Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Clarke.

The bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) has been cultivated for at least 10,000 years and was the only plant species cultivated in both the Old and New Worlds before Columbus; in this sense, it can be considered the world’s first global crop. Its durable fruit shells are used for containers, apparel and musical instruments throughout the tropics, subtropics and some temperate zones worldwide. Despite the importance of bottle gourd, its distribution across many cultures, and a long-standing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Aldana.

In 2013, an innovative study applied Bayesian statistical analysis to new AMS 14C samples taken from a Classic Maya lintel originating at Tikal. Because the lintel was inscribed with a Maya Long Count date, the authors argued that the results of their study confirmed the Calendar Correlation Constant known as the GMT. There are, however, two key problems with this new study and its conclusions. The first is an error of interpretation of the hieroglyphic text; the second is the questionable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kolleen Kralick. Bridget Roth. Towny Anderson. Molly Westby.

Fire lookouts are symbolic within the US Forest Service. Following the devastating fires of 1910, early fire detection became a priority, and lookout towers began to be built throughout the country. Although technology has practically made lookouts obsolete as early fire warning systems, their historic significance and a powerful nostalgia makes them the ideal subject for a preservation initiative which focuses on restoration and celebration of these important icons. In 2013 the USFS, Forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Meer. J. Ryan Young. D. Shane Miller. Albert C. Goodyear.

In 1984, Goodyear and Charles conducted a survey of an area adjacent to the Savannah River encompassing the Allendale Chert quarries, which includes the multi-component Topper Site (38AL23) in Allendale County, South Carolina. During the summer of 2015, Mississippi State University revisited a 102-acre area included in this survey. The survey revealed a near continuous scatter of lithic debitage throughout the project area, at varying depths across different geomorphological settings....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Neyland. Alexis Catsambis.

The Sunken Military Craft Act (SMCA) was enacted on October 28, 2004. The SMCA preserves and protects from disturbance all sunken military craft owned by the U.S. government, as well as foreign sunken military craft submerged or buried in the seabed within U.S. territorial waters. The Navy's sunken ship and aircraft wrecks remain U.S. property regardless of their location in U.S, international, or foreign waters. Ownership is not changed by the passage of time. These wrecks may not be disturbed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Melcher.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute began making extensive use of digital technology to aid in archaeological research. The past 25 years of research have left a plethora of data on a variety of digital media. Current work on developing a new interpretive plan for downtown Pensacola, Florida made it necessary to update and combine as much of this data as possible. Updating this information required the use of a variety of hardware and software...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marimar Becerra Alvarez.

La arquitectura es una forma de expresión cultural producto de la abstracción humana, a través de ella el hombre materializa ciertas ideas y va modificando su entorno para construir paisajes que son determinados por los procesos históricos y que responden a sus necesidades funcionales, prácticas y estéticas. En la zona costera de la Sierra de Santa Marta se tiene el registro de pequeñas estructuras arquitectónicas superficiales de forma circular asociadas a los sitios portuarios de la costa. En...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Neville. Tiffany Birakis.

Three-dimensional digitization technology is opening up a new world of opportunities for the analysis and manipulation of artifacts without the risk of extraneous handling of the original, which could compromise preservation. This poster examines the practice of digital scanning on a collection of Mesoamerican spindle whorls at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, Florida, discussing the hardware and software used for digitization, as well as the process of creating accurate three-dimensional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren Davis. Alex Nyers. Daniel Bean.

We describe a digital 3D geometric morphometry approach that employs GIS-based routines to extract information about the form of Western Stemmed Tradition projectile points from sites located in the Columbia River Plateau of the Pacific Northwest. These data are used to describe a number of novel morphometric measures and to compare the design characteristics of regional early stemmed projectile points. We explore issues of artifact use, rejuvenation and repair and how these aspects can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Koller.

This paper explores the organizational impact of Spanish contact on the island of Luzon, Philippines from the 15th-19th centuries through an analysis of sound landscapes (soundscapes) that are produced by the habitual ringing of Catholic Church bells. Church bells in Luzon were intended to notify local residents of prayer congregation or of impending ‘Moro’ attacks; however the bells were also Spanish territorial markers that flaunted power and demanded the attention of residents living within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jade DAlpoim Guedes. R. Kyle Bocinsky. Sturt Manning.

The timing and mechanics of the spread of agriculture to the Tibetan Plateau—one of the most challenging environmental contexts on Earth—is a focus of recent work and debate. In research on the spread of agriculture, researchers have sought evidence for the earliest, furthest or highest occurrences of diagnostic elements. However, the case of the Tibetan Plateau illustrates a key flaw in current work: archaeologists have often uncritically interpreted the presence of plant domesticates at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seren Griffiths. Erick Robinson. Philip Buckland. Ralph Fyfe. Kevan Edinborough.

The 8.2ka ’event’ is represented by significant cooling in multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental records (e.g. Alley et al. 1997; Kobashi et al. 2007; Thomas et al. 2007; cf. Wiersma 2008). This temperature drop, and its related consequences, have been presented as factors in human social changes across Europe and the Near East (e.g. Roberts et al. 2011; van der Plicht et al. 2011). However, given the complexity of regional and local ecosystems, the impacts across broad geographical scales were likely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoopes.

