Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause. Verena Schuenemann. Alexander Peltzer. Wolfgang Haap. Stephan Schiffels.

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we mtDNA and nuclear DNA from mummified humans recovered from Middle Egypt that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter De Barros Damgaard. Jeremy Choin. Andrzej Weber. Martin Sikora. Eske Willerslev.

Genome-wide data from hunter-gatherer populations of the Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic has provided unprecedented insight into the human evolutionary and demographic trajectory. However such datasets have hitherto been largely confined to Western Eurasia. The sole representative of Inner Asian past populations post-dating the split between paleolithic Europeans and Asians, as well as paleolithic Siberians and East Asians, are the Mal'ta and Afontova Gora individuals, the Ancient North East...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Melendez.

To date, nine greenstone mosaic masks (GMM), recovered in eight royal and one elite interment, have been found in association with other grave goods belonging to ancient Maya individuals from Tikal, El Zotz, and El Perú-Waka’. Nearly 1,000 tesserae compose these nine GMM, however to date it is unknown what the mosaic masks originally looked like as these were found unassembled. Nonetheless, prior to carrying out preliminary reintegration and restoration projects, a manufacturing study was deemed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frido Welker. Jean-Jacques Hublin. Matthew Collins.

The analysis of ancient proteins is increasingly used to study archaeological and anthropological bone specimens from prehistoric time periods. This ranges from large-scale ZooMS screening (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) of morphologically unidentifiable specimens to the targeted analysis of ancient bone proteomes from humans through the application of LC-MS/MS. Here, some biological and phylogenetic results that can be obtained through the analysis of ancient human bone proteomes will be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Monroe. Fernando Villanea. Eric Lenci Jr.. Alan Leventhal. Rosemary Cambra.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data was collected from over 300 individuals to further understand the hypothesized spread of Penutian populations from the Columbian Plateau into Central California around 5,000 BP. While living and ethnographic Ohlone groups- specifically in the San Francisco Bay area- speak Penutian languages, it is unclear what effect immigrating Penutians speakers had on existing Hokan populations between 2500-3000 BP. Distinct maternal lineages that belong to either immigrating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Recent studies on ancient Maya agriculture address differences in farming methods used within the Maya area, and the implications these differences have for larger issues within Maya studies. Excavations conducted during the Actuncan Archaeological Project 2015/2016 field seasons examined GPR anomalies in the Northern Neighborhood region of the Actuncan, Belize site; the proposed poster will discuss evidence of terracing obtained from these excavations, including how these probable terraces were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc.

El Mirador (Peten, Guatemala) is among the largest Preclassic settlements in the Maya lowlands. The site has attracted attention due to its size and antiquity, but also for its location within a region containing few permanent or perennial water sources. This study presents a preliminary analysis of the site’s faunal remains to assess diet, ritual, habitat use and exchange. Comparison of the El Mirador data with other Preclassic faunal assemblages allows us to assess the degree to which animal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Heather McKillop. Christian Wells.

Underwater excavations at Early Classic Chan b’i (A.D. 300-600) and Late Classic Atz’aam Na (A.D. 600-900) ancient Maya salt works in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, reveal activity areas associated with a substantial salt industry for distribution to the southern Maya inland inhabitants. At these sites, wooden architecture and salt making artifacts are abundantly preserved in a peat bog composed of red mangrove. We describe the excavation methods at this shallow, submerged underwater site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo. Cesar Valentín Hernández. Lissandra González. Mijaely Castañón.

At the Tarascan Señorío, all the metal work aspects were controlled by the uacúsecha (most important clan) leaders, from their central cities of Pátzcuaro, Ihuatzio and specially Tzintzuntzan by the Pátzcuaro Lake in central Michoacán. In this paper we present the different aspects of the metal work, and the control that the uacúsecha nobles imposed, expressed in the architecture and their most relevant adornments like metal earplugs and lip-plugs, from the mining sites in the Tierra Caliente,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Hofman.

In this paper, we present multiple lines of evidence for the existence of interwoven and dynamic ancient networks in the Caribbean. This region is characterized by a long and unique history of social relationships between communities and peoples at various temporal and spatial scales. Through time, Caribbean networks of human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas were shaped by expanding and contracting group territories, fission and fusion of local communities, and variable degrees of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Burns. Jelmer Eerkens.

Far from providing a bounty that obviated agriculture, the California acorn economy presented risks of secular variation more extreme than experienced by other densely populated hunter gatherers. Decentralized political organization and high ethno-linguistic diversity further complicated redistribution of spatio-temporally variant resources. In the ethnographic period, shell bead money played a key role in enabling exchange. We examine changing patterns in bead manufacture and distribution...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seungki Kwak.

This study attempts to understand ancient human subsistence using isotope analysis on the organic residues extracted from the archaeological potsherds collected from prehistoric coastal shell midden sites in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. In Korean archaeology, shell middens are useful for isotope analysis because they provide suitable condition in terms of organic preservation. To date, the subsistence of these prehistoric coastal and island dwellers remains poorly known. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham.

