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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Greening. Dana Lepofsky. Mark Wunsch. Nancy Turner.

For many Indigenous Peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes’ geological features, the plant and animal communities, and associated archaeological and paleoecological records. Some of these landscapes, recently termed "Cultural Keystone Places" (CKPs), are iconic for these groups and have become symbols of the connections between the past and the future, and between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Chia.

When the Tiv, a Bantu language speaking group migrated into the Benue Valley of Nigeria from southwestern Cameroon over five hundred years ago, they faced hostilities from different groups in the valley. Hilltops readily served as important settlement locales to protect the Tiv from violence and conflict. As they migrated from one hilltop to another they eventually settled over much of the Middle Benue Valley. Archaeological research in the valley has investigated these ancient hilltop sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Catherine D'Andrea. Valery Terwilliger.

Recent archaeological survey, excavation, ethnoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted in northeastern Tigrai by the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) has produced new insights into the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE-CE 700). The principal ETAP excavations thus far include the Pre-Aksumite site of Mezber (1600 BCE-1CE) and Ona Adi (c. early 1st millennium CE) which was inhabited during the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Both sites were occupied...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Coupland.

The practice of household archaeology has a long history in the Prince Rupert area, owing in large part to the remarkable preservation of sites in the region including the existence of house depression features on the ground surface of many village sites. Approaches to investigating these house features have shifted over the years as new theoretical paradigms have arisen to replace older ones. Issues of chronology and culture history dominated early investigations, but more recently questions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ari Caramanica. Gary Huckleberry.

The sequence of landscape transformation across the area of the Ascope Canal System in the Chicama Valley involved both natural and anthropogenic events and processes that unfolded in nonlinear ways. We argue that early events were crucial in determining transformations later in the sequence. In the arid environment of the North Coast, water availability plays a key role in landscape histories. This paper highlights evidence for El Niño events, water management, and changing ecologies for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katrina Erickson. Melyssa Huston. William Reitze.

Part of Roosevelt’s New Deal Program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established in 1934 as a work relief program for unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25. Designed to assist families during the Great Depression, the Corp members were paid $30 per month, $25 of which was sent back to help support their families. Up until its disbandment in 1942, multiple companies of these young men were stationed at Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO). Throughout their time at PEFO these CCC...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Bell.

The total excavation of the Cotswold-Severn Neolithic long cairn at Hazleton was unusually meticulous and represents an excellent example of long term skeletal exposure. Some discussion exists around the nature of bodies prior to deposition in theses long cairn structures and histotaphonomy is here used to consider this question. The human remains at Hazleton were recovered from two spatially distinct stone-lined chambers in a highly disarticulated and commingled state. During excavation each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Bain. Mélanie Rousseau.

This paper presents an overview of North American archaeoentomology, focussing on the study of introduced species. Seminal works on the introduction of plant and animal species during colonization suggested multiple parameters allowing for the colonization of the Americas by Old World species (Lindroth 1957) and introduced the term "European biological imperialism" (sensu Crosby 1972) to our vocabularies in environmental archaeology. Research in archaeoentomology, focussing primarily on beetles...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxwell Meredith.

World War II left behind archaeological evidence of an impressive magnitude on the British Channel Islands, and today many of these features lay untouched. It was throughout my Master's research at Glasgow University in 2013-2014 that I developed a project to enhance our archaeological understanding of these concrete relics. Using a specific set of methods, I was able to accurately and non-destructively test the compressive strength of several concrete features. Combining this raw data with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Parrish.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) Regulatory Program initially served a fairly simple, straightforward purpose: to protect and maintain the navigable capacity of the nation's waters. Time, changing public needs, evolving policy, case law, and new statutory mandates have changed the purview of the program, adding to its breadth, complexity, and authority. Prior to the issuance or authorization of any Department of the Army permit under Corps regulatory authorities (e.g. the Clean Water...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Crawford.

Hokkaido, Japan is an island separate from the East Asian mainland and Honshu yet closely linked culturally to the rest of the Japanese archipelago. Hokkaido was never isolated entirely from the East Asian mainland either. This paper reviews several key events that relate to Hokkaido as an island with a distinct cultural history. As the contemporary home of an indigenous population, the Ainu, Hokkaido has played, and can continue to play, an important role in our understanding of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hawkins. Krystiana Krupa. Jayne-Leigh Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When the remains of Native ancestors, or sacred and ceremonial objects, are screened from backdirt or backfill, what implications does this have for the soil in which they rested? Backdirt is usually considered unimportant after screening, but should, perhaps, archaeologists more carefully consider the ethical implications of the ways that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Riggs. Blythe Morrison.

Despite the importance of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) in contemporary archaeology, the task of teaching students proper field techniques still largely falls on academic institutions in the form of summer archaeological field schools. Although CRM derives from numerous federal laws and policies, the same laws have made the conduct of field school increasingly difficult as federal, state and tribal land managers impose restrictions on the scope of excavations on lands that were once...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel McTavish. Corey Hoover.

