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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Metzger.

This PhD research investigates the use of polished flint discoidal knives from the Late Neolithic/ Early Bronze Age, which are reportedly unique to the British Isles. No scientific study has been performed on these artifacts and functional understanding to date is based on contextualized hypotheses from the literature. The three main hypotheses from the literature are that the discoidal knives are perceived as: 1) unused status symbols; or that they were used 2) for butchering; or 3) for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jalh Dulanto.

Extensively excavated by Frederic Engel in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Disco Verde and Puerto Nuevo are very well known in the archaeological literature of the south coast of Peru for their occupations dating back to the first millennium BC. Recent excavations by the Paracas Archaeological Project in these two sites have resulted in the recovery of crucial information to improve our understanding of the role maritime communities played in the expansion and intensification of long-distance exchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Chatelain.

La Cariba was a relatively small minor center in the northwestern Petén, but was situated in an area of important political dynamics with far-reaching consequences in the Maya world. During the Late Preclassic, the region may have been heavily influenced by El Mirador. Eventually, during the Late Classic, the nearby center of La Corona became a strong ally and vassal of the Kaan dynasty at Dzibanche and later Calakmul. Formal investigations at La Cariba since 2012 have revealed that La Cariba...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Oas. Mark Hauser.

The domestic economies of households occupied by enslaved laborers are an important domain of analysis for understanding the political ecology and environmental legacy of colonial empires. These households occupy an important intersection of environment, political economy, and culture, and provide an opportunity to exploring both top-down and bottom-up processes of environmental and economic change. This paper presents preliminary research onto households from excavations at Morne Petate in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

This presentation examines a case study of changes in Maya plant use at several closely located sites during the middle-to-late Postclassic Period (~1300-1525 CE) at Lake Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. These sites were inhabited contemporaneously and exhibit substantive differences in size and political/economic importance, making the archaeobotanical assemblages recovered from them uniquely suited for a study focusing on how they were created by social processes. It specifically examines whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Olson.

Neo-evolutionary models for the emergence of early complex polities propose a causal relationship between political centralization and the development of large-scale irrigation networks. Decades of field research and historical analysis have made available a large dataset of settlement patterns and irrigation networks in lowland Central Asia, but information regarding settlement and agriculture in the highlands of Central Asia during this time is less well understood. The relationship between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beniamino Volta. Joel D. Gunn.

A critical issue for understanding the relationships between Maya political geography and long-distance economic exchange is that many trade goods are archaeologically invisible. Iconographic depictions of feathers, cacao, and textiles—along with evidence for production and the sheer biological necessity of salt—indicate that these goods were widely traded alongside more durable items such as obsidian, jadeite, marine products, and ceramics. This paper explores the possibility of using political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Cutright.

This paper draws on recent research at Ventanillas, a community in the middle Jequetepeque Valley in northern Peru, to explore how local communities negotiate ethnic identity and political affiliation at the outskirts of large scale polities. On one hand, Ventanillas could be easily understood as the easternmost outpost of the coastal Lambayeque and Chimú states. On the other hand, elite households seem to have been drawing on coastal and highland practices, hosting household-based feasts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raymond Hunter. Steve Kosiba.

Recent GIS studies of colonialism combine archival and archaeological data to understand and map changes in political economy, such as settlement patterns, land use, and population aggregations. Such studies often overlook how colonial politics centered on the transformation of value—the social significance of the things and resources that constituted social life. This paper develops a GIS method to document shifts in land value in the Inca imperial capital (Cusco, Peru), during the long process...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Teixeira Dos Santos. Carolyn Heitman. Karl Reinhard. Samantha Hayek.

Chaco Canyon is an important archaeological region for providing information about the ancestral Puebloan cultures.By analyzing 12 coprolites from Prehispanic sites within Chaco Canyon, we found large concentrations of Zea mays pollen grains. The differences in size-frequency of these creates the hypothesis that there were different species of Maize being consumed. The size distributions of the earliest Zea grain populations are not normal, suggesting the possibility that more than one variety...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

Roads in Yucatan, Mexico, were aesthetic, territorial, and communicative systems that both united and divided the landscape. I employ network theory, placemaking, and urban planning and landscape models to analyze Maya road systems at Yaxuna, Coba, Ek Balam, and Chichen Itza as site extensions, markers of identity, and ritual and commercial corridors. It may seem heretical for an art historian to abandon historical documents available for one’s arsenal for analysis. However, Gil Stein and others...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Riley.

The Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah contains an impressive collection of textiles and other perishable artifacts from Eastern Utah. Many of these artifacts were donated by private individuals early in the museum’s history and have very limited information on their discovery and provenience. Despite these limitations, these items can become much more than striking art objects displayed to the public. Recent efforts have focused on expanding the useful data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Harper.

For over a decade it has been suggested that several events of the fourth millenium BC in Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine – the rise and fall of the giant-settlements of the Tripolye culture in Central Ukraine, the abandonment of Gumelnița tell settlements in the Danube valley, and the dissolution of the “Old European” complex and advent of the Bronze Age – were influenced by climatic factors, notably the 5.9 ka event and the beginning of the Subboreal period. However, the simple synchronicity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Blair.

