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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Stauffer. Lindsay Johansson.

The Fremont people were socially complex and lived within various sized communities. As with any community there are mechanisms used to either differentiate among members of the community or to integrate members of the community and beyond. One of these mechanisms is feasting. In this paper we present evidence from several large village sites across the Fremont region that suggests that the practice of feasting was utilized. In many cases, evidence for feasting is associated with structures that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Ziel.

The turpentine industry employed African American labor in the southeastern United States under a system of debt peonage that was similar to antebellum slavery. One such company camp, Nalaka, located in Polk County, Florida was in operation between 1919 and 1928. The circumstance of its abandonment is unknown. Although no structures survive, artifact scatters from 1920s Nalaka remain in situ. Despite the oppression of peonage, African American laborers developed venues known as "jook joints" for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiuzhen Li. Andrew Bevan. Marcos Martinón-Torres. Yin Xia. Kun Zhao.

A striking feature of Qin material culture (770-210 BC) in ancient China is the frequency with which it preserves stamped, incised or painted marks with a variety of Chinese characters, numerals or symbols. In a general sense, such repeated mark-making was an administrative strategy that enabled Qin administrators to mobilise people, raw materials and finished goods in vast bulk, subject to careful quality and quantity control, and archaeologically, this strategy is nowhere more obvious than in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paola Schiappacasse.

The late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century provides us with numerous examples of the acquisition of collections carried out by museums. When archaeologists talk about those collections, housed at museums worldwide, the discussions are often directed towards how the lack of context limits or nullifies their research potential. I argue that we need to go back and carefully re-examine the research prospects of these collections. This presentation considers several avenues for research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivy Faulkner.

While it is true that theoretical advancements are slow to cross disciplinary boundaries, when disciplines by necessity overlap, it seems almost willfull ignorance that perpetuates old frameworks. For example, it has been over thirty years now that anthropology and colonial studies have come to terms with the complexities of identity in colonial contexts and yet scholars in related disciplines, such as Classics, still argue over which label imposed by colonizers should be used for which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Simmons.

Why humans colonize unoccupied lands, such as islands, has always intrigued scholars. Over the past few decades, researchers working on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus have documented both a Late Epipaleolithic occupation and a more substantial early Neolithic colonization episode. The number of such sites remains limited, but is growing with continuing research. For the Neolithic, both Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and PPNB occupations are now well-documented, and are as early as mainland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shakour.

Public involvement and collaboration with communities are major concerns for archaeologists around the world. Community outreach efforts are major components of research projects and require an immense amount of resources. Further, different stakeholders have varied responses to those efforts. This paper uses data from the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project’s community outreach on Inishark and Inishbofin, County Galway, Ireland, islands five miles into the Atlantic Ocean. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Haslam.

The known record of tool use in the human lineage now extends back 3.3 million years. For other animals, however, we have very few clues as to how and when their tool use behaviors evolved. Study of tool use among extant primates, in particular, offers an opportunity to develop comparative models and analogies for human technologies. Here, I present the results of recent archaeological investigations into stone pounding behavior by wild bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) in Brazil....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Johnson.

In 1570, 50 years after the conquest of Mexico, King Philip II of Spain sent one of his court physicians, Francisco Hernández de Toledo, to the new colony. The goal of this venture was to compile a detailed account of the natural history of New Spain, emphasizing indigenous medicine and the uses of local plant, animal, and mineral resources. The result of his efforts was a series of volumes, describing in detail the virtues of local Mexican resources, and his own observations of Mexico. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Neme. Adolfo Gil. Miguel Giardina. Clara Otaola.

Southern Mendoza region has been considered the meridional boundary of South American farmers, which arrive at this region ca 2000 years BP. At the time of the Spanish arrival, there was coexistence among north Patagonian hunter gatherers and southern Andean farmers along Atuel and Diamante basins. However the real impact of the first domesticates (corn, squash, quinoa and beans) as well as how their latitudinal distribution could vary through time are still on debate. Different lines of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leilani Lucas.

