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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Nieves Zedeño.

This paper discusses the trajectories and intersections of cooperative practices and ordering strategies among prehistoric communal bison hunters. Utilizing the vast and ancient record of bison hunting in the region and particularly in Montana, the paper specifically focuses on the rise of large-scale bison harvests in the northwestern Plains of North America, and the effect of hunting technology on social cooperation at various scales (kin, band, supra-band). As well, the paper delves on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Jones. Al Schwitalla.

Inter-group cooperation in prehistoric California has traditionally been evaluated via the relative intensity of exchange--tracked archaeologically with shell beads and obsidian. Transported great distances (most commonly via down-the-line exchange) trade items in abundance imply amiable inter-group relations, if not actual cooperation. Violence, on the other hand, as represented in the ethnographic and bio-archaeological records, is generally assumed to represent hostile interactions between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Lemke. John O'Shea.

Forager cooperation can be difficult to detect in archaeological contexts. One approach is to focus on built structures, such as drive lanes or fishing weirs, which required the participation of multiple persons. Yet such features are ephemeral and vulnerable to disturbance and destruction. One way to circumvent these challenges is to target areas with excellent preservation, such as underwater contexts. For example, the cold, fresh water of the Great Lakes preserved 9,000 year old stone built...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

The peripheral location of Copan has always raised questions about the ways in which it related to the core of the Maya world. Clearly Copan was no isolate in the Classic Maya tradition, divorced from developments elsewhere, but what did it continue to draw from the center and what were the mechanisms underlying those contacts? What do we know about the influence of centrally placed polities in this far-flung region, which held a symbolic status in the far east, but could never be a significant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine.

This presentation reassesses the chronology and meaning of the inscription on the hieroglyphic step of the Ante structure at Copan, Honduras. The analysis was made possible by a high-resolution 3D scan of the step produced in 2011. The new interpretation indicates that the city of Copan underwent a re-foundation event upon the accession of its eighth ruler, Wi’ Ohl K’inich. The known contexts of similar statements are discussed along with the implications of several possible translations for our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weston McCool.

Warfare was a significant sociopolitical practice throughout the Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). A salient research topic within broader investigations of conflict is how populations cope with chronic warfare. This article utilizes statistical and GIS-based analyses of architectural features and settlement patterns to reconstruct defensive coping mechanisms among fortified settlements in the Southern Nasca region of Peru. Specifically, this research evaluates how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Grant.

The early residents of the Creole faubourgs have long been recognized as contributors to the development of New Orleans’s unique aesthetic traditions. Indeed many of the city’s most iconic architectural forms and cultural practices were forged in these neighborhoods—semi-peripheral spaces where people from a variety of local and trans-Atlantic backgrounds came together to re/define and embody the meaning of "Creole" in the nineteenth century. But much of the details about the labor that built...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernhard Heeb. Alexandru Szentmiklosi. Rüdiger Krause.

Corneşti-Iarcuri 10 years of research at the largest prehistoric site in Europe The Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, the Muzeul Naţional al Banatului Timişoara and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, have been investigating the archaeology as well as the landscape context of the Late Bronze Age settlement of Iarcuri in the Romanian Banat region with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft for the last 10 years. The site is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Novak.

This paper seeks to expose the "fallacies of synchrony" that often accompany the analysis of human remains. In approaching a cemetery, for example, we all too easily think of the bodies there as a "community," even when they belong to different generations or geographic contexts. This simple point has major implications, especially for the bioarchaeology of urban landscapes. Here, chronologically disparate elements accumulate in vast mélanges, offering innumerable examples of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Moritz. René Vellanoweth.

People have utilized stone tools for food procurement, manufacture of utilitarian and non-utilitarian goods, and self-defense for thousands of years. On the California Channel Islands, both formal (curated) and informal (expedient) stone tools have been observed in the archaeological record. Tule Creek (CA-SNI-25) is a large multi-component site located on an uplifted marine terrace on the north coast of San Nicolas Island, outermost of the California Channel Islands. Humboldt State University...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxwell Forton.

Unraveling the complex relationships that existed between Chaco Canyon and outlier communities is essential to understanding how and why Chaco rose to prominence and the nature of its sociopolitical authority. Key to this debate is evaluating the interactions between Chaco Canyon and the great house communities of the eastern slope of the Chuska Mountains. This region produced substantial quantities of the lithics, ceramics, timber, and food found within Chaco Canyon. The social conditions that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tara Smith.

The formative period dwarf imagery in Mesoamerica offers an exemplary opportunity to further our understanding of the Olmec cosmovision and how their ideology spread throughout the region. This study specifically compares the three monumental sandstone dwarfs at La Venta to the portable dwarfs carved in stone and sculpted from clay found elsewhere within the Olmec exchange network. I discuss the origin of Dwarf imagery within the Olmec artistic style through an analysis of stylistic trends and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Schaeffer.

In the Postclassic Mixtec codices, the integral and integrative themes of place, emergence, and movement converge. Neglected in much of the scholarly literature on the sacred books of the Mixtec, the visual representation of supernatural and historical figures’ emergence and movement from place to place is an integral component of the codical narratives. Emergence and movement are tethered to and integrative with Mixtec portrayals of place, of various kingdoms through a standardized glyphic sign...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estela Martínez.