Native made ceramics are, without question, the most abundant and intensively studied artifact type recovered at southeastern Spanish colonial mission sites. In the mission province of Guale, located on the northern Georgia coast, these ceramics consist of Irene and Altamaha series wares—primarily stamped and incised grit-tempered—related to the broader Lamar ceramics of the South Appalachian Mississippian region. Many studies have thoroughly established the broad contours and temporal patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer. Matthew Peeples.

Population estimates are the foundation for many current interpretations of social changes, human demands on resources, and land use patterns in the Mimbres region over time. Population estimates for the area currently rely on either local datasets for specific subregions, or regional data from the early 1980s. This poster presents updated population estimates for the Upper Gila, Mimbres Valley, and Eastern Mimbres areas between AD 1000 and 1450. A large regional database allows us to examine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Hranicky. Jack Hranicky.

This illustrated paper presents an overview of moveable artforms from the late Pleistocene era of Virginia. While fixed rockart is the major form in analytical archaeology, portable rockart is also found. This paper includes stone and clay objects that represent effigies and abstract forms. These artifacts are a survey of the several hundred recorded specimens, such as an ivory vulture head, camel image, numerous other animal forms, as well as geometric forms, and engraved and incised pieces....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Litschi. Kayeleigh Sharp.

The increasing use of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometers in compositional studies of archaeological materials has led to an ongoing debate over proper use of this equipment, including procedures for sample preparation and homogenization. Due to the diverse nature of archaeological materials, sample preparation methods should be tailored to specific research questions and material types. This study examines the impacts of different sample preparation methods on pXRF analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenny Riley.

Between 2005 and 2010, dive teams from the Indiana University Bloomington Center for Underwater Science performed surface collections of the entrance chamber to Padre Nuestro Cavern, a submerged freshwater limestone cavern located in the East National Park in the southeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic. They extracted Chican ostionoid ceramics indicating use of the cave by the Taino culture (ca. AD 1000-1492), Casimiroid lithics indicative of the Archaic culture (ca. 6000-500 BC), and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Warren Lail. Victoria Evans. Amanda Aragon. Joaquin Montoya.

Several years ago in a remote canyon in northeastern New Mexico, a rancher found the fragmented remains of what was later determined to be a Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). In addition to the mammoth remains, now dated to 13,000 BP, the rancher also found several blades, allegedly in context, of chert that originated on the Edwards Plateau in central Texas (microanalysis of the blades is underway). At the invitation of the ranch manager, we began limited testing at the site in 2010. Since...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Seifried.

In the past 50 years, a great deal of archaeological research in Mani has focused on its Byzantine churches and the enigmatic abandoned settlements that surround them. Far less has been written about the centuries following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire (i.e., the post-Medieval period), when the Ottoman Empire took control. This paper gives a brief overview of the most important sources of historical information about the post-Medieval settlements in Mani. A reassessment of a list dated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Bonogofsky.

The Neolithic Near Eastern inhabitants of the Levant and Anatolia removed the skulls or crania of females, males and children after decomposition of the body, ca. 8,500-5,000 B.C. They modeled facial or other features over the disembodied skulls and crania of adults and children using substances such as plaster, marl, or collagen, and then generally painted them, while others were only painted. Many of the skulls and crania, however, display no apparent post-mortem decoration. Some skulls of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khadene Harris.

This paper is a summary of the ongoing analysis of artifacts and spatial data recovered from postemancipation house sites on the Bois Cotelette Estate in Dominica. This project began as an examination of the social and economic impact of emancipation on the lives of the formerly enslaved. The projects goal is to explore how a shift in labor conditions altered the physical layout of postemancipation settlements and determined the kinds of access individual households had to local and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Bongers. Brittany Jackson. Susanna Seidensticker. Terrah Jones. Colleen O'Shea.

This paper investigates postmortem human body manipulation associated with above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs known as chullpas, which date from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-1476) to the Late Horizon (A.D. 1476-1532) in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru. Mortuary processes involve groups interacting with the dead to negotiate sociopolitical relationships. Groups commonly manipulated human corpses as part of mortuary processes performed cross-culturally. In the Andes, groups...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renzo Duin.

Ceramic analysis is essential to understand identity and regional interaction in pre-Columbian (before AD 1492) Amazonia. Underpinning existing ceramic analysis are time-space graphs developed and established in the second half of the twentieth century by Irving Rouse and José Cruxent (Orinoco and Caribbean) and by Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans (Amazon and Guiana). These time-space graphs are grounded in the concept of a culture-historical mosaic, aimed at fixing peoples in time and space by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivan Roksandic.

This presentation looks at the paterns of interaction in the Western Caribbean at the time of early migrations onto the islands, with a special focus on the potential long-distance connection between Lower Central America and the Greater Antilles indicated by several important observations: a recent comparative study of ancient DNA from the pre-contact site of Canímar Abajo in western Cuba; circulation of some plant species (e.g., pollo maize; Zamia); the practice of dental modification on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ingrid Mainland. Jane Downes. Scott Timpany. Julie Bond. Jen Harland.

