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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Zobler.

There are few communities in the Andes untouched by the legacies of empire. On the North Coast of Peru, the Chimú (900—1470 AD) formed the most extensive empire in the region prior to Inca conquest. Significant archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the Jequetepeque Valley—the first region to be incorporated by the Chimú— has illustrated the nature of this conquest and the varying impacts on local communities. The site of Talambo, located in the lower neck of the Jequetepeque Valley, has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Dalton.

The Inca Empire was the largest empire in the New World and its ability to expand relied upon the flexibility and diversity of its methods. In some regions the Inca used force and installed their own loyal members imposing a direct rule; in other regions, local administrative structure and elite groups were kept largely intact. The Chincha Kingdom has often been cited as a prime example of Inca diplomacy and peaceful incorporation, whereby the Inca gained access to the Chincha Kingdom’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Hsieh.

The Chinese has conducted trading activities with people who live in the Manila area before the Spanish arrived in 1571. However, the establishment of the Spanish Manila changed the regional networks and attracted much more Chinese merchants and immigrants. The Spanish colonists assigned them to live in a separated area called “Parián”, which became the oldest Chinatown in world history. In this paper, the author will use the concept of trade diaspora to examine the early history of Parián. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernanda Neubauer.

This study combines a detailed analysis of hot rock and chipped stone technologies in order to investigate behaviors related to subsistence and settlement strategies, domestic life, and knapping activities. This paper contributes to the research of Late Archaic lithic technology on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). There, fire-cracked rocks (FCR) dominate the archaeological assemblage, yet relatively little is known of the roles that they played in the lives of the island's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatianna Menocal.

The Yamashita sites are four Virgin Branch Puebloan sites in southern Nevada dating between the early Pueblo II (AD 1000-1050) and the Pueblo III period (AD 1200-1300). This poster summarizes the chipped stone tool and debitage data collected from the sites. The goals of this project were to examine what the chipped stone tool and debitage site assemblages revealed in regard to lithic technology organization.  As sedentary settlements with a horticultural subsistence, the expectation was that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Galle.

Attempts at understanding the economic and social strategies used by enslaved people in the early modern Atlantic World require sophisticated models of human interaction, models that allow archaeologists to precisely investigate the complex behavioral strategies that underlie artifact patterns. Here Optimal Foraging Theory provides the framework for identifying the fishing and foraging activities of enslaved children and adults laboring at the Stewart Castle Estate, an 18th-century Jamaican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Laura Kosakowsky. Jaime Awe. Erin Ray.

The prevalence of Late Classic cultural material in ancient Maya ritual cave sites has led both researchers and lay people to characterize cave use as a Late Classic phenomenon; yet, data collected by the Belize Cave Research Project under the direction of Holley Moyes and Jaime Awe demonstrates that many if not most caves were initially used during earlier temporal periods and many sites demonstrate continued use beginning in the Preclassic period. From 2011 to 2015, the regional project has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaohong Wu. Ofer Bar Yosef.

Human evolution is punctuated by inventions and innovations. One of the important inventions in the development of Chinese civilization was pottery. Cooking and steaming are two of the processes that change the nature of the food. The same are parching and grilling, or chopping meat and vegetables into very small pieces. The archaeology of South China uncovered the earliest pots in the records in East Asia. In this presentation the dating of pottery bearing layers in three cave sites from this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Camacho-Trejo.

In prehispanic times, caves signified the place of origin, the underworld, or where Tlacamecayotl kingship was claimed. Cincalco, a cave located on Chapoltepēc Mountain, was first recorded in the 16th century Historia Toltec-Chichimeca (1550-1560) as being appropriated during 1156 or 1168 after the fall of Tollan. Toltec legend tells that the last king of Tollan, Huemac (Big Hand), committed suicide at the cave after failing to receive help from the gods. At the approach of the Spanish,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Pargeter.

The term “microlith” has grown to include a range of small tool technologies beyond those for which it was originally intended (small retouched geometrics). This definitional dilemma has resulted in a loss of precision in studies of technological miniaturization. Miniaturization includes the production and use of small-unretouched flakes from small cores. This paper proposes a new term for this phenomenon, Cinci-liths (Cinci: isiXhosa for small) that solves the problem of distinguishing these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Stevens.

Since its designation as a National Historic Trail in 1987, partnerships between government agencies, preservation organizations, contractors, local communities, and individuals have been essential for identifying, marking, preserving, protecting physical traces and historical landscapes as well as, recognizing, interpreting, and promoting research and recreation along the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. In southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado, these diverse partnerships have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hughes.

Purpose of this paper is to examine our ability to model trade connections through the use of ceramics and quantitative methods. Ceramic collections from various eighteenth Caribbean sites will be examined through a statistical model for inter-island trade. I shall argue that consumptive patterns are knowable and testable through the archaeological record. Finally, the connections developed from the importation of various goods, such as ceramics, provide opportunities to test ideas about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Clayton.

In this paper I discuss the urban decline and political breakdown of Teotihuacan from the vantage of Chicoloapan Viejo, an agrarian settlement situated in the Basin of Mexico hinterland, 40 km south of the capital city. Fieldwork in the southeastern Basin, including settlement survey led by Jeffrey Parsons in the 1960s and excavations at Chicoloapan in 2013 and 2014, shows that population numbers in this area grew dramatically in the years surrounding the state’s dissolution. As a settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gidusko. Rachael Kangas. Kassie Kemp. Nigel Rudolph.