In 1987, the author’s doctoral dissertation featured a comprehensive analysis of calibrated radiocarbon dates associated with the earliest ceramic complexes in the Americas towards a model for the emergence of sedentary lifeways. This resulted in a critical evaluation of James Ford’s posthumously published model for the Early Formative diffusion of pottery as well as other cultural features in a region extending from the Southeastern U.S. through Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian Area to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Adolfo Cadena Guativa.

Las cerámicas tempranas del Caribe Colombiano (5000 a 1000 a.C.), las más antiguas del continente, son importantes en la formulación de hipótesis sobre origen y producción de alimentos en América. Esta investigación plantea un estudio tecnológico de cerámicas de Puerto Hormiga y Monsú desarrollando tres actividades. Primero, se determinaron las propiedades físicas y mineralógicas mediante técnicas de laboratorio (RX, petrografía, SEM, y DRX). Segundo, se comprobaron hipótesis sobre su función....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Galvan. Betsy Kohut.

Excavations in the main plaza of Kiuic in Yucatan, Mexico, revealed the presence of a dismantled stucco façade south of the temple it once adorned. The façade dates to the temple’s initial Late Classic construction (600-800 AD) and is thought to have been stripped from it during a second construction phase in the Terminal Classic (800-1000 AD). Preliminary analysis of the deposit provided insight into the methods used to sculpt the stucco revealing its theme to have been a historic-narrative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Tica.

The goal of this research project is to examine differences in overall health between two groups that have been characterized in the literature as Romans and “barbarians”. The research questions addressed using skeletal remains are about how the daily life of people under Roman-Byzantine control compared to that of their neighbors, the “barbarians” to the north. Comparing two contemporaneous populations from the territory of modern Romania—and dating to the 4th-6th centuries CE, the study will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount. Kara Fulton. David W. Mixter. E. Christian Wells. Thomas R. Jamison.

This report describes the results of a geochemical analysis of nearly 1,000 samples from earthen and plaster surfaces at Actuncan, a prehispanic Maya city in western Belize. Studies of the social, political, and economic relationships between elites and commoners demonstrate that the lived experiences of both groups were dramatically different. However, we know little about how social roles and relationships impacted the organization and daily use of domestic and public spaces. Multivariate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

Researchers have long hypothesized that the 9th century Maya collapse resulted in the end of divine kingship as the dominant political form in the southern Maya Lowlands. In post-royal settlements, tall pyramids and labyrinthine palace spaces are deemphasized in favor of more publically-accessible open courtyards and broad platforms. Some scholars have argued for the increasing prevalence of council houses based on architectural layouts and the iconography of sculptural programs. However, little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Detlef Gronenborn. Hans-Christoph Strien. Christian Lohr. Johanna Ritter.

Simplistic scenarios of the role of climate on the dynamics of socio-political trajectories are increasingly being replaced by coupled models in which climate and societies undergo mutually influential interactions. The concepts of adaptive cycles and resilience have been particularly helpful in understanding these interrelations. Based on an extensive body of data from Early to Upper (Young) Neolithic sites in western Central Germany and adjacent regions, a model is proposed which takes into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Caromano. Rui Murrieta.

Research conducted in the Amazon point to the importance of anthropic fire in the history of people and the forest itself, being a common element in traditional agriculture and responsible for changes in ecosystems and soil productivity. Despite its importance, fire is not subject to systematic study in Amazonian archaeology. Few efforts are made in actively searching for evidences of its use in archaeological contexts, being such evidences documented opportunistically when casually observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marissa Stewart. Francesco Coschino. Antonio Fornaciari. Giuseppe Vercellotti.

New computer technologies have become indispensable components in Human Sciences. Archaeology has a long history of adopting and using these technologies to document the site and the excavation process, to record the location of excavated artifacts and materials, and to assist in interpretations and analysis of the excavation and recovered finds. However, despite the constant and ever-developing applications in archaeology, the specialization of bioarchaeology has not yet developed unique...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Zori.

Viking Archaeology, conceived of here as a particularly influential subfield of medieval archaeology, originated in antiquarian efforts of early Scandinavian scholars who helped to shape the identities of their nation states. From C.J. Thomson, to Jens Worsae, and Oscar Montelius, these early Scandinavian archaeologists were formative in the establishment of a periodization of the past, development of dating techniques, and the professionalization of archaeology as a discipline. The Viking Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Walz.

This paper grapples with seemingly mundane objects frequently encountered, but largely ignored, in East African archaeology: beads and shells. I report on beads of various materials, shells, and other residues identified during systematic research in hinterland NE Tanzania, AD 700-1350. Finds of glass and stone beads with Indian Ocean origins and local beads of landsnail shell alter, in a meaningful manner, archaeological views of oceanic ties to interior East Africa. Material patterning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Domínguez.

The archaeological study of intercultural encounters in the context of a geographically interstitial zone, such as the Jubones River Basin in present-day Ecuador, elucidates the interconnectedness of multiple historical processes and evaluates the notion that such convergences have existed since antiquity. Preliminary archaeological fieldwork and analysis of the material culture from Potrero Mendieta revealed monumental architecture, and ceramic and lithic traditions that denote cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Breiter.

One of the more dramatic results of the English Reformation was the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Once these institutions were closed and sold off, they often had a secondary purpose for the new landholders, such as working farms, personal residences and colleges. In spite of this, much of the architecture of the original monastery was destroyed, with stone, brick, and metal carted off. This paper focuses on how the stone from monasteries became a resource in the immediate vicinity of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Baumann. Gary Crites.

