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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernard Means. Vinod Nautiyal. Mohan Naithani. Sudhir Nautiyal. Akanksha Rai.

The Virtual Curation Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, and the Archaeology Department of Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna (HNB) Garhwal University, in Garhwal (Srinagar), India, have partnered to create three-dimensional (3D) models of artifacts and sculptures from the trans-Himalayan region of northern India. Many of these items are on display in the HNB Garhwal University Museum of Himalayan Archaeology and Ethnography. This partnership seeks to preserve these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Herrick.

Traces of early modern European presence in the Sonoran Desert endure today as plaster-white mission churches dotted across the arid landscape. Established by Jesuits as early as 1691 AD, Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, Arizona is unique in its continued usage as a modern Catholic church. Its long-standing occupation necessitates nearly-constant conservation practices, which must be complementary to the church’s original construction. However, the absence of nearly two-hundred years’...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Baltus. Sarah Baires.

Human engagement with the world includes forging and maintaining relationships with social agents, both visible and invisible. Among Native North Americans, these relationships are simultaneously religious, social, and political. We explore these relationships using data from our 2016 excavations at Cahokia’s CABB (Courtyard Area Between Borrows) Tract, located southeast of Woodhenge and west of the Grand Plaza. The CABB Tract is situated north of two known borrow pits (Fowler’s 5-5 and 5-6) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Reitze. Amy Schott.

In 2004 Congress authorized Petrified Forest National Park to more than double in size, in part to protect unique cultural resources. This poster introduces the preliminary results of three seasons of pedestrian survey in these new lands. So far this research has recorded archaeological resources dating across the spectrum of the human habitation of North America, beginning with Paleoindian lithics and extending through the historic period. Sites ranging from lithic landscapes covering hundreds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Watrall.

As digital methods have become more ubiquitous in archaeology, the challenge of teaching those methods has become important. Beyond the question of how and what we teach, however, there is an equally important challenge - how do we build communities of practice populated by scholars who are connected through a shared perspective on both the methods and the thoughtful application of those methods. In is within this context that this paper will explore an approach developed at Michigan State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Campbell.

The East Palisade Project at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is an ongoing investigation with the main goal of fully determining the path of the multiple construction phases of the palisade walls surrounding the core of the site. Located in Ramey Field, just east of Monks Mound, excavations have occurred intermittently in this area since the 1960s. The study of the area has helped in the understanding of the construction of the palisade walls as well as the varying types of bastions used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Heinz.

Homosexuality’s place within the church has been a topic of considerable debate among modern theologians. However, most theologians have only focused on homosexuality, disregarding the presence of all other alternative sexual identities and have used only Biblical textual evidence to justify their views on homosexuality. This text contributes a broader scope to the sexuality debate. It considers all queer sexualities, archaeological artifacts, and uses a queer theoretical lens to deconstruct the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Carlson. Leland Bement. Brian Carter.

Bull Creek is one of a handful of Paleoindian camps, which has survived the taphonomic consequences of time. In this presentation we will discuss our current understanding of the site and it’s inhabitants. The topics discussed include environmental reconstruction and the broader use and reuse of the surrounding region by Paleoindian people. Snapshots of butchering techniques have been captured at Bull Creek as well as differential seasonal use of the site. After the third season of excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pauketat.

Even a cursory outline of the pan-continental history of non-domestic circular architecture impels us to relate similar buildings, some of which are water shrines, in the greater Cahokia region to Mesoamerica and the Southwest. In the central Mississippi valley, standardized steam baths, rotundas, and circular platforms make a dramatic appearance in the late eleventh century CE. Explaining the big-historical patterns, of which this appearance is a part, entails theorizing the bundled transfer of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Mathwich. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman.

The introduction of livestock to the Pimeria Alta (northern Sonora and southern Arizona), was one prong of Spanish imperial expansion into North America initiated largely by Jesuit missionization. Unlike other areas of North America, the missions in this region experienced an enormous bureaucratic transition following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the subsequent arrival of Franciscan missionaries. Historians and historical anthropologists debate the social and economic impacts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Sparks. J. Tait Elder. Mathew Sisneros. Melissa Cascella.

ICF assisted the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) with the preparation of a buried archaeological sensitivity model in support of a client-sponsored research project in Seattle, Washington. ICF approached the model development from a statewide scale and employed geologic landform type and soil age as main model inputs. Surface geology data was not available at a large enough scale to support the entire effort so ICF combined national resource conservation soil data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Stone. Scott Fitzpatrick. Matthew Napolitano. Connor Thorud.

Remote Oceania was one of the last major regions colonized by humans prehistorically. While there has been an increasing amount of archaeological and genetic research in the region in recent years, many parts are sorely un- or understudied. This is particularly true of Micronesia, where many questions remain as to how and when these early inhabitants settled and adapted to the area. The Palauan archipelago, which comprises hundreds of smaller uplifted limestone "Rock Islands," hosts identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Shantry.

Concentrations of burned earth, cooking stones, a shallow basin profile, and sometimes faunal remains are often associated with Puget Sound hearth features which were commonly used for open-air cooking. Discrete areas of burned earth lacking concentrations of cooking stones have not received as much cultural feature recognition or interpretation. This poster explores the function of one in situ concentration of charcoal adjacent to a dense area of cooking stones at an upland camp in the Puget...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zewdu Eshetu. Tsige Gebru Kassa. Valery Terwilliger. Mitchell Power. A. Catherine D'Andrea.