Recent investigations of minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the social and spatial organization of ancient Maya cities. Many researchers suggest that minor temples were important integrative hubs in lowland Maya settlements. Because minor temples were constructed at regular intervals around the urban epicenter of Ceibal, it appears that they were integral to city planning, and likely the centers of localized communities. Although they may have been discrete social units, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Archila Montanez. Mónica Berón. Gabriela Musaubach. Martha Mejía. Eliana Lucero.

Empirical evidence of ancient ritual practices is not often found in many archaeological sites. This complex ideological aspect of past human societies has usually been reported in association with the presence of monuments such as sculptures, tombs, funeral mounds, temples and shrines and also with particular artefacts used during ceremonies and rituals such as ceramic, stone or metal vessels, musical instruments and so on. Archaeobotanical evidence could contribute enormously to the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Sellen.

While the growth of the Internet market in pre-Columbian antiquities is of great concern to the countries of origin and law enforcement, we should also recognize that the Internet is a crucial tool in the fight to protect cultural materials. In particular, online databases that were once created for purely scholarly purposes, can be effectively used to track stolen, lost or exchanged artefacts. This talk will focus on my own experience, for over a decade now, of managing a database that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bettina Arnold.

"...we have been set free... by our most tireless prince, King and lord, the lord Robert... Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy... and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King" (Declaration of Arbroath April 6, 1320). The Romans in 1st century BC Gaul and the English in 14th century AD Scotland described the political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Núñez Aparcana. Jorge Rodríguez Morales. Raúl Zambrano Anaya.

One of the characteristics of ritual practices in the Andean Society is the presence of shrines in top of mountains related to local deities. These shrines formed part of ancient cultural landscapes that involved settlements, farmlands, cemeteries, and even complex road systems. Most of these ritual spaces are not regularly present in the archaeological record, yet they are frequently mentioned in etno-historical accounts. This study presents a preliminary analysis of a shrine located in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cosimo Posth. Thiseas Lamnidis. Stephan Schiffels. Kurt Rademaker. Johannes Krause.

Present-day Andean human populations harbor a relatively high genetic diversity but a minimal population structure and differentiation among them. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome studies on pre-contact human remains suggest that both modern and ancient Andean populations derive from a single ancestral origin. However, nuclear ancient DNA (aDNA) data from the Andes in particular and South America in general are still too scarce to fully address questions on genetic continuity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only João Cascalheira. Nuno Bicho. Celia Goncalves.

A recent survey project is documenting new Stone Age sites in various regions of Mozambique, including the areas of Niassa in the north and Limpopo in the south. Most of this work involves the identification and characterization of hundreds of surface lithic scatters among which thousands of stone tools must be analyzed. A digital recording system was required that would allow to: 1) register information of each scatter, including context description and geographical coordinates; 2) do on-site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Mentore.

In honor of the innovative contribution by Peter Roe to the ethno-archaeological research on Amazonia, my paper will focus on the indigenous knowledge forms which invert our own logics about material objects. Roe’s early willingness to allow indigenous thought to impact our scientific interpretations was well ahead of its time. Today, we on the ethnographic side of Amazonian scholarship, have little difficulty speaking in terms of the "social life of things." Yet, even beyond, the legitimacy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Shelby Anderson. Shannon Tushingham. Andy Tremayne.

Processing and combustion of animal products including bone, fat, and oil for food and fuel was critical for human occupation of far northern latitudes. Remnant fats from these activities preserve exceptionally well in many Alaskan sites and various sources can be identified using standard techniques of lipid analysis. Combining lipid analysis with ethnographically informed experiments and high-resolution analysis of archaeological sediments, combustion features and ceramics, could help trace...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Price.

The Late Chalcolithic (4th millennium BC) in northern Mesopotamia was a period defined by an increase in social complexity and inequality. The Oriental Insitute of the University of Chicago's excavations at the site of Tell Surezha on the Erbil Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan have brought to light new information regarding the settlement of the region during this crucial period. This region is not well understood, especially when compared to adjacent regions, such as SE Anatolia and the Jezireh....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James A. Zeidler.

The mythological and iconographic analyses of Peter G. Roe have made seminal contributions to our understanding of Amerindian cosmology and religious thought in South America, both in the ethnographic present and in the prehispanic past. His unitary mythic model set forth in the Cosmic Zygote (1982) and explored in subsequent publications has convincingly demonstrated that this quintessentially Amazonian model has "deep-time" attributes that shed interpretive light on iconographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Wisner. Katie Tappan. Dylan Wilson. Chrissina Burke. Norbert Stanchly.

Zooarchaeological materials from terminal deposits in the Belize Valley have the potential to assist archaeologists with understanding if terminal deposits represent ritual activities. This poster presents the results of zooarchaeological investigations of terminal deposits at the sites of Lower Dover and Baking Pot. While archaeologists from the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project (BVAR) have focused on the pottery and lithic materials in these deposits a thorough comparative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takao Sato. Andrzej Weber. Taichi Hattori. Tomonari Takahashi. Hirofumi Kato.

In the animal utilization and animal rituals of the Okhotsk culture, chronological and regional differences can be observed. Significant differences can be seen between the northern and eastern regions of Hokkaido in terms of the volume of archaeological artifacts recovered relating to both domestic animals (dogs, pigs) and wild animals. In northern Hokkaido, there are conspicuous differences in the use of a variety of fishes and types of sea urchins between the early period (Towada) and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Grossman.

