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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keri Hicks.

In an effort to meet the spirit of the NHPA, USDA Forest Service Alaska Region has a long history of collaboration and partnering with a wide variety of tribal, state, federal, not-for-profit, and educational entities, institutions, agencies, and volunteers throughout the state and beyond. The Alaska Region consists of the two largest national forests in the system, totaling 21.9 million acres. Over the last 18 years the Ketchikan-Misty Fiords Ranger District (KMRD), located on the Tongass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Palmiotto.

This paper critically evaluates the concept of seasons as utilized in zooarchaeological studies of coastal settlements. The project aims to show that "seasons," as a matter of perception, emerge from interplay between natural processes and human practices. Because processes and practices vary geographically and historically, effective seasons are contingent on local circumstances and histories. This paper presents methods for utilizing data on present-day fish populations in the Lower Suwannee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloé Andrieu.

Technological and distributional analysis of the lithic collections from Cancuen, La Corona, Rio Bec and Naachtun show that the same goods were produced under different production contexts, some specific debitage being deposited in elite cache, whereas the same flakes were also gathered in domestic refuse. This suggests that some aspects of production were carried out in independent workshops, but a part of some knapping actions were given as tribute with particular stages of debitage held in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal Geiger. Jack Chalfant.

Tribal archaeology expands the interpretation of the archaeological record through the incorporation of tribal perspectives. The Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) partnered with the sixth grade students of STOF Pemayetv Emahakv (“Our Way”) Charter School in 2014 to excavate a little known, historic, Anglo-American home-site on the Seminole Brighton Reservation. The THPO worked with the students to document their observations and participate in the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessi Halligan. Michael Waters.

While directly-dated sites are somewhat rare, northern Florida contains an extremely rich archaeological record of diagnostic artifacts from the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods. Very commonly, Early Archaic diagnostics are discovered at the same sites as Paleoindian diagnostics. The Paleoindian components are presumed to be Pleistocene in age, while the Early Archaic is generally but not universally associated with early Holocene ages. Recent research we have been conducting in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Chmilar.

The approach taken by Vernon Scarborough to the study of water management in the Maya area has been a thorough investigation of the role of water in the formation of both the relationships of people with their environment, and also the impact of water in the organization of people among themselves. While I was a student of Vern Scarborough's from 2003 through 2005, he emphasized three key points in my thinking. The first is an openness to seek is a cross cultural analogy. Secondly, he stressed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirk French.

From his initial doctoral work at Cerros in the late 1970s to his most recent investigations in Tikal, Vernon Scarborough’s research goals have consistently used water control as an instrument to better understand social complexity. His research has spanned a period of our own history when more sustainable approaches to growth are desperately needed as access to water is of an ever increasing concern. As his student, now colleague, this paper will highlight how Vernon Scarborough and his work...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Shreve. Eileen G. Ernenwein. Jay D. Franklin. S.D. Dean.

Radiometric dates from the protohistoric Cane Notch Site on the Nolichucky River in upper East Tennessee indicate contemporaneous ceramic assemblages characterized by multiple traditions. Our work produced wares referable to the Qualla and Overhill series, wares directly associated with 18th century Cherokee villages elsewhere. Burke wares, from the eastern side of the Appalachians, also occur in large numbers. These “different” wares at Cane Notch share common attributes, however, that also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shadreck Chirikure. Abigial Joy Moffett.

The transition of time from day into night is a fundamental pivot through which human existence revolves. And yet, as if ‘afraid of the dark’, few archaeological reconstructions have attempted to explore nightly practices. In the anthropology of southern Africa, particularly amongst groups such as the Shona, the dawn of the night opened the door to a host of nocturnal activities, which included learning, reproduction, relaxation, and ritual. For example, witches used mundane winnowing baskets as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Micheletti.

The ceremonial heart of the ancient Maya site of Pacbitun, thriving for the site’s entire 2000 year existence, must have held an enormous amount of cosmological significance to its inhabitants. However, while the sacredness of this location remained constant, the ideology within this space was incessantly in flux. Over the past 30 years, Plaza A excavations have revealed numerous architectural transformations signifying sociopolitical unrest. One such transformation is archaeologically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Mathwich. Alexander Ruff. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman.

The introduction of livestock to the Pimeria Alta in the 18th-century dramatically shifted resource use in the Sonoran Desert and the Santa Cruz River Valley. Colonial and indigenous politics and economics were transformed as a result of the presence and uses of these animals, but it is relatively unknown how O’odham people in the Santa Cruz Valley balanced the grazing and watering needs of livestock with the needs of farming and seasonal wild food gathering in the arid region. Using carbon and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Shaffer Foster.

The re-use of sites and landscapes in both ancient and contemporary contexts is widely recognized in archaeology. In Ireland, many sites show evidence of use throughout prehistory and into the historical era, although the meaning of these places changed substantially over time and continues to evolve today. This paper will examine historical and contemporary folklore surrounding archaeological sites in Ireland, focusing largely on the nineteenth and twentieth century understanding of raths,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Alix. Glenn P. Juday. Jess Ryan.

