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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Miller. Naomi Sykes.

A central focus of stable isotope analysis in archaeology has always been to reconstruct human diet, with faunal samples examined primarily to better understand the human data. This paper will challenge this precept and highlight that important information about human-animal relationships can be obtained from isotope studies if the animals are viewed as individuals in their own right, as opposed to mere background data. Using several species as case-studies, this paper will examine how stable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Dodrill. Mila Lassuy. Nicholas Jew. Scott Fitzpatrick.

Abstract. In Palau, Micronesia, marine resources such as shellfish played a vital role in subsistence for millennia. At the Chelechol ra Orrak site, nearly 100 shellfish species have been identified in archaeological assemblages, but there is a dearth of data on nearshore paleoecology or prehistoric shellfish foraging practices. To address these issues, we employed stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) on select shellfish species, which has been successfully applied in many coastal regions to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Wenzel.

This presentation will provide a review of current archaeological studies of historic resort and hotel sites in Florida. I will discuss insights yielded from these studies that informs on commodities acquisitions, consumption, and social status through the framework of anthropological and sociological perspectives of leisure and tourism. The major research goal of this project is to ascertain the cultural, sociological, and economic forces that have shaped Florida tourism through time by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kuzminsky. Tiffiny Tung. Mark Hubbe. Antonio Villasenor-Marchal.

Bioarchaeologists have long been interested in documenting the forms and techniques involved in cranial modification and exploring the larger social significance of such practices, particularly in the Andes. While such studies have enriched our understanding of head-shaping practices among pre-Hispanic populations, there has been a dearth of research that investigates the individuals who were responsible for carrying out these corporeal modifications on infants. Was the practice carried out by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Qiaowei Wei. Feng Shi. Yichao Zhao.

The legislative system of cultural heritage in China outlined cultural heritage management and archaeological activities fulfilled under exclusive right of state. This state archaeology proves its worth to increase the authority and quality of cultural heritage management, as well as to enhance the heritage values at the state level. The local communities, however, hardly embedded into the activities of cultural heritage management and archaeological projects, nor meet cultural heritage concerns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brown. Caitlin Limberg. Anne Parfitt. Patrick Lewis. Patrick McCutcheon.

Understanding the change of artifact frequencies through time and across space at the Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit site is essential to testing hypotheses about settlement and subsistence in the Pacific Northwest. Some problems associated with intra-site time-averaging were controlled with intensive chronological analysis and volumetric control of artifact bearing sediments. Initial differences in analyzed artifact frequencies reveal a decrease in technological diversity and an increase in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal Glassburn. Ben A. Potter. Joshua D. Reuther. Matthew J. Wooller.

Steppe bison (Bison priscus) were an important species for interior Alaskan subsistence economies during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, but the locations of preferred bison habitat areas, seasonal movement patterns, responses to environmental change, and other behavioral factors remain largely unexplored in Alaskan archaeology. This study applies strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotopic analyses to 14 sequentially-sampled and AMS radiocarbon dated steppe bison teeth from two locales in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melody Pope. Lynn Alex. Shirley Schermer.

Between 2010 and 2013 archaeologists at the University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist collaborated with local communities, traditionally associated peoples, and other stakeholders in planning processes involving archaeological sites, cultural resource districts, and archaeological preserves in Iowa and Illinois. Each project built on and extended partnerships with and between Native American communities and fostered new multidisciplinary relationships between archaeologists,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Garcia-Plotkin.

As stewards of the Tribe’s heritage, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has designated the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) responsible for the protection, preservation, and management of a wide array of Historic Properties and Cultural Resources such as archaeological sites, historic-period properties, as well as expanses of land which are of traditional or ceremonial importance to Tribal membership. In order to best protect the Tribe’s cultural heritage the THPO has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Livesay.

Groups in the past used social memory for various social negotiations, which can include maintaining and legitimizing power, access to resources, and monumental construction. But how is memory maintained, created or recreated in the daily practices of a group or groups going through social and material transitions? How does that translate to real social power? In this spirit, I explore the creation, inscription, and possible contestation of social memory in the Mimbres region of southwest New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dil Basanti.

Aksum, the capital of an ancient northern Ethiopian kingdom (50-700 AD), is well known for its elaborate funerary stelae, the largest of which were carved in the impression of multi-storied “houses.” Prior to a widespread conversion to Christianity, the Aksumites buried their dead in kin-groups either in tombs or in shafts that cluster around the stelae. Human remains are often burned, fragmentary, disarticulated and jumbled, creating an impression of ephemeralness that contrasts with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loukas Barton. Christopher Morgan. Bayarsaikhan Jamsranjav.

Understanding hunter-gatherer adaptations to northern latitude marginal environments such as the Uvs Lake Basin of northern Mongolia is crucial for understanding social historical processes such as the transition to herding and pastoralism. To date, however, the archeological patterns of hunter-gatherer life in this part of the world are notoriously ill-defined, on the one hand because so little attention has been given to them, and on the other because buried, stratified sites have been so...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Fox.

This poster describes a novel high-resolution 3D geometric morphometric outline method that is able to describe object shape in great detail. Elliptical Fourier spherical harmonics - SPHARM –quantifies the shape of an object by producing values for the elliptical Fourier harmonic formula over multiple iterations of the object’s surface. This technique is applied to a series of handaxes from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, and the data is correlated with the volumetric research of Riddle and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde.