The influences of Ethiopia's palaeoenvironments on its past societies may inform land management practices now. A staple for reconstructing palaeoenvironments is to record palaeovegetation changes. Botanical remains for reconstructing palaeovegetation are usually archived in lake sediments. Eastern Tigrai had the most developed ancient civilizations known to sub-Saharan Africa but no lakes. When we began research in Eastern Tigrai, the region had been deforested for so long that botanists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Quarato. Julia Giblin.

The elemental and isotopic analysis of human skeletal remains has greatly added to our understanding of diet, mobility, and social variability in prehistoric societies. For studies of this nature, it is critical to evaluate the preservation of the skeletal material prior to analysis to make sure that taphonomic processes have not affected the original chemical signatures. Calcined bone (usually produced from cremation burial practices) is generally avoided for chemical analysis due to heat...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristyn Hara.

Compared to archaeological research in other parts of the globe, the analysis of wood charcoal assemblages, or anthracology, remains an underutilized methodology for investigating aspects of the human past in Cambodia. This paper argues for the importance of anthracology as a viable scientific methodology by foregrounding its interpretive potential in addressing a diverse suite of micro- and macro-scale questions pertaining to human-environment dynamics and cultural practices over the longue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd. Kim Cox.

The White Shaman Mural (~2000 BP) is a planned composition with rules governing the portrayal of symbolic forms and the sequencing of colors. Using digital microscopy we determined that all black paint was applied first, followed by red, then yellow, and last white. Complex images were woven together to form an intricate visual narrative detailing the birth of the sun and beginning of time. One of the key figures in this creation narrative is a small anthropomorphic figure bearing red antlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Steidl.

In the early 1st millennium BCE, Greek communities sprang up around the Mediterranean, and the West was no exception. As the story goes, Ionian Greeks arrived in southern France and a legendary marriage to the local chieftan’s daughter ensured their acceptance as settlers. From their base at Massalia, they expanded their trading foothold to Emporion on the Catalonian coast, cementing a relationship that was long-attested by the presence of Greek goods on western shores. Whereas rapid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Malainey. Timothy Figol.

Accounts of the amount of meat consumed by First Nations who relied on bison are spectacular; but, there are also reports of plant collection and use. The challenges and successes of using lipid residue analysis to detect plants in precontact Indigenous pottery are outlined. Fatty acid compositions of fresh roots, greens and certain berries form several distinct clusters when subjected to statistical analyses. Degradation processes arising from cooking and the passage of time tend to remove...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damian Kirkwood.

Spatial recognition of organization at mass kill sites is often commented on in the literature but is rarely systematically investigated. The goal of this paper is to investigate social organization of butchery with the nearest neighbor test. The lack of these sorts of methods in the literature is primarily due to the ever-changing methods of archaeological excavation and limited ability to easily analyze provenience data. In the literature, observations of organization and spatial patterning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Markens.

This paper explores the meaning of butterfly imagery among Classic period Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca. Images of butterflies, or parts of their anatomy, sometimes appear on effigy vessels found in tombs. The effigy vessels represent rulers, or other individuals of high social-standing, as jaguars, owls or the Fire Serpent. I argue that rulers of Zapotec urban centers were perceived to have a number of specific naguales or alter-egos that constitute the moral basis of political power. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agapi Filini.

During the Classic period, butterfly motifs encountered throughout Mesoamerica are indicative of diverse kinds of interaction with the city of Teotihuacan. Highly standardized stuccoed and painted ceramics from the lacustrine region of Michoacán, West Mexico, were used as the principal medium to project a major iconographic theme: the Butterfly-Solar Complex, which was very likely related to a Teotihuacan solar militaristic ideology. Symbolic meanings were encoded in symmetrical panels which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corin Pursell. J. Grant Stauffer.

Cahokia’s Mound 34 was an essential component of the dramatic reorganization of the eastern portion of Cahokia’s site core at the turn of the 13th century. Since the 1990s the Mound 34 Project has included examination of a copper workshop, the exploration of a complex mound construction history, and extended study of Mound 34’s special role in the production and exchange of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art. The construction of this mound and a series of other low platforms adjacent to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Romain.

Cahokia stands as the flagship city of the ancient Mississippian world. One of the enduring mysteries concerning Cahokia has been how to account for its skewed orientation and unique layout of its mounds and plazas. What accounts for the site's orientation east of north; and why are the mounds situated where they are? In this presentation I use recently obtained LiDAR imagery together with archaeoastronomic analyses to explore the idea that Cahokia was built according to a grand master plan....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jake Pfaffenroth.

The concept of a "frontier zone" in which diverse peoples would have been equally susceptible to each others’ influences offers a dynamic and multi-scalar approach to the investigation of "Mississippianization" in Cahokia’s northern hinterland. Aztalan, a site of Mississippian and Late Woodland co-residence in southern Wisconsin (ca. AD 1100-1200), has long been interpreted as a "Mississippian town" or "Cahokian colony". Mississippian-centric interpretations have led some archaeologists to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Lewarch.