Giddings’ pioneering dendrochronology research in Alaska and his extensive and impressive sample collections were left mostly untouched since the 1960’s. For the last 10+ years, we have undertaken an effort to re-establish a library of dendrochronologies from live trees along the main driftwood-producing rivers in Alaska to re-initiate archaeological tree-ring research in Arctic coastal regions. We are now examining Giddings’ original samples, most of which were never measured. We believe these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helena Tomas.

During Late Bronze Age it was not unusual to find objects of Mycenaean origin at any part of eastern and central Mediterranean. The only area that seems to have been omitted from Mycenaean naval routes was the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland. However, during earlier times that coast was not as marginal to the Aegean world. The period in question was Early Bronze Age when Cetina Culture saw its birth in the valley of the eponymous river in the hinterland of the eastern Adriatic coast....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bobi Deere.

Marine shell was ubiquitous in the Mississippian Southeast. In an effort to shed light on where the shell originated, X-Ray Fluorescence analysis was done on a sample of Spiro engraved shell, and on Cahokian engraved shell. As a second line of questioning, results were separated by previously assigned styles, including Braden and Craig. At this point, sourcing with the Pxrf only points to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Coast. However, interesting questions have arisen in the data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Bryce. Spencer Lambert.

Excavations conducted by Brigham Young University’s Field Schools from 2010-2015 have uncovered several examples of Fremont residential architecture at two sites around Utah Lake. At least five residential structures have been excavated at Wolf Village (42UT273), a site dating to A.D. 900-1208, while one residential pithouse was uncovered at the Hinckley Mounds site (42UT111). Recent research at these sites has focused on architecture and the use of space, particularly in regards to communal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

Recent reanalyzes of the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere have invoked reinvigorated, multi-dimensional research that examines symbolism, social organization, and subsistence practices. Through a reanalysis of faunal remains from Spiro Mounds, OK, this paper interrogates the presence of faunal remains and materials to better contextualize their use through a lens of concurrent religious practices at the site from CE 1000-1400. By contextualizing the remains within broader discussions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Hoover. Thomas Hardy.

Minaspata, a site located in the Cuzco Valley of the south-central Peruvian Andes, contains evidence of occupation spanning continuously from the Early Horizon through the end of the Inca Empire. In 2013, several units were excavated in order to better understand the social transformations which occurred in local populations due to colonial practices, focusing primarily on the early consolidation of the Inca heartland during the early Late Horizon (AD 1400-1532). Analysis of the faunal remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giacomo Gaggio. Paul Goldstein.

Tiwanaku, one of the first Andean states, spread during the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000) from the Bolivian Altiplano into the lowland territories of Cochabamba and Moquegua in order to acquire the resources that were lacking in the highlands, a strategy termed by Murra as the "vertical archipelago". Plants such as maize and coca were among the primary resources that the Tiwanaku sought in these valleys, and different social groups, ayllus or elites, were probably in charge of accessing and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Bardolph. Brian Billman. Jesus Briceno.

In this paper, we explore migration and culture contact in the prehispanic Moche Valley of north coastal Peru, specifically through the lens of domestic foodways. During the Early Intermediate Period (EIP, 400 B.C. to A.D. 800), serrano groups from the neighboring highlands colonized many principal river valleys along the Peruvian north coast; however, the nature of highland colonization remains poorly understood. Scholars have envisioned diverse interactions between locals and nonlocals, from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Pio. John Marston.

While the collection and analysis of paleoethnobotanical material is increasingly common in settlement excavations, it still remains rare in burial contexts. Botanical material from cemeteries can provide important insights into mortuary practices and associative beliefs about the afterlife for investigated populations. Charred food remains may indicate food offerings or feasting around the burial site, as well as social inequality or aspects of the deceased’s personal identity. In the case of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Wolff.

On a remote frontier fort where conspicuous consumption materials were limited, officers and enlisted men reinforced distinct hierarchical social status identities through differential food consumption. While status differences in the military are primarily signaled through rank insignia and uniform elements, I intend to focus this paper on differences in diet to better understand the maintenance of Victorian class structure at Fort Laramie from 1870 – 1890. A zooarchaeological and historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvana Rosenfeld.

Based on the chronicles and ethnohistorical documents, the consumption of (more) camelid meat has been linked to groups of high status or rank in the Andes. However, were all camelid dishes created equal? At the site of Chavin de Huantar, previous (Miller and Burger 1995) and recent zooarchaeological investigations provide evidence for the consumption of ch’arki (traditional way to dry meat on the bone) and the consumption of roasted meat in different areas. Can the particular preparation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Thakar.

In recent years, burgeoning paleoethnobotanical research on the Northern Channel Islands of California has challenged long held assumptions regarding the nature of aboriginal patterns of plant exploitation and helped refine our understanding of prehistoric Chumash subsistence economies. Yet, little effort has been made to systematically integrate paleoethnobotanical analysis and datasets with normative subsistence studies, which tend to focus on the abundant (and highly visible) shellfish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Johnston. Paul Martin. John Schweikart. Lucas Rolleri. Jane Brown.

In the discipline of archaeology the field school experience is considered the fundamental training that all archaeologists will experience along their educational pathway. These trainings are designed to teach the basic methods and critical thinking skills that are needed to conduct archaeological investigations. Within the realm of forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology an additional set of field school experiences have been developed to address the recovery of human remains and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McKee.