The story of the start of the California Gold Rush by the announcement of the discovery at von Pfister’s General Store in Benicia, California, lives large in the contemporary community’s collective memory. Archaeological excavations and historical research at von Pfister’s has shed light on daily life at the general store and has served to historically and socially contextualize the popular story. This paper explores the origins of the story and the ways the narrative has shaped a larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd. Timothy J. Murphy IV.

Pecos River style murals are highly-ordered, complex compositions of layered figures composed of different pigments. Through analysis of sequential ordering and stratigraphic relationships of these figures, researchers can gain insights into the technical history of a mural and the artistic and cognitive processes that led to its creation. The Pecos River style mural in Rattlesnake Canyon spans 32 meters and contains more than 250 finely-executed, polychromatic figures. Shumla is investigating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janice Campbell. Jennifer Wildt. Prentice Thomas.

Data derived from archaeological investigations at Tyndall Air Force Base in northwestern Florida suggest strategic decision-making in settlement patterns during the Middle and Late Woodland periods. The installation occupies prime property on a northwest/southeast-trending peninsula that extends for 18 miles along the Gulf of Mexico and is between two and three miles wide. This small coastal stretch with minimal relief was the scene of increasingly intensive settlement beginning with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Frampton.

The presences of different type of artifacts, especially shell and stone beads, have often been used to discuss these inter-regional trade networks. In this paper I will discuss and try to identify some of these regional networks and the importance of exchange within these local networks. I examine whether elaborate grave goods are displays of wealth or whether they might represent ritual paraphernalia. I discuss the nature of incipient status inequality.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vaughan Grimes. Rui Boaventura. Ana Maria Silva. Maria Hillier. António Carlos Valera.

During the end of the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE (Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic) in South-Central Portugal significant movement of people has been assumed due to the widespread distribution of ‘foreign’ artefacts found at coastal and inland archaeological sites. Counter to this, other archaeological evidence from the region seems to suggest a more sedentary lifestyle among these people at that time. Here we will present human strontium isotope data from three Late Neolithic tombs, namely the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Freiwald. Timothy Pugh.

The earliest Spanish explorers in the 15th century brought ships stocked with European domesticated animals. Yet for nearly two centuries, the Maya living in Guatemala’s Peten Lakes region continued to rely on traditional wild animal species. A small number of cow and horse bones have been identified in Contact period contexts at Zacpeten and Tayasal, but significant changes in animal use are only visible after the Spanish began to build missions in the region during the early 1700s. We explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret-Ashley Veall.

Variations in design and function of any tool represent adaptive strategies employed by humans to exist within a landscape. With the increased application of both chemical analysis and microscopy to archaeological material, the identification of hafting adhesives, the glue of composite tools, provides a means by which we may evaluate how members of our species existed within dynamic environments and exploited its resources. In southern Africa, the well-preserved assemblages of the Later Stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Peña. Emily-Anne Davis.

During the Middle Horizon, the Andean area experienced significant cultural transformations in settlement patterns, architecture, ceramic style, and subsistence strategies, which are commonly associated with the Wari Empire. The region surrounding the Wari capital in Ayacucho was transformed to increase agricultural productivity in order to support the growing population. The increase of agricultural productivity can be also observed in the provinces in which the transformation of the land was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ema Perea. Luis Muro.

For two decades, archaeological research in the Moche site of San José de Moro, located in the valley of Jequetepeque northern coast of Peru, have focused on exploring the ceremonial nature of the site from the study of funerary and feasts contexts. However, there are still many unresolved questions about the ritual practices, where they were made and what its frequency was. That is why, since 2012, new explorations started at a monumental construction, in order to understand the role and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Duffy. Julia Giblin. Györgyi Parditka. László Paja.

Significant population increases, the intensification of craft production and new forms of agricultural output characterize a major transition between the18th and 17th century BC on the Great Hungarian Plain. Many archaeologists consider these changes hallmarks of an emerging social class. Yet research from different parts of Eastern Europe suggests that societies were organized in a variety of ways during this regional florescence. This session describes recent investigations into a Bronze Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Mascarenhas. Steve Kosiba.

Archaeologists have long examined how ancient empires and states developed a standard aesthetic and material culture—a set of styles and iconographic designs meant to express their claims to regional authority. In contrast, this paper moves beyond style designations and iconographic interpretations, which often draw on texts to make claims about representations of myths and political personages, to instead understand the materials and technological sequences that constituted a regional aesthetic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Buck. Donald Sabol.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

Children throughout Mesoamerica were preferred sacrificial victims, especially to water deities. Because caves were associated with rain, ethnohistoric sources mention the sacrifice of children in caves. The importance of children in sacrifice was documented early on by Edward Thompson’s dredging of the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza. More recently archaeological investigations of caves have recovered and identified the skeletal remains of children that have been interpreted as sacrificial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Ellis.

This study focuses on the subadult skeletal remains excavated in 1960 from the Late Prehistoric-age McLemore site (34WA5) in southwest Oklahoma. Past analyses of this skeletal collection primarily focused on the adults, and what they could contribute to the overall understanding of the health and lifestyle of the individuals who inhabited McLemore. The goal of this study was to reexamine the skeletal collection in light of new methodologies in diagnosing pathology, focusing on the subadult...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Grinnan.