This paper presents the results of a five year zooarchaeological study at the site of Hamoukar, a major Late Chalcolithic (fourth millennium BC) site in northeastern Syria. The Late Chalcolithic occupation at Hamoukar presents an excellent opportunity to study the social impact of foodways at an early urban site in northern Mesopotamia. When the site was destroyed by fire during the late fourth millennium BC, the occupants fled, leaving their goods and garbage behind in a well-preserved building...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Cootsona. Madeleine Strait.

This poster reports on the analysis of the faunal remains from a D-shaped kiva in use during the late 1200s or early 1300s at Pot Creek Pueblo in the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. The kiva was decommissioned in a highly ceremonial manner with both human and animal interments, as well as a variety of additional animal offerings on the floor. Additional animal deposits in the fill of the kiva, suggesting the continued use of the space as a receptacle for offerings. Close analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Skoglund.

The rock art of southern Scandinavia includes a variety of images and among these are ships, humans and animal images. The ship is the most common motif and appears in various constellations. The ship may appear without associated images, it can be seen with a row of lines indicating a crew, and it can be associated to rather detail human and animal images. The process of adding humans and animals to the ships changed the significance of these images. In this paper I will go through some of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maren Hopkins. Octavius Seowtewa.

After the Zuni people emerged into this present world from Ribbon Falls in the Grand Canyon, they set out on a centuries-long journey in search of their spiritual and physical destination, Idiwana. During their travels, the Zuni people split into groups and moved in different directions, forming medicine societies, acquiring song and prayers, and gaining knowledge about the environment that would become the core of their cultural practices into the present. As such, the places of Zuni’s past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Fallu. W. Flint Dibble.

The assumed increase of cattle in Dark Age Nichoria has been a key piece of evidence for the "cattle-ranching" model of Dark Age Greek economy. New zooarchaeological analysis, however, demonstrates a distribution of more robust skeletal specimens which are likely the result of preservation bias, rather than economic reliance on cattle. Geoarchaeological analysis of "archival" soils retrieved from uncleaned bones provides some confirmation and additional detail: the abundance of cattle bones at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Bauer. Erle Ellis.

Much scientific debate has focused on the timing and stratigraphic signatures for the Anthropocene. In this paper, we argue that strident debate about the Anthropocene’s chronological boundaries arises because its formal periodization necessarily forces an arbitrary break in a long history of human alteration of environments. The aim of dividing geologic time based on a "step-change" in the global significance of socio-environmental processes goes directly against the socially differentiated and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Douglass. Henry Wright. Robert Dewar.

The date of Madagascar’s initial settlement has long been the subject of academic inquiry and debate. Archaeologists, historians, geneticists, linguists and paleoecologists interested in the history of Malagasy and Indian Ocean peoples, regional exchange, and environmental change have contributed diverse datasets and perspectives to this debate over Madagascar’s colonization, but consensus on the timing of human arrival remains elusive. Despite its relative proximity to the African mainland,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jed Kaplan. Andrea Kay. Leanne Phelps.

Did humans affect global climate before the Industrial Era? While this question is hotly debated, the co-evolution of humans and the natural environment since the last Ice Age had an undisputed role in influencing the development and present state of terrestrial ecosystems, many of which are highly valued today as economic, cultural, and ecological resources. Yet we still have a very incomplete picture of human-environment interactions over the last 21,000 years, both spatially and temporally....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Moriah McKenna. Anthony Graesch.

The now-forested New England landscape has been shaped substantially by long-term human activities. Partitioned by thousands of miles of stone walls, the young and dense woodlands visible today are a consequence of intensive clear-cutting and farming activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this study, we apply the theory and method of landscape archaeology to the study of farming practices at an eighteenth century, 49-acre colonial farmstead in southeastern Connecticut. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinzia Perlingieri. Kelley Shanahan. Elena Toffalori.

Much of what we do today as archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals is designing digital projects. From organizing field documentation methodologies to processing, analysis, publication, and sharing, we design workflows based on how content is best represented in a digital format. Transition to digital form is still rarely linear, even more so when you help others adopt digital solutions for their content. Given the cultural nature of projects we work on, at CoDA, we have adopted a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Currie.

This paper presents findings of a new European Community funded research project: "Indigenous Concepts of Health and Healing in Andean Populations". The study population are indigenous Quechua peoples in northern Andean Ecuador. The project examines ethnic Andeans’ understanding of their world and how health, illness and healing are understood within it. Current practices of traditional medicine (TM) have evolved within complex historical contexts into new forms which can reveal the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Flores Ramirez. Carlos Salgado Ceballos.

Dos cementerios no contemporáneos fueron parcialmente excavados en el sitio El Tropel, Villa de Álvarez, Colima, en 2004. En el cementerio correspondiente a la Fase Comala fueron excavados seis entierros, mientras que en aquel de la Fase Armería fueron excavados 23 entierros, uno de ellos doble. Además fue excavado un solitario entierro de la Fase Chanal. Los restos de los 31 individuos fueron estudiados bioarqueológicamente, buscando determinar edad, sexo, características físicas, estado de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Martz. David Wood.

