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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Yao.

This paper complements prevailing studies on prehistoric domestication and agriculture with an eye toward the interrelated problem of land use and food security in south China. In ecologies characterized by monsoonal variability, rugged terrain, and dense vegetation, what are the conditions that challenge or enable the cultivation of a range of staples? Using archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data, I examine how extensification of field practices enabled the cultivation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra McCleary.

This paper will discuss the most recent excavations in the Genizaro Pueblo de Abiquiu, NM (est. 1754). Abiquiu, as one of the oldest and most successful Genizaro land grants, is a key area for better understanding the history and trajectory of Indo-Hispanic settlements in Northern New Mexico. Three distinct areas within the historical boundary of the land grant were excavated, representing domestic defensive, and agricultural contexts. The paper will go over the excavations, ground-truthing GPR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raymond Hunter. Steve Kosiba.

Access to land is an important marker of status in agrarian societies. During the Andean Late Horizon (c.1400-1532), land differences grounded status distinctions: nobles developed monumental estate farms and kin-oriented communities collectively administered patchwork fields. Under the Spanish colonial system (1532-1824) access to land and labour came to differentiate status in new ways. Spaniards appropriated labor and property, while indigenous nobility contested Spanish rule and staked new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Morrison.

This paper introduces LandCover6k, an international collaboration dedicated to reconstructing Holocene land cover (vegetation) and land use on a global scale. Throughout the Holocene, human land use has led to changes in vegetation as well as having other effects on global climate. These effects are typically modeled (anthropogenic land cover change models, ALCC) using limited historical information, with the results of such models used in climate models. Existing ALCC models differ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Kay Lazrus.

Spatial analysis of landuse data from Napoleonic era Cadastral records provides a window into the social and economic status of individuals in the town of Bova (Calabria, Italy) during the Post-Medieval period. Using GIS to explore the cadastral records and archaeological evidence from field survey conducted by the Bova Marina Archaeological Project, this study explores how economic strategies and social relations in this community located in the foothills of the Aspromonte is reflected in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Joyce. Sarah Barber. Guy Hepp. Paul Sandberg. Michelle Butler.

This paper presents the results of an isotopic study of human dietary change during the Formative period (2000 BCE-300 CE) in the lower Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca. Approximately 60 individuals were sampled for δ13C and δ15N using both teeth and long bones. The study examines trends in the consumption of maize and marine/estuarine resources relative to regional environmental change. Interdisciplinary research along the drainage system indicates that environmental change in the lower Verde was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Skinner. Timothy Hay. Katherine Smyth. Jamie Quartermaine. Ann Killebrew.

Excavations at the ancient port site of Tel Akko in 2010 were co-directed by Ann E. Killebrew (The Pennsylvania State University) and Michal Artzy (The University of Haifa). Located on the only natural bay in the southern Levant, Akko is frequently mentioned in historical sources ranging from the Bronze Age through the present time. Among the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project’s primary goals is the development and implementation of new technologies devoted to 3D documentation and to a high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eduardo Neves.

There is good archaeological evidence that the Amazon basin was densely populated during the 2,000 years prior to the beginning of European colonization and that these populations promoted important landscape transformations. However, not much is known about patterns of landscape transformation during the Middle Holocene. This paper brings such data based on ongoing research on two archaeological sites in Southwestern Amazonia: Monte Castelo, a fluvial shellmound and Teotonio, an open air deeply...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cody Dalpra.

The importance of landscapes has long been discussed in archaeology, yet this is an often overlooked line of evidence. Landscapes often have a primary role in Native American oral histories and stories. Humans in general have a tendency to attach strong social meanings to visually prominent landforms. Such meanings are embedded within cultural landscapes as networks of natural and constructed places are perceived and made meaningful by communities. The Colorado Plateau of Northern Arizona...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Kruse-Peeples.

Archaeologists have long used environmental data to reconstruct the past. Recently, environmental scientists have come to realize the value of incorporating archaeological viewpoints in understanding modern ecological systems. It has been shown that human activities, even those that are relatively non-intensive, have the potential to result in long-lasting ecological transformations. Cross-disciplinary alliances between archaeologists and environmental scientists are necessary if we are to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikhail Echavarri. Stephen Acabado.

Dominant historical narratives suggest that groups located on the periphery of colonial empires and states received minimal influence from the latter. However, recent studies that focused on borderlands indicate substantial culture change and ecological manipulation that contributed to successful resistance against conquest. The Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) investigated the colonial borderland of Spanish Philippines, focusing on the role of the adoption of wet-rice cultivation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Li Zhang.

In the last decade, much has been learned about the network of interactions in Bronze Age Eurasia, and the importance of the steppe pastoralists in the creation of this network. However, the mechanisms that enabled societies in ancient China (both those bordering on and distant from the steppe) to participate in the Bronze Age Eurasian arena are still poorly understood. Based on the latest archaeological discoveries in China, this article focuses on the participation of four regions of ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Koerner. Bretton Giles. Eric Skov.

The Cultural Resource program at Fort Riley provides an ideal setting for developing and testing models for Pre-Contact settlement within the Flint Hills region of the Central Plains. Pre-Contact populations utilized the patchy environmental resources available within the Flint Hills by means of specialized activity locations in varying topographic zones. Many of these small sites have been identified through extensive pedestrian surveys of the Fort Riley Installation. These survey data have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Udo Schlotzhauer. Denis Zhuravlev. Daniel Kelterbaum. Anca Dan. Hans-Joachim Gehrke.