The economization of lithic raw materials for Late Prehistoric groups in the Midwestern United States has long been the subject of research. This research has often focused on explaining aspects of either technological or subsistence changes, such as the shift to agriculture (e.g., Bamforth 1989; Cobb 2000; Emerson, et al. 2000; Emerson and Titelbaum 2000; Jeske 1990, 2000). This project uses the underlying framework of economization used by these lithic studies and applies it to faunal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Goodbred. Mario Pino. Tom Dillehay.

This paper focuses on reconstructing the Holocene paleoenvironmental history of the lower Chicama River valley and coastal system, which has provided diverse natural resources for the Preceramic cultures at Huaca Prieta and Paredones. The archaeological site of Huaca Prieta is situated on the southern tip of a Pleistocene terrace along the shore, ~3 km north of the Chicama River mouth and floodplain system. Paredones is located 0.6 km to the north on the eastern edge of the terrace. Here we...

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

Since the retreat of the Pleistocene some 11,700 years ago, the landscape and vegetation of the Mongolian Gobi Desert has been profoundly changing, punctuated by the appearance of lakes, wetlands, and finally aridification. Vegetation communities have responded to these changes according to temperature shifts and northward to southward movements of the edges of East Asian monsoonal systems. Human groups have lived, foraged, and traveled through the landscape of the Gobi for millennia, adapting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Krasinski. Brian Wygal. Charles Holmes. Barbara Crass.

The earliest archaeological sites in eastern Beringia occur at the gateway of the ice free corridor in interior Alaska. The Holzman site was discovered in 2015 along Shaw Creek in the Tanana Valley and dates to the late Pleistocene. Bison and caribou remains as well as mammoth ivory in the lowest components of the site demonstrate the importance of big game hunting during the colonization of Beringia and the interaction of humans with mammoths during the last phase of their extinction in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Renteria. Ronald Towner.

Cebolla Canyon, in the El Malpais National Conservation Area, New Mexico, was homesteaded extensively in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by Hispanic and Euro-American families. The local environment provided grazing resources for sheep and cows, and the ability to homestead in this area allowed families to pursue seasonal or year-round occupation. The regional histories of these migrants differ, but the exploitation possibilities of land and timber provided people with the promise of land...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sidney Reynolds. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass. David R. Braun.

The occurrence of large densities of lithic and fossil material in Early Pleistocene contexts have been the focus of much interest. Several hypotheses modeling hominin foraging strategies have been generated to explain their formation. Assemblage formation is often hypothesized to be the result of particular land use strategies that relate to the movement and discard of stone artifacts. These hypotheses are difficult to test because they rely on ethnographic models of human movement, yet they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Gillam. Junzo Uchiyama. Mark Hudson. Carlos Zeballos.

Pre-agricultural Japan experienced significant changes in its cultural and natural landscapes over some 30 millennia of human habitation and modification (ca. 34,000 to 2,300 calendar years BP). As an extensive period witnessing fundamental environmental and cultural changes, the pre-agricultural era was dynamic, with sub-periods of relative stability punctuated by episodes of rapid change in lifestyle, material culture, and environmental and cultural setting. This research compares and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shari Silverman.

Hood Canal in Washington State contains a variety of archaeological sites, dating from at least 3,330 years ago to historic times. These sites include shell middens, villages, individual settlements, petroglyphs, logging activity traits, and hydroelectric features, to name a few. The area has undergone significant land movement due to seismic activity, landslides, and, possibly, sand blows. This presentation examines Hood Canal’s prehistoric and historic land use with respect to the region’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Butler.

In 1976 Richard Jefferies published on a Middle Woodland burial mound complex in northwest Georgia called Tunacunnhee. The previous year, Brian Butler salvaged an unusual Middle Woodland ritual and mortuary site on the Elk River in southern Middle Tennessee, called Yearwood, published in summary fashion in 1979. At the time, radiocarbon dating was too limited and primitive to get an accurate read on the age of these two sites, and the then available dates suggested a considerable difference in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leigh Kuwanwisiwma.

For thousands of years, the Hopi clans have traversed both the South and North American continents. Today, this presence is evidenced by the thousands of Hopi/Puebloan archaeological ruins. As well, esoteric ceremonies of today are ancient ceremonies and reinforce a living connection to our cultural history and religion. This great migration period of Hopi people was in fulfillment of a spiritual covenant between clans and our spiritual deity and guardian called Ma’sawu. Ma’sawu is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peregrine Gerard-Little.

The shifting settlement pattern of Haudenosaunee groups in what is today central New York state was intertwined with the political order on which the League of the Haudenosaunee was based. These entangled political and ecological practices produced a landscape of significant places and a unique ecology, which impressed European missionaries, travelers, and soldiers exploring this frontier. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French and later American frontier military efforts were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Casana.

Since the 1970s, archaeologists have known that a wide range of features, including subsurface architecture, pits and ditches, pathways, and surface artifacts should theoretically be visible in an aerial thermal image, but technological hurdles largely prevented thermography from being deployed in most field settings. Recent research has begun to take advantage of new lightweight, uncooled thermal cameras, increasingly reliable drones, and photogrammetric image processing software,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hernandez Garavito. Carlos Osores Mendives.

