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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Arnold.

This presentation traces population estimates of the Chumash peoples on both sides of the Santa Barbara Channel through several thousand years, examining how researchers have arrived at those estimates and where possible suggesting how we might need to adjust both some of our assumptions and some of the outcomes. This review should be useful in further examining other phenomena such as sizes of labor forces available for the intensive Channel Islands specialized craft production industries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amira Ainis. Kristina Gill. Jon Erlandson. René Vellanoweth. Kristin Hoppa.

California’s Channel Islands are surrounded by some of the most extensive and productive kelp forests on the planet with nearshore environments containing more than 100 species of edible seaweeds. Archaeological deposits testify to the use of kelp forests by native islanders, but there has been little discussion of seaweeds as a food resource. Ethnohistoric evidence that Channel Islanders consumed seaweeds is limited,but accounts of islander foodways in general are minimal. Ethnographic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Fauvelle. Andrew Somerville.

The exchange of botanical subsistence resources such as nuts and seeds is well documented in ethnohistoric accounts of Chumash trade across the Santa Barbara Channel. But on what scale was such exchange carried out? Due to the perceived marginality of island environments, it has long been assumed that the need to import subsistence goods from the mainland to the islands was a central instigator for cross-channel exchange. Recent research, however, has shown that the islands were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Glassow. Jennifer Perry.

Although California mule deer never inhabited the Channel Islands during prehistoric times, deer limb bone fragments commonly occur at Channel Islands sites dated to the Middle Holocene, and fragments of worked deer bone also occur. In addition, mortuary collections obtained in the 1920s dating to the Middle Holocene contain artifacts of deer bone, including ornaments and hair pins. We summarize the evidence of deer bone importation to the Channel Islands and argue that the abundance of deer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Gusick. Jon Erlandson.

Islands have long been viewed as marginal habitats compared to mainland regions where terrestrial resources are generally more abundant and diverse. We examine this concept of island marginality by reviewing evidence for Paleocoastal settlement of islands off the Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California. If the islands were marginal, we should expect human settlement to occur relatively late in time and early use of the islands to be sporadic and specialized. For the Northern Channel Islands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Queeny Lapeña. Jessica Morales. René Vellanoweth.

The California Channel Islands contain one of the most productive coastlines in the world. Despite the perceived marginality of available resources on the islands, they encompass approximately 428 linear kilometers of rocky and sandy bottom habitats that have abundant shellfish beds. Thousands of shell middens dated to the past 12,000 years attest to the importance of these resources to native islanders. In this paper, we define the ecology and biogeography of intertidal shellfish communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisa Vázquez De Ágredos Pascual. Cristina Vidal Lorenzo. Patricia Horcajada Campos. Christa Schieber de Lavarreda.

La arqueología, la iconografía y la epigrafía maya han identificado desde hace décadas la importancia que tuvo el aroma entre los antiguos mayas, en especial como parte de la escenografía simbólica que envolvió distintos acontecimientos políticos y religiosos de profunda significancia en la cosmovisión de esta antigua cultura prehispánica. Más recientemente, la arqueometría ha empezado a caracterizar algunas de estas antiguas y simbólicas fragancias, lo que nos permite entender con mayor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Lorenzo. Gaspar Muñoz.

The presence of burials placed on the floor of the palaces and private patios within elite complexes but without offerings are truthful testimonies about the time of the Mayan settlements abandonment at the end of the Classical Terminal period. Such burials have been found at the Acropolis of La Blanca (Petén, Guatemala). Years later, during the Early Postclassic period, when those buildings had already partially collapsed and debris covered Terminal Classic material vestiges, other individuals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mora-Marin.

Language serves to enact and commemorate ritual behavior. And ritual behavior, while embedded in tradition, is adaptive, and can serve to mediate and implement social and cultural change. This paper examines epigraphic evidence of relevance to ritual practices and their contextualization and recontextualization, with the goal of tracing the correlation between linguistic practices, on the one hand, and social and cultural change, on the other. The goal is to document and account for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynneth Lowe.

La utilización de incensarios cerámicos con el fin de quemar ofrendas durante las ceremonias, que podrían ser resinas aromáticas, papel, semillas, flores u otros elementos, constituyó una tradición milenaria en el centro de Chiapas, como lo han demostrado las evidencias arqueológicas. Las excavaciones realizadas en Chiapa de Corzo y otros sitios de la Depresión Central, como Mirador o Vistahermosa, aportan información de gran interés sobre los orígenes, formas de uso y desarrollo estilístico de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Didierd Boremanse.

According to Lacandon worldview till the last century, the ruined buildings of Classic Maya culture, and the funerary caves found near small archaeological sites on the shores of lakes in the forest, were respectively the "houses" of celestial and terrestrial deities (who once lived on earth). From these shrines the ancestors of the Lacandon collected stone relics which they deposited at the bottom of their incense burners. A Lacandon censer is a clay pot with an anthropomorphic head modeled on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Popenoe Hatch. Matilde Ivic de Monterroso.

This paper compares expressions of ritualistic concepts that can be found on images on censers and on other artistic creations, including monuments and documents. The research concentrates on Late Preclassic and Early Classic developments in the Guatemala South Coast and Highlands but also uses relevant information from other areas. One of the objectives is to trace continuities and changes in forms of rituals and the manner in which individuals participated in them. It is found that contrasting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Violeta Vazquez Campa.

