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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslav Bruzek. Kevin Salesse. Petr Velemínský. Pascal Sellier. Dominique Castex.

The new evaluation of the skeletal remains and the archaeological documentation from the Saint Benedict cemetery in Prague is a unique opportunity for a bioarchaeological analysis of past mortality crises. The rescue archaeological excavation (held in 1971) and the first osteological analysis (Hanakova et al., 1988) showed in the baroque phase V (1635-1786) the presence of several multiple graves (approximately 30 with 190 individuals) and also many other simultaneous individual burials...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hiroto Takamiya. Hitoshi Yonenobu.

It has been suggested that in order for Homo sapiens to colonize islands, because of their size, food production is necessary. Indeed most islands were successfully colonized by farmers. However, some islands were colonized by hunter-gatherers. These islands are characterized by 1) large in area, 2) closely located from continent or large island, 3) sea mammals more or less constantly available, 4) translocation of edible plant and/or animal resources from the mother land or 5) combination of 1)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vance Hutchinson. Norman Easton. David Yesner. Lauriane Bourgeon. Blaine Maley.

The Little John site holds an extensive record of human occupation spanning 14,500 years ago to the most recent past. Due to a combination of taphonomic factors, the Late Pleistocene deposits are particularly rich in culturally modified faunal remains related to the subsistence economy of the founding and early human occupants of the upper reaches of the Tanana River Valley of interior Alaska and Yukon. In this presentation we report on the current results of our analyses of the Little John...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantal Huckert.

La investigación que realizo actualmente conduce al análisis formal e interpretativo de los glifos cefaloformes de reptiles híbridos representados principalmente en la vestimenta de las Figurillas Sonrientes en custodia del Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, Veracruz. En este sentido, propongo exponer una ficha señalética por cada referente reptil, que incluya los rasgos determinantes, realistas e híbridos, su campo de acción definido por los pictogramas que lo acompañan en la vestimenta, y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Carrier. Hillary Conley. Susan Kane.

This is an examination of a collection of 200 sherds of black-gloss pottery (a type of fineware that was used for dining and wine consumption from the 5th century B.C.E.-1st century B.C.E ) excavated from the Monte Pallano ridge in the Abruzzo region of eastern Italy. Customarily, pXRF has been used to identify and characterize clay sources for ancient pottery production. In this paper, the elemental composition of the ceramics—measured with a Bruker Tracer III SD pXRF—is analyzed: 1) to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Lohse. Derek Hamilton. Victoria Smith. Mark Brenner. Jason Curtis.

A record of late Holocene volcanic activity in highland Guatemala was inferred from sediment and tephra stratigraphy in two cores from Lake Amatitlan. Electron microprobe analysis of glass from the tephra samples suggests most eruption deposits are of local origin, coming from nearby Volcanoes Pacaya and Fuego. The 6th-century Ilopango ash is clearly visible, and a few tephra samples have not been correlated to particular volcanoes or eruption events. Using dates from this sequence with others...

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

Recent survey fieldwork undertaken as part of the ongoing project, Production Landscapes of Southern Andhra Pradesh (PLoSAP), has revealed a complex material landscape. The scale and variety of the remains seem to indicate that various technologies – and especially pyro-technologies – were consistently present in this area, while the spatial distribution of the remains suggests that these technologies were differentially distributed across the survey areas. A more detailed analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Egeland. Alexa Uberseder. Cynthia Fadem.

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, remains one of the richest sources of information on human bio-behavioral evolution between 1-2 million years ago. While much research has justifiably focused on the gorge’s junction area and its rich collection of sites, including FLK 22 (The Zinjanthropus Floor), the older fossiliferous deposits to the west have received much less attention in recent years. The DK area, which lies along the north edge of the main gorge, is particularly intriguing and was made famous by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McGuire.

Barn owls (Tyto alba) are the most common accumulators of micromammal assemblages in archaeological sites. These assemblages have been shown to be a good proxy for local environments and thus, for paleoecological reconstructions. Previous research assumed all comparative samples of micromammal assemblages from barn owls pellets have a taphonomically similar signature. Surprisingly, this has never been tested; thus, reducing the overall robusticity of current paleoenvironmental reconstructions. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Olson.

The Gorgan Plain in Iran has long been considered to be an important part of the northern frontier of the Ancient Near East. Only recently, however, has this region been considered a center of complex society in its own right during the third millennium BCE. While no society in this frontier zone would achieve literate statehood until much later, there is nevertheless mounting evidence that the societies of northeastern Iran developed incipient urbanism, craft specialization, and organized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Heins. Jordan Karsten.

Animals associated with human burials provide insight into mortuary rituals of ancient groups. This study is the examination of faunal remains from Verteba Cave (3,951- 2,620 cal BC), a site in western Ukraine associated with the latest period of Eneolithic Tripolye-Cucuteni (TC) culture. Relative abundances of taxa were compared to published data from other TC sites. Remains from red deer and cattle are the most frequent fauna of the Verteba Cave assemblage. The sample also has a high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jess Beck.

Fragmentary and commingled human remains recovered from salvage excavations present bioarchaeologists with a number of interpretative challenges, including calculating MNI in the absence of detailed provenience information, untangling post-excavation commingling of remains, and analyzing high volumes of recovered material. Importantly, analytical techniques developed in recent research on forensic and archaeological taphonomy can help overcome some of these difficulties. Here I focus on the case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Halling. Ryan Seidemann.

