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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Clark.

From the 13th to 17th centuries, emperors of Ethiopia, attended by the royal court, largely abandoned rule from fixed capitals in favor of a migratory lifestyle suited to projecting imperial power across an unruly collection of subjugated states and territories. At its peak, this system of administration was formalized into a highly regulated assembly of people with the visual and functional attributes of a royal urban center, though it lacked the spatial permanency of a conventional city. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Peterson.

Presented are the results of an ethnoarchaeological study of hide working traditions among the Wolayta peoples of southern Ethiopia. This research is part of a larger study that aims at tracing the development of social complexity/inequality occurring during the pre-Aksumite period (>800-450 BCE) in eastern Tigrai through studying the emergence of craft specialization of hideworking traditions. The processing and trading of hides has a long history in Ethiopia. The export and local trading of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Riaan Rifkin.

Given that red ochre is a ubiquitous artefact in Middle Stone Age (MSA) contexts throughout southern Africa, the habitual exploitation of ochre has been widely interpreted as evidence for symbolism, a proxy for the origin of language and as a key element of ‘symbolic’ and modern human behaviour. Although evolutionary explanations generally agree that ochre and the products of its processing played a significant role in the adaptive strategies of early modern humans, they differ substantially in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Russell. Kendra Farstad.

Since our team began work at the Ancient Maya political center of Mayapán (1150-1450), we have increasingly relied on insights derived from working with the modern residents of the nearby village of Telchaquillo, Yucatán. We have successfully applied the Direct Historical Approach to explore the function and remains of house groups, food production, lime plaster production and ritual activity. During the 2015 season of the Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project, we had the opportunity to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karime Castillo-Cardenas.

Blown glass is produced today in Jalisco, Mexico, in places that have a longstanding glass-working tradition. Many parts of the process are done in a traditional way even though some technological innovations, like the use of gas kilns, have been implemented. During the summer of 2015 an ethnoarchaeological project was carried out in the towns of Tonalá and Tlaquepaque, located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Jalisco, the main center of traditional glassblowing in Mexico today. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Greaves. Karen Kramer.

Ethnoarchaeological observations of residential mobility provide crucial links between subsistence activities, landscape use, social behaviors, and archaeological visibility of occupations. Pumé foragers of the Venezuela llanos move their camps up to six times a year. They occupy separate wet and dry season main camps that are the hubs of central place foraging for different seasonal resources. Pumé hunter-gatherers also make temporary camps for fishing, raw material acquisition, and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jen Knutson. Robert Lynch.

A nearly intact, Chattahoochee roughened variety Chattahoochee, Apalachee ceramic jar was excavated in the 2014 summer field season by the University of West Florida Colonial Frontiers Archaeological Field School. It was recovered from the Spanish mission of San Joseph de Escambe situated in northwest Florida and occupied from 1741-1761. Testing of the vessel for organic residue, specifically Ilex vomitoria, may provide evidence to support to a hypothesis that the vessel was used to serve the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Ambrose. Andrew Zipkin. Mercy Gakii. Craig Lundstrom.

Red ochre occurs in African archaeological sites spanning more than 250,000 years. It is usually considered to be evidence of the evolving capacity for symbolic behavior. If geological outcrops have distinctive geochemical fingerprints then it may be possible to determine the sources of pigments in archaeological sites and rock art, and reconstruct source preferences, transport distances and perhaps exchange network patterns. Although ochre is almost universally used in Africa, ethnographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah Minc. Jeremias Pink. Veronica Perez Rodriguez.

In the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, Mexico, ceramics resembling those found in the Valley of Oaxaca are a common component of Late to Terminal Formative assemblages. Prior compositional analyses indicated that at least some of these wares represent actual imports, and further, that ceramic trade between the two regions was possibly two-way. More recently, our knowledge of ceramic compositional variability in the Valley of Oaxaca has expanded greatly, allowing us to refine our understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffiny Tung. Theresa Miller. Jessica Oster. Larisa DeSantis.

This study examines whether oxygen isotope analysis can be used to study ancient human migration in the central, highland Andes of Peru (Ayacucho Basin). Although strontium isotope analysis is a reliable way of exploring questions of migration, oxygen isotope analysis, which is significantly less expensive, may offer preliminary insights regarding the possible presence of migrants at a site. This approach has not yet been used in the Ayacucho Basin where the Wari empire was centered, so we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Brown. Lisa Nagaoka. Feifei Pan. Steve Wolverton.

Soil moisture can have profound impacts on crop success and failure. Although soil moisture can be modeled at multiple spatial scales, most studies rely on remotely sensed data that are at resolutions of 1-km or greater, where soil moisture is averaged or interpolated within spatial units. However, crop growth can vary considerably across even small distances. The effects of soil moisture on growth variability at finer resolutions have not been thoroughly studied. Therefore, we are developing a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Riehm.

In parts of the U.S. Southeast, including south Alabama, relative ceramic chronologies for prehistoric archaeological sequences are based on descriptive type-variety systems of classification that have remained unevaluated by seriation methods. This project assesses the chronological utility of the type-variety classification for Pensacola archaeological culture ceramics through the application of seriation methods to collections from three extensively excavated sites on Mobile Bay....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Ellyson. Timothy Kohler. R. Kyle Bocinsky.