The figurines were an essential part of prehistoric people in Mesoamerica. In Oaxaca, these figurines were essential for daily and religious life in the village stages. It has been subject of several hypotheses in its role and significance in life due to the same range and presence in most places in the Oaxaca region. However, we were unable to determine a specific role for each stage or a decisive site because we need to carry out further excavations in contexts that include them. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Arroyo.

The site of Naranjo, located in the Central Maya highlands of Guatemala has an important occupation that begins around 800 BC. Here, many important rituals took place, some of them connected to the calendar and others as part of pilgrimage activities. Naranjo was part of a wider network of interaction as documented in the ceramics, site layout, sculptural practices, and figurine inventory. By 400 BC, the site was abandoned and continued like that until the Late Classic when a specific ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthias Stöckli.

According to the 16th-century Título K’oyoi, the K’iche’ captain Tecum participated in two elaborate ceremonies before leading his army into war against the Spanish conquerors. Both included dance and music and even though he later was killed in battle, Tecum somehow continued to dance until the present day, now taking part in the preparation and performance of the so-called Dance of the Conquest. This "fact" alone tells important things about the concepts and functions of dance and music in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Barrientos. Salazar Daniel. Sion Julien.

Durante el período Clásico, el culto a los antepasados en la cultura maya tuvo muchos propósitos, como fundamentar el arraigo a un lugar y la ostentación del poder por parte de un grupo familiar o linaje; esto se lograba haciendo de la figura de los antepasados agentes socialmente activos, rememorados mediante eventos rituales dedicados a su persona. Las evidencias arqueológicas de estas prácticas sugieren un fuerte vínculo entre estos personajes y el espacio, materializado generalmente en los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sergio Romero.

In this paper I will present an analysis of colonial texts in indigenous languages that describe or paraphrase pre-Hispanic ritual. I will present comparisons between the structure and poetics of such texts and those of contemporary Christian sacramental practice as attested in sixteenth and seventeenth century doctrines and catechisms. Based on the analysis of intertextuality, I will show that pre-Hispanic ritual genres became a template for the Spanish mendicant friars and their native...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christa Schieber de Lavarreda.

Archaeological record of 27 years of research at the ancient site Tak’alik Ab’aj at the southwestern pacific piedmont of Guatemala have summed evidence of a wide range of different ritual activities and patterns, which as well are represented through a huge diversity of materials and artistic or handicraft skills employed. The pivotal role of Tak’alik Ab’aj as a long distance trade center and precocious cultural and religious "mecca" with "international flair" is reflected in the materials and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlene Colman.

Offering 4 at La Venta consists of one brownstone and 15 greenstone human figurines arranged in front of six jade celts set on end. This unique offering was placed north of the pyramid in the Ceremonial Court of Complex A as part of a ritual activity that dedicated a new building phase in the court around 600 BC. It was associated with a massive serpentine pavement and a cruciform axe offering. About a century later, Offering 4 was reopened and checked. Offering 4 at La Venta conveys a story in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Orrego Corzo. Heber Delfino Torres Estrada.

Tak’alik Ab’aj since its heyday in Preclassic and during its long history until Late Classic, was an important trade and cultural center of the southwestern Maya Periphery. After abandonment of 1700 years of long-lived and uninterrupted history in 900 AD, this ancient city apparently maintained its significance as ancestral sacred place and rituals were performed as inconspicuous as possible, in view that the site has passed into private properties. Since de beginnings of the creation of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Calamia.

Evidence of American Indian occupation and use of the pipestone quarries (now Pipestone National Monument) has been dated to least 3,000 years ago. For centuries Indians have considered the quarries a sacred site. Today the quarries are also considered ethnographic resources as members of numerous federally recognized American Indian tribes continue to express their right to quarry pipestone (catlinite) and carve this stone owing to its spiritual value. Although numerous studies have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Jones.

Indigenous Cultural Resource Ceremonies looks at the relationship that Indigenous people have with archaeological sites and with sacred places. Spiritual connections that Indigenous people have with the land, waters and even with the stars and with the cycles of the moon. How is this relationship defined within modern archaeology and cultural resource management today? The relationship and the connections to places that we originate from. The villages, communities, towns, and the cities. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jewel Gentry.

The Californian Spanish colonial community of Mission San Miguel the Arcángel consisted primarily of Salinan, Tulare native populations and included neophyte Indians from previously established Missions of San Luis Obispo and San Antonio. Within the Mission Church examples of 19th century "graffiti" can be found etched throughout the sanctified interior. Researchers have suggested that specific sections of these stylized markings are analogous to California Indian rock art with parallels being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Breck Parkman.

Located in the eastern San Francisco Bay area, Mount Diablo (3,848’) rises from an otherwise almost featureless terrain, making it highly visible from much of central California. Because of its visibility, Diablo is a backdrop to ethnographic and contemporary mythologies. The view from the peak is considered one of the most spectacular and unhindered in the world. Easily accessible by vehicle, the summit is visited daily by hundreds of tourists, many whom throw coins and other objects from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Saltzman.