Human skeletal remains recovered from the Smith Creek Site in Adams County, Mississippi came to the Louisiana Department of Justice for analysis. Twenty-six individuals recovered required a full bioarchaeological analysis to inventory and document as much information as possible before final disposition. Of particular interest, one individual displayed the relatively uncommon trait of missing permanent maxillary lateral incisors. In order to determine whether the agenesis resulted from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Qualls. Leslie Drane.

This poster explains the work being conducted for the creation of a booklet about the Indiana (and likely surrounding states) ceramic types and varieties from approximately 1000 BCE – 1600 CE. We anticipate this booklet being utilized as a field guide and a comparative resource for those studying pre-Columbian people in the area. Because archaeologists so often encounter unfamiliar types and hybrid ceramic formations, this resource could be extremely beneficial for any researchers studying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. M. Adovasio. J. S. Illingworth.

Decades of research have indicated that the basketry of the Fremont formative "culture(s?)" of the Eastern Great Basin is unique to and highly diagnostic of that (those?) prehistoric population(s?). Additionally, it has been repeatedly stated that the basketry of the Fremont exhibits few to no technical connections to that produced by neighboring Ancestral Pueblo groups. Recent reanalysis of literally all of the basketry recovered during the multi-year Glen Canyon Project corroborates the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Griffith.

In the summer of 2014 St. Charles Community College (SCC) in Cottleville, MO offered, for the second year in a row, an archaeology field school. This project was an opportunity for people outside of a traditional 4-year college or university setting to engage first-hand in archaeological field work. By offering the field school through a community college, students who might not otherwise be able to afford a regular field term got valuable hands-on experience—many St. Charles students (and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruhl.

Across Florida, severe drought in recent years lowered water levels, especially in 2000 and then again a decade later. Both times this resulted in the exposure of dozens and dozens of ancient dugout canoes. This trend occurred not only in Florida, but also the greater southeastern U.S. This paper discusses the concerted efforts of state and local agencies as well as private stewards to document the environmental impact on these canoe finds, as exposure to sun and elements accelerated their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Dorland.

This paper concerns my proposed doctoral research that focuses on learning environments within Ancestral Wendat potting communities, more specifically, the 15th Century AD Keffer village. My theoretical perspective is grounded in a framework of apprenticeship, and experiential philosophy that emphasizes the experience and interaction of an individual within the material world, interwoven with both social and body memory. My methodological approach consists of micro-variation analysis to identify...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaoru Akoshima.

The paper investigates concrete methods to evaluate lithic microwear data in conjunction with human mobility patterns and raw material distributions. Since the discovery of micro-polish variety reflecting different worked materials, use-wear analysts emphasized reconstruction of individual behavioral episodes at the site location. However, actual wear traces reveal highly complex patterns, partially attributable to combined factors of mobility and raw material selection. Conventional methods of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Williams.

This zooarchaeological study examines the recovered faunal remains from a mid- to late-18th century household site on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. The results of this study indicate the residents’ incorporations of European-introduced practices and resources with traditional subsistence practices. The site yielded a mixture of faunal remains from domesticated and wild species. Over the course of the 18th century, the residents came to rely on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Brant.

The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku, around AD 1000, was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling elite. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku’s ruling dynasty, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca basin peoples abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku’s authority. A 1500-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, and ritual practice turned to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Wales. Jazmín Ramos Madrigal. M. Thomas P. Gilbert.

Following the initial domestication of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) from a teosinte grass in Mexico, human populations dispersed the cultivar through trade and migration. Despite a long history of archaeology in the American Southwest, many questions about maize remain, including how the crop was dispersed northward from Mexico and how maize was acclimated to new environments. These unresolved questions can be explored in new ways, thanks to next-generation DNA sequencing technology and targeted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Schmidheiny.

This project develops a basic material characterization of pre-mechanized, handmade bricks excavated at the site of Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, New York. In the early Manor period of 1650-1690, this early Northern provisioning plantation supplied Barbadian sugar operations and pursued mercantile interests independent of state control. The technology and processing of pre-mechanized brick and other architectural ceramics have received comparatively little attention in historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sacha Kacki. Dominique Castex.

mass graves. Such discoveries testify to an abnormally high death rate linked to a specific event, such as wars or epidemics. Two research lines are fundamental to ascertain the nature of such crises: biological analysis of the exhumed skeletons (age, sex, and paleopathology), and research of DNA of the ancient pathogens which may have caused the deaths. Besides, these burial sites provide an insight of the impact of such a high mortality on funeral customs. At present, enough data is available,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Suarez.

This presentation provides new data on investigations on the middle basin of Uruguay River. The most recent research on Northern Uruguay in the K87 Tigre type site has yielded radiocarbon dates with similar ages to Clovis (ca. 13.000 cal yr BP). At a regional level, a settlement pattern emerges where the Paleoamerican residential sites are located on the banks of Uruguay River near the mouth of arroyos, near "rapidos", natural passages (pasos), and small cascades (cachoeiras). This pattern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Murphy.

As research in historic archaeology progresses, it is possible to explore numerous facets of past cultures from health to funerary practices through cemetery excavations. Despite this, only a handful of historic cemetery reports in the United States include certain categories of data or the most basic anthropological analysis necessary to address specific research questions. Fewer still have been widely disseminated. As part of one of the largest surveys of historical cemetery excavations to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lech Czerniak.