The Communities of Lake Apopka Artifact Survey Project (CLAASP) is an attempt by several regions within the Florida Public Archaeological Network (FPAN) to preserve information about the many unprovenienced collections of artifacts hailing from this area in Central Florida. Relative to several other areas in the state, the Lake Apopka region is under-represented in the archaeological record. This is in part due to the long term use of much of this area for agriculture prior to the creation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cody Dalpra. Brian Harmon. R. J. Sinensky.

Late Archaic, Basketmaker, and Pueblo I time period projectile point types are problematic in the greater Southwest because many exhibit considerable morphological overlap. The sizable collections from Petrified Forest National Park represent an excellent test case where all of these time periods are well represented. To characterize their considerable morphological range we analyze over 80 projectile points from cross dated surface finds and the excavated sites of the Basketmaker-era Flattop...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Mullen.

The Tres Zapotes polity flourished in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) between 400 BC and 300 AD. As Tres Zapotes’ economic and political power waned in the Early Classic, the ELPB became a political frontier (Stark 1997). Sites in the contested political landscape of the ELPB and Tuxtla Mountains strengthened their ties to both Classic Veracruz and Central Mexico (Stoner 2011; Loughlin 2012; Santley 2007). This paper broadly explores how the political and economic landscape of the ELPB...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Hartford.

This pilot project used petrographic analysis to examine fifteen Classic Period sherds from the site of Azcapotzalco, Distrito Federal, Mexico. These sherds had already undergone instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), which separated the sherds into two chemical groups--Azcapotzalco-B and Tenochtitlan--and left one-third of the sherds unassigned. This project aimed to compare the INAA results with results obtained through the visual analysis of the microstructure of the sherds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Brown.

The Chumash manufactured cooking vessels using soapstone from Southern California quarries for thousands of years, especially between A.D. 1500 and 1804. These vessels have been recovered in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging fin form small cups to large ollas with small orifices that stand over two feet tall. Hundreds of Chumash soapstone cooking vessels were collected by early antiquarians in California and are curated in museums throughout North America with little information regarding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamra Walter. Valentina L. Martinez. Sari Turcotte.

Recent archaeological investigations at site (C4-084B) within the Rio Blanco valley in coastal Ecuador yielded significant data regarding Manteño occupation of the region during the Integration Period (A.D. 700-1500). Situated in a cloud forest in the community of El Pital, the site contains the remnants of masonry residential structures along with evidence for at least two different occupations. Phase I, the earlier occupation, is separated from Phase II, the later occupation, by a gravel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haeden Stewart. Jason De Leon.

The growing subdiscipline of archaeology of the contemporary has stressed the importance of studying detritus to access silenced or abject aspects of the recent past. This paper takes a different approach, focusing on the ways that an archaeology of the present is not about uncovering “truths” that correct ethnographic research, but is rather a constant agitation and addition to ethnographic engagement. Following recent American pressure on the government of Mexico and changes in Mexican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Kyle Wright. Paul Burnett.

The Shoshone National Forest (Northwestern Wyoming) encompasses some of the most remote, inaccessible landscapes in the continental United States with 56% (1.4 million acres) designated Wilderness. Documenting, researching, and managing heritage resources in these Wilderness areas provides special challenges. A fundamental issue is that little basic archaeological inventory has been conducted and working in the area is logistically difficult. Over the last several years, a partnership between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smyth. Timothy Beach. Eric Weaver.

Exploratory research into climate change and the formation of chiefdoms took place in the Valley of Leiva. Preliminary findings from cultural-environmental contexts provide extraordinary interdisciplinary data. A stone-walled, oval-shaped elite building with compacted earthen floors, post-holes, and artifact-ecofact assemblages (decorated pottery, spindle whorls, deer fauna, and stone monoliths) was revealed near El Infiernito. Soil survey along the Rio Leyva produced evidence for major erosion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Anderson. Thaddeus Bissett. Martin Walker.

The historical trajectories of many societies in southeastern North America have been linked to changes in climate and biota. Rainfall regimes influenced population distributions as much as political geography during the late prehistoric era, and arguably well back into the past. Likewise, sea-level fluctuations shaped settlement near changing shorelines and resulted in population movement over much larger areas. Changes in biota over large areas brought about changes in settlement at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

International, interdisciplinary fieldwork is at the core of Lawrence Straus' long-term archaeological research. Inspired by such an approach since my involvement with Straus' excavations at the Abri Dufaure in southwest France, I have been conducting field work in the Arabian peninsula, which aims to understand the relationship between climate change and human demography across the Pleistocene. Satellite images and GIS studies have effectively demonstrated that there were wet phases in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Weinelt. Christian Schwab. Jutta Kneisel. Martin Hinz.

In the eastern Mediterranean area, coherent patterns and synchronous events around 4.2 kaBP suggest an obvious link between cultural upheaval in urban societies and climate forcing. Here, the 4.2 kaBP aridification event is thought the cause of severe economic consequences and social unrest. The picture for the central and western Mediterranean regions, at the interface of North Atlantic (Bond event 3) and monsoon-influenced climate, is different. It remains unclear whether supra-regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jørgen Hollesen. Henning Matthiesen.