This paper will discuss the interaction between an archaeologist, a Native American who is a most likely descendent from the archaeological site, and a municipal government agency in the rediscovery, documentation and eventual repatriation of indigenous knowledge of a previously unrecorded rock art site. The rock is located in Northern California, on the lake bottom of a municipal water district water property. How should the rock be recorded? Does anyone really "own" that information? Who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Emerson.

In American archaeology, as practiced in the context of cultural resource management, recognition and protection of sacred places requires application of bureaucratic standards that may not co-exist peacefully with the cultural norms of those most concerned about such protection. Definitions of the sacred exist in an awkward balance between the regulatory need for a precise, legally defensible definition and the reality that sacredness is a culturally-based concept that resists easy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Gillette.

The word sacred (or Sacred) can encompass many meanings. Some are tangible – others not. The sacred can exist in the mind or be defined on a map. Are there two sacreds – one with a small "s" and the other with a capital "S"? What constitutes the Sacred and who defines it, and with what parameters? How is sacredness determined, and who decides? Is it a legal term that is defined by the courts? Are there degrees of sacredness? Can sacred and profane co-exist? What role do Native oral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher (Toby) McLeod.

In 40 years of filmmaking, I have explored indigenous peoples' relationship to sacred places threatened by extractive industries spawned by a culture that values profiting, owning and collecting material artifacts of great worth. Archaeology – like filmmaking – has evolved in the last 40 years to include the concerns and perspectives of cultures all over the world, including indigenous people. Previous methods labeled Euro-centric, racist or exclusionary have been intensively questioned. If the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cory Wilkins.

The Archaeological Conservancy (TAC) is the only national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving archaeological sites across the United States. In the late 1970s the founders of TAC recognized the threat and lack of protections to archaeological sites on private lands. In response, TAC was organized and incorporated. Often, TAC is contacted by archaeology firms, state agencies, and landowners with requests to explore the possibility of preserving a specific site. Many landowners find...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Soderberg.

A common vision of the medieval Irish monk involves the aesthetic alone at the edge of the world occasionally appearing to bring flashes of the sacred to the rest of us. Here, the sacred is carefully delimited from the profane. Archaeology has done much in recent decades to elaborate this portrait of the monk into a fuller vision of life at monasteries with all of its mundane entanglements. But, archaeology has largely deferred the task of considering the impact of all that information on how we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hoffman. Chelsea Starke. Forest Seaberg-Wood. Kevin Reider. Liesl Weber Darnell.

Both archaeological and ethnographic evidence supports the idea that the locations of petroglyphs and pictographs are considered sacred. In the Northern Plains of North America, the Jeffers Petroglyphs and similar petroglyph sites along the Red Rock Ridge are part of a landscape which includes habitations, petroforms, lithic reduction sites, and quarries. We report on the results of archaeological fieldwork at four sites along the Red Rock Ridge near the Jeffers Petroglyphs: a habitation site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Sanders.

The Hindquarters of God, Seeing the Sacred in a Landscape: As the needs of our expanding society increasingly refashion our natural environment, we struggle to maintain healthy habitats and our sacred places. Archaeologists, land developers, lawmakers, theologians, and indigenous practioners of traditional spirituality all struggle with conflicting views of what do we mean when we declare that something is sacred and how do we recognize and preserve sacred places. The burning questions at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Vogel.

Efforts to recover and protect indigenous sacred sites in the United States by framing conflicts over them in adversarial terms that employ the vocabulary of conventional legal doctrine on religious liberty and property rights have failed to succeed despite the creative efforts of many advocates. One cannot understand these failed efforts and move toward the development of a more hopeful approach to these conflicts without taking seriously the contrast between Indigenous views of the land and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Cooney.

A notable feature of the Irish prehistory is the recurrence of activity over long periods of time in specific areas. These persistent places or landscapes are also a feature of the wider world of prehistoric Atlantic Europe. This pattern of human activity has been long debated. Depending on the point of view of the researcher it can be explained for example as indicating foci of long-term settlement, as the repeated but unrelated use of areas improved by human modification in the context of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert David.

For the past three decades, efforts to interpret Klamath Basin rock art symbols using ethnographic literature and concepts of sacred landscapes have advanced our understanding of the art. This approach, however, is limited by the assumption that the rock art symbols meant the same thing in every social and land use context. From my research of the past decade I have inferred that rock art designs are not distributed randomly across the landscape. Instead, rock art displays appear to vary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Ewonus.

This paper examines past foodways within the southern Strait of Georgia, Pacific Northwest Coast at a number of geographic scales. It also addresses the extent and nature of temporal shifts in the social landscape of the region. Seasonal use of the landscape is revealed through an understanding of place in the Salish Sea. Zooarchaeological analysis of a regional sample of thirty sites suggests that while extensive variation was characteristic of southern Strait of Georgia settlement from 3200 BC...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. Thurston. Aadel Franzén.

Relationships between subjecthood and rulership in northern European societies changed significantly between the late prehistoric and early modern eras, as long-extant nations were absorbed by emergent states. Using a landscape approach to food production and livelihood affordances, we study changing conditions and production strategies of forest agropastoralists in a marginal Swedish upland, through episodes of climate change and turbulent interaction with governing powers. Perspectives on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Zaneri.

