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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Carmody. D. Shane Miller. Thaddeus Bissett. Lydia D. Carmody. David G. Anderson.

The Bell Site is a multicomponent prehistoric site located along the Cumberland River in Central Tennessee. Archaeological fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2010 and 2012, including riverbank profiling, auger testing, unit excavation, and column sampling, revealed a long and dynamic occupational history of the site. Here, we integrate multiple lines of evidence including paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, and geoarchaeology, to unravel the site's complex (pre)history and explore the functional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J Joseph.

My first job in cultural resource management was in 1976, the American bicentennial. While I thus missed the first decade of the National Historic Preservation Act and Section 106, I have been actively engaged since. The first fifty years of Section 106 resulted in profound changes to the field of archaeology. From the growth of the cultural resource industry and private sector cultural resource management firms; to NAGPRA and the treatment of human remains; to the creation of Tribal Historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Ayers-Rigsby.

This paper explores the role of Section 106 compliance in small projects, such as telecommunications facilities, city parks, and fiber routes. Often thought of as less significant by regulatory agencies, state historic preservation offices, and CRM firms themselves, small scale archaeology is capable of identifying national register eligible sites, and can play a critical role in examining areas that have been heavily developed by the private sector and therefore not previously subjected to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Gill. Dorothy Peteet.

Wetlands have a long history of anthropogenic influence due to their proximity to watersheds, traditionally optimal localities for human settlement. Sediment stratigraphy from these ecosystems is an important source of paleoecological data, as they experience high depositional rates and, due to their anoxic environments, preserve organic material. Humans have acted upon one such watershed, the Hudson River Estuary, since the Paleo-Indian Period (10,500-8000 BCE) and have been a keystone species...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Sánchez-Morales. Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

Caribbean and Lowland Neotropical archaeology has emphasized the importance of human relations with their environments, from plant and animal domestication to ceramic production, agriculture, and settlement patterns. However, in most excavations, sediments have often been overlooked and simply discarded without further consideration. Sediments hold the micro and macroscopic evidence of human behavior in the past. By ignoring them, we ignore important pieces of the puzzle that can help us ask and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Gunn.

This paper synthesizes the growing body of chronological, settlement, economic, epigraphic, and iconographic data generated from recent research to critically examine traditional models of a short Terminal Classic occupation for the Puuc. The Late Classic period (600-800 AD) was the period in which the political and economic systems of Puuc states crystallized. Settlement patterns suggest that land was a widely available resource during the seventh century, but that the rapid infilling of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Mueller.

For crops to spread successfully, transmission of knowledge about how, when, and where to grow them is just as important as the seed itself. Seed morphology can be used as a proxy for this knowledge in two ways: 1) Domesticated seeds have been shaped by many generations of human cultivation, and agricultural practices can be reconstructed from their morphology; and 2) plasticity causes morphological variation that is a function of the growth environment created by communities for their crops. I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peregrine Gerard-Little.

This paper presents an assessment of archaeologically recovered wood charcoal data from comparable archaeological contexts at three Eastern Seneca sites: Ganondagan (1670-1687 CE), White Springs (1688-1715 CE), and Townley-Read (1715-1750 CE). These sites were successively occupied by the same community through periods of both residential upheaval and relative peace, as well as interaction with a number of non-Seneca cultural traditions and colonial entanglements. This project’s use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Graham.

As part of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Congress established the NAGPRA Review Committee, and gave it formal responsibilities covering various critical aspects of NAGPRA's implementations. In establishing Review Committee, Congress sought to "ensure a balance between differing viewpoints among Native Americans, museums, and scientific organizations." This paper considers the Review Committee's involvement in NAGPRA and the important roles that the Society...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Poister. Errol Mathias. Mario Mena. James Brady.

A large portion of the ceramic assemblage recovered from the Maya cave site of Naj Tunich, Guatemala consists of unslipped and monochrome slipped ceramic types generally considered to be “utilitarian” or “domestic” wares. This identification is based upon type-variety analysis rather than any evidence of the actual use to which they were put. That these ceramics were deposited in conjunction with domestic activities is at odds with the widely accepted interpretation that the Maya employed caves...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Finegold.

Drawing on George Kubler's theoretical treatise, The Shape of Time, as well as more recent epistemological reflections by art historians such as Georges Didi-Huberman and Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, this paper explores the potential for objects to contribute to their own interpretation. The imagery painted on Mimbres vessels often playfully responds to or incorporates their hemispherical shape. There are also instances where the imagery seems to resonate with the holes that were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marsha Sims.

Interactions, entry, timing – issues of the “First Americans” have been strongly debated. This research focuses on archaeology, recorded histories/reenactments by people, and on large-scaled forms tying culture heroes, myths, and legends to images of the Paleoindian and use of the Front Range of Colorado. Outrepăssé, reverse hinge, or overshot is a technique for stone reduction used in Clovis technology, in the Solutrean of Europe, and in a workshop/sacred center of Nohmul, a Late Classic site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Freeman. Matthew Fenno.

Cattle herding is not new to the Seminoles. It is a centuries old way of life that is embedded into their cultural heritage. This tradition began in the 1700s in the Alachua prairies of north Florida under the leader Cowkeeper and has continued into modern day on the Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) Reservations. The STOF Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) is currently investigating several early 20th century sites related to the formation of the Seminole cattle program, including the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Stephen.

