lekson. Erin Baxter. Catherine Cameron.

The architecture of Chacoan kivas was markedly unlike far more numerous non-Chacoan kivas. While Chaco is famous for its stone masonry, we focus here on wood use, and specifically on radial beam pilasters and wainscoting. Both are enigmatic and, consequently, both have often been overlooked during excavation and sometimes even removed in modern stabilization. But when the kivas were in use these features would have been dominant, eye-level aspects of kiva interiors. Using examples from Chaco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frands Herschend.

In the 7th and 8th century CE, Scandinavian societies developed a stratified social structure based on ownership of land dominated by relatively few people. When the population grew during the 8th century this created a society with few opportunities not least among the landless who were partly engaged in handicraft at rural production sites linked to the urbanized European economy. This created a situation in which raiding, conquest, colonization and state formation became attractive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Price.

The contextualised meaning of specifically ‘Viking’ identities, in relation to the general population of early medieval Scandinavia, is a topic of perennial debate. Who were the Viking raiders, how did they see themselves, and how did others see them? How did our artificial construct of ‘the Viking Age’ actually begin? A key concept in unravelling these problems may be what the Vikings’ much later successors, the pirates of the so-called Golden Age, called "the new government of the ship". Over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Raffield. Neil Price. Mark Collard.

The surge of violent raiding that traditionally marks the beginning of the Viking Age at the end of the 8th century ushered in a period of turmoil and change across much of Europe. Though the factors that might have triggered this have been repeatedly debated, no hypothesis has thus far provided a convincing explanation for this important historical phenomenon. One of the oldest arguments, discussed in this paper, was that proposed during the 11th century by Dudo of St. Quentin in Gesta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Greenlow. Ben Raffield. Neil Price. Amelia Barker. Mark Collard.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a systematic survey of Viking skeletal remains in northern Europe. The survey covers Viking Age skeletons from the homeland countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as putative Viking skeletons from several countries subject to Scandinavian colonization, including England, Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland. Among the attributes we are recording are the degree of skeletal completeness, chronological age of the specimens, and the evidence that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hui WANG.

The Qijia culture originated in Loess Plateau of East Gansu and rose to a dominant culture in the vast region of present Gansu and Qinghai with its territory stretching as far as Huanghe hetao area, Guanzhong Plain and NW Sichuan. Its consistence and continuity in material culture offers great scope for archaeological research into its varying material manifestations. This article takes a comparative approach to enhance our understanding of the evolution of the Qijia culture and its contacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaohong Wu.

Qijiaping site is one of the most important sites of Qijia culture. It was found by Swedish scholar J. G. Anderson in 1924 and excavated by Gan Su Museum in 1975. There are few absolute dating results been published since then. We collected more than 30 human bone and animal bone samples from the material of the 1975’s excavation. 25 radiocarbon dates were produced after the processes of sample pretreatment, preparation and AMS measurement. The result is that most of the dates give the ages not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hua Wang. Ruilin Mao. Hui Wang.

Animal bones were frequently recovered from burials at the Mogou site. Researchers commonly assumed that they were related to specific ritual or sacrificial activities. With application of different zooarchaeological methods and approaches to the animal bones recovered from burials at mogou, this study attempt to understand human behaviour patterns behind this phenomenon, and how they change through times. Pig mandibles were recovered in large quantities from Mogou cemetery. With detailed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Womack.

Excavated in 1975, the cemetery at the Qijia Culture type-site of Qijiaping in southern Gansu province, China, provides a wealth of data on life and death in Qijia society. Up to this point however, the production and use of the most common type of burial good, ceramic vessels, has never been fully researched. This paper will explore production organization and methods likely used to produce several classes of vessels though statistical analysis of vessel standardization. Ideas of what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weimiao Dong. Guanghui Dong.

Qijia period (4400- 3500 cal yr BP) is the key period for the introduction of wheat and barley originated from West Asia into Gansu and Qinghai Province, northwest China. Based on archaeobotanic and radiocarbon data from Caomaidian, Lajia, Jinchankou and Lijiaping Qijia sites, we discuss change of cereal cultivation through that period. Our results suggest only foxtail millet and common millet were cultivated in Caomaidian and Lajia sites dated to 4300-3900 cal yr BP, which account for 97.19% of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Fargo. Maolin Ye. Yin Lam.