En la actualidad la Zona Arqueológica de Tamtoc, un área cívico-ceremonial prehispánica de larga duración, presenta un porcentaje considerable de estructuras liberadas, cuya arquitectura expuesta ha permitido al Proyecto Arqueológico Origen y Desarrollo del Paisaje Urbano de Tamtoc, dirigido por Estela Martínez y Guillermo Córdova, el realizar un estudio metodológico de sus orientaciones y las posibles relaciones que guardan entre ellas. Cabe decir que este tipo de trabajo genera un antecedente...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman. Frank Earley.

Rather than a western extension of the Plains Village tradition, the Apishapa phase was more likely an eastern extension of the Great Basin Desert culture. Among other things, Great Basin origins explain the Apishapa foraging economy that focused on small mammals, antelope and deer, and meager horticulture. Insubstantial structures and temporary rock shelter habitations attest to residential mobility. As others have noted, Archaic rock art in the Great Basin and Apishapa areas are remarkably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Lane.

This paper focuses on issues and methodological approaches to the comparison of archaeological sites, scaling from a regional to a global perspective, with a specific focus on settlement archaeology. The key issue appears to be the logical difficulty of contextualizing regional culture historical data within theories of global settlement patterns. A secondary problematic issue related to the one aforementioned is in the comparison of data sets with highly variable integrity at both these scales,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garrett Leitermann.

The use of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has been the primary technique for ceramic sourcing studies within archaeology for the last several decades. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is an atomic emission spectroscopy technique that provides archaeologists with a time and cost effective alternative to NAA. LIBS has been used by the author on a large sample of corrugated sherds originating from two Classic Mimbres sites within the Gila National Forest of New Mexico in an attempt to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Hall. Samantha Mitchell. Patrick Lewis.

Documenting the spatial distribution of scattered and commingled skeletal elements is an important aspect of forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. While existing methods of documentation may effectively represent scattered and commingled human skeletal remains, they do not facilitate further spatial analysis that may be useful in reconstructing taphonomic processes. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have recently been leveraged as a method of inventorying human remains, but their capacity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Smith. Sarah Hlubik. Tamara Dogandžic. David Braun.

Photogrammetry is a powerful tool using images to create three-dimensional (3D) models of objects and landscapes. Advances in software and personal computing have made photogrammetry an important instrument for the documentation of archaeological sites. Despite this, using photogrammetry to understand spatial data within archaeological sites is uncommon. Recording spatial data on sites is usually done by hand-measuring artifacts within a grid or by using a total station for more accurate mapping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lacey Fleming. Robert Losey.

Humans and dogs have been living together for thousands of years, participating in various forms of relationships. One of these relationships involves the partial or complete provisioning of dogs by humans. Because of these practices, it has been argued that a dog’s diet should generally resemble that of the humans with whom it lived. This proposed interspecies dietary similarity has been an important aspect of some archaeological studies in that dog stable isotope values are in many cases used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudio Cioffi-Revilla.

This paper presents the Canonical Theory of the origin and early development of social complexity, which has previously been successfully applied to other formative polities in the Near East, early China, Inner Asia, Aspero-Caral, and Oaxaca, among others. The theory explains how and why sociopolitical complexity emerges following repeated instances of challenges and opportunities that are successfully or unsuccessfully resolved by the local community, based on extant lines of evidence. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leszek Pawlowicz. Christopher Downum. Michael Terlep.

Recent advances in hardware and software have made implementation of advanced machine learning algorithms for image classification and analysis faster and more accessible. We demonstrate the applicability of machine learning to the classification and analysis of common decorated ceramic types from Northern Arizona. Both supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms are used to investigate standard ceramic typologies, as well as design/temporal similarities/differences between different ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline McKinney. Sarah Hlubik. David R. Braun.

Multispectral imagery is a powerful tool for various disciplines that use landscape scale spatial patterning to understand and identify underlying geochemical variations. Paleontologists have used multispectral imagery in numerous locations; however, it has not been extensively applied in the study of archaeological sites associated with human fossil localities in East Africa. Extensive geological exposures combined with laterally expansive volcanic ashes in the Turkana basin make this an ideal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Hinojosa-Balino. Gerardo Gutiérrez.

Mapping caves has always been a daunting task, given the complexity of its forms and the usually difficult access for surveyors and their equipment. 3D modeling of the exterior and interior of some caves is now possible using photogrammetry. Here, we present how we captured the complexity of the Mesoamerican underworld using both drones and digital photography in the caves of Guerrero.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Swift.

Stable isotope analysis of small commensal fauna provides a novel approach to paleoecological reconstruction and investigations of human site activities. The human translocation of rat species, especially the black rat (Rattus rattus), brown rat (R. norvegicus), and Pacific rat (R. exulans), has significantly—and often deleteriously—impacted native floral and faunal communities, particularly within island ecosystems. Rats are small-bodied omnivores with limited home ranges and highly generalized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Kotsoglou. Andrew Crocker.

The ceremonial center of Tzak Naab, located in the northern hinterlands of the major Maya city of La Milpa, displays many idiosyncratic and unique elements in its built environment that speak to the relationship of the site with the natural landscapes it inhabits. The site core is constructed on three large tiers which overlook the Dumbbell Bajo, a large seasonally inundated wetland. Within this area, aspects of (in)visibility are employed to control movement through—and perception of—space. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Martínez Tagûeña.