Archaeologists and geographers calibrate the flow of commodities among households and settlements to infer patterns of production, consumption, economic function, and social class. Michael Smith and his colleagues developed sophisticated measurements of wealth and social class using residential architecture attributes and domestic artifact assemblage diversity from excavations at three Aztec Period sites in Morelos. Here, data from over 4,000 surface collection units in eight Aztec Period sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio. Philip Piper. Andrew Zimmerman. T. Elliott Arnold. John Krigbaum.

Almost nothing is known about the early development and diversity of Vietnamese cuisine, which potentially has its origin more than 2,000 years ago. This research investigates the culinary practices in southern Vietnam during the Neolithic and Metal Age (3000 BC-AD 500) by analysis of food residues recovered from earthenware pottery. To identify former food contents, organic residue analysis was conducted on sampled pottery vessels recovered from two Neolithic sites (Rạch Núi and An Sơn) and two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah.

The Susquetonscut Brook Site 11 (SB-11) is a Native American campsite occupied primarily during the Archaic Period and again briefly in the Woodland Period. Data recovery excavations conducted by The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) in the summer of 2015 resulted in the recovery of thousands of artifacts and the exposure of 14 cultural features, including post-molds, pit features, fire hearths, and a roasting platform. Feature definition was attained through a variety of analyses,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonya Atalay.

Community-based research requires systemic shifts within institutions, from the way research is funded, protection of human subjects/IRB reviews, ethical guidelines, and what is legible/valued in tenure & promotion decisions. Some of the most important yet least discussed changes must happen in the classroom, in terms of what & how we teach. For community-based archaeologists, we know that process matters. How we conduct research with community partners is essential. The relationships and trust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Riede. Russel Blong.

Extreme climatic events and natural disasters often have a recurrence periodicity beyond that of ethnographic, sociological and, at times, even historical investigation. In a deep historical perspective focused on geo-cultural heritage, however, human communities have been affected by numerous kinds of natural disasters that may provide useful data for scenario-based risk reduction management vis-à-vis future calamities. Using selected past volcanic eruptions as examples and merging Lee Clarke’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Candice Disque.

Settlement locations and the resultant built form are an essential part in understanding the social and cultural ideals of prehistoric peoples. Vital information pertaining to intracultural diversity is lost when the ideals, beliefs, values, and identities of multiple communities within a culture are homogenized. Landscape analysis of the Sand Canyon Pueblo community, Cajon Mesa communities, and the Ten Acres Community has revealed distinct differences in site location and orientation; masonry...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chapman. Bisserka Gaydarska.

Recent geophysical investigations of Trypillia megasites created a second methodological revolution, following the first revolution (1970s) defined by the discovery of the megasites and their dating to the 4th millennium BC. So far, this second revolution comprised primarily a methodological advance based upon detailed geophysical prospection; but its potential gains may be subverted without a fundamental re-interpretation of the very nature of megasites. The prevailing view of the megasites for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Goralski. Alexis Gray.

Despite being stakeholders with many shared goals, the working relationships between forensic anthropologists, forensic archaeologists, and their colleagues in law enforcement are often strained. The authors argue that cultural differences among the groups have contributed to the underuse and misuse of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists both in the United States and elsewhere, resulting in investigations that are neither as anthropological nor as scientific as juries and the public are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andre Costopoulos.

Every archaeological modeler, whether generalist or particularist, eventually gets asked whether "their model" can help reconstruct a particular past. Could a general archaeological simulation engine be built that can be customized to answer specific questions about specific archaeological contexts, or is simulation a tool that must remain largely general and heuristic? I will argue both that it is useful to work toward a general archaeological simulation engine, and that such an engine could...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Bowler. Emily Jones. Cyler Conrad.

Domestic dogs were an important part of human cultures in the prehistoric American Southwest; the significance of these animals is apparent from ceramic decorations and clay figurines, as well as faunal remains. But how these animals functioned within Southwestern cultures is less well-understood. Prehistoric dogs’ roles in some cases seem to have been similar to those of modern dogs: protector, worker, and pet. However, zooarchaeological data have shown that dogs, like turkeys, were also used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only B. Sunday Eiselt.

Plains-Pueblo Exchange is the study of interregional interactions during the Protohistoric Period (ca. AD 1450 to 1700) between the people and cultures of the Southern Plains and the eastern, frontier Pueblo communities associated with the Rio Grande Valley and its tributaries. Plains-Pueblo research has focused generally on issues of culture contact, culture history, and social evolutionary trajectories leading up to European Colonization, but has skirted the increasingly obvious fact that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Earley.

Stripped, humiliated, and often sacrificed, the captive in ancient Maya art acted as a potent symbol of defeat. Captives are a central theme of Maya art, appearing on media from painted vases to carved stone monuments. However, discussions of ancient Maya captives often focus on their captors: rulers, usually depicted as conquering warriors. "Captive Bodies, Captive Power" investigates, instead, the captives themselves. Treating the captive body as a cultural project that both modeled and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Jaimes Vences. Sugiura Yoko. Xim Bokhimi.

En el sitio arqueológico de Santa Cruz Atizapán (con ocupación desde el Clásico tardío ca. 500-650 dc hasta el Epiclásico ca. 650-900 dc), han sido detectadas macroscópicamente una serie de pastas, que por sus atributos de textura, compacidad e inclusiones, fueron agrupadas en nueve conjuntos (Inclusiones café, blancas, naranjas, de varios colores, pseudo anaranjado delgado, fina, intermedia, burda y con mica). Lo anterior refleja una diversidad en los posibles centros de producción cerámica que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guowen Zhang.