The archaeology of the department of Morazán, in northeastern El Salvador, is poorly known. Several sites there were included in national site lists compiled in the 1920s and 1940s, and a small survey was conducted in the 1950s, but only one site, the Gruta del Espiritu Santo, has been thoroughly documented. Multiple reasons explain the dearth of archaeological research. Much of the worst fighting during the 1980s and 1990s civil war occurred in Morazán, which is also one of the poorest and most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster.

During the 1890s, more than 4000 well-preserved textiles, baskets, wooden implements, hide and feather artifacts, and other organic materials were excavated by local “cowboy” archaeologists from Basketmaker and Pueblo-period archaeological sites in the greater Cedar Mesa area of southeastern Utah. Most of these artifacts were shipped to museums outside of the Southwest, where they were largely forgotten by archaeologists and the public. In 2010, the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project was born to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David M. Hyde. Nadine Gray.

The chultun from Group H at the Medicinal Trail Community in northwestern Belize was an unsealed, dual chambered feature filled with lithic debitage and sparse ceramic evidence. The chultun was located on the southern side of the dual level Structure H-1. The chambers had doomed roofs and walls with a sill leading into the largest chamber, the western chamber. The eastern chamber was small and was more of a niche than a chamber to be entered. Although storage is suggested by the small size of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Norwood.

Formally defined open spaces in cities give people a designated forum for interaction and impact how common people perceive each other and their authority. There is a critical lack of understanding of the origin of these spaces in the earliest cities and their social contexts. I will examine a sample of premodern cities, including archaeologically and historically documented examples, to clarify why formal open spaces exist, both in ancient cities and modern ones. This project stems from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Blom. Kelly Knudson. John Janusek. Sara Becker. Corey Bowen.

Despite their importance, little attention has been paid to childhood and the roles of children in the ancient Andes. Here, we focus our case study on the Tiwanaku polity of the South Central Andes, which expanded through migration and culture contact across parts of Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Argentina between ca. 500-1100AD. The way the lives of children are structured and shaped are fundamental to understanding the formation and maintenance of states and their impact on the life experiences of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only WengCheong Lam. Jianrong Cong. Xingshan Lei.

Market system plays a key role in the formation of the imperial economy of Chinese early Empire. Previous scholarship usually paid attention to prestige goods in this regard, giving a good albeit partial description about the market system in Early China. Putting in the anthropological discourse of market exchange, this presentation explores the production and distribution of iron objects—one major type of daily-use items—in the Guanzhong basin according to burial data to better understand the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist.

Obsidian studies are capable of articulating spatial-temporal and economic trends at particular sites with those at regional and interregional scales. Recent obsidian data acquired through stratigraphic excavations at the site of Matacanela, centrally located within the Tuxtla Mountains, reaffirm patterning previously identified through systematic survey and further enable the temporal refinement of lithic technological shifts throughout the settlement’s sequence. This paper examines the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jody Patterson.

Fundamental issues regarding the interaction of the formative inhabitants of Nine Mile Canyon with their neighbors in Castle Valley and the Uinta Basin relate to temporally distinct changes identified in the canyon’s archaeological record. Arguments pertaining to changes in land use patterns, artifact assemblages, and the development of seemingly defensive structures hinge on connecting distinct material cultural characteristics with chronometric data to develop a first approximation of shifting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Janusek.

Archaeologists tend to apply the term ‘formative’ to phases of emergent complexity in a given world region. I critically engage the concept by honing in on what I term incipient urbanism as a core dimension of formative complexity. I draw on comparative data from across the Americas to situate formative complexity and incipient urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin. Archaeologists working in the region have known for years that by at least 800 BC, the region was home to multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Lacquement.

Platform mound building is a key indicator of sociopolitical complexity in the southeastern United States. In this presentation, the human energy employed in earthen monumental construction at the Moundville polity in west-central Alabama is quantified as a means of exploring the organizational variability of the control of surplus labor and material resources in an emerging complex society. To reconstruct the scale of sociopolitical differentiation invested in mound building, the energy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Thunen.

This paper summarizes the history and archaeology of Fort Caroline, a French outpost established in North Florida in 1564, then captured and occupied by the Spanish who renamed it Fort San Mateo. To date only one French artifact has been identifed for the 16th century time period and it was recovered from a dredge spoil pile along the river. Several archaeological surveys have been undertaken both within National Park property and on adjacent private property along the south bank of the St....

DOCUMENT Citation Only S. Spivey.

The zoomorphic wood carvings excavated by William Sears from the mortuary pond at the Fort Center (8GL13) site in South Florida are a chronically understudied assemblage. These artifacts are generally interpreted as totems carved into a single contemporaneous dock structure built above the mortuary pond, later excavated in various states of degradation. I propose a preliminary typology through which to interpret their function. Beyond that, I discuss the form the carvings individually take and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Flood. Seth Grooms. Matthew Pike. Edward Herrmann. Jeremy Wilson.