Landscapes are subject to ongoing geological transformation which change, hide or even destroy for their part anthropogenic remains. The reconstruction of historic landscapes as well as the causes of their changes is subject of geoarchaeology. A noteworthy example for a reconstruction of the historical landscape of a whole region is demonstrated by an interdisciplinary and international project on the South Russian Taman peninsula in the North Pontus. The new insights that were made by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Miller. Russell Cutts. David Braun. J.W.K. Harris.

Previous research in the Koobi Fora Formation, Marsabit District, Kenya identified nine delineated areas where the sediment was lithified and rubefied. These features derived from the excavation of the archaeological site of FxJj20-Main in the Lower Okote Member, which dates between 1.5 and 1.64 Ma. Previously, similar features in archaeological sites have been recovered with material that exhibit evidence of having been exposed to high temperatures. These features are discrete, isolated,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Whitney.

The widespread availability of satellite data has opened up parts of the world that have long been inaccessible for archaeological research. One such area is the border between Ethiopia and Somalia, which has been embroiled in civil conflicts for the past 30 years. As such, little is known about the cultural heritage of southeastern Ethiopia and the greater Somalia region. This project shows how using geographic information systems (GIS) as a form of initial survey can reveal substantial results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

Abstract In this paper we present a systematic comparative analysis of the most characteristic cultural traits of sites, apparently distant in time and space, that share fundamental aspects, concerning basic geomorphological and landscape features, settlement patterns, and rain and fertility symbolism depicted in rock art. The direct association between political power and religious authority, social prestige and the privilege of presiding ritual performances appears to be evident. While in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Bone. Habeom Kim.

Intensive archaeological research in Jeju Island, Korea conducted over last three decades have produced a rich set of spatial data on archaeological sites and feature distributions across the island. While these spatial data have high potential for improving archaeological understanding of past human activities, a systematic analysis of spatial data from Jeju has yet to be fully undertaken by archaeologists. In this study, we employ spatial analysis on high-resolution topographic data to enhance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn MacFarland.

Realistic, symbolic and metaphorical representations of animals (i.e., Animal Style Art), and associated themes ("griffins"/animal fusion, combat, geometric design within animal) depicted on artifacts attributed to Scythian, Saka, and Xiongnu, from Iron Age (ca., 1,000-100 BC) north central Eurasia are the focus of statistical analyses identifying structured usage amongst the regions, linked to religious beliefs. Common expression of symbolic subject matter and themes on artifacts is analyzed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LuAnn Wandsnider.

LandUse6k is a consortium of archaeologists, historical geographers and historians engaged in synthesizing land use data for various slices of time, to be used to improve the efficacy of climate models. These efforts recognize the large impact that anthropogenic land cover change has had on past climate and climate change trajectory. We report on efforts to characterize land use through time for North America describing methods and issues. We estimate how these characterizations allow for more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Maxwell. Robert H. Tykot. Andrea Vianello.

The Romans and Byzantines in Veneto (northeast Italy), experienced invasions from a Germanic tribal group, the Langobards, in AD 567, with occupations lasting until the 8th century AD; however, Langobard diet and health are largely unknown during this period of transition. Information on Langobard diet and health is pertinent to understanding the political, economic, and social changes that occurred during the Langobard arrival and subsequent occupation. To address these questions, we focused on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon Zinsious. Jonathan Haws.

The Solutrean techno-complex, traditionally divided into three broad temporal phases, has been an area of great interest for those studying human adaptations during the Upper Paleolithic, specifically the Last Glacial Maximum. Distinguishing more discrete phases of the Solutrean period is hampered by the lack of adequate radiocarbon dates from secured contexts. Currently, Solutrean stratigraphic information relies mostly on older excavations that produced lower resolution data. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Field. Carrie Heitman.

In this poster, I explore shifts in the geomorphic landscape surrounding Pueblo Pintado, outside of Chaco Canyon National Cultural Park, New Mexico, in order to assess modern impacts on the ancient road systems which connect Great Houses throughout the Chacoan region. Utilizing high-altitude aerial imagery gathered by Jacob Smith III, I am working to create a high-resolution, large-scale photogrammetric model surrounding Pueblo Pintado. This model will provide support for geospatial analyses of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Farid Rahemtulla.

Site EjTa-4 located on Calvert Island is a large midden complex capped with dozens of culturally modified cedar trees, and it has revealed older cultural material in the intertidal zones. Over the last five years the Hakai Institute has supported excavations of the large, undisturbed shell midden through the University of Northern British Columbia’s archaeology field school. The midden rises to 10 meters above the shoreline and radiocarbon dates indicate relatively continuous use of the site for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rowan Flad.

In the third millennium BC, several walled sites were inhabited in the Chengdu Plain of Sichuan, China. These late Neolithic settlements varied in size and shape, and they had mounded earth walls, some encompassing the largest areas of any known sites of their time in China. The site of Baodun is the largest known example, and has recently been the focus of extensive excavations. Other known sites in the region include Gucheng in Pi Xian County, the most completely preserved of these walled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirrily White.

There is no agreement as to how very large, dispersed, occupation aggregates in prehistory such as the Trypillia megasites (4th M BCE), Chaco Canyon (9th–12th C CE) and the sprawling Neolithic settlements of the Middle Yangzi (3rd M BCE) should be classified in archaeology. Often these sites behaved very differently to the large, higher-density settlements with which they are sometimes compared. The aim of this research is to look at material and spatial patterns in the formation, development...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gibránn Becerra.