Most scholarship on the shifts in local lifeways during the Late Horizon strictly focused on changes in the availability to new and limited-access goods by local elites (D’Altroy 2001; Hastorf 1990; 2003). In these models, local leaders became immersed in reciprocal and status-granting relationships with the Inka through gifts and exclusive artifacts. Materiality played a pivotal role in the relationship between the Inka and their subjects. However, it is less clear how local ethnicity was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Graves.

Examining household-level economic behaviors has long been a means for archaeologists to explore social and political organization in ancient Hohokam society. In this presentation, I reflect on the training and influence of Katherine Spielmann in my thinking about the economic roots of inequality in small- scale societies and begin to outline an explicitly political-economic framework to explore the structure and bases of power among the Hohokam of southern Arizona. The Hohokam household was the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Lee.

Household archaeology has made important contributions to the study of large-scale social transformations through the remains of the everyday. This paper examines the role of households, themselves, in the social changes that occurred during the Early and Middle Mumun Pottery Periods (ca. 1500-500 B.C.) in Korea. During this time, incipient social inequality developed alongside another significant change—households that were previously composed of multiple families became single-family units....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julian Salazar.

Long term evolutionary narratives on South Andean pre-Columbian history have stressed lineal processes of complexity intensification, defined by big changes on subsistence strategies, from small and egalitarian hunter gatherer groups to complex multicommunitarian chiefdoms. These changes were thought to influence or even determine the structure of household and consequently daily life of people. Nevertheless recent household archaeology studies have demonstrated that the reproduction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Ryan. Pei-Lin Yu. Matthew Schmader.

Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have, to date, exposed seventeen discreet floors primarily dating to ca. 1500-1000 cal. B.P. In this poster we draw data from three of the site’s floors, IIk, IIl, and IIm, where the most recent investigations have yielded an interesting pattern of hearth and cache pit features. Questions will be addressed specifically towards formation processes as well as the potential relationships between the patterning of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deseray Helton. Elizabeth Sobel. F. Scott Worman. Jennifer Bengtson. Jack Ray.

Mississippian archaeology displays a longstanding bias towards the study of large, mound-bearing sites. Studies of small, "hinterland" sites that lack mounds are relatively uncommon. Our research addresses this problem through a study of flaked stone tool technological organization at South Cape, a Mississippian hinterland site (23CG8) that is located in southeast Missouri and does not contain mounds. We compare flaked stone artifacts from two house features, including one that may have been the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Pluckhahn. Neill Wallis.

The Middle Woodland period in the American Southeast was marked by a fluorescence of interaction, evidenced most prominently by Hopewellian exchange of exotic, symbolically-charged artifacts of stone, bone, shell, and minerals. The focus on exotic artifacts and their mortuary contexts has created a myopia toward exchange among elites, be they conceived as chiefs or religious specialists. However, recent work suggests that the exchange of exotics may have been secondary to more common exchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Marie Prentiss. Thomas Foor.

The Bridge River Archaeological Project initiated excavations of Housepit 54 in 2012 with the goal of developing an understanding of household history during the period of ca. 1000-1500 years ago. Excavations at Housepit 54 have revealed a remarkable sequence of 17 anthropogenic floors, 16 of which pre-date 1000 years ago and reflect periods of rapid growth and stability. The earliest three floors derive from small (estimated 4-6 m diameter) oval structures followed by a seven floor sequence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilia Tifental. Kathryn Bobolinski.

Excavations at the Bridge River site, British Colombia have been on going since 2003. The careful study of these housepits have significantly increased our understanding of the communities that inhabited the Middle Fraser Canyon over 1,000 years ago. The completion of the Housepit 54 excavation has provided further evidence of the many facets of indigenous life at Bridge River; among these is the role of dogs. The possession and many uses of dogs in the Middle Fraser Canyon is well documented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison K. Carter. Cristina Castillo. Rachna Chhay. Tegan McGillivray. Yijie Zhuang.

Household archaeology and a focus on residential spaces is an emerging field in Southeast Asia. At Angkor, this approach has great potential for exploring the resiliency of non-elite members of society through changes in environmental and socio-political processes. In this paper we present results from the ongoing analyses of a 2015 excavation of a house mound within the Angkor Wat enclosure. Using a variety of techniques including macro- and micro-botanical analyses, geoarchaeology, soil...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erick Casanova Vasquez. Abigail Gamble. Beau Murphy. Karissa Dieter. Steven A. Wernke.

As a result of the Toledan Reforms in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the late fifteenth century, new settlements known as reducciones were established to centralize indigenous populations. Such is the case of Mawchu Llacta, originally Espinar de Tute, in the Caylloma Province, Arequipa. The introduction of these sweeping reforms brought a series of major changes to the social order. External agents were established as the new bearers of power and local elites took on a secondary status. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn.

World-wide, communal houses and specialized houses represent hallmarks of social complexity. In pre-contact Society Island chiefdoms, social complexity was materially marked by architectural differences between elite and commoner residences. Yet perhaps more pronounced are architectural differences and varied spatial patterning between residential houses, communal houses, and specialized houses. This paper provides a spatio-temporal analysis of communal and specialized houses on the Maʻohi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Springer.