The prevalence and ubiquity of warfare have long been recognized by scholars studying the Mississippian Era in the Eastern Woodlands. These data point to a culture(s) that often found itself in periods of conflict between competing regional polities, which is reflected in skeletal trauma rates, fortified settlements, and conflagrated villages. Our collective understanding of the geopolitical interactions and causes for this strife is subject to substantial interpretation and debate, rendering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James VanderVeen. Rebecca Gibson. Sabrina Lute.

While historical documentation is, for the most part, a deliberate system of record keeping, the archaeological record primarily exists because of the accidental deposition of artifacts. Often these artifacts cannot be coded as representing either male or female use or ownership; however, in certain artifact assemblages where the history of the site is well documented, the researcher can examine the artifacts with an eye toward gendering them and re-creating the story of the people who utilized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hope Luhman. Eric Voigt.

Louis Berger has engaged in cultural and heritage resource management since the early 1980s. This long legacy of project successes, pitfalls, surprises, and minefields offers an interesting perspective of what works and what may not. As priorities and budgets rise and fall, new approaches meet with acceptance or resistance, leading to project streamlining or increased bottlenecks. Using project examples drawn from each decade, this paper explores consulting hits and misses and highlights the key...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristiana Barreto.

This paper presents the initial results from analysis of ceramic materials from open air sites in Monte Alegre, a region that has long been known for abundant and impressive rock art sites, and for the very early human occupation at Pedra Pintada cave excavated by Ana Roosevelt 20 years ago. A new research project in the area with a broader regional approach so as to explain the enormous diversity of sites, has included now sites from a more recent occupation beginning around the XII century AD....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Johnston.

This poster reports the results of a systematic examination of composition for 188 ceramic samples from the Bay of Cádiz (Spain), and discusses the socio-economic ramifications of the findings. Petrographic, NAA, and portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) analysis focused on 166 Phoenician and Iberian sherds dating to c. 800-550 BCE. An additional 12 geological and ceramic samples were included as controls for the provenance determination. The findings reveal unexpected relationships between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Parker.

For decades archaeologists have been trying to develop methodologies that will help them determine what activities took place in and around domestic structures. Since people tend to clean activity areas, especially those that are used repeatedly, visible artifacts like pottery, bones and stone tools are rarely discovered in the context where they were originally used. Instead, such artifacts are usually discovered in refuse heaps or other secondary contexts. Microarchaeology, the study of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Baxter.

When Bahamian scholar and educator Arlene Nash Ferguson wrote about the history of the famous Bahamian festival of Junkanoo, she began her story with enslaved people taking action under cover of darkness. Freed from labor for the two day Christmas holiday, the enslaved went into “the bush” at night time, adorned their bodies with decorations found in the natural world, and reenacted, recreated, and created dances, songs, and traditions reflecting their African heritage. Nighttime afforded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Yoder.

Anyone interested in the ‘Fremont’ knows of Fremont figurines; small figures that range from exquisitely crafted works of art to cruddy little lumps of clay with eyes. Despite years of interest, archaeologists still know relatively little about this phenomenon. But fear not intrepid Fremont enthusiast! After examining nearly every Fremont figurine described in the literature, hidden in museum basements, and even a few from super-secret private collections, I have ALL the answers! Come learn how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edy Barrios. Antolin Velasquez Lopez. Cameron McNeil. Walter Burgos.

A recent mapping and excavation project in the Copan Valley is taking a second view of communities outside of the Copan Pocket. The goal of this project is two-fold, one, to understand the environmental context of these sites, and two, to understand the relationship between them and the powerful leaders of the Copan Acropolis. It is unlikely that the kingdom of Copan could have reached its apogee without the support and subordination of its closest neighbors, a diversity of towns, villages and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maggie Morgan-Smith.

This paper presents preliminary findings from recent research at Rancho Kiuic, an 18th- 20th century landed estate in the Puuc region of Yucatán, México. Occupied by generations of Maya-speaking landowners and laborers during the Colonial and Republican eras, the Rancho represents a site type with that has seen little archaeological or ethnohistoric investigation. Drawing on household-level excavation data, oral histories among the Rancho’s descendant community, and archival research,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dave Schmitt.

This paper presents an introduction to the life and times of David B. Madsen and a collection of presentations that celebrate his significant contributions. Perhaps best known for his unparalleled investigations of Great Basin paleoecology and Fremont period farmers and foragers, Madsen’s voluminous and enduring record also includes books and articles on late Pleistocene-Holocene paleontology, the peopling of North America, the Asian Upper Paleolithic and the transition to agriculture, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zackary Gilmore. Kenneth Sassaman.

North America’s oldest pottery-making societies belonged to the Late Archaic Stallings culture of Georgia and South Carolina. The basic culture history of Stallings archaeology is relatively well-known; however, the types and scales of communities constructed by Stallings people, along with the nature of the connections between them, remain poorly understood. This poster presents preliminary results of research that uses compositional data from Stallings fiber-tempered pottery to investigate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ester Echenique. Florencia Avila.

The Yavi-Chicha phenomenon in the circumpuneño Andes has been extensively discussed, however, little systematic research has focused on systems of ceramic production. Consequently, multiple questions remain unanswered regarding the organizational systems of Chicha communities during the Late Intermediate Period (ca. A.D. 1000-1450). Today, the core region of the Chichas is an exceptional area of ceramic production. Nearly 70% of the inhabitants of the town of Chipihuayco are actively producing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Bratten.