Monumental architecture is often theorized as a costly signal in prehistoric complex societies, including Oceania in general and Hawaiʻi in specific. In this paper I explore sensory exploitation theory, which suggests that the costliness of monumentality may have contributed to social stratification and the multifaceted function of religion through specific sensory sensitivities. Puʻukoholā heiau, a large temple on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with notable archaeological, historic, and contemporary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Van Oss. Olivia Navarro-Farr.

In 2012, Dr. Olivia Navarro-Farr and her team excavated the tomb (Burial 61) of a Maya ruler in a large ceremonial structure at the site of El Perú-Waka’ in Petén, Guatemala. A confluence of taphonomic, epigraphic, and ceramic evidence underscored the identification of these remains as likely pertaining to Lady K’abel, a queen already well known from texts associated with that ancient city. This poster will explore one of the artifacts found in Burial 61, called the War Serpent Vessel, placed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Gronniger.

The historical archaeology of domesticity and consumption rests heavily on the analysis of ceramic tableware artifacts. Few archaeologists have seriously incorporated analyses of glass tableware into this body of research, even though glass tableware was a common, durable, and heavily marketed domestic artifact class. My research addresses this problem through a study of glass tableware from Victorian Age (1830s – 1900s) residential sites in St. Louis, Missouri. This is done, in part, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Hulse. John L. Fagan. Jason Cowan.

The Holocene in the northwest Great Basin is characterized by episodes of severe drought punctuated by abundant rainfall. Prehistoric people settled widely across the area against this variable ecological backdrop. Excavations for the Ruby Pipeline project have produced a wealth of data on prehistoric settlement patterns and chronologies in the northwestern Great Basin. In this paper, multiple lines of evidence are used to reconstruct chronologies of occupation that have been obscured by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Rieth.

The settlement system used by the prehistoric populations of Eastern New York is one in which forager societies often reoccupied the same landscape creating persistent places. Evidence of this can be seen in a variety of single and multi-component occupations that span the Late Archaic and Transitional (4,000-1,500 B.C.) and Early Woodland Periods (1,000 B.C.-A.D. 200). Artifact assemblages found at these sites suggest that the site’s occupants used a diverse array of tools manufactured from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Shaw.

In the wake of the American Revolution, exiled British Loyalists transformed the landscapes of the Bahama Islands. They developed sprawling plantation complexes on outlying islands where only small or transient settlements had once existed. A recent survey of Newfield Plantation, which was established on Cat Island by a member of a North Carolina Loyalist family, sheds light on the changes that occurred. Field investigation has yielded new data on the spatial organization and architectural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Casana. Claudia Glatz.

This paper presents results of a regional archaeological survey in the Upper Diyala/Sirwan River valley, a study area that straddles the highland landscapes of the Zagros Mountains and lowland plains of southern Mesopotamia. Historically constituting a key communication route between these regions, the Upper Diyala offers a unique laboratory for analysis of changing subsistence strategies and interactions among and ancient communities who inhabited very different upland and lowland environments....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Walters.

Shaft tombs are an interesting McCurtain Phase (1300-1700 ACE) mortuary ritual in the Caddo region. The tombs are dug into the center of preexisting mounds and around 8-10 individuals are supine, primarily interred, and facing the same direction. The shaft tombs could have been constructed as a revitalization ceremony after a period of abandonment from a site. Alternatively, the tombs could have functioned as a termination event at the end of an occupation for these sites. However, the purpose...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kong Cheong. Mads Jorgensen. Roger Blench.

In the past 60 years, the presence of musical instruments, musicians, and dancing in West Mexican art has been frequently discussed but largely unanalyzed, limited to comparison and contextualization of individual pieces, or occasional mention tangentially as part of some other narrative. The cursory treatment of this class of material has resulted in many unanswered questions: who, for example, made these instruments? Who played them? How were they made? How and when were they used? What do...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Ruuska.

The Ojibway on the northern and southern shores of Lake Superior of North America created transitory as well as relatively permanent material expressions of sacred experiences and cultural narratives. Using examples of 'spirit objects' expressed via emplaced pictographs in the landscape in Ontario Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Mide’wiwin birch bark scrolls, and culturally modified ‘storied’ trees, this paper compares and contrasts dynamic and emplaced expressions of the sacred, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Schmader.

Rock imagery in the puebloan region of the southwestern United States often combines elements from different animal, human, and plant sources. Blended elements may depict or refer to other-wordly states of being. Beings made from combined elements shift from shapes familiar in the present world and transport the frame of reference to the spirit world. Specific animal forms may be selected because they are spirit guides, have specific powers, or are guardians of cardinal directions from mythical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Margaret Scarry. Kathleen Deagan.

This paper argues that the incorporation of environmental archaeological data into long-term research programs can significantly influence theoretical and methodological practice thereby enriching and sometimes reshaping interpretations. We draw on our respective experiences of producing, consuming and integrating environmental data to reflect on the benefits of such collaborative endeavors. To illustrate our points, we use examples from the American South and the Caribbean to explore the ways...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Idrogo.