The acute problem facing Scotland’s archaeological heritage through loss and damage by rising sea levels and increased storminess in response to global climate warming is gaining increasing recognition. This threat is prompting diverse mitigating responses, most significantly Historic Scotland's Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys and the work of the SCAPE Trust. These surveys have, however, predominately focused on the recording of cultural, rather than palaeoenvironmental remains; while midden...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Davis.

A prehistoric Amazonian site near the town of Monte Alegre in the state of Pará, Brazil shows evidence for potential use as a sandstone quarry by paleolindians. The rock art site at Painel do Pilão has a wall, that appears to have been reduced to a flat surface through repeated micro flaking, forming part of a semi subterranean shelter. The flattened wall comprises a platform from which ancient artists painted mostly sky-themed paintings on the open-air stage above. The shelter itself had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Walker. Chadwick K. Burt.

Since the enlightenment western approaches to material culture have distinguished between natural and supernatural processes. This demarcation produces archaeological perspectives at odds with ethnographically known cultures and likely past ones. Contemporary Native American ontologies emphasize the animacy of things such as architecture and pottery. An important theoretical question therefore, is what social relationships did people establish with material objects, and how did these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo De La Fuente. Jeffrey Ferguson. Michael Glascock.

Pottery production during the Late Period (c. AD 900 – 1450) in Northwestern Argentina has been characterized as primarily a household industry, becoming increasingly intensified and concentrated following the appearance of the Inkas in the region. Most pottery production in these chiefdom sociopolitical contexts was for local consumption and distribution following different technological organization schemes expressing several degrees of standardization, specialization, firing technology, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clifford Brown.

I summarize the archaeological ceramics recovered from our excavations in the Department of Chinandega, in northwest Nicaragua. Our analysis is still in an early stage, and we have studied mainly collections from sites on the coastal plain, in the southern half of the Department. We have found Late Preclassic ceramic assemblages intimately linked to those described for Quelepa, Chalchuapa, and Santa Leticia in El Salvador. We have also found Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic assemblages with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hernando Giraldo Tenorio. Robert Speakman. Michael Glascock.

The circulation of goods and knowledge between Amazonian and Andean societies from southwestern Colombia have been understood as pivotal for the development of political hierarchies in the region since 2500 BP. However, such circulation has not been supported by solid empirical evidence. By using neutron activation data we document pottery production, distribution and consumption in a frontier region between Andean and Amazonian groups. Ceramic samples were obtained from a systematic regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estefania Vidal Montero. Mauricio Uribe. Ester Echeñique. Andrew Menzies.

In the area commonly known as Pampa del Tamarugal, in the middle portion of the Atacama Desert, the valleys of Tarapacá, Guatacondo, and the oasis of Quillagua have been important spaces for characterizing the Formative period in northern Chile. In this paper, we present the results of pottery analyses from this region, comprised by samples obtained from residential and ceremonial contexts, as well as transitory sites along prehispanic routes (Fondecyt Project 1130279). The purpose of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Junzo Uchiyama. Christopher Gillam.

The Jomon Period in Japan (ca. 16,500-3,000 BP) is one of the world’s earliest ceramic-making cultures. The Jomon sustained a hunter-gatherer-fisher (HGF) economy for an extensive period of time until the introduction of the wet rice paddy system from the Asian continent. Three major factors characterize the Jomon cultural landscape: pottery, shell mounds, and stone/wood monuments. This paper will discuss the roles these elements played in the alteration of the landscape. First, despite the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Foias. Kitty Emery.

Motul de San José dominated a swath of the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza in central Peten, Guatemala, during the Late Classic. Recent excavations at two small sites in the periphery of Motul de San José, Kante’t’u’ul (approx. 3km northwest) and Chachacklu’um (approx. 5km east) investigated the relations between these secondary centers and their political overlords at Motul de San José. The divergent cultural histories, settlement patterns, architecture, and material culture of these two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher.

For most of the second half of the twentieth century Neoevolutionary theory dominated explanations for the rise of social complexity and inequality. However, beginning about two decades ago, scholars began to problematize this framework. The resulting body of theory, referred to as “alternative pathways to complexity”, introduced concepts of structure and agency and moved away from functionalism and systems theory. Despite these improvements in our theoretical toolkit, much scholarship continues...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Kasper. Katharine Reinhart.

Often plants recovered from archaeological sites are not seen as keys to interpreting the agency associated with social contexts and cultural identities. Yet, the physical remains of plants left behind by individuals and communities, like other aspects of material culture, are the result of the choices made, completed actions, knowledge availability, and goals/strategies. This paper highlights and recenters traditional ecological knowledge of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe from 1000 to 1800 A.D....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanna Bruck.

This paper will investigate evidence for the curation of ‘relics’ (pieces of human bone that were deliberately retained over long periods of time) in the British Bronze Age. Isolated fragments of human bone have frequently been identified in settlement contexts, for example pits and ditches; they have also been found in graves alongside the complete bodies of other individuals. It is widely recognised that Bronze Age artefacts such as jet beads and ceramic vessels were kept and circulated as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Heller.

