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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Carlock. Tiffany Raymond.

For the most part, freshwater mussel shell rings in the Mississippi Delta have not been systematically tested to determine whether they are contemporary, what their function may have been, how they were created, etc. This is in part due to the massive undertaking it requires to pull the necessary data from the field. Controlled surface collection is one of the methods that have been used to do this, and while it is labor-intensive, it can provide a wealth of information about a site. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Phillips.

This research examines three different analytical methods used in the archaeological studies of soil chemistry for the purpose of uncovering human activities at archaeological sites. The samples used come from a prehispanic urban center at the Formative period site of Tlalancaleca (800 BC- AD 100), located in Puebla, México. Soil samples from Tlalancaleca were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), Mehlich 3 soil phosphorus colorimetry, and portable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Cox. Valerie Sgheiza. Kelsie Hart.

While the structure of Middle Woodland (2050-1600 BP) burial mounds from the lower Illinois River valley (LIV) is widely understood in terms of ramps, tombs, and peripheral interment facilities, those for the subsequent Late Woodland period (1600-1000 BP) remain poorly characterized. To illustrate commonalities between Late Woodland sites from the LIV, we here compare Feature 36 from Helton Md 20 and Feature 15 from Carter Md 2. The detailed excavation notes from the Helton excavation are used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Smith. Patrick Mullins. Steve Wernke. Brian Billman.

Site-based archaeological projects often face a common challenge of producing detailed maps of large, complex areas. The use of traditional site-mapping techniques (e.g. total station) can be expensive and labor-intensive. Alternatively, a variety of platforms provide archaeologists with practical and inexpensive approaches to aerial photography and photogrammetric mapping. Here, the authors explore three different approaches to aerial photography as alternatives to traditional methods of site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Ames. Meredith Chesson. Ian Kuijt. Rahul Oka.

The origins, evolution, and variation of inequality comprise a central overarching theme within anthropological archaeology. Various ideas, including hierarchy and heterarchy and their material correlates, have been proffered to explain the origins and impact of inequality on past social, economic, and political organization. Within Economics and Development Studies, various indices and measures, e.g., Gini coefficient, Theil Index, HDI and GDP, and the Consumption Approach have been offered as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Benton.

Tribes and museums have experienced a paradigm shift in their relationships during the twenty-five years of the NAGPRA era. The experiences of each group have been multi-faceted and complex, driven by new legal mandates and opportunities and shaped by differing viewpoints as to what must, should, and could emerge from the repatriation journey. This paper will explore some of the assumptions, experiences, and future expectations that NAGPRA has engendered in various tribal and museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Swantek.

People who seek wealth and power structure and restructure the social networks that underlie society. From these networks that bind people together and facilitate the movement of goods, services and information, emerges the phenomenon we call social complexity. To better understand this phenomenon in past societies, this project uses data from the Prehistoric Bronze Age on Cyprus (2400-1700 Cal BCE) and novel methods derived from complex systems and small world network science, and modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Kiahtipes.

From the Desert West of the US to Asia’s Tibetan Plateau, David B. Madsen’s work focuses on better understanding the perennial anthropological and ecological problems of migration and human biogeography through robust paleoenvironmental and archaeological collaborations. An essential aspect of this body of work is challenging assumptions of homogeneity in cultural and ecological associations in order to consider how they co-evolved through space and time. Current research from the Great Basin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Maher.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has control of approximately 8,000 human remains and 100,000 funerary objects stored in multiple major research Universities in the southeastern United States. It also manages 293,000 acres of land with 11,000 known archaeological sites. The successes, pitfalls and unexpected discoveries resulting from complying with NAGPRA over the last six years are evaluated in light of the future of prehistoric archaeology in the southeast U.S.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Go Matsumoto.

This paper discusses the results of a recent compositional analysis by INAA of 225 samples of ceramics sherds excavated from the Great Plaza of Huacas de Sicán. The analysis revealed a limited number (3) of compositional groups and a high rate of arsenic and uranium in one group. The author argues that the high rate of arsenic indicates the side-by-side production of arsenical copper and ceramic vessels and that the vessels used at the Great Plaza were produced at the regional ceramic workshop...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emlen Myers. Hector Neff. Mike Glasscock.

Ceramics from three archaeological areas in the dry lowlands of eastern Bolivia were analyzed by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The resulting compositional data were analyzed statistically to identify potential patterns of manufacture and distribution. Samples were selected from three archaeological areas investigated prior to construction of the Bolivia-Brazil Natural Gas Pipeline in 1997-1998: 1) Rio Grande; 2) Bañados del Izozog; and 3) an inter-riverine area in the Gran...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Rappe. William Ringle.

Photogrammetric techniques have been around for many years but have not been widely implemented because of the requirements of known camera positions and expertise in registering photographs, as well as the difficulty involved with going from data points to actual models. This paper addresses concerns with accuracy, efficiency and overall utility of using more mobile photogrammetric techniques and related software which we began using in 2013. In addition, some of the benefits of photogrammetry...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Corbett. Jorge Rios Allier.