The Nanwa site（1680BC-Song Dynasty; located in Dengfeng city, Henan Province, China, provided a valuable opportunity for the Xia Dynasty and the Chinese civilization investigation. We could provide effective evidence for the food resources utilize pattern and agricultural economy development. Stable isotopic carbon, nitrogen analysis of 14 animals and 22 human bone collagen from the Nanwa site indicated that, wild animals (-19.9‰, 4.4‰, n=1) have a C3-based terrestrial diet. Domesticated pigs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Glover.

This regional study of carnelian beads in Korea and Japan (c. 100-700 CE) provides new perspectives on patterns of regional and long-distance trade and exchange. Possible source areas for carnelian will be presented along with the major stylistic and technological features recorded from carnelian beads. Preliminary analyses confirm the existence of intra-regional exchange between polities on the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago proposed by earlier scholars. Long distance exchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Carlson Dietmeier.

Utilizing faunal evidence from two assemblages from Drayton Hall, this paper explores the changing cattle husbandry strategies employed in the eighteenth-century South Carolina Lowcountry. Before colonists had perfected rice production in the region, they worked with the varied terrains and natural resources of the Lowcountry to create a very successful livestock industry in the early eighteenth century. Cattle remains from the Pre-Drayton assemblage (circa 1730s) reflect this thriving livestock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Elson. Maren Hopkins.

Recent fieldschool excavations at University Indian Ruin, under the direction of Drs. Paul and Suzanne Fish, have uncovered a wealth of new data. University Indian Ruin is a large Classic period Hohokam village situated in the eastern Tucson Basin. The site likely contains hundreds of adobe rooms and at least two platform mounds, a form of monumental architecture built by or for elites. In the late 1930s, such archaeological luminaries as Byron Cummings and Emil Haury investigated the site and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hanlon.

The ancient temple city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu is flanked on the east and west by a series of granitic hill ranges and inselbergs. Upon many of these hills are caves containing rock-cut beds and inscriptions that record donations to Jain mendicants. Until recently, interest in these caves has been primarily epigraphical with exiguous analysis of their architectural features and use as Jain residences. In fact, the role of Jains in the history of Tamil Nadu, where they currently represent 0.1% of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Van Roggen (Paterson).

Archaeobotanical re-analysis of plant remains from the late Pueblo III Mesa Verde site of Sand Canyon Pueblo has yielded pharmacological plants and presence of clans. In this presentation the social organization of the site is explored through mythic and historic relationships recorded in Emergence narratives and ethnography. Plants, art, artefacts, architecture and disease at Sand Canyon Pueblo provide compelling evidence of Bear clan shamans, who, through their association with the mythic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Spears. Damian Garcia.

This poster presents a collaborative archaeological project between the Pueblo of Acoma Historic Preservation Office (HPO) and the University of Arizona, School of Anthropology. The project began as an internship that fulfilled a requirement of the Applied Archaeology MA program. The internship was designed to better understand the Tribal Historic Preservation Program in residence at the Pueblo of Acoma, while providing professional archaeological assistance to the HPO by compiling a database of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Peña.

Pottery production was an important aspect of the social and economic life within Andean societies. In pre-industrial societies craft production occurred at the household level and depending upon the social complexity, this production was either independent or sponsored by the elite. Recent archaeological excavation of domestic contexts at the El Campanario site revealed that the area was occupied by the Casma polity during the Middle Horizon (600-1000 AD). This coastal polity occupied the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiuzhen Li. Marcos MartinÓn-Torres. Andrew Bevan. Thilo Rehren.

Among the most spectacular finds at the Mausoleum of China’s First Emperor (259 - 210 BC) are the Terracotta Army built to protect him in the after life, and the two sets bronze chariots designed and buried to facilitate his travel in his underground empire. Thousands of terracotta warriors are equipped with casting bronze weapons, including swords, lances, halberds, spears, crossbows, and arrows, and the quantity and quality of bronze weaponry provide an extremely rare opportunity to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Buchanan.

Castle studies in recent years has developed two major themes in developing technology: landscape studies and spatial analysis. Studies of castle landscapes have shown that external spaces were intensively used and a significant part of the space actively portrayed as noble environment. Spatial analysis has been key in identifying spaces of control, privacy, and household interaction within the castle structure. One of the limitations of spatial analysis in castle studies is the failure to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Connell. Rachel Brody. Andrew Bair. Lena Murphy. Valerie Watson.

An overview of project design and preliminary results from two field seasons of research aimed at expanding our understanding of settlement in later medieval Ireland. The field school program run by Foothill College at Ballintober Castle in Co. Roscommon has made remarkable progress 1) identifying possible phases of Anglo-Norman and subsequent Gaelic Irish castle construction and occupation, 2) utilizing different geophysical techniques to find a Deserted Village associated with the castle,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Neudorf. Nicole Smith. Dana Lepofsky. Ginevra Toniello. Olav Lian.

Rock-walled archaeological features are notoriously hard to date, largely because of the absence of organic material for radiocarbon dating. This study demonstrates the efficacy of dating clam garden walls using optical dating, and uses optical ages to determine how sedimentation rates in the intertidal zone are affected by their construction. Clam gardens are rock-walled, intertidal terraces that were constructed and maintained by coastal First Nation peoples to increase bivalve habitat and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Duncan. Peter E. Siegel. John G. Jones. Nicholas Dunning. Deborah M. Pearsall.