El ejercicio del poder en Mesoamérica puede ser medido y estudiado de diferentes formas. Una de estas formas tiene que ver con los despliegues políticos ligados a los programas arquitectónicos y las estrategias políticas implementados a partir de estos elementos. En este trabajo se pretende mostrar de forma visual los resultados de un estudio que evaluó la centralización del trabajo de la arquitectura pública como un índice de poder político.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Lorenza Lopez Mestas Camberos.

Los objetos trabajados en una extensa variedad de piedras verdes fueron altamente apreciados por las culturas mesoamericanas desde tiempos tempranos. Lo anterior aplica para el Occidente de México, en donde su uso se encuentra ligado a las actividades económicas, rituales y políticas realizadas por las elites, desde el Formativo medio, documentado en sitios de los complejos Capacha, El Opeño y Pantano, y generalizado a partir del Formativo tardío entre los grupos pertenecientes a la tradición de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Víctor Hugo García Ferrusca. Alejandra Abrego Rivas.

Durante los trabajos de excavación y recorrido de superficie en el Proyecto de Salvamento Arqueológico Gasoducto Puerto Libertad-Frontera Estatal, llevado a cabo en Sonora, México, se ha recuperado una numerosa muestra de puntas de proyectil sobre un área que cubre cerca de 600 kilómetros lineales, desde Puerto Libertad, en la costa noroeste del estado, hasta el límite con Sinaloa. Éstas puntas están afiliadas a determinados contextos en diferentes periodos, como el arcaico, el de agricultura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Roberts.

In 2009, a three phase project was initiated at Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site to remove graffiti that was painted over Native American pictographs, using portable lasers. The first phase of this project tested the ability of a laser to remove graffiti from an area of rock that did not contain pictographs; this test showed that a laser could be used to remove layers of graffiti from the igneous formations at the site. In 2010, samples of graffiti paint that was not directly on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Reed.

Pottery from Earl Morris’ excavations in Late Bonito phase contexts at Aztec West Ruin and recent surface collections at Aztec North Ruin are examined to shed further light on Chacoan period developments at these two great houses. Morris’ early 20th century excavations focused specifically on West Ruin, but the North and East Ruins filled out the triad of great houses comprising a substantial complex within the modern boundary of Aztec Ruins National Monument. Several researchers have suggested...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabine Reinhold.

After more than one millennium of mobile pastoral lifeways, the mid-2nd millennium BC witnessed the reappearance of village-based life in an area stretching from the Black Sea, across Caucasia to Anatolia and North Western Iran. Its manifestation is the emergence of stone-built dwellings clustered in small or middle-sized settlements. Concurrently, the transformation of the 3rd millennium BC mobile pastoralism into combined mountain agriculture allowed retaining a pastoral economy in spite of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Eng. Quan-chao Zhang. Hong Zhu.

The late Bronze Age in the Inner Asian steppe was a transitional period, with the adoption of mobile herding, as well as increasing sociopolitical interaction and complexity among groups in this region. Although archaeological studies have indicated that many steppe groups engaged in a variety of subsistence practices, pastoralism in general has been characterized as a rather uniform lifestyle; and nomadic pastoralism in particular has been associated more often with the role of males, i.e., as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Turner. Rex Koontz.

The proliferation of ballcourts at major sites such as El Tajín and Xochicalco during the Late Classic period suggests that the Mesoamerican ballgame and its associated architectural features played a crucial role in the expression of power and identity in the tumultuous centuries that followed the collapse of Teotihuacan. This paper investigates the role of Late Classic ballcourts in fostering, shaping, and manifesting cross-cultural interaction through focus on sites from three different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Jordan.

Archaeological approaches to ancient Maya communities often assume that spatially distinct architectural groups are tantamount to social groups, but proximity is likely not the only salient organizing principle. Members of prehistoric communities, like modern ones, defined the community in which they belong based on who they choose to interact with, which often lies at the intersection of kin, status, gender, ethic, economic, and spatial affiliations. Employing a communities of practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lesley Howse.

This paper investigates human and animal interaction in two very different hunter-gatherer societies, Late Dorset and Thule Inuit, who once occupied the eastern Arctic. To access cultural differences I focus on how disparate hunting technologies impacted each society's archaeofaunas, and describe what appear to be culturally distinct trends in the faunal remains. In light of these findings, differences between Late Dorset and Thule Inuit hunting strategies, and other societal aspects including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Gabriel Vicencio. Aurelio López Corral. Mari Carmen Serra Puche.

This study inquires into the obsidian commercial networks of Late Formative in the site of Xochitecatl-Cacaxtla employing an analysis of pXRF on 102 pieces of obsidian artifacts. In addition, we performed a technological approach of the material recovered from ceremonial and domestic contexts in order to know in which stage of the process did it arrive. With this, we intent to know how each source was represented throughout the site, revealing the internal maneuvers used by two different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Beckwith.

Compared to the coastal areas of Ecuador, the central highlands of Ecuador are not well known archaeologically, especially for the Formative Period. This paper will report on preliminary survey and excavation research carried out in the Chibunga River Valley, to the south of the modern city of Riobamba, during the 2009 and 2012 field seasons. Test excavations were carried out at the site of Collay, located on a mesa at 3100 masl, to obtain a sample of material culture and material for dating....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Neff. Sachiko Sakai. Brendan Culleton. Douglas Kennett.