In studies of LBK societies, one of the categories of feature which are potentially indicative of differences in social status are longhouses that are notable for their substantial length (e.g. over 33 m). The author examines this issue based on examples of LBK longhouses in Poland. Rescue excavations carried out during the past decade along the routes of planned motorways have led to the discovery of over 100 new longhouses together with their broader settlement contexts. This has provided a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nuno Bicho. Jonathan Haws. Mussa Raja. Omar Madime. Célia Gonçalves.

Located between modern-day South Africa and Tanzania, both of which have well-known and extensive Stone Age records, Mozambique and its Stone Age sequence remain largely unknown in the broader context of African Pleistocene prehistory. This is in spite of the country’s critical position linking southern and eastern Africa, and of its clear potential to inform various models about recent human evolution. Specifically, the geography of Mozambique makes its sea coast a natural area of interest to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mareike Stahlschmidt. David M Carballo.

Recent excavations of the PATT (Proyecto Arqueológico Tlajinga, Teotihuacan) have explored two residential zones and the southern extension of the Street of the Dead in the Tlajinga district, located in the southern periphery of Teotihuacan. Excavations at the residential zones are directed at investigating neighborhood dynamics including social organization, craft specialization and domestic ritual. Excavation at the Street of the Dead are directed at evaluating the processes of urbanization at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xu Zhang.

The south central Inner Mongolia, China has been defined as an area where two economically diverse prehistoric cultures interacted: northern nomadic pastoralists and southern sedentary agriculturalists. Earlier archaeological work suggested that cultural exchanges between these two groups occurred prior to the early Iron Age. Dabaoshan cemetery was recently excavated in this area, and contains approximately 44 individuals. Human remains from this site represent one of the earlier settlements in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

This poster will present a "new" view of Aztec Ruins -- particularly Aztec West -- which refines modern base maps with historic data. This latter includes data drawn from Morris-era excavation photos, as well as additional information from unpublished sketch maps, correspondence, and field notes. This 'new' map will include unpublished locational data on mounds, burials, floor features, wall features, remodeling, refuse, burning... etc etc. Almost no reading required. SAA 2015 abstracts made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophie Miller.

Bone fragmentation is a potential issue for anyone who works with skeletal remains. If a bone is burned, or fragmented in a way that prevents morphological identification, it can be near impossible to identify which bone it is, or what taxa it belongs to. However, there are techniques for identifying bones based on their microstructure, as the microstructure of human and non-human bone has distinct differences. These differences allow for microscopic comparisons of bone cross-sections and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bibiana Cadena. Meggan Bullock.

While ethnohistoric documents offer insights into the physical and structural violence that accompanied the Spanish conquest of Mexico, these accounts are typically written from the perspective of the conquerors. Few native testimonies exist that provide an indigenous perspective of this period of social, economic, and political upheaval; however, human skeletal remains offer a means of directly evaluating the violence of the Conquest and its impact on the native population. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Perrino. P. Nick Kardulias.

Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the Franco-Cantabrian region is associated with some of the first visible, material, and social production processes of anatomically modern humans. Since art is a component of culture, and culture is a component of human evolution, the integration of evolutionary and cultural theories is key in understanding Upper Palaeolithic cave art. The present study inventories the techniques, materials, and image contexts from Chauvet, Lascaux, and Cosquer caves in France,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Thompson.

With the release of Google Earth for consumer use, archaeologists were an early professional group to begin exploiting this resource for identifying potential archaeological sites around the world. However, it seems as though the ability to detect sites using this powerful tool might have advanced faster than the ethical considerations of site detection, validation and protection that most countries require today. This paper will explore the history of site prospection via Google Earth and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shurik.

Handstone is one of the artifacts that is associated with the Mesoamerican ballgame. However, barely any research has been published about them, since 1961, when Stephan Borhegyi first analyzed them. He identified that the handstones vary in size and shape. In the past, it has been suggested that they could be used to serve the ball when initiating the ballgame. Recent analysis of their size, abrasion, and context in imagery identifies the improbability of using them as a serving tool. Not a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masami Izuho. Ian Buvit. Takeyuki Ueki. Gunchinsuren Byambaa. Tsogtbaatar Batmunkh.

Mongolia, located at a key crossroads for human migration between central, eastern, and northern Asia, is important for understanding a number of current hotly debated archaeological topics, including the possible human exodus out of northern Eurasia at the Last Glacial Maximum (24,000-18,000 cal yr BP), the emergence of microblade technology as an adaptation to extremely cold and harsh environmental conditions, and the route and process of an initial modern human migration into high latitudes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garth Norman.

Norman's latest "Izapa Sacred Space" book (2013; in English and Spanish) will be introduced, highlighting shared culture contacts near and far. Izapa popularity peaked at the end of 2012 and is being rekindled with the 13th baktun zenith sun (August 13) and new year (Sept 21) calendar monuments and applied technologies. New Izapa civilization discoveries in Preclassic Mesoamerican history have been examined with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) digital imaging technology recording of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Grimes. Brian Codding.

Fire is increasingly recognized as a central evolutionary force shaping the earth’s ecosystems. This is especially observable in the fire-prone American West, where indigenous populations frequently used low-intensity burns to modify their habitats for myriad purposes. Given the variability of environments within the Great Basin, the effects of anthropogenic burning  likely had different impacts depending on local ecological and subsistence contexts. To understand where and why anthropogenic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Berryman.