One of the defining characteristics of humans is our propensity to migrate. However, the push or pull factors resulting in human migrations may be impossible to know in some cases. Furthermore, our sole reliance on the archaeological record may mislead our understanding of the timing and impact of migrations. Recognizing migrations in the archaeological past is made especially difficult in cases where migrating groups were small, leaving ephemeral traces of their occupations. Paleoenvironmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Triozzi. Anna Semon. Thomas Blaber.

This poster considers social networks derived from artifact assemblages and interment types from early-Irene and late-Irene and protohistoric mortuary contexts on the Georgia (USA) coast. Network analysis can be used to evaluate potential interactions between community members represented in mortuary contexts. The R statistical program is used to model social networks according to multiple parameters and generate statistical indices of network connectivity. I propose that these indices are a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Woolard. Briana Pobiner.

Evidence for hominin meat acquisition in the form of butchery marks on fossil animal bones dates back to at least 2.6 million years ago. With this new dietary behavior came competition between hominins and large carnivores for animal carcasses. Identifying which carnivores hominins were interacting with would allow various models of the timing and sequence of hominin and carnivore carcass to be evaluated. However, many studies of carnivore tooth marking and damage patterns are conducted with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanora Reber. Mark Rees. Samuel Huey.

Absorbed organic pottery analysis is a technically easy but interpretively difficult branch of archaeometry. Given the complex interaction between organic chemistry, pot use, pyrolytic effects, depositional effects, and modern contamination, it is often difficult to balance interpretations between appropriately cautious and culturally and anthropologically useful information. This issue is illustrated through the analysis and interpretation of a suite of absorbed organic pottery residues...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tobías García Vilchis. Emiliano Gallaga.

The Raramuri, an indigenous people from Chihuahua, Mexico, has occupied the western part of the country for over 1000 years. As many authors claim, their ways of life have changed little, and they remain as one of the only, if not the only, living seminomadic groups existing in North America. In this paper, we will focus on recent ethnoarchaeological research carried out by students and professors of the EAHNM. This research allows us to create an explanatory model to comprehend the nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

In the municipality of Tonalá, Chiapas, Cerro Bernal represents a unique feature on the Pacific coastal plain—one that is both strategic and of economic importance as well as representing a deeply potent sacred landscape. Among the important features of this landscape that have become the focus of cotemporary folklore are a series of caves, or more specifically rock shelters, that have entered the imagination of local residents as important elements of a living and enchanted landscape. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer McCrackan. Eric Weaver.

The El Malpais National Monument located roughly 100 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, borders the southern part of the San Juan Basin and the southeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau. The extensive geologic history of volcanic activity has created a seemingly hellish volcanic field rightfully named "the badlands" by Spanish explorers. However, the region is in fact home to a rich cultural history that heavily utilizes the natural environment, including its many cave systems. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Del Roble Rios Ortega.

In this paper I present the historic and archaeological records, of social gatherings that formed an integral part of the mining way of life and the material culture that represents it. The study is focused on the town of Magistral del Oro, Durango in northern Mexico. This region was forged by mining activity in colonial times. Though the village today has been largely abandoned, traces of both labor and domestic areas still remain. Furthermore, photographs and interviews with people who worked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Rivera.

In an era of globalization and mass production, archaeological objects and images are not immune to being transformed into commodities and sold for profit. This (re)production of the past can profoundly influence the ways that consumers understand the history of particular times and places—often erasing the experiences of marginality and resilience that archaeologists work so hard to recover. This paper examines two distinct cases in which historical images (and periods) are being transformed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry Lyon. Jeffrey Jones.

The transition from hunting and gathering to increased reliance on farming and the subsequent development of distinct regional cultural traditions represent critical processes in the prehistory of southern Arizona. Previous research at the site of Valencia Vieja in the southern Tucson Basin suggests the development of a distinct Hohokam cultural identity began during the Tortolita phase (Red Ware horizon) when significant population aggregation could be maintained and supported with dependable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maya Cowan. Vanessa Tallarico.

The goal of our research was to analyze the correlation between decomposition, and damage to memorial structures around the Emanu-el Jewish Cemetery in Victoria B.C. We hypothesized that some concrete fill damage was due to casket decay after the fill was placed, causing it to sink or crack. We used damaged double plots with a single fill as evidence, because the side of the older burial had time to settle before the fill was poured over both plots. We found that damage was almost always on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Chang. April Nowell.

Binary models of gender are often uncritically applied in paleoanthropology, even if the biological sex or gender identity of a specimen or representation is ambiguous. In the Upper Paleolithic, indicators ranging from simple bifurcating lines to overt representations of secondary sex characteristics may be used to identify an illustration, engraving, or piece of portable art as "male" or "female." These taxonomic rubrics are rarely stated explicitly. Still, the impression given by an overview...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Louise Stone.

On top of Caral Peru’s amphitheater mound, an entry passageway opens to an inner sanctum—tiered benches surrounding a sunken floor and a central ceremonial hearth. This concentric design recessed into the earth repeats in diverse ways throughout third millennium BCE Kotosh Religious Tradition temples in the central Andes. Whence the concentric sunken design and hearth? I propose the hearth functioned as Andean portals for communication with unseen worlds, giving offerings, remembering ancestors....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Annereau-Fulbert.