Deposits in the mangrove zone south of Izapa have abundant debris from salt and ceramic production, consistent with pyro-industrial specialization based on fuel wood and other resources. These archaeological deposits are also relatively intact, and thus they offer the opportunity to test hypotheses about demographic trends derived from more chronologically ambiguous deposits of the coastal plain and piedmont. A regional demographic bottleneck has been suggested for the Early Classic, when survey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Javier Fernandez-Lopez De Pablo. Mario Gutiérrez-Roig. Magdalena Gómez-Puche. Sergi Lozano.

This paper presents the preliminary results of the research project MULTI-SCALARDEM and our current work in the context of a new ERC supported project: PALEODEM. Both projects aim to reconstruct the population history of the Iberian Peninsula from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.16,000-8,000 cal BP), a time framework of major cultural and socio-economic adaptations to climatic and environmental change. For this presentation, we will focus on the analysis of the radiocarbon record...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Holst. Jonathan Haws.

Lapa do Picareiro, a cave located in Portuguese Estremadura, contains continuous deposits dated to the Late Pleistocene. As one of the highest elevation Upper Paleolithic sites currently known in Portugal, questions are raised about the function of the site during this time. The high resolution data sets generated from the ongoing excavation allow for various types of analysis to help shed light on a broader understanding of the site’s function. This poster presents a comprehensive analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Fisher.

Understanding ecological responses to climate change are essential before inferences can be made regarding past culture change and human adaptation to the environment. This study focuses on modeling the paleoecology of central Alaska at the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition using predictive modeling. Quadratic Discriminant Analysis is used to determine which modern climate variables, including minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation, as well as topographic data, best predict modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Politis.

In the 1970s Ruth Gruhn and Alan Bryan spent several weeks in Argentina as part of a one-year trip around South America. In those years, Ruth and Alan started to challenge the Clovis-First Model for the peopling of the America, and their visit to South America was instrumental in consolidating their ideas as well as stimulating the research of Late Pleistocene archaeological sites. Subsequent travels to the region, especially the one made by Alan in 1980, contributed to generating the hypothesis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karisa Terry. Ian Buvit. Aleksander V. Konstantinov.

Late Pleistocene settlement systems in the Transbaikal Region of Siberia were established by 21,000 cal bp, and underwent key changes as climates ameliorated into the Holocene by around 12,000 cal bp. During this time the area was characterized by construction of characteristic stone-outlined circular structures, or dwelling features, with activities situated around central, stone-outlined hearths, in riparian environments of major waterways. A few produced as many as six hearth features. With...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Hodges.

Stratigraphic and soil horizon sequences within the boundaries of archaeological sites are remnants of formerly more extensive paleolandscapes. Since these fragments have both spatial and temporal boundaries extending beyond the site boundaries, the sedimentary and soil bodies defined within an archaeological site represent segments of past landscapes and reflect, sometimes indirectly, relationships with the broader surrounding paleoecosystem. In order to further our understanding of LPH...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sanna-Kaisa Saunaluoma.

The archaeology of Acre has been widely drawing the attention of the scientific community due to the discovery of an ancient civilization building geometric earthworks labeled "geoglyphs". In the course of field surveys realized at the geoglyph sites other types of archaeological sites were documented as well, including sites consisting of small artificial earthen mounds arranged in a circular form. At first, the mound sites were also classified as geoglyphs, but through the recent fieldwork it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Hill.

Within the Yellowstone River basin, in eastern Montana, upland landscapes contain silts with buried soils. Radiocarbon measurements from bone and the paleosols provide a basis for proposing a regional chronostratigraphic model. At the Lindsay locality, north of the Yellowstone River, mammoth remains were recovered within silts overlain by a buried soil A-horizon. Samples from the mammoth have been analyzed by six laboratories, using beta decay or AMS. If the radiocarbon determinations older...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jasmine Sacharuk. Hongbin Yue.

A great deal of effort has been dedicated to developing detailed ceramic chronologies at the late Shang capital of Yinxu (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.E.) in China, but there has been comparatively less focus on the specific, actual uses of ceramic vessels and the roles that they played in the day-to-day life of Shang citizens. Local cooking practices and cooking technology in particular, both of which are key aspects in household dynamics and cultural identity, hold the potential to reveal important...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Ainsworth.

In 1598, Spanish colonialists introduced European domestic fauna, including sheep, pigs, and cattle, into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley (MRGV). Sometime after this initial contact, Native residents of the MRGV shifted away from the use of a diverse set of native fauna and focused their diets on non-native domestic taxa. This shift had far reaching effects; reliance on domestic grazers ultimately led to overgrazing, erosion, and loss of native species – all of which characterize the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Pierce. Elizabeth Graham.

The Maya site of Lamanai in northern Belize exemplifies one of the longer occupation spans in the Maya Lowlands—continuously inhabited from the Preclassic (ca. 1500 B.C.) through the Spanish and British colonial periods (post A.D. 1540). The N10[3] architectural group (Ottawa), located in the Central Precinct of Lamanai, has been interpreted as a palace group of significance due to its lengthy occupation span and its location adjacent to two important ceremonial plaza groups. During the Late to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Olszewski. Brenda Baker.