This paper explores aspects of the archaeology of coastal California. Drawing on a large body of data collected during cultural resource management studies on Camp Pendleton in northern San Diego County. The period of broad focus is the Late Holocene. Since chronological issues are central to this study, only radiocarbon dated sites are described while exploring the wider landscape, and changes it its use, and occupation. Landscape factors considered include chronology, topographic setting,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Connie Ericksen. Haagen Klaus.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, burial status has been a subject of archaeological investigation. Tainter (1978), Saxe (1970), Hertz (1907), and Pearson (1999) have contributed to our understanding of what status means in various cultural contexts and how it may be interpreted from archaeological contexts. This paper is an application of the burial status theme applied to burials recorded in late-colonial Peru. In 1868 burial records note the advent of yellow fever. Monthly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norman Easton. David Yesner. Vance Hutchinson. Michael Grooms. Jordan Handley.

New AMS radio-carbon dates derived from culturally modified bone and charred material in association with artifacts has expanded our appreciation of the antiquity and continuity of occupation at the Little John site, from the early Bolling-Allerod in the Late Pleistocene post-glacial period through the Early and Later Holocene. These new dates, combined with dates from other local sites on the Yukon – Alaska borderlands, allow us to identify a number of discrete chrono-zones at Little John that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Trowbridge. Lori Stephens Reed.

Recent analyses of ceramics from the Southern Chuska Valley (SCV) have suggested that vessels commonly identified as imports from the Mesa Verde region in fact largely represent locally-produced variants of Mesa Verde White Ware rather than actual imported vessels. Data collected from the US 491 Highway mitigation project (SRI) and the El Paso Pipeline project (WCRM) provide a baseline from which we plan to further investigate the presence of locally-manufactured Mesa Verde variant types in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel LaDu. Ian W. Brown.

Around A.D. 1000 Mississippian culture emerged in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Originating around the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Mississippian culture rapidly spread south and east, radically transforming Late Woodland societies in its wake. Although Mississippian culture had come to dominate much of the interior of the Southeast by A.D. 1100, its advance into the Lower Mississippi Valley was impeded. Here, Mississippian societies encountered the Late Woodland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nuria Sugrañes. Fernando Franchetti.

During the last ca. 3000 years BP, there was a change in socioeconomic organization of hunter-gatherers in Southern Mendoza, north Patagonia, Argentina. New technologies, like pottery, bow and arrow, was incorporated allowed the exploitation and occupation of marginal areas, such as highlands and arid environments. Technological strategies, mobility and use of space are linked in this research by a distributional analysis of archaeological ceramics from southern Mendoza archaeological sites....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Baustian.

A comprehensive bioarchaeological assessment of Mimbres health, activity, and interpersonal violence was completed using data from a sample of 248 human burials from 17 Late Pithouse (AD 550-1000) and Pueblo (AD 1000-1300) sites in the Mimbres region. The findings presented here demonstrate broader patterns for interpretation of community experiences that have not been as well described in previous case studies from individual site samples. This larger sample of all available adult burials...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yan Cai.

My analysis provide a picture how socioeconomic organization change in terms of changing ecology. Differences in aggregated artifact assemblages between households and sites in the KS phase have been taken to indicate participation in mutually exclusive economic activities (eg. Wood working, fishing, and animal processing), the products of which were then exchanged for those of other units. In contrast, a weak difference in the proportional composition of economic artifact assemblages between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Kellett. Sarah Jolly. Danielle Kurin. Guni Monteagudo.

Recent archaeological research from a high elevation (4,000 masl) hilltop site in the Andahuaylas region of southern Peru offer new data to illuminate aspects of life and social organization within the Chanka society that lived during the tumultuous Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1400). In contrast to the machay (or cave) burials typical of this time period, an intramural burial site excavated from the ridgetop site of Achanchi may offer another perspective of this localized polity. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wenjie Zhang.

Since the Zhongli King's tomb in Anhui (China) was excavated in 2013, various types of bronze artifact were found which can be sourced to different regions in the Late-Chunqiu period. Through examning these bronzes, this article is going to analyze where they were coming from, how they were arranged into the tomb and what kind of ritual systerm the Zhongli King was referring to, which accordingly would be helpful to get a better understanding of the exotic funeral structure of this tomb. It can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Walton.

Tzintzuntzan was the political capital of the Tarascan Empire and home to the royal uacúsecha dynasty during the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1350-1525). This study presents the technological analysis of 1,155 lithic artifacts recovered during excavations at Tzintzuntzan from 1977 to 1978 and places these findings in context with prior lithic studies based on survey data. The excavation contexts include a palace, storehouse, residential structures, and the five ceremonial Yácatas located on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

The Lauricocha caves in Peru were the first known evidence for an Early Holocene presence of humans in the high altitude Andes. However, critical examination of the excavation reports cast doubts on the status and significance of Lauricocha in the archaeological record of South America. Here, we present a thorough revision of site including new radiocarbon dates, as well as morphological, craniometric, and genome-wide genetic data obtained from the human remains found at the site. Our results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Lees. Della Scott-Ireton. Sarah Miller.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network delivers programming through public outreach, assistance to local governments, and assistance to the Florida Division of Historical Resources. The general goal of FPAN is to achieve preservation gains through raising the awareness of Florida archaeology to the public and governmental officials. Authorized by statute in 2004, the Florida legislature funded FPAN in 2005. The program is administered by the University of West Florida but operates in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Hixon. Carl Lipo. Terry Hunt.