Archaeological sites in Greenland represent an irreplaceable record of extraordinarily well-preserved material remains covering more than 4000 years of human history. Out of the more than 6000 registered sites very few have been excavated and it is anticipated that thousands of sites are still to be discovered in the many unexplored parts of the country. However, the climate is changing rapidly in Greenland leading to accelerated degradation of the archaeological sites. Since 2009, the National...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Adler. Barbara Judy. Sarah Stokely. Rory Gauthier.

The Ancestral Puebloan sites at Bandelier National Monument include both masonry pueblos and man-made cave sites. The dry climate of Northern New Mexico in conjunction with the environmental awareness and architectural ingenuity of the builders have played an important role in the preservation of these sites, which continue to yield valuable archaeological information. Changes in the semi-arid climate in which the monument is located have begun to threaten the equilibrium between these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu. Robert Kelly. Craig Lee. Ira Matt. John Murray.

Managing the impacts of climate change to cultural resources, and conducting relevant research, cross-cuts disciplinary boundaries and calls for an innovative, outward looking mindset. Descendant communities, particularly Native groups with long ties to lands and resources and high stakes in climate change outcomes, are rich in traditional ecological knowledge and cultural expertise. These bodies of knowledge are key building blocks for successful strategies for risk evaluation, vulnerability...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Wilson. Lucas Stamps. William Gilhooly. Broxton Bird.

Archaeologists are increasingly turning to climate change as part of their explanatory models of regional and interregional population movement, socio-cultural transformation, and the dissolution of societies in North America. In the lower Midwest, both megadroughts and megafloods have been invoked to explain declining agricultural returns, rises in conflict, and abandonment of major river valleys during the latter half of the Mississippian Period. However, the data sources and indices recording...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Laurent Cases.

Increasing literature has focused on the role of climate change in the collapse of complex societies. These studies suggest that abrupt shifts in climate can exacerbate existing political, social, and economic issues by affecting the basic subsistence systems on which populations depend. Here we compare archaeological, historic, and climate proxy data from two state-level societies: the Classic Maya and the Roman Empire. A strong focus on the impact of multi-decadal droughts from the ninth to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dante Garcia. Guillermo De Anda.

According to the ceramic evidence that came out of the Chichen Itzá sinkholes or "cenotes" it seems the ancient Maya offered into these wells important quantities of pots and very unique ceramic vessels within a very specific period of time, and under very specific situations. The evidence indicates that most of the ritual activity occurred approximately between AD 900-1100, a time that coincides chronologically with the end of the Terminal Classic Period, the rise and subsequent abandonment of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Bellorado.

Scholars have suggested that the process of dressing both animates and ascribes identities to inanimate things. During the thirteenth century, people in the Mesa Verde region of the North American Southwest conceptually dressed special structures, pottery, baskets, and even cotton garments in similar ways. These diverse media were often adorned with clothing depictions and woven textile designs, painted on a white clay-coated background. Grounded both physically and conceptually in bodily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Asher.

Clovis and Folsom artifact distributions, particularly projectile points, are not homogenous throughout the Central Plains. Uneven artifact distributions are in part attributed to diverse land use and hunting techniques that resulted in distinct artifact breakage patterns. Lithic material use and transportation is also unique. These differences are partially driven by changing ecosystems during the terminal Pleistocene. Models of Clovis and Folsom land use are explored to account for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Velchoff Littlefield. Thomas Williams.

Clovis biface manufacturing represents a complex flaked stone reduction technology (Bradley, et al. 2010:64) where extant evidence has established that Clovis knappers possessed a high degree of skill in their craft. Most Clovis behaviors have been gleaned from data-rich Clovis caches and kill-sites. However, quantitative data is limited on Clovis flaked stone debris, and thus, remains an open research issue. One issue raised is the careful preparation of striking platforms during biface and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sanchez-Morales.

Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site located in the north-central portion of the state of Sonora, northwestern Mexico. The site comprises multiple localities including a buried kill of two gomphotheres (cuvieronius sp.), a Clovis camp and raw material procurement areas. The Clovis lithic component at the site consists of Clovis points, Clovis point preforms, bifaces, unifacial tools and a blade industry. The tool types suggest that Fin del Mundo was occupied for a long time span, possibly during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliet Morrow. Stuart Fiedel.

I review the archaeological record of northern Eurasia and North America from 15,000 to 12,000 cal BP to better define the Clovis cultural complex and identify its most likely area and time of origin. Evidence including a clinal pattern of point style changes indicates migration southward and eastward through North America south of the ice sheets. Diagnostic attributes permit discrimination of early, middle and late Paleoindian assemblages. These data support a relatively simple and parsimonious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jody Clauter. Zachary Garhart. Adam Guinard. Rachael Shimek.

This poster details the archaeological collections housed at the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository (UWAR) located in Laramie. The repository houses approximately 3 million artifacts from 15,000 different Wyoming sites as well as comparative, replica, experimental, and educational materials. We highlight our extensive suite of artifacts from across the state, which includes artifacts from all time periods from the Paleoindian to the Historic. Many of these objects are submitted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Tune.