The multi-family, above-ground, post-and-beam plankhouse looms large in our understanding of ancestral Coast Salish households that populated the coastal regions of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State. In addition to their practical role as shelters, plankhouses were both social fields of daily practice and ceremonialism, and imposing physical structures that communicated presence and the territorial and tenurial interests of the household. In this presentation, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheina Lew-Levy. Rachel Reckin. Noa Lavi. Jurgi Cristóbal-Azkarate. Kate Ellis-Davies.

This poster aims to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn to produce material culture. We use a meta-ethnographic approach, which allows for the systematic extraction, synthesis, and comparison of quantitative and qualitative publications. We extracted a total of eleven publications from psychology, cultural anthropology, and ethnoarchaeology, including studies on the Baka, Aka, San, Kaytetye, Gidra, Penan, Batek, Khanty, Cree and Sioux. Our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Vara. Whitney Lytle.

Public outreach and education has increasingly become an essential component of archaeology. Helping the community become invested in the past can do wonders for perpetuating the archaeological ideals of cultural preservation and conservation. Instilling these values in the younger generation is one of the most effective ways to create a more culturally conscious future. The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Archaeological Research aims to meet this goal through their educational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Filloy. Maria Olvido Moreno-Guzman.

The Florentine Codex is an excellent source for understanding the manufacturing techniques used by Mexica featherworkers to make luxury items. It records many of the tools and steps necessary to tie feathers and produce multicolor mosaics. Historical information about the selection of the raw materials, their storage, preparation, and handling, however, is scarce. The meticulous study of two Mexica feathered shields has allowed us to understand, not only the materials used in their manufacture,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Arroyo-Kalin.

Assessing the landscape impact of past settlement and subsistence systems in space and in time is essential to reconstructing pre-Columbian land use in the Amazon basin. In this paper we consider archaeological and landscape evidence for past land use by examining the strengths and limitations of archaeological radiocarbon evidence as a proxy for broad demographic patterns in pre-Columbian Amazonia.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randall McGuire.

Archaeologists live in a North America divided by lines. These lines include the borders of nations, the boundaries of states and provinces and the limits that we as archaeologists have drawn around culture areas. These lines affect in subtle and complex ways, how we frame questions, how we define the boundaries of our studies, what journals we read, what colleagues we talk to, where we go to school and dozens of other aspects of archaeology. Most if not all of these lines had no meaning for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Golitko.

Archaeometric studies of archaeological materials by their nature examine social process—for instance learned technological traditions, socially mediated access to raw materials, or the social act of exchange. Models and methods drawn from social network analysis have gained popularity as a means of more formally modelling social relationships, and hold promise as a missing link between laboratory data and the social dynamics archaeologists wish to understand. However, archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhouyu Zhang. Jianli Chen.

This paper is mainly about a study report of several iron smelting sites in Shandong and Henan province. By analyzing archaeometallurgical remains from large-scale iron production sites, this presentation tries to clarify issues under-addressed in previous excavation reports and shed new light on the iron technology, production organization, and the management of Iron Offices of the Han Empire that led to the developmental peak of iron industry in Chinese history.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Hammond.

Righting the balance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations is the defining challenge of 21st century nationhood in Canada. Archaeology, as a discipline and an industry, has specific responsibilities and opportunities in this reconciliation. Despite recent attention brought to the social injustices of colonization, reconciliation is still scantily considered and spottily applied by heritage practitioners, governments and businesses. I discuss how we can and must enact reconciliation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Dodd.

Palette means "little shovel" in French. The name derives from a commonly held belief that these curious objects were shallow, hollowed-out containers in which paint pigments were prepared. Another suggestion is that they were used as snuff trays, i.e., surfaces for grinding up hallucinogens prior to chewing or inhalation. This paper advances a new hypothesis with testable implications. It is argued that palettes were employed as mirrors, possibly in ritual contexts. Test results from a series...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick W. Rennaker. Virginia L. Butler.

In 2011, U.S. federal agencies listed Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) in the Salish Sea as a species of concern. Fishery managers typically use historical data from the past ~ 50 years to create baselines to manage reduced fisheries, which does not take into account long term environmental change or how human populations have affected the ecosystem in the past. Archaeological data extends these baselines much further back in time. The Tse-whit-zen faunal project provides a ~ 2200 yr history...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Levi Keach.

In 2016, Desert Research Institute archaeologists identified 26NY15768, an artifact scatter consisting primarily of Vegas Vic brand root beer bottles dating to 1953. 26NY15768 is located in Frenchman Flat on the Nevada National Security Site, known as the Nevada Proving Grounds at the time of deposition. The Nevada National Security Site, under various names, has served as the United States’ continental nuclear test site since it was withdrawn from the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yunfa Miao. Heling Jin. Jianxin Cui.

Over the past several thousand years, the arid and semiarid regions of China have experienced a series of asynchronous desertification events in its semiarid sandy and desert areas, but the precise identification of the driving forces of such events has remained elusive. Identified are two rapid desertification events (RDEs) at ~4.6 ± 0.2 ka BP and ~3.3 ± 0.2 ka BP from the JJ Profile, located in the eastern Mu Us Sandy Lands. These RDEs appear to have occurred immediately following periods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaishi Yamagiwa.