The Village Ecodynamics Project simulation ("Village") incorporates paleoenvironmental and archaeological data to understand the human and environmental interactions that occurred during the Ancestral Pueblo occupation of portions of the Colorado Plateau of the US Southwest. Village predicts the available populations of deer, jackrabbits, and cottontails across the simulated landscape—as well as the sample of those fauna hunted by households—and how these vary with such parameters as household...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

Between A.D. 1120-1260 in the Black Warrior River valley of west-central Alabama, a Mississippian identity first began to take shape that ultimately led to the materialization of the civic-ceremonial center of Moundville. While traditional models hold that feasting played an important role in this process, in this presentation, I propose that the adoption of an ancestral hominy foodway during this formative period restructured everyday household activities, seasonal procurement strategies, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Brown. Ben Hanowell.

The time-transgressive loss of archaeological, paleontological, and other geological deposits to destructive geomorphic processes has been parametrically modeled by T. Surovell and colleagues (2009), with minor revisions offered by A. Williams (2012). We expand on these modeling efforts in an explicitly survival-analytic framework, employing analytical techniques tailored to the study of time-to-event processes and data. First we show that Surovell and colleagues’ model is in fact a reduced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torin Power. David M. Hyde.

Excavations associated with Structure A-7, a 9 x 4 m isolated mound near Group A of the Medicinal Trail Community in northwestern Belize, have revealed evidence for the extraction of stone blocks from the limestone bedrock. The evidence for quarrying consists of rectangular scars outlining stone blocks that appear to have been in the process of being harvested. Additionally, there was an artificially created bowl-shaped depression, 2 m in diameter and approximately 1 m deep. A problematic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Balco. Michael J. Kolb.

Evidence for the production of Roman glass artifacts in western Sicily remains difficult to identify. The fragile nature of glass artifacts and the frequency with which glass could be recycled into new glass artifacts contributes to a general lack of evidence concerning its ancient production. Excavation of a Roman water cistern in Salemi, Sicily however, preserve evidence of the local manufacture of glass artifacts. Following its abandonment, the cistern was filled with refuse from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Beaudoin. Russell Cutts. David Braun. J.W.K. Harris.

Recent reviews have identified the control of fire as a important innovation in the history of human adaptation. The FxJj20 Main-Extension-0 locality, an oxidized sediment feature, may be associated with hominin-controlled fire. This locality was recovered from sediments in the Okote Member, of the Koobi Fora Formation, Kenya. Radiometric age estimates on associated tephra indicate that the locality is likely 1.5-1.64 Ma. This locality is associated with multiple sedimentary anomalies that were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Phillips.

This paper examines evidence of heirlooming at Moundville, a major Mississippian center located in west central Alabama. This evidence was discovered while analyzing pottery engraved in Moundville's Hemphill style. The Hemphill Style (ca. AD 1325-1450) is Moundville's local representational art style including such motifs as winged serpents, raptors, crested birds, paired tails, hand and eye designs, scalps, skulls, and forearm bones.

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Bertilla Beltrán Malagón.

El Centro de Veracruz, localizado dentro del territorio que comprende el área geográfico-cultural de la Costa del Golfo, es una zona que presentó un marcado dinamismo dentro del desarrollo prehispánico mesoamericano. En este espacio se localiza la región de Córdoba, la cual posee una extensión de aproximadamente 935.51 km2 y cuyo estudio es analizado a través de la lógica del asentamiento a lo largo de un valle por donde transitan los ríos Blanco y Seco-Atoyac. Hasta el momento se tienen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Lanata. Claudia Briones. Adrian Monjeau. Andrés Vaccari. Florencia Bechis.

Recently, the Anthropocene has challenged us to reflect on the era we live in and about the very terms in which we can frame its definition. As a geological era, the Anthropocene seems to be the field of geologists, paleontologists and biologists. However, now that the impact of Homo sapiens on the planet became focus of preoccupation, an excellent opportunity has arisen to rethink the relationship H. sapiens - nature from the viewpoint of other disciplines. As controversy, the Anthropocene can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Saldana. Samantha Lorenz. Brandon Lewis. Mario Giron-Abrego. James E Brady.

In 2014, the California State University, Los Angeles Sacred Landscapes Archaeology Project took over the investigation of what appeared to be a sinkhole with a small cave chamber at its northern end. In 2015, excavation was continued to bedrock. Lying on bedrock, was a chultun capstone and examination of the ceiling directly above it disclosed the remains of what had been the entry tube into the feature. The lack of deposition between the ceiling collapse and the floor suggests that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsey Smith. Danyelle Leentjes. Paul Blackman. Nadia Werby. Sue Fischer.

Chimney Rock National Monument, designated by President Barack Obama on September 21, 2012, is located within the San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado. The 4,726 acre monument preserves and protects hundreds of prehistoric sites (including a Chacoan outlier great house and kiva) and resource gathering and use areas associated with the ancestors and families of numerous Native American groups with ties to the greater American Southwest. The stewardship and sustainability of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Kardulias.

Since 1991, the Malloura Valley Survey, part of the Athienou Archaeological Project, has studied the shifting patterns of land use in central Cyprus. The survey work identified 30 loci of human activity in a rural setting midway between Nikosia and Larnaka, major population centers from antiquity to the modern period. The sporadic scatter of artifacts on the surface indicated a low-level but persistent pattern of land use through most periods. As a project that incorporates material from all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Arnold. Haskel Greenfield. Aren Maeir.