Arriving after AD 1000, the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was the last domesticated plant to be adopted in the prehistoric Eastern Woodlands. Beans were combined with corn and squash to create the "three sisters" agricultural system. Recent scholarship has argued that the earliest beans entered the eastern US from the lower Plains and through the Great Lakes. When and how beans entered into the southeastern U.S. is not clearly understood because very few beans have been directly dated. New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Wolfhagen.

Zooarchaeologists reconstruct age- and sex-specific animal mortality profiles in order to examine past human strategies of animal exploitation. Traditionally, animal age structures and sex ratios were derived from complementary but distinct data (e.g., age via epiphyseal fusion data, sex via bone morphology or metrics), though recent research has highlighted the value of integrating these data. This paper describes how zooarchaeologists can further that integration by fitting standard...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Chechushkov.

The Eurasian Bronze Age has been in focus of archaeologists, historians and linguists at least for last 50 years for the rich and striking records of Indo-European origin and movements. Important topics, strongly attached to this theme, are horse utilization and emergence of battle chariot. However, previously they have not been analyzed statistically and rarely treated from the positions of anthropological archaeology. This paper examines the modern level of knowledge of archaeological records...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Penny Bickle. Linda Fibiger.

Identity is an embodied experience and, as such, it has the capacity to change over a lifetime as the body grows, goes through puberty, suffers illness and becomes inscribed with habitual movements from daily tasks. Understanding the process of maturation is therefore an important facet of investigating identity. In this paper, we focus on ageing and childhood in the early Neolithic of central Europe, the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture (5500–4900 cal BC), with particular reference to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier.

Small-scale agriculturalists in the Mediterranean Basin rely on multiple strategies including diversification, intensification, and storage to maintain a stable food supply in the face of environmental uncertainty. Each of these strategies requires farmers to make specific resource allocation decisions in response to environmental risks and is thus sensitive to variability in both the spatiotemporal pattern of risk and the ability of farmers to perceive that pattern. In this talk, I present an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Vernon Scarborough. Nicholas Dunning. Elizabeth Haussner.

From approximately 850 to 1250 A.D., despite an extremely arid environment, the ancient people of Chaco Canyon were able to marshal the food production and engineering skills to build a string of "Great Houses", several containing hundreds of rooms. This poster describes a system of multiple water sources supplying the agricultural area below the Great House at Peñasco Blanco. High-resolution aerial lidar was key to identifying the multiple water sources. Rainfall and snow are the source of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Bogaard. Valasia Isaakidou. Erika Nitsch. Amy Styring.

In this talk we use case studies to compare the agroecology of relatively egalitarian Neolithic communities (low ginis) with that of early urban societies featuring high levels of inequality (high ginis). We use a combination of novel archaeobotanical and -zoological approaches to investigate arable land management. Neolithic sequences in western Asia, the Aegean and central Europe present contrasting settings in which early farmers developed labour-intensive cropping strategies that buffered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Brown. Linda Popelish. Steve Owen.

Early airway beacons, which marked transcontinental flyways, may not be what you first think of when you see the term archaeology but they are a part of our broader history as a nation, and as historic structures or sites can be eligible for the National Register. In order to preserve a key piece of recent national history, two Passport in Time projects on the Mt. Taylor Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest focused on airway beacon sites. The partnership between the Forest Service and a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ridge.

During the Final Neolithic (4500-3200 BCE) there appears to have been a major restructuring in the regional settlement networks of southern Greece. This included a general shift in activity from the north to the south with a significant increase in the number of of small, short lived sites in southern Greece, particularly in coastal locations. Trade and exchange also appears to have intensified, with exotic materials moved further and more frequently than in previous periods. Alepotrypa Cave,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Triozzi.

Mapping the excavations at the Fallen Tree Mortuary Complex, St. Catherines Island, GA, effectively consolidated nearly sixty burials and hundreds of features into a cohesive view of the site. Similarity of burial orientation and bodily positioning jumps out immediately. At a glance the norm is that individuals face east with their heads to the south. Examining this pattern more closely called for a more advanced utilization of GIS. Techniques used to quantify burial orientation of the large...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sandra L. Lopez Varela.

“Alternative Mexico” is a mobile application drawing from the need to preserve and promote contemporary heritage resources that are of great value to its citizens. After more than a century of infrastructure building and promotion of urban lifeways to become a modern country, the experience has resulted in the appropriation of modern spaces and behaviors by Mexico’s citizens, with the inevitable creation of new heritage values. These new heritage resources oppose the national definition of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Sereno-Uribe.

Arqlgo. Pablo Sereno Uribe. INAH Guerrero. The Chimalacatlán archaeological project has focused its research in the southern section of the state of Morelos. Initially, this archaeological site was excavated by the archaeologist Florencia Müller in 1943. The first actions developed by the Chimalacatlan archaeological project centered on the conservation and restoration of the different buildings along the site, focusing on those buildings that were extremely damaged. Subsequently, several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Peter J. Pilles, Jr.

Archaeology in the state of Arizona has been a partnership between professionals and “amateurs,” or avocationalists, for more than a century. From an early focus on collecting “antiquities” for display, both professionals and avocationalists have followed a parallel course in the development of method and theory and the specialization of skills and interests, that today has blurred the distinction between “professionals” and “amateurs.” This paper will discuss the growth of avocational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro. Helena Pinto Lima.