En antropología, la muerte es considerada un hecho natural universal con expresiones socioculturales fundamentadas en la cosmogonía de cada grupo humano, y es a través de los rituales funerarios que se marca la conexión simbólica entre la vida y la muerte, que se expresa tanto en el plano material-biológico (cadáver y lugar de destino final) como en el espiritual (trascendencias, creencias y escatología); en tanto que, la muerte, como hecho objetivo y como hecho cultural ritualizado, delimita el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Benn.

Recently discovered geoglyphs at two Late Woodland sites in northwestern Iowa take the form of anthropomorphic turtles, bison, thunderers and a "stickman" similar to the petroglyphs at Pipestone Monument in southern Minnesota. Excavations indicate the geoglyphs functioned as cosmograms where vision quests and other life-renewal rituals probably were conducted. The cosmograms and associated evidence for rituals are compared to ethnographic descriptions of Lakota tribal myths to reveal possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Lipe. Laura Ellyson. Kyle Bocinsky. Robin Lyle. Matson R.G..

In the Central Mesa Verde (CMV) area of the Southwest, turkey bones increased markedly relative to those of artiodactyls in sites of the late AD 1100s and 1200s. We present an exploratory model of the proportional contribution of turkeys, artiodactyls, and small mammals to the animal protein component of the diet. Assuming a demand of 5 to 10 g of animal protein/person/day, we estimate that more than half that demand was met by turkeys in the mid-1200s. Both turkeys and humans relied heavily on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Safi.

Peer polity interaction has been suggested as a primary driver of interaction among communities with Chaco-style great houses. Unfortunately, the peer polity model lacks underlying theory and therefore using it to empirically examine the relationships between great house groups is difficult. We propose instead that costly signaling theory is a better framework for evaluating the construction of these monumental structures, the ritual or group level activities associated with their use, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvina Castro. Gustavo Lucero. Valeria Cortegoso. Marsh Eric.

Based on geo-archaeological studies on the Argentine–Chilean border in the southern Andes, a method is proposed for ranking lithic sources based on the quality of the material, cost of accessibility, and location along travel corridors. In the upper Las Taguas river valley (northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina, 5500–3700 masl), 32,622 lithic artifacts from 30 sites were analyzed to study the variation in the use of seven lithic sources between 10,000 and 500 cal BP. We ranked the time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty. Sharisse McCafferty.

Sixteen years of archaeological research along the shore of Lake Cocibolca in Pacific Nicaragua has yielded a wealth of material culture relating to domestic practice and mortuary rituals for the period from AD 500 to 1250. Among these are numerous objects of adornment, such as pendants, beads, and ear ornaments. Additional costume information is found on small ceramic figurines, primarily of females with painted decoration indicating clothing, hairstyle, tattooing, and jewelry. Based on initial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Richards-Rissetto.

Digital Heritage…? A definition could be "the valuing, protection, documentation, and understanding of humanity’s shared heritage through the application of digital tools, media, and digitally-enabled spaces." The take-away—Digital Heritage is a big concept. As scholars and educators making use of digital tools and methods, we face challenges of big data, rapidly changing technology, proprietary vs. open source, and the list goes on. Yet, increasing use of technology necessitates that we teach...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Friesen. Andrew Stewart.

Complex relationships between people and animals define life in the northern past. For Inuit these relationships are manifested in many ways; particularly in practices that are often described as "showing respect" for animals, thus promoting stable relations between animal and human societies. Frustratingly, many of these activities, which are so prominent in the ethnographic record, have few archaeological correlates. Here, we examine one important practice with a relatively high level of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Terlep. Travis Bugg. Erick Laurila. Francis Smiley.

Modern applications in spatial analysis are reinventing the way archaeologists view spatial relationships in the prehistoric Southwest. Building on the extensive research conducted by the Black Mesa Archaeological Project (BMAP), this poster presentation presents new insights into spatial relationships and social dynamics on northern Black Mesa, Arizona using ArcGIS applications, such as viewshed analysis, as well as predictive modeling. Recently conducted pedestrian survey on Peabody Western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Costello.

Small-scale transhumant movements were once quite common in Ireland, and continued in places like Conamara, Donegal and Achill Island up to the late 19th century and early 20th century. Also known by the term ‘booleying’, these practices involved young people, usually girls, bringing dairy cows up to hill pastures for the summer so as to free up land at home for tillage and winter fodder. However, the seasonal landscapes and settlements which they visited have until recently been neglected by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Penfil. Patrick Ryan Williams. Marie Elizabeth Grávalos. Lauren Monz.

This paper presents preliminary analysis and interpretations of a craft production space located within a single residential patio group on the summit of Cerro Baúl, located in the Moquegua Valley of Peru on the Wari- Tiwanaku frontier. Excavations in a patio group located close to a Tiwanaku temple exposed a dense artifact midden which included obsidian points and debitage, shell and lithic beads, burnt ceramics, and bone. Evidence of subfloor offerings, marked by multiple cuy internments in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Menz.

Archaeological considerations of craft production and specialization in the American Southeast has often focused on elaborate prestige goods crafted from exotic materials. Less frequently studied is the potential for specialized production of mundane household goods. Recent research from the Southeast suggests that intensive production of such items was occasionally practiced at the household level among Middle and Late Woodland period (ca. 200 B.C. – A.D. 1000) societies, which generally lacked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelica Costa. Lane Fargher. Richard Blanton. Verenice Heredia Espinoza. John Millhauser.