Early urban economies during the Early Bronze Age of the southern Levant are often treated as if they relied upon locally-available food resources that were largely produced at the household level, such as the herding of domestic livestock around the periphery or territory of the city-state. In this paper, we investigate whether the pastoral component of economies was a small-scale local affair or was conducted remotely, which would have involved productive specialists such as nomadic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Wismer.

The Rainbow site (13PM91) is a multi-component Woodland site situated within the tallgrass prairie of northwest Iowa. Excavated in the late 1970’s, the site remains one of few examples within the region for Woodland period habitation sites with substantial recovered faunal collections. The current study focuses on the seemingly unusual concentration of pocket gophers (Geomys bursarius) found within Cultural Horizon C (~1400-1370 BP). Recent reanalysis of the faunal assemblage reveals a presence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Betsy Kohut. George J. Bey III. Tomas Gallareta Negron. William Ringle. Evan Parker.

In the last decade, major strides have been made in the study of early ceramics in the northern Maya lowlands. Long considered to lack ceramic occupations dating before the late Middle Preclassic (600-300 B.C.) it is now recognized that communities were founded throughout much of the northern Maya lowlands, particularly in the Puuc and northwestern Yucatan peninsula, by 900-800 B.C. This paper examines similarities and differences among these early pottery complexes at various occupations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin DuBois. Tony Waldron. Kate Bowers. Carolyn Rando.

In the field of forensic science, the investigation that follows an explosive attack is one of extreme importance. There are, however, few universally accepted methods for the location and recovery of human remains after an explosion, especial in the cases of an IED or suicide bomb attack. This explains the paucity of available research and guidance on the subject. The research presented here aims to improve practice both in terms of recovery of the victims and in determining the characteristics...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omar Reyes. Susan Kuzminsky. Cesar Mendez. Manuel San Roman.

Our understanding of the evolutionary processes and the prehistory of South America have been enhanced by recent archaeological and biological studies on this continent. Of particular interest has been the focus on marine environments along the Pacific Coast and their importance to biocultural developments among human groups. In this study, we focus on the Chonos Archipelago (43°50’-46°50’S) in the Western Patagonian channels of Chile, which is comprised of a series of more than 150 islands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jean Larmon.

Teetering on the edge of a 60-meter deep cenote, or karstic sinkhole, partially consumed by the pool and constantly threatened by erosion, is an Ancient Maya Water Temple. This particular cenote, Cara Blanca Pool 1, is one of 25 pools (cenotes and lakes) in the Cara Blanca region. Exploratory diving from the pool and excavations from several of its associated structures suggest the temple was a pilgrimage site for Terminal Classic (AD 750-900) Maya. Seeking reprieve from the Terminal Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Cook. Sachiko Sakai.

Establishing temporally-diagnostic artifacts has long been a tradition in American archaeology. One such case is that of using the Madisonville-type pottery, one of the most agreed upon temporal markers in the Fort Ancient region of the Middle Ohio Valley. This pottery type is often used as the defining characteristic separating A.D. 1400-1650 Fort Ancient sites from those dating to the earlier A.D. 1000-1400 period. While this temporal marker has been demonstrated in strict terms through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Dalton.

During the 2014 and 2015 field season excavations were carried out on a chultun at the ancient Maya site of El Mirador, Petén, Guatemala. This chultun was situated near the Grán Acrópolis, with a 10-meter pyramid located directly to the north and a large L-shaped structure directly to the east, in an elite district. Over the course of excavations the site was found to contain both Middle and Late Preclassic ceramics, including fragments of an elaborate incensario in the shape of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Richards. Catherine Jones.

The Second Ward Cemetery Association incorporated the Second Ward or Gruenhagen Cemetery, in 1850 after the association purchased the land from Joachim F. Gruenhagen. This Milwaukee cemetery consisted of between three and five acres and interments took place until 1870 when the Association defaulted on the property’s mortgage and the land was sold by Sheriff’s auction. By 1874 plans had been made to subdivide the property and an article appeared in the Milwaukee Sentinel announcing that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Turner. Steven Meredith. Martha Dorland.

In March and April 2015, a Phase II cultural resources investigation was conducted to assess the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility of the Webb Site (22LE516) in Tupelo, Mississippi. Excavations identified 36 cultural features, including the outlines of two Chickasaw houses and several nearby clay-extraction pits, or okaakinafa'. Materials recovered from the site suggest a single-component occupation between A.D. 1680 and 1760. The site lies near the eighteenth-century...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Russell Cutts. David Braun. Sarah Hlubik. JWK Harris.

Clear evidence of hominin-controlled fire in the Earlier Stone Age archaeological record is sparse. Many indicators used to identify anthropogenic control of fire are not present or do not preserve from Early Pleistocene sediments (e.g. hearthstones, charcoal, ash). The 1972-4 excavations at FxJj20Main and FxJj20East localities of the Okote Mbr. (1.5-1.64 Ma) of the Koobi Fora Fm. recovered sediment features that appear to be reddened by an anomalous oxidation process. These are among the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt OMansky. Thomas Delvaux.