Although ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources offer insights into the practices of producing political and sacred landscapes among contemporary and colonial era Maya, the scarcity and separation in time and space of written sources from most Classic period contexts complicates the examination of placemaking strategies in more ancient settings. In the near absence of written sources, landscapes, which are inscribed by built environments and the material remains of inhabitation, may be read as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Roddick. John W. Janusek.

Archaeologists working in the Lake Titicaca Basin have become accustomed to treating Formative material traits - whether a style of decorated pottery, ritual architecture, or stone sculpture – as the “Yayamama Religious Tradition”. This term, originally defined by Sergio Chavez and Karen Mohr Chavez, has become a shorthand to refer to what is presumed to be a common approach to ceremonialism across the Titicaca Basin (see also Chavez 2004). More recently, scholars have associated it with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ted Parsons.

3D modeling to document artifacts, features, and sites is commonplace in archaeology today. The use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is the standard for creating 3D models. The limitation of this type of scanning is that the units are bulky and expensive, and archaeological work is often done in remote locales under limited budgets. I present information on portable, affordable, and easily implemented alternatives to TLS. Three scanning methods are assessed: photo modeling using Agisoft’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Dorland.

Pottery vessels that are produced by younger community members are highly effective avenues for addressing learning structures and social interactions of Great Lakes potting groups. Yet, learner actions are often isolated by archaeologists from the actions of experienced potters in the belief that variation is random and does not follow similar stylistic and manufacturing practices. Furthermore, traditional belief portrays pottery learning as passive transmission of knowledge, an interpretation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Nicholas.

When descendant groups are denied direct and meaningful engagement in decision making, heritage management policies are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Access to and control over one’s own heritage is a basic human right essential to identity, wellbeing and worldview. The historic separation of Indigenous peoples from their heritage not only results in considerable economic and cultural harms, but is a form of violence. Community-based heritage initiatives are capable of challenging...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Dunn.

The practice of “compliance archaeology” within existing structures requires practitioners to constantly weigh ideals against practicalities. What we think should be done, and how, is often limited by shortfalls in budgets, labor, time, and access. It is evident that few cultural resource stewards or managers have the resources they need to sufficiently address the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, much less compliance with any other legislation, guideline,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Sain.

This paper examines the lithic materials from the presumed pre-Clovis deposits at the Topper Site (38AL23), a Paleoindian quarry and stone tool manufacture site in Allendale County, South Carolina. Prior research at Topper identified flakes and possible chipped stone tools from Pleistocene-aged sediments that predate Clovis, traditionally considered the earliest culture complex in the region. The goal of this study is to document the nature of the pre-Clovis assemblage at Topper, and to explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heckenberger. Paulo De Oliveira.

This paper considers landscape domestication in the Upper Xingu region in the southern Amazonian transitional forests of Brazil. Archaeological research provides detailed information on major late Pre-Columbian settlements, ca. 1000-500 BP, within an environmental history to >30,000 BP and cultural history extending over the past two millennia. Late Pre-Columbian agricultural systems involved forest farming and agro-forestry, including forest conversion within patchy, mosaic forests, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fitzpatrick. Christina Giovas. Michelle LeFebvre.

The post-Columbian introduction of exotic animals in the West Indies initiated a cascade of ecological changes, resulting in extensive defaunation, reduction and homogenization of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, and extinction of island endemics. Yet, these changes were not without precedent in the Caribbean, one of the world’s foremost biodiversity hotspots. Evidence suggests that in the years before 1492, Amerindians in the region had already profoundly impacted insular ecology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Parker-McGlynn.

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the ability to create a viable site location model of pre-historic archaeological sites in the Columbia Plateau Region that are older than 15,000 BP. The site location model is created by analyzing several different variables: previously discovered archaeological sites in the Columbia Plateau Region older than 10,000 BP, Missoula Flood modeling, Bonneville Flood geological evidence, and prehistoric climate data. The prehistoric site locations are used to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Lohse. Guillermo Acosta Ochoa. Molly Morgan. Aleksander Borejsza.

Recent and ongoing investigations in Mesoamerica are showing how different regions followed different developmental trajectories leading up to the adoption of ceramic technologies and sedentary lifestyles. This threshold, which typically defines the end of the Archaic period, was reached at different points in time anywhere between about 1800 and 900 BC. These multiple preceramic adaptations seemingly imply that Mesoamerican cultural diversity that marks Formative and later periods had its basis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski. M. Kathryn Brown.

Recent investigations in the Preclassic site core at the site of Xunantunich have revealed new evidence for ritual activity at the site’s earliest monumental structures. This ceremonial core, recently designated Early Xunantunich, is composed of three plazas, an E-Group, and several large, flat-topped platforms. The largest of these platforms forms the northern boundary of the site, measuring 100-115 meters wide and over 10 meters tall. Recent excavations of this platform revealed at least three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamara Whitley.

The Carrizo Plain National Monument contains some of the most significant heritage resources in North America. This includes the 100 Native American habitation and pictograph sites within the Carrizo Plain Archaeological District National Historic Landmark. Appropriate management is critical to the preservation of these sensitive resources. The results of GIS modeling can be directly applied toward a wide variety of historic preservation approaches. This presentation will describe the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Per Stenborg.