En las décadas posteriors a la firma de la Convención del Patrimonio Mundial, el modelo dominante para el manejo de dichos sitios se concentró en la formación de equipos de expertos y profesionales comisionados para manejar los procesos operativos según los marcos y prácticas establecidos por sus pares. Si existía una poblacion local su responsibilidad consistía en conformarse con la tutela de los reconocidos por UNESCO o por dependencias nacionales como los responsables. Hoy en dia estamos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Linford.

Previous research into the conceptual foundations of the Mesa Verde style has found that ceramic imagery is conceptualized as textile designs and is representative of a worldview grounded in container imagery (Ortman 2000). However, these conclusions derive from patterns observable on sherds. In this study I examine designs on whole vessels using the same framework to determine whether the same worldview of textiles and ceramic imagery is seen in a complete context. Examining design constraints...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mia Carey.

Since 1979 the Archaeological Resources Protection Act has secured protection of archaeological resources and sites which are located on public and Native American lands. Unfortunately, it is the archaeological sites and resources located on privately owned land are under the most immediate threat of destruction due to private and commercial development interests. So what happens when a concerned citizen notifies the D.C. City Archaeologist that an early 19th century African Muslim site is being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Zeidler.

This paper revisits interpretations of the built environment at the Early Formative Valdivia town site of Real Alto in coastal Guayas province, Ecuador, from the broader comparative perspective of contemporary Formative Period sites throughout the Americas. Special emphasis is placed on the Middle Valdivia town configuration encompassing individual households, residential neighborhoods, open plazas, and central ceremonial space, but consideration is also given to Late Valdivia transformations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frankie West. Brannon Hulsey. Graciela Cabana.

The Norris Farms #36 site in northern Illinois (ca. AD 1300) has been widely featured in archaeological investigations, including foundational ancient DNA analyses. We built on these studies, analyzing mitochondrial DNA hypervariable regions I and II from 98 individuals. The Norris Farms #36 site demonstrates high levels of mitochondrial diversity, with all five major founding lineages present. Included in this diversity are individuals belonging to mitochondrial haplogroup C who demonstrate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Vaughan. Dominique Meyer. Jeffrey Glover. Dominique Rissolo. Sebastian Afshari.

The site of Conil is located in the northern part of the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Not far removed from the modern shore of Laguna Holbox, Conil appears to have been inhabited at various times between the Preclassic period and the present day. In AD 1528, the conquistador Francisco de Montejo reported that Conil was a large town of 5000 houses.  First investigated by William Sanders in 1954, Conil has seen little in the way of research since that time. Recent research by members of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rory Dennison.

This research, part of an ongoing dissertation project, examines a network of maritime trade between imperial China and Southeast Asia by considering issues of both production and distribution through the comparison of the chemical signatures of paste from porcelain samples obtained through Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (LA-ICP-MS). Porcelain samples have been collected in the Philippines, and porcelain and clay samples have been collected from kiln and habitation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Niamh Daly. Elise Alonzi. Saskia Ryan.

In Ireland, in the last decade we have seen a proliferation of isotopic studies in Irish bioarchaeology addressing questions such as paleodiet and paleomobility patterns spanning from the Neolithic to Post-Medieval periods. The Irish Isotope Research Group (IIRG), an innovative multidisciplinary group, was set up to tackle some of the limitations in this field of research in Ireland. A comprehensive strontium isotopic baseline has been established in order to better understand the processes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Lyall.

The French sociolinguist Roger Chartier argues that “form produces meaning”: the physical arrangement and presentation of a text will influence a reader’s reception of it (2004). In other words, the process by which a reader assigns a text meaning, consciously or not, depends as much on the material or physical form through which the text was published, distributed and received as on its semantic content (Chartier 2004: 147). Elements such as format, layout, scale, and color give a text status,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Timothy Beach. Samantha Krause.

A large wedge of our planet is tropical, and archaeology and natural science have long histories of tropical research. But we still know comparatively little about human interactions in the tropics while rates of land and water use change that expunge ecological and archaeological records are accelerating. In this paper we focus on evidence for ancient wetland management in the Maya World, especially around the evidence for water chemistry in multiple watersheds of northern Belize. Here we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Jazwa.

In this paper, I present a technological analysis of stone-built, domestic architecture from the transition of the Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2200-1800 BCE) in mainland Greece. Specifically, I analyze the degree of correspondence of 180 unique aspects of architectural construction and spatial organization between contemporary structures. Because domestic architecture was most likely built by the local inhabitants and used for their daily activities, the network of correspondence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baires.

The goal of archaeology, rigorous in its method and theory, is to reconstruct past practices and events. Our pre-conceptions, knowledge, and training channel our analyses through varying theoretical lenses. These perspectives provide context within which to hypothesize about the past, creating narratives about human relationships with the environment, materials, places, and practices. While these theoretical perspectives add nuance and structure to archaeological analyses they sometimes miss,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Clay. James Delle.

While household artifact analyses contribute a great deal to understanding the enslaved experience in the colonial Caribbean, where possible, landscape studies allow archaeologists to more completely reconstruct past built environments of slavery. Using a landscape approach, this paper investigates the use of space by the enslaved population at Marshall’s Pen, a 19th c. Jamaican coffee estate. Through landscape survey, we can better understand how enslaved men and women actively constructed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Sparks.