This paper contributes to the field of applied ethnobotany, which focuses on the role that knowledge, institutions and cultural perspectives play in resource management and conservation (based on Cunningham). Through different case studies to understand people and their use of wild desert plants, this paper stresses the importance of collaboration between disciplines, principally among biological and social sciences; and secondly between formally trained researchers, and local people and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman.

The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was nearly driven to extinction on the Pacific Coast in the 19th century due to intensive commercial hunting and the maritime fur trade. Despite some successful reintroduction efforts in North America, the Oregon sea otter population remains locally extirpated and listed as endangered. One aspect of Lyman’s 1988 study examined precontact sea otter teeth from Oregon and found they were similar in size to modern California sea otter teeth, and smaller than modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Ramos.

At present, human population groups in the Colombian Caribbean, in common with people from most regions of the world, face problems associated with the sustainability of resources that results to a large extent from the indiscriminate use of plant and animal species for food among other uses. The phenomenon not only impacts plant and animal species but rebounds, too, on human beings. Although governmental and non-governmental bodies have made some efforts to implement preventive programs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joyce White. Elizabeth Hamilton.

Application of archaeometric techniques to metals and related evidence from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia is in its infancy. One result is that sample sizes per site have in most cases been minute or even unspecified, although in rare instances, such as Ban Chiang, sample sizes for metallographic and elemental analyses have been more robust and representative. Small sample sizes obscure key evidence for intrasite and regional variability in technological and economic systems. Recent lead...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Lewis.

"Community based" archaeology programs are all the rage in North America, as both academic and consulting archaeologists respond to descendant communities’ rights to management over their cultural heritage in the face of large-scale development and resource management. This movement is not yet applied in other regions facing similar challenges of economic development opportunities and access to heritage. The Khirbet al-Mukhayyat Community Archaeology Program (KMCAP) is inspired by North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linea Sundstrom.

The Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) provides a legal framework for site protection. A review of various ARPA cases involving rock art points out the advantages and challenges of referring rock art vandalism and theft for prosecution. Case outcomes have ranged from out-of-court settlements to fines to incarceration. The keys to successful prosecution of such cases are appropriate public education about archaeological resource protection laws, competent gathering of evidence,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Keenan Early.

The Gault site is a well-known Clovis-age occupation site in Texas, with further evidence of pre-Clovis activity. In addition to an abundance of lithic artifacts, the site has yielded thousands of faunal remains. Unfortunately, the taphonomic processes to which these bones have been subjected have resulted in the vast majority of them being morphologically unidentifiable beyond small, medium, and large mammal. This greatly restricts researchers’ abilities to understand the human-environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Purcell. Ashley Schubert.

In this paper, we present the results of archaeobotanical analysis from the Cane River Site in Yancey County, NC. Thirty-three samples were collected during the 2013-2014 field season from features associated with different spatial contexts such as household architecture and palisades. Our results show that corn, beans, and squash are ubiquitous in the assemblage, indicating that Cane River has unexpectedly high amounts of domesticates given its higher elevation and lack of lowland floodplains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Ryabogina. Robert Spengler.

Plants in the Chenopodium genus have attracted human interest around the globe for millennia; they have been used for grain and vegetable food as well as being a key forage plant for herd animals. Historically, several wild species have been economically significant across Eurasia, notably in Central Asia, and the genus has been domesticated in various parts of the world, including East Asia. Wild Chenopodium seeds are the dominant category of archaeobotanical remains found in the vast majority...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John G. Jones. Nicholas Dunning.

Examination of sediments from several reservoirs at the Preclassic site of Yaxnohkah Campeche, Mexico reveals less that stellar pollen preservation, but still useful botanical data. Thus far, pollen grains show varying degrees of degradation, requiring the use of exacting extraction methods. Cultigens and economic taxa are abundant in the samples demonstrating that we are sampling in the right place, but cyclic wetting and drying has resulted in the loss of fragile taxa, skewing the botanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhijie Cheng. Yuzhang Yang.

As an transition zone between the southern and northern China, the Huai river valley possesses distinct uniqueness in climate environment, agriculture, archaeological culture and other aspects. We have taken a series of archaeobotany case study on the Neolithic sites of different period,such as Shunshanji, Longqiuzhuang, Wanbei, in the lower Huai river valley. Combined with previous archaeobotany research in this area, so we can summarize the plant food utilization in various periods. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Madella.

The analysis of plant microfossils has progressed immensely in recent years. The increase in the number of phytoliths and starch grains works in several disciplines has substantially extended our knowledge about these microfossils, while at the same time diversifying the approaches by which they can be used as archaeological and palaeoenvironmental proxies. This presentation will discuss the history and developments of plant microfossils in South Asia.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Wyatt. Cameron S. Griffith. Rebecca Friedel.

The past several decades of research have identified caves as important loci for Precolumbian and historic Maya ritual activity. To the ancient Maya, caves served as portals to the underworld, functioning as sites where ritual practitioners could be in closer contact with important deities and enact rites associated with natural forces. The Belize River Valley has been a significant area for cave exploration and excavation, and Stela Cave in particular, located in the Cayo District in western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Meadow.