This study aims to discuss about the strategy of prehistoric human adaptation to the island environment, especially focus on the natural resource usage. I introduce the case of southern part of Ryukyu islands—the southwestern part of Japan archipelago, where the first long-term human settlement had occurred about 4,300 years ago. Prehistoric people in southern Ryukyu islands had a unique material culture (absence of pottery, use of giant clam shell adzes), which was dissimilar to the surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl Reinhard. Luz Ramirez de Bryson. Nicole Searcey. Isabel Teixeira-Santos. Calogero Santoro.

It has been proposed that Chinchorro coastal people along the Atacama Desert in northern Chile had marginal access to plant food, a position refuted by recent scholars. The older perspective comes from bone chemistry analyses which showed a nearly exclusive reliance on marine animal resources. Newer analyses of mummy gut contents shows a substantial reliance on wetland plant resources, especially sedge rhizomes and seeds. Therefore, existing analyses present very different ideas of Chinchorro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Szymanski.

Interpretive challenges involving issues of equifinality and causation can chronically hamper environmental reconstruction efforts, as numerous physical, environmental, or anthropogenic processes may potentially be responsible for creating observed raw data patterns. Nested multi- proxy and multi­scalar analyses offer potential means of approaching these difficult conceptual issues which can plague interpretations reliant on single lines of proxy evidence. A dataset comprised of multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu-chao Zhao.

The newly excavated Yangshang site generated a high-resolution record in China's Western Loess Plateau which demonstrated that ancient humans occupied this region since MIS-7. Nearly 1700 stone artifacts and more than 330 animal remains were unearthed in 2013. Although the site was dominated by the quartz based core/flake tradition, same as most lower Paleolithic sites in Northern China, the core reduction analysis and raw material economic study among the long term cultural sediments indicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only César Méndez. Antonio Maldonado. Andrés Troncoso. Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Sebastían Grasset.

The geographical band between 31°-32° S, from the Pacific to the Andes, lies in the southernmost part of the Semi-Arid North of Chile, south of the Atacama Desert. Multidisciplinary research to the north and south of the Choapa River’s mouth is uneven, thereby in need of new data for understanding the relative intensity of the human traces across the landscape and the human interactions with environmental changes. Currently, the combined pollen records in the coast and highlands indicate arid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Vidal Elgueta. Luis Felipe Hinojosa. María Fernanda Pérez.

Maize from Andean region has a recognized complex history, involving ecological and human interaction. Today, while Andean maize show high morphological and low genotypic diversities, the process involved in its production and selection is unclear. In this work we ask how the morphological and genetic diversity of maize has varied through Formative Period to present time in Tarapacá Region, northern Chile? To answer this we analysed thirty morphological traits and eight microsatellites markers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Cerimele.

Northern Florida has provided some of the oldest evidence of riverine subsistence in the lower southeastern United States, redefining our understanding of how these communities interacted with animals. Previously, these data were restricted to bioarchaeological analyses of mortuary pond assemblages, such as the Windover site. Recent testing at Silver Glen Springs, along the St. Johns River, has uncovered direct evidence of animal exploitation that increases our knowledge of subsistence patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Portillo. Wendy Matthews.

The MICROARCHAEODUNG project aims to develop, standardize and integrate much-needed holistic interdisciplinary sampling protocols and analytical strategies for multi-proxy studies of livestock dung as an important archaeological material that is routinely overlooked or missed using conventional excavation procedures. MICROARCHAEODUNG integrates state-of-the-art analytical techniques in geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology and biochemistry to enable a robust identification and interpretation of ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James D. Keyser.

A petroglyph panel at 48SW85 in southwestern Wyoming presents a convincing case for the use of rock art imagery in hunting magic rituals. Based on differential weathering and revarnishing of the petroglyphs, different stylistic signatures of artists carving various animals and humans, and key superimpositions, the panel can be confidently identified as the product of at least half a dozen artists reusing the site for more than a century, and possibly much longer. The panel's basic structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Pintar. Nora Viviana Franco.

Deserts have traditionally been considered marginal environments, because survival depends on several factors. Some researchers have pointed to the importance of water for hunter-gatherers living in these environments, as well as the increased knowledge of the environment they lived in, and its resources, as well as the awareness and knowledge of neighbors on whom to call in lean times or with whom to interact and exchange partners and the knowledge of resources. Here we present two cases from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Ohman.

Fish and fishing occupy an intersection between meat and not-meat, hunting and gathering. As such, it does not fall into a clean division of labor by gender. Fish were acquired, processed, and distributed according to distinct sociocultural and sociopolitical codes of conduct that could result in death if not properly carried out: either accidental death from ciguatera toxicity or execution as punishment for breaking kapu/taboo. Tuna is well-known to be one of the most prized animals in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rus Sheptak. Rosemary Joyce.

Archaeological excavations in Caribbean coast Honduras explored the site of Ticamaya, described in 16th-century Spanish documents as the seat of a leader of indigenous resistance. Yet despite testing confirmed deposits from the period covering initial conflict with the Spanish, roughly 1520-1536, these excavations produced no use of European goods until the late 18th century. Contemporary with Ticamaya, the site of Naco to the west hosted troops sent by Cortes, and at least one majolica vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meir Orbach.