In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, individuals from diverse regions and social classes deployed facial adornments, such as ear spools and lip plugs, to materialize concepts of identity. Specifically, recent archaeological research at the Late Postclassic (AD 1250 to 1521) city of Tlaxcallan provides new insights into the role of facial adornments in a highly collective society. Tracing material sources reveals the inter-workings of regional and local economic interactions and local sociopolitical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dong Wei. Si Yang.

Trepanation is defined as the intentional removal of a piece of bone from the cranial vault of a living individual without penetration of the underlying soft tissues. In China, practicing trepanation can be traced back to the Neolithic, and it can still be found today in some populations in other parts of the world. Nine skulls with lesions from four Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cemeteries (Yaer from Hami, Goukou from Jinghe, Yanghai from Tulufan, and Choumeigou from Changji) (4000BP–2000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Bishop. Dorie Reents-Budet. Kathryn Sampeck.

Since publication on the compositional analyses of Copan ceramics by Bishop and Beaudry in 2004 several scholars have addressed the manufacture and distribution of cream wares similar to those that are found at Copan. The additional accumulation of data usually results in more insights and better source attributions, but at times the complexities of compositional analysis can mislead interpretation. This paper presents highlights of greatly extended sampling and uses a geochemical perspective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Katz.

The Maya Music Project is dedicated to documenting ancient Maya musical instruments throughout the Maya area. Over the past year and a half the project has been documenting instruments housed in both archaeological laboratories and museums in Guatemala, Belize, and the United States in order to better understand the types of musical instruments that were played by the ancient Maya. At the time of writing this abstract, the project has worked with over 250 musical instruments, and has made 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya.

From roughly 800 BCE, evidence supports the development of a widespread regional interaction sphere centered in the Central Karstic Uplands. This paper discusses specific data regarding the origins of this network and the subsequent integration of the Central Karstic Uplands as an economic force in the Maya lowlands. Scholars have long recognized the strong affiliations among the major cities that comprise this network during the Preclassic. Recently artifacts recovered from sites point to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ceri Ashley.

Mapungubwe’s influence spread deep into the regional hinterland, drawing in far-flung communities, trade networks and people. The traditional picture of a centripetal economy however has been challenged recently by work at these so called peripheries, indicating unexpected levels of autonomy and material wealth. While the place of these newly explored hinterlands need to be re-theorised and their agency acknowledged, there is danger in swinging the interpretive pendulum too far towards a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yvonne Marshall.

This paper seeks to reframe archaeological thinking on what constitutes ‘an object’ and how such objects endure through time. I will consider the changing presence of pots among the Paiwan people of southern Taiwan over the past 2000 years. The Paiwan are understood to have ‘lost their pots’ at least 100 years ago, in the sense that they chose to stop making them. This ‘loss’ is has been presumed to result from Chinese and Japanese colonial interventions during the 19th and 20th centuries. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Webster.

Over the last decade archaeologists have shifted from dramatic accounts of collapse to more nuanced narratives of decline and disruption, resilience and recovery. This shift partly reflects richer archaeological data, and partly fashion. Although Copan has long been a poster-child for the Classic Maya collapse, the history of research there has long prefigured this shift in archaeological perception and contributed importantly to it.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cerezo-Román.

Cremation and related fiery rituals performed by Phoenix and Tucson Basin Hohokam in Southern Arizona and Trincheras Tradition populations in Northern Sonora are examined and contrasted in order to understand different regional spheres of social interactions. These were done by examine biological profiles and posthumous treatments of individuals to better understand who they were and how they were treated at death in the Classic Period (A.D. 1150-1450/1500). These data were compared between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nuno Bicho. João Cascalheira.

One of the main elements in prehistoric research is the study of settlement patterns. In the last five decades, stemming partially from Binford’s research on the topic, the idea of settlement is based on site typology, including the traditional residential and logistic concepts. The latter is certainly marked by the notion of short-term occupation. This concept, used freely by many archaeologists, tends to rely on two main ideas— that of an occupation lasting a short span of time, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Colin Doyle. Nicholas Dunning. Nick Brokaw.

Over the last two decades we have studied agroecosystems in the Programme for Belize (PfB), a valuable and privileged reserve for an exceedingly wide array of research efforts. Aspects of the agroecosystems preserved in the PfB include terraces, wetland fields, aguadas, ecology, and curious wall features under the canopy of this tropical forest with some savannas. We based these studies on excavations along multiple transects across this karst region’s uplands, escarpments, bajos, floodplains,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Foreman.

My CRM career has included positions in both British Columbia and Ontario, two provinces situated on opposite sides of the country. Working for the same consulting firm in both provinces, I have had the opportunity to manage the analysis and curative preparation of large precontact Aboriginal collections. This experience has resulted in the observation of strengths and weaknesses in current British Columbia and Ontario heritage legislation, archaeological permitting regulations, and collections...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert OBoyle. Conrad Fisher. Erich Longie.

Federal Agencies have long been required to consult with Tribal Nations; however, true consultation has been lacking. The table was tilted in favor of local land managers who have been free to make decisions on consultation and resource management, often with little or no insight from the descendant communities; however, that is changing. Coinciding with the rise of Tribal Higher Education, Tribal Nations on the Great Plains have begun to take charge of the consultation process, and change the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Robles Cortés.

