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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gina Buckley. Rebecca Storey. Kenneth G. Hirth. Douglas J. Kennett. Brendan J. Culleton.

The Tlajinga district was a possible southern entrance for visitors to the city of Teotihuacan. It was also a locus of craft specialization, especially of San Martin Orange ceramics in the later periods, yet was a cluster of common status neighborhoods. The Tlajinga 33 compound (33:S3W1) was extensively excavated 30 years ago, and recent excavations in two other compounds located along the southern Street of the Dead by the Tlajinga Teotihuacan Archaeological Project (PATT), have added to our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shaina Molano.

Cranial vault modification is a cultural practice used throughout much of the Andes and study of body modifications is a powerful tool for understanding group identity, social structure, and status. Different modification types have been found in the prehistoric Ancash region of north-central Peru, although the significance of this practice has yet to be further explored in the area. As cranial modifications are variable by nature, quantitative assessment of different vault shapes allows for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Tricarico. E. Christian Wells. Georgia Fox. Reginald Murphy.

Geomorphological survey and analysis of anthropogenically modified soils surrounding the Betty’s Hope Plantation in Antigua, West Indies, sought to model the impacts of colonial farming on local landforms. Sugarcane was extensively farmed across the island from the mid-17th century until independence from Great Britain in 1981. Physical and chemical analysis of subsurface soils and sediments was conducted to understand the landscape legacies of British colonialism on landscape modification. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pawel Dziechciarz. Dylan Kelly.

In archaeological research both non-invasive and weakly invasive methods are often employed without, or prior to, excavation. Surface collection, geophysical survey and shovel testing are the methods that have been employed at the site of Békés 103. Despite the difficulty imposed by the soil conditions and the nature of the targets themselves (cremation graves), geophysical measurements employing a variety of techniques (gradiometry, soil resistivity and electromagnetics) were applied in tandem...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicaela Cartagena. Michael Lawrence. Sheldon Skaggs. Terry Powis.

The archaeological site of Pacbitun is one of the ancient sites that was inhabited by the Maya for approximately two thousand years. It is located in the west central side of Belize, near the town of San Antonio. Exploration of the surveyed areas revealed a smaller archaeological site in 2011 known as the Tzib Group, also known as “Mano Mound” due to the significant amounts of mano fragments found on the surface. In the 2014 summer season, geophysical data was collected using an instrument...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lukas.

Geophysical prospection utilizing ground penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry in association with a general packet radio service (GPRS) topographical survey was conducted at Caisteal Mac Tuathal – an unexcavated potential Iron Age hill fort on the northeastern terminus of Drummond Hill near Kenmore, Perthshire, Scotland. Nestled above the rich archaeology of Loch Tay and Glen Lyon, Caisteal Mac Tuathal’s prominence in the local topography, proximity to rich Iron Age landscapes, and its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Chisholm. Thomas M. Urban. Robert W. Jacob. Dale Vinson. Jillian Richie.

The Brooks River Archaeological District National Historic Landmark (XMK-050) in Katmai National Park, Alaska, includes sites that date from 2500 BC to the historic period--a cultural record that spans nearly 4500 years. While this district has already yielded data of great scientific importance--including the greatest concentration of Arctic Small Tool tradition dwelling sites in Alaska, and possibly in North America--it is suspected that as much as 90% of the cultural resources remain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Pratt.

In the northern Great Basin region of eastern Oregon, little is understood about human settlement during the hot, dry middle Holocene. The only diagnostic piece of material culture which reliably dates to this period is the Northern Side-notched (NSN) projectile point, which was last studied extensively by John Fagan in 1974. The purpose of this study is to reconsider Fagan’s interpretations of Altithermal occupations in the northern Great Basin - specifically whether such sites are limited to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Jones.

The Ogeechee River valley lies between the Oconee and Savannah River valleys in central Georgia. It is a slow moving blackwater river, unlike the faster-flowing Oconee and Savannah Rivers. More than 7,000 sites have been recorded in the Ogeechee basin, compared to 20,200 sites within the Savannah drainage and 9,800 sites within the Oconee drainage. Using existing site data ranging from the Paleoindian through Historic periods, I test whether the number of sites recorded for each basin is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark McCoy.

Initial worries about the adverse effect the adoption of GIS would have on archaeology in terms of environmental determinism have proved to be unwarranted. Today, as spatial technology has evolved and become integrated into the discipline, we must rise to a new set of challenges posed by the sheer size and complexity of data we use and produce. Field survey and excavations regularly yield far more pieces of spatial information than ever before. At the same time, the amount of available satellite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dante Garcia. Cesar Dante García Ríos. Ronald k. Faulseit.

Durante el proyecto de investigación Arqueológica Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl 2015, la gestión arqueológica ha permitido conjuntar la ciencia con la tradición. Partiendo de vincular a la comunidad con la investigación se ha logrado la reapropiación y el empoderamiento patrimonial, el fortalecimiento de la identidad, la reapertura del museo comunitario y el redescubrimiento de los zapotecos antiguos por los zapotecos contemporáneos. Los dos ejes de trabajo, mapeo y excavación, revelan algunos elementos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Hudson. John Henderson.