Manot Cave is situated in the western Galilee hills of Israel. Excavations have been conducted since 2010 in 12 different areas, yielding a rich archaeological record attributed mainly to the Early Upper Paleolithic period (46-33ka). Area D is located in the main hall of the cave on top of the western talus less than 15 meters from the assumed cave entrance. The upper sedimentological layer is about 80 cm thick and contains flint items, bones, coprolites and stones. The Area D ungulate-dominated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Surface-Evans.

As anthropologists we know that the heart is considered a source of strength in many cultures. Yet in Western society and the culture of science, an epistemology of the heart or heartfelt thinking is generally feminized and as a consequence, devalued. Guided by Feminist and Indigenous theory, I have established an archaeological practice that foregrounds heartfelt thinking as part of community-based heritage work. Importantly, I strive to train the next generation of archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mia Carey.

Millennials are hailed as one of the most racially progressive generations in America’s history. African Americans and other people of color are becoming consciously aware of the challenges that they face in navigating America as a minority. White millennials, who describe themselves as being racially progressive, typically lack awareness or understanding of discrimination and racism and use colorblindness as a way of coping with fear and ignorance. Their colorblindness invalidates the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Fernandez.

The prehistoric exchange of macaws and their feathers was a ritually charged cultural phenomenon observed across the Southwestern United States and portions of Northern Mexico. Nowhere was the integration of this industry more apparent than at Paquimé, the principal center of the Casas Grandes culture, in present day Northern Chihuahua, Mexico. The residents of Paquimé and some of its outlying community members imported, bred, raised, and ritually sacrificed various species of macaws by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Valentina Caracuta. Bridget Alex. Lior Regev. Eugenia Mintz. Elisabetta Boaretto.

Since 2012, a series of investigations in Manot Cave recovered charcoal samples from archaeological layers in order to study the landscape around the site between the Upper and the Middle Palaeolithic (UP/MP). Samples of soils and loose charcoal were collected in different areas of the cave, while particular attention was paid to the sampling of the hearths found in Area E and I. Anatomical features of the charcoals were analyzed using a metallographic microscope in order to indentify tree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbons.

Zooarchaeologists have typically employed faunal biometric data to address questions of domestication, breeding and improvement strategies, animal population demographics, market economies, and the movement of livestock. However, an historical ecology approach to biometrics also suggests the utility of investigating relationships between livestock management strategies and landscape change. Building on over twenty years’ worth of standardized zooarchaeological datasets from across the North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Getino Granados.

Representaciones de mariposas en la escultórica de la antigua ciudad de Tula, se observan en edificios monumentales y conjuntos habitacionales comunes. Aparece en forma de pectoral de las cariátides que sostenían los techos de los templos principales. Este distintivo también identifica a guerreros sacrificados, representados como altares dentro de espacios ceremoniales. El pectoral lo portan además gobernantes en pilastras y seres mitológicos en lápidas. Atributos de la mariposa se distinguen en...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Copeland.

While elite Maya polychrome ceramics often contain images and inscriptions related to political actors, motifs on the majority of polychrome ceramics relate to important elements of ancient Maya cosmology. This poster analyzes the iconography on a Classic Maya polychrome vessel from Petén, Guatemala donated to the San Bernardino County Museum. The central figure on the interior of the bowl is a deer and a supernatural figure is painted on the inside wall. Terrestrial motifs are found on both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Li Fei.

In 2012, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated a group of cliff tombs in Nanxi County, Yibin; grave M12 at this site revealed a clay Buddha image. This paper argues that this is the base of an object dating between the late Eastern Han and the Shu Han period (AD 25-263) that is similar to the bases of money trees molded in the shape of a seated Buddha or Queen Mother of the West. The image thus likely developed from the image of the Queen Mother of the West as seen at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shaowu Lyu. Chunxue Wang. Quanchao Zhang. Lixin Wang. Ningning Liang.

With the emergence and development of composite tools in the Upper Paleolithic, adhesives became one of the most widely used materials by early human societies. Of particular interest is to know which animal/plant species were being exploited for glue manufacturing. The Houtaomuga site, located in northeast China, provides favorable materials for the identification of organic residues; and a few bone-handled microblades were collected from this site. In this study, we scraped micro adhesive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Lubinski. Thomas Hale.

The stylohyoid is the largest bone in the hyoid complex surrounding the throat in artiodactyls. There is little published information to allow its identification to species or anatomical side. Our study examined comparative stylohoid bones in order to provide criteria for taxonomic identification, using more than 350 animals representing 13 species present in the continental United States. Based on osteometrics and discrete features, the bone can be distinguished to species for most of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adolfo Batun-Alpuche. Maia Dedrick. Patricia McAnany.

Colonial- and national-period studies of agricultural practices in Yucatán can provide useful case studies to address current theoretical concerns in political ecology. Perspectives on livelihood strategies today are broadly comparable to household-level studies of economic activities accessible through archaeology, especially given historical archaeology’s attention to market integration and technological innovations. The time depth available through archaeological study complements...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Kullen.