The numerous animals placed in the offerings of the Templo Mayor were brought in through tributes, trade, or spoils of war from every corner of the Aztec Empire—from tropical jungles to deserts. Indeed, the largest part of the fauna included in the collection at the Templo Mayor is identified as foreign. Crocodiles are among the exotic animals on display. This presentation explains the process of how these crocodiles were acquired, from their selection, to their hunt or capture, and, later,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shadreck Chirikure.

The legacy collections from Great Zimbabwe (CE1000-1700) emanated from uncontrolled treasure hunting expeditions of the late 19th and early 20th century and the sporadic professional digs conducted at various points throughout the twentieth century. As a result of this colorful history, most materials from the site are scattered in different archives where they are gathering dust with little or no research being performed. This contribution discusses a technological and typological analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Wilkins.

DigVentures was launched in 2012 as a rewards-based crowdfunding platform designed to enable participation in archaeology and citizen science projects. We were formed by a small team of archaeologists, driven to action by what we saw as the three most pressing needs affecting our sector: the necessity for heritage professionals, museums and cultural organizations to reduce dependence on grants and state funding; the development of digitally enabled alternative finance models that diversify...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Gaytán-Caballero. Belem Zúñiga-Arellano. José Luis Villalobos Hiriart.

Tlaltecuhtli monolith was discovered over offering number 125. It was buried in the sixth stage of construction of Tenochtitlan Sacred Precinct during Ahuítzotl government (1486-1502). The offering was composed of biotic elements from Panamic and Caribbean provinces. A microcosm is reflected due the offering disposition, vertical levels represented biota and elements of underworld, terrestrial and aerial stage. The inferior level as underworld, recorded aquatic biota. Crustacean were identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theo Shaheen-McConnell.

The Crystal Creek Water Ditch, located within Whiskeytown National Recreation Area (NRA) west of Redding, California was built between 1852 and 1859 for the purposes of gold mining and conveying water to the nearby Tower House Hotel which was situated along the historic travel corridor between Shasta and Weaverville during the California Gold Rush. The ditch provided water for the hotel gardens, orchards, and for small-scale gold mining along the creeks. The ditch consists of two sections which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only América Martínez.

En esta ponencia se hablará de los sitios arqueológicos establecidos en cuevas conocidos como casas acantilado (cliff dwellings) asociadas a la cultura Casas Grandes, teniendo como punto de referencia la actual Zona Arqueológica Paquimé, la cual tuvo su momento de apogeo entre el año 1060-1340 d C. Este tipo de sitios tienen características muy específicas en cuanto a la formación del contexto arqueológico y todo lo que encontramos en él; es decir, gracias al microambiente que en este se genera,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Popper.

Most of the Chinese who immigrated to the United States in the mid to late 19th century came from a few districts in southern China, an area with a well-developed cuisine. They brought ingredients, cooking equipment, dining implements, and seeds for garden crops to prepare food for daily meals and festivities. However, their culinary traditions were modified by a variety of factors including the absence of some ingredients, the easy availability of Euro-American foods, and restrictions on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Pozza.

Despite almost two centuries of North American prehistoric copper research, intensive archaeological investigations focusing specifically on Oneota copper are less abundant. Building upon previous studies, this project documented and analyzed over 500 Oneota copper artifacts in an effort to assess the production, utilization, and ideological and social significance of this copper materials. The artifacts of this study were recovered from four Oneota sites adjacent to Lake Koshkonong in Jefferson...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Magalhães.

Arqueólogos estão revelando que além de terem domesticado algumas plantas para consumo, como a mandioca, por exemplo, os indígenas teriam agido de modo a cultivar florestas inteiras! Além disso, pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento estão confirmando que a formação de parte das florestas e biodiversidade amazônicas, é produto da seleção cultural de espécies. A consequência disto foi que, muito provavelmente, boa parte das florestas conhecidas como naturais seriam, na verdade, obra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Goddard.

Loss aversion theories contend that people prefer to avoid losses than acquire gains. Further, this tendency increases with object possession and ownership history. Although loss aversion implies a preference for heritage conservation practices, Holtorf (2015) argued that material losses could provide greater heritage gains. This paper asserts that loss aversion tendencies are relative to the referent’s valence perceptions. Positive or negative valence embedded in heritage values will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ahmed Alsherif.

This paper discusses what kind of cultural and historical correlation between Tefinagh inscriptions and rock art in the Tadrart Acacus. The Tuareg alphabet, Tefinagh, is one of ancient African alphabets documented not only in Libya but also Algeria and Tunisia, among other countries. It is traditionally taught by a mother to all her children. This alphabet, which dates back at least to the second half of the first millennium B.C.E, is used by approximately 50 percent of the Tuareg for short...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña. Varinia Matute. Carlos Chiriboga. Francisco Castañeda.

In this paper, we present the results of our preliminary analysis of the application of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) imagery of the archaeological site of El Tintal in northern Guatemala. El Tintal is an extensive site with over 800 known buildings distributed in an area of about 12 square kilometers. From the Preclassic through the Late Classic Periods (ca. 400 B.C. to A.D. 850), the cultural settlement developed in direct association with the natural landscape marked by extensive bajos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nazim Jafri.