The northern Andes, and in particular the Cajamarca region, has for years seen a dearth of archaeological investigation into the lithic, or archaic period. This is surprising given early investigation in the region by Augusto Cardich whose excavations at caves like Cumbe yielded archaic period occupations dated to 8,500 B.C. More recent work at Conga and Maqui Maqui north of the Cajamarca basin have documented hunter-gatherer occupations including projectile points dating to approximately 12,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Thomas. Tyler Perkins.

Cahokia (c. 1050-1400AD) was the largest pre-Columbian city in North America and had far-reaching influence across the Mississippian world. Initially considered a chiefdom, recent reappraisals have cast doubt on the applicability of traditional social evolutionary models to Cahokia, suggesting it is best understood on its own terms as a historical phenomenon. One significant facet of the Cahokian prestige goods economy involved the production, distribution, and circulation of large numbers of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Caseldine.

The Hohokam that occupied the area now covered by the present city of Phoenix, Arizona and surrounding cities, constructed one of the largest canal systems in the ancient world. Of the systems operated by the Hohokam, Canal System 1 was the largest irrigation system built and maintained by the Hohokam. Despite its size, it is the least understood of the major irrigation systems within the lower Salt River Valley, the area often identified as the Hohokam core. Recently, a project to reconstruct...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Norton. Eva Hulse.

It has long been common knowledge that “most” archaeologists attain gainful employment in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) related fields rather than in academic institutions. By and large there is an accepted idea of what such a career trajectory looks like- there are many archaeologists who have built successful careers in CRM while adding to scientific knowledge and policy, or who have built laudable businesses. The vast majority of those employed in CRM, however, are low-level field and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurora Skala.

The results of this 2013-15 MA research will showcase the successful use of DStretch to bring out hidden images at pictograph sites in a geographically-remote area where prior photographs are unavailable. The examples used will be taken from First Nations Territories, primarily from Heiltsuk Nation and Wuikinuxv Nation, on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Although these examples are a case study of one region, the concepts presented may offer insight regarding sites worldwide....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Szumilewicz.

Two types of painted textiles exist within controlled funerary contexts from the Middle Sicán culture (900-1100 CE) on the North coast of Peru. The first represents the genre of painted cloth in a traditional sense: woven textiles with decorative elements added to the final product. The other is a more complex, multi-crafted and multi-stepped object that combines the labor intensive production of sheet-metal, cotton textile, gesso-like clay, and the final application of painted designs. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Sullivan.

Data from a surface survey of 105 sq km in and around the site of Chiapa de Corzo indicate that over the course of the Late Formative, serving vessels of Sierra Red, a style that originated in the Maya Lowlands, were widely adopted across the Chiapa de Corzo polity. At the capital early Sierra Red serving vessels largely conformed to the size of serving vessels from the Maya Lowlands. In the hinterland, however, the Sierra Red vessels people were using had dimensions that conformed more tightly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dragan Filipovich.

The Classic Maya civilization flourished from approximately 200 A.D. to 800 A.D. in the southern reaches of the Yucatan Peninsula. Population increased throughout the period, accelerating towards the end, finally falling to a small fraction of its former peak level (10% or less) in a relatively short span of time (50-100 years). Even though Maya civilization continued in the northern end of Yucatan Peninsula, the holy kings who had been the protagonists of Classic Maya civilization disappeared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Beasley. Ian Orland. John Valley. Margaret Schoeninger.

One goal of zooarchaeological inquiry is to reconstruct past environments. This presentation will highlight a new method to identify paleoprecipitation records from the stable oxygen isotope values (δ18Oen) recorded in tooth enamel. Seasonal rainfall patterns are reconstructed using a secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) to generate high-resolution serial spot analyses (13 µm spots) of δ18Oen. Additionally, this presentation will address the specific issue of identifying diagenesis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Rockwell.

Explanations for the rapid appearance of Clovis technology across the North American landscape as a population migration. Detractors from this hypothesis argue that the spread of Clovis more closely resembles the movement of a technology through a small, highly mobile population. Using a computer simulation approach this paper explores the conditions under which it would be possible for such a technological spread to occur. This simulation explores the requirements of population size,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Rafferty.

Although Valley of Fire has been mentioned in the archaeological literature since the 1930s (Harrington n.d.), the first real reconnaissance surveys were conducted by the Richard and Mary Shutler in 1961 (Shutler and Shutler 1962). They recorded 32 sites throughout the park, many of which were near present-day Atlatl Rock. One particular site, 26CK206, was recorded by the Shutlers at that time, and also partially by Heizer and Baumhoff (1962). In 2011 the CSN Valley of Fire survey project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Sampson.

Subsistence strategies shape mobility and site use practices. These relationships can be investigated at a regional scale, but they also appear at the level of daily domestic activities. The interpretation of subsistence remains is enhanced by assessing how specific deposits and activity areas across a site fit into broader strategies and relate to community organization. At many coastal and riverine sites of the American Southeast, mollusk shell is prevalent and well-preserved in midden...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Smith. Linda Gosner.