Recent research from both the island and the mainland Near East have changed what we know of the timing and dynamics of the spread of agriculture to Cyprus. The timing of the arrival of the initial explorers and colonists by late Pre-Pottery Neolithic A cultures of the mainland Levant, and the dynamics of cultural developments in subsequent cultural phases is providing further support for the unique Cypriot prehistoric culture. One aspect that has long characterised Cyprus in prehistory is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Green. Roland Rodell.

The social and political ferment of the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) was associated with a golden age in Wisconsin archaeology for avocationals and professionals alike. In 1901, a group of archaeological enthusiasts led by Charles E. Brown founded the Archeological Section of the Wisconsin Natural History Society. The Section soon became the independent Wisconsin Archeological Society (WAS). Its promotion of the “scientific and educational value” of archaeology was meant to engage “scientists,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Wheeler.

In the spring of 1989 Jerry Kennedy hired me to conduct fieldwork for the first archaeological reconnaissance survey of Palm Beach County. I drove around the county in Florida Atlantic University’s late 1980s model Ford Taurus wagon with a list from the Florida Master Site File, attempting to revisit as many sites as possible. The station wagon endured a fair bit of off road driving, including an excursion into the South Florida Water Management District’s newly establish DuPuis Environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Kolianos.

Almost 120 years has passed since Frank Hamilton Cushing recovered hundreds of wood artifacts from a peaty muck lagoon at Key Marco, Florida. Relatively few of these extraordinary, fragile wood specimens remain in existence today due to difficulties with excavation and preservation methods in the late 1800s. In 2001, at Weedon Island Preserve, another mangrove peat saltwater site was discovered containing an ancient waterlogged canoe and pole. The salvage of Florida’s longest and only maritime...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlie Harper. Daniel M. Seinfeld.

The Letchworth Mounds site (8JE337), located near Tallahassee in Jefferson County, Florida, is a predominately Woodland period site that encompasses the largest earth mound in Florida. In addition to this monumental earthwork, a number of smaller mounds survive and it is thought that as many as 20 mounds may have been lost to modern land use. During the summer of 2014, the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research and the Florida State University conducted a field school at the Letchworth Mounds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Walker. Thaddeus Bissett.

Sea-level curves have been one of the main tools used within archaeology to understand human settlement patterns in coastal environments. Questions remain, however, about which curve (or curves) are most appropriately used both at different geographic and temporal resolutions. In order to evaluate these differences in resolution, we examine 161 radiocarbon dates from 32 shell rings from across the lower Atlantic and Gulf coasts. We then plot them against a regional high-resolution reconstruction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernadette Cap.

Marketplace exchange among the Classic Maya is frequently inferred from the degree of homogeneity in consumption practices among households of differing statuses. The actual presence of marketplaces among the Classic Maya has been a point of debate, but recent empirically based investigations at a few Lowland sites have provided evidence for their existence. The Late Classic marketplace located in the East Plaza of Buenavista del Cayo, Belize is such an example. Examination of marketplace...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlene Fleming.

The World Bank provides loans, credits and technical assistance to governments of its client countries. The importance and value of cultural heritage on international, national and local levels are reflected in the Bank’s investment operations as well as in its Operational Policy 4.11 – Physical Cultural Resources. Investment for cultural heritage has totaled over four billion U.S. dollars in the past two decades. The Bank’s safeguard policy requires that an Environmental Impact Assessment...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Nowak.

Throughout the American Southeast, prehistoric and contemporary indigenous groups have conducted ritual acts of wrapping and binding sacred objects in spirit and medicine bundles. Previous researchers have also noted the concept of ritual encapsulation in other cultural expressions such as: settlement design, mound building, pottery, and cosmology. This presentation will focus on the apparent bundling of iconographic motifs and designs present on a ceramic vessel from the Gilcrease Museum in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Gearty. Rachel Freer-Waters. Gwenn Gallenstein.

