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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susana Ramirez-Urrea De Swartz.

The Aztatlán Tradition is a widespread cultural and economical system in West and Northwest Mexico from AD 850 to 1300. The Aztatlán iconography is remarkable, not only because it is rich in the variety of images and icons related to the codices, but also because it reflects a concept related to the worldview of the Aztatlán groups (and others in Central Mexico and the Mixteca-Puebla region). Butterfly imagery seems to be part of it. Some of the ceremonial vessels used in rituals or found as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramzi Aly. Christopher Beekman.

How can we as archaeologists best focus our efforts to have a positive impact upon the Precolumbian antiquities market? We will discuss some of the most important restrictions upon law enforcement investigations into antiquities smuggling, by drawing upon case experience. We will discuss how both foreign and American government departments may overestimate law enforcement’s ability to pursue legal action based on a flawed understanding of constitutional law; how antiquities smuggling is of low...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Yanicki.

The Promontory Gray ceramic type is problematic within the narrative of proto-Apacheans at the Promontory Caves: progenitor populations of Subarctic Dene did not make or use pottery. A solution to this dilemma is readily evident in both oral traditions and genetic studies that show large-scale recruitment of women into founding proto-Apachean populations. Ceramics, normally an aspect of women’s craft production, likely arrived with the women who joined them. Early dates for the peak of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kehoe.

Part of the postcolonial movement is recognition of long-distance trade and other interactions in the Americas. As late as mid-twentieth century, anthropology textbooks dichotomized the world between "progressive, dynamic" Western civilizations and "primitive peoples" alleged to remain isolated in small villages. Unilineal cultural evolution constructed by Enlightenment didacts and continued in Western "rise of civilization" histories and textbooks such as Johnson and Earle’s Evolution of Human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Covert.

Shell jewelry at Petrified Forest National Park has been found from Basketmaker II through Pueblo IV. Since there are no local sources of marine shell, it is important to understand how trade routes from the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico directly affected how shell was traded to this region. Shell recovered from archaeological contexts curated in the Petrified Forest National Park collections were typed according to class, genus, and species and were sourced to the Gulf of California...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Crowell. Dana Lepofsky. Daryl Fedje.

For people who rely on the ocean, changes in sea-level can have a profound effect on daily lives, connections to place, and identity. When we study sea-level from a broader or regional scale, we do not require the time and space specificity that is necessary to examine the effect of highly local sea-level change in a particular time and place. Thus, the regional sea-level curves that have been well-refined and developed, may not answer (or allow us) to understand and appreciate what this change...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Von Petzinger.

Geometric signs are found at nearly all Upper Paleolithic rock art sites in Europe. Created between 10,000 and 40,000 BP, the signs are one of the major thematic categories of art from this era, however, they are often not as well-documented as their figurative counterparts. While there are some sites (e.g., Grotte Chauvet) where detailed inventories have been created for all of the imagery, there are many other sites where this has yet to be carried out. The geometric signs have the potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lilia Fernandez Souza. Mario Zimmermann. Socorro Jiménez Álvarez.

In the past as in the present, foodways and cuisine have been expressions of identity and status. Different social strata had different access to natural resources and offer a variety of material expressions related to food, preparation and service, from grinding stones to exquisite art works. In Classic Maya society, some foodstuffs such as cacao, were mentioned and painted in beautiful elite wares, as well as in murals and carvings. At Sihó, Yucatán, archaeological projects developed by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melyssa Huston. Christine Mikeska. Catherine F. West.

Archaeological evidence suggests that domesticated dogs (Canis familiaris) have been in the Kodiak Archipelago of Alaska for at least 7000 years. Despite their lengthy presence, little is known about their relationship with Kodiak’s human inhabitants. Based on both western assumption and the limited ethnohistoric record for this region, it is commonly assumed that people simply kept dogs as pets. However, previous studies of dog remains from the Uyak site on Kodiak Island note the presence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Painter. Jodie O'Gorman.

As a tradition, Oneota encompasses a wide geographic area and several groups, each with their own unique developmental histories. It also encapsulates multiple population movements and other complex social interactions that took place in various areas. Living in a dynamic social setting, different Oneota groups likely negotiated their social landscape in diverse ways. Foodways may have been one way that Oneota peoples either adapted to or set themselves apart from those with which they came in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heilen. Jeffrey Altschul. Friedrich Lueth.

Globally, climate change represents one of the largest impending threats to archaeological research and heritage preservation. Rising sea levels and increased storm intensity will cause inundation and erosion of coastal and island resources across the globe. Climate change impacts will increase in their frequency and severity in the coming decades, resulting in compromised integrity or outright destruction of thousands of heritage resources, many of which may never be identified before they are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Gray. Craig Goralski.

Fueled by the media and uniformed academic advisors, students are flooding into the field of forensics, often with unrealistic expectations of success and future employment. Although careers in forensic anthropology and archaeology are difficult to attain, today’s practitioners have the responsibility to prepare and train the field’s future members. This paper discusses the 2014 field season of the Unidentified Persons Project, a twenty-three student forensic archaeology field school that took...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Marie Mires. Claire Gold.