The potentials of using analysis of remote sensing data (particularly Lidar data) as a method of predicting the presence of archaeological sites in densely forested areas are discussed in this paper. The case study deals with an inland area — the Belterra Plateau — situated south of Santarém in the State of Pará, Brazil. Recent fieldwork has suggested that late pre-Columbian settlements generally are found in the surroundings particular geological features and in this region. Drawing on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Rivas. Carlos Efrain Tox.

The use of GIS-based analyses has been increasing in archaeology over several years, including predictive modeling from digital elevation models (DEMs). Critics of these methods suggest that these computational approaches leave no room for human agency, and can create improper landscape analyses. However, these methods can be properly used when operating in well-defined theoretical frameworks and correct scale. In this paper, we present recent ground survey data and ethnoarchaeological methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Kirk. Amy Thompson. Christopher Lippitt.

The potential for remotely sensed metrics of phenology and a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network to accurately model potential archaeological sites in central New Mexico is high. Focusing on two different environments, the Galisteo Basin and the Sandia-Manzano Mountain range, this study attempts to distinguish between archaeological sites and their surroundings based on differential growth in vegetation. Using multi-spectral satellite data, a time series of Normalized Difference...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily McClung De Tapia.

Archaeological evidence indicates occupation in the Tlajinga área of the southern Teotihuacan Valley throughout the Classic and Postclassic (ca. 200-1500 DC) as well as the Colonial period. Excavations as well as soil profiles in this sector provide macro- and microbotanical remains that, together with stable carbón isotope values (δ13C) provide new insights with respect to agricultural activities, conforming evidence for maize (Zea mays) and opportunistic flora associated with food production....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Fajardo Bernal.

The results from a settlement pattern study covering 123 square kilometers in the Sogamoso Valley in the northern part of the Muisca area are presented. The survey revealed that sedentary occupation there began during the Herrera period (400 BC-800 AD) and consisted only of a few small hamlets and some scattered farmsteads. After 800 AD population increased dramatically, reaching a few thousand inhabitants organized in several local communities within the survey area. The largest of these local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorothy Block.

In 2007, severe drought conditions at Lake Okeechobee, in the northern Everglades revealed 6 prehistoric archaeological sites. These were the Caleb Boyer , Ritta Island , Kreamer Island and three sites referred to as the Pelican Bay series. Since Phase 1 investigations failed to yield intact strata or datable carbon, it became necessary to assign each site’s temporal position based on their artifact assemblages. This paper presents and a detailed summary of the sites’ ceramics and concludes that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Betts. David Black. Brian Robinson. Arthur Spiess.

The northern Gulf of Maine (GOM) and its watershed have attracted humans for the last 12,500 years (cal BP), and evidence of marine economies is well established in adjacent regions by ca. 8000 cal BP. Sea level rise (SLR) has obscured our understanding of early coastal adaptations, though underwater research and some near-shore sites are providing important insights. The earliest evidence from shell middens dates to ca. 5000 cal BP, and reveals that bivalve collecting and the seasonal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Martin.

At the geographical interface between two cultures or worldviews, there are often found a hybrid or unexpected set of burial practices that mix ideas from each culture. This is the case for numerous prehistoric and historic cultures including the North American Hopewell and British Early Bronze Age, which will be examined here. However, if we look closely at these instances, there exists much more than just a borrowing of ideas. Amalgamations are often accompanied by acts of violence,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alper Basiran. Cevdet Merih EREK.

The Cyprus Island iş the third largest mainland in the Medditerranean, and it should have been connected by near lands in prehistoric times. Some evidences of this situation obtained from a few prehistoric settlements and geomorphological proof. The new researches has been started by assistant prof. Cevdet Merit Erek behalf of Gazi University in Ankara, from Turkish Republic. The new researches was carried out by permission of The Turkish Republic Government of Northern Cyprus. Major assistance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hiroto Takamiya. Hitoshi Yonenobu. Taiji Kurozumi. Takeji Toizumi.

Islands colonization by Homo sapiens is relatively recent phenomenon in the history of Homo sapiens (modern human or human afterwords). While modern human successfully colonized five continents by 10,000 years ago, only handful islands were colonized by 10,000 years ago. Most islands were successfully colonized after 10,000 years ago. Islands seem to be one of the most difficult environments for modern humans to successfully colonize. However, once Homo sapiens successfully colonized island...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yasuyuki Yoshida.

This paper aims to suggest an alternative perspective to understand the "Jomon" in contemporary Japan within the context of public archaeology, paying attention to the contact zone between archaeology and the public. Contemporary Japanese society includes an ideological conflict with regard to an international cooperation with East Asian countries, a nuclear plant politics, and a modern history education under the situation of the post-cold war equilibrium and globalization. The conflict is not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neal Ackerly.

Systematic archaeological survey of more than 100,000 acres in the southern Tularosa Basin of New Mexico has resulted in the discovery of almost 600 prehistoric sites and upwards of 65,000 isolated occurrences. These data, combined with highly detailed information regarding environmental characteristics of the study area, allow time-sequent reconstructions of land-use patterns over thousands of years. To anticipate more detailed discussions, there is evidence for long-term central places that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daria Merwin.