Hand imagery carried conventionalized meanings across ancient Mesoamerica and represented an embodied semantics that was central to ancient constructions of meaning. Precolumbian ceramic imagery from northwestern Honduras reflects of this generalization and features a set of highly stylized compositions that conveyed an array of specific meanings. Figures and, by extension, the gestures made by them feature prominently in this corpus, but little attention has been paid to how these motifs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Elliott.

Small arms ammunition in America, throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, consisted of round soft-metal balls. These were mostly lead, although archaeologists have documented other metals such as pewter and silver as additives. Available small arms and related ammunition varied by military unit, and included pistols, rifles, trade guns, carbines, fowlers, and large caliber wall guns, as well as American, French and English muskets. Macroscopic identification of associated bullets alone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Slater.

During reconnaissance in a dry cenote at the small site of Ceh’ Yax, Mexico, members of the Central Yucatan Archaeological Cave Project discovered an in-situ monument incised with a petroglyphic scene depicting a dignitary seated within a litter. Although litters are not commonly shown in Mesoamerican imagery, they do appear on lintels, wall graffiti, codex-style Maya vases, and as ceramic effigies. This paper will present an analysis of Mesoamerican litter iconography which will demonstrate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Roberts. Jerod Roberts. Carolyn Boyd.

Pecos River style rock art in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico is arguably one of the most famous and complex pictograph styles in North America, if not the world. Thirty-two radiocarbon assays obtained from 19 figures range from 4200 ± 90 to 1465 ± 50 RCYBP. Many characteristics of the style have remained almost unchanged throughout that time. What attributes define the Pecos River style, however, are still debated, despite a seemingly iconic appearance....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Stone. Caroline Kisielinski. Justin Tackney. Scott Fitzpatrick.

While Micronesia was one of the last geographical areas to be colonized by humans prehistorically, the timing, direction, and origins of initial settlement in many ways still remains unclear. The Chelechol ra Orrak site in Palau, which contains the oldest known human remains in Micronesia, (dating back to at least 2800 BP)—and that is one of only two burial sites in the Pacific Islands to pre-date 2500 BP —provides an excellent opportunity for direct study of population dispersals into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Mason. James Jordan. Shelby Anderson.

Beach ridge archaeology developed as a relative-age archaeological survey method in the late 1950s within Kotzebue Sound. Giddings’ breakthrough collaboration with geologists David Hopkins and George Moore focused on Cape Krusenstern, defining 5,000 years of prehistory from the Denbigh complex to Thule tradition, dated mostly by reference to the type site at Onion Portage and 14C ages mostly on Old Whaling and Ipiutak and Thule occupations, but none on Norton or Denbigh. The onset of beach ridge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Kohler. Katie Grundtisch.

We briefly explore the history and current use of Gini coefficients, emphasizing the relatively few studies previously completed in archaeology. Then we explore the behavior of this measure against a variety of theoretical distributions, showing that it makes a useful though imperfect statistical summary of interesting phenomena. Finally we present Gini coefficients for a variety of contexts drawn from prehispanic Pueblo societies. Archaeological thought on emerging inequality has tended to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Turck. Alexander Martin.

The use of GIS and remote sensing for discerning patterns in past cultural phenomena has exploded in the last 15 years. It has moved beyond mere map-making, to sophisticated analyses (incorporating aspects such as spatial statistics, regional archaeological data, LiDAR data, and 3-D representations) that synthesize large and diverse datasets to better understand the past. This is especially true when reconstructing human settlement patterns to understand the nature of social change and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe. James McGrath.

The sediment stack at Woodpecker Cave (13JH202) does not possess an easily discernable stratigraphic sequence. Woodpecker Cave’s deposits are a combination of visually homogeneous colluvium derived from glacial loess mobilized from above the rockshelter and variably-sized tabular roof fall blocks. The lack of visible stratigraphy has necessitated the creation of a digital model from which to analyze the spatial provenience of a variety of mapped objects in order to differentiate between sections...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mu-Chun Wu. Maa-Ling Chen.

This research showcases how Geographic Information System (GIS) serves as a heuristic interface to visualise obscure spatial concepts and further facilitates researchers to explore how these concepts influence people’s perception of and interaction with the landscape. The abandoned slate-stone settlements of Paiwan are one of their most distinct icons. However, their spatial location and their relation with the wider regional landscape were not thoroughly investigated. This research utilises...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Jones.

In this paper, I explore the relationship between method and theory in spatial archaeology that employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I do this through an examination of the settlement ecology of societies of varying sociopolitical complexity in the Southeastern United States. I use GIS to estimate past environments and landscapes and record attributes of settlement sites, their catchments, and surrounding areas, which I then analyze using spatial statistical methods. Comparisons of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Livingood.

Waterways are one of the most common elements of archaeological maps. However, most GIS layers of waterways contain either too many or too few features at a given scale and don’t have any associated data for efficiently including or excluding features. Further, most commonly available rivers datasets contain modern features such as manmade lakes, which are anachronistic for premodern maps. A little known, but freely available dataset known as NHDPlus makes it possible to create better...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Howey.

Geospatial technologies allow archaeologists to study past social processes at a spatial scale previously unimaginable. Here, I ask how we may realize more fully the potential created by this fact, namely that these tools let us ask questions we have never asked, nor could think of asking, before we had access to them. I explore this by focusing on one area of study with a notable amount of untapped potential: movement. Archaeologists recover material items which show people moved themselves,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Anderson. Tom Rocek.