Forensic archaeology can be a useful tool when searching for "unfound" missing persons. Forensic Archaeology Recovery (FAR, non-profit) has worked on a number of missing persons cases in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Three case studies are presented that highlight FAR’s involvement and assistance in generating new knowledge. The first case study is the search for Maura Murray, a University of Massachusetts student who went missing in 2004. The second case is Melanie Melanson, a fourteen year...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Groen. Nicholas Marquez-Grant. Rob Janaway.

Forensic archaeology is mostly defined as the use of archaeological methods and principles within a legal context. However, such a definition only covers one aspect of forensic archaeology and misses the full potential this discipline has to offer. This paper will focus on the perception of forensic archaeology as practiced in different countries, intergovernmental organisations or NGO’s. It will show that the practice of forensic archaeology differs worldwide as a result of diverse historical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberlee Moran.

In 2004 the first symposium dedicated to forensic archaeology was organized at the Society for American Archaeology’s annual meeting. At that time, forensic archaeology was struggling to be defined within the archaeological community and was mostly non-existent to forensic practitioners in the USA. The events of 9/11, several domestic high profile mass casualty events, missing persons and some homicide investigations began a gradual momentum towards the recognition of archaeology’s use within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Ellwood. Bill Schneck.

Forensic science and archaeology share many similarities in laboratory and field methods that are deeply rooted in geology, chemistry and biology. Questions addressed in forensic science contexts often include item/material identification and provenance, rarity (probative value), comparative examination for sourcing purposes, and accurate scene reconstruction. This paper will examine actual forensic cases and their archaeological analogs in order to demonstrate how current forensic analyses may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanan S. Tobe. Courtney Mower. Anna Dhody. Carolyn Rando. Kimberlee S. Moran.

Forensic biologists utilize the latest DNA technologies to deal with low level, difficult, and degraded samples on a regular basis. In fact, forensic testing is specifically designed and validated to be robust under conditions that would cause most other genetic testing to fail. It is therefore no surprise that forensic genetic techniques can assist museums with research questions regarding their collections. Here we discuss how, using forensic techniques and testing, we were able to analyze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Seidemann. Christine Halling.

Since the inception of the Louisiana Department of Justice’s human remains acquisition program in 2007, two Tibetan kapalas have been recovered from illegal sales. This commodification of human remains constitutes technical violations of the law, but the nature of the remains makes for an awkward fit to the existing laws. The forensic, bioarchaeological, and cultural analysis of these remains are difficult due to their altered nature, leading to problems of disposition. Questions inherent in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Kelker.

Why forgery? "Because," as Willie Sutton once said, referring to why he robbed banks, "that’s where the money is." Forgery is a common problem in the art market with works by contemporary living artists as well as "old masters" having been and, continuing to be, faked. Some segments of the market, specifically pre-Columbian antiquities, are worse than others in the sheer number of forged and faked works being offered for sale in upscale galleries, online, and by independent,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadya Prociuk.

The Iron Age Castro Culture of northwestern Iberia was steeped in the crosscurrents of disparate cultural influences. Linked to areas of temperate Europe by Atlantic trade routes, the Castro Culture was also subject to the encroachments of Mediterranean powers moving through the Iberian Peninsula. These diverse influences manifested in the Castro Culture in a variety of ways, including in methods of personal adornment. The gold and silver torques left by the Castro people are the best example of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Thompson. Alan Morris. Flora Schilt. Andrew Zipkin. Kendra Sirak.

In 1950, J. Desmond Clark led excavations at a Later Stone Age rock shelter at Hora Mountain, a large inselberg overlooking a modern floodplain in the Mzimba District of northern Malawi. At the Hora 1 site, he recovered two human skeletons, one male and one female, along with a rich – but superficially described and undated – cultural sequence. In 2016, our renewed excavations recovered a wealth of lithic, faunal, and other materials such as mollusk shell beads and ochre. Our re-examination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Ramsey Ford.

Coastal Alaska played an important role in U.S. defenses for the Pacific Theater during World War II. Many resources on Kodiak Island have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These include the Kodiak Naval Operations Base, Fort Greely, and Fort Abercrombie which are listed together as a National Historic Landmark. Two other installations within the military command structure on Kodiak Island include Fort Tidball and Fort J.H. Smith. These two installations and the batteries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Martin.

Spatial and temporal patterning of projectile point morphology continues to be a well discussed topic within the Great Basin. However, despite this attention, little progress has been made addressing the functional attributes of projectile points beyond the simple atlatl vs. bow dichotomy. Stratified cave sites offer a unique opportunity to study the relationship between hunting technology and prey choice through the analysis of projectile point characteristics and contemporaneously deposited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pratt.

The archaeological site of Cochasquí, located north of Quito in the Ecuadorean highlands, has long been defined by its massive quadrangular pyramids with extended entry ramps. When Max Uhle arrived on site in 1932 he focused his excavations on the largest of the fifteen known pyramids. Uhle’s work laid the foundations for the interpretations and the chronology of the site, which are still applied today. Archaeologist Udo Oberem conducted the most extensive excavations on site between 1964 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Norwood.

The lack of large plazas at Teotihuacan has led archaeologists to claim that Teotihuacan was a city with very little public open space. There are, however, many smaller assembly areas distributed around the city. The Teotihuacan Mapping Project identified a large number of "plazas" in the city but the criteria were subjective and the data were never analyzed. I have filtered these data by applying a more formal definition of plaza than the initial field criteria used by the Mapping Project....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Olson.

