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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen. Rachel Loehman.

How can the archaeological record be used as a chronicle of prehistoric forest fires? How do cultural resource managers today evaluate the potential impacts of wildland fires? The "ArcBurn" project, funded by the Joint Fire Science Program, is a collaboration among archaeologists, fire scientists, forest ecologists, and fire managers. This project was created to develop hard data on fire effects to ensure that the best science is effectively and appropriately used to guide management plans, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Aiuvalasit.

Establishing causality between climate change and cultural history is often fraught by mismatched temporal scales and weak archaeological correlates. In the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico the abandonment of large villages on the Pajarito Plateau in the early 16th century has largely been attributed to drought, however the persistence of large communities on the adjacent Jemez Plateau, which shares similar climate histories, ecological settings, and prehistoric adaptations, has not been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Stack. Sarah Martini. Matt Liebmann.

Determining the population of ancestral Pueblo villages has beguiled inquisitive observers from the 16th century down to the present day. Spanish explorers and colonial settlers floated wildly variable population estimates upon their initial visits to Pueblo villages. Today archaeologists are no different, offering demographic estimates that often differ by orders of magnitude. This "population problem" plagues the Jemez region of northern New Mexico in particular. In this paper, we present the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barry Price Steinbrecher. Paul Tosa.

Ethnographic research with cultural advisors and research partners from the Pueblo of Jemez on fire ecology, use of plant resources, and landscape within the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico reveals significant ongoing connections to Jemez ancestral places. The ancestral places within the Jemez Province that archaeologists define primarily through the distribution of Jemez Black-on-white ceramics, which dates between approximately A.D. 1250 to A.D.1750, reflect an intensively occupied...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Van Hoose. Connie Constan.

This paper is part of an ongoing study associated with the FHiRE Project, which examines the interaction of fire, landscapes, and people in prehistory in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Before we can examine higher-level questions of demography and interaction through time, it is necessary to firmly establish time with as much precision as possible. This paper represents the first step toward building and anchoring a detailed chronological framework for occupation at Kwastiyukwa, a large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Swetnam. Joshua Farella.

Forests and human communities are now extremely vulnerable to large, severe wildfires during droughts as a consequence of fire exclusion and other land use practices. The extent to which this vulnerability is influenced by extreme climate events and past land-uses remains unclear. Combined studies of climate, fire and human histories from the same landscape can help reveal the relative roles of people and climate variations in driving spatial patterns and temporal trends of wildfires. The Jemez...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Drake Rosenstein. Christopher I. Roos.

Luminescence dating of surface ceramics at archaeological sites is problematic for many reasons, including estimation of environmental dose rate, likelihood that an artifact is in situ and weathering. Until now, there has not been systematic research on the effect of natural fires on luminescence dating of pottery. This is an important consideration, because while the temperature of a typical fire is well above the threshold for resetting the luminescence signal in a sherd, the length of time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Morgan. Brian Andrews.

The presence of four contemporaneous Folsom-age structures at the Mountaineer site near Gunnison, Colorado suggests these hunter-gatherers had broader adaptations than previously recognized. Mountaineer provides a unique setting for investigating Folsom socio-economic structure as it relates to domestic architecture, through analysis of lithic assemblages and spatial patterning. A multi-scalar analysis has provided new insight into Folsom lifeways and raised questions concerning how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Asher.

Folsom artifact distributions from the Rocky Mountains to the Plains-Woodland border are not ubiquitous. This study documents Folsom projectile point occurrences across seven different physiographic regions, from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the Central Lowlands and Glaciated Region of eastern Kansas, and argues for diverse resource availability and lithic procurement strategies in separate regions. Particular attention is given to artifacts from private collections and surface context. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Jennings.

The relationship between Folsom points and Midland points in the Southern Plains remains an unresolved topic of debate. At the scale of individuals, it has been suggested that the fluted Folsom point was a symbolic object made by a person(s) of power to alleviate risk in hunts. Along similar lines, differences between Folsom and Midland points have been attributed to the relative skill differences between knappers. At a broader scale, some have questioned the association of Folsom and Midland,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Reitze.

At the end of the Pleistocene, during Folsom occupation, the Estancia Basin contained the eastern-most pluvial lake in the American Southwest. The basin has a long history of archaeological research and the story of changing lake levels has played an important part in understand the Paleoindian occupation of the New World. Within the basin, geoarchaeological assessment at the Martin site can be used as a baseline for understanding environmental change during the late Pleistocene. The large well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Boyd.

This paper explores variability in Folsom adaptive strategies by examining endscraper technology throughout the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Common reconstructions based on highly curated projectile points and bifaces as well as presence of exotic raw material portray Folsom people as highly mobile and technologically organized in the sole pursuit of bison. Recent studies have begun questioning such a rigid perspective concerning Folsom life ways. Utilizing endscraper assemblages from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Carlson.

The purpose of this research is to compare and contrast Paleoindian arroyo trap bison kills on the Southern plains to analogous sites on the Northern plains to investigate the transition from opportunistic hunting to organized hunting under different environmental regimes. Analyses to address this problem include: Stable isotopes of bison bone to aid in environmental reconstruction; radiocarbon dates to determine the antiquity of the sites being compared; and the seasonality of the kill event to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Seebach.