Landscapes and foodways are intrinsically connected. Food practices act as a frame of reference to impose social, historical, and cultural meanings on places and vice-versa; their materiality provides a sense of stability in shifting demographic settings. Culinary activities can help structure the experience of place and through repetition become involved in the creation and transmission of collective memory. However, memory is far from stagnant, it continues to be challenged and reworked in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone.

Archaeologists often struggled with understanding the life-cycles of relic agricultural field systems. By incorporating the multi-variable approach of the adaptive cycle, complex relationship dynamics can be identified and applied to understanding the historical sequences of specific cases studies. Demonstrating this is the intensive terrace systems and settlement within the Contreras Valley and the associated ancient Maya center of Minanha, Belize. The variables identified include the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantel White. Demetri Brellas. Nathan Arrington.

The movement of goods, information, and people across the Classical world has been a subject of intense archaeological investigation for over a century. Established trading outposts, known as Greek emporia, contained a multitude of cultural elements from indigenous communities, Classical Greece, the eastern Aegean, and beyond. The ongoing excavation of a coastal site in northern Greece as part of the Molyvoti Thrace Archaeological Project has revealed a Classical Greek settlement dating to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbons. George Hambrecht.

Early in the settlement of Iceland, social perceptions were imported along with herds of livestock primarily from Norway. Cultural identity and agricultural traditions can influence and react upon each other. Iceland provides a unique location to explore these intersections as an island intellectually connected to Europe but isolated from significant trade routes. An exploration of Iceland’s rich literary tradition suggests that the Icelandic social landscape coalesced and matured from the early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Ivanova-Bieg. Elena Marinova.

During the spread of farming from the Near East to Europe, farmers and their domestic plants and animals gradually penetrated into new environments. Reaching the northern periphery of the Balkans (present day Serbia, northern Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary), early farmers encountered for the first time an ecological zone that significantly differed from the natural habitats of their domesticates. The continental environmental conditions, i.e. frosty winters with snow cover, stronger expressed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Madgwick. Angela Lamb. Jane Evans.

This paper explores the interplay between food provision, landscape and power centres in late Neolithic Britain. This period is characterised by iconic megalithic ceremonial complexes, the most famous of which is Stonehenge. These centres represent a new scale of labour mobilisation, not previously seen in Britain. Evidence for feasting, invariably focussing on pork, is rife is in the environs of these monuments, yet settlement evidence is generally sparse. It is likely that these feasting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie-Anne Bouchard-Perron.

Since the Age of Discovery, Quebec City and its broader area have seen their lot of colonists and travellers, some of which chose to establish themselves in the region. Their relationship with this, initially new, landscape was transformed through time, following wider political events and social convictions. The nature of their attitudes and perceptions to the territory impacted their foodways by calling upon particular social networks. In doing so they reflected colonialist and nationalist...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Scott.

All of France’s New World colonies were based on relationships with particular geographies, from eastern New France, to the western Great Lakes, to the Illinois Country, to Lower Louisiana and the Caribbean, according to the particular products and resources wanted by the Crown, which may be thought of as the ultimate "consumer" of French colonial landscapes. Colonists and French descendant communities engaged with these different landscapes for both commercial and family subsistence purposes....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erendira Quintana Morales.

In the Swahili towns of the East African coast, fish have contributed a major source of protein consumed by coastal inhabitants, but the role of fish consumption in the construction of social meaning is rarely discussed. This paper addresses this gap by exploring spatial differences in fish consumption strategies around Songo Mnara, a 15th -16th century Swahili town in the Kilwa Archipelago, and links them to social patterns visible in the organization of the town. The spatial distribution of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Birmingham.

This presentation will explain three possible strains an anarchist archaeology might pursue. While I will briefly explain how my own work in the related field of material culture studies relates to anarchist scholarship, the focus will be on exploring what an anarchist archaeology might look like. In brief one focuses on the far past or perceived "past" and what we may learn from it; the next on more recent resistance and alternative political forms; and the final on the contemporary anarchist...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bill Angelbeck.

Archaeologists can view the societies of the archaeological record through the lens of their contemporary experience. I will explore how archaeologists have viewed past societies in terms of their experience within states based in capitalism. Some identify "rational economic actors" primarily as pursuing individual gain, or others find "aggrandizers" as the active, entrepreneurial agents of change in past societies. These arguments propound the socioeconomic dynamics of capitalist societies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Severin Fowles.

This paper takes up the writings of Clastres, Deleuze and Guattari on the core premise that war is a driving sociological principle in societies that have successfully opposed the development of state organization. My first goal is an attempt at clarification: if predatory military exploits are involved in the consolidation of most, if not all, states, what did Clastres mean when, in contrast, he wrote about the centrifugal logic of the war machine in non-state societies? My second goal is to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lewis Borck.

Globally, archaeologists often talk about cultural change as a dynamic, directional process that leads toward either failure (collapse, reorganization, abandonment, and "stability") or state level societies. This evokes a unilinear evolutionary framework that most admit is flawed. But what if state level societies were not the "pinnacle" of human civilization? What if states represent societal failure instead? From this position, often glossed over historic periods may stand out as lynchpins...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sanger.