This paper evaluates the previously proposed sequence of transformations in prehistoric social organization in Northeastern Iran (Khorasan) using geospatial analysis of settlement distributions. The proposed sequence begins with agricultural villages during the Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, transitions to craft-producing towns during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, culminates in a process of proto-urbanization and the emergence of state-like structures during the Middle Bronze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Cain.

How can we study political violence in the archaeological record? How does it impact civilian spaces and how can we rethink its consequences for everyday life? This paper argues for the interpretive value of civilian landscapes for the study of violent conflict. The tendency to treat political violence as an event (e.g. the Caste War of Yucatan) in archaeology, rather than a prolonged sociopolitical episode or process, impoverishes our archaeological theorization of violence: violence is forced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estefania Vidal Montero. Francisco Gallardo. Benjamín Ballester. Gonzalo Pimentel. José Blanco.

Social spheres are constituted by population movements. Mobility entails not only the circulation of material goods, but of people, collective imaginary, experiences, flows of information, and knowledge. In this paper, we examine multiple types of movements through the Atacama Desert during the Formative Period (ca. 500 BCE—700 CE). Here, mobility required displacements whose variability included pedestrian travels, the movement of large llama caravans, and the use of sea lion-skin rafts to sail...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Goman. Arthur Joyce. Jessica Hedgepeth Balkin.

We provide a summary of the past ~15 years of paleoecological and paleoenvironmental analysis in the Lower Río Verde Valley. Ten lacustrine, wetland and estuarine sites throughout the valley and coastal zone were selected for sediment coring. The sediments were intensively sampled for a suite of biological and sedimentary analyses chosen to provide insight into changes in local and regional landuse. Our findings indicate initial land clearance and incipient agriculture occurred during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Rosenswig.

Mesoamerica is one of the cradles of civilization where the first kingdoms and states emerged during the latter part of the first millennium BCE. Recent lidar mapping and pedestrian survey documents the extent and internal political structure of the Izapa kingdom from its emergence at 700 BCE through its collapse after 100 BCE. At its peak, a four-tiered political hierarchy maintained internal cohesion and the distribution of large centers around the kingdom’s perimeter established external...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Pollack. Gwynn Henderson.

In many parts of the world, the construction and maintenance of a domestic dwelling is often accompanied by rituals intended to bless the house, appease the ancestors, or please the spirit world. Within the Fort Ancient (A.D. 1000-1750) area of the middle Ohio River Valley, as evidenced at Fox Farm, a large Fort Ancient village in north-central Kentucky, such rituals may take the form of objects (pipes, shell or bone pendants, marginella shell beads, drilled deer toe bones [cup and pin game],...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Romuald Housse.

During the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1450 AD), the upper valleys of Tacna, between Sitajara and Tarata, are known to have been multietnic areas of contacts between coastal and altiplano populations. Our research concerns the fortified settlements, called Pucara, to better understand the cohabitation relationships with different scales: from the study of the fortifications themselves to the territory analysis with the identification of the inhabitants of these fortresses.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Ciolek-Torello. Jeffrey Altschul. John Olsen. Ch. Amartuvshin. B. Gunchinsuren.

Mongolia is well known for its history of nomadic pastoralism and Bronze and Early Iron Age burials and monuments. For a brief period in the 8th and 9th centuries, however, the Uygher and Khitan Khanates built large towns and urban centers. One of these, Bai Balik was established about 758 CE during the northward expansion of the Uyghur Empire, by the Uyghur khagan, Bayanchur Khan as a ceremonial and trading center in the fertile and strategically located Selenge Valley. This well-known site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phillip Ashlock. Dawn Chapman Ashlock.

In a collaborative partnership among the surrounding community, local government, private non-profit groups, and professional organizations, the first archaeological investigations involving Phase III data recovery excavations were conducted at Fort Fremont in advance of the development of a local government sponsored interpretive center. Entrenched in a maritime forest along the Port Royal Sound, Fort Fremont is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and enhances the coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Picard. Alexander Anthony. John Richards.

Much of the historical research on Irish immigrants, particularly women and children, focuses on those who moved to urban areas during the time of the Famine. Less has been written about Irish immigration prior to the famine, particularly to rural areas. The McHugh family immigrated to the United States in 1825, settling in Waupaca County, Wisconsin circa 1849. The McHugh site (47WP0294) was occupied by this family for over a century. Following her husband’s death in 1856, Mary McHugh was left...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Ledin. Hongbin Yue.

Oracle-bone inscriptions and pre-Han texts say little about children, making bioarchaeology the best available method to study childhood during earlier periods. In 2004, extensive excavations were carried out on building foundations in Dasikong Village, a Late Shang (c.1200-1046 BC) lineage neighborhood found on the outskirts of modern-day Anyang, Henan Province, China. This led to a uniquely high recovery of subadult remains as younger subadults are often found in and around foundations. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loa Traxler.

Historical and archaeological data support interpretation of Classic Maya polities as centralized states—strongly integrated organizations with stratified and hierarchical political structures led by rulers wielding coercive power. Yet archaeology is often hard pressed to identify changes instigated by individuals or events, or define watershed moments when particular sites or regions coalesced as states. By the early sixth century CE, the kingdom of Copan had established itself as a dominant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Goodale. Alissa Nauman.