Folsom technology has been characterized by Ingbar and others as employing a "serial replacement" strategy, where toolkits are replenished on a more or less continuous basis based on the proximate taskscape. Such replenishment is in evidence at Chispa Creek, a west Texas lithic workshop repeatedly occupied by Folsom foragers. Similar to Hanson, Wyoming, at least three local toolstone sources were used at Chispa to manufacture projectile points and a large number of unifaces. These occupations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Surovell. Matthew O'Brien.

Over the few decades, households have been identified in a handful of Folsom sites. Although it should surprise no one that the Pleistocene inhabitants of North America built, lived in, and used domestic structures, it may be surprising we know relatively little about how those household spaces were organized. This problem is hardly unique to Folsom. It could be argued that this is true of hunter-gatherer household archaeology as a whole. Part of the difficulty we encounter in interpreting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leland Bement.

The Beaver River Complex (NW Oklahoma) of early Paleoindian (Clovis and Folsom) large-scale bison kill sites began contributing to our knowledge of Folsom hunting organization two decades ago with the identification, excavation, and analysis of the Cooper site. Since then a total of five Folsom kill components have been identified at three arroyo kill sites within a 700 m reach of the Beaver River. The most recently discovered site, Badger Hole, contains the youngest Folsom kill component of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Lassen.

Analyses of Folsom projectile point technology generally focus on the making and use of the classic bifacially fluted form. Often some mention is made of Midland or unfluted points, but formal technological analyses of these types are rare. Utilizing a sample of 989 points and preforms from Folsom and closely related technologies, this research explores the variation that is present in Folsom point production. Points from Folsom contexts are divided into five types: Folsom, Midland,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Blake. Robert M. Rosenswig. Nicholas Waber.

We analyze the settlement layout patterns and orientations of major buildings at eight Middle and Late Formative period sites that fall within Izapa’s hinterland. Our previous examination of Izapa’s layout, using high-resolution Lidar maps, confirmed the observations of earlier researchers that the site had a dual orientation: N-S aligned to the volcano Tacaná and E-W to winter solstice sunrise. This dual orientation led to an off-square (97degrees) layout of the site during the Late Formative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

Izapa occupies a curious place in the study of Mesoamerican writing and semiotic practice. Although the linguistic affiliation of ancient Izapa is unknown, glottochronological estimates suggest that Izapa stood at a multilingual crossroads between proto-Mihe-Sokean and proto-Mayan speaking populations. The blended visual vocabulary of Izapa-style monuments, coupled with the site’s location and chronology, further prompted early scholars to place Izapa on a transitional, regional continuum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Love.

The Pacific Coast borderlands of Chiapas and Guatemala were home to at least three major urban centers in the Late Preclassic Period: Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and El Ujuxte. How these sites were related to one another through intellectual exchanges and commerce tells us a great deal about the nature of urbanism in Mesomamerica during the Late Preclassic Period. These three sites were part of a broader southern "City-State Culture" that included Kaminaljuyu, Chalchuapa, and other early urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Lieske.

The Group B complex in central Izapa contains the oldest known structures at the site and is vital to understanding the growth and development of Izapa as a regional center. This paper offers a reconstruction of Group B’s architectural development through time as revealed through the excavations and discusses the placement of its numerous burials and offerings. Most of what is known concerning the development of Group B is restricted to Mound 30a, the Mound 30 acropolis, and its auxiliary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Pool. Michael Loughlin.

Beginning with Matthew Stirling, who in 1943 opined that "Izapa appears to be much more closely related to the earth-mound sites of southern Veracruz … than it does with sites in the Maya area," scholars have postulated ties of varying strength between Late Formative polities on either side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Ceramic similarities have been noted between southern Chiapas and the Gulf Coast, but discussion of Late Formative transisthmian interaction has focused primarily on sculptural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig.

This paper reports the results of the first systematically collected Formative-period settlement data from the area around Izapa. Three environmental zones (coastal plain, low hills and piedmont) were documented by the Izapa Regional Settlement Project combining lidar and pedestrian survey methods. Results indicate population was highest on the coastal plain from 1700-850BC as a series of four sequential political centers rose and fell, each lasting for a century or two. After 850BC collapse of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey.

The stelae of Izapa have long been analyzed within a mythic framework, drawing heavily on longstanding interpretations of mythological narratives like those of the Maya maize god. Such interpretations, while fundamental to understanding the complex meanings of such imagery, nevertheless often neglect other salient aspects of the scenes, including elements that speak to more economic concerns, particularly those that revolved around water transport. This paper argues that a re-analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Neff. Paul Burger. Sachiko Sakai. Timothy Garfin. Marx Navarro Castillo.

LiDAR coverage of a portion of the eastern Soconusco mangrove zone due south of Izapa has identified nearly 300 archaeological mounds within an area of 56 sq km. The vast majority of these mounds contain Formative period deposits. Surface and subsurface investigation indicate a major movement of people into the zone around 1600 BC, followed by population growth through the Late Early Formative (Cuadros phase). Middle through Terminal Formative (900 BC through AD 200) deposits consist of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Luis Macias. José Luis Arce. Paul W Layer. Ricardo Saucedo.