Changes in the importance of agriculture in prehistoric economies are of major interest in a range of contexts worldwide. Measures of site location in relation to agricultural potential are an important tool for identifying relative shifts in the importance of agriculture over time within a given region. Here we examine the application of GIS modeling of agricultural potential based on soils, topography, temperature, precipitation, and horizontal coordinates in the highlands of the Jornada...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland.

Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu peoples lived in northern central Eurasia throughout the Iron Age (1,000-100 BCE). Current research in this region has revealed a variety of economic strategies employed by people who lived in this time period: agriculture, pastoral nomadism, and metallurgy. This project seeks to fill gaps in current understanding of landscape utilization and consistent iconographic usage by attempting to identify and study processes driving religious complexity utilizing a GIS-based...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Wernke. Teddy Abel Traslaviña.

GIS in archaeology has diversified beyond its origins as a map-and-database and predictive modeling tool to explore multidimensional views of human experience in the past. This paper combines models of movement and visibility at the scale of a single settlement to render an approximation of sensory experience within the built environment of a planned colonial town in highland Peru. In the 1570s, some 1.5 million native Andeans were forcibly resettled to “reduction towns” (reducciones) based on a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dael Devenport. Shelby Anderson.

A GIS-based predictive model helps guide archeological inventories and mitigation measures by identifying areas of archaeological interest subject to climate change threats. This multi-year large-scale inventory and vulnerability assessment of coastal archeological resources at Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument is designed to rectify the lack of basic inventory knowledge and complete a vulnerability assessment. The remote 1600 km-long coastal areas of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ling-yu Hung.

This paper focuses on the use of GIS (geographic information systems) to examine mortuary practice in the Yangshan cemetery (ca. 4300-4000 BP), Qinghai Province, Northwestern China. The abundant graves unearthed in the Yangshan cemetery are valuable sources for investigating local social and economic organization. However, mortuary practice at Yangshan appears to be complicated, including graves containing single or multiple individuals, individuals deposited in extended or flexed position,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Susak Pitzer.

This multi-disciplinary study of glass from Karanis, Egypt combines archaeological, chemical compositional data, ethnoarchaeology, and historical insights to assess how objects were valued in the ancient world. The the selection of raw materials is investigated through onsite portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometry analysis of recently excavated Karanis glass dating primarily to the late Roman period (4th-6th centuries CE). Quantitative analysis of these data informed by pXRF and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Mayer. Matthew Sayre.

In the field seasons of 2004-2007 Justin Jennings and his field crew conducted archaeological excavations at the Middle Horizon (600-1100A.D.) site of Tenahaha in the Cothuasi Valley of the Peruvian Andes. During 2013-2014 floatation samples from the site were analyzed in the Archaeology Laboratory at the University of South Dakota. The Tenahaha site contained five domestic areas from which macrobotanical data was collected and interpreted. It is believed that the Tenahaha necropolis was only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King.

This paper explores the long-term history of the Nejapa region of southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico and the many groups of people and famous individuals that have called it home. Based on data derived from a variety of archaeological research methods, including archival documents, excavation, survey, oral history interviews, and collaborative research with contemporary residents, I argue that what might be viewed by some as a loss of indigenous identity in the present is rather a multiethnic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Nixon. Simon Kaner.

This presentation introduces a project providing a new examination of the relationships between local, national and global archaeologies, Global Perspectives on British Archaeology. World Archaeology is a hugely active field of research for British archaeological institutions, with sustained field programs worldwide. In contrast, research on British archaeology sees little involvement of non-British research institutions. Within an increasingly globalised world of education and research, there...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Brodie.

The existence of different heritage values is well-established. For centuries, cultural objects have been looted or stolen because of their heritage value, in particular because of their value as art objects. Cultural heritage sites have suffered accordingly. In the rapidly globalizing world of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, however, a new set of fundamentalist values relating to ethnic and religious identity have been foregrounded, with no less damaging consequences....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ling Qin. Dorian Q Fuller.

An eastern crescent zone of the Middle to Lower Yangtze and upwards to Shandong can be defined as a zone of Globalization processes in the Neolithic that was eventually broken down into a number of cores in a world system. The globalization model operates through Neolithic networks, that had no clear political centre but nevertheless promoted shared practices and cultural values over large distances. This is illustrated by the spread of food cultures: crops, cooking methods and ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Delvaux.

Viking Age graves typically contain two types of exotic goods: coins and jewelry. Coins have long dominated discussions of early medieval economics because they have been understood as being closely linked to exchange. Two factors militate against this one-sided approach. First, coins appear alongside jewelry either as pendants worn singly or as parts of necklace groups. Second, ornamental objects appear in coin hoards, and beads in particular are attested in written sources as a means of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raúl Rocha García. Arturo Pascual Soto.