Community interest in archaeological shipwreck sites is increasingly profound in Florida. Though laws protecting these submerged cultural resources in state waters have been in place for nearly 30 years, many people are still unaware of the importance of these resources as heritage tourism destinations, foci of archaeological research, and representatives of community identity. After award of a grant to explore the 16th-century Spanish Emanuel Point II shipwreck in 2014, the University of West...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Garay. Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

Mollusks recovered from archaeological sites reflect decisions made by individuals in the past, changes in the environment through time, and the interactions between people and landscapes. Therefore, archaeomalacological analyses can help to reconstruct paleoenvironments and to identify changes in consumption practices. Changes should be particularly evident when considered from a deep-time perspective. In this presentation we will be evaluating samples from three archaeological sites spanning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jinok Lee.

This study examines the transition of subsistence practices in early Bronze Age sites in eastern China, when the region was integrated into the Shang state in the second millennium BC. Through a combination of geomorphological and archaeobotanical analyses, I reconstruct the long-term environmental history as well as land-use practices at the Yueshi cultural sites, to explore a variety of responses and adaptations that would have been developed before and after the Shang expansion into the area....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yadira Chinique De Armas. William Mark Buhay. Roberto Rodríguez Suárez. David Smith. Mirjana Roksandic.

Starch and isotopic analyses have changed our understanding of subsistence strategies and food consumption patterns of Cuban “fisher-gatherers”, traditionally considered as populations who depended on natural resources, without management of cultigens. Isotopes (13C and 15N) from Guayabo Blanco, Cueva del Perico, Cueva Calero and Canímar Abajo (CA) sites, indicated two different food consumption patterns among coexistent “fisher-gathers”, suggesting that populations with different dietary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Napolitano. Traci Ardren. Scott Fitzpatrick. Victor Thompson. Michelle LeFebvre.

Archaeological research on prehistoric settlements in the Florida Keys has been largely sporadic and diffuse. To help improve our understanding of when the Keys were settled and their relationship to Calusa and other groups regionally, we revisited the well-known site of 8MO17 on Upper Matecumbe Key in the central Florida Keys and conducted preliminary subsurface investigation. Preliminary results from the newly established Matecumbe Chiefdom Project have revealed dense, stratified midden...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumie Iizuka. Diana Carvajal Contreras.

Archaic to Formative transitions in the Intermediate Area of Latin America have been discussed in terms of the timing of agriculture, population growth, sedentism and mobility, use of coastal resources, and the appearance of pottery. The Caribbean Colombia has among the earliest dates for pottery in the New World. Sites such as Puerto Chacho and Puerto Hormiga, shell middens near the coast, were occupied by ca. 5,000 B.P., during the wet period. Monsú, a mound in the riverine environment, was in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Colaninno. Carla Hadden. Maran Little.

This paper explores relationships among subsistence, landscape, and identity on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida. Zooarchaeological assemblages from three Woodland-period shell midden sites (8BY1347, 8BY1355, 8BY1359), all located on a small (150 km2) peninsula in Bay County, Florida, differ in molluscan species composition reflecting proximity to varied marine and estuarine habitats. Coastal dwellers had flexible subsistence regimens, targeting local habitats rather than specific resources....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Griffith. Nikolai Grube.

In this paper we present recent analyses conducted on the elaborate artwork in Actun Halal, an important ancient Maya cave site in western Belize. Actun Halal contains a wide variety of art forms, ranging from monumental modified speleothem sculptures four meters in height to small, detailed bas-relief sculptural works executed in layers of travertine only millimeters thick. Akin to the elegant scenes rendered in murals and on polychrome pottery vessels, the sculptural works in Actun Halal tell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Depalmas. Francesco di Gennaro.

The paper focuses on some aspects of food production and preparation of meals in the poorly equipped context of the protohistoric village in Italian territory. Some arrangements that have already been observed or reconstructed on archaeological basis, specifically when connected to particular found tools are discussed. With specific reference to the Italian protohistory, research on these items has been sometimes supported by ethnographic comparisons. In this search some already stated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Lewarch. Stephanie Trudel.

The Suquamish Tribe of the Port Madison Indian Reservation in Western Washington promotes incorporation of tribal history, culture, and language into school curricula. Staff members in the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Program participate in curriculum development and make presentations in the North Kitsap School District and at the Suquamish Tribe’s own Chief Kitsap Academy Middle and High School. Tribal archaeologists contribute to the classroom experience in a variety of ways to bring...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Kohut.

Mobility is frequently examined in terms of interaction, confluence and circulation. During periods of conflict, however, roads and paths can become arenas for the negotiation and control of people, lands and resources, and thus bring into sharp relief the often tense politics of mobility. This paper draws on regional survey of Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1450) hilltop fortifications in the Colca Valley to examine the use of fortification to monitor and control mobility during a period of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Paris. Roberto López Bravo.

Although the famous "Maya collapse" in the 9th century A.D. destabilized many powerful Southern Lowland Maya Late Classic kingdoms, the small polities of highland Chiapas not only survived, but thrived. Excavations in the Central Highlands of Chiapas suggest that the small cities and towns in this region maintained their roles as political centers throughout the Late Classic-Early Postclassic period transition. Recent excavations at Moxviquil provide evidence for the economic and social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Elquist.