More than three dozen prehistoric sites exist on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. These consist of small settlements and work areas of the indigenous Lucayans. One of these sites, the Fresh Lake site (SS-7), has been the focus of research by Youngstown State University archaeologists each December since 2012. No clear signs of habitation have yet been found, although over 100 shell beads, along with pottery, shell tools, and shells and fish bones, have been recovered. In this paper, the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Bauer. Javier Fonseca Santa Cruz. Miriam Araoz Silva.

After the Incas failed to regain control of their capital city from the Spaniards in 1536, many Inca loyalists withdrew into the Vilcabamba region. Over the next 40 years of organized indigenous resistance to Spanish rule, much of the Inca royal court was centered in the town of Vilcabamba and a host of critical events occurred in the region. Despite the important role that the city of Vilcabamba held in the final years of the Inca Empire, there have been few archaeological projects aimed at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Searcy. Todd Pitezel.

In the summer of 2015 we conducted excavations at a site located along the Palanganas River, just south of the Casas Grandes River Valley in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. This represents the first excavation of a Viejo Period site (A.D. 700-1200) in this vicinity since the 1960s. We discovered remnants of at least five structures, and fully excavated three. This paper reports our findings and compares them to previous work carried out in the region.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Safi. Andrew Duff.

The great houses of Chaco Canyon and the similar monumental buildings scattered across the northern Southwest during the Pueblo II period (A.D. 900-1150) are often discussed in terms of a regional system. One aspect of recent research is evaluating the movement of goods between great houses as an indication of the degree to which these communities were well integrated into a social or economic system. This paper examines patterns of non-local resource procurement and exchange among three great...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Graham.

Exchange drove Maya economy at many levels, yet the political landscape changed dramatically from the Preclassic to early colonial period. How did exchange networks respond to these changes? Or, we might ask instead if political change or upheaval was instigated by fluctuations or upsets in what might be called the market economy and those who sought to manage or control networks of supply? Did the ability to exact tax/tribute provide rulers and nobles with the economic power to invest and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Crandall.

Bioarchaeologists have rarely marshalled data from historic American burial assemblages to explore the dynamics of violence in the borderlands West. This paper considers the social dynamics of American violence under Manifest Destiny through an exploration of ballistic trauma patterns documented in extant historical bioarchaeology literature. This study examines the lives of 42 individuals whose remains exhibit fatal gunshot wounds from across the mid-17th and early 20th century America. Trauma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pohl.

A continuing issue is the treatment in exhibitions of Pre-Columbian objects as simply works of art. This is as much due to museum department compartmentalization and the dominance of design divisions who do not consider the integration of meaningful detail a priority and may even see it as disruptive to the overall design concept. Many of us are interested in developing contextualization without inhibiting the ability of art and artifacts to be appreciated for their own aesthetic merits so we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Morris. Jaime Awe.

Mounting exhibitions that highlight the achievements of Mesoamerican civilizations can be a daunting task for curators of even the most affluent museums in America, Europe or Asia. In the case of smaller museums with ever decreasing budgets, the challenges posed by these projects are greater, and sometimes even cost-prohibitive. But what about the situation faced by the lending institutions in the developing world? Are there challenges and benefits that result from their collaboration with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaoru Ueda.

This paper explores the roles of Chinese and Japanese porcelain excavated at the Dutch East India Company forts built in the Sultanate of Banten, Java, Indonesia and raises the questions of how to interpret Asian porcelain in European-related sites in Asia. The paper pays particular attention to the multi-directionality of cross-cultural influence and the assumed exoticness of Asian porcelain to European consumers. In 1596, the first Dutch expedition in the East Indies went to the Sultanate of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Murray.

The approaches and perspectives of Historical Ecology are solidly grounded in interdisciplinary objectives. Wide-ranging projects, such as the one Carole Crumley initiated and has sustained in France, demonstrate the utility of integrating interdisciplinary objectives into research that seeks to understand long-term changes in a landscape. As the original set of archaeological objectives in Crumley’s project changed over time, Historical Ecology emerged as a robust conceptual framework that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaclyn Doering. David Hyde. Krystle Kelley.

Excavations within the Tapir Group at Medicinal Trail, a Maya hinterland community in northwestern Belize, have revealed evidence for multiple phases of expansion of both Structure B-1, a large pyramidal structure on the eastern side of the courtyard group, and the plaza platform on which it rests. The Tapir Group is a relatively large, formal Plaza Plan 2 courtyard group (as defined by Becker). Excavations indicate that Structure B-1 was expanded at least twice and, in order to accommodate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ringle. Gabriel Tun Ayora.

Research conducted at the ancient Maya site of Yaxhom has identified very early monumental architecture next to one of the most fertile tracts in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan. A third field season, reported on here, carried out further mapping and testing of the urban center to determine the extent of accompanying Formative architecture. We wished to test whether the platform served to mark place for a population with minimal investment in residential architecture or whether it formed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Hurcombe.

In living contexts the majority of material culture is formed from organic materials, but on most archaeological sites only the inorganic elements are preserved. The perishable material culture thus forms the 'missing majority'. The fragmentary records and fragmentary remains of perishable material culture stored in museums can offer new ways of understanding artefacts made from organic materials. A mosaic approach has been used to offer new interpretations of artefacts using original museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon Hankins. Yarely Meza. Cristina Gonzales.

This is a multifaceted approach utilizing environmental, ethnographical, and ceramic studies from various instructors with feedback from students, faculty, and experienced potters. Incorporating this project in our field school, generates more knowledge and curiosity in the observation of materials in the field pertaining to this technology.The environment and its contribution to our needs such as clay, water, temper, fuel, and firing methods are some of the most important aspects of research....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Boomgarden.