Later Stone Age (LSA) foragers in the Middle Nile Valley had relatively mobile lifeways that included use of pottery. Distinguishing LSA from Neolithic ceramics is difficult due to continuity in styles, an issue that extends to lithic assemblages. Lunate microliths and scaled pieces and use of flint and quartz as main lithic raw materials span both periods. We examine the lithic assemblage at ASU 09-02, a LSA site in the 4th Cataract region of northern Sudan. Situated on a terrace north of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pilar Escontrias.

In 1884, Friedrich Engels attributed the development of the nuclear family unit to the rise of the capitalist state and the subsequent emergence of private property in 16th century Europe. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, he posited that private property resulted in the restructuring of kinship practices where women gradually lost authority over their own activities, spaces, and their lives, and where the division of labor became gendered and spatialized. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Sharpe.

This study examines the first use of lead (Pb) isotope analysis as a means of tracking animal movement and exchange in the Maya area. Strontium and oxygen isotope ratios have been previously used to track animal and human movements archaeologically in Mesoamerica. Lead has been used to track movement and exchange in other parts of the world, and its application to Mesoamerican archaeology holds great potential for refining sourcing strategies. This study identifies local and non-local fauna at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Desrochers. Marvin Rowe. Sally Cole. Karen Steelman.

We used numerous techniques to study the white step pattern murals of Lowry Pueblo Kivas A and B: visual analysis, portable X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer, and powder X-ray diffraction. Elemental analyses identified lead and zinc in the shiny bright white paint layer and calcium in the dull white paint layer. X-ray diffraction confirmed zinc oxide and lead sulfate pigment minerals in the shiny, bright white paint layer, whereas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Livingood.

One of the remarkable aspects about the Hasinai Caddo is the nature of their specialized leadership roles. This paper is going to take a comparative approach using ethnohistoric documents to examine the differences between the Caddo and their neighbors with regard to the types of specialized roles that exist, the types of divisions and circumscriptions on authority that exist for leaders, and the level of formality or informality in leadership function. The goal of the paper is to highlight what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Springate.

In 1903, white middle-class women founded Wiawaka Holiday House in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains for "working girls" to have an affordable vacation away from unhealthy factories and cities. In 2013 and 2014, I and dozens of community volunteers (ages 18 to 70) excavated on the grounds of the still-operating Wiawaka Holiday House (now the Wiawaka Center for Women). Underpinning all of the conversations and instruction about interpretation and excavation at the site were the queer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon Locke. Brian Geyer.

Founded in August 2014, LEADR is both a physical space and a curriculum development initiative established as a collaboration between the Departments of History and Anthropology, and Matrix at Michigan State University. Fully equipped with large screens for group work, computers, cameras, 3D printers and scanners, microcomputing equipment, and other technology, LEADR is well equipped to facilitate innovative digital cultural heritage instruction and project development. The decentralized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alston Thoms.

Ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts attest to the dietary importance of wild root foods (i.e., geophytes) and a diversity of earth-oven baking techniques among hunter-gatherer populations in south-central North America. Recovery of charred bulbs and tubers, as well as their microfossils, from ancient earth ovens and fire-cracked rock features illustrate that dependence on wild geophytes and earth-oven technology was widespread by the early Holocene and continued to the historic era. It is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Valery Terwilliger. Marilyn Fogel. W. Paul Adderley. Zewdu Eshetu. A. Catherine D'Andrea.

Home to Aksum and other highly-developed polities, the Tigrai Plateau is a leading contender for sub-Saharan Africa's richest center of ancient state formation. This and its susceptibility to environmental (climate and land cover) variation make the region compelling for evaluating whether environmental changes affected the trajectories of polities. Soils exposed by gullying are the longest continuous archives of environmental proxies in the region. Many proxies are affected by both climate and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Gustas.

Spatial modeling of prehistoric maritime movement on the Pacific Northwest Coast is important in contemporary archaeology because it can help reveal previously unseen patterns and trends in movement through a landscape that has radically changed over time. GIS analysis has the potential to reveal new sites that have been hidden by changing sea levels. Here we present models of maritime movement using least cost path analysis (LCA) to determine the area’s most likely to have been traveled through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Damick.

An oft-heard sentiment in prehistoric archaeology, particularly for contexts without traditionally visible indicators of gender (i.e., bodies or identifiable representations of bodies), is that "the evidence just isn’t there" to productively introduce intersectional gender research. This is partly due to the trend-sensitivity of archaeology, which often draws from other disciplines to supplement its own scope. Intersectionality is used in the same way, as archaeologists attempt to reframe their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Cobb. Linda Palit.

Handprints and stencils are ubiquitous elements in rock art throughout the world. Numerous well preserved examples have been noted in Maya caves. These elements provide a clue as to the sex of the person whose hand is recorded on the cave wall. Recent studies have shown that sex may be estimated with a high degree of accuracy using anthropometric hand measurements. Sex is estimated by applying a variety of mathematical models based on sexual dimorphism in hand dimensions to direct measurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Camacho-Trejo.

H.B. Nicholson was considered the Tlamatini of Aztec studies. He was also known as a warm and generous professor who dedicated his life to the study of Mesoamerican cultures. His legacy is highlighted by his remarkable collection of articles, books, photographs, and slides acquired over more than five decades. After his death in 2007, Nicholson’s family donated his entire private collection of books, articles, slides, and photographs to the University of California, Los Angeles. Five years ago,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Mesa Dávila.