Si hay algo que define el estatuto cultural del período Epiclásico en El Tajín, Veracruz, es la transición hacia modelos de gobierno que enfatizan la figura del soberano como el centro indiscutible de las relaciones sociales de la época. Es a estos nuevos gobernantes a quienes debemos de atribuir en el punto más alto de la antigua ciudad la edificación del Edificio de las Columnas y de su magnífico conjunto arquitectónico, además de la producción de un grupo de vasijas negras de forma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

When excavated 100 years ago, many of the perishable items found at Aztec Ruins did not long survive the process. Fortunately, chief archaeologist Earl Morris was an avid shutterbug and modern researchers are treated to dozens of curated photos of in situ perishable objects that include architectural features, basketry, fibers, etc. When (re-)placed into context with other archaeological data, these items are helping to tell new stories about Aztec Ruins.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi. Sarah Boudreaux.

Socio-spatial constructs that loosely translate as "neighborhoods" are found within many indigenous Mesoamerican communities. Unfortunately, the phenomenon receives less attention and commentary by observers of contemporary lowland Maya place-making. Nevertheless, archaeologists have long suspected that ancient lowland communities possessed multiple spatial subdivisions; and, at long last, neighborhood archaeology would seem to be a growing focus of research. To date, however, the physical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Newton.

Preliminary archaeological investigations took place at Wakulla Springs State Park, in Wakulla County, Florida, during August to September of 2015. The project’s primary objective was to locate areas containing dense artifact clusters, in an effort to proceed with Phase II and Phase III investigations. The abundance of cultural materials found at previously documented sites within the park is a testament to this rich archaeological site, and warrant continued research efforts. Furthermore, few...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maurits Ertsen.

In Scarborough’s comparative work, when explaining the differences between Old and New World water systems, the differences between small-scale, local and imperial, large systems are important focus points for defining these differences. Furthermore, much of Scarborough's work suggests that the wetness and dryness of these worlds matter as well. Building on these key notions of the importance of environmental conditions in building understanding of water systems, this paper discusses the growing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Howie. Sheldon Skaggs. Terry Powis. Sherman Horn III.

Artifacts made from green-colored rocks, including but not limited to jadeites, circulated widely in Mesoamerica during the Middle Preclassic (c. 900 – 350) and were imbued with cosmological significance and social value from early times. "Greenstone triangulates" form a distinct subset of these artifacts that have only been recovered from Middle Preclassic settlements in the Belize Valley. These roughly triangular objects are typically made from green-colored rocks that are visibly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bret Ruby.

The monumental mounds and earthworks at Hopewell Mound Group have attracted attention since the dawn of American archaeology. By the early 20th century, the site’s imposing earthworks, exotic raw materials, and exquisitely crafted artifacts were widely recognized as the most flamboyant expression of a newly defined “Hopewell culture.” Yet attention was focused narrowly on mounds and mortuary contexts, ignoring the vast spaces in between. Agricultural plowing steadily eroded above-grade features....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eileen Ernenwein. Jeremy Menzer. Frederic Surmely.

The medieval period in Europe is well known from archaeological sites and historical records including England’s Domesday Book. The Auvergne of southern France, however, is a poorly studied upland region. This rugged environment of volcanic peaks contains a rich, yet mostly unknown medieval history. A research program is underway that includes archaeological survey, excavation, and geophysical survey at sites across the region. GPR survey in June 2015 focused on unexcavated portions of Les...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Menzer. Katie Simon. Matthew Piscitelli. Carl Williford.

Caballete is a Late Archaic (3000-1800 B.C.) ceremonial site located in the Fortaleza Valley of Peru. In 2015, a focused archaeo-geophysical survey was conducted as a pilot effort to determine the utility of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry in locating subsurface features at the site. The Caballete survey included approximately 1.5 ha of targeted GPR and a smaller magnetometry survey across the 400 ha site. The site features six platform mounds ranging from approximately 5 to 17 m...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hilary Gopnik.

The Middle to Late Bronze Age transition in the South Caucasus is generally characterized by a shift from small settlements and elaborate kurgan burials to hilltop fortresses and smaller burials grouped in cemeteries. It has been argued that the hilltop fortresses with their broad view over the landscape served as anchors to the mobile populations that surrounded them, and ultimately to the development of increased social hierarchies at these fortresses. This pattern has been identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Hadley.

The involvement of children in the Viking Age migrations, and their experiences upon settlement in new regions, has been afforded little attention by archaeologists. In part this derives from the perceived paucity of evidence for children and their lives. It is also arguably because migration is generally overlooked as a facet of childhood because of an assumption that ‘the home’ is the environment in which childhood is experienced and thus this is where analytical attention is often focused....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Stark.

In south-central and southern Veracruz settlement pattern data document a collapse of previous settlement systems and many cultural traditions. Some regions reorganized and some likely were re-populated in part by migrants from highland regions. The timings of collapse in these lowland regions are poorly defined, but variation seems likely. Causes have received little attention because the extent of changes has not been recognized. Likewise, possible consequences are still to be investigated....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Damour. Leila Hamdan. Jennifer Salerno. Robert Church. Daniel Warren.

After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rapid influx of research and damage assessment funds dedicated to studying the spill’s impacts poured into the region; however, only one study is examining the spill’s impacts on historic shipwrecks. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and study partners implemented a multidisciplinary approach to examine microbial community biodiversity on deepwater shipwrecks, their role in shipwreck preservation, their response to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Downs.