This paper examines the economic trade-offs between dry farming maize vs. maize farming using simple surface irrigation for Fremont farmers occupying Range Creek Canyon, Utah, from AD 900 to 1200. A maize farming experiment was conducted focusing on changes in edible grain yield as irrigation water was varied between farm plots. The benefits of irrigation were clear; higher yields. Experiments designed to construct irrigation ditches and dams, using only technology available to the Fremont,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heilen. Monica Murrell.

This poster presents an experimental research project performed for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Permian Basin Mitigation Program exploring the use of aerial lidar data to identify and document ring midden features. The project was carried out in three study areas in southeastern New Mexico situated along the eastern foothills of the Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains. Previous archaeological surveys indicate that ring middens are common along rocky escarpments in the piedmont zone and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Carroll.

Agent Based Modeling (ABM) has become increasingly popular because of its relatively shallow learning curve and robust capacity for simulating social and environmental phenomena. This paper discusses new developments in ongoing work simulating social interaction in Precontact small-scale societies using NetLogo, a freely available software package. Model design, assessment and experimentation of a multilevel ABM are discussed, as well as how the simulation results compare to real world,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Gamble. Brooke Milne.

The field of bioarchaeology is leading to significant advances in our understanding of the lives of past populations. A particular area of interest in this field lies in the consideration of the early life determinants of later life conditions. The consideration of non-specific skeletal stress markers has been at the forefront of this research. Dental enamel grows incrementally, and because it does not remodel once formed, a permanent record of growth disruption is preserved. Traditionally,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Montoya. Diana Sherman. C. L. Kieffer. Julia Clifton. Maxine McBrinn.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) acts as the Repository for the State of New Mexico, curating archaeological materials from Federal, state, and tribal lands, and private donations. The Archaeological Research Collections (ARC) is the museum’s largest collection, with Paleoindian through historic material from New Mexico and the greater Southwest. The collection is housed at the Center for New Mexico Archaeology, a new state-of-the-art facility shared with the Office of Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Blaber.

Recent excavations at the Fallen Tree Mortuary Complex (9Li8) on St. Catherines Island, GA have recovered over 20 shaped mica artifacts and dozens of fragments associated within three Late Mississippian adult male burials. This non-local material was purposely shaped and interred with the individuals. In this paper, I present the results of recent analysis and explore mortuary mica use at this site. I examine the location and orientation of the mica discs to help determine spatial patterns and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Berman. Perry L. Gnivecki. Lisa Park Boush. Erik Kjellmark.

The peopling of the Bahama archipelago during the eighth through eleventh centuries AD occurred at a rapid pace. In this study we examine several data sets to understand this fast-moving expansion. Sedimentological and geochemical data derived from cores from inland ponds and lakes from several islands in the Bahama archipelago indicate that migration took place during periods of hurricane hyperactivity, sea level changes, and hydrological variability. Settlement data and material culture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Miller.

The human skeleton is a dynamic tissue that changes over the lifetime in response to particular variables such as an individual’s diet, health, sex, and physical activity. Studying human long bones, such as femurs and humerii, for measures of bone quantity and shape can provide insights into the ways that the skeleton reflects the amounts and types of work performed during life. The Muisca, from northern Colombia, are often characterized as highly stratified societies where social differences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kassie Kemp.

The last 10 years of outreach and education has allowed staff from the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) to experiment with many different strategies for discussing archaeology with the public. Through this experience we have become better aware of the ways to effectively communicate archaeological concepts and garner an appreciation for our archaeological and historic heritage. This presentation will provide some basic strategies and outline specific programming that we have found...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Styles. Mona Colburn. Sarah Neusius.

The Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG), established with funding from NSF, is preserving Archaic period faunal databases from interior portions of the Eastern Woodlands in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record) in order to undertake data integration at multiple scales that examines the use of aquatic resources across time and space during the Archaic. A major initial question about our existing datasets is how comparable they are taphonomically and contextually. Protocols for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah E. Adcock.

In this paper, I explore how viewing collapse as a social and political phenomenon might change how we interpret the collapse of the Hittite empire in Turkey at the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BC). To this end, I consider the implications of changes and continuities in animal management at two sites in central Turkey following the collapse of the Hittite empire. The end of the Late Bronze Age was characterized by significant political and economic disruption throughout the eastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Shirar. Joshua D. Reuther. Joan B. Coltrain. Owen K. Mason. Shelby L. Anderson.

J. Louis Giddings’ pioneering work in chronology building in Northwest Alaska laid the groundwork for this case study, where we explore differences between the radiocarbon ages of seals and caribou from Late Holocene archaeological sites in the Kotzebue Sound region. Samples were recovered from distinct cultural features like house floors and cache pits which date between 130 and 1600 BP, including two samples from a house excavated by Giddings in Kotzebue in 1941. Our comparisons of radiocarbon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Lape. Emily Peterson. Jenn Huff. Joss Whittaker. Lauryl Zenobi.

The Island Southeast Asian Neolithic remains a controversial archaeological construction. Traditional theories explain the appearance of pottery, domestic plants and animals in the region about 3500 years ago as the result of migrations from Taiwan and SE China. Archaeological and genetic data collected in the past decade do not fit well with those theories, and scholars have begun to investigate new explanations. One area of renewed focus is in the relationship between fishing and farming at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Willett. Peter Biehl. Ralf Vandam.

