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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Cesario.

In both past and present, pastoralism has been an integral part of life in Iceland. In fact, status is generally defined by how many cattle one can keep; however, wild resources are abundant in Iceland and are also used to supplement the diet. For much of Iceland’s history, wild resource use and access was heavily regulated through formal laws and social contracts that often favored elite landowners. Using case studies from Skagafjörður, North Iceland, this paper will explore the use of wild...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Chiykowski.

Around 1200 AD, Trinchereños (members of the Trincheras Tradition of the Sonoran Desert) covered the hillside of Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora, Mexico in over 900 terraces. After such extensive investment in shaping and laying out space within the site, they then proceeded to live in relatively ephemeral domestic structures on the hillside. This paper addresses the apparent contradiction of impermanent houses on robust platforms by examining how Trinchereños built, maintained and managed space...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dean.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation focuses on Southern Utah University's forays into community-engaged archaeology through public-private partnerships and collaborative work with federal and state agencies and nonprofit groups in the Colorado Plateau region. Southern Utah University is a small, public, regional, undergraduate institution with many first-generation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jakob Sedig.

Recent advances in ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis have helped to shed new light on long-standing archaeological questions. Researchers can now study how elites and commoners may have been genetically related, the genetic heritage of the first migrants to a particular area, how ancient populations are related to modern groups, and more. While such revelations have been of critical importance to archaeology, results from recent analyses have implicated that ancient DNA analyses can also be applied to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Cullen.

Applications of elementally-sensitive geochemical methods have made it possible for archaeologists to identify chert sources with more provenance accuracy than previously possible. Alibates dolomite from quarries in the Texas Panhandle is commonly identified in Southwest sites as evidence for trade with Southern Plains communities. However, regional archaeological research suggests the presence of an Alibates "look-alike" chert outcrop in northeastern New Mexico, near the Baldy Hill formation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Griffin.

Following the discovery of gold and growing reports of trouble in eastern Oregon, the US Military established a series of four forts to protect settlers and miners flocking to this part of the state and to insure continued use of local military roads. One of these forts, Camp Warner, served as the primary military fort in the Warner Valley from 1866 to 1874. Camp Warner actually consisted of two separate fort locations; old Camp Warner in use from 1866-1867, and new Camp Warner in use from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Dunnavant.

In 1896 Emperor Menelik II of Abyssinia engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of his military campaigns, attempting to unseat King Tona of Wolaita. After two weeks of fighting, King Tona was captured and the royal court devastated. The last palace of the Wolaita Kingdom stood in Dalbo just 10 kilometers northeast of the current city of Soddo. While the general location of King Tona’s palace is known, contesting narratives situate the exact location at different sites. This paper reports on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Beekman. Verenice Yunuen Heredia Espinoza.

The site of Los Guachimontones was occupied from the late Middle Formative to the end of the Postclassic period. It had a bimodal history of occupation, with the first peak corresponding to the Late Formative period (100 B.C. – A.D. 200) and the second to the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1400-1600). It had an estimated population of 4000-6000 people in the Late Formative, when most of the public architecture was constructed. This makes it a very modest settlement in comparison to other Mesoamerican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Axel Nielsen. José Berenguer. Gonzalo Pimentel.

"Inter-nodal archaeology" contributes to research on social processes through the study of the areas between nodes, i.e., places where human activities tend to cluster (sites or densely settled areas, depending on the scale). By focusing on the material traces directly generated by people’s movement, this approach holds great potential for addressing questions regarding who travelled across regions and why. These possibilities are illustrated through research conducted in three inter-nodal areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Sherwood. Jan Simek. Alan Cressler.

This presentation reports on a new rock art site from Kentucky, brought to the authors' attention by local citizens. Inside a large sandstone rockshelter, more than a dozen black pictographs show several anthropomorphic characters. These images bear distinctive features and regalia associated with the "Redhorn Cycle" hero narrative reported by Paul Radin in 1948 from his ethnographic work among the Ho-Chunk. The rock art from this "Morning House" strongly resembles well-known Mississippian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aline Magnoni. Travis Stanton. Vania Carillo Bosch. Cesar Torres Ochoa. Tanya Cariño Anaya.

Due to the proximity, contemporaneity, and some architectural and ceramic similarities with Chichén Itzá and Yaxuna, Ikil provides an important opportunity to understand the political and socioeconomic integration present in the Late-Terminal Classic in the region southwest of Chichén Itzá, as the seat of regional power was transferred from Yaxuná to Chichen Itzá. The Proyecto de Interacción Pólitica del Centro de Yucatán (PIPCY) has been investigating the site of Ikil since 2008. Ikil was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renee Collins. Rafael Guerra.

Located directly across the Belize River from Barton Ramie, the recently discovered site of Lower Dover has been the focus of intensive research by the BVAR Project since 2011. The major foci of these investigations are to determine the relationship between Lower Dover, Blackman Eddy and Baking Pot, and to ascertain the development of the site within the sociopolitical landscape of the Belize River Valley region. In an effort to address the latter research questions, excavations have focused...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley. Tony Quach.