Compared to its Guatemala counterpart, the region of the Chiapas highlands is known to have a marginal history in the Postclassic period. This misrepresentation is due to limited investigations since the 1960´s and to inexistent ethnohistoric sources, which could provide clues for the interpretation of ethnic and settlement patterns on the eve of the Conquest. However, Spanish documents described "cacicazgos" as Chamula and Zinacantan near Jobel Valley, which is the focal point of our study....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Dolan. Colin Grier.

The Marpole Period (2500 to 1000 BP) was a time of social transformation in the Salish Sea region of the Northwest Coast of North America. During this period, social and economic relations became increasingly bound up in the operation of centralized, long-lived, multifamily households. Yet, centralization arguably failed to extend far past plankhouse walls, producing regionally decentralized economic communities. This paper examines the processes underlying this pattern from the vantage point of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Ljungkvist.

The Valsgärde burial ground is one of key sites for the Viking phenomenon project. This burial site was used for more than 1000 years. It is the best preserved and the only "entirely" excavated boat grave site in Sweden. Here we can follow the changing burial rites and interactions with the world during the 1st Millennia AD. Valsgärde has been seen as a place where an unbroken series of male elite individuals were buried for nearly eight centuries. However, detailed studies of all burials, both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Wilson.

The Washington Mounds site is an Early to Middle Caddo period (A.D. 800-1300) mound site with 11 mounds, some of which contain burials; two village areas are associated with the site surrounding the mounds. It is located in southwest Arkansas between the Red River and Little Missouri River Basins. Some level of ritual activity occurred at the site, but the types or scale was previously unknown. Two excavations have been done at the site: first in the early 20th century by M. R. Harrington, and a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt O'Mansky. Arthur Demarest.

Recent popular interpretations have proposed that the "Terminal Classic" in the southern lowlands was a gradual transition or slow multi-stage process or that many ninth and tenth century centers continued to prosper; or even have proposed a "What collapse?" scenario. Yet systematic site by site review of ceramic chronologies and evidence reveals that these characterizations and, indeed, the whole debate are poorly informed due to errors in ceramic typologies and limited understandings of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Paling. Hannah Dutton. Justin Lowry.

This paper discusses patterns of production and distribution of pottery recovered from the site of Chiquilistagua through the use of X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD) and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) compositional data. Dominant types found in the Chiquilistagua assemblage include Usulatan, Espinoza, Segovia, Chavez Astorga, and Nejapa Roja. Occupational episodes at Chiquilistagua extend across the Tempisque and Bagaces ceramic spheres, which have been associated with widespread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirk Costion. Donna Nash.

This poster will present the results of the analysis of household ceramic assemblages from the slopes of the secondary Wari center Cerro Mejía in the Moquegua Valley. The slopes of Cerro Mejía are divided into distinct domestic neighborhoods by fieldstone walls. Based on differences between these neighborhoods observed during excavations it has been hypothesized that this site was a multiethnic community similar to Inca mitmaqkuna with local inhabitants from throughout the region and possibly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Gorman. Kevin Vaughn. Michiel Zegarra Zegarra.

This paper investigates negotiations of power on the south coast of Peru through ceramic attribute analysis. The ceramic sample comes from the site of Cerro Tortolita, which contains both ceremonial and habitation zones. This site’s emergence in the upper Ica Valley during the 3rd century AD coincided with a broader increase in local settlement hierarchy. The timing of Cerro Tortolita’s rise and its religious nature provide a unique opportunity to isolate and investigate the relationship between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krystal Britt.

As is true today, migration throughout the past had a phenomenal impact on communities through the renegotiation of cultural practices, community and social identity. Using LA-ICP-MS I investigate community formation through shared ceramic production practices in Northern Arizona during the Pueblo III period (1125-1275 C.E.). This paper introduces the preliminary results of ceramic compositional analysis from contemporaneous sites in the middle Little Colorado River valley. During short-term...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabelle Druc. Roberto Pimentel Nita. Maciej Kalaska. Rafal Siuda. Marcin Syczewski.

The paste analysis of the ceramics found in the Castillo de Huarmey, a Middle Horizon Wari political center on the north coast of Peru brought forth the existence of a variety of production areas and a panorama of multiple producers with different agendas or practices. Much of the ceramics appear to have been made with material available in the Huarmey lower valley, coastal area, and probably the adjacent Culebras Valley. The fine painted Wari ceramics and fine reduced impressed wares present a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Linford.

Tracing complicated social links such as kinship through the material record has fallen in and out of favor in anthropological discourse. The ceramic sociologists of the 1960s and 1970s (Hill 1966; Longacre 1970) focused on tracking kinship through spatial patterning of ceramic designs among Pueblo sites in the American Southwest. The concept of ceramic sociology sparked many critiques within archaeology (Allen and Richardson 1971). These critiques were tied to a need for better understanding of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Braun.

The patterned deposition of certain objects, often in association with materials or structures that are seen to have symbolic associations, is an act of memorialization seen in many Neolithic and broadly shamanic societies throughout the world. This paper uses petrographic and contextual data to explore how objects manufactured with certain material qualities may have served as symbolic referents to memories related to Ontario Iroquoian ritual and social practices, both at the object level, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Lozada Mendieta.