Traditional conceptions of power, hierarchy, and inequity focus on the relations between and among human communities. To a certain extent, objects and places are considered important aspects of human relations, but they are largely framed as inanimate tools wielded by human actors. This prevalent view is threatened by a rich body of research among non-Western societies that shows non-human things, places, and animals are often considered to be powerful beings imbued with agency and efficacy....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Gonzalez-Tennant.

This paper explores the relationship between anarchism, collaborative archaeology, and the decolonization of African diaspora heritage in the US and Caribbean. The heart of anarchism as a political theory articulates a robust criticism of hierarchy, and neatly intersects growing interests in collaborative archaeology and heritage. This represents a crucial intersection as the majority of archaeological projects remains rigidly hierarchical, often resulting in the silencing of local stakeholder...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kretzler. Joss Whittaker. Ben Marwick.

Kintigh et al (2014) recently published a survey of archaeologists that claimed to identify 'archaeology's most important scientific challenges'. Numerous commentators have critiqued the small sample size of this survey (181 respondents) and the subjective reading of the responses. We use quantitative methods to analyse the full text of the survey responses and discover different challenges to those highlighted by Kintigh et al. We also analyse over 6000 archaeology journal articles in JSTOR to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Wells. David Anderson. Eric Kansa. Sarah Kansa. Stephen Yerka.

Demands for archaeological "big data" must move strategically beyond buzzwords. Sciences and humanities that are successfully augmenting their workflows with ubiquitous computing are necessarily dealing with issues of accessibility, interoperability, and fundamental questions about the intended utility of core collection strategies at massive scales. Fortunately for archaeology, solutions to these issues are achievable through emphases on existing research networks and readily "open" solutions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Brughmans.

Most citation network analysis techniques are designed to identify the main paths of the ‘flow of academic influence’ through a citation network, or result in a ranking of publications with the highest scores for certain network measures. Although such results are interesting, they are not always particularly surprising. A recent application of citation network techniques to a network of archaeological literature concluded that a literature review will allow one to identify key works and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kansa.

This paper explores the challenges in recognizing and rewarding greater openness and collaboration in archaeology, given neoliberal institutional realities. After years of advocacy, governments and major granting foundations have embraced many elements of the open science reform agenda. The White House recently made open access and open data in research a policy goal, and it is exploring other policies to promote "reproducibility" in federally-funded research, including archaeology. Despite open...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Faulkner. Alison Crowther. Mary Prendergast. Mark Horton. Nicole Boivin.

Decades of pioneering archaeological research have firmly established East Africa’s offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region’s pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonisation – and in particular the processes by which migrating Iron Age groups...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Harris. Weisler Marshall. Ariana Lambrides.

Islands have long been extolled as ideal ‘laboratories’ where comparative analyses between high volcanic, continental, makatea (or raised limestone) and low coral islands or atolls have provided insights into the speed and tempo of social, technological, and economic change of insular societies over centuries to millennia. The severity and chronology of human impacts on pristine landscapes is a common theme in island archaeology. Ironically, the diminutive atolls—most only a few square...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Keegan.

The construction of space usually begins with the georeferencing of physical boundaries. As such, space becomes an external container that affects the structure of it contents. This paper explores the construction of space from the perspective of the individual. It begins by recognizing the minimal distance of face-to-face interactions and expands outward from there. The first step is to reject three-dimensional space and to situate the individual in an n-dimensional space. Production,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torben Rick. Leslie Reeder-Myers. Kenneth Gobalet. Nicholas Jew. Thomas Wake.

Anacapa Island (2.9 km2) is the second smallest of California’s Channel Islands and has limited freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity. Called ‘Anayapax, a word meaning deception or mirage, by the Chumash, archaeologists have long speculated that the island was occupied seasonally or as a stopover by people based on the mainland or other islands. Here, we focus on our recent archaeological research at CA-ANI-2 and other Anacapa sites. Occupied between about 3130 and 2750 cal BP, CA-ANI-2...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian McNiven.

The Kulkalgal of central Torres Strait are marine specialists who established a series of viable hunter-horticultural communities on small sandy cays highly vulnerable to seasonal drought and associated water and plant food shortages. Here risk management strategies focused on the well-known buffering mechanisms of high mobility, translocation, food and water storage, and plant food importation. However, for the Kulkalgal, risk management strategies for survival also involved a broad range of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Poteate. Scott Fitzpatrick.

Across the world’s seas and oceans, archaeological research focused on islands has traditionally privileged those which are larger in size. Myriad reasons can explain this phenomenon, ranging from the (mis)perception by scholars that prehistoric peoples would have been attracted to the greater number and diversity of resources typically available on larger islands, to the ephemeral aspect of archaeological evidence on smaller land areas along with issues that archaeologists face in terms of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Wickler.

The definition of island marginality in northern Norway was radically altered by the advent of motorized fishing vessels in the early 20th century. Prior to this development, small offshore islands were of central importance for settlement and marine related activity due to their proximity to fishing grounds. In this paper I discuss three settlements on small and ‘marginal’ islands in Arctic Norway from 68°19’ to 71°05’ N latitude that illustrate the centrality of such locations since the Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Toney.