Optimal foraging models and faunal analysis to interpret diet require quantitative data to negate variables of results. With the collection and processing of eleven mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Sierra Blanca Region, New Mexico, a statistically significant database for analysis is constructed. Previous researchers collected a wide range of data with different methods. By synthesizing it into a solid and replicable method an index can be developed for subsequent species to enable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Muñiz. Kimberly Sumano.

Northern Mexico has traditionally been underrepresented in received archaeological scholarship on Mesoamerica, and in this sense the Guadiana branch of the Chalchihuites Culture in Durango is no exception. Nonetheless, in recent years archaeological research in the region has produced a body of new data that permits a deeper understanding of the ancient inhabitants of Durango. This paper explores archaeological evidence from the Santiago Bayacora basin, a riverine watershed whose lower portion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonio Martínez Tuñón.

Las excavaciones de Cerro Jazmín se han enfocado en distintos sectores de la ciudad con funciones diferenciadas que nos ayudan a comprender los procesos del urbanismo emergente en la Mixteca Alta de Oaxaca. En esta ponencia me concentraré en una unidad domestica excavada en la Terraza 131. La ocupación de esta terraza se ubica entre 262 AC y 273 DC. En esta terraza los materiales cerámicos indican el acceso a bienes foráneos, en particular de tipos grises característicos de Monte Albán. Además...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Watson. Jim Enote. Nell Murphy.

With NAGPRA’s passage 25 years ago, many saw this federal mandate as an opportunity for museum professionals, scientists, and Native Americans to assess and change the dynamics of their relationships. Few however, likely anticipated the full range of collaborations between Native communities and institutions that emerged from NAGPRA consultations. One such example is the ongoing partnership between the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alissa Jordan.

Kneeling on bare earth, the Priestess takes a handful of store-bought confections from their glinting metallic bag and tosses them into a living cache. Candles and carved stones protrude at the sides of this hole, marking intrusions made and remade so many times they have now been lost to memory (even as their matter persists). Following Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas’ call to study contemporary material culture archaeologically, this paper uses and presents ethnographic data collected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Larsen.

Humans have long favored settlement along rivers for access to water supply for drinking and agriculture, transport corridors, and food sources. Settlement in or near montane forests include benefits such as food and wood supply, and high quality water resources derived from watersheds where upstream human disturbance and environmental degradation is generally reduced. However, the advantages afforded by these floodplain and montane settings pose episodic risks for communities located there as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorie Reents-Budet. Ronald Bishop.

Ethnohistorical accounts of tribute among the Yukatek Maya provide an impressive list of commodities in circulation at the time of Spanish contact while also affording a glimpse of the interwoven layers of socio-economic relationships underlying these acts of tribute and tax payments. This paper compares the Yukatekan configurations, both recorded and implied, with those intimated from the patterns of production and distribution of Classic period decorated ceramics. The study employs a...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Jamie Hampson.

In many countries, cultural and socio-political identity is still shaped, manipulated, and presented through rock art. Both on and off the rocks, pictographs and petroglyphs are powerful tools. In this poster, I present results from ten years of fieldwork in southern Africa, northern Australia, and west Texas. I focus on re-contextualised rock art images, in commercial settings, in academic publications, and as integral components of national symbols. I also consider innovative new visitor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Edgar. Christopher Toya.

The Pueblo of Jemez and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology have been working together since 2007 to document human skeletal remains in preparation for repatriation. Challenges presented in preparing for repatriation included a paucity of field notes and other records, as much of the material came to the Museum from 1930’s field schools, and a loss of information about which burial objects were originally with which burials. Despite these challenges, over 700 individual skeletons have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krystle Kelley. David M. Hyde.

This poster details the findings from a contextual analysis of “special finds” artifacts collected at Medicinal Trail from 2004-2014. Medicinal Trail is a hinterland community in the Maya lowlands of Northwestern Belize, 5 km east of the large urban center of La Milpa. The special finds collected at Medicinal Trail include an assemblage of artifacts from a variety of non-perishable raw materials including clay, shell, and stone that do not belong to standard categories of ceramic, lithic, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly.

The wide scale abandonment of Mississippian towns in the lower Midwest by the beginning of the fifteenth century has been the focus of interest for the last four decades beginning with the work of Stephen Williams. The largest urban center, Cahokia, is one of the earliest to be abandoned before the end of the fourteenth century. Recent evidence has been presented on a massive flood in the twelfth century as perhaps an important factor in this process, that occurs over a century later. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Torpy.

During the Archaic period (750-480 BC) the island of Cyprus underwent a dramatic transformation as new city-kingdoms rose to dominate the political landscape of the island. This shift resulted in increased competition for resources, establishment of political boundaries, and emergence of a pronounced social hierarchy within the new polities. The present study aims to investigate the development of these new polities in a broader geographic context, and to explore the ways in which cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirk Schmitz. Amanda R. Harvey. Christopher Von-Nagy. Eliseo Padilla Gutiérrez. Paul Schmidt Shoenberg.

This paper presents findings from the 2014-2015 field seasons of the Urban Origins Project at Oxtotitlán cave in Guerrero, Mexico. Collaborative archaeological methods at the Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán site resulted in extensive survey, preliminary mapping, and excavations at the cave and in the surrounding area. Excavation units were placed in association with the murals, at the mouth of the rockshelter in the northern part of the cave complex, and in the botanical garden within the protected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josh Torres. Johshua Torres.