The faunal remains from Lajia, a late Neolithic and early Bronze Age site in northwestern China, reveal that sheep, a newly introduced domesticate during this time period, are the central source of meat for the site’s residents. This represents a shift from earlier modes of subsistence in the region, which were focused on pig husbandry. Sheep were the most common domesticate in the Lajia assemblage, followed by pigs and cattle. An examination of age profiles reveals that mature adult sheep...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Dal Martello.

Mortuary data is one of the few now available tools we have to understand Chinese late neolithic culture of Qijia. With the exception of Lajia site, the most famous and best investigated sites are cemeteries, scattered throughout the regions of Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia in Northwest China. The data they revealed has been a long time source for Chinese archaeologists in the attempt of reconstructing the social organisation of the time, often putting too much emphasis on only certain type of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariel O'Connor. Katherine Eremin.

The Harvard Art Museums contain one of the world’s largest collections of inlayed Chinese ritual weapons from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). These weapons are ornately decorated with turquoise inlay, exemplifying power and elitism in early Chinese society; yet little is known about their manufacture and use. A technical study of 32 inlayed weapons and pre-Shang plaques has yielded new observations on early technology and production organization in ancient China, and concluded that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only XiaoLi Qin.

Most turquoise ornaments from early Neolithic sites are pendants with a single material. However, from the later Neolithic period such as Qijia culture, people started to use ornaments which were inlaid with turquoise and other materials by unique techniques. In early Bronze Age, turquoise production process, especially the inlays technology, reached its peak. From a Qijia culture site, we found a bone hairpin. On its tail part, small white bone rings were sticking on black jelly. From Majiayao...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Lee.

At the Mogou site 1000 graves were excavated from 2008-2011. A preliminary bioarchaeological analysis was done on 154 individuals. The male to female sex ratio is the same as other Qijia sites, with more males than females. The sample population was heterogeneous with 8% of the individuals originating from the west (Xinjiang), north (Mongolia), and east (China) of the region. This may be a result of the site being situated on trade routes from the West into China. Analysis was done on trauma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rowan Flad. Andrew Womack. Yitzchak Jaffee. Jing Zhou.

In 2014 a team from the Gansu Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Peking University, Harvard University and National Taiwan University conducted intensive site survey and geophysics work at the site of Qijiaping, the type site of the Qijia Culture. This research complements previous excavation work in the cemetery area of the site, and coring conducted by the Gansu Provincial Institute, and has provided new understandings of the distribution of cultural material in the site area, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only MINMIN MA. Guanghui Dong. Hui Wang. Fahu Chen.

This study traces the extent to which dietary change coincides with intercontinental cultural exchanges in Eurasia, to enhance understanding of the effects of long-distance exchanges on the human diets. Through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age human and animal bone collagen, we find that intercontinental cultural exchanges in Eurasia led to significant changes in diet in the Hehuang and contiguous regions of northwest China. The isotopic evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek.

The nature, plasticity, and durability of states as geographical and territorial entities has been a topic of longstanding debate in the study of Classic Maya political geography. One of the central tenets of Joyce Marcus’ highly influential ‘Dynamic Model’ is a view of states as comprised of relatively durable small-scale polities that were sometimes incorporated into more volatile larger scale hegemonic states. However, recent research in Central Campeche suggests that local and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Fitzsimmons.

What actually constitutes Classic Maya political units? One way to address this question would be to examine ancient Maya conceptions of territory. Certainly, many major Maya sites had emblem glyphs, and these did provide—for those who could read—the sense of a geographic place controlled by a ‘holy lord.’ The real issue for understanding territory, however, is not an emblem glyph but what a Maya kingdom was to the people within it: how territorial boundaries were perceived by different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marieka Brouwer Burg. Eleanor Harrison-Buck. Astrid Runggaldier.

Traditional approaches to ancient Maya territories focus on site hierarchies, which are defined by a capital with monumental architecture and an elite body that controls a hinterland population. In the central lowlands, E-Groups are among the earliest monumental architecture found and are almost always associated with sites that later develop into large Classic Maya capitals, such as Tikal and Naranjo. Thus, scholars suggest that E-Groups are in some way connected to early forms of Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Vaughan. Dan Leonard. Jeffrey Glover.

The Yalahau region in northern Quintana Roo, Mexico constitutes a unique physiographic landscape in the Maya area. The region is characterized by abundant freshwater wetlands, known locally as sabanas, which stand in marked contrast to the dry karstic plain of the northern Maya lowlands. The paper combines the results derived from surveys of the region’s settlements and its wetlands along with remote sensing data (in particular LANDSAT and LIDAR platforms) to highlight how multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland. Debra Walker.