By the summer of 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) had constructed over 3000 checkdams within the Silver City Watershed. Men working in Little Walnut CCC Camp located a few miles outside of Silver City, New Mexico were focused on rehabilitating the Silver City Watershed from 1933-1940. Many of these features are still visible and functioning on the lands administered by Gila National Forest, Silver City Ranger District. These water and erosion control features are not only a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Barnum.

The most prominent New Deal work-relief program with regard to archaeology was the Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA), which existed from 1935 to 1943. Functioning through sponsoring universities, historical societies, and other agencies, the WPA supported major field and laboratory projects. In Nebraska, almost all of the New Deal archaeological projects were carried out with WPA-funded labor. Between 1936 and 1941, the University of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Schofer. Peter Pilles.

During the 1930s, federal New Deal programs financed and supported a number of archaeological projects in northern Arizona. Within National Parks and Monuments, surveys and excavations were undertaken so that people could see archaeological sites, and visitor centers were constructed to display and interpret archaeology for the public. Several major expeditions by the Museum of Northern Arizona were also supported by New Deal programs. Excavations from 1933 to 1939 were directed by professional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven James.

Perhaps the earliest Federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) archaeological project in California was conducted during the winter of 1933-34 at five sites along Buena Vista Lake in Kern County by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), Smithsonian Institution. The project location was chosen for several reasons: mild winter climate, high number of unemployed men from nearby oil towns, and large, deep prehistoric sites. At the height of the excavations, the labor force amounted to 187 men. BAE...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Howe.

The International Boundary Commission (IBC) conducted many projects along the entire U.S. – Mexico border during the Depression. Many of the projects were in cooperation with the Mexican Commission (Mexico) as per treaty stipulations. These projects were conducted under funds from agencies such as the Public Works Commission (PWC), Works Progress Administration (WPA) and others. Examination of the original documents and maps at the present International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schelberg. Carla Van West.

In 1937, a unique Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) sponsored "Indian Mobil Unit" was established in Chaco Canyon. The camp was located east of Pueblo Bonito and the goal was to train Navajo men and a woman in stone masonry, ruins stabilization, drainage control, archaeological excavation, and associated administrative tasks. In 1939, under the direction of National Park Service (NPS) archaeologist Gordon Vivian, men from the Indian Mobile Unit excavated a small village site in advance of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Sutton.

The CCC and other New Deal agencies were active across the Gila National Forest during the 1930s. The North Star Road (which experienced earlier use as a Military Road) runs alongside the Gila Wilderness, the nation’s first wilderness area, established in 1924. The road is now sandwiched between the Gila Wilderness and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness (part of the first Wilderness established in 1964, under the Wilderness Act). Significant work was conducted along the North Star Road by the CCC. How...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Bostwick. Steven James.

The Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona is well known for its wealth of archaeological sites left behind by PaleoIndian, Archaic, and Formative period cultures. During the Great Depression, archaeological surveys and excavation projects provided employment opportunities for hundreds of young men and women seeking jobs. Bryon Cummings and Emil Haury at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Odd Halseth at Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix took advantage of a variety of New Deal work programs to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower. Kathleen M. O'Meara. Ioana A. Dumitru. Clara J. Hickman. Jacob L. Bongers.

Three-Dimensional modeling is rapidly transforming reconstruction, visualization and conceptualization of ancient architecture. Many archaeologists are enthusiastic about 3D modeling and implementation of 3D methodologies has been rapid; others remain skeptical that the outcomes of 3D modeling justify the time and resources expended. This paper considers the strengths, weaknesses, and future prospects of 3D models. We discuss results of two projects that used photogrammetry and advanced GPS to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark McCoy.

Architecture holds a special place in archaeological reconstructions of past societies. I discuss how advances in the application of spatial technology in the study of architecture in the Hawaiian Islands has put us in a better position to describe how the creation of an archaic state society shaped this all-important material indicator of social change. I draw upon forms that are commonplace – house complexes, fields, and small temples and shrines – as well as less common classes of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese. Timothy Kohler.

There are many architectural features in the Mesa Verde region that have been defined as "community centers," or rather, specific areas of cultural and social significance. Community centers may contain several public features, including a: Great Kiva, Reservoir, Great House, Plaza, Tower, and others. Although these features are assumed to have served a large surrounding population, the placement of these structures on the landscape can help us understand the ease with which the surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Contreras.

The monumental center of Chavín de Huántar in the Peruvian Central Andes has been the subject of mapping efforts for more than a century, and of digital mapping efforts since the mid-1990s. Spatial technology has been fundamental to significant revision of the site’s construction sequence, definition and extent, and ultimately interpretation. This results from the site’s complex, three-dimensional, and often-obscured architecture, mapping which has only become practical – and perhaps even...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Ore Menendez. Steven Wernke.

Large archaeological settlements with complex architecture have been always difficult to map. The introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles to fly over sites has helped reduce the time and increase precision of archaeological mapping; nevertheless post-processing time is still a workflow bottleneck. We present a geospatial imagery-based methodology for identifying and mapping surficially-visible structures and environmental features at a late pre-Hispanic and colonial settlement with extensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wetherbee Dorshow. Patricia Crown. John Crock.