The Tacaná Volcanic Complex consists of four volcanic edifices: Chichuj, Tacaná, and San Antonio volcanoes, and Las Ardillas dome. It began its formation ~225 ka yr ago at Chichuj, followed by Tacaná ~50 ka, and San Antonio volcano and las Ardillas Dome during late Pleistocene. Its volcanic history recorded during the past 50 ka yr indicates that the complex has experienced major flank failures at Tacaná (~15 ka) and San Antonio (~2 ka). The latter destroyed the southern flank of San Antonio...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Mendelsohn.

Izapa is best known as a Formative period (850-50 BC) monumental center with elaborately carved monuments. The site is also known for its Late Classic period monumental construction in Group F, at the northern end of the site. Considerably less attention has been paid to the transitional Terminal Formative or "Protoclassic" period Hato and Itstapa phases (50 BC-AD 250), as well as the Early Classic period Jaritas phase (AD 250-400), which bridge the temporal gap between these two centers. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maximilian Jewett.

Developments in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) over the past five years have allowed for their use among non-experts and the rapid development, at relatively low cost, of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) or drones. UASs use the UAV platform to carry a variety of sensors. One of the most important developments coming from this technology is the ability to collect aerial photos for photogrammetry at relatively low cost. In an effort to better understand the uses, practical issues of operation, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Pentney. Marc Cavallaro.

The effects of climate change on the physical environment are just recently beginning to be understood by scientists and local planning agencies. Climate Action Plans and Future Proofing studies are being conducted to help planners implement policies and plans to protect communities from the various effects of rising temperatures, fluctuating weather patterns, more intense storm and flood events, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. However, one area of research that has not received much...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annamarie Leon Guerrero. Whitney Kirkendall.

This paper presents the collaborative efforts of the Society for California Archaeology, the US Forest Service and the Cabrillo College Archaeological field school to document sites along the southern Monterey coastline. During the 2012 field season, a new generation of archaeologists documented sites along a 2-mile stretch of coastline in order to study how coastal erosion is affecting these sites. Part of the purpose of this presentation is to highlight the importance of these types of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeannine Pedersen. Jere H. Lipps.

Humans arrived in Southern California about 13,000 years ago, shortly after sea level began rising following the last glaciation. Most of their sites along the shoreline of the time have been inundated and are unknown. Now hundreds of remaining sites on-shore are threatened, or will be threatened, in the foreseeable future by rising sea levels. A survey of prehistoric and historic human site elevations in Southern California reveals the 1.4 m rise in sea level expected in 2100 due only to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phil Riris.

How did southern proto-Jê mound and enclosure complexes (MECs) in the eastern La Plata basin structure their social landscapes? MECs possess a broad geographical distribution from the banks of the Rio Paraná to the Atlantic mountains of southern Brazil, as well as a variety of configurations, relative densities, and sizes. Discussions of their functions have emphasized their implications for the perception of social inclusion/exclusion among the groups that constructed them. Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Watling. José Iriarte. Francis Mayle. Denise Schaan. Alceu Ranzi.

A debate that has received much attention in recent years is the nature and scale of pre-Columbian impact in the Amazon lowlands. While the notion that Amazonia is a "pristine wilderness" has long been rejected, several papers have proposed that human impact in western regions was more sporadic and on a smaller scale than impacts in central and eastern regions, and that western Amazonia supported sparse pre-Columbian populations. The discovery of over 400 geometrically-patterned earthworks in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliana Machado.

The environmental management practiced by traditional societies has already been presented as a model of sustainability and an example of economic flexibility. However, little is said of its meaning for that own population, to whom it certainly exceeds its economic importance. Land is constantly transformed by human action, through selective cuttings, extraction of weeds, fertilization and planting. In this paper I will present two different examples from Brazil, one focusing on a ribeirinho...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eduardo Neves.

The archaeological record of lowland South America shows the widespread establishment of sedentary life styles, associated with marked signs of landscape modification, starting around the mid first millennium BC. Such changes had a large scale, ranging from the lower Orinoco basin in the north all the way to the mouth of the Plata river in the south, albeit with earlier dates towards the north. This paper argues that this process of change needs to be understood from a continental perspective,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Macarena L. Cárdenas. Frank Mayle. José Iriarte. Silvia Moehlecke Cope.

Understanding the purposes and associations of burial monuments and sacred built landscapes in the Formative period of the Americas is an important research goal among archaeologists. A key step that can help us to better understand the social and spatial organisation of these cultures is determining the ecological and environmental characteristics of the landscapes within which these cultures lived and developed. Created by the Je group in south-eastern Brazil, and with more than 30 pit houses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Bueno. Myrtle Shock.

During the middle to late Holocene a series of archaeological sites in central-north Minas Gerais state, located in the southwest of the Central Brazilian Plateau, show a context marked by the presence of an expedient lithic technology, no pottery, human burials and structures made of botanical remains. These structures contained domesticated plants, such as maize, manioc, cotton, bottle gourd, squash, peanut and native plants, such as palm nuts, passion fruit, jatobá, umbu and pequi. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Nadal de Masi.

The results of an archaeological project in the Lower valley of Canoas River in the Highlands of southern Brazil show a cultural sistema of proto-ge grups formed by residencial bases, camp sites, cultivation fields, storage pits, hunting camps, cerimonial centers and burial mounds. Burial mounds show evidences of social hierarchy and the storage pits show variability in their size indicating diferente functions for those pite. Polen from few pite shows how the environment evolve near by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sagi Filin. Vera Miller. Danny Rosenberg. Dani Nadel.