Yokuts ethnography indicates that pictograph sites passed from father to son to grandson within shamanic lineages, suggesting episodic painting at these locations. This practice is archaeologically supported by motif superimpositions and minor stylistic differences at sites. An in-situ pXRF study of red motifs was conducted at site CA-TUL-2871, Springville, CA, in the hopes of analytically distinguishing painting episodes, based on the assumption that chemically dissimilar pigments may have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kerchusky.

Early in the Middle Horizon (c. AD 650-1000), the Wari Empire expanded from its Ayacucho homeland and established at least three colonies (Pacheco, Pataraya, and Inkawasi) in the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) on the South Coast of Peru. Concomitant with the Wari presence local settlement patterns underwent dramatic reorganization. Large portions of the population shifted from the Nasca and Taruga Valleys south to the Las Trancas Valley – away from and perhaps in contention with the Wari. A new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Wylde.

The goal of this paper is to elucidate the social role of the dog in ancient Peru as an artifact, a physical manifestation of culture, produced by humans, through archaeological and iconographic interpretation. The large numbers of dogs available for study are a neglected archaeological resource, and one that can provide a wide variety of information on human life and cultures in ancient Peru. Through the examination of archaeological dog remains and dog iconography from differing temporal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Dalton. Nathaly Damián Domínguez.

When the Spanish arrived to the coast of Peru they heard stories of the wealthy Chincha Kingdom and the privileged position that they enjoyed within the Inca Empire. Previous archaeological and ethnohistorical research has concluded that at the Chincha Kingdom’s capital of La Centinela, the Inca rulers set up their authority alongside the local lord, and that they left him in charge of ruling the rest of the valley. This poster will present recent research conducted at the site of Las Huacas, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edines Pebe. Bryan Núñez Aparcana.

The Qhapaq Ñan or Great Inca Road was declared World Heritage by UNESCO in June 2014. The section of the road located between Pachacamac Sanctuary and the Inca administrative center of Hatun Xauxa (central highlands of Peru), is one of the most important, and one of the segments considered for the UNESCO declaration. Within this portion, the stretch from Canturillas to Nieve-Nieve is located near to the modern town of Nieve Nieve in a desert area, right where the Andes start raising, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Chirinos Ogata.

The Condebamba valley, covering the southern part of the Cajamarca-Huamachuco road, constituted the privileged scenario of the interaction among local groups and foreign empires. Several surveys along this part of the Inca road have established the cultural sequence in the region and the main features of its settlements. One of these sites, Ichabamba, exhibits stone walls in a rectangular layout, with two narrow subdivisions framing a large central space. Due to its architectural features,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only TzeHuey Chiou-Peng. Jianfeng Cui.

This work discusses results from current studies and issues on the production and use of early Yunnan metals, as well as possible interaction between western Yunnan sites and their counterparts in surrounding regions. Archaeological materials from recent excavations at western Yunnan sites witness the earliest signs of copper-base metallurgy in Yunnan dating around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC; they offer illuminating data for studying the step-by-step development of metallurgy in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Godin.

Alternative, subcultural, or otherwise non-mainstream forms of heritage are increasingly being recognized, both in the social imaginary and in the discipline. Such moments provide archaeologists with opportunities for actively working towards a more inclusive and diversified heritage practice. Specifically, my work explores the potential of urban art walking tours and workshops in the borough of Kreuzberg (Berlin, Germany) from a contemporary archaeological standpoint. As tour guides present...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dee Malcuit.

When considering how to incorporate sex/gender and sexuality studies into college curricula, the question is: Where to start? In this paper, I argue that college and university programs should include content on the social construction of sex/gender and sexuality within general education courses. I will predominately focus on my work with Ohio community college students as a case study that has broader implications for general education outcomes. Pairing courses such as Sociology and Archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. J. Sinensky. Kellam Throgmorton.

The Western Puerco Region of East-Central Arizona contains a staggering diversity of architecture and material culture eluding to complex mobility practices that varied across time and space. Although archaeologists in the US Southwest/NW Mexico have explored the sociocultural and ecological underpinnings that influenced household mobility, and have identified numerous lines of evidence that indicate increasingly mobile or sedentary habitation strategies, archaeologists have not developed robust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Badillo Sánchez.

En el contexto de la ultima época de la guerra de castas. El gobierno de Porfirio Diaz manda a construir un sistema de fuertes en la zona centro oriental del estado de Yucatán, con el objetivo de tomar el control del territorio que por más de cuarenta años había estado dominado por los mayas "rebeldes". Excavaciones realizadas, así como recorridos en la zona revelan la planeación, ubicación y arquitectura de puestos militares, los cuales sugieren por una parte la estrategia del gobierno para...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cobb. James Legg.

Broadly speaking, iron and copper-alloy objects of Spanish origin in southeastern North America seem to fall into three categories that variably dominate from one site to another: 1) essentially unaltered; 2) trade goods modified by Europeans to conform to Native American demand; 3) assemblages that consist of both categories 1 and 2, but were re-worked by Native Americans. This diversity was a complex product of the convergence of structure, agency, and serendipity. The timing and nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johan Garcia.

During the entire colonial period, the South-Central region of Michoacán, Mexico was the main producer of copper in New Spain and one of the most important loci of production in the whole Spanish empire. Copper was a fundamental material for artillery, coinage and silver extraction, not to mention its importance in the manufacture of all sorts of daily life items. However, Spanish colonizers had an almost complete lack of copper extraction knowledge. On the other hand, the region had a natural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Magnani.