The nurage of S’Urachi is a Bronze Age stone monument that has served a central place in the landscape of west-Central Sardinia for millennia. Since 2013, the archaeological site has been the subject of an ongoing investigation into the daily lives of local inhabitants living around the nuraghe from the Bronze Age through the Roman period. The project—a joint effort of an international team funded by Brown Universtiy and the Comune di San Vero Milis—has investigated the immediate surroundings of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Hurst. Leonard Ashby.

Re-illustration of the well-known cave paintings at Oxtotitlán, Guerrero, Mexico has revealed important new iconographic details. The use of multispectral imaging, as well as direct observation following recent conservation work, contributed to re-visioning the artworks with increased clarity and accuracy to the originals. This paper will present new renderings of the Olmec-period paintings and summarize observations on artistic practice and iconographic significance that resulted from this...

DOCUMENT Full-Text R. Kyle Bocinsky. Adam Brin.

This is a copy of the PowerPoint presentation from the SAA Annual Meeting symposium. Interest in the impacts of environmental change on human societies is increasing—and, given the latest IPCC projections, without a moment to spare. Archaeologists are engaging this interest by interpreting past human experiences with environmental change, often by reconstructing environments at local spatial and temporal resolutions most relevant to humans. Crucial tasks ahead include generalizing the plethora...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kuijt.

The transition from forager-collectors to small-scale agricultural communities, in the case of southern Levant the Natufian to Pre-Pottery Neolithic periods, is widely viewed by researchers as a critical evolutionary threshold, one that both sees the development of new economic realities, and at the same time, long-term continuity in select ritual practices. Numerous studies have put forth functional and symbolic interpretations for the existence of skull removal in specific ethnographic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

Archaeological work in Guadeloupe and Martinique conducted since 2001 has revealed considerable evidence of the housing used by enslaved laborers in plantation villages, both before and after emancipation. Enslaved housing is remarkably diverse in its construction, diverging from the attenuated range of styles described in historic accounts, and generally follows several trends, whether on sugar plantations, industrial sites, or elsewhere. In addition to variations in construction, the placement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Kjellström.

The definition of slavery during the long Scandinavian Viking Age (AD c.750–1100) is far from simple. In recent years scholars have pointed out that the terminology for slaves, and the attitudes towards unfree labourers, found in Icelandic Sagas, on rune stones or in law codes, actually reflect a significant variation in social rank. Even though slaves and the slave trade constituted an important and determining element in the Scandinavian economy during this time, a material culture clearly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Price.

The cultures of the Viking Age in Scandinavia (AD c. 750-1100) were economically dependent on widespread, complex and deeply rooted systems of slavery. However, this aspect of the period was long neglected by scholars, partly due to the diluting influence of contemporary terminology. A Viking slave was a träl, producing the rather weaker English word 'thrall', and the nationalistic approaches to the period that dominated Viking studies far into the twentieth century often tended to subsume an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Heckel.

The gradual, mosaic nature of the development of symbolic material culture has become increasingly apparent due to discoveries outside of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic. Even so, much remains unclear about the mechanisms and circumstances surrounding the production and use of personal ornaments in early societies. The idea that the intensification of symbolic behavior was the result of some sudden cognitive/behavioral shift is not well supported by current evidence, and finding more complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Vara. Whitney Lytle.

The positive impact of public outreach and education to the preservation of archaeological resources has become increasingly apparent to professionals within the field. Outreach programs not only help disseminate the knowledge gained from excavations and research but also how the public can play active roles ensuring this knowledge is not lost. Making archaeology accessible to those outside the field strengthens our ability to neutralize the mass of misinformation found in the media. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynda Carroll.

Archaeological studies of the modern world often focus on the effects of the “global” on the “local.” Understanding smallholder experiences in the modern period requires us to examine – to varying degrees – the economic and social consequences that global capitalism, colonialism and nationalism had on people at the local level, as well as how the construction of new grammars of modernity affected daily lived experiences. In this paper, I focus on the impacts of these new grammars on smallholders...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn.

I discuss comparative analyses of Society Island residential complexes to understand the role of smallholders in the advent of social complexity. In particular, I investigate the role of commoner production and its relationship to the elaboration of social inequality in late prehistory. Integrated spatial analysis of activity areas, artifacts, and sub-surface features provides data for understanding variation in production and consumption activities (tool production, subsistence production,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roselyn Campbell.

Violence against the physical bodies of both the living and the dead provides a powerful way to create and reinforce power dynamics, modify and maintain social roles, and to structure identity groups. The human body has been used as a canvas for violent messages both in modern communities and in past societies. Throughout the long history of ancient Egypt, violence against foreigners and prisoners of war was regularly depicted in art that was intended to demonstrate the king’s dominance over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Anderson.

Throughout the process colonialism many cultural traditions have been negotiated through the interactions of different sociocultural groups. One such tradition that was deeply affected was smoking. Tobacco, a staple product of the Americas, was returned to Europe by colonizers; this began a tobacco smoking revolution which spread clay tobacco pipes back to North America in the 17th-century. These instruments made smoking a more accessible and leisurely activity for Native American and European...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerry Hull.