The Átures Rapids in the Middle Orinoco region are mentioned in the historical sources as a key trading center linking the Western Llanos of the Orinoco and the Guyana, where people, goods and ideas were exchanged. A recent study in Picure Island, located in the rapids, present a variety of ceramic temper wares, beads and quartz crystals associated in stratigraphically excavated contexts. The ceramic sherds recovered in Picure are closely related to other archaeological sites in the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson. Lorena Paiz Aragón.

Located at the headwaters of the Usumacinta and the confluence of the Salinas and Pasión Rivers, Altar de Sacrificios is uniquely positioned with strategic access to points far beyond its sandy shores. Despite the geopolitical importance of this site, Altar has not featured prominently in recent narratives about the political history of Classic Maya society. After more than fifty years, a new phase of archaeological investigations seeks to bring Altar out of the shadows and reevaluate this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonia Foias. Jeanette Castellanos. Kitty Emery.

Motul de San Jose entered its Golden Age during the Late Classic. It was located at a critical crossroads in the Central Peten Lakes region, sitting between the east-west San Pedro Martir River that connected it to the Western Peten kingdoms all the way to Yaxchilan, and a north-south route that tied it with Tikal in the north and Dos Pilas and the other Petexbatun centers in the south. The political alliances between Motul and these kingdoms were materialized through the gifting of Ik’ Style...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Moriarty. Ron Bishop. Matthew Moriarty. Antonia Foias.

Over the past 15 years, Late Classic ceramics from Motul de San José and surrounding sites in the Central Petén Lakes area have been subjected to a variety of technical analyses. Modal and petrographic analyses of ceramics from sites throughout the Motul area have been used to explore intra-polity patterns of production and exchange for both elite and mundane vessels. At the same time, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) has been conducted on sherds from Motul to define production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron. Liliana Padilla. Christopher Martinez. Arielle Pierson.

The Guatemalan archaeological site of La Florida, located on the San Pedro River near the Mexican border, was home to the Classic Maya polity known as Namaan. Hieroglyphic inscriptions from La Florida and elsewhere reveal the polity’s widespread political contacts with sites in western Peten, Tabasco, and beyond, as well as a dynastic history spanning three centuries. While known to archaeologists since 1943, the site has only recently been the subject of a multi-year research project. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Cercone. Kristin Donner.

During the Early Bronze Age at Seyitömer Höyük, ceramics began to be standardized in their shape and size through the use of a mould-making process. Evidence from the archaeological record suggests that this innovative technique was incorporated at the site due to the increase in trade and demand for ceramics from other settlements in Anatolia, from nearby Küllüoba to faraway Troy. The early use of a mould-making process established Seyitömer Höyük’s pivotal role as a ceramic hub and trading...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Jensen. Mark Golitko.

This project explores the provenience of ceramics found at the Bronze Age Békés 103 cemetery. By answering the question of where these ceramics came from, it is possible to hypothesize which Bronze Age communities used the cemetery. To do this, clays were collected throughout Eastern Hungary for chemical analysis. Clay is often found along river banks, but many modern rivers may have been polluted. Instead, paleo-meanders of modern rivers were chosen as collection sites; these were identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Castillo.

Rice is the most important crop in Southeast Asia today. The evidence is that rice was equally important in Southeast Asia’s past. From the Neolithic period to the Middle Ages, rice has been discussed as food, a ritual item, a farming system, a culinary tradition, a tradable commodity and the basis of power. However, was it always the staple crop in Southeast Asia? The archaeobotanical studies conducted in Central Thailand by Weber revealed that in some instances and places, millet was more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giacomo Gaggio. Paul Goldstein.

The consumption of psychotropic substances is a ceremonial practice widespread worldwide since antiquity, however, archaeological evidence for the role of plants in rituals is scarce and interpretations are mostly derived from ethnographies and iconography. Among other methods of analysis, Paleoethnobotany is one of the most indicated for the finding of micro and macro remains involved in ceremonies. This paper presents the results of a Paleoethnobotanical analysis conducted at the site of Omo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Forsythe.

Intentional breakage of artifacts proliferates throughout the archaeological record in Eastern North America. Using the case of a Middle Archaic site (ca. 5000-4500 B.P.) from Ontario, this paper seeks to examine and compare the strategies for purposely damaging artifacts, with focus placed on gaining insight into motivations for breakage. Through the refitting of artifact fragments it is possible to identify when breakage was intentional and implemented for purposes beyond subsistence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Gamble.

Shellmounds have not been recognized as prominent ritual features in southern California, despite evidence to the contrary. The largest extant shellmound in the region is on Santa Cruz Island, measures 270 by 210 meters (roughly 45,000 m² in area), is 8 m higher than the terrace it rests on, is covered with 50 house depressions, and dates to 6000-2500 BP. In the 1920s, three cemeteries were excavated at the top of El Montón; one young woman stood out among the over 200 individuals in that she...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francesca Fernandini.