The Susquetonscut Brook 5 Site located in Lebanon, Connecticut consists of Archaic to Woodland Period deposits within an upland interior setting. Such upland interior sites are typically associated with small campsites of a temporary nature. Data recovery excavations at the site in 2015 revealed numerous, large and complex features, such as storage pits, postmolds, and roasting pits, that are more typically associated with larger, more residential campsites located within lower-lying floodplain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Fairley. Joel Sankey. Joshua Caster.

In 1963, construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River was completed, profoundly altering the downstream riverine ecosystem in Grand Canyon National Park. One consequence of the dam and its subsequent operations has been an 85% reduction in the amount of sediment flowing into the Grand Canyon. The paucity of sediment to re-supply sand bars and replenish sand dunes along the river shoreline has not only altered the bio-physical dynamics of the riverine ecosystem but has also affected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Tackney. Dennis H O'Rourke. Anne M Jensen.

The peopling of the North American Arctic was made possible after the full retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. The archaeological record supports multiple migrations beginning approximately 6,000 years BP, thousands of years after the initial colonization of the Americas. Modern Iñupiat/Inuit peoples are the descendants of a recent (~800 ybp) and rapid (<200 years) migration by the Neo-Eskimo Thule. The Thule brought with them specialized technological developments adapted for the exploitation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcio De Figueiredo.

The present study proposes a comparative analysis of the iconography and morphology of ritual pottery produced in the Northern Peruvian Coast during the Late Intermediate Period and Late Horizon. Ceramics produced in that region during the 15th century presents several changes in the attributes of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic protagonists (here addressed as "figures of power") when compared to those of prior periods. Such modifications in the symbolic patterns suggests aspects of ancestry, ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wilcox.

The history of archaeology is replete with stories about the synergies that have come from relationships between professional and avocational archaeologists whose cooperation repeatedly has produced significant contributions to knowledge. Recalling some of those stories today is a valuable reminder of how such success is crafted, and perhaps a guide to how it again can be realized. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Erich Schmidt, Byron Cummings, Emil Walter Haury and my own experience provide five such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Diaz.

Understanding the land use history of an archaeological site is necessary for understanding the contextual state of the archaeological artifacts recovered through systematic excavation. Bronze Age cemetery excavation at Békés 103 in Eastern Hungary presents some challenges, however, because multiple landowners and a long and varied history of land use parcels the site into archaeological deposits of differing and varied degrees of disturbance. Oral history provides an important source about land...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Magnani. Natalia Magnani.

The arctic indigenous people known as the Sámi inhabit northern Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden, comprising distinctive cultures and languages. The group has experienced a legacy of subjugation strongly evidenced to this day. In northern Finland, the expansion of community-driven cultural heritage revitalization programs have focused on the reclamation of traditional knowledge perceived as lost or disappearing. This remembering is an active process which involves engagement with past material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariane Gaudreau. George Nicholas.

Cultural anthropologists’ and archaeologists’ interest in theorizing identity has a long history. Anthropologists have generally focused on emic perspectives to gain insight into contemporary individual and group identity, while archaeologists have relied mainly on material culture to discern identity in the past, with relatively little attention paid to the views of contemporary peoples. When archaeological interpretations conflict with those of contemporary peoples, serious concerns arise....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Lindsay. Carolyn E. Boyd. Victoria L. Roberts. Jerod L. Roberts. Timothy J. Murphy IV.

The Rattlesnake Canyon mural represents one of the most well-preserved and compositionally intricate rock art murals in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, and perhaps the world. Deposited gravels from a major flood episode in June 2014, however, raised the canyon floor approximately 10 feet, enabling future floods to destroy the fragile panel. The Rattlesnake Canyon Project is an emergency collaborative effort among Texas Tech University, the National Park Service, and Shumla to document this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yongsong Huang. James Dillon. Samantha Lash. Kevin Smith.

Throughout his career, J. Louis Giddings explored the roles of climate on maritime and terrestrial resources and human ingenuity in adapting technologies and social strategies to exploit those resources under changing conditions. At Cape Krusenstern, Alaska, Giddings’ teams identified sequential occupations based on changing maritime adaptations but had no analytical tools for directly inferring key climatic parameters during periods of the Cape's occupation. Recently, our research group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Beisaw.

Water rights is a social issue of growing importance. Recently, the United Nations declared access to clean drinking water to be a basic human right. Yet financial groups are predicting that water is the next major commodity, to be bought and sold like oil. What few are talking about is the long history of water flowing towards political and social centers, and away from rural populations. As Leith Mullings stated in her presidential address, anthropology pays attention to not only that which is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Schneider.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing interest at both the scholarly and public level in the relationship between social transformation and climate change in the past, and especially in the potential role of climate change as a cause of societal collapse. However, this focus has also raised some concerns that too much emphasis is being placed upon environmental factors in some archaeological collapse models, and consequently that important social factors are not being adequately taken...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beau Carroll. Tom Belt. Alan Cressler. Jan Simek.