This paper provides archaeological evidence for the local landscape surrounding the Ceremonial Center of Tibes (ca. 500 and 1300 AD) on the south-central coast of Puerto Rico. Settlements identified during recent archaeological survey of the micro-region surrounding the site, in conjunction with archaeological data from well excavated sites in the area, is presented to spatially and temporally contextualize recent findings at Tibes. Settlement variability is characterized and local temporal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Gillam. Andrei Tabarev. Masami Izuho.

Genetic evidence suggests that the Amerind haplogroups A-D coalesce in north-central East Asia (CEA), around Mongolia. How, then, do we have a late Pleistocene coastal migration to the Americas when ancestral populations are centrally-located in the heart of the continent? One answer is offered by bio-geographic and archaeological evidence and an (in)convenient gap in our genetic knowledge of Upper Paleolithic Japan. Japan’s mainland, Honshu, is proposed as the genetic refugia of the first...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Katherine Erdman.

Continuing education and adult enrichment courses offer readily accessible opportunities for archaeologists to engage a non-traditional learning group who are often already curious about archaeology and are relatively informed. Adult and senior students in these settings prefer discussions and debates to strictly information transmission; such an environment is conducive for presenting issues of cultural heritage and preservation. In 2015, these topics were introduced to two such audiences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Hockett. Evan Pellegrini.

Hockett and Jenkins (2013) suggested that two bones directly AMS dated prior to the Clovis era (ca. > 13,100 calendar years ago) recovered from the Paisley Caves, Oregon, displayed stone tool cutmarks. Since this publication, additional bones were identified as possibly exhibiting cutmarks from Paisley Cave #2. In addition, in the 1950’s Phil Orr recovered a number of burned large mammal bones from Pleistocene-aged deposits in several caves flanking the eastern margins of the Winnemucca Lake...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Schubert.

Previous studies of Mississippian towns and villages have extensively detailed the various elements of community organization and built environment that reflect the incorporation of widely shared Mississippian ideas and beliefs. How these towns were built and rebuilt over time demonstrates how regional processes of expansion and integration played out at the presumed edge of the Mississippian world. This paper examines the evolving built environment during the Pisgah period in western North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Delaere.

El lago Titicaca se encuentra en el corazón del paisaje cultural Tiwanaku. Las excavaciones subacuáticas realizadas en 2014 a lo largo del espacio litoral de la Isla del Sol (Puncu) sitúan al lago como nexo de comunicación y de intercambio de toda la cuenca lacustre. En el plano ritual, este mar interior formaba parte de la vida cotidiana y como tal ha jugado un papel preponderante en la relación que mantenía el hombre con el territorio en el que vivía; racionalizándolo para comprenderlo,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Lucero.

In this paper I highlight Vern’s career path and contributions, particularly his work on water management and sustainability, and how his other interests, such as dual economy and heterarchy, tie in with the former. I will also focus on how his interdisciplinary approaches have paved the way for applied anthropology on an international level and with global implications.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea López. Florencio Delgado Espinoza.

Carvajal´s descriptions of the Upper Amazonian populations created controversies, given that little evidence was presented until recently, by the archaeologists about the demography of the area. Only few studies in the Upper Amazonia region have contributed with data for the reconstruction of local demography, given that most of the work has been enforced as contract archeology projects within the oil and mining industry, with specific questions on mine and lack of regional scope. In the Valle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scotti Norman.

In the first generation after the Spanish conquest of Peru, indigenous Andeans and Spaniards entered into a period of change in which daily practices, traditions, and religion were negotiated and reshaped. A local response to Spanish attempts at Christian conversion was the cultural revitalization movement of Taki Onqoy (Quechua-dancing sickness). Primary sources suggest that this movement was practiced by local Andeans and manifested through the rejection of Spanish religious beliefs in favor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Lehner.

The role of copper and bronze in the context of the emergence of Bronze and Iron Age states in the Near East is poorly understood due to a relative lack of comprehensive analysis of diachronic archaeometallurgical data. Excavations from Boğazköy and Kerkenes Dağ in central Anatolia have recovered one of the largest, diverse, and stratified corpora of copper objects and metal production debris, spanning the period from the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2300 BC, until the Late Iron Age, mid-5th century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Prentiss. Thomas Foor. Kristen Barnett. Matthew Walsh.

Archaeological research at the Bridge River site, British Columbia, demonstrates that during the Bridge River 3 period (ca. 1300-1000 cal. B.P.) material wealth-based inequality developed on an inter-household basis during what appears to have been a Malthusian ceiling where populations were briefly very high and resource access weakened. While there is significant knowledge of village-wide socio-economic, demographic and political change at the site little work has been done to gain an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yanhua Song. Bar-Yosef Ofer. Xiaohong Wu.

Influented by the global climate fluctuation in the Late Glacial Maximum(LGM, ca.24,000-18,000 KaBP), Chinese antient hunter-gatherers underwent the climate cooling. Shizitan Site completely recorded the surviving process of hunter-gatherers in the valleys of Middle Yellow River. Supported by 71 AMS 14C dates, more than 10m-thick layers with human occupations fall into the LGM period. Evidence shows that Shizitan Human dealed with the guadually cold weather by more general fire-using, conpound...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Gunter. Christopher Stevenson.

Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in prehistoric North America suggests that from AD 800-1700, objects made from copper featured prominently in Native American exchange networks. Native polities saw copper as an insignia of social and economic power and sought to control its flow and distribution. Scholars have long hypothesized that prior to European contact in the Middle Atlantic region (AD1607), Native polities in Virginia predominantly traded copper acquired from the Blue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diego Salazar. Andres Troncoso. Frances Hayashida. Cesar Parcero-Oubiña.

The hyperarid and thinly populated Atacama area of northern Chile seems an unlikely target of imperial interest. However, archaeological research has demonstrated direct control over this territory and its people by the Inka, who were drawn to the region by rich copper deposits that have been exploited at least since the Late Archaic (4500 BP). How did the Inka reorganize copper mining technology and labor? How were mining and metallurgical centers provisioned in this agriculturally marginal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Landau.

Recent work in the San Lucas neighborhood outside of Copán’s urban core discovered significant human occupation in the Late Preclassic period—centuries before the first king came to power. Construction materials, ceramic styles, obsidian tools, human remains, and radiocarbon dates from three households attest to the early and continuous settlement of this area in the foothills south of the Copán River. This paper reviews the evidence for San Lucas’s Preclassic population, and its significance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cláudia Umbelino. Francisco Francisco Curate. Teresa Ferreira. Eugénia Cunha. Nuno Bicho.

Bone loss has been extensively evaluated in archaeological samples, adding diachronic complexity to the biomedical knowledge about skeletal changes associated with gender, age, genetics, menopausal status or lifestyle. In this paper, the first results of Portuguese Mesolithic cortical bone loss are presented. Radiogrammetry of the second metacarpal was used to assess cortical parameters (diaphysis total width, medullary width and cortical index). The classical osteoporotic fractures (vertebral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nissen.

As a method of deconstructing and disrupting what is normative, archaeologists have used queer theory to explore aspects of the formation and intersection of identities. In this paper I illustrate how queer theory can be used beyond the study of identity by exploring the relationships between people and places. Comprising 25 cenotes, or karstic sinkholes, Cara Blanca, Belize represents one of the highest concentrations of cenotes in the Southern Maya Lowlands. A highly sacred landscape, Cara...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pawlowicz.

One of the most important developments from the past couple of decades towards understanding the history of the East African coast has been an appreciation of diversity among Swahili communities. Those communities each experienced the broad trends and developments that have been used to characterize Swahili history, but their experience of those trends was not uniform. This paper explores such diversity towards the end of the Swahili florescence at the turn of the 16th century, drawing on recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Goldfield. Ross Booton. Teresa Steele.

"Specialization" and "generalization" are used as descriptors for Paleolithic subsistence behavior, particularly when differentiating the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. These terms, however, dichotomize and obscure the complexity of subsistence decision-making. Instead, it is more productive to investigate whether Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMH) differed in their perception of thresholds of cost versus gain in processing food. These thresholds are points beyond which the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Kevin Schwarz.

Costly signaling theory indicates that highly visible acts of public generosity and display, which exact costs not easily recouped, however, can provide social benefits to those engaged in such acts. Such signaling is associated with the strength or fitness of the provider. Analyzing slipped and fineware ceramics in display contexts, and obsidian use and architecture, this presentation explores how Maya elites and rural sub-elites engaged in costly signaling and modified their actions by cost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Everhart.

Calcium carbonate encrustations of faunal materials are a problem that limits analysis of faunal materials from a wide variety of regions and time periods. In many locations they are associated with climates with persistent or increased precipitation. This precipitation percolates through the sediments of the stratigraphic column, mixing with calcium carbonate. This mixture is then gradually deposited throughout the stratigraphic column, encasing archaeological materials in hardened carbonate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

Although art historians, archaeologists, and epigraphers often decry the poor preservation of certain ephemeral categories of Maya hieroglyphic remains – wooden lintels, codex-style books and plaster facades – the missing corpus of ancient hieroglyphic textiles is rarely discussed. Yet unlike the handful of maddeningly flat, angular, or profile-view representations of codices in Maya art, the "extant" inscribed textiles seen in murals, painted on narrative vessels, incised into stone and molded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencio Delgado Espinoza.

Powerful chiefly elites seem to have been always concern with “crafting “ themes of ideological order to convince followers of their divinity character and justify being at the top of social and political hierarchy. This concern in some instances have resulted in the “institutionalization of belief systems forged by these elites. In coastal Ecuador, prior the Spanish conquest, the Manteño society developed a religion system that was based on the creation of a sacred landscape, around which, they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Watts Malouchos. Alleen Betzenhauser.

The procurement, processing, preparation and most importantly here, the storage of food, are inextricably tied to the everyday lived experiences of peoples of the past and cannot be disentangled from larger social, economic, and political processes. Storage pits and structures feature prominently in prior studies of Mississippian households but they are mostly regarded as utilitarian and economic spaces rather than integral to communities. Similarly, previous interpretations of Mississippian...