Epigraphic studies have confirmed what Classic period iconography has long shown—the Ancient Maya cultivated and smoked tobacco. Ethnographic studies among various Maya groups have brought to light a wide range of uses for tobacco, from pleasure, to healing, to witchcraft. In this paper I will address several lesser discussed topics related to tobacco. First, I will discuss ethnographic data relating to the use of other plants that are mixed with tobacco to alter its effects or tastes. Second, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Zender. Jaime Awe. Simon Martin.

Recent years have seen the evidence from Western Belizean sites—especially Buenavista, Cahal Pech, Caracol, Cuychen, and Xunantunich—beginning to contribute substantially to scholarly understandings of the hegemonic networks underlying Classic Maya politics. Particularly illuminating are a series of seventh-century monuments commissioned by Caracol's king K'an II, which chronicle his polity's shifting fortunes as a client kingdom. While his own father was placed on the throne of Caracol by Wak...

DOCUMENT Citation Only BrieAnna Langlie.

Following the collapse of Tiwanaku in the Andean altiplano, warfare, sociopolitical balkanization, and a severe drought lead to economic hardships during the Late Intermediate period (LIP) between A.D. 1100 and 1450. Previous research in the region has shed light on how martial conflict between and possibly among competing ethnic groups incited people to live in defensive fortified hilltop villages. Although scholars have previously speculated on the severity of lifeways for residents of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Hill.

Poor preservation of fiber technologies in the archaeological record has caused the importance of basketry in pre-Colonial California society to be often overlooked. Subsequently, studies of the social and economic elements of basketry manufacture, primarily done by women in pre-Colonial California communities, have been impacted. Despite preservation issues, the archaeological record can be used to study the socioeconomic contexts of this engendered craft production by identifying the tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Enrique Rodriguez.

How can archaeologists both benefit from interaction with local communities and also debate with local scholars? Engaging with local scholars can sometimes require walking a fine line between imposing foreign values in a colonizing manner and accepting ideas that are either incorrect or that promote oppression and inequality. Theoretically-informed social archaeology can help us engage with local scholars with respect and debate their ideas with the goals of promoting social justice, and without...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Juarez. Kristin De Lucia.

In this paper, we consider how social archaeology can inform the study of political organization and power, and provide insight into the tumultuous events taking place today. Social archaeology has long made significant contribution towards understanding the conflicts the occur between different classes, ethnicities, and factions. However, social archaeology is equally capable of making important insights into top down processes and address broader topics of state organization and politics....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Vázquez López. Felix Kupprat. Rogelio Valencia Rivera. Hugo García Capistrán.

Dozens of Maya ceramics from the Late Classic period feature the epithet "k’uhul chatahn winik", ‘divine person of Chatahn’. Most of these are codex-style vessels of unknown provenance, but some specimens have been recovered during archaeological explorations at Calakmul, Nakbe, and Tintal. Moreover, the same title appears in monumental inscriptions, most prominently at Calakmul, where there are at least four examples. Despite a recent increase in research on this specific title, the different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Hurtubise. Haagen Klaus. José Pinilla. Carlos Elera.

We examine the social identity of the individuals buried at a Late Middle Sicán (A.D. 1050-1120) mass grave designated Matrix 101, located in the Sicán Religious-Funerary Precinct in the La Leche Valley, north coast of Peru. Our objectives are threefold: (1) to understand the social identities of the individuals, (2) to examine the complex mortuary practices that took place during the construction of the burial, and (3) to infer sociopolitical reasons for the construction of Matrix 101 and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisa Lazzari. Lucas Pereyra Domingorena. Maria Cristina Scattolin. Wesley Stoner. Michael Glascock.

South-central Andean scholarship has extensively discussed a variety of circulation and exchange practices, with particular emphasis on llama caravan long-distance trade. In NW Argentina, traditional approaches proposed that regional interaction was an increasingly centralized process, based on typological similarities observed in a variety of materials across the region. While material culture styles and traits were undoubtedly shared, the unexamined focus on similarities leaves the mechanisms,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabelle Druc. Gabriel O. Prieto.

Recent petrographic analysis of ceramics and comparative samples from the Formative site of Gramalote, on the North coast of Peru, allows us to brush a tentative portrait of ceramic production at or for Gramalote. Considering ceramics as part of a socio-economic network, the identification of different paste groups yields information relative to some of the interactions occurring at that time period in the Gramalote region.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Codlin. Mark McCoy.

In ancient Hawai'i, elites employed ideology as a way of acquiring and stabilizing political and economic power. Material evidence of this is found in the numerous temples throughout the islands and in the formalized rules for constructing households. Ethnohistoric literature describes Hawaiian households as a collection of buildings with specific functional purposes. By segregating these activity areas, the Hawaiians were seen to observe kapu, a Polynesian ideological concept which, in Hawai'i,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Ingalls.

During the Preclassic period in the Maya lowlands, public structures became the materializations of ideology and memory, functioning to add permanence and significance to the growing ritual landscape. Most Preclassic public ritual structures, however, are documented within formal ceremonial centers. Little is known about Preclassic public spaces within hinterland communities. Recent excavations at the Xunantunich hinterland site of San Lorenzo have uncovered a Preclassic round platform buried...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John O'Hara.