Considerable debate has recently been focused on understanding the effects of the Younger Dryas on human behavioral adaptations throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It has been proposed that adverse paleoecological conditions in southeastern North America triggered a decline and/or substantial reorganization in human populations. The Tennessee Paleoindian biface data in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas is used to assess the evolution of behavioral adaptations during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Connolly. Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza.

Initiated through the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Regional Ancash, the cultural heritage component of the archaeological research program in the village of Hualcayán, Ancash, Peru, has taken on an increased "co-creative" perspective over the past two years. We define co-creative processes as those where the cultural heritage professional partners with a community in projects that address the expressed needs of the local residents. This poster reports on the process of implementing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Walters. Lorena Craig.

This paper presents results from co-phylogenetic analysis of Earth-Diver creation myths and regional language history. This study seeks to understand process of dissemination of traits of historically congruent cultural traditions across time and geographic space. We hypothesize creation myths and language have parallel evolutionary history and form a combined set of core cultural traditions. Thus creation stories and language will map closely together. Results from phylogenetic methods and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Tsai.

The "Coastal Cajamarca" style of painted bowls was first documented by Disselhoff in the 1950s at the site of San Jose de Moro (Lower Jequetepeque Valley, Peru). There are two competing hypotheses with regard to the origin of this ceramic style: (1) it originated from the coast or (2) it was produced in the middle valley or chaupiyunga zone, an intermediate area between the coast and the highlands. In this paper I present evidence from the site of Las Varas, located in the Middle Jequetepeque...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Golitko. Ethan Cochrance. James Goff.

Pleistocene-Holocene environmental variance in the southwestern Pacific plays a critical role in explaining the human settlement potential of islands, and their respective settlement histories. In particular, prevalence of viable ecological niches for human settlement on the northern coast of New Guinea has likely fluctuated due to a combination of eustatic and tectonic factors that may have constrained the size of human populations living there as well as its potential as a route of movement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Steele. Esteban Álvarez-Fernández. Emily Hallett-Desguez. Mohamed El-Hajraoui. Harold Dibble.

Increasingly, researchers have considered the role of coastal marine resource exploitation in influencing the trajectory of human behavioral and biological evolution, specifically relating to modern human origins. However, these models have focused almost exclusively on the relatively rich and well-documented record from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of coastal South Africa. Here, we present data on coastal marine resource exploitation during the Late Pleistocene at Contrebandiers Cave [La Grotte...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Cervantes. Robyn Cutright.

Based on research at Ventanillas, a Late Intermediate Period community in the middle Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, this paper discusses the role of coastal polities and highland influence in a multiethnic middle valley context. Mapping, surface collection, and excavations in 2011 and 2013 focused on investigating the cultural and political affiliation of Ventanillas residents. Ventanillas’ imposing adobe platform mounds link the site visibly to coastal traditions; however, households used a mix of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joost Morsink. Jay Haviser. Ruud Stelten. Dr. Corinne L. Hofman.

Leiden University recently initiated a long-term field project on Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean, which focuses on the human exploitation of resources in dynamic coastal environments. The location of the Den Bon site - behind a large inland bay bordered by mangroves and on the edge of a tidal flat – suggests an explicit interest in resources that derive from such environments. Previous research has indicated that island-specific resources were fundamental in the creation of larger regional networks in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Miller.

This paper presents new spatial and cultural data on the Maya archaeological site of Coba. As part of the Political Interaction Project of Central Yucatán, we have piloted a new investigation on the political, social, and economic relationship between the two Maya cities Yaxuna and Coba. These two cities are connected by the longest sacbe in the Maya region, Sacbe 1, stretching 100 km across the peninsula. Understanding the relationship between these two cities will require a multi year and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pratt. David Brown. Ryan Hechler.

The archaeological site of Cochasquí exhibits some of Ecuador’s largest and most ornate earthen pyramids or Tolas. With long dirt ramps and truncated steps of cangahua blocks, the Cochasquí pyramids are some of the most recognizable in the country. It was at this site that the Inka first encountered and conquered one of the great polities of the Caranqui Confederation. Sometime after its conquest by the Inka, the Spanish arrive and, by all historic accounts, the location was abandoned by 1580...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Braden.

Coins in the ancient world provided a medium for the propaganda of rulers and other influential individuals. Analysis of coins alongside an understanding of their historical context can reveal their significance. In 2014 the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History received a donation of assorted Greek, Roman, and Byzantine coins from Ambassador George C. McGhee. This project analyzes and catalogues these coins by translating their inscriptions and interpreting their images to determine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Ochoa Castillo. Patricia Ochoa.

La presencia de colecciones mesoamericanas en museos extranjeros forman parte de la historia de la arqueología de México. El coleccionismo entre anticuarios, arqueólogos incipientes, principalmente durante el siglo XIX y las primeras décadas del siglo XX fue una actividad común y legal y muchas de estas colecciones fueron dispersas en distintos museos de Europa y de Estados Unidos. El recuperar estos materiales, en este caso del Preclásico del centro de México, por medio de su registro es una...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Rossen. Mahealani Pai. Keonelehua Kalawe. Brooke Hansen.