Archaeologists rely heavily on experimentation to understand the past. Today, we are not the only ones. Indigenous peoples and members of the public are consulting ethnographic and archaeological museum collections, by trial and error investigating techniques of object production. Many of these individuals work with craft specialists, and others are craftspeople themselves. They seek to learn, remember, and reclaim lost or fading skills in an attempt to connect with their pasts. The process...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paulette Steeves.

Indigenous Archaeology has been described as archaeology with, for, and by Indigenous people. The differences between with and for, and by Indigenous people are critical to Indigenous people and society in general. Research framed in Indigenous method and theory is built within frames of respect, relationality, and reciprocity, it is praxis that weaves through institutional and public spaces to create social change. Such social change addresses the past real world consequences of colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Smit.

The mercury mines of Huancavelica have often been described through two familiar discourses in the colonial narrative, the European pursuit of wealth through extractive industries, and the simultaneous destruction of indigenous Andean communities through brutal forced labor and the corrosive effects of the colonial market. While these two historiographical traditions contain a great deal of truth, they can minimize the role of indigenous Andeans in the creation of new economic networks that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisheva Charm. Severin Fowles.

As the horse spread across the American Southwest on the heels of Spanish colonial project, Native American ways of moving were abruptly transformed. This was particularly the case for the many indigenous peoples from the Plains and Rocky Mountains who used equestrianism to build new regional economies based on wide-ranging nomadism. Along with these new ways of moving came a new emphasis on particular sorts of archaeological sites—notably, on the "way station" as a point on the landscape that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brock Wiederick. Fernando J. Astudillo.

From 1880 to 1917 "El Progreso" plantation operated on the humid highlands of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos archipelago (Ecuador). The plantation enterprise used steam-powered machinery for sugar refining and alcohol distillation. Despite its remote location, 1000 km west from the South American coast, this large operation took advantage of the latest industrial technology. A number of specialized machines were used in sugar processing which were imported from factories in Scotland and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson. Stephanie Leroy. Enrique Vega. Quan Hua. Philippe Dillmann.

Intensive surveys around Phnom Dek, the ‘Iron Mountain’, in central Cambodia have revealed the presence of a massive iron production landscape dating between the 9th and 20th centuries. Using a combination of site morphology, spatial distribution, field pXRF analysis and in-slag radiocarbon datin,g this paper attempts to reconstruct these industrial-scale iron smelting practices with particular emphasis on the Angkorian period (9th to 13th c.). The results will inform on the localized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Clarke. Franco Rossi. Boris Beltran. William Saturno.

This paper explores questions of inequality and gender in the Classic Maya world by examining the spatial relationships between and within local sites of craft activity. Pulling from recent archaeological work at the Classic period site of Xultun, Guatemala, we present research on two contexts that were connected to the production and use of limestone and lime plaster. In presenting this work, we discuss the broader social implications of these spaces as they relate to class and gender through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walker.

Raised fields and other earthworks, as parts of archaeological landscapes, can be theorized through Ingold’s related concepts of taskscape and lines. In the Bolivian Amazon, such earthworks are the physical remains of group or community activities in the precolumbian past. As such, they are both the products of community tasks, and infrastructure, or resources that in turn afford other community tasks. In conjunction with archaeological survey and excavation, mapping of raised fields and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Schwartz.

What can intersectionality offer to a study of an all-male antebellum dormitory? While this approach has typically been used to identify and combat race- and gender-based discrimination, this paper argues that intersectional theory can also illuminate subtle class- and age-based inequalities among historic individuals of the same gender and race. Archaeological investigation of Graham Hall, a combined dormitory/classroom space/chapel located on the campus of Washington and Lee University in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dragan Filipovich.

Hirth 1998 proposed identifying archeologically the operation of mar- kets in ancient societies by looking at the distribution patterns of selected objects across households of different types. This paper revisits criti- cally this so called `distributional approach' and argues that it essentially amounts to a (failed) attempt at `estimating' a (say, Classic Maya) market demand from archeologically recovered consumption data. Such an un- dertaking, besides facing considerable identification...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ke Hu. Weilin Wang.

Yangguanzhai is located in Xi’an, Shaanxi, at the confluence of the Jing and Wei Rivers. There is an evidence that during the Holocene, the area experienced two major hydrological changes: first, in the middle Holocene, the Jing and Wei Rivers experienced a long period of elevated water levels; and second, over the course of the Holocene, the Wei River moved north while the Jing River moved south. This research used a stratigraphic analysis and GIS to reconstruct the change of the river courses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Schoeninger. Corinna Most. James Moore. Andrew Somerville.

The stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (δ13C, δ15N, and δ18O values) in animal tissues show promise as environmental indicators. We evaluated the use of chimpanzee hair and leporid (jackrabbit and cottontail) bones. Chimpanzee hair δ13C values correlate negatively with mean annual precipitation (MAP) as expected based on isotope variation in C3 plants, whereas δ15N values do not because of diet selectivity. Leporid bone δ13C values do not correlate with MAP because of leporid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Peregrine.