Bedrock features such as mortars and cupmarks are known in the southern Levant at least from the late 1920's. Many were dated to the Natufian and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A periods (15,000-10,500 calBP). Likely, the appearance of large and diverse bedrock feature assemblages, reflecting a variety of functions, has played an integral role in the earliest transition from hunting-gathering to food producing economies. So far, research was limited due to the lack of precise documentation of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Castaneda.

Bedrock features are a common archaeological occurrence in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. These occur in a wide range of forms, from polished "slicks", cupules, and small grinding facets to large, deep, well-developed mortar holes. Even though relatively common, bedrock features, and ground stone in general, have received very little directed research in the region. This paper discusses ongoing research which uses a multi-faceted approach to examine bedrock feature attributes at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Duwe.

The Pueblos of the American Southwest define their sacred geographies by using ground boulders and bedrock shrines (cupules, slicks, grooves, and channels) to establish land tenure, reflect cosmologies and religious organization, and to record history. Based on ethnography and Pueblo collaboration we know that these places mark the remains of the deceased, act as communication nodes with the spiritual world, and delineate social boundaries. Because these landscapes (and their associated shrines)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Damick. Severin Fowles.

The lives of pre-Columbian communities in New Mexico were anchored and shaped by stone features in the landscape. Stones were pecked, ground, and piled into cairns or circles; ethnographic evidence from descendant communities suggest certain stones received offerings of corn pollen, antlers, or prayer sticks; in other cases, parts of stones were removed as potent medicine, either as stone powder or flakes; elsewhere, it was the abrasive contact between fixed bedrock and tools that appears to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eli Crater Gershtein. Steve Black. Amanda Castaneda. Tammy Boanasera. Daniel Nadel.

Shiny grooved surfaces are common in rock shelters and cave sites in the Lower Pecos region, Texas. They are found on horizontal as well as vertical exposures, usually in close association with mortars and/or rock art. The shiny appearance has been interpreted as the result of human traffic, hand touching, animal sacrifice, etc. In many cases these surfaces are densely grooved and incised by a variety of shallow and deep marks which are not found outside the shiny surface. Such phenomena have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Lynch. Tom Noble. Neffra Matthews.

Prehistoric peoples of the Southern Plains created bedrock ground stone surfaces in rockshelters along upper canyon rims on exposed Dakota Sandstone. These bedrock milling features became centers for the reproduction of food and other resources but also developed into anchored places that facilitated the reproduction of socio-cultural values and norms. The socialization of the Southern Plains prehistoric landscape is most visible in the material culture remains of bedrock milling features that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Jelmer Eerkens. Dani Nadel. Amanda Castaneda. Steve Black.

Recent analysis of bedrock features located in several dry rock shelters across the arid western U.S. indicate that such settings provide favorable contexts for organic residue preservation. Residues extracted from these contexts can provide a unique window into past functions and resource use. Gas chromatography / mass spectrometry (GC/MS) was used to identify and quantify very small amounts of lipids absorbed and preserved in the various bedrock features. Though organic residue studies are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dani Nadel. Margie Burton. Jenny Adams. Mark Willis. Laure Dubreuil.

Ubiquitous cultural features such as mortars, basins and slicks on rock outcrops, boulders, and cave floors attest to the long history of human use of landscape features. Although widely noted, methods for systematic investigation of such features lag behind well-developed study protocols for other archaeological material categories. Answers to questions such as how cultural landscape features were manufactured, how they were used, and how they were incorporated into the spatial organization of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Rosenberg. Dani Nadel.

The Natufian–Pre-Pottery Neolithic A transition (ca. 11,500 Cal BP years ago) in the southern Levant is evident in many aspects of the material remains, and reflects pronounced socio-economic changes. One of the most fundamental changes is documented for bedrock features such as mortars, basins and cupmarks. While during the Natufian we find bedrock features mainly in 'public' contexts near or within sites, it seems that during the following PPNA period these were also introduced into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff. Joel W. Palka.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ancient Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala, was briefly re occupied by Yucatec refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatan. The Tikal village was poised on the confluence of the frontiers of Mexico, Guatemala and British Honduras, as well as the belligerent Santa Cruz Maya from Yucatan. Despite the limited presence of settled European diasporas in the northern Petén, colonial institutions were still able to reach indigenous communities seeking refuge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Velasquez.

The aim of this paper is to explore the potential that the potters’ signatures on maiolica vessels have to gain insights to the shifts in the craft industry from the mid-seventeenth century and onwards. It will be argued that the modifications that are observable on the personal imprints of the potters may have been related with changing attitudes towards their cultural identities. The analysis of archaeological samples from different sites in Mexico City enabled the identification of a variety...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Newman.

During the last quarter of the 19th century, Mexico experienced a period of rapid social and economic modernization under the leadership of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Central to this was the dismantling of community-held lands, a practice that was intended to undermine the social aspects of the agrarian/indigenous lifestyle. The nineteenth century architects of Mexico’s progress believed that by dismantling communal villages lands and thus communal indigenous communities, they were moving Mexico’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez.