As part of monumental statue (moai) construction during the prehistory of Rapa Nui, islanders quarried bodies of red scoria, carved them into hats (pukao), and placed them atop statues measuring up to 10 meters tall. Despite overall great interest in moai and the improbable magnitude of pukao that were raised to reach their positions on the heads of statues, few studies have investigated pukao production and transport. This study seeks to analyze three-dimensional variability of pukao using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Kissel. Agustín Fuentes. Celia Deane-Drummond.

How can anthropologists assess the pattern of complex decision-making that early humans undertook when navigating social networks and what role does this ability, which we might call wisdom, play in the origin & development of the cultural human experience? While it is clear that there are behaviors unique to humans such as the creation of complex lithic artifacts, unaddressed for the most part has been how behaviors such as collaboration, land use patterns/long-distance raw material transport,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Habiba Habiba. Jan Athenstädt. Ulrik Brandes.

The Brainerd-Robinson (BR) index is frequently used as an measure of similarity among disparate archaeological entities. We propose a number of novel alternative methods to gauge similarity among such entities. We base our analysis on similarity among sites(locations) inhabited in the US Southwest during AD (1200-1450) using a large corpus of artifacts excavated at those locations and maintained as a comprehensive database by Archaeology Southwest. In this work we first identify some vital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Zeferjahn. Michelle Baroldi. Chris Lee. Carl Lipo. Matt Becker.

One of the many mysteries of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is how the ancient inhabitants survived with so few sources of freshwater. The scarcity of freshwater suggests that water resources may have been a constraining factor in settlement growth, patterning, and distribution. As a first step of addressing this hypothesis, we conducted field work to identify classes of terrestrial sources of freshwater and compared them to early settlement distribution. From May-June, 2014, we generated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bobi Deere.

Focusing on research previously done with residue analysis of containers in the Southeast that had found Ilex or cacao, this study was conducted on imagery and residue results. Residue analysis in the Southeast has been either focused on container form, or only on the residues to be tested. Taking a new look at containers already tested for residues from 3 main sites (Cahokia, Etowah and Spiro and surrounding area), a data base of imagery was created by cataloging motifs and themes of images on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sachiko Sakai. William Krill. Hector Neff. Hazwan Faizul. Desiree Shahbazkhani.

Recently, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediment has been used increasingly in the study of human occupation history in archaeology. This paper employs OSL to date the Little Springs Lava Flow, a lava flow near Mt. Trumbull, northern Arizona thought to have erupted about 1000 years ago. The accepted dates are based on cosmogenic helium dating. This lava flow covers some of the most productive agricultural land in the Mt. Trumbull area. Previous archaeological surveys revealed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Campeau. Tristan Carter. Yosef Garfinkel. Danny Rosenberg. Katharina Streit.

CAMPEAU, K., CARTER, T., GARFINKEL, Y., ROSENBERG, D. and STREIT, K. This poster details the elemental characterization of obsidian artefacts from three prehistoric sites in Israel: Beisamoun, Nahal Lavan 109 and Tel Tsaf. Raw material sourcing was achieved using the non-destructive technique of EDXRF spectroscopy, matching the chemical fingerprint of the artefacts’ materials with those from known obsidian sources. With the assemblages spanning the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to Chalcolithic (9th –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominic Bush. Mark Schurr.

Since the Collier Lodge Project commenced in 2003, excavations from the Porter County, Indiana site have yielded substantial amounts of faunal remains. The goal of my research is to examine particular collections of remains, which date to the nineteenth century, and construct a clearer picture of life at Collier Lodge. The remains being analyzed offer a unique look at diet and the interaction between fauna and residents of the lodge. Specifically, I am comparing the amount of domesticated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Drane. Joel Lennon.

Lunsford-Pulcher (11-S-40) is a Mississippian mound center located in the American Bottom, near modern day Dupo, Illinois. To date there has been limited excavation and analysis conducted at this important ceremonial village. For this study, 181 rim sherds from a surface collection by Timothy R. Pauketat and Bobby Pauketat were analyzed and then compared to other nearby Mississippian sites (the Washausen, Peiper, and Morrison sites), with a focus on the differences in temper usage. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Muzzall.

Using correlations between biodistance and tomb distance, this poster examines how mortuary practices of two central Italian Iron Age (1000 – 27 BC) ranked societies partially encoded responses to increasing sociopolitical instability. This time period witnessed reorganization of clan-based, transhumant, agropastoral societies immediately prior to long periods of conflict and Roman encroachment. Although they used similar mortuary arrangements, local groups had different attitudes towards these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Hallihan. Jenny Fucillo.

On the graffiti-covered desks and walls of the eighth through eleventh floors of the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Library lies a study in duality—highly public expressions of students’ most private thoughts. Studying samples of graffiti left behind by decades’ worth of college students allowed us to examine aspects of life at Notre Dame that were not normally visible. An analysis of 107 pieces of graffiti yielded that 47% were sexual in nature and 53% pertained to non-sexual topics (e.g....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. James Stemp. Jaime Awe.