A collaborative archaeological project on the Big Island of Hawaii involves excavation and intensive water flotation to recover plant remains at Maluaka, a ten acre parcel of the North Kona agricultural field system above Keauhou traditionally known as the Kuahewa. The work is conducted in collaboration with Kamehameha Schools, a private charitable educational trust endowed by the will of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop (1831-1884). The project involves linkages with elementary,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Neller. Jacqueline Cook. Velma Valdez. Diana LaSarge. Robert Taylor.

The Columbia Plateau Inter-Tribal Repatriation Group consists of the tribes and bands in the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. The Colville, Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce, and the Wanapum Band of Priest Rapids have come together to undertake the repatriation of human remains and funerary objects from the Columbia Plateau. The Plateau tribes have an inherent responsibility under their religious beliefs and practices to care for the ancestors buried within their homeland....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nigel Rudolph. Jeff Moates.

Among the many places that the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) uses as a base of operation, the relationship the Central Region has with the Crystal River Archaeological State Parks is unlike any other. Housed within the visitor’s center at the Crystal River Preserve State Park, FPAN’s Central Region is the only regional center located at a National Historic Landmark prehistoric mound complex. This provides the center with a unique opportunity for outreach, education, and promotion of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Eklund. Lisa Palacios.

In Transforming Archaeology, Atalay et al. (2013) have identified benefits of collaborative projects for both the discipline and participating communities. A well-designed collaborative project has the potential to both foster the application of standard archaeological research methods to questions of interest to various tribes and apply Indigenous research methods to standard archaeology inquires. We propose a standardized evaluation scorecard (rubric), to examine outcomes to American Indian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Ingram.

This presentation reports the results of a preliminary cross-cultural comparative study of collapse (depopulation) in the late precontact Southwest. Key descriptive characteristics and trends in possible contributing factors to collapse (e.g., population levels, social conflict, natural disasters, environmental impacts, etc.) within eight archaeological cultures will be considered. Generalizable and systematic description rather than explanation is the emphasis. The purpose of this trial study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lambert. Joseph Bryce. Jaclyn Eckersley. Paul Stavast.

The process of labeling, measuring, photographing, and classifying artifacts consumes significant amounts of resources for museums and archaeologists. This poster presents technology developed by staff and students at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at BYU for high-volume cataloging and processing of artifacts. The current project is an integrated system that will reduce basic cataloging tasks from over 10 minutes per item to less than 15 seconds per item. The system automates artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elanor Sonderman. Crystal Dozier.

The Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University has an extensive but largely underutilized collection of unprovenienved artifacts, intended for use as teaching collections. Many of these materials have diagnostic attributes but have not gone through the typing process and, therefore, cannot yet be fully incorporated into the teaching collections. The authors have designed several projects for students in introductory archaeology and old world prehistory courses that give these students the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Greenlee. Stephanie Perrault.

The Poverty Point World Heritage Site is a state-owned and -managed archaeological park in northeastern Louisiana. Named for the nineteenth-century Poverty Point Plantation, the site’s cultural significance derives from its monumental earthen complex constructed 3,700-3,100 BP. The complex includes five mounds; six enormous, concentric, semi-elliptical ridges; and a large interior plaza. A sixth mound was built 1,700-2,000 years after the initial construction. This culturally created landscape,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Galaty.

The concept of collective memory has received some attention in archaeology, but has not been systematically applied to processes of state formation and sociopolitical change. In this paper I model the evolution of collective memory systems in Greece from the Neolithic to Iron Age, with a focus on Mycenaean regions. The Argolid, Messenia, and the Mani – using The Diros Project’s excavations of a Mycenaean “ossuary” at Ksagounaki as a primary example – vary in terms of how collective memories...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sofia Chacaltana.

How small communities of coastal Colesuyo were transformed under Inca authority? What roles were played by local and regional elites? Previous worked conducted at the coastal site of Tacahuay has suggested that this site was an altiplano enclave controlled by more powerful Lupaca group. This enclave was established with the aim of obtaining coastal products, and in return Tacahuay elites would have access to Inca sumptuary goods. In this session I present different lines of analyses for future...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hardy.

This paper will present data from the author’s dissertation research at the site of Minaspata, located in the Lucre Basin at the eastern end of the Cuzco Valley, Peru. Minaspata has a long history of occupation, dating to the Early Horizon to the end of the Late Horizon, but was conquered as the final component of the Inca heartland immediately prior to the early imperial excursions by the Inca. The results of recent excavations at Minaspata and the different phases of occupation and material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marianne Sallum. Plácido Cali.

This represents a preliminary paper about the colonial process in Portuguese America and the development of the historical archaeology of indigenous peoples in Brazil. It uses as reference the archaeological remains of a Tupi settlement, on the south shore of the state of Sao Paulo, called Peruíbe. For many years Brazilian historiography built a history of America’s discovery and European colonization with indigenous peoples treated as passive victims of colonial encounter, fated to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Nash.

When Wari colonists arrived to Moquegua (ca. 600CE) there were several groups occupying different valley ecozones but a relatively small population. In order to establish the colony Wari officials invested a great deal of labor and resources in the upper drainage, which engaged local and colonial populations. In this paper I consider imperial expansion as a process, which was a multi-generational affair. I examine the construction of three major sites: Cerro Baúl, Cerro Mejía, and Cerro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Potter. Joshua Reuther. Vance Holliday. Charles Holmes.