One of the most distinctive forms to come out of the Medio period (1200-1475AD) Casas Grandes ceramic tradition was human effigy vessels. These vessels exhibit primary and secondary sexual traits, and the males and the females are seated in different postures. The males are usually seated in a squatted position, whereas the females typically sit with their legs straight out. To see if these vessels reflected real-life habitual postures, Medio period skeletal remains from Paquimé were examined....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey Young. Brooke Brilliant. David Jones.

Recent excavations at Hampton Plantation State Historic Site, located in Charleston County, South Carolina, have yielded colonoware from an early eighteenth century occupation and a late eighteenth to nineteenth century occupation. The later occupation is associated with the Horry family, who developed Hampton Plantation. A large assemblage of colonoware associated with this late eighteenth to nineteenth century context has been recovered from the living and work areas of enslaved workers and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Halley.

A key theme of archaeological research in the American Southwest has been understanding the diverse ways people came together to form communities. This paper examines the physical and symbolic practice of forming social bonds through the practice of hand-holding in communal performance. Iconographic representations of hand-holding figures (on ceramic vessels and rock art) from the prehistoric period (A.D. 500 – 900) will be presented. These images provide an exceptional opportunity to explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumiyasu Arakawa. Garrett Leitermann. Kailey Martinez. Austin Schwartz.

To develop a better partnership between academics and United States Forest Service, and disseminate the concept of stewardship to the public, the Gila National Forest and the Department of Anthropology at New Mexico State University collaborated together at a fieldschool at the Twin Pines Village—a northern Mimbres settlement and the largest Mimbres phase site—for six weeks in 2015. The major goal of the project is to add our understanding of the cultural trajectory of the Twin Pines communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Huckell. Timothy Rowe. Leslie McFadden. Grant Meyer. Christopher Merriman.

A scatter of large mammal bone scrap along a shallow rill led to discovery of the Hartley Mammoth site in north-central New Mexico. Informal testing revealed a shallowly buried partial skull and a group of three rib fragments some 2 m apart. On the surface 9 m away was a small, impact-damaged Clovis point, suggesting the possibility that the mammoth had been the victim of Clovis predation. Excavations in 2015 revealed the remains of a juvenile mammoth, consisting of rib fragments, portions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rubén Mendoza.

The art and science of ritual human sacrifice is a fundamental axiom of Mesoamerican social violence. Accordingly, interpretive constructs for human heart excision and ritualized dismemberment remain keyed to synchronic ethnohistorical and iconographic frames of reference or practice. Though ritual dismemberment, decapitation, and cannibalism have been traced to remote antiquity in highland Mesoamerica, the cosmological underpinnings of human heart excision, and its corollary technologies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Horton.

Hatteras island is one of the few stable landforms on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and archaeological survey and excavation over many years has located numerous sites particularly from the Middle and Late Woodland. Our research which commenced in 2009, and has continued annually since then, has added to this archaeological record, though a community based approach, that has enabled us to work on private property and conduct over 80 test pits and excavations. The results show that Hatteras...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Glowacki.

There are many visual representations spanning the different time periods of the ancient Andes, and corroborated by historic accounts, that point to man’s spiritual essence as residing in the head, and more specifically, head hair. These examples suggest that this power was transferable and maintained the reciprocal balance between men, and the earthly and supernatural realm. This presentation briefly discusses the human head and hair in Andean belief as a conduit for the flow of spiritual power...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Osterholt. Christopher Schmidt.

The removal of human body parts after death is a diverse practice with many cross-cultural nuances. Trophy taking is just one means of body part removal. Among the hunter-gatherers of the late Middle and Late Archaic (6,500 - 2,600 B.P.) of the US Eastern Woodlands, heads were common trophies, though any body part could be taken. A survey of over 20 sites shows that post-cranial trophies were often handled and kept for long periods of time. Trophy heads however, were utilized for a short time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Hampton.

Previous theories concerning women’s access to roles of power within Native American Hunter-Gatherer societies have focused on linking such access to socially proscribed gender identities, role flexibility, and/or kinship systems. My work seeks to validate such models within the context of women’s access to the role of healer among California Hunter-Gatherer groups by looking to written records from the 1800s and ethnographies from the early 1900s. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiangqun Wu. Xu Zhang. Hong Zhu.

Dabaoshan cemetery (2300-2200 BP) is a recently excavated archaeological site in south central Inner Mongolia, China. Human remains from Dabaoshan cemetery (DBS) represent one of the earlier groups of ancient people in this area, which has the potential to illuminate the prehistoric life ways and relationships of ancient peoples in East Asia. Yet, little attention has been given to this cemetery by way of archaeological research. In this study, the nature and health consequences of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Brown.

This paper explores the social influence in the employment of one aspect of Roman architectural culture, the hypocaust heating system, in the specific context of Roman Dacia. Hypocaust heating became the prevalent standard for wealthy homes throughout the Empire, but due to the expense was more commonly employed in a limited fashion, especially in Dacia. As a luxury accommodation, the hypocaust provides a potential proxy for wealth and status of the resident user. As a luxury that is felt,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hendrik Van Gijseghem. Kevin Vaughn. Jelmer Eerkens. Gry Barfod.

Located in the Nasca region of southern Peru, Mina Primavera was an important source of hematite for centuries, and in particular, was intensively exploited by people of the Nasca culture for a variety of end products. Here we explore technical and ritual dimensions involved in the mining process. We also present new data on iron isotopic (56Fe/54Fe) diversity from a single hematite source as information that is critical in sourcing and provenience. The new data are compared to previously...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Bernal Rodriguez.