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

Between 13,000 and 12,300 BP, sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico increased rapidly. For the next 2,300 years, however, sea levels both rose and fell by centimeters per year, producing significant shoreline movement observable within a human lifetime. Because of continental shelf’s topography, however, shorelines in different areas did not shift at the same rate. Areas with minimal movement would have seemed more stable and attractive for repeated occupations over generations. This paper models of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wolf. Katherine Miller Wolf.

Societal change does not occur in a vacuum and marks the social and physical landscape in a myriad of ways. The natural world—the lived in landscape—is the most pervasive and enduring reminder and example of social order. Water is a staple of both domestic and ritual life and leaves its mark in architectural and biological manifestations of society. Mountains, caves, and ravines and other landscape monuments are emblematic of regional geology and influence the local human population both at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Reetz. William Quackenbush.

Midwest archaeologists and Native American communities have recently initiated successful community-based and collaborative research endeavors. Through such collaborations, tribal leaders have expressed an interest in providing ways for youth in their communities to engage in contemporary cultural and natural resources work to inspire future stewardship and introduce potential professional pathways. Many archaeologists are in a unique position to promote heritage and preservation through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Oswald.

Anthropologists use discourse analyses to study how language is used within cultures and across cultural boundaries as a way to distinguish between the cultural “insiders” and “outsiders.” This study investigates how language creates insiders and outsiders in archaeology. Textbooks and primary literature are used in the professionalization of students from undergraduate through doctoral programs, helping to drive the transition from novice to professional status in archaeology. Scholars within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Day. Heather Richards-Rissetto.

Digital reconstructions and 3D modeling have become an increasingly frequent application in archaeology for the purposes of preservation and visualization. As part of the MayaCityBuilder Project, we are developing an immersive 3D environment of late eighth century Copan, Honduras that incorporates high-resolution base models and hypothetical reconstructions into an open-world environment. Our goal is to offer users opportunities to freely explore the models in context to their surroundings and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Roberts. Matthew Spigelman.

Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field was the first municipal airport in New York City (1928) before its use by the U.S. military until the Vietnam War. Since 1972, the field has been administered by the National Park Service within the Gateway National Recreation Area- the first of its kind in an urban setting. The landform supporting Floyd Bennett Field is almost entirely anthropogenic having been created by numerous landfill episodes dating from 1878 to 1941. These efforts used two general...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Birge.

Around the mountain of Sajama in western Bolivia exists a network of pre-Hispanic linear pathways that connect villages, chapels, churches, and hilltop altars. These pathways were primarily used in the Colonial era (1532-1825) but are still used by the local Aymara people for fiestas and rituals. The creation and transformation of this space demonstrates a changing ritual practice that occasionally reused pre-Hispanic places to combine Catholic and Andean sacred elements. Through this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Geller.

Official historic documents proclaimed nineteenth-century medical officers as heroic for administering to the inflicted during wars that defined and expanded the United States’ national borders. Military doctors were especially welcomed by U.S. soldiers and Euro-American settlers on the Florida frontier where life was precarious. Yet, their activities were often far from benevolent; many advanced necropolitical conditions. Rather than humanitarian crisis, medical officers regarded the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianne Boileau.

Archaeological excavations at the Maya site of Lamanai, Belize, have resulted in the recovery of more than 10,000 remains of turtles dating from the Late Postclassic to the Early Colonial periods. This abundance of turtle specimens represents a unique opportunity to study Maya turtle exploitation at an unprecedented scale. Preliminary analyses of a sample of 2,400 bones recovered from domestic structures provide information on subsistence practices. The Maya primarily exploited river turtles,...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Adam Rorabaugh. Kate Shantry.

Recent developments in evolutionary psychology expanding on signalling theory provide key insights to the connections between expressing social commitments and resource rights. Credibility enhancing displays (CREDs) are a means to convince individuals of commitment to belief systems and can link costly acts or extravagant displays to social success. In the Salish Sea the transition from labrets to cranial modification from 3200-1000 BP has often been framed in terms reflecting a shift from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Love.

Previous research on the 3D digitization of fossil cast collections using photogrammetric reconstruction has indicated that a negligible margin of error exists when comparing 3D digital measurements to those obtained by precision instruments. The ability to collect both quantitative and qualitative data using low cost, time efficient digitization methods presents multiple possibilities for digital curation and open-source data access in addition to mitigating potential risks to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Raffield.

Slavery was an integral part of Viking culture, as attested by a variety of contemporary sources such as the observations of the tenth-century Arab envoy Ahmad Ibn Fadlān, which describe the capture, trafficking, sexual exploitation, and employment of slaves amongst Scandinavian societies, including their role in ritual and their treatment after death. Slavery nonetheless remains largely underrepresented in the archaeological record, although a small corpus of finds support historical and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francesca Neri.

The burials from the Oak Creek Valley Pueblo and the Dewey Archaeological sites provide data for interpreting the mortuary practices and burial rituals of the Southern Sinagua and Prescott cultures. The variability exhibited in the burials uncovered at these sites, which include the remains of an adult male, two adult females, infant burials, and one dog, allows for an examination of mortuary practices as they relate to social structure and the role of children, symbolism, environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Lewis.