In Yucatan at the turn of the twentieth century, industrialization of henequen production and the export of binder twine heightened socioeconomic inequality and encouraged consumption of non-local manufactured items within native communities. Yet, the official history of capitalist expansion and globalization in Latin America has been written by and for the dominant class. Often, the material record shows that new and traditional technologies were appropriated in particular ways by poor people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Fournier. Bridget M. Zavala.

The historiography of nineteenth century industrial development in the northern Mexican state of Durango has tended to focus on the biography of a few successful business men, rather than on the local production and consumption of daily material culture. Specifically, the inhabitants of this northern territory, experienced greater socioeconomic inequality as only the minority that belonged to the entrepreneurial class reaped the benefits of industrialist projects. Thus only a small number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krista Eschbach.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Spain and its American colonies were still steeped in mercantilism with the Spanish Crown and elite merchants struggling to maintain a monopoly over trans-Atlantic trade. Over the next hundred years, this economic system was transformed as a result of political and economic events in Europe and the Spanish colonies. By the end of the 18th century, the Port of Veracruz, once one of the few legal ports in Spain's American colonies, was now one of many ports...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tracie Mayfield.

During the nineteenth-century, the Caribbean region was a hotbed of trade and commerce driven principally by extractive industries such as agriculture (principally sugar) and hardwood collection. Such ventures required large injections of capital into the creation and maintenance of discrete, productive landscapes as well as for hiring, housing, and feeding the workers who provided physical labor and management. The following presentation will explore a long-term residential area of one such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Escobar. Guido Pezzarossi.

Located in the cacao-rich Pacific piedmont region of Guatemala, the colonial period Kaqchikel Maya community of San Pedro Aguacatepeque produced cacao for the Iximche Kaqchikel polity prior to colonization. With the 16th century global cacao boom that followed Spanish colonization, cacao producing communities in the region became critical sources of this increasingly desired regional and global exchange good. The bust of the global cacao market in the latter part of the century, coupled with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aileen Balasalle. Judith Zeitlin.

During the late colonial period, the political economy of the Oaxaca Isthmus of Tehuantepec, like many areas of rural New Spain, witnessed dramatic changes in response to Bourbon political reforms and as a consequence of increased engagement with global capitalism. These changes are particularly apparent in the sheltered piedmont zone of the Rio de los Perros, where Zapotec elites had managed to control productive agricultural lands into the early 18th century. New creole landowners emerge in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Otis Charlton. Patricia Fournier G..

Beginning with the 16th century opening up of the New World, New Spain was integrated into the complex trade networks of the expanding world system as part of the Spanish Empire in the Indies. Prior to the rise of capitalism in Europe, mercantilism dominated sociopolitical and economic development trends. Indirect contact with the imperial power of China by way of the Philippines led to the establishment of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade starting in the 1570s. Exotic goods, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Wagner. Kayeleigh Sharp. Go Matsumoto. Mary McCorvie. Heather Carey.

Native Americans recognized unique natural features as representing parts of ritual landscapes imbued with power that also contained cultural elements including rock art and mortuary sites. One such landscape within Illinois consists of a three mile long isolated bluff segment located on the now-drained Mississippi River floodplain that prehistorically was surrounded by a mosaic of lakes, ponds, and swamps. In this paper we use GIS, LIDAR, and archaeological data to reconstruct the ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meg Berry.

Murujuga comprises one of the most complex rock art provinces in the world.The iron red boulders of this ancient landscape host petroglyphs which communicate a myriad of sociocultural dynamics of groups utilizing changing landscapes over millennia.These petroglyphs are situated within a landscape marked by complex and diverse archaeological signatures including stone arrangements,lithic scatters,quarries,middens and hut structures.Currently our archaeological understanding of the prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Pritchard. Johannes Loubser. Jan Simek. L Mashburn.

Located in northeastern Alabama, Painted Bluff contains motifs similar to ones found on Mississippian ceremonial objects, and an associated charred river cane dating to between AD 1300 and 1440. Approximately 80 images were recorded on the limestone cliffs of the bluff, most of which are red ocher paintings, a few done with yellow pigment, one containing white, and at least three separate thinly-plastered surfaces with fine-line incisions. Following initial recording of the site by Simek,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Goodmaster. Erin Helton.

Recent digital documentation efforts at Panther Cave (41VV83) have yielded a detailed record of current site conditions and provide a wealth of geospatial data pertinent to the prehistoric art preserved at the site. Three-dimensional laser scanning (LiDAR) and digital photogrammetry were integrated to record a highly accurate digital model of the rockshelter and its immediate environment. This documentation effort provides a robust corpus of data for use in the digital visualization, analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Munoz. Jeremy Freeman. Carolyn Boyd.

One of the most important, yet often neglected, components of any archaeological project is what happens outside of the field—processing the data. Without meticulously organizing and archiving the data we collect, these fast accumulating pieces of information become no more useful than a pile of papers pushed to the corners of our desks. Worse yet, irreplaceable data could be lost. Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center is taking measures to avoid this pitfall by developing methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Benn.