The mouth of the Xingu River was an important Lower Amazonian crossroads in colonial-historic times, as attested to in documentary sources. However, little is known about the rich precolumbian past evinced by extensive terra preta (anthropogenic black earth) and abundant artifact deposits. Here, we present research aimed at understanding the longue durée of the spatial articulation of cultural and natural systems. Sited at the entrance to the Xingu River, Carrazedo was a prominent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eliane Faria.

Based on a historical ecology approach, this work aims to investigate interactions between indigenous societies and the natural environment expressed in landscape changes through the analyses of their long term occupation of the Middle Xingu River. My goal is to show the specificities of the indigenous settlements in the region considering the multiple aspects of this process in the human settlement of Amazonia. Although not producing great changes in the landscape, small groups of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphen Rostain.

Because the subject of the archaeological study disappears nowadays and exists only as traces, it is necessary to diversify the points of view to comprehend the past. The interdisciplinary approach helps to interpret better the human and natural components of the environment. On the basis of two Amazonian cases, from French Guiana and from Ecuador, it will be shown how cooperation between various disciplines improves considerably the interpretation. The first case concerns thousands of small...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Peter Whitridge.

Part of the attraction of relational ontology is its encouragement to discard conventional epistemological hierarchies. We needn’t frame our investigations with the usual weighty themes – economy, social relations, ideology – but can begin anywhere, with any sort of question, and tug on the thread until the archaeological fabric unravels. Here I begin with dogs, and their relations with humans and other animals in the Inuit past. Inuit had an exceptionally complex relationship with the dogs that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Rangel Rivero.

At the beginning of the twentieth century several American archaeological expeditions were made to Cuba. The Museo Antropológico Montané from the University of Havana was the mediating institution for academic exchange. They were conducted to explore, excavate and treasuring pieces. The description of these expeditions is the goal of this work. In 1900, Stewart Culin, from the University of Pennsylvania, sought descendants of Aboriginal communities in the region of Baracoa and its observations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Schneider.

Garden Canyon Village is a large multi-component formative period site located in southeastern Arizona on the Fort Huachuca military reservation. Located 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico Border and 65 miles southeast of the Tucson Basin, Garden Canyon Village was located on the frontier of Hohokam, Mogollon, Casas Grandes, and Trincheras culture areas. This poster presents the final results from an analysis of Garden Canyon Village’s ground and chipped stone artifacts. In addition to providing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kaldahl.

The Amerind Foundation of Dragoon, Arizona, is a private anthropological research center with an 80 year history. The Amerind conducted foundational studies in southeastern Arizona, but is best known for the Joint Casas Grandes Project (JCCP) conducted in Chihuahua between 1958 and 1961. The Arizona collections consist of southeast Arizona sites dating from the Hohokam Colonial period to the Spanish Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate. The New Mexico collection includes material recovered at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hicks.

Land tenure is a prominent theme in the study of political and economic transition during the Spanish Colonial Period (AD 1550-1824) in Peru. Previous investigations have tended to focus on the concentration of land ownership into the hands of the ethnically Spanish elite minority, first through encomienda and later through the evolution of haciendas. However, native Andean communities were just as active in engaging the legal system to delineate their holdings and defend them from encroachment....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sayre. Nicco La Mattina.

The ontological turn in Anthropology has revealed new possibilities for considering the relationships between humans, material things, and “other-than-human persons,” as well as reassessing the Western notion of a nature/culture dichotomy. One site where these insights have begun to be applied is Chavín de Huantár in Peru. The iconography of the site is well known for its mixed human/animal hybrids, a style that prompted John Rowe to consider the art figuratively as visual kennings, with certain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Chavez. Charles Frederick. Arlo McKee.

Recent archaeological investigations at LA 151618 on the west side of Albuquerque exposed an extensive residential site dating to the late Developmental-to-Coalition period transition. The site contains a wide range of subterranean architectural features, including three pithouse structures, and three storage pits/middens, some of surprising depth. In partnership with Charles Frederick, consulting geoarchaeologist, Dublin, Texas and Arlo McKee, consulting geoarchaeologist, Richardson, Texas, two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Keeney.

The Matcharak Peninsula Site (AMR-196), located in the central Brooks Range of Arctic Alaska, contains a mid-Holocene archaeological assemblage dating between 4,000 and 7,500 calBP and assigned to the Northern Archaic tradition. Excavations between 2010 and 2014 yielded hundreds of identifiable faunal specimens preserved in permafrost, making it one of the largest and most well-preserved faunal assemblages found in a Northern Archaic context. The assemblage has great potential for elucidating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Claudia Avila Peltroche. Ali Altamirano-Sierra. Bryan Nuñez Aparcana.

During Late periods, the use of domestic animals as camelids and guinea pigs were part of a fiscalized economic system which allowed a better management of faunal resource for consumption. These animal species also had a symbolic meaning in the Andean cosmovision that led them to be used in ritual spaces, along with another animals as canids, amphibians, deers, birds and felines. In this study we showed the results of the analysis made on the bone assemblage recovered from the site of Panquilma....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Copeland. Jocelyn Acosta. Marilyn Bueno.