Recent investigations at multiple well-stratified multi-component sites in interior Eastern Beringia have provided important data on late Pleistocene technology, subsistence economy, and habitat use. Our review incorporates recent multidisciplinary work at Upward Sun River, Mead, and Swan Point. We summarize these data within human ecological perspectives and derive implications for the lifeways of early Beringians. We review the biogeography and early archaeological record for the Ice Free...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Creager.

Colonial studies has long ignored early medieval Britain. However thanks to archaeology it is possible to reconstruct enough the conditions of the fifth and sixth centuries to understand the impact of the multiple colonizations. England experienced two distinct occupations by foreign parties before the Norman Conquest: the expansion of the Roman Empire into Britain ending in 410 AD and the Anglo-Saxon migration beginning in the mid-fifth century. Neither of these occurrences has been discussed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey Jordan.

Archaeological collections are more than a record of form and function. Historiographic analyses can assist in placing material remnants in their broader social context. Investigations of the production, producers, use and users of locally produced coarse earthenware at the 17th- and 18th-century Dutch East India Company Cape of Good Hope illustrate the complex fractals of cultural influence in this particular multi-cultural context. Here, like in many colonial situations, power was exerted not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Harkleroad.

Often discussing Colonialism means discussing the colonized and the impact of the colonizers on them highlighting indigenous responses to the situation as well as looking at methods of resistance and signs of the agency of the colonized. All too often we overlook the impact of this process on the colonizer. I argue that during the rise of the British Empire the role of colonizer became such a part of national identity that it colored interpretations of British prehistory. This is most evident...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Isenbarger.

Research into the slave settlement at Dean Hall Plantation uncovered substantial evidence for the on-site production of Colonoware. Archaeology of household production and the anthropology of households provide us with frameworks for investigating the individual strategies of different homes as they engaged in the internal economy. Each household was a productive unit and their ability to produce their own wares affected their needs, access, and exchange within local markets. Identifying the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Cordell.

Colonowares of the Apalachee Province of La Florida consist of plain and red painted pottery made in European vessel shapes by Apalachee potters between 1650 and 1702. This pottery, also known as “copy wares” or “mission ware,” represents hybrid products of transculturation that show elaboration or syncretization, in which newly introduced European vessel shapes provided the inspiration for vessels made by Apalachee potters using traditional materials and methods. Typical colonoware vessel forms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Stone.

Color is one of many key expressive modes for textiles in particular. Intense, communicative, and not always predictable, Andean textile coloration is a complex issue. Rather than submitting to a "cookbook" delineation of color symbolism (red means blood, etc.), the abstract mindset of ancient and modern Andean societies means that color has many more complex, even philosophical, roles to play in the fiber arts of this area. For instance, purposeful rupturing of regular color patterning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Urton.

This paper analyzes the uses of color in the Wari and Inka khipus. The focus of the study will be on the ranges and ways of combining colors used in each tradition. The central question to be addressed is: How was color used as a medium of coding information in each tradition and what can we say about how and why the system of color may have changed as it did from Wari to Inka times?

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Peters.

Anne Paul (1998) observed that the Paracas Necropolis embroiderers seem to explore all possible color repeat patterns in their mantle design. At the same time, a few dominant color combinations recur throughout the assemblage. Like speech, color is a system of difference, hues perceived relationally through contrast with those adjacent. Dyed color is produced by chemical processes on natural fiber with pre-existing tones, and changes over time in diverse environmental conditions. These factors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser.

Inka khipus used cord color, knots, cord attachment, final twist, and sometimes material (e.g., colored camelid hair) to encode information. Middle Horizon (Wari) khipus used all these conventions and more. For instance, the thick, white, cotton pendant cords of MH khipus were routinely wrapped with brightly colored (usually camelid hair) yarns that most likely conveyed meaning. The thickness and structure of pendant-cords themselves likely held significance. Further, while Wari khipu makers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baitzel.

In the Andes, weaving and wearing cloth are essential for shaping identity and social relations. The weavers of the south-central Andean Tiwanaku state (Middle Horizon period A.D.500-1100) possessed knowledge of plant and animal fibers, weave techniques, dyes, and iconography which allowed them to produce a wide range of textiles, from the monochrome cloths of daily life to the vibrantly colored tapestries. Examining textile evidence from burials at the provincial center of Omo M10 (Moquegua,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blenda Femenias.

Of the many surviving pre-Columbian Inka textiles, especially those made in tapestry and featuring tukapu (rectangular design blocks), only a few full-size garments are associated with females. There are, however, many miniature female garments. Inka textiles also tend to follow a limited number of color combinations, although some textiles show a more diverse, even exuberant mixture. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, in his section on the coyas (queens), attributes a specific set of colors to each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hermine Xhauflair.

In order to recover the activities that took place a long time ago in the rainforests, it is desirable to have an idea of the ones which can possibly be carried out in this specific environment with the resources available. Such knowledge can be acquired by conducting field investigation among forest experts: local populations who currently inhabit it and rely on plants, animals and minerals for their daily subsistence. To be able to identify these activities in the archaeological record, it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Acevedo.