Both Zooarchaeological and Paleoethnobotanical studies have been carried out on animal and plant remains from archaeological sites in northwestern South Asia for at least a century. These investigations, while providing important insights into the hunter-gatherer and agro-pastoral economies of the region, have lagged behind those carried out in other parts of the world in both quantity and quality. Indigenous practitioners of both sub-disciplines are few, and interest in these aspects of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilen Pool. Christina Bisulca.

The ancient cultures of the American Southwest used various plant and insect exudates as adhesives in a range of artifacts, including mosaic plaques, arrows, wooden tools, and in pottery as a repair and sealant. The conservation department at the Arizona State Museum surveyed the adhesives used in the Pottery and Archaeological Perishable Collections, analyzing over 100 objects that included every major cultural group in the Southwest sourced to 35 different archaeological sites. Identification...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seonaid Duffield. Duncan McLaren. Iain McKechnie.

Detailed tracking of the chronology and spatial extent of shell middens on the Northwest Coast is a challenging and often expensive proposition given the size and time depth often represented at these sites. The Hakai Ancient Landscapes Archaeology Project (HALAP) used vibracore technology to efficiently sample intact 7cm diameter stratigraphic profiles from multiple 4-6 m deep shell midden deposits at site EjTa-13 on Hecate Island. A series of radiocarbon dates from the initial core documents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Hogg. John Welch.

The 2014 Tsilhqot’in Decision in the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirms the relevance of archaeological research in the adjudication of Indigenous land and title claims. The evidentiary standards adopted by the Court, that occupation must be sufficient, continuous, and exclusive, invite comparisons with previous archaeological contributions to land claim settlements, refresh inquiry into current applications of archaeological data and perspectives to argue for (and against) affinities between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman. Jessica DeYoung. Carolyn Boyd.

This research is a collaboration between chemists and archaeologists to study the ancient mural paintings of the Lower Pecos. Using two independent methods, we are able to provide reliable age estimates for rock paintings. To obtain direct dates, we oxidize organic material in paint layers using plasma oxidation followed by accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. For minimum and maximum ages, we isolate calcium oxalate in overlying and underlying accretion layers for combustion and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Gonzalez Lauck.

The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City holds the largest collection of archaeological artifacts in the country. A recent survey and inventory of the objects that form the Gulf Coast cultures section has revealed a more comprehensive and detailed view of the composition of it. This paper will present an overview of this collection providing information on the site provenience of the artifacts; what private collections were incorporated into it; the types of artifacts, as well as their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Parker. Nicole Herzog. Earl Keefe. James O'Connell. Kristen Hawkes.

The importance of controlled fire use in human evolutionary history is widely acknowledged, but the timing of initial anthropogenic fire use and control remains contentious. This debate has recently extended to question whether fire-making behavior was maintained and employed by early hominins moving into northern latitudes based on inconsistencies in archaeological fire signatures in the European record. A series of recent publications interpret these inconsistencies as indicating that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Trites. Frances Robertson.

Northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) of all ages (pups, juveniles, bulls and adult females) dominate the mammal assemblage of prehistoric (prior to 1850) coastal middens from California to Alaska. We reviewed archaeological data, historical documents on the early fur trade, as well as more recent data on fur seal genetics and migratory patterns of fur seals―and discovered that most of the fur seal remains in Washington State middens likely originated from a very large colony of northern fur...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Zegarra.

Ethnographic research is herein demonstrated to contribute a crucially important initial step in the re-construction of indigenous histories and to building a praxis of collaborative archaeology. Ethnographic research was conducted during two field seasons in 2015 and 2016 in and around the sprawling ruins of the capital city of the Wari Empire in the central highlands of Peru to reach an understanding of the contemporary cultural idiosyncrasies pertinent to the Peruvian historical context. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brennan Bajdek. Terry Ozbun. Cameron Walker.

The Burnett Site (35CL96) in Lake Oswego, Oregon, has yielded important information about settlement, subsistence, and lithic technology in the Portland Basin during the Early Archaic. The lithic assemblage is dominated by Cascade-style projectile points, but also contains a high percentage of bifaces and expedient flake technology. The identification of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) blood residues on both hunting and processing tools from the site provides new data about the resources used by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deidre Cullon. Rhy McMillan. Heather Pratt.

Fish traps are a ubiquitous fishing feature on the Northwest Coast, with thousands of features recorded at hundreds of sites. This fishing technology represents a use and modification of intertidal and riverine environments at an industrial scale, yet protocol and management practices ensured that fish populations flourished. As in other areas of the Northwest Coast, First Nations and archaeologists in British Columbia have documented fish traps, resulting in the registration of 822 fish "trap"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Moe.

Educators have long claimed that traditional school subjects should be integrated while archaeologists praise the ability of their discipline to bridge the divide between science, social studies, and many other subjects. While everyone seems to think that interdisciplinary teaching and learning is important and highly desirable, very little research has been conducted on students’ conceptual understanding of the relationship between science and social studies. In a case study, I assessed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dongya Yang. Antonia Rodrigues. Anna Marie Prentiss. Eleanor Green. Camilla Speller.