The unique characteristics of the Lubbock Lake Landmark offer a rare opportunity to ask questions about how vertebrates respond to changes in the environment. In order to address such questions in the fossil record several qualities are required including a continuous sequence of fossils, reliable dates for the stratigraphic layers, large sample sizes of well preserved and homogenous skeletal elements, and a detailed understanding of the environmental conditions associated with each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Yellen. Alison Brooks.

The ca. 3 km2 Aduma region of the Middle Awash region, Ethiopia, incorporates a number of stratified sites within a matrix of sands and silts dating to between 180 ka and ca 80 ka.(Yellen et al 2005). With the exception of one possibly earlier site with late Acheulean bifaces (A-14, Clark et al 2003), all sites yielded diagnostic Middle Stone Age cores and most also contained typical retouched bifacial and unifacial points. In contrast to the earlier assemblages of Gademotta (Sahle et al 2012)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Evans. Louise Leakey. Randolph Donahue. Andrew Wilson. Tom Sparrow.

Fossilfinder.org is a citizen science project that enables the public to engage directly with palaeo/archaeological research. Data, in the form of images, was collected from research areas to the east of Lake Turkana. The regions studied are those well known as fossil bearing regions dating to periods of interest in human evolution studies (up to 4 million years old in parts). In the first two seasons of research 1 million images of the ground surface were captured at a resolution of 30 pixels...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Schryver.

Crusader Archaeology at the beginning of the 21st century occupies a somewhat strange position. While certain aspects of the field are at the forefront of interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological evidence, others remain focused on basic issues of identification, categorization, and preservation. In part this is due to the nature of the field itself. In addition, some studies can only focus on preserving a particular monument from further decay before moving on to the next one. The port...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nohe.

Washed up on the Florida shore, the boats that survive the voyage from Cuba are more than a means of transportation; they represent the refugee’s stories of ingenuity and courage. Known as "chugs" due to the sound they make, these boats can be anything from fishing yachts or skiffs, to vernacular vessels that almost defy categorization. These chugs are the physical artifacts of the struggle for political and economic freedom that has propelled thousands to make the dangerous journey over more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gizeh Rangel De Lázaro. Armando Rangel Rivero.

The pre-Columbian deformed skulls, display an oblique tabular fronto occipital artificial cranial warp, which is an Arawak – Taino cultural characteristic element. Such cranial deformations were induced immediately after birth, in both women and men. According to the descriptions supplied by Columbus and other chroniclers, deformations were practiced by the Taíno pottery agriculture groups living in Cuba. Although not all Taíno’s skulls were deformed, this feature is typically used as a cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Ramon Celis.

A cinco años de la declaratoria de patrimonio cultural de la humanidad por la UNESCO, el sitio Cuevas Prehistóricas de Yagul y Mitla, que alberga elementos naturales y arqueológicos variados (desde los vestigios más tempranos de la agricultura en América, hasta evidencias del México porfiriano), es un ejemplo del arduo trabajo de gestión que se requiere para poder concretar un proyecto de dimensiones tan grandes. Este proceso de construcción no hubiese sido posible sin la participación e...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart.

Investigations at sites across Northwestern Honduras-- inside and outside of the Maya area—have uncovered diverse food practices and ingredients. As with other more durable goods, there is evidence of transformation over time, and the movement of elements across the landscape. Some foodways were never adopted in regions where they came to be readily available (considering the general flow of species and materials) while others were quickly adopted but in novel ways. Evidence points toward...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Konrad Antczak. Miguel Lentino.

This paper discusses a diachronic human ecological approach to the interaction between humans and saltpans in the Venezuelan Caribbean from the 16th to the 19th century. This research is based on historical archaeological and oral historical evidence marshaled to understand the dynamics of past solar salt production, and the impacts of the natural environment on the final product’s output and quality. “Tending” a saltpan was not always straightforward business as knowledge of the weather...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ahmed Alsherif.

This paper discusses what kind of cultural and historical correlation between Tefinagh inscriptions and rock art in the Tadrart Acacus. The Tuareg alphabet, Tefinagh is one of ancient African alphabet documented not only in Libya but also Algeria and Tunisia among other countries. It is traditionally taught by a mother to all her children. This alphabet, which dates back at least to the second half of the first millennium B.C.E, is used by approximately 50 percent of the Tuareg for short...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Motta.

Staple foods offer an ideal opportunity to investigate cultural identity and socio-economic interactions. In Iron Age and Archaic Central Italy several kinds of cereal staples were grown, consumed and possibly exchanged. Different patterns shown by recent archaeobotanical research suggest interesting implications for the understanding of the cultural and political landscape of Central Italy in a period of rapid tranformations. A new method has been developed to detect directly the movement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Smith Marquez.

The El Grillo Complex (AD 300-600) of Jalisco’s central plateau, as defined by Galvan in the Atemajac Valley, is recognized as a dynamic and changing society that was integrated in the emergent Epiclassic cultural system of the Mesoamerican northwest. The excavations done in the last few years at El Palacio de Ocomo by the Oconahua Archaeological Project reveal a close relationship between this site and the El Grillo Complex. At the same time, ceramic analysis show elements that are considered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Qun Zhang. Quanchao Zhang. Xiaofang Gao. Tao Han. Hong Zhu.