Few lithic workshops have been found in the Belize Valley of Western Belize. This paper presents the results of surface reconnaissance and debitage collection at two newly discovered chert tool workshops near the villages of Esperanza and Teakettle in the Cayo District of Western Belize. Each of these workshops consists of a single large mound of debitage and includes tools aborted or broken at various stages of manufacture. At both locations, the main tool types produced were oval bifaces and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Harrington. Linda Gosner.

The patterns of daily life are vitally important to our understanding of the past. What people do to make ends meet, to worship their gods, and to take care of their families and property help define a culture and create identity. However, the routine practices of non-elite people, often occurring in non-monumental spaces, have often not received significant scholarly attention, especially in Classical Archaeology. However, since 2013, an interdisciplinary group of graduate students from six...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Edwards. Jeffrey Wedding.

For archaeologists, the term geoglyph typically conjures up images of enormous carved landscapes such as the Nazca Lines in Peru or the Blythe Intaglios in California’s Mojave Desert. But the creation of earth drawings is not restricted to people of the distant past. Modern populations have also been known to produce their own geoglyphs. Like their prehistoric predecessors, many contemporary geoglyphs have spiritual or ceremonial significance, but others were generated for purely functional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dustin Kennedy. Kim Przewlocki. Viktor Gabriel.

Low mound sites, often referred to as Calapooia Mounds in western Oregon, are prevalent throughout stream systems within the Willamette Valley. Archaeologists postulate that the Willamette Valley mounds, which date to within the last 4,000 years, were created through the accumulation of occupational debris over time. Many of these late Holocene sites are located on private property and are continually impacted by farming activities while others, located in riparian zones, are less effected....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Roth. Aaron Woods. Forrest Jarvi.

Recent excavations at the Harris Site in the Mimbres River Valley of southwestern New Mexico have documented differences between Three Circle phase (A.D. 750-1000) pithouses and associated features that suggest differences in social organization. In this poster we use data from cores and chipped stone tools recovered from house floors, extramural work areas, and extramural storage areas to examine core reduction technology and raw material use associated with these households. Our main goal is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Farahani.

The measurement of carbonized domesticated cereal caryopses through a number of established morphometric parameters has the potential to provide information on past cultivation conditions, crop processing practices, and taphonomic processes. This poster presents the results of morphometric analyses using a microscope-mounted camera on carbonized cereal caryopses of wheat (Triticum aestivum/durum and Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) collected from the archaeological site of Dhiban,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Wolin. Natasha Osing. Jigen Tang. Yuyun Tang. Lingling Deng.

Ongoing archaeological investigations at the Late Shang capital of Yinxu (ca. 1200 – 1050 BCE) in China have resulted in the location and partial excavation of thousands of sacrificial pits with an estimated 10,000 individuals interred within. Evidence of human sacrifice during this period includes contemporaneous oracle bone inscriptions, mortuary contexts, weaponry, and the skeletal remains of these individuals. We are presenting our preliminary interpretation of the osteological analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

Discovered in 2006, Offering 1 from Los Horcones, Chiapas represents a unique grouping of figurines deposited perhaps to commemorate the construction of Mound B1 from this site. Previous publication of this offering focused on deriving meaning from this cache based on its context and stylistic attributes. During the summer of 2014, the offering was reconstructed and new layers of meaning perhaps representing a more emic perspective on its meaning emerged. The offering, made up of masks and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Faught.

This poster presents a critical reflection on the dialectical and power-imbued relationships of archaeologists and stakeholder communities, focusing on the ongoing Stélida Naxos Archaeological Project in the Cycladic islands, Greece. While much has been written about archaeologists’ interaction with neighboring populations, Stélida provides a complex case due to the transitory and heterogeneous nature of what constitutes its "local" community. Residence is both seasonal (summer) and fluid in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Harvey.

Cultural sites known as "hearth mounds," scattered throughout the gypsum dune field of White Sands National Monument in south-central New Mexico, have the potential to provide additional insight into human habitation and subsistence strategies within the Tularosa Basin. These sites contain the remains of prehistoric thermal features which transformed the surrounding gypsum sediments into a hardened material similar to plaster of Paris. This paper explores the formation processes that influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lapp.

During the excavations of Conchal, Department of Rivas, Nicaragua relatively few lithic materials were encountered. While there were only 315 lithic pieces found, much can be learned from these pieces; this includes the daily activities that the prehistoric population conducted. By examining the data from the excavations, it was determined that the population began as a semi-nomadic one that eventually permanently inhabited the area. The formal and informal tools, along with the site furniture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rory Dennison.

This research examines issues of production and distribution of Chinese porcelains in the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties by comparing chemical signatures of porcelain sherds and clay collected from sites in Fujian, China both to each other and to sites of dispersal within Philippine chiefdoms in Tanjay, Cebu, and Manila. This research examines how patterns of long distance trade were negotiated within the Philippines at one end of the network and the variations in production strategies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Scattolin.

This paper gives a characterization of the ceramic styles as well as the forms and functions of vessels and, broadly, the production of pottery in the village societies that inhabited the southern Calchaquí Valleys (Northwestern Argentina) during Formative period and Middle Horizon (first millennium AD). The study of ceramics in Northwestern Argentina has traditionally been centred on descriptions, taking decorative motives as fundamental evidence in the definition of styles and periodization....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Selin Nugent. Hannah Lau.