Pensar en la cultura Cajamarca nos lleva enseguida a pensar en Henry Reichlen. Indudablemente él fue el gran precursor y fundador de todo estudio científico sobre esta cultura. Su trabajo de campo en diferentes sitios de Cajamarca, sus diversos análisis de materiales arqueológicos y sobre todo la cronología que estableció continúan siendo grandes aportes para las investigaciones actuales. Sin embargo, ¿quién fue realmente Henry Reichlen? ¿A qué institución académica pertenecía y para quién...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Niell.

According to national legend, Havana, Cuba, was founded under the shade of a ceiba tree whose branches sheltered the island’s first Catholic mass and meeting of the town council (cabildo) in 1519. The founding site was first memorialized in 1754 by the erection of a baroque monument in Havana’s central Plaza de Armas, which was reconfigured in 1828 by the addition of a neoclassical work, El Templete. Viewing the transformation of the Plaza de Armas from the new perspective of heritage studies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresita Majewski. Jeffrey Altschul. Antonio Arantes.

In response to ever-growing threats to intangible and tangible cultural heritage in the region, the Anthropology Department of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil, organized and held the inaugural meeting of the Inter-American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Working Group on August 11–12, 2015, at UNICAMP. The goal is to establish a permanent collaborative forum to explore ways to improve anthropological practical and theoretical approaches to cultural heritage issues....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Koji Mizoguchi.

The 'post-modern' condition can be characterized by reflexivity, by which is meant that every social fact is scrutinized as socio-historically constructed. The spread of this 'attitude' fundamentally destabilize the sense of the authenticity of heritage. However, as long as we have to accept this constitutive element of social reality, we have to consider how to come to terms with this and how to better utilize this for the betterment of our relationship with heritage and of our life-world. This...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Francis McManamon. Jodi Reeves Flores.

This conference poster describes for individuals, organizations, and public agencies responsible for cultural heritage the challenges and opportunities that stewards of this important information face. Challenges include: heritage loss due to poor access and preservation; lack of perceived value; hesitancy to share information resulting in absence of public interest; and loss of heritage information through destruction or neglect. Digital techniques can provide access to information (with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Salam Al Kuntar.

As the security situation in northern Syria deteriorated following the beginning of the Syrian Revolution/civil war, members of civil society, heritage activists, and museum workers have placed themselves at risk to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage. This paper discusses two heritage protection projects in the Idlib region in northwest Syria, a region that has fallen out of the control of the Assad regime to opposition groups. The projects are self-initiative efforts by local activists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liv Fetterman. Rick Anderson.

The ongoing partnership between the Dakota Prairie Grasslands (DPG) and Southern Methodist University, supported by the US Forest Service Region 1 Heritage Stewardship Enhancement (HSE) program, is an investigation of the Paleoindian archaeological record of the Little Missouri National Grasslands. As hoped, this collaboration produced vital information about local Paleoindian prehistory. It has also been fruitful in other ways, including a few tough lessons learned along the way. Liv Fetterman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Reeves Flores. Leigh Anne Ellison.

Digital access to all levels of archaeological data, from the raw data to synthesized reports and summaries, can support public interest in cultural heritage. High quality internet resources easily provide access to more information on local sites that they are already interested in, and can also make them aware of heritage issues that they never considered. The Center for Digital Antiquity makes a variety of archaeological and historical information available to researchers and the general...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Diserens. Tiffany Cain. Richard Leventhal.

The Heritage Preservation and Community Development Project in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo is a community based anthropological program that seeks to combat the visible economic and social inequality in the region. Such inequalities exist both between the tourists and laborers as well as between the larger economic centers and peripheral indigenous communities. While the project seeks to bridge some gaps by creating jobs and a small-scale tourism market, we also explore ways to have an impact upon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Uzi Baram.

Recognizing the intellectual, social, and political economic terrain for archaeology is crucial for effective and meaningful work in the present, archaeologists have reflected on the colonial, imperialist, and nationalist context for research and representations of the material past. Since the 1990s tourism has grown as a concern particularly as heritage tourism has expanded greatly, offering opportunities for preservation and representation of the past. Through multiple examples, this poster...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heidi Bauer-Clapp.

Increasing interest in a heritage of violence and dark tourism raises new questions about social, political, ethical, or economic dimensions of heritage values. In this poster I present a case study of St. Helena to examine diverse interests in violent heritage, in this case the island’s little-known use as a refuge for captive Africans liberated from illegal slave vessels. I evaluate the efficacy of existing resources such as codes of ethics and heritage policies in balancing potentially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase.

Many large cities of the ancient Maya, occupied in the Classic Period from 300 to 900 CE, had limited or no access to permanent bodies of water. Instead, these low-density urban centers focused on harnessing the full extent of the seasonal rainfall their tropical environment provided. Previous research has highlighted the complex water management practices of the ancient Maya through their built environment and the sequestration of water into reservoirs (constructed feature sealed with clay or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J Andrew Darling. B. Sunday Eiselt. Rachel Popelka-Filcoff. John Dudgeon.