The Slocan Narrows site is a prehistoric pithouse village aggregation on the Slocan River, a tributary of the Upper Columbia River in the interior Pacific Northwest, North America. 14C dating of housepit deposits have revealed a complex occupational history, likely reflecting fluctuating demographic and habitation cycles beginning ca. 3100 cal BP continuing to approximately contact in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Slocan Narrows was occupied through three millennia characterized by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reuven Yeshurun. Melinda Zeder.

Ethological and ecological studies point to the proliferation of small mammalian carnivores, most notably red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in human-modified environments. Foxes prey on human trash and consequently their populations in and around settlements are denser, their survival rate is improved and their foraging territories contract, centering on refuse dumps. This carnivore overabundance leads to a series of effects on the local ecosystems. The foxes’ strong commensal relationship with humans...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Goodwin. Lisa Hodgetts.

Outstanding organic preservation at many Arctic sites gives archaeologists access to large artifactual and faunal assemblages through which to examine human-animal interactions. However, much of the research focused on these interactions conceives them not only in ecological/economic terms, but also examines them at the level of entire communities (e.g. zooarchaeological studies of subsistence) or focuses on the predominantly male realm of hunting. The Arctic ethnographic record reflects a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only P. Gregory Hare. Christian D. Thomas.

Since the late 1990’s, a significant collection of fragile, organic artifacts has been collected from melting alpine ice patches in southern Yukon, Canada. The ice patch study area is in the Athapaskan homeland, and was an area strongly impacted by the White River Ash event, ca. 1200 yBP, which possibly triggered southward migrations of some Athapaskan speakers. This paper will present an overview of the Yukon ice patch project and will include a description of organic hunting artifacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Yellen.

National Science Foundation funding for archaeological research is driven by several factors some internal and others external to NSF. The Foundation is an agency of the federal government and the amount of money authorized for expenditure and strictures on how it is to be allocated is determined by a multifaceted process which involves the Foundation itself, the President and multiple House and Senate congressional committees. Thus for each annual budget appropriation cycle uncertainty is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lambert. Elizabeth Whisenhunt. Spencer Lambert.

Ventilation tunnels were commonly used by the Fremont to circulate air within their subsurface buildings. However, there is evidence that ventilation tunnels at Wolf Village, a Fremont site south of Utah Lake, were used for more than circulating air. Our research will explore possible ritual abandonment practices of the Fremont by analyzing the six ventilation tunnels and their associated artifacts uncovered at Wolf Village. Evidence of ritual abandonment practices can include finding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brady Robbins. Spencer Lambert.

We examine the life history of Fremont worked bone gaming pieces. Fremont gaming pieces have long been interpreted as instruments of gambling due to their similarity to items used historically in Native American gambling practices. During our research we analyzed all of the worked bone gaming pieces from Wolf Village and compared our results with ethnographic accounts of Native American gaming pieces. Our research focuses on two aspects of the Fremont gaming piece life histories which have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paz Núñez-Regueiro. John W. Janusek.

In the context of a pluridisciplinary mission organized by the French government in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia in 1903, archaeological excavations were conducted in the monumental site of Tiahuanaco by the naturalist Georges Courty. During his 3-month stay, he conducted extensive fieldwork in the Akapana mound, the Sunken Temple, the Kalasasaya, and the Chunchukala and Putuni structures. The material corpus unearthed is estimated to consist in over 1400 artifacts, later divided between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

The Mixtec codices depict costumes from Postclassic Oaxaca, including clothing, face paint, hairstyles, footwear, and jewelry. Contextualized in religious, military, and other social rituals, costume played an important role in framing the action as well as representing individuals in a variety of social identities. This paper focuses on styles and patterns of clothing as they were used to characterize gender, status, ethnicity, occupation, and religious and political roles. Specifically, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shaodong Zhai.

Silk Road played an important role in the ancient China and West communication. Dunhuang is located in the most western part of the Hexi Corridor, which is a valley between Qilian Mountain and Beishan Mountain. It connects the countries of the Middle Asia, Europe and Africa in west and the East Asia in East. Beacon ruin is the most important type among the archaeological ruins, and played a key role in protecting the Northwest frontier and the Silk Road accessibility. Among the 182 ruins of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catarina Guzzo Falci. Annelou Van Gijn. Corinne Hofman.

Bodily ornaments are found throughout the Greater Antilles and have been generally regarded as items belonging to high-status individuals. Many studies have focused on their iconographic designs, meaning, and exchange among so-called "Taíno" societies (AD 1200-1500). However, much of the biography of stone and shell ornaments is poorly known, as raw materials, technologies of production, systems of attachment, and modes of deposition have not received comparable attention. This is partially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Scott. Matthew Collins.

Bone is the foundation of the human body. In an archaeological context, the skeleton is the primary piece of evidence with which to explore past peoples and cultures. Because the skeleton adapts and changes over the life course, bone acts as a record-keeper, capturing specific periods of skeletal disturbance that we are able to observe and interpret. While the research potential using skeletal remains seems limitless, the primary challenge is that changes associated with poor health take time to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Norman. Claire Alix. Owen Mason.