Polychrome archaeological ceramics called "vírgulas or comas" hold a comprehensive but an unequal space distribution. They are found in limited quantities in achaelogical sites in regions as North and Central Puna, Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy and Northeast areas of Argentina.These ceramics vessels had been used in both regions since 900 AD until the Spanish post-colony. Then, we come to the conclusion about the movement of these ceramics pieces with a significant use and a ritual or ceremonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kelley. Ana Cecilia Mauricio. Daniel Sandweiss. Joseph Kelley. Daniel Belknap.

The Los Morteros archaeological site is located on the desert north coast of Peru. This large, elliptical mound (ca. 225x200 m, with relief of 14.5 m) is situated on a 3 m high Mid-Holocene shoreline. Limited excavations in the 1970’s identified preceramic midden deposits. Subsequent ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey at the site revealed interior stratigraphy inconsistent with a sand dune or bedrock-cored sand deposit, suggesting human agency in the construction of the mound, rather than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Pecci. Fernanda Inserra.

Residue analyses have been applied for more than 40 years to the study of ceramics and floors (Barba, Bello 1978; Condamin et al. 1976). This has allowed to better understand ceramic contents, on the one side, and the traces left by human activities on floors, on the other. Both these disciplines provide important information on human activity markers, focusing on the use of ceramics in the first case and the use of space and the function of structures in the second. However, a deeper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins.

Through hieroglyphic, historical, and ethnographic documentation, the act of ensouling and cleansing an architectural space is a well documented ritual activity practiced among Mesoamerican cultures. Acts that commemorate space, whether marking renewal or termination, often leave traces. As can be attested archaeologically, the trace evidence commemorative acts are often visible on several surfaces in an architectural sequence, speaking both to the continuity and disjuncture in such practice....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich.

The ceramic database from El Perú-Waka’ contains the record of the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of some 50,000 sherds and 200 whole vessels. Patterns and fine details of the Classic Maya economy emerge from this expansive dataset. These include, but are not limited to, the marketing distribution of monochrome ceramics and the redistributive gifting of high-quality polychrome vessels. Unexpected patterns appeared as well, such as the apparent autarky of monochrome blacks in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest. Paola Torres. Chloe Andrieu. Myriam Saravia.

Initial hypotheses on the port gateway city of Cancuen envisioned it functioning within a “normal” Classic Maya economy, albeit with a particular emphasis on import/export of sacred goods, (e.g. jade, pyrite, probably quetzal feathers). After 15 years of excavation and intensive lithic and ceramic studies, however, it appears that after 760 A.D. Cancuen shifted to a different form of economy almost entirely based on commodities production and long-distance exchange. Evidence demonstrates massive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

In the North Coast of Peru, relatively little is known about the majority of the population that supported the lifestyles of the elite. In this paper, I discuss the concept of a Moche cuisine through a study of the foodways of both elite and commoner classes, drawing on archaeobotanical data from a feasting preparation area located in the elite cemetery of San José de Moro and from a humble household situated near the base of the fortified hilltop settlement of Cerro Chepén. Cuisine can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Brown.

A unique building (Structure 12) excavated during the early 1990’s was interpreted as a divination house serving individuals living in the agricultural community of Cerén, based on its unusual architectural features and enigmatic artifact assemblage. The latter was composed of bits-and-pieces of mostly broken, worn, or repurposed items, some of which showed physical evidence suggesting they were collected from a discard context or dated to an earlier time period. The similarity between this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Hanna. Michael Jessamy.

The St. John’s River site is an early Late Ceramic Age settlement on Grenada’s west coast, largely destroyed by the expansion of a public cemetery, stadium, and bridge. The St. George’s Community Archaeology Project (SGCAP) was a summer program developed to engage young people and community members in the investigation and preservation of the remaining areas of the site. During the summers of 2011 and 2012, surface collection, shovel testing, and four excavation pits were implemented. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Barnett. Anna Prentiss. Sarah Nowell. Ethan Ryan.

The Togiak archaeology and Paleo archaeology project is a combined effort between the Togiak community and the University of Montana to renegotiate the pre-colonial and historic understanding of the Old Togiak site in Southwest Alaska. Preliminary results from the first field season challenge our current understanding of the site incorporating community driven research and knowledge. This paper serves to expand our knowledge and understanding of the region in propose a new baseline in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Pyburn.

A decade of collaboration with Kyrgyz citizens from many walks of life has resulted in several new heritage initiatives including local museums, teaching materials for school children, a college textbook, a national avocational organization, and a new government ministry. Kyrgyz people have always placed great value on their heritage, but as these programs have developed people have become more interested in protecting the material signifiers of heritage. Counter to expectations, public and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Dean.

This poster focuses on the pedagogical challenges and educational outcomes of including excavations at a 19th century cemetery in an Introduction to Archaeology class. The research project was initiated by a local family when their cemetery was destroyed for farmland. Community-based research is archaeology for, by, and of local communities, a collaboration between community members and researchers. The Anthropology program at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) -- a small, public liberal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Catesby Yant.

In the past as in the present, powerful people used the built environment to display and reinforce their power, so that structures play an important role in the development and maintenance of sociopolitical inequality. Iconography and material culture indicate that ancestor veneration played an important role in Maya society from the Formative period until the Post Classic period. Excavations over the last 15 years in the Ulum Plaza of Kiuic, a site in the Puuc hills, supports the importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae.