The study of prehistoric maritime cultural landscapes (or seascapes) in the broadest sense seeks to explore the relationship between people and the water. If we are to reconstruct the nature of this relationship over time along the Atlantic coast of North America, however, we must account for environmental changes, particularly sea level rise and related shifts in ecological communities and habitats on the shore and at sea. This paper examines the coastal archaeology of the New York Bight (the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Sever.

The objective of this research is to understand human adaptation and survival in a tropical forest environment that was buried through time by six volcanic eruptions. Through the use of remote sensing and GIS technology an ancient footpath network has been discovered that connects villages, cemeteries, springs, and other cultural features upon a forested landscape. A combination of aerial and satellite data was used to locate archeological features invisible to the human eye. This information...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Koerner. Brett Giles. Eric Skov.

This study compares the effectiveness of pedestrian walkover and shovel test survey for identifying and delineating prehistoric sites in the eastern Great Plains. The cultural resource program at Fort Riley, Kansas manages 100,000 acres along the Kansas River in the Flint Hills physiographic province. An archaeological inventory of the Fort has been ongoing since the mid-1990s and less than 30 percent remains to be surveyed at this time. The two survey methods approved by the Kansas SHPO include...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Candice Brennan.

The prehistoric population of the Los Alamitos Bay area made significant use of local shell fish resources. Using records of shellfish species found in shell middens, information about habitats for shell fish species, sea level records for the Holocene and a detailed topographic model of the region, one can examine how prehistoric use of the landscape changed as a function of the post-Pleistocene environment.

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Farley.

This paper describes the results of four seasons of field research and laboratory analyses at Calluna Hill (CT 59-73), a small Pequot village burned during the English retreat from the battle at Mystic Fort, part of the 1630s Pequot War. The project uses environmental, spatial, and artifactual data from the site to undertake a study of culture change in southern New England’s contact period in order to better understand the role of intercultural exchange in colonial settings at the domestic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Moretti.

A diverse and abundant latest Pleistocene vertebrate fauna is currently being investigated at Macy Locality 100 on the southeastern edge of the Southern High Plains, Texas. Remains of an extinct box turtle (Terrapene carolina putnami) are common among the recovered material from the site's alluvial deposits. Believed to have been a mesic form, the extirpation of the eastern species from the region and the extinction of the T. c. putnami are ostensibly linked to ecological changes of the terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Szigeti. Virág Varga. Viktória Kiss.

Bronze is a central economic and symbolic focus in the European Bronze Age, and the distribution of metals found in Bronze Age burial contexts can suggest differences in wealth. This poster analyzes the bronze artifacts from the site of Békés 103, a Bronze Age site in Eastern Hungary. Previous work at settlements in this area indicates little social inequality and suggests that metal production was not centralized at larger settlements (fortified tell-sites). Study of the distribution of metals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Nieves Colón. William J Pestle. Anne C Stone.

Recent archaeological research suggests that indigenous groups in Puerto Rico stemmed from multiple and continuous migrations of continental indigenous populations. This view is supported by contemporary genetic studies, which have found evidence of genetic affinity between multiple modern Native American groups and the native ancestry components of modern, admixed Puerto Ricans. Overall, these findings challenge the traditional single-migration model for the peopling of Puerto Rico, and suggest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petra Cunningham-Smith.

The ancient coastal Maya fished for food and trade to the heavily populated cities that lay many miles inland. At these inland cities, marine fish were an elite and symbolic product often included in burials and caches. Although the use of marine resources in both coastal and inland Maya communities has been well documented, actual fishing and trading practices are poorly understood. This paper explores the potential of using stable isotope analysis to answer questions related to the use and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brewer. Chris Carr.

The collection, storage, and management of water was an ongoing challenge—and necessary focus—for the ancient Maya, who occupied a physical environment with a pronounced annual dry season and a general lack of perennial surface water necessary to support and sustain an expansive population. The urban center of Yaxnohcah, located within the central lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, provides an ideal test case for studying how the residents of this important Maya center managed their crucial, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford. Brigitte Kovacevich.

Holtun is a medium-sized civic-ceremonial center located in the Maya lowlands in the central lakes region of Petén, Guatemala that was occupied from the Preclassic (~600BC) through the beginning of the Postclassic (AD1000). During the 2011, 2014, and 2015 field seasons of the Holtun Archaeological Project approximately 147 pieces of obsidian were recovered from a mixture of contexts including fill, plaza, ceremonial, and household. Analyses of obsidian artifacts included typological analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sitek. Paul Goldstein.

This poster presents the findings from a preliminary survey of the site of Cerro San Antonio in the middle Locumba Valley on the far southern coast of Peru. Ethnohistoric sources suggest limited agrarian potential, yet the site of Cerro San Antonio shows evidence for over 25 hectares of occupation dating from the Formative through Inca Periods. This includes at least 10 hectares of Tiwanaku domestic occupations. The middle Locumba Valley lies between two very different peripheral regions of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Martin. Felipe Sol.

The past couple of decades have seen a marked rise in behavioral and social science research from evolutionary psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists looking to clarify what motivated the development and spread of religious institution throughout the world. These approaches tend to highlight the functional “prosocial” role that religion played in social development, citing its character as an integrative social device, as mitigator of external social stress, or as an enforcer of more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendal Jackson. Thomas Pluckhahn.