In 2014 the Flagstaff Area National Monuments received funding to conserve and re-house more than 300 non-burial related prehistoric cotton textiles from Navajo, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki National Monuments housed at the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA). The textiles were woven in the 1100s A.D. and range from expediently constructed objects to technologically complex clothing with dyes. These prehistoric remnants of cloth were excavated by archaeologists in the 1930s and 1960s, and many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josalyn Ferguson.

Despite the fact that images of Maya scribes in Classic period art are not uncommon, the identification of scribes and their households within the archaeological record remains elusive. The association of several utensils typically correlated with Maya scribal toolkits, and a prominent house mound at the Terminal Classic Maya community of Strath Bogue, has prompted the identification of this structure as a scribal household. This identification is of particular significance given that the site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Bies.

This poster presents superimposition sequences of Dinwoody Tradition Rock Art. The sites discussed are located in west central Wyoming. The superimpositions include those of styles within the Dinwoody Tradition and with styles that predate and postdate the Dinwoody Tradition. The poster also addresses difficulties associated with the evaluations of superimpositions within the Dinwoody Tradition. The sequences establish a relative chronology for the images.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremias Pink. Ronald K. Faulseit. Erica Ausel.

Imagery related to the deity Xipe Totec is well-recognized in Late Classic Zapotec iconography, most notably on a few large ceramic figures known as "Xipe Statues." Unfortunately, the majority of these objects lack detailed contextual information, limiting our ability to fully understand their ritual or ceremonial significance. Our excavation of an elite residential complex has yielded numerous Xipe statue fragments, as well as painted and incised human bones, including two drilled mandibles...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Antonia Aguilar Pérez.

El municipio veracruzano de Playa Vicente es fundado oficialmente en 1873 a partir de un caserío que se desarrolló alrededor de una playa formada a orillas del río Tesechoacán, el asentamiento es producto de la ruta que seguían los comerciantes de madera que bajaban de la sierra de Oaxaca hacía las costas veracruzanas. Sin embargo antes de que se establecieran allí los nuevos lugareños el área estuvo habitada tiempo atrás, pero de aquellos pobladores poco se ha sabido. En la última década se han...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rogers. Sileshi Semaw.

Tentatively dated to MIS 5/4, the YAS-1 (Ya’alu South 1) site at Gona, Ethiopia is a high-density open-air archaeological site preserving classic Middle Stone Age (MSA) stone tools such as Levallois cores, points, and blades in addition to a variety of fossil fauna, some with bone modifications including cut marks. While most of the archaeological material has been found on the surface over the last ten years, recent excavations have documented both lithics and fauna in situ. Though the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimball Banks. J. Signe Snortland. Linda Scott Cummings. Donatella Usai. Maria Gatto.

WK26 is a Late Paleolithic occupation consisting of a sparse lithic scatter, hearths, postholes, storage features, a possible living floor, and faunal remains in which fish predominate. The site lies on the west side of Wadi Kubbaniya, north of Aswan, Egypt, and opposite the Late Paleolithic dune field the Combined Prehistoric Expedition investigated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Radiocarbon dates and stratigraphic position indicate that WK26 dates to the end of the Late Paleolithic. Few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Morehouse. Sara Rivers Cofield. Erin Wingfield.

Eighteen years ago, the State of Maryland’s archaeological collections were moved into the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab) at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum in Southern Maryland. This was an important step towards improving the storage conditions of the Maryland collections, but it did little to make the collections more accessible. Understanding the need for better access to archaeological collections, MAC Lab staff spent years rehousing, inventorying and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippa Jorissen.

Social position, ethical origin, cultural background and diet are found to be strongly intertwined, therefore faunal remains provide a unique opportunity to explore differences in diet between different ethnical groups and/or social classes. Hence we studied the zoological remains from the pre- and post-emancipation of three archaeological sites on Saba (late 18th to the early 20th century), which were inhabited by different groups of people, such as impoverished people of European descent,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Otárola-Castillo. Max Price. Jesse Wolfhagen.