Recently discovered geoglyphs at two Late Woodland sites in northwestern Iowa take the form of anthropomorphic turtles, bison, thunderers and a "stickman" similar to the petroglyphs at Pipestone Monument in southern Minnesota. Excavations indicate the geoglyphs functioned as cosmograms where vision quests and other life-renewal rituals probably were conducted. The cosmograms and associated evidence for rituals are compared to ethnographic descriptions of Lakota tribal myths to reveal possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Freeman. Victoria Munoz. Carolyn Boyd.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas retain hundreds of rock art murals exhibiting varying degrees of preservation. Since 2009 Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center has been documenting the murals, some of which date back 4,000 years. As part of this project, we collect Legacy Photographs to assess historic deterioration of the art. Analysis of these photographs has revealed significant changes in the imagery over the past 50 years; however, the factors affecting its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Von Petzinger.

Geometric signs are found at nearly all Upper Paleolithic rock art sites in Europe. Created between 10,000 and 40,000 BP, the signs are one of the major thematic categories of art from this era, however, they are often not as well-documented as their figurative counterparts. While there are some sites (e.g., Grotte Chauvet) where detailed inventories have been created for all of the imagery, there are many other sites where this has yet to be carried out. The geometric signs have the potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan Simek. Alan Cressler.

We provide an overview of a signature prehistoric cave art form in the Southeast of North America: "Mud Glyph" images traced and/or carved into plastic sediments inside the dark zones of caves. Today, we know of 21 such mud glyph caves in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Virginia. Sometimes, mud glyphs form elaborate cave art compositions. While this art form has roots in the Archaic Period more than 3000 years ago, its greatest frequency occurs during the Mississippian Period after AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramon Valcarce. Carlos Rodriguez-Rellan.

Horse riding scenes are arguably about the most emblematic representations within post-paleolithic open air rock art in Galicia (NW Iberia). They have been used as a controversial chronological milestone, setting them somewhere between the Final Neolithic and the Iron Age. Such an iconography may be related to a shift in the Human/Nature relationship arising along the Late Prehistory. While not discarding they are showing real activities, we believe the riding scenes could be emphasizing a new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman. Victoria Muñoz. Jeremy Freeman. Carolyn Boyd.

Exploring new applications of portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to the study of rock art, we report the determination of paint layer stratigraphy based upon measured elemental levels. In Lower Pecos rock art, we were able to discern when red and yellow paints superimpose black paints based on elevated levels of manganese. This ability to see underneath paint layers with "X-ray vision" shows great promise in answering stratigraphic ambiguities, complimenting Dino-Lite digital microscopy....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James D. Keyser.

A petroglyph panel at 48SW85 in southwestern Wyoming presents a convincing case for the use of rock art imagery in hunting magic rituals. Based on differential weathering and revarnishing of the petroglyphs, different stylistic signatures of artists carving various animals and humans, and key superimpositions, the panel can be confidently identified as the product of at least half a dozen artists reusing the site for more than a century, and possibly much longer. The panel's basic structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Esther Jacobson-Tepfer.

This paper describes the complex process of documenting two huge rock art complexes and a third very old complex, in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. Previous to our work in this region at the Mongolian border with Russia and China, all three complexes were virtually unknown except to local herding populations. Our project began with a survey of a broad region in Bayan Ölgiy aimag and the identification of the complexes on which we wished to concentrate our efforts. This initial phase was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Roosevelt. Christopher Davis.

Rock painting flourished in several parts of the world, including eastern South America. Traditions that can be important evidence not only of development of art, society, and religion but also of science and technology. Techniques for direct dating are in active development these days, but archaeological stratigraphy and radiometric dating can give an important baseline to compare with other methods. We present an example of this strategy and its results at Monte Alegre, Brazil and briefly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Chevalier. Danièle Lavallée. Michèle Julien.

Research at the Peruvian site of Quedrada de Burros (Dep. of Tacna, Peru) evidenced a very early settelement of fiserhmen and shel-gatherers on the desert Pacific littoral. The campsite has been occupied during the Early and Middel Holocene, between 10'000 and 6'000BP. The analysis of organic remains indicate that since the beginning, the different groups not only relied on ocean resources but also exploiter the surrounding vegetation. In particular, phytolith analyses show that the settlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Ball. Luc Vrydaghs. Akos Peto. Madison Pierce. AnnaLisa Davis.

Morphometric analysis has proven to be an effective tool for identifying phytolith assemblages produced by various plant taxa. Dendritic phytoliths are produced in the inflorescence bracts of Triticeae. Articulated dendritc phytoliths produce a wave pattern along the margins of the cells. In this study we explore the use of morphometric data from our reference collection of articulated dendritic phytoliths to identify Triticeae taxa in soil and ceramic thin sections. SAA 2015 abstracts made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luc Vrydaghs. Yannick Devos. Jean-louis Slachmuylders.

Whilst phytoliths are plant microfossils, due to their formation process they differ markedly from any other plant remains. Consequently, their incorporation within archaeological deposits relies on specific taphonomical processes. It is here assumed the phytolith analysis of archaeological soil thin sections allows to document these processes and as such to discriminate between in- and exsitu phytoliths. However and accordingly to the context you consider, as such analysis do not involve any...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Breanne Clifton. Marta Portillo Ramirez. Rosa Maria Albert.

Biological microremains such as pollen, diatoms, starches, and phytoliths are invaluable data sources for reconstructing paleoenvironments and subsistence practices among human populations during times of technological transition. A primary goal of archaeological research is to use these remains to reconstruct the relationship between environment and technology. Phytoliths in particular allow us to reconstruct the specific flora that comprises the biome in a particular place and time....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree. R. Kyle Bocinsky. Timothy A. Kohler.