Iron oxides and other associated minerals (“ochre”) are among the most common pigments used by prehistoric North American populations, particularly in the Hohokam region of central Arizona where they were employed in mortuary rituals, as body paint, and to decorate pottery, basketry, arrows, and pictographs. This paper identifies the wide variety of iron-oxides making up Hohokam, O’odham and Pee Posh red paint (in O'odham, heḍt) and it considers how prehistoric artisans manipulated earthy,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Fernandez-Gotz.

Traditionally, Iron Age communities have been depicted as hierarchical, triangular societies, with elites at the top of the social pyramid and a strong warrior tradition. However, archaeological evidence reveals very varied patterns of societies during the First Millennium BC in Europe, from those that display marked signs of social hierarchy, to others where social differentiation was much less pronounced. This paper aims to contribute to the task of rethinking Iron Age communities from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Casey Campetti.

Isle Royale, located in northern Lake Superior, is a freshwater archipelago and home to Isle Royale National Park (ISRO). Though the antiquity of Isle Royale’s prehistory is well-established, identification and excavation of sites has historically been difficult due to the remoteness of the island and its rough terrain. Over the past several years, these efforts have been greatly enhanced by the use of GIS predictive modeling, which has allowed ISRO archaeologists to target surveys and manage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Ralston. Gary Lock.

Since the beginning of insular Iron Age studies, the nature and variability of the settlement record across these islands have been a principal matter of interest. This approach reached a zenith in the mid-20th century, in the schemes of Christopher Hawkes and Stuart Piggott. These set out to delineate different provinces and regions within Britain in which distinctive cultures could be recognized, in substantial part framed on the distributions of varieties of settlements, as depicted for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Mullins.

Prehistorically used in contexts ranging from mountain deity veneration to imperial conquest and warfare, hilltops serve as excellent platforms for staying connected to and informed of the surrounding social, political, and ritual landscape. This being said, how can the characteristics of visibility networks between hilltop sites help inform archaeologists of the ancient socio-political and ritual settings on which they were situated? Featuring dozens of hilltop sites that temporally correlate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whittaker Schroder.

The ordering of space has been a focus of state-building initiatives since the formation of the earliest centralized polities. Landscape archaeologists are especially well situated to contribute to discussions regarding how states succeed and fail to control diverse populations in topographically complex areas. During the Late Classic period, the Middle Usumacinta Basin supported numerous regional polities, including Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, that vied for supremacy over terrain broken by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Neitzel.

More than a century of intensive archaeological investigations in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico has produced a vast literature on all types of remains and alternative theories about the development, organization, and collapse of Chacoan society. But often missing in this overwhelming amount of information is the lived experiences of the prehistoric Chacoans themselves. This paper synthesizes Chacoan archaeology from the perspective of one of the canyon’s residents. Pueblo Bonito’s Burial #14 is best...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Zalea Matias.

Artists’ reconstructions are one of many ways to present how people lived in the past, particularly in the case of cultural heritage. Specific ideas of gender are routinely perpetuated through such imagery, often reinforcing certain preconceptions of gender roles in the past within both public and academic consciousness. This paper presents a selection of archaeological reconstructions commissioned by Historic England representing life in Iron Age Britain. It addresses the visual language of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Ahlman.

Like most of the Leeward Islands, St. Kitts' historic economy was powered by sugar cultivation. Enslaved Africans and ultimately freedmen were the labor source in the sugar fields and from the late seventeenth century onward enslaved Africans outnumbered Europeans 15 to 1. By the early nineteenth century there were over 100 known slave villages across the island. Using data from three investigated plantation sites from St. Kitts’ southeast peninsula, the spatial arrangement of the enslaved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Fulton. Catherine Yansa.

We quantified the nature and extent of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) disturbance on the forests of the Finger Lakes region, west-central New York, U.S.A., through multivariate statistical analysis of witness trees and survey line vegetation descriptions derived from original late 18th century CE land survey records and historical documentation in conjunction with archaeological site distributions analyzed in a geographic information system (GIS). Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordinated the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Finnigan. James VanderVeen.

All too often, archaeology illuminates the history of "big men." This paper narrates the history through archaeological investigation of one city corner in South Bend, Indiana, and the contribution of the businesses that occupied it in the city’s most formative years. Manufacturing successes within South Bend such as the Oliver Plow Works, and Studebaker are well known and researched. What is less well known are the supporting businesses and businessmen that made up the representative sample of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna Grimstead. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman.

Carbon (δ13C), oxygen (δ18O), and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopes from cattle, caprine, and small mammal teeth from two historic-period Spanish missions and modern cattle were assayed with the goal of reconstructing historic ranching practices in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern North America. Carbon isotope ratios from modern cattle indicate that it is possible to distinguish cattle free ranged within upper elevations desert habitats compared to lower elevation free ranged or possibly foddered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Scholl.

Carole L. Crumley has long advocated broadly inclusive studies that reach across disciplines to bring together social and environmental data from multiple geographic and temporal scales in order to draw lessons from the past. This work reports the use of those approaches to map the changes in colonial American agriculture and on-going research into 19th century westward expansion. What is becoming clear is that U.S. has a long-term trajectory which continues to move away from the sustaining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas McGovern.