Archaeologists have continuously struggled with understanding the complexity exhibited within relic agricultural practices. In this paper, we will explore a comparative approach to addressing this dilemma using cases studies from the charter states of Southeast Asia (CE 800-1400) and the classic Maya kingdoms of Mesoamerica (CE 250-900). Special emphasis is placed upon the use of intensive practices and their resiliency within the agricultural strategy. Comparing the similarities and differences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krzysztof Makowski. James Davenport. Mercedes Delgado. Iván Ghezzi. Michael Glascock.

Our goal is to reconstruct networks of ceramic production and exchange on the Peruvian central coast through a comparison of compositional datasets on pottery and soil samples from the Lurin valley. While one dataset from Villa El Salvador dates to the late Early Horizon, most of the pottery sample comes from Late Horizon occupations at the Pachacamac, Pueblo Viejo, and Huaycan de Cieneguilla sites. In Tawantinsuyu, the products and networks of exchange connected heterogeneous populations, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramona Harrison. Thomas McGovern. George Hambrecht.

Support from US, Canadian, Scandinavian, and UK funding bodies 2007-16 has made possible a sustained multi-investigator multi-regional interdisciplinary series of investigations of the offshore islands of the North Atlantic (Faroes, Iceland, Greenland) coordinated by the NABO research cooperative. These islands were connected by Viking Age migrations from mainland Scandinavia and the British Isles, and the diverse fates of their human populations during the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray.

The medium-sized Late Classic Maya polity of Las Cuevas, Belize features a heavily-modified cave just below the main plaza, containing 73 platforms, seven staircases, and two sets of terraces. Geochemical analyses of the plastered surfaces were conducted in situ using portable XRF (pXRF) and in the lab using pXRF, XRD, SEM-EDS, and FTIR in order to understand the technology used to create the platforms within the cave. Platforms were sampled by selecting from different areas of the cave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower.

Anthropology has long been marked by tension between emphasis on commonalities among histories and cultures on one hand, alongside emphasis on histories and cultures as unique, contingent, and exceptional on the other. Vernon Scarborough is one of few who have pioneered new understanding of water among ancient societies through both focused study of particular regions, as well as broad, synthetic comparison of water among ancient societies worldwide. In an era marked by a daily increasing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase. Diane Chase.

Gordon Willey wrote about the importance of settlement patterns, focusing on the ways that humans distributed themselves over the landscape. While his and other early researchers’ efforts incorporated built features, they did not really research or assess the impact of the human-nature relationship within a given landscape. Vern Scarborough’s work has helped to fill in this gap in the Maya area, particularly relating to Tikal, Guatemala and to northern Belize. This paper builds on Scarborough’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Sussman. Megan Perry.

Commingled and fragmentary human remains are a common occurrence in archaeological and forensic contexts, but only a few methods have been developed to record these complex assemblages. Conventional inventory methods, such as the Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains, document the presence and completeness of specific portions of skeletal elements and the minimum number of individuals (MNI) represented by each bone portion. This rather subjective method for MNI calculation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only ErinMarie Chenvert. John Davis. Ian Buvit. Alexis Dyson. Jillian Hendrix.

Particle size analysis can be time consuming and expensive. Effective time and money management have the potential to contribute to more accurate particle size analysis results. Here we compare various pretreatment procedures to determine which is more efficient. Coarse-fraction was determined for nine sediment samples by sifting through nested sieves with standard mesh sizes #5, #10, #35, and #60 to compare wet-screening to mechanical dry-screening. Carbon was then removed from the smaller than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Raymond.

The Mississippi Delta is dotted with many types of aboriginal archaeological sites. Among these are freshwater mussel shell rings that seem to occur mainly along current or historical water sources. Using a modern flood model for the Mississippi Yazoo Basin, this paper will examine whether freshwater mussel shell ring sites in the Yazoo Basin occur predominately in highly flood-prone areas, as shell rings would create elevated surfaces for habitation. This paper will also compare mussel shell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Horton. Karen Harry.

The Virgin Branch culture is the least understood of the Ancestral Puebloan branches. It is considered most similar to the Kayenta branch; however, there are significant differences between the two, particularly for the Virgin Branch settlements located in the lowland region of southern Nevada. Compared to the Kayenta people, who lived primarily in small settlements and relied on dry farming techniques, the lowland Virgin people occupied more aggregated settlements and relied on irrigation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Dudley Gardner. William Gardner.

Over the last 9 summers we have conducted extensive excavations at a rock shelter (Eagle Point) located above the Gunnison River in west central Colorado. The deposits are laddered and the macro botanical fill from the features indicates that from the Paleo Period to the last occupation in 200BP similar plant resources were available and exploited. There are some differences. We want to briefly present the differences and similarities in plant exploitation from the Paleo (13,000BP) through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Riethmuller.

The aim of this study is to attempt to source ceramic sherds recovered by Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute from the Ripley site in Ripley, New York. Based on data gleaned primarily from XRF analysis, visually as well as statistically, the clay’s elemental composition, while not an exact match with the ceramic’s composition, shows only minor variation and sufficient similarity to conclude that the clay used to form most of the sampled ceramics was sourced locally. Sourcing was accomplished...