The paper we present reveals the legal basis of the Mexican cultural heritage public registry and the consequences of the relation it sustain with it´s statements and academic interests involved in the description of archaeological materials. Accordingly, the real work begins of typology, chronology and cultural classification, associated with the sites and related archaeological materials, as well as, its preservation status. All this information is stored, organized and published, in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Rendu. Morgan Roussel. Sylvain Renou. Marie Cecile Soulier. Marie Soressi.

During the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, the replacement of Neanderthal populations by Anatomically Modern Human ones is concomitant of major cultural transformations. Progressively, human population incorporated new raw materials in their personal gear cumulating into an explosion of the cultural material diversity. Les Cottés in France preserves a detailed sequence with levels attributed to the late Mousterian, Chatelperronian, ProtoAurignacian and Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hayward. Frank Schieppati. Michael Cinquino.

Two data sets-Jonsson Marquet's proposed chronological framework for rock art of the Windward Islands and Alistair Bright's reconstruction of settlement, socio-political and exchange networks within the same region-provide a context for examining the interrelationships among the material cultural correlates (petroglyphs, settlement types, pottery) of various aspects of the area's, as well as inter-area prehistoric cultural components.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Seidemann. Christine Halling.

Unlike many other aspects of archaeology, forensic archaeology and anthropology is, in part, only as effective as the courts believe it to be. While peer review is the gold standard for assessing the integrity and viability of the scientific aspects of forensic archaeology and anthropology, passing muster in a court of law can be a different—and sometimes counterintuitive—standard. Although some recent research in this area has examined the impact of court attempts to “police” the integrity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde.

This paper will seek to explore how archaeological investigations of masculinity and manhood can contribute to contemporary theory on gender and sexuality. Drawing on material from a 19th century industrial work camp in Coastal California, I will argue that intersectionality provides promising avenues as both a theoretical paradigm and as a way to articulate archaeological work within a wider, multi-disciplinary discourse on gender. Methodological implications for archaeological engagements with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Kitty Emery. Carlos Peraza Lope.

The ancient Maya utilized two species of turkeys: the Ocellated Turkey (Meleagris ocellata) native to the Yucatán Peninsula, northern Guatemala, and northern Belize and the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) from Central Mexico. The exact timing of Wild Turkey domestication and its introduction to the Maya area is unknown, although evidence as early as the Preclassic exists. The Ocellated Turkey was never fully domesticated but many scholars have proposed the Maya may have managed the species. To...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Fash.

The abundance and diversity of monumental art, architecture and hieroglyphic texts at sites outside the Principal Group in the Copan Valley, and into the hinterlands, illuminate the timing and intent of regal investiture of authority in elites considered important to the stability of the kingdom. The consistent use of two imagery programs in architecture, and the linking of one of those programs with textual confirmation of membership in the royal court, reveal two strategies for leveraging the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rheta Lanehart. Anne P. Underhill. Robert H. Tykot. Fen Wang. Fengshi Luan.

Patterns of food consumption are intimately linked to economy, social organization, culture, and identity. This study investigated patterns of food consumption across space and time at Liangchengzhen, a Longshan (ca. 2600-1900 B.C.) site located in Shandong Province, China. It was hypothesized that evidence of increasing social inequality with respect to food consumption would be found from early to late phases. Rice and meat from mammals, especially pigs, were hypothesized as the most likely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Bates. Walter Witschey. Craig Rose. Mary Farrell. Erin West.

The Chesapeake Bay, one of the largest marine estuaries in the world, serves as a microcosm of the forces of shoreline environmental change such as sea level rise, land subsidence and erosion and the impacts that such change has on the archaeological record. Using shoreline analysis, empirical observations and predictive modeling of four counties along the Bay, this project seeks to establish an understanding of the impacts on known archaeological sites in the study area as well as to assess...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petro Pesonen. Miikka Tallavaara.

Investigation of LiDAR visualizations has become a standard tool in archaeological site detection in Finland, as large part of the country has been LiDAR scanned. Because archaeologists alone do not have enough resources to thoroughly analyze these big data, part of the work has been crowd sourced. Thanks to active volunteers, not only the number of sites has increased, but we now have new types of sites, and sites in environmental contexts that have previously been ignored in archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ringle. Tomas Gallareta Negron. Dan Griffin.

A 2013 NASA LiDAR mission passed over the eastern extreme of the region being investigated by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project (BRAP), in the process partially imaging the secondary site of Acambalam II/III. A substantial portion of the site was ground-checked during the summer of 2016. This paper discusses post-collection LiDAR processing and the possibilities for feature detection and landscape use revealed by ground truthing. The data also provide interesting demographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon Moses.

African magic rituals among the graves of the recently dead in the South and elsewhere may not be as rare as one might think. This paper is an exploration of a case wherein the author was called in as a forensic archaeologist and consultant to law enforcement investigating a case of cemetery desecrations with supernatural overtones. Further, during the course of this investigation, possible connections between the author's historical archaeological research excavation of a slave street on a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber Osterholt.

Hardin Village is a Fort Ancient site located less than half a kilometer from the south bank of the Ohio River. It was excavated under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s. The skeletal remains from the Late Middle and Late Fort Ancient Periods (A.D. 1450–1675) represent more than 300 individuals, both male and female, aged neonate to 60+ years. Adult individuals presented a range of possible cranial and post-cranial trauma, including blunt force, sharp force, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willa Trask. Kristin Hoffmeister. J. Alex Canterbury.