In 1990 Carole Crumley organized a School of American Research (SAR) seminar that brought together a group of researchers from different areas with interests in a wide range of periods and topics in world archaeology and human ecology. This disparate group was united by Carole’s vision of a fresh approach to the interactions of environment and society through time- something beyond the increasingly stale processual/ post-processual debates of that period. Her vision of a dynamic interaction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanna Troufflard.

The presence of demographically dense indigenous societies in the Lower Tapajós River during AD 900-1600 is visible in the present day’s landscape through the existence of Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE), earthworks, and a distinctive ceramic industry. As demonstrated by recent archaeological surveys, landscape transformations and ceramic assemblages associated to the Tapajó chiefdom are widespread at the regional scale and attest to common cultural practices. Although these archaeological sites are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Denise Schaan.

Historical Ecology is a research program that seeks to integrate diverse perspectives from human and natural sciences to improve our understanding on the relations between societies and their changing landscapes. Investigations in historical ecology draw from different corpus of data, including the participation of the public, not only to solve scientific problems, but also to provide answers to social and political situations. Archaeology has a major role in the production of knowledge on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Schober.

The integration of research-driven results with visual media is an integral component of effective museum exhibitions, general interest publications and public programs in archaeology. Annual archaeology month activities, for example, often result in the design of posters to attract audiences and illustrate attributes of indigenous cultures. To what degree does this popular form of visual communication reflect contemporary theoretical perspectives on gender and identity rather than reinforce...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan deFrance.

The zooarchaeology of historical contexts in New Orleans has benefited significantly from analyses conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Reitz and her students and colleagues. Several of these analyses were conducted as part of cultural resource management projects that were primarily site specific. I present a comparative analysis of various zooarchaeological projects from New Orleans contexts to examine the contribution of Reitz and others to our understanding of past food practices, animal economics,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Wallman.

The arrival and colonization of the Caribbean by Europeans beginning in the 15th Century transformed the already dynamic landscapes of the region. To accommodate the slave-labor supported colonial plantation system and its orientation towards market exports, the region witnessed the introduction of exotic plants and animals, creating a ‘creolization’ of flora and fauna. In this paper, I discuss how environmental archaeology contributes to a nuanced and diachronic understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Martin.

Indigenous people have lived on and moved throughout the landscape of southeastern New England for thousands of years. Today, representatives from several Tribal Historic Preservation Offices are interested in identifying and protecting ceremonial stone groupings that are significant elements of ceremonial landscape sites, ties to which were in many cases severed by colonial law. These sites are important loci of Indigenous history, inter-Tribal ceremony, and collective memory. This presentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peri Johnson. Müge Durusu Tanriöver.

The Yalburt Yaylası Project studies a series of depressions bounded by scarps forming a corridor frequented by merchants and armies traveling between the Anatolian plateau and western Aegean valleys of Turkey. With a settlement structure dominated by fortresses controlling access along this corridor, the landscape could be interpreted as an imperial possession, but then archaeology would become an apology for imperial power. To contrast, we focus on how imperialism is built from the ground up...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Kamp-Whittaker. Andrea Barker. Margaret Nelson.

Hohokam Risks and Trade-offs is the product of research funded by an NSF Coupled Human and Natural Systems grant that focused on the role of social and ecological diversity in reducing risk of food shortfall or supporting food security. Several teaching tools were developed to demonstrate to students the risks undertaken and trade-offs made by prehistoric southwestern groups in the selection of residential locations. The curriculum, based on a platform designed by NASA, engages students in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erick Robinson. H. Jabran Zahid. Bryan N. Shuman. Robert L. Kelly.

Statistical analysis of large databases of radiocarbon dates enables research on the processes regulating human population growth rates. Recent analysis of summed probability distributions of dates from the entire states of Colorado and Wyoming has found that both states had similar long-term growth rates of .04% for most of the Holocene. This growth rate was the same for Australia, Europe, and North America throughout much of the Holocene. Similar growth rates between different environments and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Krigbaum. Lindsay Lloyd-Smith. Bryan Tucker. Benjamin Valentine. George Kamenov.

Assessment of fine-grained proxies to infer paleoclimate and paleoecology in tropical Southeast Asia is hampered by the coarseness of the archaeological record. Advances in technology, however, do permit fresh insights into past rainforest ecologies using isotope ratios from tooth enamel, albeit with very real spatial and temporal limitations. This is especially true for isotopic analysis of incremental growth layers in human tooth enamel. In this paper, oxygen and carbon isotope ratios are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celeste Ray.

Sacred springs and holy wells in northwest European prehistory evidence multi-period veneration, yet are archaeologically-resistant sites. This paper assesses evidence for votive deposition at sacred watery sites with a focus on the Iron Age to Christian transition in Ireland. While recent scholarship deconstructing “the Celts” has also dismissed contemporary holy well practices as invented traditions or as Roman introductions, ongoing veneration at nearly 1000 Irish well sites is part of an old...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Riebe. Attila Gyucha.

Over the past five years, the Diros Project has conducted multi-disciplinary investigations in Diros Bay near the modern day town of Pyrgos Dirou on the Mani Peninsula, Southern Greece. Excavations aimed at gaining a better understanding of the chronological and functional relationship between the Neolithic Alepotrypa Cave and the contemporary external settlement on the nearby promontory. Excavation trenches were selected based on preliminary data recovered through surface collection and remote...