Chetumal Bay had political and economic importance for local Maya populations for more than 2000 years. When the Spaniards entered the region in the 16th century, they settled near its political capital and attempted to incorporate it into a larger colonial world system, only to be met with wide-scale resistance. This paper examines the shifting dynamics of the Chetumal Bay territory, from the Preclassic through Postclassic-Colonial Periods, with perspectives drawn from Cerros and Progresso...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Dobereiner.

In this paper, I explore tensions between territorial integration and local resilience at Rancho Búfalo, Chiapas, a five hectare Preclassic center that was geographically intermediate to the cultural territories of the Olmec, Lowland Maya, and Pacific Coast. This site's residents' employed a localized approach to extra-local architectural packages, ceramic spheres and burial traditions, that complicates traditional narratives of ethnic and political incorporation in Preclassic Southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe. Richard George. Rafael Guerra. Claire Ebert.

Evidence suggests that the influence of regional polities in the Upper Belize River Valley shifted through time, with political centers ascending and declining in power. Archaeological research by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project utilizes a regional approach to understand the political development and disintegration of three major centers: Cahal Pech, Baking Pot, and Lower Dover. This paper uses a multi-scalar settlement approach to understanding territorial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount. Lisa J. LeCount. David W. Mixter.

This paper introduces the Lowland Maya Territories: Local Dynamics in Regional Landscapes symposium that critiques the current model of territories as stable geo-political entities. We use data from the Actuncan Archaeological Project and other upper Belize River valley projects to suggest that territories were in flux, reacting and changing to social and political relationships. Territorial dynamism is driven by at least two processes: the social construction of place and the political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

Many Classic period (ca. AD 250-900) polities owe the location of their royal courts to decisions made by settlers in the Preclassic period (ca. 1000 BC – AD 250). This presentation evaluates the basic question of whether there is evidence of territories or political boundaries in the Preclassic Maya Lowlands. In the past, I have argued that Middle Preclassic residents constructed monumental E-Group architecture at specific places on the landscape as a conscious creation of distance between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña.

The archaeological site of El Tintal, known primarily as a large and important Late Preclassic ancient Maya city in northern Petén, Guatemala, also had a significant occupation during the Late Classic Period. Preliminary observations and an initial season of explorations at El Tintal indicate that this later occupation was quite substantial, yet unlike the southern lowland pattern of recording history on stone monuments, not a single carved stela that dates to the Classic Period has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Garrison. Brett Houk.

The lowland jungle environment of the Maya area presents numerous challenges to archaeologists in the study of ancient territoriality. Incomplete settlement survey data and fragmentary textual records hinder attempts to formulate comprehensive hypotheses comparable to those put forth for complex societies in other areas of the world. The Three Rivers Region of northeast Guatemala and northwest Belize is one area where some advancements may be made. Large portions of the region have been surveyed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Pagliaro. Travis Stanton.

The site of Yaxuna, Yucatan, Mexico was an independent Maya city from the Formative to Early Classic periods. While the size of its territory during the early periods is unknown due to the lack of regional data on other large early cities in Central Yucatan, the Early Classic dynasty at Yaxuna was violently and abruptly vanquished towards the end of this period. At this time, a 100 kilometer causeway was also constructed connecting Yaxuna to the large metropolis of Coba, which was at its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine.

One of the significant challenges in dealing with indigenous classification systems is establishing continuities and discontinuities between Pre-Contact, Colonial, and Modern situations. The present paper addresses this question with respect to the concept of territory among the Ancient Maya, specifically, the speakers of Ch’olan and Yukatekan languages. It considers the corpus of Classic period inscriptions from the Southern Maya Lowlands as well as sixteenth and seventeenth century documents...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Foias. Kitty Emery.

Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Its Ik’ Emblem Glyph has now been translated as "Windy Water," an apt name for this zone. Excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) aimed to investigate the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. Settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrianne Offenbecker. Jane H. Kelley. M. Anne Katzenberg.

Casas Grandes, also known as Paquimé, was one of the largest and most complex societies in prehistoric northern Mexico, with established trade networks and social influences from Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and western Mexico. Analyses of the human skeletal remains from Casas Grandes have found evidence for interpersonal conflict, human sacrifice, and cannibalism during the Medio period (ca. 1200-1450 AD), which coincides with increasing sociopolitical complexity and emerging social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle LeFebvre. Birgitta Kimura. Susan deFrance.