Testing and data recovery at the Hunters Home site (11Wi398) in Naperville, Will County, Illinois, recovered nearly 60 formal end scrapers. Microwear analysis determined that more than 80% of them exhibited traces of use-wear, and, of those, nearly 90% showed evidence of hide working. Spatial relationships between hide scrapers, burnishing stones, ochre crayons, and refitted fire-cracked rocks were examined to define discrete, hearth-centered, hide working activity areas within the site.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Choi. Jaime Ullinger. László Paja.

Attempts to determine the status of human remains prior to their final deposition are complicated in the analysis of cremains. Forensic and archaeological studies, however, have advocated for the interpretation of heat-induced fracture and warping patterns as indicators of the pre-incineration state of the body and of the characteristics of the funeral fire. The purpose of this research is to examine the possible internal social structures of a Bronze Age population in the Körös region of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Binning.

Most lithic technologists would agree that pressure flakes cannot be reliably identified in debitage assemblages by their size and morphology. Analysts using fractorgraphy have had success identifying pressure flakes by determining crack velocity via microscopic features on the ventral surface. However, this technique is time-consuming and is most successful on glassy materials. Native Americans of the western continental United States, extensively used one pressure flaking technique for 8000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Baldini. Keith Prufer. Yemane Asmerom. Franziska Lechleitner. Sebastian Breitenbach.

Yok Balum Cave’s location at the northernmost extent of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) combined with its abundance of aragonitic stalagmites makes the site an exceptional archive of paleoclimatic information. Additionally, Yok Balum Cave is located at the heart of the Maya Lowlands, and speleothem-based paleoclimate records from the site can provide invaluable information for archaeological research. Although the Yok Balum record and most other regional climate records strongly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Mollenhauer.

In the early 20th century, the discovery of the Olmec colossal heads associated with San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes led to the early designation of these three sites as the triadic centers of Olmec civilization, implying a level of cultural uniformity. Subsequent archaeological investigation has shown that the three centers, each with a distinct but overlapping chronology, share few commonalities in layout, artifact assemblage, or sculpture style. Indeed, the heads themselves...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Menaker.

Inka and Spanish imperial projects in the Andes frequently targeted local beliefs and ritual practices, albeit in dissimilar ways. Understanding the effects of imperial projects is not possible without a clear sense of the local ritual landscape and its (in)compatibility with state religions and other practices spread across state networks. The painted tablet and disc tradition of the Arequipa region in the Southern Peruvian Andes offers a particular case for studying local and regional rituals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Taylor.

Archaeologists live in a reality in which gender, sexuality, race, age, and occupational identities (to name a few) are pervasive and impactful in our professional and personal lives. Our individual experiences in the world are always being shaped by our place at the intersection of multiple perceived and/or performed identities in the multiple social landscapes we inhabit. It then must be accepted that social identities operated similarly for people in the past. Still, there remains a hesitance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Lofaro. George Kamenov. Jorge Luis Soto Maguino. John Krigbaum.

La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Huamanga, the earliest Jesuit church in modern-day Ayacucho, Peru, was built in AD 1605 near the main plaza. Famous for its baroque art, this standing church is in need of extensive renovations. In a partial restoration in 2008, an archaeological excavation uncovered human and faunal remains underneath the church floor proper, and underneath the floors of associated chapels. Upon examination, only indigenous individuals appear to be buried underneath the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Johnson.

In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. The passing of NAGPRA was a huge step forward for indigenous rights; the law allowed tribes to decide the ultimate outcome of Native American burials found in any context on federal or tribal land. In Utah, there are also state laws that require similar standards of protection on private land. That being said, the repatriation process can be long and painful for many tribe members who are concerned with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Kolpan.

Although World War II (WWII) hostilities ended in 1945, still today the graves and remains of both combatants and civilians continue to be unearthed, especially in Eastern Europe. These discoveries of graves become entwined with the dynamic physical and geopolitical landscapes, whereby the post-human remains take on new, contested identities. Their unique identifications to name or nationality are sublimated, as their collective national or ethnic identities become prioritized. Combatants...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Darwent. Genevieve LeMoine. Hans Lange. Christyann Darwent.

Iita (Etah), which sits on the north shore of Foulke Fjord in northwestern Greenland, in many ways could serve as a poster child for climate-change-driven destruction of coastal sites. Sitting on an alluvial fan at the base of a steep-sloped kame deposit, the site has rich historic and late prehistoric occupations visible on its surface. But more uniquely for the high Arctic, there are also 1000 years of continuous human use locked in stratigraphically sequenced buried soils, starting with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Woodson.

This paper examines the impact of changes during the Hohokam Classic period on the social organization of canal irrigation management along the middle Gila River in south-central Arizona. A series of important social, political, and environmental changes occurred during the Hohokam Sedentary to Classic period transition. This study examines this transition to see if it represents a hinge point in how irrigation was organized. The focus is on the irrigation organization which is the social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Fehren-Schmitz. Kelly Harkins.

Archaeological studies in the Central Andes have pointed at the temporal coincidence of climatic fluctuations and episodes of cultural transition throughout the pre-Columbian period. Although most scholars explain the connection between environmental and cultural changes by the impact of climatic alterations on the capacities of the ecosystems inhabited by pre-Columbian cultures, direct evidence for assumed demographic consequences has been missing so far. Desert margin areas, as we find them at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1999, the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department (NNHPD) became a Tribal Historic Preservation Office, under 36 CFR Part 800, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act 1966, as amended. This action enabled the Navajo Nation to enforce the Navajo Nation Cultural Resource Protection Act (CRPA), Navajo Nation Code Title 19...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Merritt. Kara Peters.