Caves have offered the Cherokee people concealment before and after contact with Europeans. With the invention of Sequoyah’s Syllabary a way to record these hidden activities became available. A number of caves in the Southeastern United States contain such historical inscriptions and interpreting these can tell archaeologists about who made them and when they were made. This paper considers several such inscription caves, located in the area of North Alabama, North Georgia, and southeastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Enk.

Bait-target hybridization (a.k.a., "target capture") is rapidly replacing PCR as the enrichment method of choice for ancient DNA sequencing projects. Though very successful in recent years, ancient DNA target capture outcomes vary substantially and could be better understood. Here we performed a series of experiments to measure how three commonly-varied parameters - temperature, time, and bait tiling density - impact enrichment of short, rare targets embedded in complex DNA backgrounds. We found...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vivian Scheinsohn. Pablo Marcelo Fernández. Mercedes Grisel Fernández. Florencia Garrone. Mercedes Salado.

The application of traditional zooarchaeological methods in the analysis of faunal specimens recovered in Acevedo 1 site (Chubut, Argentina) led us to a low level of taxonomic identification. Therefore we decided to implement new ways to strengthen its information capacity. We joined hence the Laboratory of Forensic Genetics of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (LGF-EAAF), which had developed locally a protocol for identify animal species in forensic contexts by Cytochrome b analysis. As...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Leigh Anne Ellison. Adam Brin.

This record is a pdf copy of the PowerPoint slides that were part of this presentation in the SAA symposium. The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) is a domain repository for archaeological information maintained by The Center for Digital Antiquity (DA) at Arizona State University. Our mission is the long-term preservation of documents, data sets, images, geospatial information, 3D scans, and other digital files, to provide access for current and future uses. tDAR provides a secure location...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Whittaker.

Few of my students have much experience with hunting, farming, anatomy, or even eating meat these days, so teaching faunal analysis labs in an Archaeological Field Methods class can be difficult. Faunal assemblages from archaeological sites are often small, fragile, and too valuable for class use. They require good comparative collections, and it may be difficult for students to relate to unfamiliar animals and cultures. A faunal teaching assemblage can be produced from home meat consumption....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Chenault.

In a graduate seminar on flaked and ground stone analysis, Payson Sheets emphasized the importance of experimental replication of production techniques for lithic analysis. In this study, I build upon the work of another of Payson's students, Devin White, who analyzed Hohokam palettes in the collections at Arizona State Museum in Tucson, and apply his methods to the analysis of palettes at Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix. In addition, I attempt to replicate some of the techniques used in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Seyler. Beth Koontz Scaffidi.

As with other forms of technology, normative patterns in textile production can suggest information about the communities of weavers that produced them. Through an analysis of technical attributes, this poster establishes the normative patterns involved in the production of textile bands at the mortuary site of Uraca in the Majes Valley of Peru and suggests how these patterns relate Uraca to broader textile traditions within the region. More specifically, it examines how Uraca relates to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Franklin. Jean-Philippe Rigaud. Jan Simek. Lucinda Langston. Frédéric Surmely.

The Gravettian cultural sequence has become of greater interest to Paleolithic scholars now that the relationships of previous industries have been sorted out. Our focus here is on Gravettian truncated elements. Morpho-typology suggests that this tool type is a recycled, broken Gravette point. We suggest that truncated elements were deliberately produced tools used as different armatures than Gravette points based on techno-morphological differences. We suggest that truncated elements were part...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Picin.

The introduction of Levallois method in Europe is considered the technological innovation that marked the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic. In north-central Europe, the early evidences of this new concept of flake production are dated to the late MIS 9/ early MIS 8, a period in which were testified a deterioration of the climatic condition, a change from forested to tundra -cold steppe vegetation and the dispersal of the “Mammuthus - Coelodonta” faunal complex from the artic territories. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer McElhoes. Carl Lipo.

Prehistoric ceramics found across southern California have a relatively discrete spatial distribution. While locally manufactured ceramics are common to the south and southeast of the Los Angeles River, prehistoric sherds are rare in deposits located to the northwest. This marked distribution is potentially explained by regional differences in surface ages and post-depositional processes. Alternatively, populations to the north may have had access to resources necessary for pottery alternatives,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reid Ferring. Teona Shelia.

Recent excavations in the M5 Sector of Dmanisi recovered a series of stratified lithic assemblages dated to the Upper Olduvai subchron (1.85-1.78 Ma) and early Upper Matuyama Chron (1.78-1.76 Ma). These materials from all of Dmanisi's nine major strata provide the most detailed record of lithic acquisition and use from the site. Highly diverse raw materials were acquired and transported to the site from both bedrock and alluvial sources, in contrast to many contemporaneous sites in East Africa,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petr Kvetina. Klara Neumannova. Richard Ther.

The paper presents the development of the technological analysis of pottery at the large Neolithic settlement at Bylany (Czech Republic). The aim of the study is to identify technological chains and interpret the technological variability as materialisation of social networks. Technological variability is studied in relation to the chronological and spatial diversity of the settlement area. The approach is based on visual examination of macroscopic features coupled with validation of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Juan Bautista Belardi. Flavia Carballo Marina.