The first Emanuel Point Shipwreck was discovered in 1992 and the second, Emanuel Point 2, was discovered in 2006. Both of these vessels have been firmly associated with a 1559 colonization attempt of what we know today as Pensacola, Florida. In addition to the archaeological excavation and historical research given to both vessels, many specialized types of analyses have been undertaken to paint a more complete image of this 16th-century Spanish endeavor to gain a foothold in La Florida. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendi Field Murray. Meagan Schoenfelder.

The State Historical Society of North Dakota curates collections covering 13,000 years of human history in North Dakota. The development of a more comprehensive archaeology collections program in the last five years has been geared toward increasing public access to these collections and communicating the collections’ research potential to an academic audience. The spectacular Lake Ilo Paleoindian collection documents thousands of years of continuous land use in North Dakota. Future research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arie Boomert.

At the onset of the Holocene scattered small-game hunters, fishers and foragers occupied the northern South America. Such residentially and logistically mobile groups also traversed occasionally the relatively open landscape of Trinidad, judging from the individual find of a Lithic spearhead of Canaima/Atures type in this island. By then movement from the mainland to Trinidad was still easy due to the existence of a land bridge. Following its flooding as a result of the post-Pleistocene sea...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabelle Lulewicz. Victor Thompson. Thomas Pluckhahn. Oindrilla Das. Fred Andrus.

Debates centering on the monumental nature of shell mound sites have often failed to provide direct empirical evidence for interpretation of monument construction and or simple midden accumulation. Our research in the Crystal River region illustrates the complexity of such sites. Through our research at Crystal River and Roberts Island Shell Mound, we aim to offer better quantitative assessments of the temporality of shell deposit construction, Native subsistence practices, and mobility...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flora Vilches. Hector Morales.

Towards the end of the 19th Century, the subsistence mode of indigenous Atacameño society transited from an agricultural-pastoral economy to a more diversified capitalist-based one. This transformation resulted from a growing mining industry in the northern region of Chile. While part of the indigenous population migrated to the new productive enclaves, others remained in their territory, especially the herders of the puna. These highlanders, however, also took part of the new capitalist order...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Fleming. Liza Pryor.

Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed is a 10,000- to 15,000-square-foot traveling exhibition created through multi-national, multi-institutional partnerships and intended to appeal to museum visitors of all ages. The core of the exhibition is a collection of more than 200 stunning and thought-provoking archaeological artifacts and ethnographic objects from throughout the Maya world. These objects provide visitors opportunities to engage with the authentic Maya past, the Maya today, and the work of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Wesson.

Archaeological examinations of households and communities have increased dramatically over the past decade. These studies explore the ways people define themselves while simultaneously shaping the social interactions, physical spaces, and material objects that comprise their daily existence. Despite the considerable insights generated by such studies, it is often difficult to bridge analytical scales when research is primarily focused at either the household or community level, with little to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Moses. Ugo Fusco.

Veii (Veio) was one of the most significant urban centers in central Italy during the Etruscan Period. The Campetti-Southwest excavations at Veii have uncovered more evidence from this site pertaining to its Iron Age settlement (Period I), the Etruscan period urban sanctuary (Period II), and later occupations. The focus of this research is Period I (late 9th to mid-7th cent. B.C.E.) and II (mid-7th to 4th cent. B.C.E.). The faunal remains from these time periods add to our understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zackery Cruze.

Located along the western bank of the Blackwater River in Santa Rosa County, Florida, lie the remains of a once active and flourishing lumber mill and associated company town, known as Bay Point Mill of Pinewood, Florida. The abundance of yellow pine lumber and multiple waterways necessary to produce water power and provide a means of transport for timber allowed the region of Northwest Florida to become an ideal location for the development of the lumber industry; growing to comprise over one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Crones. Michael Heckenberger.

The collaborative turn in archaeology has had important impacts on Amazonian research over the past several decades. It uses participatory research strategies and public archaeology to promote inclusive research partnerships. One aspect of collaboration that is still seldom addressed is the use of digital technology in archaeological analysis and dissemination. The Xingu project, which included local digital documentation and video and a long-standing project of archaeological GPS mapping and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Covert.

Shell jewelry at Petrified Forest National Park has been found from Basketmaker II through Pueblo IV. Since there are no local sources of marine shell, it is important to understand how trade routes from the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico directly affected how shell was traded to this region. Shell recovered from archaeological contexts curated in the Petrified Forest National Park collections were typed according to class, genus, and species and were sourced to the Gulf of California...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Goodwin.

The archaeological record of Hopewell cultures of the Eastern Woodlands demonstrates the ritual importance of birds in the form of effigy pipes, copper and mica cutouts, and mortuary vessels. Bird motifs continue to be prevalent beyond the Hopewell period in peninsular Florida, during Weeden Island times (A.D. 200-900), when representations of waterbirds, among other avian taxa, appear on pottery, often in the form of effigy vessels. Because of their ability to traverse worlds—air, land, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Valentine. Penny Jones. Erik Otárola-Castillo.