Actualistic butchery often investigates the relationship between tool characteristics and butchery behavior but rarely considers individuals’ butchery skill. Therefore idiosyncratic behavioral differences may confound analyses of butchery time or efficiency. Here, two novice butchers used replicated Oldowan flakes on 40 domestic goat limbs to examine how tool attributes affected processing time and efficiency during defleshing and disarticulation, and whether a learning curve impacted butchery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Müller. Philip Staudigel. Sean Murray. Hildegard Westphal. Peter Swart.

The analysis of geochemical proxies in skeletal remains has become a standard tool in shell midden research. Sub-seasonally resolved proxy records provide information about environmental and anthropological aspects such as ancient climate conditions, fishing and foraging seasonality or site occupation pattern. However, as subsistence was the primary purpose for fishing activities in most prehistoric cultures, it is likely that many shell midden constituents were subjected to processing methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Curran. David Raymond. Timothy Curran.

This research focuses on the transformation of conflict from its earliest modes to more intensified forms seen in complex societies. Specifically, the focus is on the transition of combat in band level societies to its institutionalization in tribal social structures. One of the challenges in archaeology is in recognizing steps in the evolution of violence in formative and less stratified societies. To achieve this end, the transition of conflict needs to be operationalized. This investigation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Sanchez-Morales.

In this presentation I examine the environmental impacts that cattle introduction had in Puerto Rico by combining geoarchaeological and ethnohistorical methods. During the sixteenth century hides became one of the most profitable commodities to be produced in the Caribbean. For the bigger islands of the Antilles, it has been reported that these early populations proliferated, leading to underground economies based upon their exploitation. Through the analysis of historical accounts and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gwendolyn Kristy. Kate Frank. Emily Hammer.

Urbanization is a significant force affecting the preservation of archaeological sites across the globe. Even in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, urbanization dramatically outpaces looting and other forms of site destruction that have been highly visible in the media. We present data on how urbanization has affected archaeological site preservation across Afghanistan. Using the city of Herat as an example, we present a method for predicting how urban growth will affect archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Iván Batún Alpuche. Patricia McAnany.

Spanish encomenderos and friars demanded beeswax from their subjects in Yucatán, Mexico, during the early Colonial period. This wax was harvested from beehives infrequently used for wax production in pre-Hispanic times—instead the focus throughout the long history of beekeeping in the region was on honey. In fact, indigenous honeybees, from the genus Melipona, make an impure wax in low quantities, which would have made candle production difficult. These candles were important for Catholic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Thomas.

The Chimu smelting site of Dos Cruces is located along the Zaña River in the middle valley of the greater Lambayeque area. Dos Cruces is located at the intersection of two major trade routes and nearby several rich sources of copper ore. The smelting of ore at Dos Cruces utilized wind powered smelting technology, a new innovation for this region. Despite its obvious Chimu affiliations, Dos Cruces lacks an audiencia, or indeed any indication of Chimu administrative oversight. The denizens of Dos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Farahani.

In this paper the results of an archaeological case-study are presented to argue that considerations of space, taken here to be a physical location in Cartesian terms, are essential to identifying changes in agricultural practice in premodern imperial contexts. The recording of the location of samples intended for paleoethnobotanical analysis, whether through digital or other means, allows for more nuanced reconstructions of the depositional routes of archaeological plant remains. In turn, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bill Angelbeck. Chris Arnett.

While archaeology concerns a Western-derived discipline, the scope of its perspective is broadening. Here, we highlight Indigenous frameworks for the analysis and interpretation of archaeological data wherever there is direct historical and cultural continuity of people and place. To this end, we attempt to map out the contours for analyses using models and theory derived from oral traditions, language, and other schema from indigenous sources to explain patterning of artifacts and features of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernadette Cap.

The identification of marketplaces among the Classic Maya has contributed to more complex understandings of their economies, but scholars are still working to determine the fundamentals and variations of Maya marketplace exchange across time and space. Recent investigations at the Classic Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize recovered a small assemblage of spindle whorls from the site’s Lost Plaza, a posited marketplace. This the only example among the Classic Maya to directly connect the activity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Dominguez.

In 2010 the "Sistema Único de Registro de Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicos e Históricos" was developed to face the need of having a modern and strong technological support capable to cover the legal, academic and institutional aspects that the Public Registry required as a fundamental area of the Institution. It has the duty to guarantee information for query and monitoring activities about federal and particular monuments involved in the system. Due to the vast universe of information which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Thacker.

The majority of Late Pleistocene archaeological sites in central Portugal resulted from short-term forager activities on the scale of days or weeks. This paper explores the analytical and theoretical significance of these small, ephemeral sites for understanding Middle and Upper Paleolithic organization of technology and settlement strategies. The interpretive context provided by short term site assemblages is essential for developing robust regional hypotheses of Paleolithic behavior, including...