The Magdalenian comprises one of the richest and most complex archaeological records known to archaeology, with extensive social networks stretching across the landscape. Large quantities of ‘exotic’ goods, such as objects in stone, mineral or shell found hundreds of kilometers from the material source, attest to the wide-ranging mobility of these groups. On occasion, however, the distances are so great that archaeologists attribute them to complex networks of interaction, procurement and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Peeples. Barbara Mills. Jeffery Clark. Benjamin Bellorado. Thomas Windes.

Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico has long been recognized as an important regional center characterized by impressive architecture and wide-spread influence across the Ancestral Puebloan region (ca. A.D. 800-1150+). Although few researchers dispute the strong similarities in construction styles and techniques most often used to track Chacoan influence, there is little agreement on what such similarities mean in terms of social, political, or economic relationships. In this paper, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wiley.

This paper will examine applications of Social Network Analysis to cultures of the Middle Neolithic of Central Europe. Implications for this method to better understand circular enclosures will be explored.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Candice Disque.

Through architecture, the Ancestral Pueblo people expressed their ideas and beliefs in many different ways. Towers have long been an enigmatic presence in the Southwest when role and function are in question, though focus should not be placed solely on a single explanation if one is to understand the people. Rather, interpreting the entirety of a site allows for a more holistic view into the social landscape. Ongoing research is being conducted at site 42SA4998 in the Alkali Ridge region of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Reifschneider.

Colonial regimes of knowledge and practice and the attendant maintenance of biological, raced, class-based, and gendered difference have remained central concerns for social historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Within this milieu of colonial studies, social histories of Western medicine have increasingly interrogated the connections between biological science and racial and gendered difference. Social constructionist approaches to biomedicine provide a useful groundwork for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Vargas Ruiz. Yhael Mendez.

Ethnohistoric descriptions and archaeological evidence suggest that in the Llanos regions of Casanare (Colombia) and Barinas (Venezuela) between the Andes and the Orinoco/Amazon basin, agricultural intensification provided the resources that enabled aspiring elites to pursue their political strategies during prehispanic times. Warfare and feasting were especially important strategies in the early complex societies of Barinas. The presence of nearby highly developed Muisca chiefdoms, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Braje. Jon Erlandson. Kristina Gill. Christopher Jazwa. Nicholas Jew.

For more than 12,000 years, the Chumash and their ancestors thrived in a maritime hunting and gathering existence on California’s Northern Channel Islands. Despite a dearth of terrestrial game, growing populations, and major changes in climate and geography, the resilience of these maritime hunter-gatherers across the Holocene is remarkable, with only limited evidence for long-term human impacts, extinctions, or abandonment until the arrival of Europeans. Trans-Holocene archaeological sequences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Smith.

The confluence of contemporary terrorism and radical changes in the media landscape constitutes a fresh—and currently under-rated—threat to cultural heritage. Socially mediated terrorism in Syria and Iraq is underpinned by a clash in heritage values. As visual symbols of competing political, ideological and religious values, iconic cultural heritage is an increasingly likely choice for extremists seeking visual ways to maximise their impact. Not everyone ascribes to the notion of Outstanding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

Although comparative studies have been criticized in recent years, especially within the more post-modern corners of anthropology, cross-cultural studies continue to have value for exploring the sometimes congruent, and at other times unique, manner that different communities choose to confront analogous socio-ecological issues. The Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) project is a long-term endeavor aimed at promoting the cross-cultural, transdisciplinary examination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yajaira Núñez-Cortés.

This study explores the case of La Libertad, a secondary site located on the southern section of the Soconusco’s coastal plain, probably belonging to the Ayutla polity. The ceramic fragments collected systematically across the entire site are used here as a material correlate to explore expressions of hierarchy. The characteristics of the ceramic collection and the methodology used to recover the materials provide an ideal setting to study spatial patterns of distribution and the concentration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Meissner. David McCormick. Marc Marino.

This study presents new data from the site of Río Amarillo, Honduras focusing on the social aspects of craft production in the political sphere of Copán, Honduras (A.D. 400 – 900). Between 2011 and 2014, excavations led by the Proyecto Arqueológico Río Amarillo Copán (PARAC) have recovered large quantities of microcrystalline silicate artifacts, including nodules, debitage, and finished tools. Such data are important as they shed light onto the procurement strategies, methods of local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Lawrence. Jon Lohse.

This paper compares radiocarbon chronologies for climatic and cultural changes in Texas and the Southern Plains region utilizing multiple sources. A radiocarbon baseline (>100) from select river basins across Texas helps reconstruct the alluvial histories of these catchments. This baseline establishes a framework for understanding aspects of climate change, as alluviation provides a proxy for general cycles of precipitation and aridity. Next, the alluvial-climatic records are supplemented by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Loren.

Wellness and spirituality are rooted in the body. Bodies and material culture are intertwined through practices of healing; ways to navigate bodily and spiritual health in daily life. In colonial Lower Mississippi Valley, European-introduced diseases and new forms of material culture greatly impacted Native American communities and their practices of healing. Some of these stories are familiar to us: the changes brought about by access to new materials, new tools, and new kinds of clothing. Yet,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristy Primeau. David Witt.

During the past few decades, researchers have developed methodologies for understanding how past people have experienced their wider world. The majority of these reconstructions focused upon viewsheds and movement, illustrating how individuals visually observed their environment and navigated through it. However, these reconstructions have tended to ignore another sense which played a major role in how people experienced the wider, physical world: that of sound. While the topic of sound has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Marino. Nathan Meissner. Lucas Martindale Johnson.