Using the experimental testbed of the Village Ecodynamics Project’s agent-based simulation "Village," we examine how population growth and resource depletion in the Central Mesa Verde landscape between AD 600 and AD 1280 set the stage for territorial conflict, and how lineage and clan membership likely affected the structure of coalitions. We take a three-pronged approach, combining models for the evolution of leadership, models for the formation of coalitions and alliances, and models for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Davies.

The archaeological landscapes of arid environments often feature surface scatters of stone artefacts, which are used to infer past human activity and organization. For hunter-gatherer groups this typically involves some interpretation of mobility; however, the scales of activity inferred from these assemblages usually extend beyond the boundaries of study areas. Understanding what these assemblages mean in terms of human mobility requires assessment of how samples fit within a wider landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Devin White.

Understanding and explaining the flow of people across landscapes through time, and the transportation networks that flow creates, has long been of interest to archaeologists focused on the origin, development, and inner workings of complex societies. Reconstructing these networks is extremely challenging due to data sparsity. Existing desktop GIS tools allow you to generate point-to-point routes via least cost analysis, which can then be compared to documented routes (which are very rare), used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Murphy. Louise Purdue. Maurits Ertsen.

Societies that rely on irrigation face challenges arising from the variability and unpredictability of water supply and the physics underlying the flow of water through open channels; they overcome these through structured social interactions and institutions ranging from simple to complex. To better understand these past interactions we combine geoarchaeological studies with flow simulations and Agent Based Modeling. Fieldwork conducted during CRM projects on Hohokam irrigation structures in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Wren.

Since Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1971) introduced Fisher’s (1937) wave of advance equation to archaeology, it has been the most commonly used method to model the complex dynamics behind human dispersals in a variety of regional and global case studies. The standard form of the model involves an initial population growing and spreading randomly outwards from an origin. Studies use the model to calculate expected arrival dates and expansion velocities based on population growth rate,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Ullah. C. Michael Barton.

Over the last decade, the Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics Project has integrated complex systems concepts with computer simulation and empirical data in research on early farming systems. We have developed a computational laboratory, composed of multiple interacting models that are dynamically and recursively linked. to study how small-holder Social-Ecological Systems (SES) grow and change over time, how they react to major system state change, and how specific system variables affect the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iza Romanowska. Seth Bullock.

The Variability Selection Hypothesis proposed by Potts (1996; 1998) postulates the evolution of behavioural plasticity among early hominins arising during periods of strong environmental fluctuations in the last 6 million years. It argues that the inconsistency in selection regimes caused by the rapid environmental fluctuations produced particularly strong selection pressure on adapting to change rather than any particular set of conditions (termed 'adaptive complexity', 'adaptive flexibility',...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Grove.

It has long been known that temporally unstable environments are likely to promote the evolution of plastic adaptations, whilst it is equally clear that such adaptations are characteristic of successful colonizers. These two established findings, however, are rarely related. This contribution bridges this gap using a very simple evolutionary algorithm that tracks the evolution of plasticity under various climatic regimes, allowing for the construction of an index of climate-mediated dispersal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Enrico Crema.

Empirical validation is a key stage of any model development process and should provide an objective and quantitative account of the model performance. Yet, too often this stage plays a marginal role in the inferential exercise, with many discussions almost exclusively dedicated on the model building process. This paper discusses this neglected aspect of archaeological simulation, distinguishing two approaches drawn from epistemological parallels with statistical modelling. The first utilises...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Fisher. Luke Premo.

Lithic studies have benefited from the increased availability of raw material provenience data. The ability to determine the source locations of obsidian artifacts through X-ray fluorescence, for example, provides archaeologists with another line of evidence for addressing questions concerning mobility, settlement patterns, trade, adaptions to environmental conditions, and subsistence strategies. Brantingham (2003, 2006) previously demonstrated the importance of "null" model expectations in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Graham. Tom Brughmans.

The study of the Roman economy is a battlefield of sometimes conflicting archaeological and historical models. Each model argues for different factors as the driving forces of the Roman economy. Yet the model authors rarely make explicit how their descriptions of the functioning of Roman trade can be abstracted as concepts that allow comparison with other models. Moreover, the development of these descriptive models has not gone hand in hand with the development of methods that allow for them to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Lilley.

Recent research in southern New Guinea, Torres Strait and northeastern Australia suggests that Lapita users and possibly makers may have been present in regions hitherto believed to be beyond their reach. In New Guinea, the discovery of late Lapita near Port Moresby has just been complemented by findings of late Lapita ceramics in the western Gulf of Papua. Southwest of the Gulf, undiagnostic ceramics dating to perhaps 2500 years are now known in the Torres Strait. Bill Dickinson showed that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Sheppard.

Thanks to the efforts of Bill Dickinson petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections has been able to make an almost unparalleled contribution to sourcing studies in Oceania. In this paper I will report on use of one of the new generation desktop SEMs which will help us continue and build on Bill’s work. Examples will be drawn from studies of Lapita period ceramic assemblages in the Solomon Islands. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Marsaglia. Scott Fitzpatrick. John Lawrence. Jenni Pavia.