Various archaeological sites in the Indian subcontinent namely, Harappa, Kalibangan, Surkotada, Lothal, Daimabad, Bhagwanpura, Navadatoli and Nevasa have been identified as settlements dated to roughly 3000 to 1000 BC. These archaeological sites present evidences of urn burials, which have generally been overlooked in favor of extended burials and cremations, not unlike contemporary funerary practices. In this paper, I examine the distribution pattern of burials and cremations at the above...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Barnard.

The study of the ancient cultural history of northern Ethiopia, modern Tigray, often includes an interpretation of the obvious connections with the Arabian Peninsula, to the east, and the Nile Valley to the west. Less attention is usually given to contacts with the African heartland, to the south, and the relatively arid region between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, usually referred to as the Eastern Desert, to the north. The cultural connections with the latter are reflected in linguistic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessika Akmenkalns.

This paper addresses the effects of long-term contact and colonialism among ancient Egyptian and Nubian communities during the Kerma period (ca. 2500-1500 BC) in northern Sudan. A wide array of theoretical perspectives on culture contact and colonialism has emerged in recent decades, highlighting the diverse range of outcomes that can result from extended periods of interaction and struggles for political control. Such crosscultural interactions may occur in the context of information exchange,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Watson.

Archaeology along the Northeastern coast of the United States has often focused on island and coastal industries, with particular emphasis on shell midden deposits. Subsistence-focused research shows us that seafood played a large role in prehistoric diets, yet these studies rarely focus on the cultural dimensions of these foods. Faunal remains on Martha’s Vineyard show that early residents ate a diverse selection of land and sea animals. Identified bones reveal a broad diet of mammals,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Zavodny. Sarah B. McClure.

Here we present results from a preliminary stable isotope and zooarchaeology study of cattle from the Lika region of northern Croatia. During routine investigation of Bronze and Iron Age faunal assemblages, we identified bones belonging to a small unspecified cattle breed. These same specimens also have unexpected stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures, and are more similar to both domesticated and wild browsers than grazing cattle in other regions. We argue that these adaptations were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Earnshaw.

Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) bearing the scars of First Nation’s resource use are ubiquitous in British Columbia’s old growth forests, yet remain one of the most endangered archaeological site types due to industrial logging. The majority of CMTs are bark strip features with precise spatial, temporal, and harvesting pattern data that, when viewed on a landscape level, have great informative value related to forest use. However, CMT use in archaeological studies has been infrequent, small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Flavia Morello Repetto. Marta Alfonso-Durruty. Marianne Christensen. Luis Borrero. Manuel San Roman Bontes.

The Fueguian archipelago, dominated by three mayor islands, namely Tierra del Fuego, Dawson and Navarino, is located namely at southernmost end of South America and was peopled by hunter-gatherer societies from c. 10.500 BP to the 20th century. Sea coastline areas have evidence of specialized marine adaptation since c. 7.000 BP, including navigation. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic records account for an overlapping network area of three groups: Selk'nam land hunters and Alacalufe or Kawésqar...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter E. Siegel. Renzo Duin. Jimmy Mans.

The Guiana Shield is an island demarcated by the massive river systems of the Orinoco and Amazon and the northeast coastline of South America. Numerous Amerindian groups with distinct identities have occupied the region for thousands of years. In the contexts of maintaining distinct identities and active processes of ethnogenesis, well-established webs of relations and exchange exist across the region. Relations of production and distribution long documented ethnohistorically and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Diez Barroso Repizo.

The first systematic excavations at the archaeological site of "Teteles de Avila Castillo", in the northeastern regional province of Puebla, Mexico, in 2015, resulted in the identification of elements and cultural practices that allow us to locate this settlement in an early chronological period for this region. Additionally we can understand the relationship between the central highlands of Mesoamerica and the northern Gulf of Mexico, previous to the Teotihuacan upswing.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Pluta.

Research at the archaeological site of Yara in southern coastal Peru has revealed at least three separate levels of human occupation in sequence with several large debris flow deposits. In this extremely arid environment these debris flows represent strong El Niño events that were potentially catastrophic to the inhabitants of the region. Evidence for the repeated occupation of the landscape in the face of these episodic hardships provides a window into human responses to the changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein.

The continuum of behaviors associated with war stretches from the act of killing to the profound ideology justifying the act. Thus the study of warfare encompasses a constellation of behaviors ranging from the ideological roots of political solidarity to the physical mechanics of death. Of the many aspects of war, battle represents the union of political and individual motive in a seminal action that often leaves a salient archaeological imprint circumscribed in space and time. However, bias,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrianne Offenbecker. Kyle Waller. Jane Kelley. M. Anne Katzenberg.

One of the significant ongoing debates surrounding Casas Grandes is whether the Medio period florescence of Paquimé arose from in situ developments or external stimuli. Some scholars have attributed Medio period cultural developments to the arrival of immigrants from surrounding regions, including Mesoamerica, west Mexico, and the American Southwest, while others have suggested that Paquimé grew out of the preceding Viejo period. To address this question, we use strontium and oxygen isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubrey Cannon. Andrew Roddick.