The widespread Birnirk culture is considered the source of the Thule and modern Inuit peoples across the arctic, based largely on legacy data from the 1930s to 1960s. Nonetheless, the archaeology of the Birnirk culture is understudied, with a 1970s archaeofaunal study near Barrow framing the culture as ringed seal specialists who depleted local seal populations and were forced to migrate northward. This proposition is called into question by our excavation of two houses in 2016 at Cape Espenberg...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Forest. Grégory Pereira.

Since their discovery in the late XIXth century, the large prehispanic urban settlements located close to the modern town of Zacapu (State of Michoacán, Mexico) have confronted the archaeologists to a great challenge: mapping, and understanding 200 hectares of dense and well preserved urban features founded on the Malpaís of Zacapu (a complex formed by ancient lava flows). Interpreted as premises of the Tarascan State (occupation 1250-1450 AD), these cities constitute an unprecedented regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Sykes. Holly Miller. Karis Baker.

It took millennia, but the European fallow deer (Dama dama) a beautiful cervid species native to the eastern Mediterranean has gradually been transported around the world - its modern distribution ranging from New Zealand to the Caribbean. The translocation of fallow deer was accompanied by a remarkably consistent culture of hunting and emparkment that altered landscape and environment. Using a combination of (zoo)archaeology, isotope analysis and genetic research to reconstruct the timing and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

Butterfly imagery in the Borgia Group shows how these volatiles were classified in Postclassic Central Mexico. They are grouped with birds among the 13 "lords of the day" in the Codex Borgia, and they sometimes seem to be interchangeable with moths, especially in imagery of the Fire God. Another god, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl, is associated with images of "army worms" devouring maize, symbolizing the caterpillar stage of a moth that distributes its eggs in the wind. Butterfly symbols are naturally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Der.

The infamous seated goddess, flanked by two leopards, is perhaps the most sensationalized figurine to have been unearthed at Çatalhöyük, prompting narratives of prehistoric cults and religion. Yet research conducted since its discovery by James Mellaart has shown that zoomorphic, rather than anthropomorphic, types are predominant in the figurine assemblage. In this paper, I trace the history of changing recording systems, analytical methodologies, and interpretations of figurines at Çatalhöyük....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Bayman.

The analysis of material correlates to interpret cross-cultural variation in ancient political economies is a conventional and time-honored tradition in world archaeology. The material correlates that archaeologists use to gauge degrees of social stratification include evidence of subsistence intensification, hierarchical settlement patterns, craft specialization, large-scale monumentality, and differentiated mortuary programs. Ironically, recent claims for the rise of ancient states in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barry Kidder. Scott Hutson. Jacob Welch. Daniel Vallejo-Cáliz. Shannon Plank.

Over the past decade, the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project (UCRIP) has utilized multiples scales of analysis, from broad household excavations to large swathes of LiDAR collection, to examine the social processes of community (dis)integration of a polity in the northern Maya Lowlands. This polity, headed by Ucí, was integrated by an 18-km-long inter-site causeway system by the Terminal Preclassic and connected the emerging regional capital with three secondary sites. Extensive test...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyler N. Conrad.

Southeast Asia’s prehistoric zooarchaeological record is peculiar: faunal assemblages are seemingly ‘diverse,’ and generally include a large number of mammalian/reptilian/avian and molluscan species, but often these assemblages lack telltale evidence for human consumption. Therefore, one of the primary challenges confronting zooarchaeologists in this region is identifying what taxa were actually exploited by prehistoric foragers and how these patterns changed over time. This paper investigates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Zaro. Martina Celhar. Kenneth Nystrom. Dario Vujevic. Karla Gusar.

Ancient cityscapes with long occupational histories have great potential for reconstructing changes in social structure, spatial planning, political governance, identity, economy, environment, and climate. Recovering such information, however, poses many challenges, both human and financial. Archaeological deposits are often deeply buried and palimpsestic, representing a complex mixture of processes including collapse, partial abandonment, repurposing, and reoccupation. Yet, anthropological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Hosek.

Osteobiography, like other types of biographies, extends beyond the individual through entanglements with objects, landscapes, and social phenomena. The approach requires a multi-scalar analysis to understand how bodies both emerge from and create historical process. Osteobiographies are developed by tacking between an individual’s remains and the wider skeletal population to establish a contextualized life history. Conceptualizing osteobiography as a microhistory of human remains is one way in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt Rademaker.

Among Ruth Gruhn’s remarkable archaeological accomplishments has been the investigation of the first truly high-elevation Paleoindian sites discovered in the Americas. The open-air camps of Los Tapiales and La Piedra del Coyote in the Guatemalan highlands, located respectively at 3150 and 3300 meters above sea level, contained fluted Fishtail projectile points and rich, diverse tool and flake assemblages. Importantly, both sites were securely dated to ~12,500 cal BP, indicating early use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers. Elizabeth Peterson.

After the early Medio period, populations subsisting in the Casas Grandes region, northwest Mexico experienced internal and external pressures that led to drastic reorganization of their socioeconomic system. This is reflected by significant changes in their lithic toolkit, where differences in raw material use and tool morphology accrued through time. Presented here are the results of our lithic study comparing multiple excavated Medio and the only excavated protohistoric site located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Owen Ford.