In 2014 and 2015, the California State University, Los Angeles Sacred Landscape Archaeological Project carried out investigations of a collapsed chultun at the site of La Milpa in northern Belize. Excavation revealed a heavy concentration of ceramic and artifacts immediately surrounding the collapse with concentrations dropping precipitously only a few meters from the complex. This report analyzes the ceramic sherds recovered in excavation. The ceramics were sorted into six categories:...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Skeens.

Four field seasons of excavations by the University of Iowa field school have recovered hundreds of ceramic pottery sherds from the Woodpecker Cave site. Previous typological analyses of the ceramic assemblage have supported the hypothesis that the site was host to long-term seasonal occupations spanning hundreds of years. Woodpecker Cave provides a unique opportunity to study variation in technologies used during ceramic production in eastern Iowa, spanning the Middle Woodland and Late Woodland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Capece. Tucker Hlad. Jaime Ullinger.

In this study we use color and fracture patterns of burned bone to reconstruct cremation temperatures and the conditions of the body prior to cremation in highly fragmented skeletal material from a Bronze Age cemetery in Eastern Hungary. Using a Munsell Soil Color Book we were able to qualitatively measure the color of cremains in order to estimate burning temperature. Determining whether or not the body was burned with flesh relied on two methodologies: the analysis of color patterns across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps. Ugo Fusco.

Veii was a prominent ancient Etruscan city, which eventually fell to Roman rule in 396 BC. After its fall, Veii was abandoned and then turned into a municipality during the rule of Augustus. Within the site of Veii, is the Campetti complex south-west, which houses several different structures. In the earlier periods of occupation (circa the late 7th to 4th century BC), the archaeological area functioned as an urban sanctuary, in which water played a major role. When Augustus turned it into a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alana Acuff. Jaime Ullinger. László Paja.

On-going excavations conducted by the BAKOTA project at the Bronze Age cemetery of Békés 103 in Eastern Hungary have uncovered 69 human burials, the majority of which are cremated skeletal remains deposited in ceramic urns. Cremains are an often-overlooked archaeological resource as information regarding age at death, sex, and pathologies can be more difficult to assess after a body has been burned. While demographic information may be limited in this context, the stratigraphic distribution of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beverly Chiarulli.

During the Late Prehistoric period in the central Allegheny Valley of Western Pennsylvania, at least four major lithic raw material types were used for the manufacture of a limited variety of tool types. The major tool forms were small triangular projectile points and flake tools. The major raw material types used in this region include Onondaga, Loyalhanna, and Shriver cherts and Vanport Siliceous Shale. Workshops and quarries have been identified have been identified for these materials and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Cox.

Within its collection the Trinidad Museum has an artifact that consists of three individual wood pieces that are believed to be the remnants of the original wooden cross erected by the Spanish in 1775 on Trinidad head in northern California. The Trinidad Museum was uncertain as to the validity of this claim and so a thorough investigation of the artifact was undertaken to determine if in fact these wood pieces are indeed the remnants of the original Spanish wooden cross. A number of methods were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson. Keith M. Prufer.

This poster examines the distribution of obsidian across space and time among two Classic Period Maya centers, Uxbenká and Ix Kuku’il, located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains, Belize, Central America. Data from portable x-ray florescence analyses at Uxbenká suggests that neither the period of occupation, distance of a settlement group to the site core, nor the social status of group residents impacted the availability of obsidian source-group material, suggesting Uxbenká...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Rochelo. Donna Selch.

The landscape of southeast Florida has been dramatically altered over the past 150 years due to anthropogenic influences. The earliest, most detailed surveys of this region were conducted by the US Surveyor General Land Office from 1846-1870, with an extended survey and map production caused by the American Civil War. These land plats were surveyed along the township and range to be used as the fundamental legal record for real estate for southeast Florida. However, southeast Florida has been...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Claudine Gravel-Miguel.

This research argues for a refocus of the study of prehistoric social networks that involves contextualizing the inter-site links often interpreted as indicators of social interactions between different groups. It focuses on the social networks created during the 3 sub-periods of the Magdalenian in the Cantabrian and Dordogne regions, and visible through similarities of portable art representations. It uses Species Distribution Modeling and Maximum Classification Likelihood on faunal presence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Marla Toyne. Nathan Esplin.

The current understanding of Pre-Columbian tuberculosis is unclear, and in several geographic areas very little is known. To date most knowledge of ancient tuberculosis comes from isolated case studies. These studies are informative as they consider the individual in question but they offer little insight into the demographic or social impact of tuberculosis. This population-based study describes osteological lesions consistent with possible tuberculosis in 15 individual skeletons excavated from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Cross.

Ames (40FY7) is an Early-Middle Mississippian period town with two dozen structures, four mounds, and plazas enclosed within a palisade located in Fayette County, Tennessee, which dates to A.D. 1050-1300. Very little research has been done on Early-Middle Mississippian settlements in West Tennessee; this has resulted in very little being known about the social life history of these sites. Recent research at Ames has utilized multiple lines of evidence such as magnetometry data, surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Robb.

In 2013, the Saint Louis Art Museum presented the first major re-installation of its collection of art of the ancient Americas in nearly thirty years. This paper will present some observations on the challenges presented by a collection largely defined by a single donor, Morton D. May. May's donations coincided with the high water mark of collecting so-called "primitive" art in the 1950s and 60s. But there is also a history of collecting and displaying pre-Columbian art in Saint Louis before...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Viganò. Gülfirde Akgül. Frank J. Rühli. Abigail Bouwman.