This presentation reports a case of intentional trepanation along the ancient Silk Road in China from the Early Iron Age, with clear evidence of it being carried out by humans. Although trepanation has been widely performed in Eurasia, there are no definitive trepanation discoveries in western China dating from the Bronze Age. Microscopic observation and computed tomography scan were used to analyze the area of trepanation. With the observation of a three-dimensional deep-field microscope, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Earnshaw.

Culturally Modified Trees are British Columbia Canada's most common archaeological site type. Data related to these indigenous forest management sites have been collected for a few decades now through CRM work in the area, though little research has encorporated this archive. My MA thesis focuses on creating regional chronologies of bark stripping and logging dates for the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, to better understand forest usage and population dynamics around the contact period. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Lippi. Alejandra Gudino.

The cloud forest site of Palmitopamba in northwestern Ecuador was occupied for centuries by the Yumbos prior to the arrival of Incas around 1500. Instrumental neutron activation analysis has been performed on ceramics we have excavated there and which represent those two groups, on a third pottery complex widely identified in Ecuador as Cosanga or Panzaleo, and on raw clay samples from the vicinity of Palmitopamba. The results of some 140 analyses are presented. These imply that the Inca pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustav Eigenherr. Lais Müller.

The presentation intends to show the work and results achieved with local communities from Brazil. Those communities are culturally related to archaeological work near inhabited areas or in indigenous lands. The presentation intends to show how those communities are included in the archaeological project and what tools are used in order to reach positive outcomes. This paper highlights the technological tools used in order to be more efficient in teaching the communities and making the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinzia Pappi.

The dynamics of the expansion of Assyria involved the creation of a network of infrastructures which enabled the movement not only of goods and people, but also of technologies and ideas. Excavations at Satu Qala (Iraqi Kurdistan), the Assyrian provincial capital of Idu has highlighted the role of its region within the network. This area, located along the valley of the Lower Zab, served as a multicultural borderland both between southern and northern Iraq and between the valley of the Tigris...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ricardo Higelin Ponce De Leon.

Bone modification in human remains is a common practice among ancient civilizations. In Mesoamerica important cultural modifications on human bone have been reported, such as cranial deformation, dental modification, groves in long bones, and mandibles used as ornaments. In Oaxaca, within the Valley of Oaxaca, some of these cultural modifications of human remains have been dated to the middle Formative period in the Rosario Phase (BC. 700/500). Meanwhile, cultural modifications, such as cranial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Mendelsohn.

In southern Mesoamerica the transition from the Formative to Classic period (150 BC- AD 200) was a time of population decline, cessation of monumental construction, and abandonment of many sites. At the city of Izapa, located in the Soconusco region of Mexico, evidence for a dramatic shift has been presented for the Hato phase (ca. 150 BC- AD 50). The New World Archaeological Foundation archaeologists, working in the 1960s, noted that an urn burial custom and use of foreign pottery styles...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giovanni Bautista. Belinda Mollard.

The protection, preservation and conservation of archaeological resources has been a challenge in the Philippines all throughout the years given that there are various threats that endanger their scientific, cultural and educational value. As there are programs and measures the Philippine government carry on including state-enacted cultural/archaeological laws all throughout the country in order to safeguard these valuable resources, it is still the great task and effort to make the general...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raven Garvey.

Prehistoric boundary dynamics likely affected aspects of cultural transmission. Several lines of archaeological evidence indicate increased economic importance of bison and related inter-group tensions ca. AD 1300 in southeastern New Mexico, a boundary zone between the Pueblos to the west and cultures of the southern High Plains to the east. This paper presents preliminary results of a study centered on artifact variability and designed to test the hypothesis that model-based, biased cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Paige.

The past 5 years have seen new lithic studies inferring the degree of contact between and migrations of Pleistocene hominin populations (Tostevin 2013, Scerri et al. 2014). Their methodologies are grounded in a rigorously defined middle range theory, but independent tests of the approach have only recently begun. Bridging the gap between individual knapping events, and the trans-generational patterns we see in the archaeological record will likely require multiple approaches, including applying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Marshall. Stephanie Huddelstan.

In British Columbia, archaeologists are challenged with the task of identifying and recording Culturally Modified Trees (or CMTs) with some live trees dating back to the early seventeenth century. How these features are recorded as archaeological sites, are guided and managed by the BC Archaeology Branch under the Heritage Conservation Act (HCA). This provincial ministry is constantly changing departments, and sometimes change how they would like archaeologists to inventory and manage CMTs. Up...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yitzchak Jaffe.

For his last SAA paper, Professor Chen Pochan talked about the Dian Yangfutou cemetery in Yunnan. He presented the results of an analysis that provided new meaning on its social structure. The Dian culture was an important entity on the periphery of the Warring States and early Han world, but apart from several references in Chinese historical documents little is known, but much is assumed, about them. Chen's study complemented previous Dian mortuary research with site-specific practices in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Herrmann.

The archaeology of Late Formative Ecuador (ca. 2800-2000 BCE) remains only partially explored and understood, especially when compared to studies of contemporary cultures in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. However, ceramics looted from these contexts suggest a vibrant and complex array of cultures in this region. Excavations in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, performed in the early 1990s but largely unpublished, explored multiple sites pertaining to the Chorrera style, one of Ecuador’s...