The southern Belize region is typically considered geographically and culturally peripheral to the primary activity areas of the ancient Maya. Although researchers have documented the development of a "southern Belize style" in terms of architecture and material culture, to date very little systematic work has been undertaken to understand health, diet, and mortuary behavior in the region. Ten years of excavations at Uxbenká have yielded rich evidence of a continuous occupation spanning from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Gregory. Alanna Ossa.

Disruption of exchange networks and settlement patterns during the late Sedentary to early Classic period transition has been well documented along the middle Gila River Valley. Previous research has suggested a trend in population relocation from downstream Gila River sites such as Snaketown in favor of sites upstream such as the Grewe-Casa Grande complex during this time. Based on evidence recovered from residential contexts identified during the PVR FRS project, outlying areas situated along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Jordan.

In Arctic Archaeology, human-animal relations have traditionally been studied in terms of ecology, optimality and adaptation; more recently, there has been growing interest in understanding how spiritual obligations affected treatment of circumpolar animals and their physical remains. Although these symbolic perspectives were initially useful, many tended to draw on ethnography, especially when using the concept of a single overarching ‘Circumpolar Cosmology; unfortunately, this can reduce...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Ortega. Rosa María Flores-Ramírez. Andrés Saúl Alcántara-Salinas.

Life conditions of agrarian populations in Mesoamerica changed during the cultural periods. Scholars have seen a stature decrease and a pattern of increase of the morbidity indicators across the time (Del Ángel 1996; Márquez et al. 2002). The aim of this paper is compare skeletal stress indicators between Maya (Quintana Roo) and West México (Colima) settlements to evaluate life conditions, similarities and differences from 200 to 900 BC. These settlements share modes of production and weather...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Bengtson. Jodie O'Gorman. Amy Michael.

Children are not immune to the violence of war. They can be incidental victims, prime targets, active participants, beneficiaries of fierce protection, or the recipients of warfare-related symbolic action. Though not subject to the same high rates of violent trauma as their adult counterparts, the available osteological data show that a small number of children interred in the late prehistoric Norris Farms #36 cemetery in Fulton County, Illinois did suffer traumatic injuries, both fatal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marija Edinborough. Sarah Fearn. Imre Lengyel. Dusan Boric. Kevan Edinborough.

Life-history events such as pregnancies, skeletal trauma, and renal disease can be estimated from growth layers of tooth cementum. Cementum is a mineralized tissue surrounding root of each human tooth consist of an inorganic calcium phosphate mineral approximated by hydroxyapatite (HA) and collagen. Several parameters have an influence on the calcium metabolism and result in a lack of available calcium at the mineralization front of tooth cementum. The year of occurrence of certain life-history...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michaela Binder. Charlotte Roberts. Neal Spencer.

With the end of the Pharaonic Egyptian colonial occupation c. 1070BC and the increasing deterioration of climatic conditions, communities in Upper Nubia faced significant changes, both to the political structure (which may have affected trade networks), and to the agricultural potential of the region (e.g. availability of arable land). This presentation aims to elucidate if, and in what ways, these alterations impacted upon the living conditions of the people in the area, using the skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Chatters. Vera Tiesler. Andrea Cucina. Diana Arano Recio. Pilar Luna Erreguerena.

Cave divers discovered remains of an adolescent human female in an immense, submerged chamber of the Sac Actun cave system in 2007. Until recently, her remains had only been studied from photographs, photo-based 3-dimensional models, and minimal sampling. Now her skeleton has been removed from the cave, conserved, and subjected to bioarchaeological, chemical, and histomorphological analysis. Her unusually complete and well-preserved skeleton, a rarity for late Pleistocene females in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hilda Lozano Bravo.

Archaeometric studies promote interdisciplinarity. Therefore, through this framework we can analyze other materials which facilitate the understanding of the society which created, modified, and used them. To sum up, with this methodology we seek to comprehend the characteristics of the materials used to build the city of Teotihuacan. Currently, there are archaeomagnetic studies underway which intend to discover the Sun Pyramid Square’s chronology of occupation. Furthermore, we are also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sadie Weber.

Atalla, located in the South Central Andes of Peru in the province of Huancavelica, boasts a monumental temple and expansive, multi-phase domestic areas. Occupation of the site intermittently spans approximately 3000 years, and human presence in the surrounding area likely predates this site. Recent excavations focusing on both the monumental and domestic sectors of the site have yielded faunal remains from nearly all contexts. Here, I present an analysis of the faunal remains and bone tools...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Noldner. Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo. Johnathan Buffalo.

Countless studies have demonstrated that isotopic and ancient DNA analyses of human skeletal remains can provide a valuable added layer of information to the study of past populations and their lifeways. Although improvements in sampling methods and technological advances have greatly reduced the amount of bone or enamel required, these analyses still require the destruction of human remains. Many Native American communities are opposed and do not allow sampling of their ancestors’ remains for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anja Mansrud.

This contribution aims to investigate the entanglement of environment, materiality, technology and cosmology in the Middle Mesolithic Stone-Age (8300-6300 cal. BC), of the North East Skagerrak area, Eastern Norway and Western Sweden, by focusing on the manufacture of bone-fishhooks. I argue that fishhooks are keys objects for exploring the world-views of Middle Mesolithic coastal groups. Fishhooks were linked with daily subsistence, invested with much labour, and their manufacture entwined with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Reilly. Sean McClure.