Archaeological science has exploded globally in the past several decades, a pattern that is evident in the range and sophistication of scholarship at a variety of Canadian institutions. McMaster University, however, has played, and continues to play, a particularly important role in the development of archaeological science. In this introductory paper, we explore the genealogy and early impact of a number of pioneering scholars at McMaster. We highlight the pivotal role of the Canadian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jianxin Cui. Hong Chang.

The late Longshan culture of north Shaanxi was flouring, while that of the southern Inner Mongolia was declined and migrated to the south. Meanwhile, in Guanzhong Basin, the culture was also declined to the bottom. In this paper, we aimed to know the possible climatic factors drove the occurrence of these culture phenomena. A compile of Holocene climate records related to these three regions were collected and analyzed. The following results can be drawn: after 4.4 Ka BP, the climate of Inner...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Nicholas.

Significant differences exist between Western and Indigenous societies, and their respective knowledge systems, worldviews, modes of explanation, conceptions of time, and nature of material culture. Acknowledging these is essential to making sense of contemporary claims around Indigenous cultural property, especially in museum settings. For many indigenous peoples, cultural property was and is defined and enacted in daily life (objects may be animate), with distinct expectations and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Miller Wolf.

Bioarchaeologists draw data from the detailed study of human remains from archaeological contexts. The information embedded in the skeleton provides a powerful window into prehistory; informing us of past lifeways, health/disease, diet, kinship, migration, and conflict. The intimate relationship between the living and the dead is necessarily imbued with respect and an ethical responsibility to properly handle and curate the remains of those that we study. However, the conservation of skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

Digital imaging and curation are increasingly accessible to and implemented by bioarchaeologists working in both academic and CRM positions. In the field, 3D scanning and LiDAR technology record mortuary contexts quickly and in incredible detail. These techniques make poorly preserved remains available for study that may not survive excavation intact. In a lab setting, photogrammetry and construction of 3D models of skeletal elements shows promise for augmenting and preserving teaching...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanna Prevedorou. Jane Buikstra.

Human skeletal remains constitute perhaps the most sensitive archaeological material, both biologically and socioculturally. Their recovery, preservation, curation, storage, and analysis are complex issues that need to be addressed within any given biocultural context. Given the country’s geography and the long history of human occupation, Greek field archaeology is intense and ongoing, as part of either rescue excavations or academic research projects. Graves, cemeteries, and human skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Ehrhardt.

In North America, contemporary archaeometallurgical approaches to the interpretation of native and copper-base metals go far beyond simply recording the artifacts to probing longstanding and emerging questions related to the multiple and complex role(s) metal working and metals play in the social lives of ancient peoples. Research on the appropriate application of scientific or laboratory-based methodologies whose results augment descriptions and provide robustness to inferences is developing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhao Deyun.

Stone-cist graves are one of the most remarkable local discoveries in the mountains of Southwest China. Research on stone-cist graves has helped our understanding of various aspects of local cultural history, but there are many questions remaining such as chronology, the sequence of cultural developments, past social structures, as well as the origin and distribution of stone-cist graves. This paper introduces both previous advances and remaining challenges for research on this body of material,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Hoggard. Cory Cuthbertson.

In the construction of past hominin behaviour, frameworks emphasise the role of morphological variation within a particular artefact class, as deviations and commonalities in shape exemplify conscious/unconscious decisions by past populations and individuals. For early prehistory this is best illustrated through discussions of shape variance, and its role in understanding cognition and aspects of cultural transmission. In the formal categorisation of handaxe shape variance, within a statistical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rajesh Vasantha. Abhayan GS. Akinori Uesugi. Ajit Kumar. Neha Gupta.

Megalithic studies in Kerala started with the discovery, excavation and publication of burial site at Chattaparamba in Kozhikode district by James Babington in 1819. While a number of archaeological investigations on Megaliths in Kerala have been carried out since then, very few of them document the location, distribution and nature of these monuments. Megalithic burials are highly visible on the landscape and are often subject to excavation, yet, we currently lack an understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Yerka. Joshua Wells. David G. Anderson. Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Eric Kansa.

The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is expanding from its initial proof-of-concept phase, scaling to a truly continental effort. As a linked open data hub for information related to archaeological sites, DINAA interoperates governmental, research, and archival information sets about hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites. Although DINAA links archaeological information at a scale that was not feasible even a decade ago, its greater strengths come from a commitment to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elide Núñez Escaldón.

Not long ago a public register of moveable and immovable goods of Mexican cultural heritage was implemented. This system has been changed and modified to improve it. In general terms, the "Sistema Único de Registro Público de Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicas e Históricas (SURPMZAH)" consists of an identification, description and finally the assignment of an official number to the piece to assist in the recovery of the object if stolen. I believe the system has unsuccessfully transformed and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles P. Egeland. Christopher Nicholson. Kevin Covell. Robert Sanderford. Kristen Welch.

The process of skill accumulation can reveal a great deal about learning, cultural transmission, and the value ascribed by societies to particular tasks or behaviors. Such information is of great interest to Paleolithic archaeologists who are charged with reconstructing these behaviors over vast expanses of space and time. Zooarchaeological remains, and the butchery marks that appear on them, are a potentially rich source of information on skill. Here, we present experimental data on cutmark...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Howard. Caroline Funk. Debra Corbett. Brian Hoffman. Ariel Taivalkoski.