Environmental changes have been frequently cited as causal factors in the growth and collapse of complex societies in the American South. Gulf Coast archaeologists, in particular, have turned to generalized global paleoclimate curves in attempts to understand how ancient coastal villagers responded to environmental shifts. Archaeological palynology, a notably under-utilized resource in the region, offers fine-grained resolution and the ability to investigate local, as well as regional landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Strickland.

In the summer of 2015 an archaeological dig was conducted, as part of a salvage project due to new construction, at RI-2451 on Block Island, Rhode Island. A pre-Columbian Native American habitation area was identified near the shoreline of the Great Salt Pond, a large and almost enclosed body of water separating the north and south regions of Block Island. The pond has a small channel, artificially dug in the late 1800s, on its northwest shore to connect it with the Block Island Sound. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pascale Meehan.

The archaeological site of Zacatepec, Oaxaca is located in the coastal mountains of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, in between the modern towns of Putla de Guerrero and Pinotepa Nacional. First identified in 2014, a two month field season was undertaken in June and July of 2015 to uncover a larger portion on the site and identify the time period with which the site is affiliated. This presentation summarizes the results of the summer 2015 field season which incorporated both a survey and an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Miller. David Chicoine.

This poster presents the analysis of ceramic fragments from the Early Horizon center of Caylán, in the Nepeña Valley, Perú (800-1 BC). Ceramic fragments constitute a large portion of excavated artifacts, bringing information on chronology, cultural traditions, and exchange networks. Most are undecorated body sherds that are typically ignored in ceramic analyses. Here we present the macroscopic analysis of ceramic wares from excavated contexts to shed light on patterns of production and potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petra Vaiglova. Amy Bogaard. Panagiotis Karkanas. Maria Pappa.

The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the agricultural management strategies employed by farmers at Neolithic Makriyalos, northern Greece. Building on results of previous archaeobotanical and archaeozoological analyses, it brings together the results of a series of stable isotope measurements to ask questions about the scale and intensity of farming at a Neolithic flat ‘extended’ site. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of charred plants will be used to infer crop-growing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Meyers Emery.

The practice of cremation and inhumation can occur within the same cemetery during the same time period. This co-mingling of burial forms is found throughout Western history from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe to Ancient Rome and Greece through the Early Medieval Europe and today. Despite its wide chronological and geographic extent, data-driven study of co-occurrence of burial treatments is limited for a number of reasons; the most problematic being the disciplinary perception that cremation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristi Peterson.

Devotional sculptures and their attendant ritual interactions allow for pointed critical engagement with the very nature of images, both formally and in the intersection of art and sacra. To that end, this paper will explore the manner by which ixiptla (lit. representation), a type of central Mexican cult effigy, functioned to shape conceptions of space, place, and cultural identity in the Postclassic Period. By investigating their position within the visual milieu, I posit that, through their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Alfonso-Durruty. Flavia Morello. Miguel Vilar. Nicole Misarti. Headley Dustin.

Human remains are pivotal to our understanding of the past. While much bioarchaeological analysis continues to rely on macroscopic and non-invasive methods, scientific and technological developments in the last 30 years have revolutionized the discipline. Among others, isotope analyses, and the extraction of ancient DNA (aDNA) have further unveiled the richness of information that bones and teeth can provide. In spite of their potential, the application of these methods is limited due to their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Harrison.

The Spokane Tribe of Indians Preservation Program conducts a range of projects within the Tribe’s ceded areas in northeast Washington State. The goal of this work is to increase tribal sovereignty and to help preserve intact portions of the Tribe’s traditional landscape and resource patches in order to secure long-term access for tribal members to a mosaic of traditional cultural sites beyond the reservation boundary. The program competes with private CRM firms for archaeology consultation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Hilton.

The Black Hills National Forest (South Dakota and Wyoming) created the Historical Collections Archival Project (Project) to grapple with an issue that practically every U.S. Forest Service unit will eventually encounter: the proper long-term archiving of their unit’s historical collections. The Project objective is to digitize all images and selected print documents from the Forest’s extant historical collection. The materials are professionally archived under agreement at the Leland D. Case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Noack Myers.

Like all Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, our staff are required to wear many hats. The diversity of projects undertaken by the Chippewa Cree Cultural Resources Preservation Department (CCCRPD) includes on-reservation resource documentation and mitigation, educational programming for the local community, development of governmental agency policies and procedures, and consultation on repatriation and current archaeological and museum research. In addition, the CCCRPD has developed the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Casserino. Jennifer Pietarila.

The Spokane Tribal Preservation Program’s work within Reservation boundaries focuses on locating and monitoring tribal resources along the Spokane River and upland areas by a tribal field crew. Artifacts recovered from field surveys and excavations are curated within a tribal collections facility. Utilizing a partnership between its staff and tribal members, the Program is able to identify these important resources and provide a rich layer of tribal history to these objects. Through collections...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pauline Clauwaerts.