Tracing the mobility patterns of pastoralists and their herds is a critical part of illuminating the lifeways of people who inhabited the southern Caucasus in the past. During the 2014 season, the Naxcivan Archaeological Project excavated several Middle Bronze age kurgans overlooking the Şərur Plain. In these burials humans and animals were interred together, speaking to the significance of the animals in the lifeways of the people inhabiting the area during the Middle Bronze Age. We correlate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fowler. Jeb Card.

The archaeological site of Ciudad Vieja, El Salvador, represents the ruins of the Conquest-period town of San Salvador. Although founded as a Spanish conquest town with a small Spanish population, the inhabitants of San Salvador were mainly indigenous Mesoamericans including Mexican warriors and their families who traveled with their Spanish allies during and after the initial military conquest and transplanted members of colonized Nahua-speaking Pipil groups from western and central El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Canaday. Bryan Hanks. John Rose.

The Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness is the largest designated wilderness in the lower 48 states encompassing over two million acres and two wild and scenic rivers (Salmon River and Middle Fork Salmon River) in central Idaho. Cultural resources were identified as one of the main tenets of the establishing legislation and the Central Idaho Wilderness Act of 1980 mandates "the protection of archaeological sites and interpretation of such sites for the public benefit and knowledge."...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curran Fitzgerald. Charles Egeland. Ryan Byerly. Cynthia Fadem. Audax Mabulla.

The study of raw materials has traditionally been deeply embedded in analyses of the Early Stone Age, and the impact of source rock characteristics on early human ranging behavior and technological variation is now widely acknowledged. Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, apart from being one of the most well-known paleoanthropological sites in the world, is also home to a great diversity of potential sources for the production of stone tools. While the lithology and mineralogy of these sources have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Chuipka.

The San Juan Basin of New Mexico is one of the most archaeologically rich areas of the American Southwest. Three years in, the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is the latest in a long history of infrastructure projects that provides the opportunity to conduct archaeological research and expand our understanding of the past. One question being addressed is when the Southern Athapaskans moved into the upper San Juan Basin and how long they occupied it before Navajo culture emerged. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Timmins.

In the 1950s avocational archaeologist Fritz Knechtel discovered several important archaeological sites near Inverhuron Bay, Ontario, on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. Early professional investigations were conducted by Tom Lee and J.V. Wright of the National Museum of Canada and Walter Kenyon of the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2014 a proposed infrastructure project provided an opportunity to re-locate and test several of Knechtel's sites. This paper presents the results of this project and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Lindsay. Victoria L. Muñoz. Jeremy B. Freeman. Carolyn E. Boyd.

Rockshelters of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands display visually striking and compositionally complex Pecos River style murals painted by hunter-gatherers during the Late Archaic. The Rattlesnake Canyon mural (41VV180) is regarded as one of the six finest surviving examples of this world-renowned pictograph style. However, the site is severely threatened by repeated flooding episodes along the Rio Grande, exacerbated in recent years by siltation of Amistad Reservoir. Three known flooding episodes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause. David Reich. Iosif Lazaridis. Nick Patterson. Alissa Mittnik.

Ancient DNA can reveal historical events that are difficult to discern through the study of present-day individuals. To investigate European population history around the agricultural transition, we sequenced complete genomes from a ~7,000 year old early farmer from the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) from Germany and an ~8,000 year old hunter-gatherer from Luxembourg. We also generated genome wide data from seven ~8,000 year old hunter-gatherers from Sweden. We compared these genomes and published...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Levi Keach.

Currently, and for the first time in the age of GIS, there is a growing resurgence of interest in intra-site level spatial analysis. Many studies focusing on the application of GIS technology to site level phenomena focus, either explicitly or implicitly, on the analysis of fine resolution datasets. Realistically, however, few archaeological data are recorded as sub-centimeter points. The majority of archaeological data tends to be recorded at the resolution of the 1x1 or 2x2 meter excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Brown.

Bone and enamel apatite from human remains (N=17) recovered at the Korell-Bordeaux (48GO54) site in Goshen County, Wyoming during the 1980 and 2009 field seasons was analyzed using stable carbon and oxygen isotope methods. Patterns related to the geographic mobility and overall sustenance sourcing of the members of the population during their first and final decades of life are detailed. Remains stained with degraded copper alloys were examined through the same procedural methods and differences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Kasper. Karen Hess. Anthony P. Graesch. David M. Schaepe.

Many archaeologists overlook the presence of uncharred archaeobotanicals, specifically seeds, within excavated cultural contexts. Frequently assemblages of uncharred seeds receive little analytic attention due to the difficulty of differentiating taphonomic variables associated with their presence, including soil moisture, pH, and insect activity. Further confounding this methodological quandary, it is often difficult to distinguish between the "cultural" and the "modern" seed rain recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lavris Makovics.

It has been postulated that one-third to one-half of all known archaeological sites in the US Southwest have been vandalized; however there are few accurate and complete datasets available to prove this assumption, or to determine exactly which factors encourage illicit activity. In fact, in 1987 the Government Accounting Office identified this lack of data as a major reason for not fully comprehending the archeological vandalism problem on public lands in the United States. For over 20 years,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Gabe.

As opposed to typical well-defined urban areas, 17th c. Spanish colonial New Mexico consisted of a series of small, dispersed, rural, isolated settlements. The colonists were also isolated in the sense that they had extremely limited and irregular access to trade goods and communication with the broader Spanish Empire. Furthermore, they stemmed from diverse ethnic backgrounds, often lumped as mestizo by modern researchers. Given these challenges to maintaining a perceived Spanish identity, how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Forste. Mac Marston.