Several years ago Steve Lekson and I proposed a Postclassic Oikoumene stretching from Mesoamerica through the Southwest and into midcontinental North America. A frequent question has been how such a "known world" could have been created in the absence of long-distance trade and transportation systems. In this paper I explore how information was exchanged among the peoples of midcontinental North America in the late prehistoric and early historic periods. I examine how hunters and gatherers serve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Carmody. Ryan Hunt. Jera Davis. Natalie Prodanovich. Jon Russ.

Pipes, pipe-smoked plants, and the tradition of smoking in the Eastern Woodlands of North America have long interested anthropologists and archaeologists because these artifacts and activities are viewed as material correlates of ritual, ceremonial, and religious activities. While pipes are regularly recovered from archaeological sites, the remains of plants materials that were smoked are far more difficult to recover. Traditionally, the identification of pipe-smoked plants, such as tobacco,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Des Lauriers.

While providing a general outline of several initial settlement strategies pursued across the Americas, I argue that social networks between the small-scale communities involved would be established rapidly upon arrival. Certainly, the events of initial contact and process of network formation would have occurred within a sub-generational time-frame. The flow of material goods, genes, and information between members of the small-scale pioneering communities is essential to the survival of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Zwyns. Damien Flas. Aurora Allshouse. Johua Noyer. Kevin Smith.

In the broadest sense, the term Initial Upper Paleolithic refers to archaeological assemblages that, without being necessarily ‘transitional’, combine retained Middle Paleolithic and derived Upper Paleolithic features. Here, we present an assemblage that documents such a phenomenon at the site of Tolbor 16, northern Mongolia. Although we suggest that the layer 7b can be assigned to the northeast Asian variant of the IUP, a detailed analysis and the use of a narrow definition highlights some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catalina Mas Florit. Miguel Ángel Cau Ontiveros.

The Balearic Islands lie in a strategic position within the Western part of the Mediterranean and played an important role in the trade routes crossing the Mare Nostrum. Therefore, connectivity of the island by sea has always been considered. However, inland connectivity has not been addressed in detail probably due to the lack of information on communication routes. The paper explores the inland connectivity of sites in the late antique landscape based in a combination of spatial analysis and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Nowlin.

Greater trade and connectivity has often been associated with changes in cultural practice. This is particularly the case for the Orientalizing period for which the traditional view holds that objects, ideas and practices from the eastern Mediterranean exerted tremendous influence on local Italian communities during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. This paper articulates the subtle differences between the presence of imported objects, changes in material culture, and alterations in cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Woodfill.

Salinas de los Nueve Cerros is the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. For over two millennia, Nueve Cerros’ residents produced massive quantities of salt that was commercialized throughout the western Maya world. Unlike the Caribbean saltworks, the salt here was contained within a large urban zone. The saltworks used a variety of techniques to make the finished product, boiling brine and leaching salt-laden soils as in Paynes Creek but also scraping the salt flats. Each of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Luque-Talaván.

Every process of discovery, conquest and colonization, regardless of its magnitude and historical implications, entails a transformation in those societies in which it takes place. The Philippines, as it had already happened to other parts of the world before, was no exception. The conquest of the Philippines Islands by the Spanish Monarchy supposed the transformation of a very important part of the indigenous population of the islands. In this occasion we studied the biological conquest of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Blomster.

The Early Formative period exhibits dramatic transformations in imagery and identity throughout Mesoamerica. Focusing on a time period before techniques for mold made and mass produced objects had been achieved, this paper explores replications that involved copies, iterations, and emulations of designs and imagery. At select sites in Mesoamerica, objects have been documented with Olmec-style imagery, some of which have been linked to the Gulf Coast Olmec society; in most cases, the Olmec...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Billinger. John W. Ives.

In earlier research, we used Promontory moccasins dimensions to chart predictable relationships concerning moccasin length, foot length, stature and age. A high proportion (83%) of the discarded moccasins in the Promontory caves came from children and subadults. While a discard bias concerning adults males (more likely to discard moccasins outside of domestic contexts) must be acknowledged, the predominance of children and subadults suggested the presence of a growing population, consistent with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Christian Wells. Christopher K. Waters. Georgia L. Fox.

Multi-elemental geochemical prospection of soils and sediments has become a highly useful technique for understanding past activity areas and the behaviors that produced them. However, this technique has limited interpretive potential, because it can only identify possible locations of different classes of activities. More importantly, there has been little research to evaluate the processes and elemental loadings that characterize different types of spaces. By studying known contexts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Callaghan. Daniel Pierce. William Gilstrap.

The archaeological site of Holtun is an intermediate sized Maya civic-ceremonial center with documented occupation from the Middle Preclassic through Terminal Classic periods (800 BC – AD 900) featuring well-preserved cultural deposits in multiple contexts. Previously, NAA was conducted on an assemblage from the Middle Preclassic ceramics in which four discrete compositional groups were identified. One such group in particular was composed almost exclusively of Mars Orange Paste Ware, a product...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Marengo.

The North Acropolis of Yaxuna was the primary focus of ritual and administrative life at the site during the Classic period and functioned as a focal point for involving the local population in integrative activities. Yet architectural evidence suggests that this architectural complex changed in function over the course of its use. The acropolis was first built in the Late Formative and was modified up until the Late Postclassic. We argue that the changes we see in the architecture in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Robinson.