Lithic raw material acquisition and household flaked stone crafting continues to enable a better understanding of ancient Maya domestic economies. One such example at Santa Rita Corozal, Belize, seeks to determine how local households provisioned themselves and how Santa Rita Corozal articulated with other Chetumal Bay sites during the Late Postclassic Period (A.D. 1200-1530). Data presented in this paper challenge previous models of resource exploitation and exchange by suggesting that a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary M. Hagen.

This project seeks to understand how the basalt and turquoise found at Petrified Forest National Park fits into the trade networks of the Southwest. The procurement and subsequent movement of basalt and turquoise materials have been studied in the Southwest, but not at Petrified Forest National Park. Basalt axe heads, vesicular basalt pipes, and turquoise beads/pendants were recovered from multiple sites but no natural outcrops of either source have been found within the park boundaries. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Solis.

Strontium isotope ratios from human enamel can be used to estimate the general origin of individuals and are becoming an important tool in archaeology for studying human mobility. This presentation will illustrate the results of a pilot study looking at mobility patterns for south Texas Archaic period hunter-gatherers using strontium isotope analysis. Six human teeth from the south Texas mortuary site of Loma Sandia, dating to about 2850-2550 years ago, were used in this study. Three of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Dunbar.

For decades late Pleistocene climate events prior to the Younger Dryas (Heinrich 0 ~12.9 ka cal BP) were ignored by archaeologists because the Clovis First paradigm implicitly supposed nothing was earlier. Since 2005 attitudes have changed and the importance of understanding the effects of major climate shifts is now important to archaeology. This presentation will focus on the timing of late Pleistocene climate events and the subsequent expressions of habitat change in the Coastal Southeast....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Salvatore Ciccone.

Prior to the devastating Pequot War of 1636, the Pequot people of modern day Connecticut were one unified nation. As a result of the conflict, there now exist two separate cultural groups, the Mashantucket Pequot and the Eastern Pequot. They experienced a trajectory throughout history that remained mostly parallel until modern times. My research examines some of their historic variations, particularly their architectural practices, and the timing of their transition to English-style framed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Martini.

Here I present the results of a systematic surface survey investigating cultural development on the geological terrace of El Brujo in the Chicama Valley, Peru. Previous research has shown that this one square kilometer space contains over 5000 years of occupation encompassing the Early Preceramic through Colonial Periods. Based on survey and excavations that include nucleated architecture, archaeologists have assumed a general northern movement of consecutive occupations, with each new group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maryam Hernández Venegas.

The archaeological research on San Jorge has focused on the identification and characterization of the various structures comprising hydraulic adjustment systems such as canals, ditches, ridges and mounds. Such identification has been accompanied by the spatialization of their features most significant and the interpretation of historical and cultural processes that have accompanied the construction, use and abandonment of such structures. However, this work has also neglected the study of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Scott Cummings.

Cooking, food processing, and consumption all contribute anthropic activity markers traceable using archaeobotanic analyses and chemical signatures. Grid square sampling illuminates patterns for comparison with distribution of artifacts and architectural elements, revealing patterned activities that identify food storage in vessels, grinding, and cooking. Multiple lines of evidence, each providing only a portion of the record, contribute to better understanding economic activity and provide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Areerut Patnukao.

Dvāravatī (spanning late 6th– 11th centuries C.E.) is one of the oldest religious cultures and artistic periods of Thailand and Southeast Asia. Dvāravatī history cannot be written due to a lack of epigraphic evidence or chronicle. Its center, geographical extent, and political organization remain unclear. The archaeological and geographical evidence suggests that moated sites were associated with the emergence of Dvāravatī civilization. Among Dvāravatī style artifacts found within these sites,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley McCuistion.

Western Pennsylvania has long been recognized as a center for industrial development in the United States. While the region is best known for coal mining and steel production, numerous industries have developed and prospered in the area for centuries. The DuPont Powder Mill, located in Forbes State Forest in southwestern Pennsylvania, is a valuable resource for information on the black powder industry in Western Pennsylvania and the individuals who worked in the mills during the late 19th and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Hertfelder.

The Lincoln National Forest has produced a wealth of GIS data on archaeological sites in Southeastern New Mexico. This data has not yet been analyzed. This poster presents a predictive spatial model of archaeological sites on the Lincoln National Forest. In this project, I have developed a predictive model of archaeological sites based on a statistical analysis of environmental variables and test it by withholding a sample of sites. I also examined the distribution and density of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Cook.

McFaddin Beach (41JF50), in Jefferson County, Texas, is a 32 kilometer-long beach, stretching from High Island in the west to Sea Rim State Park (next to the mouth of the Sabine River) in the east. Since the 1950s, artifacts from almost all periods of Texas pre-history have been recovered on this beach. The projectile points found on McFaddin Beach are redeposited material from an offshore, submerged location. Results indicate that projectile point distribution is significantly correlated to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pailes.