Since the arrival of Europeans (XVIth Century) and their related economic activities in Patagonia, the different indigenous societies that inhabited the region were forced to deeply modify their ancient ways of life. The incorporation of new raw materials (glass and stoneware) to produce traditional instruments was one of several of modified aspects that have been archaeologically and historically (chronicles) recorded. We study and compare Tehuelche (Aonikenk) data from XIXth to XXIst century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Pereira.

During the summer of 1996, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) discovered a shipwreck off the coast at Tektaş Burnu, Turkey. This shipwreck, now known as Tektaş Burnu, is a classical Greek ship from the 5th century BCE and was excavated between 1999-2001. The ship was found to carry a cargo of wine in approximately 200 amphorae which may have been made at nearby Erythrae, pine tar, pottery, and other amphorae. The ship remains include a pair of marble opthalmoi and lead-filled anchor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Toussaint. Piotr Wlodarczak.

The cemetery at Szarbia in southeastern Poland is a Mierzanowice culture cemetery, from which 45 individuals have been excavated. The skeletal remains from this site had yet to be examined or published prior to this study. The Mierzanowice culture conforms to the “Borderlands” theme well in terms of its many modes of liminality. It is temporally liminal in that it is an Early Bronze Age culture, transitional between Late Neolithic and Bronze Age paradigms. It is culturally liminal in that modes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jones LeFae.

Mortuary offerings play an important role in understanding the social structure, status-building mechanisms, trade networks, and ideological symbols and beliefs of ancient cultures throughout Mesoamerica, particularly of less well-understood areas such as West Mexico. Changes in these structures, mechanisms, and networks may be recognized through analysis of mortuary assemblages and treatments. During the 2015 laboratory season, mortuary offerings from the site of Los Guachimontones in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Young.

This paper focuses on characteristics of a secondary center and its satellite settlements to provide evidence for the nature of political organization in the Cochuah Region during the Terminal Classic Period. The examination of these settlements gives insight into the political organization of a secondary center which otherwise would not be available if investigation was limited to the primary centers. The data used for investigation of the nature of political organization during this time are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuko Shiratori. Nathan Meissner. Timothy Pugh.

Recently, obsidian studies in the Maya area have benefited from the instrumental sourcing of large samples to reconstruct political and domestic economies. This paper summarizes results of the largest portable x-ray florescence (PXRF) source attribution study of obsidian in the Petén lakes region from the sites of Tayasal and Nixtun-Ch'ich'. Cluster analysis of the chemical profiles of 1,123 obsidian specimens suggests that two sites had varying strategies of procurement that emphasized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Gingerich. Daniel Wagner. Kurt Carr.

Depositional regimes determine the burial and preservation of archaeological sites. Before, during, and after the Younger Dryas interval, we see differences in depositional patterns throughout the Middle Atlantic Region of the United States. In this paper we explore both differences and similarities in alluvial and eolian deposition within the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Ridge and Valley physiographic provinces of eastern North America. Using select case studies, we explore what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Knell. Michael DeGiovine.

This paper evaluates Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene (TP-EH) lithic raw material conveyance patterns around pluvial Lake Mojave and the southern conveyance zone proposed by Jones et al. (2003). Geologic samples from 12 fine-grained volcanic (FGV) source areas around Lake Mojave were submitted for xrf analysis to expand the regional database, and 50 FGV and obsidian artifacts from the Campbell collection and sites along the TP-EH shorelines of Lake Mojave were sourced by xrf to document the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Jolie. Verónica Lema. Sara López Campeny.

Accumulating evidence from Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites in the Americas attests to the antiquity and sophistication of perishable technologies such as cordage, netting, basketry, and textiles. Although the record of perishable industries is limited principally by factors of preservation, reevaluation of the available data for plant fiber-based technologies, and direct radiocarbon dates, continue to provide insights into the importance of these earliest perishable artifacts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asa Randall. Kenneth Sassaman.

All societies face contradictions between the perception of how the world was in the past or should be in the future, and the material realities of the present. Changing social and ecological contexts are catalysts for intervention by communities hoping to restore or assert structure during turbulent times. Terraforming is one mode of intervention in which large-scale modifications to land reference ancient times, events, and persons to create new opportunities for the future. At the landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Grier.

The archaeological record of the southern Gulf Islands of coastal British Columbia provides evidence of deliberate and long-term construction of coastal landforms over the last 4500 years. Local landscapes were altered, modified and managed in the service of production, but the implications of such practices for the construction of place, of inequality, and of political networks are profound. I document the magnitude and extent of landscape construction spatially, focusing on quantifying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Navarro Rosales.

El pasado prehispánico de la sociedad Ñuu Savi ha sido explorado por diversos investigadores desde la década de los sesenta del siglo XX. A pesar de sus valiosas contribuciones, existen aún muchas interrogantes en torno a sus modos de vida, su organización social y urbana. Durante la temporada 2014 del Proyecto Arqueológico Cerro Jazmín se excavó una terraza fechada por radiocarbono en la fase Ramos temprano (100-200 a.C). La exploración parcial de la Terraza 504 reveló importantes diferencias...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sudhagar Nagarajan. Christian Davenport.