Archaeobotanical results are integrated with archaeological and paleoecological data for the southern proto-Jê of the southern Brazilian highlands. Results from a domestic structure displays a pattern of architectural termination and renewal that not only uncovers an ancient ritual practice, but also reveals practices of plant management when considered alongside paleoecological data. Within the wider context, the data support a change in the performance of ritual practices revolving around fire...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Graves. Joseph Birkmann. Kekuewa Kikiloi.

Where landscapes have been modified by recent development, identifying surface archaeological features requires a different analytical approach. In windward Kohala, Hawai‘i Island, after more than 150 years of land conversion to commercial agriculture features that comprised traditional Hawaiian irrigation agriculture have been mostly obscured. To address this, several sources of information were collected including historic documents and maps, previous and recent archaeological surveys, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Steele. Naomi L. Martisius. Tamara Dogandžic. Michel Lenoir. Shannon P. McPherron.

New excavations at the late Middle Paleolithic site of Abri Peyrony (also Haut de Combe-Capelle) in France yielded rich lithic and faunal assemblages, as well as pieces of manganese dioxide, bone tools, and much needed information about the site’s formation and antiquity. The site preserved only Mousterian material, which derives from three main layers of sediments. The site is best known for its Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA) assemblages, and Level L-3A can be attributed to the MTA....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Lagle.

The interpretation of Middle Paleolithic archaeological assemblages has been the subject of spirited debates among researchers of Neandertal behavior for over half a century. While these debates have classically centered on analyses of lithic assemblages (e.g., the "Bordes-Binford debate"), it is important to recognize the value of incorporating the associated faunal records in our approach to these questions. Differences in lithic assemblages may be affected by factors like mobility, which may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Fisher.

Many Maya centers owe their longevity to the long-term persistence of their households, which were integrated as continuous social units throughout multiple generations. Yet how did the integration of the multigenerational Maya household first emerge? I address this question through the lens of the early farming village of Tzacauil, Yucatán, Mexico. In the Late Formative period (250 BC – AD 250)—the era in which Tzacauil was occupied and abandoned—people in the Maya area began using stone to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius. Anna S. Cohen. Christopher T. Fisher.

Remote sensing techniques have enhanced studies of ancient urbanism particularly because they have improved the speed of data collection and our abilities to identify the extent of urban sites. Data derived from airborne laser scanning such as LiDAR have been rapidly incorporated to study settlement patterns in order to accelerate the survey process, but also to produce innovative and higher quality data. In this paper, we discuss the use of LiDAR and traditional pedestrian survey data at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randolph Donahue. Adrian Evans. Antony Dickson. Anne Clarke. Fraser Brown.

We present the results of an integrated study of lithic microwear analysis and lithic sourcing at the large Mesolithic site of Stainton West. Microwear analysis helped to understand why the site was so large and how the occupants supported themselves while at the site. Microwear analysis of 700 artefacts led to 49% identification of use. There is much diversity in tool use: hide working, butchery (meat/fish), impact, antler/bone working, wood working, and plant working. Various patterns were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Parkinson. Apostolos Sarris. Rebecca Seifried. Nikos Papadopoulos. Cristina Manzetti.

As part of a long-term project aimed at modeling the emergence of large, nucleated, Neolithic villages in the Carpathian Basin, the Körös Regional Archaeological Project (KRAP) collaborated with the Institute of Mediterranean Studies at the Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas (IMS-FORTH), to integrate multi-spectral satellite imagery and ground-based remote sensing techniques to reconstruct the spatial organization of the Szeghalom-Kovácshalom settlement, which covered more than 100...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Haas.

This paper presents a method to delineate discrete temporal occupations at open-air multicomponent sites by integrating site formation processes, spatial analysis, and local statistics. Open-air multi-component sites, formed on stable surfaces but lacking strong vertical integrity, pose many challenges for the delineation and interpretation of temporally discrete occupations. Such sites often lack vertical stratigraphy, so defining the horizontal spatial structure of components represents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy De Smet.

North American archaeologists are increasing using multiple near-surface geophysical techniques at archaeological sites to locate features of interest. Examining different physical properties in the subsurface has greatly improved archaeological interpretations; however, these data are often examined in a subjective site specific fashion (notable exceptions are the pioneering work of Kvamme and Ernenwein). This research seeks to quantitatively integrate magnetic gradiometry, frequency-domain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashleigh Thompson. Anna Jansson.

What is the value of a large surface collection? Surface finds are often dismissed by archaeologists as having little or no integrity. Our work uses data from 24GL304 (The Billy Big Spring Site) to speak to two different types of value for a surface collection: one being its archaeological integrity and the other the value placed on these artifacts by their descendant community. During modern times, the area around our study site has been used as rangeland, which has resulted in animal trampling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Bettencourt.

There is a long history of comparative empirical studies of settlement sizes in relation to evidence relating to nature and scope of built environments and human socioeconomic activities. However, only recently have consistent theories of settlements been developed that yield specific predictions that can be tested against archeological evidence. In this paper, I present a brief intellectual history of these ideas to show how they incorporate concepts from various disciplines with an emphasis on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Dobrez.