In recent decades, isotopic assays of strontium, lead, and oxygen in biological remains have revolutionized archaeological migration studies by providing direct evidence for the occurrence, timing, and geographic origins of individual residence change. Such research requires the clear identification of ‘local’ isotopic baselines for comparison against assayed individuals, and yet no single method to accomplish this task has emerged as best practice. Some researchers advocate the use of commensal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iziar Martínez Rojo. Verenice Heredia.

Recent excavations at Cerro Jazmín, a first tier center in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, indicate that this center´s main occupations were during the Early and Late Ramos phases and not during the Early Las Flores phase as it was previously established. These new data change our perspective on Cerro Topiltepec, a putative secondary center in the Nochixtlán valley, and its role in the region during the Early Las Flores phase. In this paper, we analyze the changing political landscape in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesus Vega.

Forty years of research in submerged prehistoric sites, shipwrecks, masonry forts, pirates, colonial wars, bridges, piers, lighthouses, eroding highways, fishing communities, estuarine shantytowns, beachfront condos, hotels, resorts, abandoned Olympic swimming pools, deep-water outfalls, trans-oceanic fiber-optic cables, etc., provide first-hand data for my own conflict theory of coastal evolution. From the earliest prehistoric hunters to my own research, the coast is a place of endless...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Pilaar Birch.

Frameworks for understanding Neolithization have increasingly recognized the complex and multifaceted nature of the spread of domesticates from Southwest Asia into Europe. But how do these factors interplay in unique island settings as compared to the continental scale? This paper takes a comparative approach using sites located on islands from the Aegean and the Adriatic to address changing subsistence and herd management between 10,000-7,000 BP. Based on zooarchaeological and biogeochemical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese.

A consistent issue that arises in archaeological studies is the absence of a complete set of data on which to perform analyses. Data may be unavailable for a variety of reasons, but its absence often inhibits complete understanding of a population in a defined area. In southwestern Colorado, survey coverage on the Mesa Verde landform is limited to the extent of Mesa Verde National Park, and therefore settlement studies are limited to less than one third of the prominent landform. To fully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Sullivan.

The visibility of conflict in the archaeological record is often limited, especially when associated with the Australian frontier. As such, a holistic approach is proposed as a means to identify conflict and address the question: to what degree is the nature of conflict between Aboriginal groups and European settlers between 1830 and 1900 visible in the historical and archaeological record of the Central River Murray, South Australia? This approach applies methods from multiple disciplines and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan King.

Expedient technology, which may appear to be indiscriminant from non-utilized flakes and flaking debris, likely constitutes larger components of most lithic assemblages. Both retouched and minimally modified flakes were examined using different methods of lithic analysis. The preliminary results of both a low and high power microwear analysis of the expedient flake artifacts from the Mussel Beach site are reported in this study. The microscopic examination of these artifacts may offer an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Kotsoglou.

Bloodletting is generally accepted as a pan-mesoamerican practice, varying both in ideology and process. The Classic Maya drew blood from two specific areas: men most commonly let blood from their genitals while women more often let blood from their tongue or cheeks. Previous research into the choice of oral and genital perforation for non­permanent piercing includes little­ investigated functional qualities, which may have been a key factor for locus choice. I argue that the functionality of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Levy. Luis Alberto Peña. Lucía Valenzuela. Erika Quispe. Teobalda Inés Ramos.

Until recently, most textile collections from Peru’s Middle Horizon were the product of looting operations. Fine tunics and headdress elements abound in museum collections, but their relationship to a deceased individual and full textile assemblage is unknown. As a result, items classified as “Wari” have been disconnected from the complex social identities and relationships that they once influenced in life, or reconfigured after death. Several mortuary contexts with unknown provenience have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Selin Nugent.

Military campaigns and conflict defined the years leading to the 1st century AD in the South Caucasus. This mountainous frontier region acted as a buffer zone between the Roman and Parthian Empires competing for territorial expansion. Local alliances were cyclically forged, broken, and mended for territorial control. Yet, little archaeological evidence remains of these interactions. How are military campaigns being conducted in the eastern frontier? How are foreign forces interacting with local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Pentney.

Climate change is already having observable effects on cultural resources within both the natural and built environments. As communities and governments strive to protect their assets from climate change impacts there is opportunity for advanced preservation practices. On the flip side of this, a lack of preservation planning within the construct of future proofing assets may have irreversible and detrimental effects to cultural resources of all types. This paper delves into opportunities for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arleyn Simon. Stephen Reichardt.

Archaeological collections have vital roles in contemporary and future research activities and afford opportunities for in-depth localized studies or broad regional syntheses. The Center for Archaeology & Society Repository (formerly Archaeological Research Institute) at Arizona State University curates the Roosevelt Archaeology Projects funded by the US DOI Bureau of Reclamation in cooperation with the Tonto National Forest. These well documented large scale excavations provide research and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paulo Medina. Justin Holcomb. Kristian Boschetto.

Archaeological applications of portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (pXRF) have increased over the last decade due to the instruments' low cost, ease of operation, and decreased analysis time. Obsidian provenance studies utilizing pXRF are now a common approach to answering questions regarding resource access and/or trade relationships in many regions and sub-disciplines of archaeology. Despite this increased popularity, the validity and accuracy of this device and the results derived from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl Foster.