Iconographic investigations have revealed how the spread of the symbolism associated with NIGHT and DAY and the liminal space that separates the two were the major focus for the layout of sacred space or ritual precincts throughout the Mesoamerican Formative Period. Night was perceived as the home of much of the spiritual power which the ancient Mesoamericans perceived as inherent within the cosmological structure of the cosmos. In order to control the public and supernatural interface of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bridget Kelly.

In this paper the potential for productive relationships between linguistics and archeology is discussed in the context of the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The material remains of most traded goods decompose too swiftly to be studied hundreds of years after their circulation in trade networks. However, the vocabulary that describes these goods has the potential to survive in contemporary languages. Thus, comprehensive study of linguistic data can support historical and archeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sally Rice. Conor Snoek. Michaela Stang.

Linguistic evidence has long played an important role in determining the relationship of Apachean peoples to Northern Athapaskans (Sapir 1936). While Apachean membership within the larger Athapaskan family is firmly established, the more precise determination of their linguistic affiliation to Northern Athapaskan linguistic groups has proved more difficult (Rice 2012). The reasons for this difficulty arose chiefly from the lack of available data and the limitations in the power of analytic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Blair.

Beads and other ornaments were important objects involved in early colonial entanglements between Europeans and Native Americans, with the color, texture, and physical properties of these objects fostering the embodiment of new social roles within changing colonial worlds. In this paper I discuss how such objects were involved in the material manifestation of social identities as pluralistic native communities aggregated in the Spanish missions of La Florida. Looking specifically at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andreas Angourakis. Agnese Fusaro. Veronica Martinez. Josep M. Gurt.

The relation between the main variants of pre-industrial economic production in arid Eurasia, from nomadic pastoralism to irrigated agriculture, is known to have been unstable, with abundant examples of conflict and shifting patterns of land use right up to contemporary times. We present the latest development of a six-year effort, within the SimulPast project, in experimenting and generating theory that could help explain the different land use patterns. Using Agent-Based simulation models, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Logan Van Hagen. Kathryn Ranhorn. Tamara Dogandžic. David Braun.

The Koobi Fora region in eastern Turkana, northern Kenya, is known for its preservation of Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossils. However very little is known about the Middle Stone Age (MSA) from this region. Fossil and genetic evidence suggest modern humans originated in eastern Africa ~200ka, adding to the significance of this time period and region. In 2016, we excavated site GaJj17, an MSA site located in Area 104 of Koobi Fora. Here we present lithic analysis of recovered in situ and surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Hart.

Recent research into quarrying and lithic production in Wadi el-Sheikh, Egypt by the University of Vienna has identified activities extending from the Middle Paleolithic to modern times. These include Middle Paleolithic use of surface materials, Neolithic chert quarrying, Pharaonic gypsum extraction, quarrying and production of groundstone, ochre collection, and small-scale independent modern salt quarrying. However, the most striking activities are the large-scale Pharaonic period chert...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yue Hu. Benjamin Marwick. Weiwen Huang. Jiafu Zhang. Bo Li.

The Guanyindong site, discovered in 1964, is located in Guizhou Province, Southwest China, dated back to 80―115 ka and 40―190 ka based on two U-series dating (fossil and carbonate samples) results. The 2323 stone artifacts and numerous fauna fossils were yielded during 3 main excavation seasons. Here we present the study of 2272 stone artifacts, which consist of untouched flakes (N=161）and retouched flakes (N=1077), cores (N= 176), chunks and debris (N=804). The principle raw materials are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Talia Abulafia. Ofer Marder. Omry Barzailai.

The lithic assemblages from Area C derive from a thick section composed reworked terra rossa soil of dark brown to reddish brown, loose clay to silty clay loam with abundant biogenic and anthropogenic materials subdivided into eight units. The depositional sequence of the units is in a chronological order as shown by radiocarbon and U-Th dates (Hershkovitz et al., 2015). A typotechnological analysis of the all units suggest a shift in industries though the sequence. Unit 2-3 are small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Taylor.

Beck and Jones’ approach to settlement patterns is useful beyond the small highly mobile groups of the Great Basin Paleoarchaic because they expertly model how to connect lithic artifacts with the lithic landscape: first, conduct a thorough investigation of toolstone sources; second, consider how people brought toolstone to sites and how that might be reflected in the reduction sequence; and third, examine the representation of the reduction sequence at many sites across the landscape. I have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Jones. Maya Krause. Caroline Watson.

Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) communities contemporaneously occupied the North Carolina and Virginia Piedmont and adjacent areas from AD 1100-1600. Discussions of trade and exchange, however, tend to focus on Mississippian political economies. Previous work at PVT sites has identified non-local lithic materials, some moving between Mississippian and PVT areas, suggesting a regional network that included both cultures. Our work focuses on the fourteenth-century Redtail site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yue Feng. Youping Wang.

Nearly half a century ago, Prof. Grahame Clark summarized the five modes of lithic technology in Paleolithic times: Oldowan, Acheulian, Mousterian, Blade and Microblade Techniques. Major areas in the western part of the Old World followed this sequence, however, going east to the Tibetan Plateau and the deserts of Central Asia, China, and East Asia, the core-and-flake and cobble–tool industries persisted majorly throughout the Pleistocene. This paper introduces the new discoveries in the central...