The approach of this paper is ecological, taking account of affordances for communication available to bodies interacting with environments. My focus is on the minimal affordance meanings of marks which, while ultimately lending themselves to symbolic use, have the capacity to disclose our real-world situatedness in unambiguous and immediate ways. I argue that the place to begin an inquiry into graphing is with human and animal traces in the landscape and the manner in which these have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Wohlgemuth. Maria C. Bruno.

Three decades of California paleoethnobotany have shown that Chenopodium is the most common small seed found in central California archaeological sites. Chenopodium is concentrated in sedentary residential communities in lowland areas, where historical population densities rivaled or exceeded those found elsewhere in the world. The most intensive use known for Chenopodium is from wetland areas of the Sacramento and Santa Clara valleys. Despite thousands of years as the pre-eminent small-seeded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Martinez. Alexandra Greenwald. Jelmer Eerkens. Alex de Voogt. Vincent Francigny.

We examine inter- and intra-individual variation in diet among high-status individuals from an agro-pastoralist Meroitic burial population interred on Sai Island in modern Sudan. We use stable isotope data (δ13C and δ15N) from dentinal collagen, extracted from serial micro-sections of third molars, to reconstruct the diet of 10 individuals. We employ MixSIAR, a hierarchical Bayesian model for estimating isotopic mixing, along with a previously constructed isotopic food-web to reconstruct human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sue Ann McCarty.

Inter-site motif variability is understudied in a systematic way to understand the complicated design vocabularies, paint colors, textures and vessel forms of ceramics from the Halaf cultural horizon (5,900-5,350 Cal. B.C.E./5,200-4,500 uncal. B.C.E.), a culture-historical entity in the Late Pottery Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia (southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq). Together, these motifs create an almost music-like multidimensional symphony of pattern including naturalistic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Moore.

Accounts by 16th- and 17th-century explorers, missionaries, and government officials clearly illustrate the considerable amount of variability in indigenous cultures, ethnicities, and traditions found throughout the Southeast at contact. Beginning in the mid-17th century, many of these formerly dispersed groups began to coalesce around mission communities in modern Georgia and Florida. The historical narrative of the contraction and eventual destruction of the Spanish mission system in Florida...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Gasco. Yahaira Nunez Cortes.

Xoconochco is located along a well-travelled transportation route that links what is today Central and parts of Southern Mexico with Central America. The region has had cultural and economic ties with its neighbors to the north and to the south for millennia, a pattern that continued into the Late Postclassic period. In this paper we examine the nature of Xoconochco’s involvement in Mesoamerican exchange systems in the Late Postclassic period. We know that Xoconochco’s forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Geoffrey Braswell. Francisco Belli-Estrada.

Least cost analysis of prehistoric nodes of interaction in the Kaqchikel Guatemalan highlands and Pacific Coast indicates the locations of viable travel routes. Several classes of data, such as sculpture, obsidian and ceramics, indicate that there was communication and economic exchange in the Kaqchikel Maya area in the central highlands and Cotzumalguapan Piedmont during the Late Classic Period (600-830 A.D.). Today people walk between neighboring towns on foot paths and roads designed for cars...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin M. Smith. Mikael Fauvelle.

People in California have interacted with groups near and far for thousands of years. Here we take a big picture approach by looking at how interactions between people across time and space affect the histories of adjunct regions. In this paper, we first establish connections between people in California to the Northwest, Southwest, Mexico, and afar to demonstrate the scale of meaningful interactions. Second, by considering wide-ranging and long-term interactions, we better explain the agency...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhen Qin. Tristram Kidder. Haiwang Liu.

Over the last 10,000 years, agriculture has gradually been intensified, and become the globally dominant way of subsistence. However, the relationships between agricultural intensification and environmental evolution are not fully clarified. Deeper understanding of the issue may be gained through research at Sanyangzhuang, a rural settlement site in present Henan Province in central China. Many agriculture features, such as ridge-and-furrow fields, have been recovered in three strata....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Gill. Natalia Donner. Irene Torreggiani. Antonio Barragán Montero. Alexander Geurds.

Excavations at the site of San Gabino took place in 2015 under the auspices of Proyecto Arqueológico Centro de Nicaragua (PACEN), directed by Dr. Alexander Geurds. Discovered during a systematic surface survey of the Mayales River subbasin, north of the town of Juigalpa, the site was selected for stratigraphic excavation due to the chronological significance of its surface finds, in particular colonial-period glazed ware pottery. Colonial wares proved absent elsewhere during the survey, making...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pestle. Christina Torres-Rouff. Francisco Gallardo Ibanez. Gloria Andrea Cabello.

Today the modern village of Quillagua, an oasis in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, is of limited regional economic importance. However, there is strong evidence to support the argument that, in the past, the village was a node of ancient routes linking the populations of the Pampa, the Pacific Coast, the River Loa, and the Salar of Atacama. Documents from the 18th century suggest that Quillagua was, in fact, an "internal frontier" between populations residing to the north and south of the oasis....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucille Harris.

The Middle Fraser Canyon of south-central British Columbia is well-known for the large Late Prehistoric aggregated pithouse villages that line the terraces of the region’s major rivers and tributaries. These villages represent a dynamic period in the history of Northern Interior Salish societies. Our understanding of the cultural dynamics underlying the formation and breakup of these large villages has been limited by reliance on theories that are rooted in uniquely Western concepts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Yanire Martínez Ceceña.