Nestled in the foothills of the western Sierra, the city of Jackson in Amador County, California was the location of some the richest gold deposits mined in the Gold Rush era Mother Lode. Over the last few years, several projects have been initiated on this historic industrial landscape. The City of Jackson began raising funds to help preserve the uniquely stunning tailing wheels that have dominated the skyline for more than a century. Conversely, well beyond locally available funds is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Krug. Andrew Fernandez. Brenton Willhite. Christine VanPool. Clayton Blodgett.

The past twenty-five years have seen a significant increase in archaeological fieldwork in the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico. Among significant issues in Casas Grandes archaeology is the relationship between sites close to Paquimé and those in its borderlands. Investigations into ceramic distributions across the landscape have the potential to provide a greater understanding of the relationship between sites and their relationship to Paquimé. In this study, we reexamine Carpenter’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Goldstein. Jon Hageman.

While chenopod cultivation has been documented extensively in North and South America, evidence for similar practices in the Maya area is lacking. Macrobotanical evidence of Chenopodium recovered from pre-Hispanic Maya archaeological sites is limited to a few seeds. In contrast, the palynological record suggests widespread tolerance across the entirety of the Maya area, if not intensive management or even cultivation of Cheno-am genera in some contexts. It is likely that chenopods are an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Hageman. David Goldstein.

While chenopod cultivation has been documented extensively in North and South America, evidence for similar practices in the Maya area is lacking. Macrobotanical evidence of Chenopodium recovered from pre-Hispanic Maya archaeological sites is limited to a few seeds. In contrast, the palynological record minimally suggests widespread tolerance across the entirety of the Maya area, if not intensive management or in some contexts even cultivation of Cheno-am genera. It is likely that chenopods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby Magee.

During their expansion throughout the Andes, the Inka Empire restructured a cultural and physical landscape to meet objectives of logistical and ideological control over their subjects. While this process is embodied by archaeological features such as large-scale infrastructure and the strategic positioning of sacred places, interpreting these datasets require appropriately scaled analyses for which GIS is uniquely suited. In this paper, I explore this topic by comparing two geospatial analyses,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Wright.

Steve Weber's pioneering research on botanical remains and environment has provided foundational studies for subsistence and settlement in the Indus civilization. Results of his field research at Harappa in the Punjab, Rojdi in Gujarat, and Farmana in Haryana focused in three key areas where major Indus centers were established. Differences in archaeobotanical remains provided a firm basis from plant remains and long-term agricultural packages in the three regions. These ranged from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felisa Aguilar. Ana Rugerio. Ulises Cano.

Fossils are physical evidence that provides important information in order to figure out and explain the origin and evolution of life on Earth. For this reason, an accurate recollection and preparation are necessary. A precise data collecting also is required. Fossils must be preserved in scientific collections where they will be studied and where they will receive the status of specimens. In addition, for non-scientists these objects could be curiosities of the past from Nature which are also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morgan. Loukas Barton. Robert Bettinger.

Recent reconstructions of terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene settlement and subsistence patterns in northern China indicate that the intensive yet highly mobile hunting pattern that developed during the Younger Dryas as a way of mediating the increased temporal and spatial patchiness of the terminal Pleistocene resource base was maintained and even facilitated by early experiments with farming millet in the early Holocene. The long-term viability of this novel adaptation was evaluated in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Klokler. Todd Pitezel.

Prehistoric societies included multidimensional natural, economic, social, political, and ritual landscapes. In this paper we briefly describe landscapes from the southwestern coast of Brazil during the Archaic period and from the Casas Grandes Medio period (A.D. 1200­-1450) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. More specifically, we address ritual landscapes from shell mounds to hilltops. These components of landscapes are highlighted in honor of research conducted by Paul Fish and Suzanne Fish that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Bryce. Michael Terlep.

Evidence of Paleoindian and Paleo-Archaic occupation of the Arizona Strip, in northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, largely remains limited to isolated projectile points found lying on the modern ground surface, dispersed across large swaths of land. Building upon the few isolated finds, this presentation discusses the recent identification of multiple fluted and unfluted lanceolate and Great Basin Stemmed projectile points. In contrast to the few previously known finds, the various projectile...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanna Casey.

The city of Axum in northern Ethiopia is well known for its high quality, hand woven cloth. Sundays and festivals bring throngs of local people who, to the outside observer, appear to be uniformly dressed in beautiful white handspun clothing embellished with colourful woven borders and embroidery. This apparent uniformity belies a very complex set of activities that lead to the production, distribution and consumption of cloth in Axum. Each step in production is dominated by people of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Watling. Eduardo Góes Neves. Guilherme Mongeló. Thiago Kater.

Terras pretas (TPs) are arguably the most visible and widespread artefacts of pre-Colonial occupations in Amazonia. Accumulated as the result of waste management practices by at least partly-sedentary populations, they are seen to mark the beginnings of landscape domestication and more agricultural-based societies starting ca. 3000 BP. On the bluffs of the Upper Madeira river, exceptionally early TP deposits were found dating more than 3000 years before TP sites in the rest of the basin. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rodriguez-Rellan. Ramón Fábregas Valcarce. António Faustino Carvalho.

The Western half of the Iberian Peninsula plays a significant role for understanding the production and circulation of "green stone objects" (mainly variscite adornments, but also some jadeite axe heads) during the Neolithic and Copper Age of Western Europe. This importance lies in the presence in the area of two out of the three prehistoric variscite mines in Europe. Through an extensive review of the variscite adornments found in the archaeological contexts of Western Iberia, we will try to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Huffer. Duncan Chappell. Lâm Thi My Dung. Hoàng Long Nguyen.