The year AD. 600 seems to be an important turning point in the settlement pattern of the lower Cañete valley. While settlements prior to this date tend to be small sized and located close to the river margin, the period after AD 600 shows settlements tend to be placed a few kilometers away from the river margin. The largest of these is Cerro de Oro, a 150ha densely populated settlement located on top of a mound, 13km away from the river margin. The construction and use of Cerro de Oro seems to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

El valle de Maltrata, enclavado en la Sierra Madre Oriental, al centro-oeste del estado de Veracruz, ha tenido una remota y continua ocupación humana, que data desde la época prehispánica hasta nuestros días. Este valle es importante por formar parte de una de las principales rutas de comunicación y comercio entre la Costa del Golfo y el Altiplano Central, con evidencias olmecas, zapotecas, teotihuacanas, cholultecas, aztecas. El asentamiento del periodo Posclásico, ocupó principalmente la parte...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Youri Van Den Hurk.

Zooarchaeology aims to reconstruct the relationship between humans and animals based on the bone remains of these animals. However the field is often primarily concerned with (domesticated) terrestrial mammals, frequently neglecting cetaceans. This can be ascribed to the fact that zooarchaeological cetacean remains are often too fragmented for identification and a general lack of extensive cetacean reference collections for comparison, resulting in poor understanding of early human-cetacean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Sanchez.

Indigenous whale hunting on the Pacific Northwest Coast is predominately associated with whaling cultures north of Oregon in northern Washington and British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. Ethnographic and ethno-historical records from the northern Oregon Coast suggests whaling occurred locally, at least opportunistically. To date the only physical evidence of local whaling is a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalanx with an embedded elk (Cervus elaphus) bone harpoon point. A calibrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Van Dyke.

Two dozen monumental buildings lie at the heart of Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Southwest United States. However, ancient Chaco Canyon was not a single locality but a focal point for outlier settlements spanning a region of 60,000 square miles. The canyon-outlier relationship is key to understanding the Chacoan polity. Residents of canyon and outlier settlements within a dialectical relationship gathered periodically to share resources, marriage partners, and ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Cronin. Anna Guengerich. Parker VanValkenburgh.

Here we present preliminary results from targeted prospection and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight over the relic agricultural landscapes of the Tambillo Valley in northeastern Peru. This work was carried out as part of the first phase of Proyecto Arqueológico Tambillo (PATA), a project investigating the organization of political landscapes in the montane forest region of Chachapoyas. Specifically, PATA aims to determine whether the densely-clustered Late Intermediate Period settlements...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Marsden. Andrew Martindale.

Archaeologists have referenced the oral record throughout the history of their research in Tsimshian territory. In this paper we frame our recent collaboration against this legacy and argue that that a symmetrical relationship is a necessary foundation for any conjunction between these complex datasets. Our collaboration recognizes the common history they represent, but also their different logical frameworks and empirical scope. In our context, the oral record was more complete, detailed, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramesh Shrestha. Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz.

The Olmec polity of Tres Zapotes, which developed on the southern gulf lowlands of the present day state of Veracruz in Mexico, is nestled between the Papaloapan river delta and the Tuxla Mountains. Topographic, geological, ecological and cultural context of the region presents unique challenges and opportunities to archeological prospecting using airborne lidar mapping due to extensive cultivation of sugar cane which can hinder the capability of the lidar to map the ground beneath it; cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert L. Kelly. Erick Robinson.

The use of large radiocarbon datasets has the potential to transform archaeology and its place in the social and natural sciences in the coming decades. Radiocarbon ‘big data’ enhances the unique contribution of archaeology to reconstruct human demography over vast spans of time. This move towards big data is confronted by some central challenges in archaeological method and theory, such as the use of legacy data of disparate quality and working over broad spatial and temporal scales. For some,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Palma Malaga. Krzysztof Makowski.

The archeological study of human burials presents many special challenges. Deterioration begins or accelerates with the exposure to new environmental conditions after recovery. In many cases, the context has to be analyzed in situ by bioanthropologists to record information before the removal of the materials to the laboratory and storage area. Continuous participation of bioarchaeologists is also vital for subsequent analysis of the funerary context many months or years after the end of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Powless.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to excavate a couple of large sites in California, working on behalf of a developer to keep their project in compliance with their permit. In conjunction, I also worked with the local tribe to resolve their burial issues with each excavation. During these two excavations, I have had to opportunity to observe the challenges that the tribe encountered when dealing with fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects where burial retrieval...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Harkins. Laura Weyrich. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

The trypanosomatid parasites are responsible for devastating human disease worldwide. In the Americas, Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas Disease (CD), the most epidemic zoonosis in Latin America today. The clinical manifestations of CD, however, have been recognized in archaeological human remains from South America as early as 9,000 years ago. We present preliminary results of a project that applies paleogenomic methods, including targeted enrichment and next-generation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Richards.

The 1987 Wisconsin Burial Site Preservation Statute (WisStats 157.70) serves as the basis for the protection of all burial sites in the State of Wisconsin and assures that all human burial sites be accorded equal treatment under the law regardless of age or affiliation. Recently, challenges to the law have taken the form of an introduced bill (LBR 2890 – eventually withdrawn), and the convening of a Wisconsin Legislative Study Committee of the Preservation of Burial Sites. This committee is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Roth.

Changes in household organization were a major catalyst for social change in the Mimbres River Valley of southwestern New Mexico across the transition from pithouses to pueblos. This paper summarizes recent work at a large Pithouse period village, the Harris Site, and the Elk Ridge site, a large Classic period (AD 1000-1150) pueblo that is illuminating the relationship between households, community integration, and social change. Work at the Harris Site has documented the important role that...