After more than twenty years of investigations, the San José de Moro Archaeological Project has discovered a total of seven funerary chambers pertaining to Late Moche "priestesses" (AD 600-850) in one of the most important ceremonial centres and cemeteries located on the North coast of Peru. This attribution was made by the correlation with different elements present in the tomb referring directly to this character. This "priestess set" works as an efficient identification criterion. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Katz.

3D models have the potential to bring archaeological data to life for the public in ways that were previously impossible. My research on ancient Maya musical practices is demonstrative of the various ways in which 3D technologies can create a tactile experience for the public as they learn about archaeology. This paper will highlight some of the ways in which the Maya Music Project will be using 3D models to increase public engagement with the subject. My preliminary experimental foray into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Striker. Linda Howie.

Petrographic studies of variability in the geographic origins of ancient pottery rely on discrimination of vessels based on their raw material ingredients, which can be traced to natural sources on the geological landscape. In the Great Lakes region, the glacial landscape is dominated by sediments comprising heterogeneous mixtures of eroded and transported materials, making such distinctions challenging. In this study we investigate variation in the geographic origins of pottery from the Mantle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dustin Merrick. Matthew Des Lauriers.

In the last half-century, studies using human behavioral ecology (HBE) have made significant headway in modeling how humans in the past would have adapted to the environmental constraints surrounding them. There has been much less progress in terms of examining the socio-political pressures hunter-gatherers in the past would have felt in their daily lives. Factors driving choices in these models are often based on an underlying assumption of ideal free distribution; however, one is hard-pressed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Carrasco.

In The Shape of Time (1962) George Kubler suggested that formal change results from a chain of solutions to problems that alter as the solutions accumulate. While this concept has been influential in studies on formal change, his notion of “problem” remains underdeveloped. This paper takes Kubler’s formulation of “problem” as a starting point for abducing meaning in works for which texts are lacking. By attending to the “problem” as the locus of dynamic change and the link to other social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Cunnar. Edward Stoner.

In 2013 Western Cultural Management excavated a well preserved structure in the Great Basin. The structure dates to 3000 cal. BP and is one of few that have been discovered of this antiquity in the Great Basin region. The house was associated with a number of artifacts. Many of the tools were clearly associated with artiodactyl processing tasks within discrete activity areas. Other artifacts such as complete bi-point knives, complete projectile points, quartz crystals, fulgurites, ochre,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Colvin. Victor Thompson.

Recent materiality scholarship seeks to understand the entangled world of belief and practice. The experience of the world is both cognitive and material and scholars are beginning to embrace the idea that there is no separation between the two. Understanding the intertwined nature of the cognitive and material world is at the center for evaluating the nature of groups that embrace a relational view of the world. In this paper, we consider the essential role that material culture plays in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah. Dianna Doucette.

In July of 2015 The Public Archaeology Laboratory (PAL) completed data recovery investigations at the Susquetonscut Brook Site 11 (SB 11), in Lebanon, Connecticut. Investigations resulted in the recovery of over 7,000 artifacts, including diagnostic projectile points, a variety of stone tools and debitage, calcine bone, and Native pottery sherds. Cultural features exposed during investigations include post molds, pit features, fire hearths, and a roasting platform. The overall lithic tool...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Overholtzer.

Archaeologists have long been interested in household production and consumption, regional economic interactions, and the development and expansion of trade networks, particularly with the rise of states and empires. This research, however, has often focused on top-down political-economic processes in which state-level elite actors condition economic activity. Put simply, “states”—and by extension, their leaders—intensify household craft production, facilitate exchange, and redirect the flow of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Vaughn. Marcela Poirier.

This poster presents a comprehensive evaluation of INAA work on ceramics from the Southern Nasca Region from the Early Horizon through the Late Intermediate period. For the first time we present previously unpublished work from the Las Trancas Valley in Nasca. The results from the analysis confirm previous studies suggesting centralized production in the region during the Early Intermediate period and decentralized production before and after this period. We attribute this long-term pattern to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Donop. Neill Wallis. Ann Cordell.

Technofunctional analysis, neutron activation analysis (NAA), and petrographic analysis were employed to map the origins of rare mortuary effigies from Palmetto Mound (8LV2) on the Gulf Coast of Florida to better understand how the production and distribution of Weeden Island (ca. AD 200-1000) religious paraphernalia was related to social interactions and emergent complex societies. Palmetto Mound is a mortuary facility composed of mounds and ramps on a small island directly west of the large,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Blomster. Victor E. Salazar.

The importance of the household in domestic production and consumption has been demonstrated throughout Formative Mesoamerica. It is the success of the household’s domestic economy that determines its survival. Focusing primarily on lithic artifacts, we explore locations in Formative Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, that represent production and consumption of lithic tools and objects. Using ratios that compare lithic frequencies with ceramic frequencies from the same contexts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Payson Sheets.

What is now El Salvador was devastated by the Ilopango eruption, probably in AD 536. A small group of Maya immigrants founded the Ceren village in the uncontested landscape some three decades later. Only about four generations lived in and constructed the functioning community before it was buried by the tephra from the Loma Caldera eruption in about AD 650. Production and maintenance activities of the recently discovered sacbe are presented, along with its various functions. Evidence indicates...