Zooarchaeologists address some of today’s “big-questions” related to human evolution, social competition and exploitation, big-game hunting and the origins of domestication. These questions are frequently answered by systematically observing the appropriate zooarchaeological assemblages and quantifying and analyzing suitable data. Techniques used throughout data collection and analysis include sampling, frequency distributions of bone counts, butchery marks , taphonomic modification, and GIS...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah MacDonald.

This paper discusses zooarchaeological analysis conducted at Elden Pueblo in Northern Arizona. As one of the last remaining Sinagua occupation sites in the San Francisco Peaks region, the site’s abandonment during a cool and dry period suggests that the occupants may have left the area because of resource shortages. I hypothesize that populations must change acquisition and processing strategies in order to adapt to these shortages. Evidence of subsistence stress over time appears in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Corl.

Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175), an El Paso Phase (A.D. 1275-1450) horticultural village in southern New Mexico is one of the largest pueblos in the region. Understanding what animal communities were included in the subsistence strategies people living in this village used will aid in understanding strategies that people relied upon to support a large population in the Northern Chihuahuan Desert. Were prey animals (such as desert cottontails, black-tailed jackrabbits, whitetail deer, mule...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharlene ODonnell.

Many indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout the world depend on coastal and riverine environments for their livelihood and subsistence. The seascape is a setting of daily activities, and these communities have a detailed knowledge of their surrounding environment, the tides, and the seasons, all of which influence their decisions for catchment locations of habitat-specific faunal assemblages. For this paper, ethnographic research, zooarchaeology, biological salinity tolerances, GIS...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Kamenov. Michelle LeFebvre. Susan deFrance. Geoff DuChemin. John Krigbaum.

Although the Bahamas are not geologically part of the Caribbean, they are culturally associated with the rest of the Caribbean Islands. Due to their unique geology the Bahamas can potentially be a distinct Pb and Sr isotopic province when compared to the rest of the Caribbean islands. Here we present the results of isotopic analysis of archaeological Bahamian hutia specimens from two pre-Columbian sites on Crooked Island (Crooked Island-8 and Crooked Island 14) located in the Bahamas, and one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey DuChemin.

This paper presents the results of a recent zooarchaeological analysis of vertebrate remains from the Tibes Ceremonial Center near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Two excavation units contained intact and undisturbed deposits with the potential to provide information pertaining to social dynamics and socio-cultural change at the site. Radiocarbon dates from the two units indicate that each archaeological deposit occurred during times of perceived dynamic social and cultural activities on the island. During...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irvy Quitmyer. Nicole Cannarrozzi. Margo Schwadron. Douglas Jones.

Zooarchaeological research in the central Georgia Bight has arrived at a point where human subsistence behavior over space and time can be modeled. Elizabeth J. Reitz and colleagues have offered a testable hypothesis that subsistence rested on three cultural and ecological pillars: continuity, flexibility and resilience. For nearly 5000 years, and possibly longer, resilient estuarine finfish taxa that easily recover from intensive harvest were most frequently exploited, while terrestrial and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hayward. Frank Schieppati. Michael Cinquino.

While Caribbean rock art is characterized by its high percentage of human-like facial and body images, realistically-depicted and stylized zoomorphic motifs are also present. Fish, turtles, birds and marine mammals are among the animals found amidst anthropomorphic, geometric and abstract designs. We identify a number of zoomorphic forms and describe their distributional patterns from our current set of rock art sites particularly Puerto Rico. We also discuss the roles or functions these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Buckley.

The interdisciplinary nature of the tools and techniques available to the bioarchaeologist ranges across the sciences. Most recently, the field of proteomics within analytical chemistry, has been utilised to develop methods of species identification of archaeological materials in a technique that we have been calling ZooMS, short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry. This methodology was initially created for separation of common domesticate vertebrates, but recent years have seen the...