The Jupiter Inlet I (8PB34) site is one of the most investigated prehistoric sites in Palm Beach County, Florida. Like many of the ancient shell works sites across the state it was partially destroyed for road fill during the first half of the 20th century. Only a sketch map of the site from 1883 depicts what the site looked like prior to destruction. Since then there have been attempts to reconstruct the mound form but these relied on verbal accounts and limited stick and scope survey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Espinosa. Nicolas Goepfert. Vincent Chamussy.

Since the Virú Project, the use of Castillo Decorated as the principal chrono-cultural element to characterize the Virú-Gallinazo presence laid to a “Gallinazo illusion“. Unfortunately, it appears that our knowledge about the Virú-Gallinazo populations are still limited, and most of the time we define them through the prism of the Mochicas. In order to understand who these groups were, we analyzed the spatial distribution of the following ceramics styles trough the northern coast using GIS:...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tommy Budd. Amanda Wissler.

Periosteal lesions are often used as non-specific indicators of overall levels of stress and health in the past. Using medieval London samples, Sharon DeWitte (2014) demonstrated that distinguishing between active and healed periosteal lesions can significantly improve our understanding of stress and differential frailty. She found that healed lesions correlated with higher levels of survivorship when compared to active or no lesions. This study examines whether such a pattern may be observable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernanda Falabella. Silvia Alfaro. María Teresa Planella. Matthew T. Boulanger. Michael D. Glascock.

La Granja site in central Chile has been considered a social aggregation site for Llolleo communities based on an unusually large smoking pipe assemblage, ritual features and an abundance of drinking jars. The hypothesis states that people from a wide region gathered here for group cohesion purposes mediated by rituals involving the smoking of psychoactive substances and drinking of fermented beverages. Based on the potential of NAA to fingerprint ceramic artifacts’ raw material sources, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Hermes. Michael Frachetti. Farhod Maksudov. Alexei Mar'yashev. Paula Doumani Dupuy.

This paper focuses on tracking the mobility and diets of domesticated animals using isotopic analysis. We present two archaeological contexts from mountain regions of Central Asia: 1) A 9th-10th century (medieval) iron smelting town located at 2000 masl in the Zaamin Mtns. of Uzbekistan and 2) a series of Bronze Age (2500-1200 BCE) pastoral settlements located between 900 and 1500 masl in the Dzhungar Mtns. of eastern Kazakhstan. We are curious about pastoral productivity as it relates to social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marybeth Tomka. Jonathan Jarvis.

The Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) was formally established at the University of Texas in 1963 to preserve an ever growing accumulation of records and collections documenting the unique history and prehistory of Texas for research, teaching and public interest. Acquisition of the collections and archive began ca. 1918. University excavations under the Works Projects Administration, and later the federal River Basins Survey salvage program for sites impacted by dams and reservoir...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophie Desrosiers.

Textiles are important artifacts when looking at mobility since they constitute a matrix of complex conceptual ideas, are important identity markers, and they travel easily with their owners. Pre-Columbian textiles have seldom been preserved in the wet Andean highlands, making it difficult to evaluate their past diversity and to identify them among the vast quantity of pieces discovered on the arid coast of Peru. Nevertheless, combining the study of present highland weaving practices with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nina Castillo Sánchez.

Las últimas investigaciones sobre patrones funerarios en la costa central peruana exponen, principalmente, entierros femeninos de élite dedicados a la actividad textil. Sobre la base de las descripciones del ajuar asociado a la textilería. Estas explicaciones hacen énfasis en los objetos hallados, asumiendo directamente la posición social del individuo, sin mencionar que este ajuar, probablemente, representa el actuar colectivo sobre estándares sociales de enterramiento femenino y no...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terren Proctor. Tiffiny Tung.

This study examines cranial vault modification (CVM) frequency and styles among 35 crania from the Vegachayoq Moqo sector at the site of Huari, the former capital of the Wari Empire. The crania date to the post-Wari era (AD 1250 – 1400). In order to document the process by which they were modified, the crania were analyzed by noting the number of pad impressions and locations, as well as the center of applied pressure; the design of the modification devices was extrapolated from the observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Maitland Gardner.

Our hands shape and express the social and material worlds in which we live by creating and measuring things around us and communicating our thoughts, feelings and ideas. In Classic Maya iconography, hands are represented in a variety of shapes and forms, which offers a unique glimpse into ancient Maya gestural practices. This paper journeys through the actions and representations of hands in the ancient Maya world, exploring the dynamic and dialogic relationships between bodily gestures and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Carlton.

Colonial studies have progressed exponentially in archaeology, but such studies can suffer from contextual limitations. Analyzing colonialism in many different social contexts adds to its potential as a lens through which to study the archaeological record. Diverse applicability would allow archaeologists an opportunity to make sense of colonialism’s profuse influence on the people it affects. Throughout the 19th-century, the Nipmuc from eastern Massachusetts faced many of the common processes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Parcak.

This paper will discuss the range and type of studies possible based on past and current advances in the field of satellite remote sensing. It will focus on work in the Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Atlantic. The paper will primarily focus on the range and type of questions is it possible to ask (and in some cases answer) using a diverse range of satellite datasets combined with intensive ground survey and excavation. It will also provide a range if...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyce De Carteret.