Bill Dickinson’s research in the Pacific is widely known and considered to be one of the most exemplary cases of transdisciplinary research between archaeologists and the geosciences. The collaborative effort cultivated between Dickinson and the archaeological community over the last 50 years has led to new ways of understanding how and when peoples colonized islands, and the exchange systems that developed through time, among other important issues. One of the most significant outcomes of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Burley.

In the 1990s and subsequently Bill Dickinson carried out widespread survey of paleo-shoreline indicators throughout the Kingdom of Tonga, these providing context for initial Lapita settlement of the archipelago. His research on Fanga ‘Uta lagoon on the island of Tongatapu has proven essential to interpretations of a 3000 BP landscape considerably different than the mangrove fringed shoreline existing today. Recent archaeological studies support and refine Dickinson’s model, providing additional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharyn Jones. Justin Cramb. Alison Weisskopf.

Inspired by Bill Dickinson’s broad and multifaceted perspective on the archaeological record of human colonization in the Pacific Islands, we present both new data from Vanua Levu, Fiji—informed in part by Bill’s ceramic petrography from the site of Nukubalavu and reflections on the thalassic pattern of colonization in the central Pacific Islands. While a sea focus in the Pacific Islands is unremarkable, some Lapita, Late Lapita, and Mid-sequence occupations of Fiji reveal an intriguing pattern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michiko Intoh.

Pottery tradition in Micronesia was diverse in terms of technology. This relates to various factors, such as historical and/or cultural reasons and the natural environmental conditions. Above all, the nature of clay resource available to the potters has significant effect upon forming techniques and products. Thanks to William Dickinson’s wide-ranging geological knowledge and active involvement in mineralogical studies of excavated pottery from Oceania, our understanding on prehistoric pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melinda Allen. Alex E. Morrison. Andrew M. Lorrey. Geraldine Jacobsen.

In a series of papers Bill Dickinson has outlined the timing of late Holocene sea level fall across the Pacific and its effects on island habitability and human settlement. He proposed that island settlement, particularly in East Polynesia, was constrained, or in some cases impossible, during the mid-Holocene sea level highstand, when low-lying islands (e.g., atolls) were awash and shallow near-shore environments restricted. Stable islets of modern configuration only developed after declining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Sand. Jacques Bolé. David Baret. André-John Ouetcho. Tautala Asaua.

W. Dickinson, as part of his wide study of the geological history of Pacific islands, has proposed in a series of papers to explain the unique case of the deeply submerged Lapita site of Mulifanua in Western Upolu (Samoa), as linked to the slow subsidence of Upolu Island. Recent archaeological research on the neighboring small island of Manono, has brought new and detailed data on this geological process. A series of dates allow to define chronologically the speed of the subsidence as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scarlett Chiu. David Killick. William Dickinson. Christophe Sand.

In this paper we will present the newest results gained from both petrographic and chemical compositional analyses of New Caledonian Lapita pottery samples, to address issues concerning long-distance connections among several Lapita communities, and competition that might have happened between Northern and Southern Lapita communities. We have been able to develop an effective way of identifying pottery production areas within New Caledonia, and our results suggest that there were possible social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Kirch.

From 1985-88 the author conducted excavations at Talepakemalai (ECA) and other Lapita sites in the Mussau Islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, recovering an extensive assemblage of pottery, obsidian, lithics and manuports, and other materials. Efforts to geochemically characterize the diversity and trace the potential sources of ceramic clay and temper, as well as the obsidian and other lithic materials from Mussau have continued over three decades. Throughout this evolving research project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Bedford. Matthew Spriggs. Richard Shing.

Archaeological research on the island of Aneityum, the southern-most inhabited island of the Vanuatu archipelago (the former New Hebrides) began in 1964 under the direction of Richard and Mary Shutler. It was soon after this that William Dickinson first began analysing pottery sherds from various sites across the archipelago. Since those early beginnings he has studied 100s of samples including 112 samples from the single site of Teouma. Early pottery sites remained elusive on the southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barry Rolett.

Early East Polynesian chiefdoms are remarkable for their voyaging spheres, as evidenced by archaeologically-documented interisland contact. One of the most prominent examples of interisland contact derives from a 1974 study by Bill Dickinson in which it was found that a handful of pottery sherds discovered in the Marquesas can be sourced to Fiji, an archipelago lying more than 4000 km to the west. Various interpretations of this discovery continue to fuel debate surrounding the context and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Cochrane. Timothy Rieth.

Bill Dickinson’s extensive and unequaled ceramic petrographic research has identified spatial patterns of artefact production and population interaction across the Pacific Islands. In Samoa his work on ceramic collections suggests a largely local focus of production and distribution. We combine Dickinson’s ceramic petrography with all available geochemical analyses of ceramics, basalt and obsidian artefacts, and demonstrate local-scale production and movement for all of these artefact classes....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marshall Weisler. Robert Bolhar. Michel Charleaux. Tyler Faith. Yuexing Feng.

William "Bill" Dickinson has long been interested in tracking interaction between Pacific Island societies by comparing temper sands of prehistoric ceramics and, more recently, thin section descriptions of basalt adzes. Fine grained basalt sources or quarries anchor ancient interaction spheres, yet few of the dozens of adze quarries found throughout Polynesia are known in sufficient detail to understand intra-source variability. This fundamental data is essential for confidently assigning...