The study of ancient Maya intensive, intra-site agricultural systems has gained new interest in recent years as a valuable way of interpreting numerous aspects of the ancient Maya’s daily life. However, ancient kitchen gardens, specifically, are usually difficult to identify by traditional archaeological techniques because of their lack of architectural structures and other identifying features. To compensate for this, Phosphate analyses are being used to positively identify kitchen gardens that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Wyatt.

Houselot gardens are defined as cultivated spaces adjacent to households used to grow flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits. Gardens function as a primary source of many food items including staples, condiments, medicines, and spices; they provide many non-food items such as dyes, construction materials, or ornamentals; and also often provide food to sell in markets. Crops grown in houselot gardens encompass primary and secondary crops as well as those grown for both individual household use...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Wright. Cameron Gokee.

The existence of the Hopewell Core – the concentration of remarkable ceremonial assemblages and geometric earthworks in the Ohio River Valley – presupposes the existence of a Hopewell Periphery, a social space that includes large swaths of the American Southeast. Often, archaeologists have attributed Hopewellian material culture at southeastern sites to their role as gateway centers facilitating the exchange and transfer of special raw materials through the Hopewell Interaction Sphere....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Barber. Arthur Joyce.

Among Payson Sheets’ many contributions to archaeological method and theory is a long-term commitment to examining the actions and relationships of commoners. Taking inspiration from his work at Cerén on community ceremony, in this paper we examine collective ceremonial practices at two Terminal Formative period (C.E. 100 – 250) sites in the lower Río Verde valley of Pacific coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The site of Yugüe, like Cerén, was a small site that was located only four kilometers away from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Lawres. Matthew Colvin.

Recent research on Pre-Contact South Florida has reinforced the notion that the peoples dwelling in the region inhabited a past material world much different from our own and from neighboring areas. In particular, the hydrologic characteristics of a subtropical landscape centered on the Lake Okeechobee basin are one of the central features of both the epistemology and ontology reflected in the earliest monumental architecture in the region. Yet these worldviews and worlds were not static...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Sieg.

What will NAGPRA look like in 25 or 50 years? The horizon is constantly shifting; it looks bright and dark, clear and complicated. Social research on the first generation of archaeologists to emerge after the passage of NAGPRA suggests that NAGPRA will remain relevant and important. At the same time, the increased diversity of this generation and an emerging post-racial world will challenge the concept of identity that lies at the heart of NAGPRA. Digital technologies will provide new methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only B. Sunday Eiselt. Patrick Livingood.

Madsen and Schmitt’s seminal 1998 article challenged the assumption that small animals and fish in archaeological assemblages of the Great Basin provides evidence for diminished foraging efficiency. Energetic return rates for density dependent species instead may be a function of harvesting technique. The Northern Paiute of the Great Basin exploited seasonally aggregated tui chub minnows (Gila bicolor) using gill nets, seines and scoops. This study presents a simulated mass harvesting experiment...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Nilsson.

Though long admired for its Pharaonic stelae, shrines, and Speos, the grand ancient site of Gebel el Silsila remains fairly unknown within mainstream Archaeology. A general idea is that the site operated merely as a sandstone quarry, but few are aware of its rich archaeology that incorporates evidence of millennia of human activity and cultural features that meet seven of UNESCO’s ten outstanding values. Since 2012 the Swedish-run archaeological project works towards changing previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Buhrow. Melissa Vogel.

Spindle whorls have historically been subjected to less archaeological attention than other artifact classes. This dearth of analysis may reflect an underestimation of the insights to be gained from spindle whorls, in terms of archaeological interpretations of gender, status, and exchange patterns, which may be much greater than previously acknowledged. The case study presented here examines a sample of spindle whorls from the Casma capital city of El Purgatorio, Peru. We examine their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Siobhan Hart.

Relationships among professional and avocational archaeologists have changed in the last few decades with the increase in collaborative heritage projects worldwide. Professionals and avocationals often work side-by-side on archaeological sites, collaborate on research, and engage in mutual knowledge sharing. However, little attention has been paid to the gendered dimensions of these relationships. Feminist critiques of research and practices within professional archaeology, along with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Campbell.

Ideally, the intersubjectivity of heritage work creates space for the interaction of multiple gendered viewpoints maintaining a collective tension where heritage work flourishes in consideration of multiple lens, multiple meanings, and multiple gendered interpretations. The reality; however, is much further from the rhetoric. In medieval South Asia gender performance was a habituated component of the collective and individual social project. It remains so today. In this paper I work to consider...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Waller.

The origins of the Casas Grandes phenomenon remain an essential, if elusive pursuit for Southwest/Northwest archaeologists. The explanations are numerous, and include migrations, in-situ development, local emulation of prestigious Mesoamerican traits, and several different combinations therein. In this study, a series of biodistance analyses are conducted using different cranial and dental metric and non-metric traits. Several hypothesized sources of migrants and cultural transmission are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harris.

This paper offers a reflection on Jerry Kennedy’s manifold contributions to the Department of Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University and their continuing influence a decade past his retirement. These contributions include his work on the archaeology of south Florida and elsewhere, the training of students at both undergraduate and graduate levels, the creation of programs, and the lending of his administrative acumen to department causes. Jerry’s work as an archaeologist has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorna Moore.