Domesticated dog (Canis lupus familiarus) remains have been recovered from a variety of Northwest Plateau archaeological sites, including Bridge River, a complex hunter-gatherer village on the Fraser River of British Columbia. To gain insight into the genetic continuity and dietary history of these dogs, this study applies ancient DNA techniques to dog bones and coprolites recovered from two pithouses at Bridge River. Dog mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is used to inform on genetic relationships...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Smith. Cara Brendzy. Lisa Dojack.

In 2014 Amec Foster Wheeler, in partnership with the Stō:ló Resource and Research Management Centre, conducted an archaeological investigation of rock shelter site DiRj-34 in response to a proposed development. The site was documented ethnographically by Wilson Duff in 1949 as the Restmore Caves and recorded as spiritual site Uwqw’iles by the Stō:ló Nation. The rock shelter is comprised of large boulders at the toe of the Canadian Cascade Range, adjacent to Hunter Creek on the south side of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Duncan McLaren. Daryl Fedje. Gitla Elroy White. Seonaid Duffield. Alisha Gauvreau.

On the outer central Pacific coast of Canada, the intertidal zone is a highly productive ecotone that lies between temperate rainforest and marine biomes. The tide comes in and out over five vertical metres twice everyday. While the tide is out, our research teams have been investigating archaeological aspects of intertidal strata, artifacts and features. Stratigraphically the intertidal zone provides a window into the late Pleistocene archaeology of the region. Our subsurface testing into beach...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Archer. Christine Mueller.

In the summer of 1966, George MacDonald launched the wide-ranging North Coast Prehistory Project. One of his goals was to document the broader patterns of human settlement along the north coast of British Columbia, and in 1968, this led to the first test excavations at GbTp-1, a small seasonal encampment on the Lucy Islands, 19 km west of Prince Rupert, in the open waters of Chatham Sound. The data from that excavation showed that this remote site was already inhabited by about 2500 years ago,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Scarborough.

The ancient citadel and urban center of Tiwanaku (c. AD 300–1100) in Bolivia’s highland plateau is a notable archaeological site that has been deployed in nation-building discourses by both Bolivia’s white minority and its indigenous majority since the inception of this small Andean republic. With the approaching bicentennial of the country’s independence from Spain, Tiwanaku has become the symbolic center from which a new generation of upwardly mobile indigenous business and political leaders...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Christensen.

The Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, is experiencing rapid gentrification due to the influx of highly-paid workers employed by the tech economy centered in Silicon Valley. As the cost of living increases, long-time residents are being actively pushed out, and various community organizations have sprung up in response to highlight and address these issues of gentrification, displacement, and homelessness. In this paper, I explore the process and results of partnering with community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omar Silis García. Pablo Daniel López Sánchez.

In this presentation I’ll review the public relevance concerning archaeological property "Bienes muebles", in particular custody. I’ll describe the registry procedures and its scope as a cultural heritage legal instrument. Additionally, my objective is to present the way by which "Ley Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicos, Artísticos e Históricos" enactment proclaimed the monuments as national properties, this way the law obligates the owners to register their monuments. We can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Hill.

This paper will begin examining the historical context for the development of archaeological repositories in BC, and the changing role they have played. Commercial archaeologists have, of late, regarded repositories in British Columbia as an afterthought, though this was not always the case. A review of the original stakeholders, and goals of archaeological bodies in BC's past will shed light on where we find ourselves and where we should be headed. The second half of the paper will examine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agamemnon Pantel. Mark Noah. Kristen Baker. Chester Walker. Jay Silverstein.

Archaeological research on 538 MIA’s from WWII has been ongoing on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa over the past two years under the auspices of History Flight, an NGO. Tarawa, one of the bloodiest WWII battles in the Pacific, still has hundreds of MIA’s unaccounted for in one of the most densely populated locations on earth. History Flight, with the collaboration of professionals, para-professionals, military volunteers, DOD and the local community have been successful in locating and recovering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gwen Bennett.

This paper explores the study of cities in China and the implications for their archaeological investigation. Walled settlements developed in China during the Neolithic and by the Bronze Age many had already grown to considerable size and complexity. While scholars in China and East Asia often consider cities to be a form of settlement organization starting at this early date, the concept of city used in their study is frequently unexamined, and historical examples of cities in the Chinese...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chunxue Wang. Quanchao Zhang. Yao Li. Ningning Liang. Xing Gao.

Ostrich eggshell beads and fragments collected from Shuidonggou (SDG) reflect primordial art and symbolic behavior of modern humans. Based on stratigraphic data and OSL dating, these ostrich eggshell beads probably date to the Early Holocene ( 10 ka BP). Two different prehistoric manufacturing pathways are usually used in the manufacture of ostrich eggshell beads in the Upper Paleolithic. According to statistical analyses of the characteristics of ostrich eggshell beads, Pathway 1 is identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hauser.

The Archaeological Survey of Colonial Dominica centered household production, provisioning, and consumption in the relationship between colonies and metropoles. This paper introduces this session, which develops an approach that considers the political economy of colonial empires at the human scale. As a site of imperial contention between Britain and France, Dominica’s material record can help examine the similarities and differences in how land, labor and commerce was imagined in the homeland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xuexiang Chen. Wei Gong.