Mexico is a country with a cultural heritage that has given him a unique identity. We have a wealth of collections ranging from the paleontological and archaeological, to the historical and ethnographic. These collections require a control that will allow both federal institutions and individuals to be aware of what they have under their care, as it is one of the serious problems they face today. One of the main objectives of this brief presentation will be: To give an insight into the control...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sihong Zhu.

There are various opinions about this kneeling archer which was unearthed in Pit No.2 at Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum known as the "Figure with Green Facial Expression". This paper holds a view that it should be called the "Figure with Cyan Facial Expression"; and combined with the ideological and cultural backgrounds and perception of colors, so to express the humanity and politics of Chinese color theory under the influence of Yin-Yang and Five-element thoughts. Seen from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brady.

A good deal of academic attention has been focused on the iconographic analysis of Maya painted ceramics, principally from the Late Classic Period and to a lesser extent from the Early Classic. The tradition, however, begins in the first century A.D. during the protoclassic ceramic stage. Virtually no analysis has been undertaken on these earliest Maya artistic expressions probably because the motifs are largely geometric and figural representations are rare. I compiled a motif inventory from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinthia M. Campos. José Luis Punzo-Diaz.

The Cueva de la Huachizca is a tectonic cave formed within a basaltic flow in the municipio of Salvador Escalante just south of Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacán. The cave was initially recorded in 2014 by Dr. Jose Luis Punzo-Diaz as part of Proyecto Arqueología y Paisaje del Area Centro Sur de Michoacán (PAPACSM). An investigation of the cave conducted this summer recorded pecked petroglyphs of a man facing an eagle, above a spiral motif. These motifs resemble those from contact period Codice de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanna Monaco-Schlater. Lawrence Conyers. Sean McConnel. Andrew Bair.

Ground-penetrating radar is often used as a way to collect from reflections from buried features, which are then processed into colorized horizontal amplitude maps to visualize these features in the horizontal plane. While this is a good way find and visualized features in "batch mode" there are other less commonly employed methods to process the data. The Castles in Communities project in Ballintubber, Ireland project has collected GPR data sets from multiple years to produce standard GPR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Devio.

Paleoethnobotany is a subfield of archaeology that requires an extensive knowledge of archaeology and botany. Because highly specialized skills are required, presenting data can be difficult. Botanical data must be conveyed in a way that is understood by fellow archaeologists while adhering to standards of botanists. Conveying this information becomes even more difficult when we begin to combine micro and macro botanical methods. Botanical datasets can contribute to a wide range of topics that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Clark.

The status of pregnancy loss as taboo in Western culture, as well as the poor preservation of fetal remains, contributes to the absence of pregnancy loss from the anthropological study of funerary practices. Furthermore, pregnancy loss is rarely viewed by society as a legitimate cause for bereavement and perhaps consequently, has been overlooked in the archaeological record. Additionally, grief associated with a miscarriage or stillbirth is often described as a novel phenomenon, while parental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liza Gijanto.

Archaeology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland began looking for the former homestead of West Ashcom in the Spring of 2012. West Ashcom was established on the south bank of the Patuxent River in what is now St. Mary’s County, MD by John Ashcom in 1651. At its height in the early 18th century it contained a manor house, kitchen, dairy, orchard, port, haberdashery, and various other barns and dependencies. Using traditional sources such as archives and methods like pedestrian surveys and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Franziska Fecher. Markus Reindel. Peter Fux.

In 2016, archaeological investigations were carried out in Guadalupe, an extended prehispanic settlement near Trujillo, on the Northeast Coast of Honduras. The site was inhabited during the Postclassic period (Cocal) and might have functioned as a coastal trading center. This is indicated by its strategic location near the coast and next to an ancient river bed connecting the coast to the hinterland, especially to the Valle de Aguán, a culturally and economically important, but hitherto poorly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Dupuy.

This presentation focuses on analytical techniques for evaluating cloth and fiber characteristics imprinted on ceramic vessels, and how reconstructing textile industries contribute a social reading of Eurasian prehistory. Inner Asian Bronze Age pastoralists of the 3rd - 1st millennium BC employed textiles to mold clay vessels as shown through woven fiber impressions coating the insides of containers. Although this production technique has preserved an otherwise marginally documented industry of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Farquhar. Joan Schneider. Arlene Rosen. Yadmaa Tserendagva. Michael Heilen.

The Cultural Heritage Program at Ikh Nart Nature Reserve is an on-going project sponsored by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (California State Parks). Over the past seven years, the project has focused on developing methods, strategies, and protocols for the management of the rich archaeological landscapes within the reserve. During this period, the project has recorded and assessed over 140 archaeological sites documenting more than 9000 years of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Hodge.

I suggest that it is worth pursuing an archaeology of white male privilege through the contextual study of white privileged males. Among many outcomes, this project can de-naturalize "maleness" and "whiteness" as nomothetic and unmarked—thereby advantaged—social categories and reveal systematized advantage/oppression. Historical gendering was a nuanced process. Masculinity had multiple practiced and experienced forms. They persisted even within a tightly controlled environment, such as colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

Intersectional feminist theory was introduced in the 1980s as an African-American critique of structural feminist theories that universalized white middle-class women’s experiences of patriarchy. Language shifted from interactions to intersections of gender systems with an expanding set of social structures, from race to class, ethnicity, religion, etc. These intersections became the basis for research on plural, fluid and multivalent identities. Intersectional feminist theory focuses on gender...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Heath-Stout.