The question of whether human populations have adapted genetically to high altitude (HA) has been of interest since studies began there in the early 1900s. Throughout the 20th century the dominant paradigm was that the major physiological attributes of HA residents were acquired during development or reflected other shorter-term processes. With the advent of genomic technologies and statistical methods for detecting genetic evidence of natural selection, a paradigm shift and an exponential rise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Boivin. Heidi Eager. Jeremy Searle. Greger Larson. Steve Goodman.

A number of invasive small mammal species, including various commensal rodents, have achieved significant range expansion as a result of accidental transportation by humans. In the Indian Ocean, this is true of the black rat, Rattus rattus, the house mouse, Mus musculus, and the Asian house shrew, Suncus murinus. The spread of these species across the Indian Ocean appears to have been facilitated by the emergence of trading networks beginning thousands of years ago. We conducted molecular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zeng Wen. Yongsheng Zhao. Hong Zhu. Jiawei Li.

The Qijia culture was an early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. It is regarded as one of the earliest bronze cultures. The Mogou site was a massive site of Qijia Culture in the Ganging region, more than one thousand graves have been found there. In our research, we studied the genetic structure of early ancient Mogou population, and further explored the genetic relationship between them and present-day...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause. Maria A. Spyrou. Michal Feldman. Alexander Herbig. Kirsten I. Bos.

Yersinia pestis is among the most notorious pathogens and is thought to be responsible for at least three major Eurasian plague pandemics since the Late Antique. Much has been speculated about the origin of the disease, and its potential migration routes to various parts of the world. Historical documents point toward an African origin for the first pandemic during the 6th century AD and an Asian source for the 14th century Black Death. Modern molecular data, however, suggest an East Asian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Greger Larson.

Animal domestication first began at least 14,000 years ago with the archaeological emergence of domestic dogs. A multitude of other animals followed suit more or less coincident with the origins of settled agriculture in numerous locations independently. The history of human translocations of wild animals dates back to at least 40,000 years ago, and humans were certainly responsible for the appearance of the wild progenitors of domestic animals on islands prior to their domestication. Here, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debora Trein.

This paper discusses the preliminary results of geochemical and micromorphological analysis of sediments at Structure 3, a monumental temple structure at the site of La Milpa, northwest Belize. This analysis forms part of a project that aims to examine the impact of a community in shaping the functions of monumental architecture. Artifact and architectural evidence gathered at Structure 3 have indicated that the Late Classic period (550-850 CE) constituted a time of intense access and use of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Napora. James Bonsall. Stuart Rathbone.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a geoarchaeological investigation of an expansive shell midden site in a dunefield blowout area known as the Shelley Valley in Carrowdough, Co. Sligo, Ireland. Based on the results of the various geophysical and archaeological methodologies we employed at this site during the summer of 2015, we examine changes through time in the ways people utilized the seashore and its resources. Western Ireland is an ideal location in which to study temporally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kara Fulton.

This research considers commoner activity patterns by investigating the results of a geochemical analysis of 500+ samples from earthen surfaces at Actuncan, a prehispanic Maya city located in western Belize. Samples derive from Terminal Classic surfaces of commoner houses as well as the open spaces surrounding them. Archaeological research has often focused on areas that contain visible architecture, since those regions are most easily recognizable as places that contained ancient activity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Velasquez. Carlos Salgado. Dolores Tenorio. Melania Jiménez.

Fragments of Spanish-style amphorae known as botijas, which date from the Mexican colonial period, were recently recovered in excavations at the port of Campeche, Mexico. Despite being common finds amongst artefacts recovered from colonial-period sites, they have not been sufficiently studied under an archaeological science approach. This would allow understand aspects related with the production and circulation of these vessels. The sample of botijas that was recovered from excavations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Fowler. Melissa Vogel.

Portable X-ray fluorescence was used to analyze raw pigments as well as paints on ceramics and adobes found at El Purgatorio, the capital city of the Casma state. This analysis showed that, in addition to the common red ochre found in the area, cinnabar was also present. This mercurial compound has a distinctive fluorescence and is not common to area, supporting Casma participation in long distance exchange networks. Further analyses showed manganese present in black paints and calcium in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Lorenz. Naomi Marks. James Brady.

Midnight Terror Cave, located in the Cayo district in Belize, has produced the largest skeletal assemblage reported from a Maya cave. Large-scale modification of the cave for public gatherings indicates that the space was used ritualistically; most of the individuals recovered are believed to be human sacrifices. The assemblage size permitted us to select a relatively large sample of permanent lower first molars from juveniles for radiogenic strontium isotope analyses. Juveniles were the only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lilian Rebellato. Camila Figueiredo. William Woods.

The geographical distribution of the Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) in the Amazon region presents interpretive gaps. Understanding their distribution patterns might reveal the dynamics of indigenous settlements during pre-colonial times, as well as landscape management practices, and chronology. In the Upper Xingu, the distribution of ADE indicates that the smaller satellite villages were interconnected by roads to a larger village center. Santarém and Belterra regions, in the Lower Amazon, ADE...