The exact nature of the illicit antiquities trade from ground to market in Southeast Asia remains poorly known outside of Thailand and Cambodia, where most research has been focused. This paper helps to address this imbalance by documenting and contextualizing looting activities at the Bronze and Iron Age site of Vườn Chuối, located within urban Hanoi. We provide a brief excavation history so as to place looting into archaeological and bioarchaeological contexts, and discuss current and future...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Crow. George Micheletti. Terry Powis.

The Middle Preclassic (900-300 BC) is known as a time for developing complexity in Maya society. The most perceptible evidence of this development is exhibited in the construction of the earliest forms of monumental architecture. However, for areas like the Belize River Valley, these structures are uncommon and poorly understood. Now, with the discovery of a large Middle Preclassic platform at the site of Pacbitun, we have the opportunity to increase our understanding of early monumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Ore Menendez. Zachary Chase.

In recent years, the use of multispectral imagery has become increasingly important in archaeological research, site detection, and classification of site functions. As the use of these images becomes more common, we must test their accuracy in order to assess their utility and potential problems with their uncritical application. In this presentation we examine the advantages and limitations of using multispectral imagery as a general survey tool. First, we use multispectral imagery from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Averett. Derek Counts. William Caraher. Jody Gordon.

Since the arrival of robust mobile tablet devices in 2010, archaeological documentation has increasingly become born-digital. The adoption of digital tools and practices has not gone unnoticed, with reactions ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to outright skepticism. Significantly, scholars are beginning to offer more critical and reflexive views of the issues surrounding the use of mobile devices in archaeological fieldwork, interpretation, and dissemination. The ability to disseminate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Busby.

From Viewer to Observer will discuss the visual elements of the Pecos River style rock art, exploring the painting techniques and patterns that created these complex spaces. In addition, this paper will examine Lower Pecos pictographs through David Summers’ Real Spaces, as well as other texts, to create a context within current and traditional art historical methodologies. In using Summers’ idea of the spatially aware "observer" instead of the "viewer" I hope to expand the boundaries of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanna Diederichs.

Behavioral conformity and, its inverse, behavioral diversity are social adaptations wielded by small scale agricultural societies faced with change. By the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the Basketmaker III period, long standing conflicts in the San Juan region of the northern Southwest had abated and new territories opened to agricultural colonization. Frontier colonization is by nature a contentious process that usually results in violence, displacement, and the reinforcement of factions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Valerie Bondura.

Borders often imply two-dimensional lines on a map, a naturalized "over here" and "over there". This is reified in places where political boundaries appear to follow ecological ones. But the nature of these lines, even apparently clear environmental ones, is always arbitrary, and the recognition of these lines is always dependent on subject position. The word "frontier" highlights this politics of definition and recognition; frontiers are defined in history and anthropology as the edges of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Ravesloot.

Full-coverage regional archaeological surveys conducted throughout the world in diverse environmental contexts have demonstrated the advantages of this methodology for addressing a broad range of anthropological issues. The Northern Tucson Basin Survey (1980-1987) directed by Suzanne and Paul Fish represents the first application of this methodology to document prehistoric Hohokam settlement and land-use. Contiguous survey blocks centered on three Classic Period platform mounds and their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Richey. Geoffrey McCafferty.

The ceramic vessel known as Candeleros, which is commonly associated with Teotihuacan, is problematic for several reasons. Candeleros are generally small ovoid vessels with one or more chambers, often associated with domestic use and believed to be a type of incense burner. However, residue analysis that has been conducted to date does not always find materials associated with burning. Candeleros are most often associated with Teotihuacan, but are also found in Northern Honduras at sights such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Jochim.

Because sites of the Late Mesolithic are relatively rare in southern Germany, and are mostly represented by caves, three open-air sites of this period provide unique insights into this period. Two of the sites are located on a lakeshore and the third is in a river valley. All three possess excellent preservation of organic materials that facilitate analysis. The contents and spatial organization of these sites will be examined in the context of their functional role and their implications for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Schoville. Jayne Wilkins. Kyle Brown. Simen Oestmo. Terrence Ritzman.

MSA backed pieces are often thought to be components of projectile armaments, however our limited understanding of their functional characteristics as projectiles precludes understanding the adaptive problems they may have solved. Despite widespread acknowledgment of raw material differences and inter- and intra-assemblage morphological variability, whether backed piece morphology reflects functional, economic, or stylistic variation has a paucity of empirical support. Here, the functional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Thornton.

For over a century, the National Geographic Society has provided field research grants to archaeologists and anthropologists from around the world, and then told their story through our media. Over the past few years, National Geographic has gone through a tumultuous period of financial instability and schizophrenia between the non-profit and for-profit arms. The new joint venture created with 21st Century Fox in the Fall of 2015 created a fully non-profit National Geographic Society with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric E. Young.

As the use of archaeologists in forensic matters grows, it is important to define the role the archaeologist ought to play in such situations. Archaeologists should educate law enforcement personnel as to their utility in investigations. It is important that archaeologists understand their usefulness in criminal matters, and even more importantly, archaeologists should understand their limitations in investigations. There is a need to establish guidelines as to what archaeologists should/should...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Short.

