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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner. Ruth Van Dyke.

Our paper reports on our recent archaeological testing at the previously unexcavated Aztec North great house at Aztec Ruins National Monument. Standing on the river terrace behind and above the better-known valley great houses, Aztec North is out of sight of those great houses but tightly bound to them as part of the formalized cultural landscape of Aztec Ruins. It is a crucial site for understanding the development of Chaco Canyon’s outliers, as it was likely the earliest great house built in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Duwe. Robert Preucel.

From the emergence into this world to the settling of the modern villages, the Pueblos view their own history as a dynamic, living process. While key elements of Pueblo identity and worldview have always been with the people, migration experiences and the amalgamation of people with diverse backgrounds and beliefs were essential in shaping the culture and cosmology of each Pueblo group. This process – called ‘becoming’ by Pueblo scholars – is never complete and represents the malleability of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Cassedy.

The Hudson River in upstate New York formed a strategic military corridor between the North American British and French colonies for centuries. In the 1750s, it was the setting for multiple British expeditions moving north to contest the French coming south out of Lake Champlain and Canada. Because the fighting was seasonal, as were the garrisons of the forts and storage depots, the facilities had to be frequently rebuilt, and the entire supply chain had to be renewed annually to move tons of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Bedford.

Much of the European mapping of the South West Pacific occurs relatively late in terms of global history. In Vanuatu (ex New Hebrides) the first visits were Spanish ships in 1606. The wider archipelago was not further explored until the visit of Cook in 1774 but soon afterwards it had been incorporated into the rapidly infilling global map. The geography, climate and people had been described as had hints of the economic potential and the islands could now be discussed and dissected amongst the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Britton. Edouard Masson-Maclean. Ellen McManus-Fry. Claire Houmard. Carly Ameen.

Historically and ethnographically dogs have played a prominent role in the lifeways and lifeworlds of many Arctic and sub-Arctic peoples, and are considered to be a vital aspect of adaptation to living in these regions, providing protection, fur and meat, as well as aiding hunting and transportation. Excavations at the precontact site of Nunalleq in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in coastal Western Alaska have uncovered a significant proportion of dog bones amongst the faunal assemblage. The presence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart.

In the 1960s and 1970s, cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport criticized the effects of the West on the developing world. Well before Crosby popularized the term, Rappaport labeled this process "Ecological Imperialism" to clarify the unequal relationship between the needs of an empire and environments it absorbs. Rappaport wrote when scientists were beginning to observe global ecological degradation, but anthropologists had yet to develop a historical perspective. Over the past decade,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Graesch. Corbin Maynard.

A boon to the archaeological study of American lifeways in the past and present, the massive assemblages of discarded objects at landfills poignantly speak to an era of unrivaled consumption and waste. Aggregated through municipally sanctioned collection services, these assemblages, however, are rarely representative of the full range of household-level discard behaviors. Illegal dump sites, in contrast, comprise assemblages that cannot be easily or quickly discarded through regular garbage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only WengCheong Lam. Liangbo Lv. Qianglu Zhang.

Although the imperial strategy of the Han Empire in its southern peripheries attracts significant scholarly interests, how to synthesize the issue of ethnic integration and imperial expansion within the study of material culture is still widely under-addressed. Especially, how the Han’s control over the movement and distribution of iron—a strategical resource for agricultural and military conquest—is almost overlooked in the literature. This presentation presents the latest statistical studies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Briseno.

This past summer I was given the opportunity to participate in an archaeology field school conducted in the country of Nicaragua. For the past 15 years, archaeologists have excavated sites along the shore of Lake Cocibolca in search for Mexican colonization. During my participation in the field school, we continued this quest through investigations at the site of El Rayo, the most significant site for studying the potential impact of outsiders on indigenous cultural traditions. The core...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Masaru Kobayashi.

As in the Northwest Coast of North America, salmon may have played a critical role for the development of subsistence and political economies as well as ritual systems during prehistoric and historic northern Japan. This paper explores the Jomon salmon ceremony in the Japan Sea coastal regions based on the analyses of the (1) ecology of salmon, (2) rock arts (petroglyphs), (3) salmon remains and their archaeological contexts, (4) zoomorphic stone figurines (clubs), and (5) ethnohistory...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Javiera Letelier Cosmelli.

Cigarettes are the most numerous, ubiquitous, and tolerated form of trash on the urban landscape (Graesch & Hartshorn 2014:1). This statement has special meaning in Chile, leading country in cigarette consumption in the continent, especially between women and youngsters. Current approaches in the study of this phenomenon are based on interviews, but no material study has yet been conducted. Considering the differences between people´s discourses and actions, along with the abundance and high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hoffman. James Myster. Steve Goranson. Rikka Bakken. Camille Warnacutt.

The Port des Morts ruins (47DR497) are from a Great Lakes lighthouse in operation for a brief nine years from 1849 to 1858. Located on Plum Island off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, this hastily constructed and poorly positioned lighthouse was home to William Riggins his wife Phebe and their growing family for all but the lighthouse’s final year. Historic documents suggest they lived a difficult frontier existence, but otherwise little is known about their time on the island. Now part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Huggett.

Computing devices have been increasingly used by archaeologists since the 1950s, their adoption accelerating significantly since the 1980s with the availability of personal computers. What is the nature of this changing relationship and what are the implications for archaeology (and computing)? These questions will be addressed through the metaphor of the interface. We are accustomed to the textual and graphical user interfaces as a means of negotiation between archaeologist and computer, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Peterson.

Archaeology, as a science, has a long history, not all of which has been ideal. Archaeologists in one generation are routinely dismayed with the work of previous generations of archaeologists. Sometimes this less than satisfactory work is due to a lack of knowledge at the time, as we learn more with each new technological advancement, and with each new generation of archaeologists. However, more often than we would like, these flaws in past archaeological work are due to apathy or negligence. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hillary Kiazyk.