Airborne LiDAR and orthophotography are increasingly ubiquitous in modern archaeological research, particularly at the regional scale. For detailed intrasite analyses of architectural sites, rockshelters, and caves, however, these airborne technologies offer limited utility. This paper highlights the significant research potential and conservation value of very high-resolution terrestrial LiDAR and gigapan HDR photogrammetry for architectural and "built" cultural dwelling places. Drawing on two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Guzman.

Guatemalan archaeology is benefiting from new technologies for the monitoring and measurement of spatial information. Traditionally, archaeologists have relied on specialists in mapping and surveying to record spatial data and use it as the basis for the study of distribution of cultural traits. However, advances in mapping technology which allow non-specialists to collect multiple data points in shorter amounts of time is greatly aiding archaeologists working at sites in Guatemala. Other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Tripcevich.

Emerging geospatial technologies have been applied to archaeological research problems in the Andean region by many researchers and this paper will provide a regional review of these contributions to architectural studies. Aerial remote sensing, both at regional and local scales, geophysical sensing, and mapping technologies like laser scanners and photogrammetry have enabled Andeanists to document architecture and construction features with new precision. Advances in geospatial software has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Safi. Adam Wiewel. Katie Simon. Andrew Duff.

This study combines spatial technology with traditional field methods to accurately identify and map the monumental architecture of the late Pueblo II Largo Gap great house. Although previous visits by early researchers to the site identified monumental architectural characteristics typically associated with Chaco-style great houses (primarily the presence of a great kiva), the surface expression of such features is currently lacking. Rubble present along the steep slopes of the knoll upon which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chester Walker. Nathaniel VanValkenburg. Mark Willis.

In the late 16th century CE, Spanish administrators and clergy sought to reconstitute indigenous Peruvian subjects by forcibly resettling them into planned towns called reducciones. Mapping domestic space in these new settlements (and those that preceded them) has been a crucial element of archaeological research that seeks to understand reduccion's impact on native households. However, on the Peruvian coast, where both late prehispanic and early colonial period domestic structures are dominated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Osborne.

Visibility Graph Analysis, or VGA, is a means of evaluating architectural environments based on a number of properties of intervisibility between points distributed within two-dimensional building plans. Created by Alasdair Turner for modern architects as a way to further space syntax analysis (itself based on patterns of accessibility instead of visibility), archaeologists have slowly been incorporating VGA into their work over the past decade. In this paper I outline the stages involved with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Sullivan.

The integration of GIS and 3D modeling now allows for the recreation and visualization of entire ancient landscapes. 3D Saqqara uses these capabilities to create a truly four-dimensional exploration of the cemetery of Saqqara, Egypt. The project offers a workflow for how 2D archaeological and architectural data can be transformed into 3D representations of the ancient built and natural environment, while maintaining the geo-spatial coordinate system of GIS and allowing for both quantitative and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Castillo Butters.

In an effort to protect our Cultural Patrimony UAVs or Drones are increasingly use to map and 3D Model archaeological sites. In Peru, the Ministerio de Cultura is leading efforts to systematically record sites using drones, produce ortophotography from the photos, and produce 3D models of the sites. Archaeologists and geographers hired by the MC are using more than 20 drones to cover the territory and register as many site as possible. Ortophotos are use for registration and surveying, 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Casana. Adam Wiewel. Autumn Cool.

Archaeologists have recognized since the 1970s that thermal images captured at an optimal time in the diurnal cycle have the potential to reveal surface artifacts, subtle topography, and even subsurface architectural remains. However, it is only with the recent development of reliable and stable unmanned aerial vehicles, small, uncooled, high-resolution thermal cameras, and powerful photogrammetric image processing software that archaeological aerial thermography has become practical. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Aliya Hoff. Mike Hess. Falko Kuester.

With the emergence of low-cost multicopters on the market, archaeologists have rapidly integrated aerial imaging and photogrammetry with more traditional methods of site documentation. UAVs serve as simple yet transformative tools that can rapidly map archaeological sites with increased efficiency and higher resolution than manual measurements while contextualizing the site within the landscape at costs significantly cheaper than plane-based aerial LIDAR systems. Though structure from motion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only César Parcero-Oubiña. Patricia Mañana-Borrazás. Alejandro Güimil-Fariña. Mariela Pino. César Borie.

The paper summarizes the contribution of UAV to the documentation of a vast group of late Prehispanic agrarian elements (fields, irrigation canals) in the arid Atacama area (northern Chile). Taking advantage of the extraordinary preservation and visibility of fields, canals and other constructions, the general mapping of the area was based on a combination of visual interpretation of high resolution satellite images (GeoEye 1) and fieldwork. However, despite their high resolution, satellite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morag Kersel. Austin Hill.

Birds’ eye views of archaeological sites and landscapes provide excellent vantage points for our understanding of the past. Images from archives, balloons, drones, kites, poles, and satellites are changing the ways in which we carry out archaeological investigations. In cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities under the umbrella project of Follow the Pots, the Landscapes of the Dead Research Project is using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, ‘drones’) to monitor archaeological site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Lee. Carl Lipo. Suzanne Wechsler.