The coastal city of Ashkelon, in present-day Israel, was a key economic port in the commercial system that connected the Mediterranean and Middle East from the Bronze Age into the Crusader Era. The advantage of its position is attested by its continued occupation as well as the luxurious and finely made, often imported, objects recovered from various time periods. The Islamic period (640-1153 CE) is considered a time of great expansion and growth, with evidence of fine craftsman having resided...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Scarbrough. Kristin Corl. Dylan Clark. Sunnie Sartin.

What is the significance of multiple burning events at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175) an El Paso Phase (A.D. 1300-1450) Mogollon village in Southwest New Mexico? What do these burning events tell us about the life history of the pueblo? When did they occur? How do they compare to burning events at contemporary sites in the American Southwest? Contextual evidence suggests they are separate ritual events. What purposes did these events serve? How do they differ from other purposeful pueblo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Page. Tosha Dupras. Rimantas Jankauskas. Lana Williams. Courtney Eleazer.

Rapid turnover of bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values in subadults can reveal dietary and physiological changes experienced by illuminating chronic stress not apparent as skeletal, pathological lesions. To assess subadult morbidity and mortality in Medieval Alytus, Lithuania, an osteobiographical examination was undertaken of individuals who presented humeral isotopic values ± 2σ from sample and cohort means (-20.02 ± 0.43‰; 11.09 ± 1.21‰). Four infants (0.1-2.9 years) and four juveniles (5-11.9...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Rubinstein. Nathan Goodale. Alissa Nauman. David Bailey. Bruce Wegter.

Elemental Analysis-Isotope Ratio Mass Spectroscopy (EA-IRMS) has been used to analyze the elemental compositions of materials from archaeological settings, but work done specifically on culturally modified sediments is limited. In this study, we explored EA-IRMS as a technique for characterizing anthropogenic sediments to establish spatial organizations of past living spaces as well as possible changes in environmental conditions over the past 2,700 years. Using EA-IRMS techniques, we examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Byrd. Alice Garcia.

Aggregation characteristic of prehistoric east-central Arizona archaeological sites influenced residential and regional identities during the Pueblo III (1100-1300 A.D.) period. Some aspects of these identities can be explored by focusing on mortuary feature and osteological data. In 1991, a total of 101 burial features were mapped and excavated at Slade Ruin (AZ Q:15:1 [ASM]) located on private land in Eager, Arizona to avoid contamination from a nearby hydrocarbon spill. This cemetery sample...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Dodd.

This paper summarizes eight years of ethnoarchaeological research into the material consequences of drug-trafficking behavior. Tens of thousands of mundane trash items have been retrieved from roadway margins in a suburban setting, then sorted and analyzed. More than 175 artifact categories and pavement features are identified that carry subtle meaning for both buyer and seller. Artifactual, behavioral, and linguistic evidence has been assembled that links individual drug types to everyday...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sterner-Miller. Robert Jeske. Robert Ahlrichs.

A combination of assemblage analysis, microwear analysis and blood residue analysis allows us to build a new understanding of the role of lithic material in the technological economy of Oneota groups in eastern Wisconsin. One foundation of this approach is accurate and replicable recognition of use-wear patterns. Blind tests have been an essential component of use-wear research since the 1970s. In this paper, we describe a study of 100 experimentally made and used chipped stone tools. Made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Kinkopf. Jess Beck.

Disturbing the dead has been considered a criminal activity in the Nile Valley since the trial of Egyptian tomb robbers in 1100 BCE. Looting is one of the most destructive forces at archaeological sites; grave robbing, in particular, leaves human remains and cultural heritage irreparably damaged. During 2007-2008, the Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition (OINE) worked to identify, record, and preserve important archaeological sites that have since been destroyed by the Merowe Dam. Al-Widay, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Buck. Donald Sabol.

We examine the detectability of sub-pixel artifacts (i.e. site midden, obsidian artifacts, and pottery sherds) using airborne and spaceborne image data. This poster focuses on research conducted to date at the Glass Mountain Site in northern California. This large obsidian quarry area has been investigated winter 2014 and again during the height of vegetation growth 2014. Visible, SWIR, and TIR spectral characteristics of targets and background were measured in the field. A spectral library...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Lou Larson. Marcel Kornfeld. George Frison.

Mammoths and thus mammoth bones are associated with Clovis occupation of North America, while subsequent cultures are associated with Bison antiquus (Paleoindians) or various Holocene faunal species. However, this simple scenario is complicated by occasional occurrences of extinct species in later period assemblages. The Hell Gap site joins this exclusive club with a recent discovery of a mammoth tusk in deposits at Locality I. The Hell Gap site in eastern Wyoming is a stratified Paleoindian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Navarro. Ricardo Higuelin. Verónica Pérez. Antonio Martínez.

In Mesoamerica twins were associated with a rich symbolism and imagery. The study of this topic has focused mainly on Nahua and Maya societies because of the large number of available stories and associated imagery. In archaeological contexts, finding twins is unusual. During the 2014 season of the Cerro Jazmin Archaeological Project two infants were found and excavated in a domestic terrace dating to the Ramos phase (300 BCE-300 CE). Osteological analyses indicate that they were two premature...