Over the last thirty years, archaeologists studying identity in the past have also examined archaeologists in the present. Feminist archaeologists of the 1990s examined gender inequities among archaeologists using a wide variety of metrics. Since NAGPRA passed in 1991, many have written about the roles of Native Americans and other people of color in archaeological research. Yet there are no studies of how sexism, racism, and heterosexism work together in our field. I will examine patterns of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Lee.

This presentation explores intersectionality in the context of health consumerism in antebellum central Virginia. Health consumerism incorporates the modern sense of patients’ involvement in their own health care decisions and the degree of access enslaved African Americans had to resources that shaped their health and well-being experiences. To emphasize the multilayered nature of health and illness, this analysis engages Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes "three bodies model." The three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Wolin. Yuling He. Zhonghe Liang. Junfeng Guo.

Participation in the near-constant military campaigns of the Late Shang dynasty of China may have constituted an important social role for much of the population. Archaeologists have employed mortuary analysis and a close-reading of contemporaneous oracle bone inscriptions to help elucidate the nature of warfare and its participants. A large-scale bioarchaeological analysis of human skeletal remains could not only provide valuable insight on the relationship between weaponry as grave goods and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolina Agüero.

Los materiales textiles tienen la capacidad de contener información relacionada con situaciones de contacto cultural y el grado de intensidad de éstas. Bajo este principio se estudió en forma sistemática la textilería del sitio Doncellas en el Noroeste Argentino -tanto aquella que se encuentra en el Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti en Buenos Aires, como la porción depositada en el Museo del Pucará en Tilcara- y aquella proveniente de sitios del Salar de Atacama y de la cuenca del Loa,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beatriz Marin-Aguilera.

The role of textile production and consumption in the formation of Early Iron Age states in Mediterranean Europe has been often neglected in favour of other economic activities such as pottery making and distribution, as well as metallurgy. In the Western Mediterranean, connectivity has been mainly addressed through the study of Phoenician and/or Greek pottery in local settlements and viceversa. However, intensive production and consumption of textiles was at the heart of urbanisation throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Singer. Peter Leach. Heather Rockwell. Tiziana Matarazzo. Krista Dotzel.

The Paleoindian occupation at Templeton is reconsidered based on research conducted since the site’s initial study by Dr. Roger Moeller in the late 1970s. This poster describes the intra-site spatial patterning at Templeton gleaned from the 2016 excavations at the site and the reanalysis of the Paleoindian materials recovered by Moeller. Aspects of intra-site spatial patterning ascertained via ground penetrating radar surveys of the landform, lithic microwear analyses, micromorphological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist.

The Tres Zapotes regional systematic survey, conducted from 2014-2016, yielded an obsidian assemblage spanning across the Formative and into a Postclassic occupation. Furthermore, similarities and differences in technology and sources utilized were observed within the RRATZ assemblage, facilitating an examination into the intraregional variation in obsidian artifact production and use. In addition, one unusual artifact type was recovered that may reflect specialized scraping activities and that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Bello.

Introduction to session and opening remarks

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Bello.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation is an introduction to our ninth symposium on “Collaborative and Community Engaged Scholarship (CES)”—an important topic in our profession, encompassing a growing diversity of activities and best practices. Conducting research (and other types of historic preservation endeavors) in effective partnership with a wide spectrum of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah L. Sterling. Sarah K. Campbell. Virginia L. Butler.

Tse-whit-zen, a large ancestral village of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, located on the southern shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Port Angeles, WA, was excavated in 2004 as part of a transportation project. Its location on a protected bay adjacent to open marine habitats, and inland highlands gave site occupants advantages in acquiring terrestrial and marine resources. The site is situated on a series of beaches representing relict shorelines, which generally prograde seaward over time....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Malone. Nicholas Vella. Reuben Grima. Katya Stroud. Anthony Pace.

Islands gave birth to many cultural and economic adaptations in prehistory. After an introduction to the symposium, the paper will focus on the small archipelago of Malta, which demonstrates a particularly resilient trajectory of survival set against environmental and economic limitations, that lasted millennia. Compared with the neighbouring areas (Sicily, Sardinia, Italy) Maltese megalithic "Temple" culture presented an unparalleled c.1500 years of unbroken development, and this paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelly Robles Garcia.

Recientes hallazgos etnohistóricos sobre San Pedro Nexicho, Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, realizados por científicos de la Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú de Oaxaca, abrieron la posibilidad de excavar el asentamiento Clásico-Postclásico-Colonial Temprano, mismo que representa el primer ejemplo de un sitio serrano del que se obtienen datos de contextos controlados. La problemática de destrucción y saqueo a la que se ha enfrentado por generaciones este sitio, nos permitió explorar tumbas en contextos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Briana Doering.

Geospatial analyses on dated sites across central Alaska suggest important subsistence changes occurred in the region between 4000-2000 years ago. A significant shift from a general foraging strategy to a targeted collecting strategy appears to have occurred during this time, and recent investigations at two archaeological sites dating to this period have begun to shed light on the timing and extent of this subsistence shift in a specific region of central Alaska.