Current zooarchaeological records indicate that humans introduced domestic guinea pig from South America to the Caribbean islands around AD 600. Using zooarchaeological and ancient DNA datasets from domestic guinea pig remains in the Caribbean, we address human mobility and interaction between the islands of the Caribbean and South America during the second half of the Ceramic Age (ca. AD 600-1500). We present new data regarding the continental origins of pre-Columbian guinea pig in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. Haas.

As obligate tool users, humans habitually reconfigure material-resource distributions. It is proposed here that such resource restructuring may have played an important role in shaping hunter-gatherer mobility decisions and the emergent macro-structure of settlement patterns. This paper presents a model of hunter-gatherer mobility in which modifications of places, including the deposition of cultural materials, bias future mobility decisions. With the aid of an agent-based model, this simple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neill Wallis. Thomas Pluckhahn.

In the Deep South of the American Southeast, regional scale social interactions burgeoned alongside the growth of nucleated villages, widespread mound-building projects, and conspicuous mortuary ceremonialism during the Middle and Late Woodland period (ca. AD 100 to 800). A premier material for understanding the significance of social interactions across the southern landscape comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery, a ubiquitous class of material culture that provides direct evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Stone. Dennis O'Rourke. Justin Tackney. John Krigbaum. Scott Fitzpatrick.

Archaeological research at Grand Bay, a large Late Ceramic Age (ca. AD 400-1300) Amerindian village site on Carriacou in the southern Caribbean, has revealed vast amounts of evidence that sheds light on Pre-Columbian adaptations to small island environments. More than a decade of research here and at other locations on Carriacou have revealed dozens of human burials, including many found in mortuary contexts rarely seen in this part of the Lesser Antilles. Ongoing research on past lifeways of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Bentz. Todd J. Braje.

During the mid-nineteenth century, Chinese and many other immigrants flooded California’s shores in pursuit of economic opportunities. Over the next several decades, Chinese labor became threatening to national, Euro-American interests and federal and state governments passed a variety of taxes, ordinances, and legislation targeting Chinese communities. The most restrictive of these were the Chinese Exclusion and Geary acts, which barred immigration by Chinese laborers and severely limited their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Farella. Thomas Swetnam. Mathew Liebmann.

The Jemez Plateau of northern New Mexico contains a rich archaeological and tree-ring record characterizing interactions between humans, forests, climate and fire over the past 500 years. Ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper woodlands on the Plateau were occupied by roughly 6,000 people within an area of about 30,000 hectares during the early 1600’s. Using dendrochronology we reconstructed detailed fire and forest histories directly on and surrounding several large, ancestral Jemez village sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Loehman. Christopher Roos. Thomas Swetnam.

The prehistoric human footprint in the American southwest is extensive and includes large and small structures, agricultural features, and other signatures of long and variably intensive landscape use. The southwest Jemez Mountains, focus of the current study, have been occupied continuously for the past 2,000 years, and by circa 1300 CE were densely settled in a network of large village sites and fieldhouses. Evidence from tree-rings and fire scars suggests that prior to ca. 1900 Jemez...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Welch. Paul Tosa. Francis Vigil. Rachael Loehman.

In addition to substantive findings about changing relations between Jemez communities and forest ecologies, our multidisciplinary project is suggesting some promising strategies for enhancing research engagements with American Indian tribes. In spite of due diligence in consulting with Jemez Pueblo leaders in the course of project planning and in engaging Jemez people and interests in project processes, we are concerned that the project’s scientific contributions outweigh its beneficial effects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Roos. Michael Aiuvalasit. Jenna Battillo. Chris Kiahtipes. Thomas Swetnam.

Sedimentary archives offer the opportunity to build millennial length fire history reconstructions with which to evaluate hypotheses of anthropogenic and climatic impacts on fire prone forests. Particularly when calibrated with centennial length fire history records from tree-rings, sedimentary paleofire proxies can be used to build spatially explicit records of fire regime changes. As part of the Jemez Fire & Humans in Resilient Ecosystems Project, this paper presents the results of multiple,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. J. Ferguson. John Welch. Benrita Burnette. Stewart Koyiyumptewa.

One component of the multidisciplinary FHiRE project included ethnographic research with 50 members of four tribes. Specific historical and traditional information about fire ecology related to the occupation of Hemish ancestral sites in the Jemez Mountains was collected at the Pueblo of Jemez. More generalizing information about the role of fire in Southwestern lifeways was collected with research participants at the Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and White Mountain Apache Tribe. Our ethnographic...