This paper presents a case study on human-environment dynamics in the Burdur Region (SW Turkey) during Late Prehistory (8000-2400 BC). Previous archaeological research in the area mainly focused on the fertile lowland areas, which revealed distinctive periods of continuity and collapse of farming communities, followed by a total abandonment of the plain areas for nearly a millennium, i.e. during the Middle Chalcolithic (5500-4100 BC). The working hypothesis is that people moved to more temperate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Denise Killeen. C. L. Kieffer.

The site of Chawak But'o'ob in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area of northwestern Belize is being investigated by the Rio Bravo Archaeological Survey. The site, located just two kilometers southwest of the minor Preclassic- and Classic-period city of Dos Hombres, is unusual in that it is a modestly sized commoner residential site with a ballcourt. Very unusually, the paired ballcourt buildings are the largest at the site and perhaps along with the adjacent sweat house, are the only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Locascio. Sarah Taylor.

Data gathered during two seasons of excavation of a Minorcan household in St. Augustine, FL are examined for patterns that reflect how recovery from the hurricane that hit the city on October 5, 1811 affected social systems and relations within the city’s communities. Johnson (2005) has argued that recovery from the disaster created strong bonds among members of the communities and acted to level social inequality within them. Schwartz (2005), however, notes that during the colonial period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Selch. Mark Rochelo. Chris Davenport.

Locating and mapping methodology of archaeological earthworks for the prehistoric Native American Belle Glade culture can be improved by applying airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) employing FUSION software and the Ground Filter program to these remote areas. This study compares the standard utilization of vendor created classes for ground classification to FUSION's software ground filter program. The two case study locations contain Belle Glade type B circular–linear earthwork...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heriberto Marquez. Cristina Verdugo. Hector Neff. James Brady.

The earliest use of red pigment in mortuary contexts has been documented in Neanderthal burials during the Upper Palaeolithic period (50,000- 12,000 BCE) in Europe (Roper 1991). The use of red pigment for both mortuary and decorative practices has been identified in Mesoamerica as early as the Early Preclassic. These practices include the sprinkling or encasing of various artifacts such as shell or bone in either red ochre or cinnabar. Investigations at Midnight Terror Cave (MTC) carried out...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Sanchez.

This paper explores ethnographic and ethno-historical records of Coast Miwok and Kashaya Pomo peoples in Central California to understand 20th century memories or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of landscape management practices. TEK and traditional resource and environmental management (TREM) practices are entangled with contemporary issues. These include but are not limited to management practices for indigenous communities, state, and federal agencies. Understanding how Native people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Pastrana.

Se analiza el proceso de explotación minera, talla y distribución de la obsidiana verde por parte de Teotihuacan en La Sierra de Las Navajas, con base en las excavaciones arqueológicas y recorridos detallados de superficie. Hemos identificado en el yacimiento tres tipos de locus de talla, talleres familiares, talleres especializados y áreas individuales de talla. La producción en general en el yacimiento comprende elaboración de instrumentos, armas, objetos religiosos y de vestimenta además de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Goni.

The concept of extensification was used in a ethnographical sense, particularly by L. Binford (2001). It was deeply related with the new organization of American hunter-gatherers when horses were introduced in the continent by European people. The main examples to introduce this concept were the Great Plains societies in North America and the Tehuelche society in Patagonia, South America. However, the use of the concept of extensification in an archaeological perspective is not very usual....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Terry. Bryce M. Brown. Aline Magnoni. Tanya Carino.

In Post Classic and Colonial times, cacao was an important crop to the Maya. Landa and others reported sacred groves of trees in the Yucatan region, and among these groves they saw cacao growing. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, cacao seeds were even used as a form of currency near Chichen Itza. Cacao typically grows in hot, humid climates. The Yucatan region is too dry and humidity is too low during the winter months to sustain cacao, but it has been found to grow in the humid microclimates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Nowakowski. Chrissina Burke.

Dogs have been described as a refuse management system in prehistoric villages across the world; in fact, much of their domestication has been attributed to their ability to adapt to consume human garbage/waste. Recent research on prehistoric dog burials housed in the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collections illustrates unusual tooth wear patterns on both the upper and lower carnassials in a large number of the canids. The wear does not appear to represent excessive gnawing on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Lyman.

In 1983, Tom King noted ethical responsibilities of American archaeologists to six entities could be in conflict. A 1997 SAA workshop concluded that "stewardship" should be the "core or foundation" of all ethical principles, and recognized the broad socio-political context of modern archaeology. This context has resulted in facade CRM—statements by federal land-holding agencies that they are the stewards of the archaeological record, yet that record is knowingly destroyed by the agency and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Warren. Lisa Sattenspiel. Alan C. Swedlund. George J. Gumerman, III.

Many archaeological agent-based computer models (ABMs) use the household as the smallest unit of investigation but, in order to answer questions about how factors such as disease, social interaction, and population movement contributed to population dynamics in prehistory, there is a need for individual-level models. Our team has worked to disaggregate an early archaeological ABM, the Artificial Anasazi model, into an individual-level model, the Artificial Long House Valley model. The baseline...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Johnson.