The Rat Islands Research Project (2009-2014) examined pre-contact era Aleut/Unangan archaeological sites on Hawadax and Kiska Islands to test hypotheses about Aleut impacts on and intersections with the environment. The 2003 test excavations at RAT-081 on Hawadax Islands resulted in the recovery of more than 6,000 remarkably well-preserved faunal specimens, which date from 2500 to 250 years ago and include fish, sea mammal, and bird species. The 2104 test excavation at KIS-050 on Kiska Island...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas E. Levy. Neil G. Smith.

Since 1999, UC San Diego Levantine Archaeology Laboratory excavations have been ‘paperless’ with the aim of developing digital data acquisition, curation, and 2D and 3D dissemination tools for archaeological and cultural heritage data. GIS provides the nexus for our data flow because all archaeological data collected in the field has a geospatial footprint. The X, Y and Z coordinates of the archaeological data provides the organizational and visualization principle of the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Diserens.

Why does the threat of loss strike fear into our hearts as heritage professionals and archaeologists? Why do we not understand the loss of cultural practices as part and parcel of being human, and accept that loss is not the opposite of heritage, but in fact and integral part of it? We need to transform the discourse surrounding loss, embracing it as an integral part of culture rather than avoiding it. This paper will demonstrate how such threats impact the decision making processes surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Robb.

This paper will explore the daily experience of space in one of ancient Mesoamerica’s quintessential urban environments, Teotihuacan. We often understand places like Teotihuacan through a consideration of its monumental structures and their relationship to the natural landscape, and emphasize the impact of specific burial events on social memory. Classic examples like the Street of the Dead’s geomantic procession in the heart of the city plan, or the Ciudadela’s stage-set quality, seemingly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Nixon-Darcus.

A morphological investigation of grinding stones recovered from the Northern Ethiopian site of Mezber revealed changes through time that likely were made to increase efficiencies. The need for efficiency may have been due to increasing needs (e.g. larger populations, an increasing reliance on grains in the diet, a desire to reduce grinding times). Through the phases at Mezber the archaeological evidence suggests a change in the quantity of grinding stones. The growing numbers of recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrinka Reinhart.

At the early Bronze Age city of Yanshi Shangcheng (Henan, China), an important aspect of the lifeways of residents was the practice of depositing various sorts of materials underground. Pottery, human and animal bodies, implements, ornaments and other materials were deposited in pits, wells, ditches, and graves. These "depositional practices" resulted in a bounty for future archaeologists. However, deposition has been undertheorized in Chinese archaeology. Depositional features are often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dawson. Alexandria Mitchem. Fabian Toro. Chantel White.

Recent excavations at Molyvoti, a large fourth century B.C. settlement on the northern Aegean coast, have uncovered a residential neighborhood of homes and roadways laid out on a Hippodamian grid system. Thousands of carbonized plant remains have been identified from excavated domestic contexts including house floors, hearths, and abandoned wells. Macrobotanical results indicate that residents’ diets relied heavily on cereals such as barley and free-threshing wheat. Cereal processing activities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Schmidt. Anne Rapp Py-Daniel. Marcos Pereira Magalhães. Helena Lima. Vera Guapindaia.

Short-term, small-scale interactions between humans and the environment may result in profound transformations of that environment over time. Recent archaeological research in Amazonia has revealed the extent that daily practices, such as refuse disposal or cultivation, have modified the soil in the vicinity of ancient and modern settlements. The fertile anthropic soil known as terra preta, formed mainly through the discard of refuse around habitation areas, is an example of how quotidian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omry Barzilai. Israel Hershkovitz. Ofer Marder.

Manot Cave is a unique relict karst cave located in the western Galilee, Israel. The cave was inhabited from the Late Middle Paleolithic through the Early Upper Paleolithic periods until its main entrance collapsed some 30 thousand years ago. The cave consists of an elongated main hall and two side chambers. The topography of the main hall is composed of a long steep talus (ca. 30 m long) inclining from the original entrance of the cave to the center; a leveled area at the lowermost point of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dylan Person.

What is the relationship between culture and the things that humans create? How do our beliefs affect what we make and how do these creations affect us in turn? This issue is investigated through study of horned water serpent iconography, imagery that is both ethnographically and archaeologically documented as ritually significant in the Southwestern United States. This case study focuses on Cottonwood Spring Pueblo, a large aggregated settlement in the Jornada Mogollon culture branch. Salado...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Scharf.

Increasingly, archaeologists are producing larger databases and asking questions about processes that play out at larger scales. To better understand the working of long-term and regional-scale relationships, archaeologists are seeking to compare proxy variables measuring phenomena such as population, climate, and the environment. In this presentation, statistical time series in the time and frequency domains is used on sample datasets to illustrate the benefits of this approach in archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Payson Sheets.

When people entered the temazcal at Cerén and shut the door, they created utter darkness at any time during the day. Their preparations were elaborate, involving obtaining permission from members of Household 2, who had a service relationship in maintaining the structure. They provided pine firewood and water in ollas for creating steam and as well as for ablutions after partaking. Creation of a fire in the domed firebox heated and smoked up the interior; then a plug was removed from the roof to...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Keith Kintigh. Katherine Spielmann. K. Selçuk Candan. Adam Brin. James DeVos. Tiffany Clark. Matthew Peeples.