This paper will investigate synchronic and diachronic inequality among the Hohokam of southern Arizona‬. The Hohokam were an irrigation dependent, middle range society that occupied the low Sonoran Desert from approximately AD 500 to 1500. Over this impressive temporal span there were substantial changes, gradual and punctuated, to organizational systems, demographic pressure, and subsistence bases. The analysis presented in this paper will draw upon available data sets from substantial CRM...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer. Maline Werness-Rude.

Site mapping has been a mainstay in the study of archaeological cultures. Following upon the heels of mapping efforts, which have grown increasingly precise as our own technology develops, scholars have studied site, building, and monument orientations to great effect. In the Maya region such investigations have shown how the Maya positioned themselves relative to the cardinal and inter-cardinal directions, natural aspects of the landscape, and/or other parts of the built environment at inter-...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Ervin. Cameron Wesson.

Spatial frameworks of cultural activity can be quantified using a number of geostatistic computations available in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These, too commonly “deterministic” models identify and display trends within a dataset. Although these results can be compelling, they also pose problems for archaeological interpretation by not including room for the ambiguity and unpredictability of human decisions and actions. Human behavior can be understood by the choices people make, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reed Coil. Martha Tappen. Reid Ferring. Maia Bukhsianidze. David Lordkipanidze.

The early Homo site of Dmanisi, Georgia, offers some of the clearest insights into the first dispersals from Africa by early members of our genus. On a more local level, the site contains very well preserved bones with excellent provenience data, which allows for an in depth look at spatial associations of archaeological material. In this paper, we look specifically at one excavation area at Dmanisi, Block 2, where majority of the hominin fossils have been uncovered. Using spatial analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Staffan Peterson. Dru McGill. Elizabeth Watts Malouchos.

The vast majority of Mississippian research in southwestern Indiana has focused on Angel Mounds, specifically the extensive excavations of the Eastern Village and analysis of decorated ceramics. Recently, a site wide magnetometry survey and large scale analysis of Mississippian Plain Pottery from the Angel site were completed by the first and second author of this paper. Additionally, recent magnetometry and excavations at the Stephan-Steinkamp site, the second largest Angel phase site in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrzej Weber. Vladimir Bazaliiskii.

Middle Holocene hunter–gatherers of the Cis-Baikal region in Siberia (~7500–3700 cal BP) are known for their rich mortuary record. The evidence provided by about 1300 individual burials documented from roughly 150 cemeteries of various size, contains frequent references to the heads of the deceased allocated special mortuary treatment. These ‘skull cults’ include peri-mortem decapitation, post-mortem head or skull removal from the grave or a treatment with fire or red ochre. While much has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers.

A recent examination of domestic architecture at Paquime demonstrated support for structural differences present throughout the Medio period following Di Peso's phases. No known analysis, though, outside of Di Peso's publications has examined the ceramics data to assess whether differences exist between rooms or units. This paper examines the connection between differences in ceramic types and distributions and those present in structural elements of architecture. The broader implications of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shevan Wilkin. Ignacio A Lazagabaster.

The prevalence of violence in past societies is generally assessed through observable skeletal trauma. Common contexts of violence vary from culture to culture, and differences in acceptable forms of violence can be evident after documenting the different shapes, locations, and stages of healing of injuries. Contemporary cross-cultural studies show the physical effects of household violence primarily display on the middle third of the face in female victims, can commonly cause concomitant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Hayes.

Shell material, particularly marine shell, has long been recognized in the archaeology of pre-colonial America as a “prestige” good of complex meaning. Particularly in the Mississippian world, shell traveled great distances and appeared in richly meaningful contexts of use. Even in areas abundant in shellfish, however, it played a complex role: food, adornment, pottery temper, landscape alteration. After colonization shell use did not disappear, and oral traditions indicate some of the ways in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook. Nathan Hale.

We present here the results from recent surveys and excavations at the Econfina Channel Site in Apalachee Bay, Florida, U.S.A., a submerged prehistoric site with a terminus post quem of approximately 5000 B.P. This site was initially identified and excavated in the 1980s in the course of a larger survey for submerged prehistoric sites in Apalachee Bay by Faught, et al. Our relocation and new excavations at the site have confirmed the presence of chert outcrops, a shell midden deposit, and a seep...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Harris. Ana T. Duggan. Stephanie Marciniak. Hendrik Poinar. Vaughan Grimes.

For a millennium, the island of Newfoundland was home to two cultures: the Palaeoeskimo, and the Amerindians who later became known historically as the Beothuk. Evidence from site distribution patterns suggests that each culture negotiated the shared space by utilizing different resources. However, after 1500 years BP, the cultural dynamics of the island began to shift as a period of climate warming altered the resources that were available on the outer coast. While the Palaeoeskimo may have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Serenela Pelier. Tosha Dupras. Rimantas Jankauskas.

In 2001, 3269 unidentified individuals were recovered from a mass grave in Vilnius, Lithuania. Archaeological context indicates that these individuals were likely soldiers that were a part of Napoleon’s Grand Army. Geographical origins of 9 individuals from the mass grave were assessed utilizing stable oxygen isotope (δ18O) values that were extracted from femoral bone apatite. The carbonate oxygen isotope (δ18OVSMOW) compositions (24.5‰ to 26.4‰) suggest that all assayed individuals were...