As part of ongoing thesis work, a taxonomic and taphonomic faunal analysis was completed for the zooarchaeological collections (n≈4000) of two house feature sites, Hole-in-the-Wall Canyon (45KT12) and French Rapids (45KT13). Both sites are located near Vantage, Washington, within the inundated area of the Wanapum Reservoir, and date ca. 2400-200 B.P. Originally excavated as part of large scale archaeological salvage work prior to dam construction in the summers of 1961-62, the fauna was never...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martina Steffen.

Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are often abundant in faunal assemblages from archaeological sites in arctic, sub-arctic, and alpine tundra areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Archaeological faunal assemblages from interior Alaska include prime examples. This poster focuses on the interpretation of a new sample of vertebrate faunal remains from the Croxton site located along the shore of Tukuto Lake on the north slope of the Brooks Range in which caribou dominate. Analyses compare faunal assemblages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Neusius. Bonnie Styles.

The newly formed Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has brought zooarchaeologists together with funding from the US National Science Foundation. Our group is seeking to preserve Archaic period faunal databases from the interior portions of the Eastern Woodlands in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), an international digital repository for archaeological databases and records of investigations. Members of the EAFWG have uploaded over 28 separate datasets representing more than 14...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Osborn. Benjamin Nigra.

Huaca Soto, a monumental Paracas platform mound in the Chincha Valley, experienced centuries of post-Formative reuse that continued well into the Inca Period. Two seasons of extensive excavation have yielded a massive assemblage of feasting debris within the mound’s uppermost sunken court dating to the mid-first millennium CE. Communal feasting in the ancient Andes is widely acknowledged to have been both a ritually and politically charged practice, and ongoing research examining the ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Gamble.

Intensive archaeological investigations at the largest extant shell mound in the Santa Barbara Channel area and one of the best-preserved Early Period archaeological sites in the region have produced an array of radiocarbon dates within solid stratigraphic contexts. Approximately 50 house depressions situated in rows on several terraces have been mapped on the eight meter high mound that measures 270 by 210 meters, approximately 5 hectares. Analysis of multiple lines of evidence, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Saldaña. Luis Jaime Castillo.

San Jose de Moro is an archaeological site with a long cultural sequence of near 1000 years. The first activities performed at this site were funerary, since a high quantity of funeral contexts and remains of ceremonial activity were found. During the Late Mochica Period, the site was used as sepulcher for high rank individuals who performed ritual roles for the development of the society. In the last eight field seasons at the site, three important chamber tombs have been found. They were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Des Lauriers. Dustin Merrick.

Discussions of resilience theory (see Redman 2005; Folke 2006; and others) and its application to ancient human ecological systems view the process of cultural change as perpetually dynamic and involving patterns reliant upon a wide range of underlying factors constantly altered by a variety of catalysts and forces. This differs from more linear arguments of transformation by unidirectional external forcing. One such complex transformation occurred on Isla Cedros Baja California, in the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Walsh-Haney. Victoria Sanford.

The mortality rate of women in peacetime Guatemala has reached the level documented at the height of the genocidal war that took 200,000 lives. These female victims tend to be between 16 and 30 years-old with most of these brutal killings occurring within or near Guatemala City. To paraphrase UN Rapporteur Philip Alston, female homicides are only the beginning of the cost because a society that lives in fear of killing is unable to combat impunity and cannot get on with life and the business of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Levy.

When archaeologists, largely led by Carole Crumley, began applying the concept of heterarchy to prehistoric contexts, the focus was on social organization writ large. We generally used heterarchy to debate, illuminate, and/or clarify models of non-egalitarianism, stratification, and hierarchy. The concept seems to have come out of analyses of 20th century political systems. Some archaeological scholars of heterarchy have diversified into discussions of other aspects of human experience, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Alveshere.

Established in 2015, the Western Illinois Taphonomic Research Sites provide access to a variety of environmental contexts for experimental research in skeletal and molecular taphonomy. These secluded, rural sites include deciduous wooded and open areas along a creek in a deep valley, and a hilltop coniferous forest bordering an upland pond. Equipped with several game cameras, these unfenced sites afford unique opportunities to observe the responses and effects of local wildlife as they encounter...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Gonzalez. Ian Kretzler.

There are few formal field schools in the United States where students can receive formal training in tribal historic preservation, community-based collaboration, and archaeological field methods. Given the increasing role of consultation and collaboration in disciplinary practice, learning to effectively communicate and build relationships with a Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) and/or tribal community is a critical skill. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Price. Christopher Jazwa. Douglas Bird. Rebecca Bliege Bird.

Hunter-gatherer and subsistence farmer populations frequently make decisions regarding field processing when collecting resources away from a central base. These decisions can have a profound influence on the relative abundance of items in archaeological assemblages if systematic biases exist in the propensity for particular goods to be field processed. An influential and productive framework for understanding field processing decisions is the model formulated by Metcalfe and Barlow. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only F. Scott Worman. Anastasia Steffen. William Wedenoja.

Field schools serve the vital functions of training students in basic research methods and introducing them to the realities of field-based investigations. Beyond that, they typically have been a venue for faculty to pursue their own research agendas. In this paper I present information about two field schools, one in Jamaica focused on community-engaged public archaeology, and a second in New Mexico emphasizing cultural resource management (CRM) as applied archaeology. I evaluate the strengths...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott MacEachern. David Wright.