Historical records and epidemiological studies can be a wealth of information about ancient diseases, nevertheless in some cases DNA evidence is also needed. The data showing high frequencies of malaria genetic adaptations (MGA) in modern and historical populations testify to the presence of malaria in the past along the Mediterranean coast. However, neither modern epidemiological data nor historical records can explain the differences in MGA frequencies that we observe in some regions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Aguirre-Samudio. Blanca González-Sobrino. Rafael Montiel. Brenda Álvarez-Sandoval. Abigail Meza-Peñaloza.

La Ventilla is a household from Teotihuacan, a great city whose people lived during Classic Period (1-700 AC) reaching a vast demographic grow. Farmers and merchants were residents of La Ventilla. Archaeological evidence has showed commercial, political and service interchanges with Teotihuacan spreading to all Mexico. We analyzed population diversity and genetic distance between La Ventilla and 11 ancient groups from Mexico. Materials from bone tools set were processed yielding ancient DNA; the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carney Matheson. Cory Vickruck. Chris McEvoy. Robert Mason.

Thick-walled small stoneware Sphero-conical vessels have been found throughout the Middle East between the 10th and 14th centuries. Researchers have proposed that these vessels could have been used as smoking pipes, grenades or containers holding medicines, mercury, beer or perfume. The unusual nature of the ceramic, being the only highly fired stoneware produced in the Middle East, together with the very thick walls, would indicate an unusually dedicated function that only existed between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Antonelli.

This paper investigates the relationship between soil enrichment and ancient urban environments. I will measure the degree to which ancient settlement density and modern agricultural potential correlate. At the Postclassic Maya center of Mayapan, a spatial concentration of black, midden-like soils have been identified by local farmers. Results of systematic soil transect samples tested for physical and chemical properties reveal agricultural potential. Soils from the urban center were compared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime J. Awe.

Archaeological investigations during the last 20 years in Western Belize has recorded considerable evidence of craft specialization in this lowland Maya sub-region. Much of this information, however, has never been synthesized, thus providing us with a foggy lens through which to view the complexity of craft production, distribution and interaction at the intra- and inter-regional level. In an effort to address this situation, this paper examines different types of craft specialization in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Friedel.

The Mopan River valley was home to a number of pre-Hispanic Maya polities, including both political centers and rural communities. The forests and plant products grown in the region played crucial roles in the lifeways of these Maya, providing food, fuel, construction materials, and medicine. This paper presents preliminary results from the analysis of macrobotanical remains recovered through flotation by the Mopan Valley Archaeological Project and Mopan Valley Preclassic Project. These plant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Morales-Arce.

The genetic analysis of different periods in specific spatial territories could contribute to understand patterns of interactions for pre-Columbian populations that lived in northwest Mexico. Especially for those sites that show debated cultural traits such as Paquimé, the use of all possible bioarchaeological approaches may be key to identify their population ancestry, affinities, and to evaluate possible migrants origin. This research analyzes ancient mitochondrial DNA, HVI and HVII, of 14...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bastien Llamas. Alan Cooper. Wolfgang Haak.

Archaeological evidence indicates human presence as far as southern Chile and Argentina by 14.6-14.0 kya (thousand years ago), shortly after the Pleistocene ice sheets blocking access from eastern Beringia began to retreat. Genetic estimates of the timing and route of entry have been constrained by the lack of suitable calibration points and low genetic diversity of Native Americans. We sequenced 92 whole mitochondrial genomes from pre-Columbian South American skeletons dating from 8.6-0.5 kya,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Martinez-Cruzado. Juan Ortiz-Aguilú. Jennifer Raff. Andrés Príncipe. María Nieves-Colón.

The Machuca archaeological site in western Puerto Rico is found in the Añasco river flood-plain, next to one of the presumed ancient mouths of the river, less than half a kilometer east of the shoreline. The first burial was found in a fetal position together with ceramic remains of the Late Saladoid or Cuevas period. Radiocarbon dating on bone collagen placed the burial at AD 550 to 660 (2-sigma calibration) whereas that on charred material found inside one of the pots placed it at AD 650 to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daiana Alves. Jose Iriarte. Denise P. Schaan.

ADEs are highly fertile soils found in association with archaeological sites all over the Amazonia that result from ancient societies’ landscape management. We present preliminary results on the research of plant consumption on Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) sites at Santarem region, Lower Amazon. To tackle questions concerning plant food production and the formation of ADEs at the region three sites are under investigation from an archaeobotanical approach: Serra do Maguari and Cedro on terra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Wildt.

For thousands of years, plazas have served as spaces for public gatherings. Modern plazas continue to serve many of the same functions as ancient plazas, providing a foundation for comparative studies. Archaeologists have begun to recognize the importance of incorporating modern studies of public spaces into their work, but in order for archaeology to remain relevant, we must engage with and contribute to studies of the modern world. It is necessary for us to work with scholars in these fields...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Devin Pettigrew. Justin Garnett.

Children and adults often glaze over during abstruse discussions of the past, yet most are instantly engaged and excited on witnessing a flexible dart launched with an atlatl, or a hunting boomerang whirling towards a target. Most will try their hands at these weapons with enthusiasm. Today these are curious, antiquated devices, however, they were once the battle and hunting rifles of their day, and using them provides us with some sense of what it was like to be an ancient hunter or warrior,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannes Schroeder.