In the last 5 years, the commercial availability of embedded computer systems and low-cost hardware has led to an explosion of lightweight aerial platforms for photography. Offering multispectral imaging with outstanding spatial resolutions, these platforms offer researchers an inexpensive means of systematically documenting the archaeological record on the scale of landscapes. Through our exploration of hobby-class vehicles and the Trimble X100 and UX5 aerial platforms, we learned that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein. Ishiba Ranoli Oñasojle. Sarah Chapman. Robert Littman.

Ancient Thmuis represents one of the best preserved examples of a Greco-Romano-Egyptian metropolis in the Nile Delta. However, preservation of the tell is variable, with sections on the periphery having been stripped by systematic looting of mud and red brick to buildings while in the center of the tell walls three stories tall and well-defined streets are common. Archaeological work and subsequent preservation have depended on a variety of imaging methods to reconstruct segments of the city. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Hinojosa-Balino. Henrik Brahe.

In this presentation we will show the way we used an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to reproduce an accurate map of Kom Wasit, an archaeological site of the Nile Delta located in the province of Beheira. An orthophoto was generated using photogrammetry and GIS, which combined layers of information such as the magnetometry results and the topography survey. It was therefore possible to recreate what can be dug in the future and to understand the settlement pattern of this Late Dynastic town. SAA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only B. Sunday Eiselt. J. Andrew Darling. Samuel Duwe. Chet Walker. Mark Willis.

Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are changing the way that archaeologists conduct fieldwork with Native American Tribes. We present an application of UAV mapping and visualization technology in a combined boots-on-the-ground and satellite reconnaissance of Classic period (A.D. 1350-1600) ancestral Pueblo sites and agricultural systems. This approach reduced field time and enhanced efficiency in the identification and recordation of regionally extensive prehistoric features at a level of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Erny. Gerardo Gutierrez. Alyssa Friedman. Melanie Godsey. Machal Gradoz.

This paper addresses how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are used as a platform to produce accurate topographic maps with a considerable reduction in time and costs associated with fieldwork when compared with a total station. For this study, data was collected in the controlled environment of a mapping course to compare the procedures and time required to train archaeology students in the operation of a total station versus the operation of a small UAV equipped with digital cameras. An...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Pacheco Gonzalez. Gerardo Gutierrez. Felipe Ramirez-Sánchez.

El desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías (UAVs) han permitido explorar, generar y diversificar nuevos puntos de vista aéreos de sitios arqueológicos y como resultado generar una conciencia social hacia la conservación, investigación y preservación del patrimonio cultural de México. En esta ponencia se presentarán los casos de Cuicuilco y El Salto, México, como ejemplos de modelación fotogramétrica de sitios arqueológicos y monumentos coloniales con UAVs. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Mark. Evelyn Billo.

A radio-controlled DJI Phantom quadcopter with GoPro or built-in camera can help document archaeological features best seen from the air, such as geoglyphs, rock alignments, and some rock art panels. The camera can be set for interval photography, or monitored and triggered in real-time. The fisheye image distortion can be reasonably corrected with software such as Photoshop or DxO. This portable and relatively inexpensive method of flying a pattern and hovering directly above a site (now...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Searcy.

There has been a significant increase in the use of UAVs throughout the world to aid in archaeological investigations. Unfortunately the current U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has enforced strict policies that prohibit most institutions and private firms to use these aerial vehicles. As a result archaeologists in the United States are falling behind in implementing an important tool in archaeological reconnaissance. This paper outlines the progress made thus far by the FAA to reform these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Willis. Eleanor Harrison-Buck. Chester Walker.

Saturday Creek is a sizeable Maya site center with an elite residence, three large pyramids, and two ballcourts. While much of the site core is in bush, most of the surrounding area has been cleared for agriculture. While the clearing makes for good visibility, the hinterland settlement has been subject to extensive bulldozing, repeated plowing, and removal of stone over the years, obscuring the smaller mounds and making it difficult to discern them on the ground. In less than two days, we flew...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Hill. Andrew Petersen.

As part of the "Visualizing Qatars Past" project, drones are being used at the Islamic Period site of Ruwayda, on the north coast of Qatar, to document extant structures and investigate buried features. A Microdrone equipped with visible light, near infrared, and thermal sensors was used to document the fort and surrounding areas. By combining thermal imaging of the site with photogrammetric mapping, it was possible to identify architecture in and around the site that is difficult or impossible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hernandez Garavito.

The Peruvian central coast is widely known in the archaeological literature as the locus of small polities that co-existed in environments of limited resources through cooperation and competition. However, most archaeological research has been greatly influenced by ethnohistoric accounts which populated the Late Intermediate Period in the Andes with a number of warring societies, and not on direct archaeological evidence. Recent research points towards a more complex scenario, in which the Inka...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Brown Vega. Nathan Craig.

The formation of economically specialized communities in the coastal valleys of Peru by the late Archaic (3000 BC) has long been accepted. Specialized groups exchanged products with each other, negotiating both local and more far-flung exchange networks by the Initial Period (ca. 1800-900 BC). By the end of the Early Horizon (ca. 300 BC) communities in coastal and inland valley areas built numerous fortifications, suggesting conflict or preparations for defense that must have changed interaction...