Iron Age settlements in the Benoué River Valley around Garoua in northern Cameroon were dispersed across the landscape, taking advantage of different eco-climatic zones to exploit a variety of natural resources. Fieldwork undertaken in 2014 located numerous mound sites in the area around Garoua, with occupation histories spanning multiple centuries. In particular, the site of Langui Tcheboua displays evidence for rapid accumulation of sediments approximately 700 years ago, which may have been a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katlynn Thompson. Jessica Levy. Diane Newburry. Sheena Owens. Ann Peters.

As part of a Practicum in Analysis and Conservation of Organic and Textile Artifacts, class participants worked with materials recovered in salvage excavations between 1955 and 1975, which form part of the collections at the Museo Regional de Ica “Adolfo Bermudez Jenkins.” We carried out documentation and preliminary interventions to improve preservation of textiles from a mortuary context, as well as miscellaneous artifacts with unknown provenience, diverse in materials and techniques. Here we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karleen Ronsairo.

The development of social complexity in Ancient Mesoamerica during the Preclassic period is marked by ideological change, economic intensification, and increasing political and social inequality. Performing household rituals allowed the people of Ancient Mesoamerica to negotiate their social identities and to contest or conform to dominant public ideologies that emerged with increasing social complexity. In Pacific Guatemala, La Blanca was one of two major regional centers during the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Schulenburg. Robert Cook.

In the Middle Ohio Valley, the Early Fort Ancient period (AD 1000 – 1200) saw significant changes to social organization reflected in the built environment. Among the most archaeologically visible of these developments was a new style of settlement – the formal village – typically consisting of spatially differentiated zones arranged in concentric circles. This study selects two Early Fort Ancient village sites from the Cincinnati area, Guard (12D29) and Turpin (33HA19); each site displays...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Messal.

This report presents the results of a large-area magnetic gradient survey at Hopewell Mound Group, a unit of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Ross County, Ohio. In 2011, a first survey covered only half of the archaeological monument, but for reconstruction and heritage management of the site a complete survey was sought. This survey was conducted in April 2015 by the German Archaeological Institute. During the survey, several magnetic anomalies of potential archaeological interest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daiana Rivas-Tello. Andrew Roddick.

Ceramic pastes in the Titicaca Basin reflect shifting pottery production practices across space and time. Yet paste groups are not very standardized, making it difficult to compare ceramic pastes between sites, explore regional pottery production, social interactions, economy, and broader ecological and social landscapes of the past. This poster presents results from ongoing research employing a Dino-lite digital USB microscope in paste analysis and its value compared to petrographic analysis....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Young.

The landlord villages of Iran were owned by a powerful, usually absentee landlord, who had near-total control over the political, economic and social lives of all those living within them. A range of sources describe the male occupants of the villages, and when reading historical and anthropological studies of landlord villages, it would be easy to think they were occupied by an amorphous mass of (male) peasants living in extreme poverty, who were subject entirely to the will of the (male)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Pierce.

Obsidian is abundant at nearly every Post-Classic Mesoamerican site. The obsidian typically is derived from multiple sources, including distant, "costly" sources. Given that the obsidians’ utility is similar regardless of source, one possible explanation for such "wasteful" consumption uses costly signaling theory. In this model, behavioral displays indicate a hidden quality. Here, use of distant obsidians reflects status by demonstrating access to trade networks and the ability to absorb the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlene Murphy.

Examining the evidence for millet in the Roman empire, during the period, circa 753BC-610AD, presents a number of challenges: a handful of scant mentions in the ancient surviving agrarian texts, several frescoes, only a few fortuitous preserved archaeological finds and limited archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence. Ancient agrarian texts note millet’s ecological preferences and multiple uses but disparage its lowly status. Recent archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence has shown that millet was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Carl DeMuth.

This paper reviews recent archaeological research at Tams, WV – a former coal company town – which revealed a significant number of children's toys such as marbles and dolls/figurines. Artifacts such as these can offer important insights into the lives of children in company towns, an aspect that is often overlooked in labor archaeology. In terms of community involvement, these artifacts are both important as well as interesting. Most former residents interested in the project only lived in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant Snitker.

Archaeological and paleoecological analyses demonstrate that human-caused fires have long-term influences on global terrestrial and atmospheric systems. For millennia, humans have intentionally burned landscapes to drive game, clear land, engage in warfare, and propagate beneficial plant and animal species. Around the world, Neolithic transitions to agriculture often coincided with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation community composition and distribution. Although this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Waters.

There is strong empirical evidence showing that North and South America were occupied before Clovis. This comes from sites such as Monte Verde, Chile, Paisley Caves, Oregon, Schaefer and Hebior, Wisconsin, Page-Ladson, Florida, Debra L. Friedkin, Texas, Wally’s Beach, Canada, and a few others. This evidence places the initial occupation of the Americas at about 15,000 cal yr B.P. Quality chronological data for Clovis still place this complex between 13,000 and 12,600 cal yr B.P. Genetic studies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Belcher.

Fish remains from the earliest deposits at the Indus Valley site of Harappa (Punjab Province, Pakistan) appear to have skeletal element distribution and cut mark patterns that are different from later deposits associated with a more complex social organization related to an urban setting. The earliest village-level fish assemblages (Ravi Phase) appear to be representative of the types of provisioning associated with direct access to either the fish resources or the fish mongers; later...