The Tainos were the first people to encounter Columbus when he set foot in the New World. The Taino culture emerged in the Caribbean around 1200 CE but the ancestral origins of the Tainos remain a matter of debate. Some scholars believe that the ancestors of the Tainos originated in the Amazon Basin, while others contend that they may have spread from the Colombian Andes via a Circum-Caribbean route. Theoretically, the ancestors of the Tainos could have entered the Caribbean from, any or all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Jeffrey Brewer. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Vernon Scarborough.

The Elevated Interior Region (EIR) of the Maya Lowlands posed especially difficult challenges for year-round ancient human occupation and urbanization. Accessible surface and groundwater sources are rare and a 5-month dry season necessitated the annual collection and storage of rainwater in order to concentrate human population. Here we review ancient Maya water storage adaptation in the EIR including urban and hinterland reservoirs as well as residential scale tanks and cisterns. Large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruhl.

This poster is a summary of the results of a multiyear study of drought-exposed dugout canoes, oral histories, steward-preserved dugouts, and revisited extant canoe collections, coupled with many new radiocarbon dates on these heretofore unstudied canoes. Along with dugout dates, location and quantities have revealed additional insights about mobility, paleoenvironment, waterscapes, settlement change, economies, and overall significance of these underrepresented yet unique artifacts. Modern and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Staller.

Pre-Columbian Andean cultures have strong cultural and religious ties to plants and animals in their surrounding landscape. The preparation of food crops and cultigens that sustained life had strong cultural associations to ethnic identity, ritual, and religious practices in the annual cycle. Archaeologists have documented the biological complexity of the Andes and the social importance of feasting, rituals and rites in ancient and colonial societies. Indigenous perceptions and beliefs regarding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Tantaleán.

In the last decade a number of studies have been published focusing on the way Andean peoples both in the past and present, describe and define their world and its relational elements. These ontologies are derived from anthropology, ethnohistory and ethnography. Most of them intend to reconstruct the worldview of these social groups with different results. In this paper I summarize the main trends related to ontologies developed for Andean societies, especially those used to explain pre-Hispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giancarlo Marcone.

Infrastructures like the Qhapaq Ñan or Inka roads can be viewed as social institutions that are the result of a complex network of social interactions between populations and their environments and fulfill several local social needs. This vision opposite the ones that understand that centralized government is necessary for local level communities to maintain certain infrastructure, like irrigation canals and roads. The Inka road system is an intricate network of Tambos, administrative centers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Stark. David Brotherson. Damian Evans. Martin Polkinghorne.

The 9th – 15th century Angkorian state was Southeast Asia’s largest ancient polity; its 1000 km2 core was among the world’s largest preindustrial urban centers. The Angkorian state’s mid-15th century CE “collapse” moved the polity’s rulers and their populations south to a series of new capitals that were closely linked to the Early Modern Southeast Asian economy. Angkor as a capital collapsed, but the Angkorian civilization continued. We use field excavations, surface survey, and remote sensing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weronika Tomczyk.

The Castillo de Huarmey archaeological expedition has been working since 2010 and so far, faunal remains from 3 different contexts were analyzed. Although the zooarchaeological analysis is still not completed, the importance of South American Camelids seems to be significant. In all of the contexts, remains of these species predominated. Formative settlement delivered small assemblage, but with high numbers of consumption patterns. Dated for Early Intermediate Period and Middle Horizon palatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damià Ramis.

The Balearic Islands were the last large islands in the Mediterranean to be settled, as late as the 3rd millennium cal BC. Currently, there is a good zooarchaeological record for the late 3rd and 2nd millennia cal BC, which allows the reconstruction of animal exploitation and management strategies in Mallorca, Menorca and Formentera. The results show that the obtainment of animal resources relied mainly on sheep, goat, cattle and pig husbandry. When this record is compared to the surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mylène Bourdely.

The Naachtun Project has collected a large faunal assemblage since the first field campaign. This material is analyzed as part of doctoral research focusing on the site's subsistence economy. The analysis is based on specific archaeozoological methods, through which it is possible to identify the different animal remains and draw up a list of the species that were used by the site's ancient inhabitants. Many preliminary issues must be resolved: Which were the acquisition strategies of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only François Lanoë. Charles Holmes.

Bone technology is often omitted from discussions about technological variability and functionality in eastern Beringia, where recovered organic artifacts are rare. However, based on discoveries in Northeastern Eurasia with good organic preservation, it can be surmised that bone technology was similarly important to Beringian hunter-gatherers during the Final Pleistocene. Here we present the results of faunal and spatial analyses of the site of Swan Point CZ4b, the oldest known archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Austin. Carolyn Freiwald. Melissa Quartarone. Hali Niles. Timothy Pugh.

A number of general trends characterize changes in Maya animal use over time. Previous studies have found that remains of dogs are most common in Preclassic contexts, while Classic period elite deposits typically consist mainly of large game, such as whitetail deer. Native species remained important even after the introduction of European domesticated species during the Contact and Colonial periods. Unfortunately, large faunal deposits that span multiple time periods are absent at most Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

To understand the relationships among rock art and ritual landscapes needs recognize how the process of making engaged in a set of spatial and social practices. These practices create a field of relationships that define the rituality of rock art as well as the sacredness of landscapes. In this paper, we discuss this process in a prehispanic agrarian community of Central North Chile. We propose the process of making rock art related to the animation of a world constituted by a web of non-human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irina Panyushkina. Steven Leavitt. John Zawiskie.