The construction of the home (‘otot’ in the language of the Classic Maya inscriptions) is one of the most important and meaning-laden events in Maya communities modern and ancient alike. In the Maya world, culturally-contingent notions of propriety, order, and moral rectitude guide each stage of housebuilding, including the procurement of materials, the organization of labor, and the actual act of construction itself. Additionally, houses must be properly consecrated before they can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Carroll.

One application of experimental archaeology is attempting to understand variations in flintknapping skill. These experiments often have flintknappers of varying skill levels attempt to replicate different variants of prehistoric stone tools. Previous studies of skill level in the debitage produced during flintknapping is restricted to qualitative means of analysis. To add to the expanding collection of experimental archaeology that attempts to identify flintknapping skill, this paper addresses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munkittrick. Alison Harris. Kelly-Anne Pike. Vaughan Grimes.

From the mid 17th to early 19th centuries the lucrative cod fishery drew sailors and settlers from the British Isles and continental Europe to the shores of Newfoundland. Poor agricultural prospects and a dependence on imports challenged permanent settlement; as a result, the life- and foodways of these early ‘Newfoundlanders’ differed from those that developed at other North American colonial settlements. Through palaeodietary analysis, we investigate the different subsistence-based adaptive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Blouet.

As a professor at Utica College in New York, I am faced with a challenge. I teach archaeological field methods, but I only have room to do so in the spring semester, a time dominated by cold and snowy weather. While a large-scale summer field school would be ideal, many UC students have summer work commitments or otherwise cannot afford to participate. So I have decided to bring the digging into the classroom. In this presentation, I will show how students learn and practice archaeological field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Swogger.

Comics are an effective medium for promoting engagement with archaeology, as they are able to communicate complex and detailed archaeological information to audiences unfamiliar with its concepts and practice. This communication is facilitated both through the comic itself and the process of creating it. During the University of Oregon's Palau Archaeology 2015 field school on the island of Palau, Micronesia, comics were used to present the ongoing results of excavations to multiple audiences....

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Seebach.

Residents of Grand Junction, Colorado must necessarily adapt to the arid, high-elevation climate of the northern Colorado Plateau. One highly visible adaptation to aridity is the personal transport of potable liquids in an array of vessels. Such vessels are ubiquitous among Colorado Mesa University students, staff and faculty, and they provide a readily accessible source of data with which to illustrate the uses of typology, style and the material correlates of social organization. In a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Jones.

The Mashantucket Pequot Reservation is today one of the best-researched heritage landscapes in New England. Cooperation between the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and UConn archaeologists has been positive and ongoing since the early 1980s. Initial heritage management work on the Reservation focused on ethnohistorical research and the documentation of Pequot homesteads as well as important off-reservation historical sites such as Mystic Fort. Archaeological work was largely limited to extensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only German Loffler.

In this paper I explore the possible function of the annular rings on p’uku-like ceramic vessels from the Central Coast of Peru during the Late Intermediate period. I argue that this part of the vessel is not decorative as others have suggested for modern contexts. Instead, I hypothesize that the annular ring at the bottom of the p’uku-like vessel’s function was to buffer the hand from heat. Alternatively, the annular ring might have aided in adding stability to a standing vessels in shaky...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celeste Gagnon. Bethany Turner.

Much sweat and ink has been shed investigating the Moche of north coastal Peru. But what of those who came before? In order to understand the Moche world, we must explore their history. To address this issue, the skeletal remains of over 850 individuals who lived in the Moche valley during the Guañape, Salinar or Gallinazo phases were examined. The collected bioarchaeological data including demographic patterns, oral health indicators, light and heavy isotopes, and pathological conditions allow...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fowler. Raquel López Rodríguez.

The impact of the eruption of Ilopango Volcano in the early sixth century A.D. has been a focus of Payson Sheets' research for more than four decades. The signature of this eruption is the distinctive "tierra blanca joven" (TBJ) layer found at sites in central and western El Salvador. Our excavations in 2013-15 at Ciudad Vieja, the archaeological remains of the Conquest-period town of San Salvador, have allowed us to identify a hitherto unknown site in the distribution of TBJ tephra. In some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Reitze. Amy Schott. Iva Lee Lehmkuhl.

In 2004 Congress authorized Petrified Forest National Park to more than double in size, in part to protect unique cultural resources. This poster introduces the preliminary results of the third and final season of pedestrian survey in these new lands. So far this research has recorded archaeological sites dating from the Archaic through the Late Pueblo periods. Sites range from lithic landscapes covering hundreds of acres to multi-room masonry or adobe structures. Survey methodology has focused...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Gunn.

Vern’s collaborative research fosters a number of insights both across investigators and disciplines. My top-three picks are tropical ecology, water cities, and Gulf Coast origin of Lowlands occupation. (1) Vern focuses on understanding implications of tropical ecology, central to which is high diversity and therefore low density. Working through the implications of this for human settlements has perhaps been his most important accomplishment. (2) Maya water cities are obvious attempts to break...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Yerka. Jan Simek. Alan Cressler.

This paper explores and compares how quantitative spatial analysis of cave and open-air rock art can be derived from high-resolution, multi-sensor 3D digital reconstructions. For this project, three different types of survey data were collected at four prehistoric cave and rock art sites within the southern Cumberland Plateau of eastern North America. The project survey methods include close-range photogrammetry, high-density laser scanning, and near-infrared (NIR) multispectral imagery. The...