The surveyed area, Heze city of southwestern Shandong, China is located at the lower reaches of the Yellow River. Most archaeological sites in this region were deeply buried, from 3m to more than 10m. Very few archaeological works especially excavations had been taken due to the depth. Our survey of 2012-2015 revealed that these sites had been continuously occupied for a long history. The occupation started from Beixin culture (c. 5000 -4100 BC), continued to Dawenkou culture (c. 4150-2650 BC),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Ames. Andrew Martindale.

We archaeologically test a hypothesis derived from the Tsimshian oral record. That record recites a long history of settlement movement and conflict culminating in an invasion of coastal Tsimshian territory by northerners. This conflict reportedly caused the Tsimshian to temporarily abandon their coastal territories and retreat inland. We tracked settlement shifts through a site taxonomy and intensive analysis of a large 14C sample acquired by percussion coring. We found an occupational hiatus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Anderson. Chelsey Geralda Armstrong.

This paper raises two questions: How do you investigate environmental ethics and emotions in the archaeological record, and how do we now use archaeological evidence to work with Indigenous and local people on heritage and conservation? We discuss the role of emotion in archaeology, with specific reference to cooperation between archaeologists and First Nations people in preserving heritage sites in British Columbia.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Milosavljevic.

With visual technology becoming more affordable, archaeologists are more able than ever to engage in global dialogue with how research can help answer questions about our past and play a role into where we are going, while celebrating our shared lifeways that unite us as a human species. Pulling examples from the 2016 Quilcapampa Archaeological Investigation Project field season, this research report will share the different ways in which projects can incorporate a visual communications strategy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Holley Moyes.

In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism imbues an object with a value not inherent to the object itself. This paper explores the ways in which archaeologists have contributed to the fetishizing of archaeological material which in turn promotes the looting of archaeological sites. By nature of our profession, old objects hold more value than modern ones or even replicas. Contextual information about these objects is arguably just as, if not more, important than the object itself. In many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debbie Wallsmith. Jeff Mummert.

Digital technology has made archaeological sites and artifacts much more accessible to the general public. Augmented reality (AR) allows visitors to "handle" artifacts and view archaeological features in their exact locations even after the units have been backfilled. Implementation of AR comes at a cost; not just in the planning process but long after the site has been backfilled, the artifacts analyzed and conserved, and the site report written. The discussion will focus on an archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas MacDonald. Matthew Nelson. Jordan McIntyre.

Recent archaeological and geomorphological studies illuminate an understanding of paleo-shorelines along Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming. Current shorelines are not always adequate predictors of prehistoric archaeological site locations due to ever-shifting lake levels over the last 12,000 years. The 20-mile-long Yellowstone Lake is within a caldera and, thus, has experienced dramatic shifts in lake levels associated with volcanism. In addition, lake levels have changed greatly due to Late Pleistocene...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Jalbert.

Research conducted over the past twenty years on gender politics in archaeology have addressed both how the past is investigated, and has examined the presence of equity issues in the archaeological workplace. It has been suggested that multiple barriers exist for women’s advancement, however, funding for archaeological research has received little attention in the literature. Although studies in the United States and Australia have highlighted the presence of funding disparities between women...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fanya Becks.

In this paper I will illustrate how my research praxis necessarily altered as a product of close collaboration and consultation. The Muwekma Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area (California, USA), is a community that has been eager to engage with respectful researchers in the analysis of their ancestors remains, once they have been disturbed. As a non-indigenous researcher collaborating with the tribal community, aspects of proper respect and care towards ancestors, and materials associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Easy.

The rise of open source publications has increasingly made archaeological research available to wider audiences and yet the knowledge we as archaeologists produce is not always freely accessible or available. It is fully understood within our discipline that archaeological sites have strong connections to the past; that they are embodied spaces and irreplaceable sources of knowledge. However, this view of sites does not always extend to the broader public or to communities with ties to those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebekah Schields. Nichole Tramel. Erika Malo.

Archaeology Fairs are held across the United States in honor of Archaeology month and the International Day of Archaeology. Students and families are exposed to many facets of archaeology, tools of the trade, the difference between archaeology and paleontology, and what to do when they find artifacts. Often this learning takes place in an informal setting, a museum or university campus. So what are students actually learning at these Archaeology Fairs and how can we measure their understanding?...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Lawrence. Peter Davies. Ewen Silvester. Darren Baldwin. Ian Rutherfurd.

The impact of gold mining on rivers in the Australian colony of Victoria during the nineteenth century provides a case study of the acceleration of human intervention in world systems characteristic of the Anthropocene. As miners used water to extract gold from the soil they also re-shaped river systems, turning rivers into artefacts that were modified and manipulated as tools in order to achieve cultural goals. The cumulative and widespread effect of mining activity is made evident through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner. Ruth Van Dyke.

Our paper reports on our recent archaeological testing at the previously unexcavated Aztec North great house at Aztec Ruins National Monument. Standing on the river terrace behind and above the better-known valley great houses, Aztec North is out of sight of those great houses but tightly bound to them as part of the formalized cultural landscape of Aztec Ruins. It is a crucial site for understanding the development of Chaco Canyon’s outliers, as it was likely the earliest great house built in...