Biomolecular organic residue analysis is an increasingly popular avenue of archaeological investigation. It is most frequently performed on pottery, though other substrates such as groundstone and chipped lithics are common. Recently, these methods have extended to fire-cracked rock (FCR). FCR features such as earth ovens are an excellent potential application: a) botanical evidence is not always preserved in the features and b) cracks that form in the FCR during the cooking process may protect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Moriarty.

The Galick site, located at the southern terminus of Lake Champlain, has long been identified as a potentially critical context for examining the precontact occupation and ecology of the southern Lake Champlain basin. Both its position at the confluence of local and interregional transportation networks and its setting within an area of remarkable biological diversity highlight the Galick site's potential importance to foragers and early farmers operating along the southern shores of Lake...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Dega. David Perzinski.

This paper takes site data from two recently excavated locales on Saipan and discusses the archaeology, physical anthropology, and bioarchaeology of the sites. The goal is to frame these within larger questions of origins, changes in the island's demography through time, and to assess several migration models for settlement of Saipan and the Northern Marianas.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zanette Glørstad.

The paper presents how continental-inspired elite jewellery from the Merovingian period (550-800AD) continued to play an important role in the Viking Age Scandinavia (800 -1050 AD).The so-called "disc-on-bow" brooch were covered with garnets, and is one of the most spectacular jewellery types we know from this period in Europe. They nevertheless appear in a number of female graves from the Viking Age, revealing traces of having been used a long time, most likely passed down through several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthieu Le Bailly. Nicolas Goepfert. Gabriel Prieto. John Verano.

The health status of domestic’s camelids is an original research topic in the past Central Andes. The discovery of more than 200 well preserved camelids in Huanchaquito in the northern coast of Peru was the opportunity to perform paleoparasitological analyses on twenty samples taken from preserved intestines and faeces recovered during the excavations. Extractions of the parasites using RHM standard protocol raised to the observation in 55% of the samples of several helminth taxa belonging to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Krus. Victor Thompson.

Archaeologists have longed grappled with how to effectively date shell mound deposits in Florida. Interpreting radiocarbon dates from shell samples has been a dominant method; however, these interpretations have not fully assessed the possibility that radiocarbon samples might not truly date their corresponding archaeological context. For example, recent research on Mound Key demonstrates that shell from middens was likely used to construct shell mounds, therefore the redeposition of old shells...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reneé Erickson.

Archaeologists have theorized that earspools functioned as symbolic adornments of high social status. However, earspools may also indicate the localized cultural practices of smaller communities within a larger region and highlight the role of specific individuals. By focusing on the sizes, material types, and decorative elements, I discuss the stylistic variations found within the temporal and spatial distribution of earspools in the Arkansas and Red River Valleys. These variations may indicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brenda Arjona.

Obsidian tool production in Mesoamerica has been considered primarily the work of men. It is important to examine the roles that women might have had in obsidian crafting. This paper uses results from a study of an obsidian assemblage from an unusual burial excavated at Puerto Escondido, Honduras, to explore the implications of women possibly being involved in stone tool production. In this burial one person was laid out on a bench, wearing an obsidian mirror, in a below-ground chamber, that was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

Between A.D. 1000-1120, groups living in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama adopted maize agriculture and began practicing an ancestral hominy foodway that not only included nixtamalizing culinary steps, but also included the use and production of a new ceramic technology, the Mississippian standard jar, as well as a new cooking technique, hot coal cooking. Curiously, while groups to the east of the valley also adopted maize and began cooking hominy, they forewent other material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Neal. Ashley Hampton. Anna Marie Prentiss. Thomas A. Foor.

Housepit 54 at the Bridge River site, British Columbia provides a unique look at the evolution of interpersonal dynamics within a single household over time. The sequence of 17 floors evinces a wide-range of activity patterns and spatial configurations reflecting performed labor. Current theories of intra-household dynamics posit that cooperative, complimentary work should underlie individual social interactions within a single household. However from late Bridge River 2 (ca. 1300-1500 cal BP)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christyann Darwent. Jeremy Foin.

Cape Espenberg, Alaska, provides a unique opportunity to directly compare two Thule-period (ca. AD 1400-1450) houses built at virtually the same time on the same beach ridge only one meter apart. The tunnels of these houses are identically built; however, their interior construction, use of space, and artifact types and manufacturing debris strongly suggest that one house was a traditional domestic structure and the other was a men’s house. Ringed seal, the dietary staple across the Arctic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shimaine Clem. Emily A. Schach. Jane E. Buikstra.

At the site of Chiribaya Alta (900-1350 AD), located in the Osmore Valley of southern Peru, certain Chiribaya grave goods are associated with either adult males or females. For example, females are often buried with weaving tools, and males with musical instruments. It is not possible to estimate the biological sex of children from their skeletal remains. Therefore, children are often excluded from studies addressing gender identities. Here, we use grave goods known to be associated with sexed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Carney.

While the diabetes epidemic among indigenous Native American populations has been examined for more than 30 years, the nuances between environmental and genetic causes of this disease remain understudied. In this paper, I explore the idea that the diabetes epidemic among Native American populations may be partially attributed to the introduction of a diet suited for Westernized populations. I will specifically look at gene-culture coevolution and the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) copy numbers...