Addressing archaeology’s most compelling substantive challenges requires synthetic research that exploits the large and rapidly expanding corpus of systematically collected archaeological data. That, in turn, demands an integration procedure that preserves the semantics of the data when combining datasets collected by multiple investigators who employ different systematics in their recording. To that end, we have developed a general procedure that we call query-directed, on-the-fly data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maureen Mahoney. Domonique deBeaubien.

South Florida’s tree island hammocks are islands that were once completely surrounded by water and used as habitation areas from the Archaic period and beyond. Although many islands along the coast can be dated using marine shell, interior tree islands (such as those found on Seminole Tribe of Florida reservation lands) generally lack these artifacts making for a difficult dating strategy. This paper will focus on a comparison of dating material, including shell, pottery, faunal bone, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Darith Ea. Kyle Latinis.

The popular narrative places Koh Ker as a short-lived, unconventionally planned, 10th century Angkorian city carved out of remote jungle following a capital shift under the reign of Jayavarman IV. The capital subsequently returned to Angkor and Koh Ker was swallowed by time and forest. A growing number of researchers find this untenable, seeing Koh Ker as a more sizeable, complex and enduring urban phenomenon based on recent investigations. 2015 excavations in the central urban core yielded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Hamilton.

The traditional approach to the Iron Age (c. 800 cal BC–cal AD 43) has been to construct complex chronologies based on artefact typologies. Historically, radiocarbon dating was eschewed in this period, because it was thought to offer less precision than artefact dating. Such views are becoming increasingly untenable, and recent Iron Age research is showing that typological dating produces sequences that are regularly too late. This paper will draw upon British Iron Age research from across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaohong Wu.

There are many bronze artifacts found from the sites located along the Hexi Corridor. The radiocarbon dates assigned to the archaeological sites do not always represent the time of the bronze artifacts from the sites. The bronze artifacts can't be dated directly. To get the precise dates of bronze artifacts needs to understand the formation of archaeological sites and the archaeological context of the bronze artifacts with pottery and other datable remains. The good samples for radiocarbon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman. Liam Brady. John Bradley. Amanda Kearney.

Working with Yanyuwa elders, we collected seven rock painting samples for radiocarbon dating from Kamadarringabaya rock shelter on Vanderlin Island in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria (Northern Territory). Hand motifs – prints and stencils – dominate the site, covering the shelter walls and roof, and are said by Yanyuwa to be the hands of the Namurlajanyugku spirit beings. In control experiments, negligible levels of humic acid contamination were shown to be present in the unpainted rock;...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Padure.

The present paper is part of a doctoral research project.The project develops and reworks a 1930s sociological exploration,conducted as part of the Sociological School of Bucharest. In this paper I will make a broader framing, at a Romanian macro-level, of the funerary practices conducted within the village of Clopotiva,Transylvania. I intend to use both data from the 1930s research,as well as a new exploratory input gained during my fieldwork, which began in 2012.I will tackle handling of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mather.

Archaeological expressions of bear ceremonialism in Minnesota include: ritual sites with dozens to hundreds of bear skulls, calcined fragments of burned bear paws, effigy earthworks, rock art and portable art. These were created by Siouan and Algonquian speaking peoples, including the Dakota and Ojibwe, who are still resident in the state. Some finds relate to the bear hunt, feast and funeral that are the focus of A. Irving Hallowell’s (1926) concept of bear ceremonialism. Others appear to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

Knowledge of Formative Period Mesoamerican archaeological sites often comes from narrow windows into buried sites. One feature has been a partial exception to this rule: burials. Groups of Formative Period burials, often accompanied by objects, have been recovered in many parts of Mesoamerica. Using models of mortuary treatment that saw burials as reflecting individual identity, burials provided one of the first ways researchers could examine the emergence of stratification within these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Cerquera Benjumea. Hamima Halim.

3D modelling has become an important tool in the distribution and analysis of archaeological data. This technology also has the potential to make archaeological information more widely available to the public. The goal of this project was to develop an interactive 3D environment based on the Békés 103 cemetery in the Körös region of eastern Hungary. This environment allows users to navigate the site in the first person while examining the burial practices of the Bronze Age people who populated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Robertshaw.

Historical research by David Schoenbrun has identified the arrival of a new ruling dynasty in the 16th century as a pivotal moment when instrumental power was decoupled from creative power in Bunyoro. Unlike previous rulers in Bunyoro, the new Bito kings were not healers and spirit-mediums. New state rituals developed both in new places and at pre-existing shrines, as is evident from historical and ethnographic sources. Archaeological investigations at known shrines and other sites, all of which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Nelson.

Archaeological research has traditionally been a top down scientific process of knowledge production with little involvement from the descendant communities whose cultural resources and heritage are under investigation. With the incorporation of feminist, postprocessual, postcolonial, and Indigenous theories in archaeology, the discipline has become more accessible and accountable to publics and communities outside of the specialists who conduct archaeological research. In this presentation, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Marie Weide. Maria C. Bruno. Christine A. Hastorf. Sherilyn Fritz.

As the greater project of this symposium attests, we want to become more aware of the constraints of our historical training and try to not separate culture from nature, or politics from the environment in our study of the past. Towards that end, the authors have been working on understanding water and lake level regimes of the southern Titicaca Basin, to better understand the history of this shallow lake and the people that lived around it from the Formative through the Late Horizon. ...