The last deglaciation was characterized by numerous abrupt climate shifts including the extended Bølling and Allerød warm periods and the Preboreal, Younger Dryas, Older Dryas and Intra-Allerød cold periods, which caused loss of stability across the periglacial landscapes of the Great Lakes region. To date, assessing the possible impact of abrupt late glacial environmental change in this area has been limited by paucity of high-resolution environmental proxies that can be compared to the...

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

Recent analysis of the basketry assemblage derived from the re-excavation of Huaca Prieta, Peru indicate the production of several highly complex “wall” types concurrently with escalating cultural complexity at this unique coastal site. These basketry variations include two expressions of twining which are presently unparalleled in South America. Both types also exhibit blue dyed elements and appear to have been intentionally dismembered before deposition. The technical attributes, chronological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Lennon. Thomas Kutys. Amy King.

Beer and Soda, typical beverages found in the lives of Victorian American’s; the remnants of their proliferate use, a plethora of bottles found at historic archaeological sites across the county. While often overlooked, these bottles, offer the potential to illuminate the landscape of small businesses, domestic residences, and the booming Industrial Revolution. Recent excavations by AECOM, sponsored by PennDOT, within the I-95 corridor of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Crowther. Nicole Boivin. Leilani Lucas. Henry Wright. Chantal Radimilahy.

Although Madagascar is probably best known for its unique endemic flora and fauna, humans have also played a key role in shaping biological diversity on the island. Indeed, it is estimated that humans have been responsible for the introduction of some 10% of Madagascar’s flora in the centuries since the island was first colonised. For many of these plants, the precise dates of introduction are unknown; and while many are undoubtedly relatively recent introductions, a number are suggested to have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Fiedel.

The close relatives who buried the Anzick infant ca. 13,000 cal yr BP made classic Clovis tools and were unequivocally the lineal genetic ancestors of all the living Native peoples of southern North America, Central America, and South America. Clovis-derived Fell 1 fishtail points track the rapid southward migration of this ancestral population all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Any hypothesized earlier populations—e.g., the seaweed eaters of Monte Verde or the rock-bashers of Pedra Furada—if they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel White.

The Anzick Site is a multi-component archaeological site located at approximately 5,000 ft above sea level in the Shields River Valley of south central Montana. Included in the archaeological discoveries at the site are the fragmentary human remains of two individuals as well as an assemblage of approximately 115 lithic and osseous tools diagnostic of Clovis Culture technology. This assemblage of tools was thickly covered with red ochre, as was one set of remains, presumably indicating a burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Lozano Varela.

Esta investigación busca determinar la importancia de los recursos faunísticos para una población del Formativo Temprano en el norte de Colombia (6000-1000 A.P). Los seres humanos que habitaron el sitio arqueológico de Punta de Pájaro en la Ciénaga del Guajaro Atlántico utilizaron una gran variedad de recursos faunisticos para complementar una dieta a base de plantas. Contrario a lo que se planteo en la teoría arqueológica para el norte de Colombia en los primeros años de investigación, este...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Pigott.

By the 18th century the Central Gulf Coast of North America was a complex of cultural borderlands, a result of constant Native American migrations and violent European power struggles. The Apalachee, a group of Floridian Indians, was one of many groups caught up in the rapid changes of culture contact. After the Spanish mission system inhabited by the Apalachee disintegrated, they dispersed across the Southeast, settling in small groups among other splintered Indian nations. As the Apalachee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Lefebvre.

En México, los dos primeros siglos de la Colonia española siguen sin considerarse suficientemente en la investigación arqueológica. Los proyectos se enfocan principalmente en estudiar la época prehispánica y posteriormente las haciendas (principalmente después del siglo 18), creando un verdadero hiato de conocimiento de la cultura material y de la arquitectura de los siglos 16 y 17. Además, esta asimetría es todavía más evidente en las zonas rurales. Esa situación se explica tanto por la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Plekhov. Christopher H. Roosevelt. Christina M. Luke.

This poster presents a study that applies an architectural energetics model to around 140 monumental earthen burial mounds located in an area known as Bin Tepe (the "Thousand Mounds") in western Turkey, which served as the burial ground for Iron Age Lydian rulers and elites. Using measurements obtained from ground survey and aerial reconnaissance, volumetric figures for each of the tumuli are calculated to determine the amounts of building materials necessary to construct each tumulus. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chen Shen.

Museums play a pivotal role in engaging in diversified communities and public at large, as cultural heritage value is applied to an understanding of the past that is relevant to everyday life today. Museums hold significant collections of natural and cultural worlds over the age that witnessed climatic changes, natural disasters, and humanly-powered manipulations. The survival objects displayed in the galleries and exhibition today are keys to engaging the public into the dialogues of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha A. Streuli. Margaret J. Schoeninger. Andrew D. Somerville.

The Formative period site of Chalcatzingo in Morelos, Mexico (1150-450 BCE) represents a socially complex society and contains the only Olmec-style monumental architecture in the region. Evidence for social stratification at Chalcatzingo includes differences in burial location and unequal distribution of rare artifacts. Significant debate surrounds the potential Olmec cultural influence on status formation and social stratification throughout Formative period Mesoamerica. Some scholars...