The recent incorporation of 3D imaging into the field of archaeology has opened many doors with regards to accessibility of archaeological materials. While this promotes research by inviting a much broader research discussion, it also poses questions of ownership of materials. This poster will explore new ways that archaeologists, descendant communities and people of the general public are now interacting with archaeological materials as well as some of the challenges, benefits and problems...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Thomin.

In 2014 the Florida Public Archaeology Network began producing a webisode series titled "Archaeologyin3 Minutes." These three-minute videos are designed to highlight archaeology in the state of Florida and feature the research of faculty and students at the University of West Florida. In 2015 one of these videos was awarded First Place Winner and People’s Choice Award for the Video Category in the Archaeological Photo and Video Festival Competition hosted by the Society of Historical Archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Peres. Renee Walker. George Crothers.

The Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group brings together researchers and nearly sixty faunal datasets representing twenty-one sites from four major sub-regions of the Eastern Woodlands. In this paper, we focus on resource availability and the potential causal relationship to cultural choice. The Archaic Period archaeological sites in our study are located in the Mid-South and Ohio River Valley regions, and are well known for their composition of shell in the form of middens or mounds. In a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez. Samantha Lorenz.

Chultunes, man-made subterranean chambers excavated into limestone bedrock, are ubiquitous features encountered throughout the Maya cultural region. Although studies in the Northern Lowlands have demonstrated that chultunes in that locale functioned as water cisterns, the ascription of them as purely utilitarian within the Southern Lowlands is under much debate. One issue that hinders dialogue is lack of a commonly accepted understanding of what constitutes a chultun. The first aim of this paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Ryan.

Researchers in a number of fields have come to recognize the vital importance of the built environment not only as material culture, but as symbolic expressions of the larger cultural framework through which social relations are produced and reproduced. Over the last half-century, studies have demonstrated how architectural characteristics—such as building size, shape, and the presence of various architectural materials, features, and furnishings—have a direct influence on human behavior and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Aguero Reyes.

Terracotta figurine offerings as part of construction deposits are one of the traits that characterize the Classic period Central Veracruz culture. They are recurrent in both modest and monumental architecture, in sites of all ranks. In this they differ from ceramic figurine use in contemporary cultures, where they belong to the domestic and/or funerary sphere. This paper presents a case study on a series of figurine deposits of a palatial residence of the archaeological site of La Joya, showing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Whitten. David Chicoine.

This poster presents architectural and spatial data from monumental urban compounds or cercaduras at the Early Horizon center of Caylán (800-1 B.C.), Nepeña Valley, Department of Ancash, Peru. Caylán is interpreted as the primary center of a multi-tiered polity that developed in the littoral portion of the Nepeña Valley and reached its peak during the second half of the first millennium BC. Recent fieldwork at Caylán revealed the existence of more than 40 cercaduras interpreted as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatsuya Murakami. Shigeru Kabata. Julieta López.

Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process and architectural traditions remain poorly understood. Our research over the last five field seasons indicates that Tlalancaleca was urbanized during the Middle Formative period (ca. 650-500 BC) and experienced large-scale urban transformations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erella Hovers. Anna Belfer-Cohen.

Lithic artifacts and animal bones form the bulk of the material remains of the Paleolithic. This has led archaeologists to interpret these two types of finds as tethered components of subsistence systems. Differences observed through time and space in the lithic repertoire were considered as functional adjustments, designed to maximize gains from a diverse faunal resource base. While we do not challenge the general notion that lithic artifacts were used (also) for exploiting faunal (and other)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Erdman.

Ritual offerings are inherently communicative; they are created or selected for the meanings they convey to the giver, other viewers, and the intended recipient(s). With this concept in mind, objects deposited in the Source of the Douix, a freshwater spring in eastern France, were recently examined to understand how people use offerings for communication in ritual practices. During exploration of the spring’s subterranean karst system, cave divers observed human-made objects in the water....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Norton.

The 1733 St. Jan Slave Rebellion in the Danish West Indies was an ephemeral event, from an archaeological perspective. Lasting only 8 months and diffused across the 20-sq mile island, the rebellion lacks a traditional archaeological signature even from battlefield methodologies. However, it is useful to apply archaeological questions to topics that are difficult to approach through dirt and shovel. This paper will discuss the application of GIS methods to analyze the slave rebellion from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesper Nielsen.

In no other culture in ancient Mesoamerica do we find butterflies represented as frequently as in the iconography of the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan (c. 0-600). Appearing in mural art, painted on stuccoed tripod vessels and in the shape of clay adornos attached to incense burners, these winged creatures undoubtedly held a special place in Teotihuacan worldview and religion. Interpretations of butterfly symbolism at Teotihuacan is often based on analogies with Late Postclassic Aztec...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerod Roberts. Victoria Roberts. Carolyn Boyd.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico houses some of the most complex and compositionally intricate prehistoric rock art in the world. Presently, there are over 300 archaeological sites reported to include rock art in Val Verde County Texas, with a vast majority not being revisited since they received their site designation 30 to 50 years ago. In January 2017, Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center launched the Baseline Rock Art Documentation Project: a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco García-Albarido.

La colonización de los Andes representó una oportunidad de enriquecimiento individual para peninsulares, criollos y nativos. Esto se logró mediante el mercantilismo forzoso de productos europeos y americanos, promovido por mercaderes limeños y tempranamente ejecutado por los corregidores (entre otros). El reparto de mercaderías a precios excesivos generó el endeudamiento forzado de las comunidades nativas. En muchos casos, los curacas también buscaron beneficiarse de esta práctica, colaborando...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rogelio Rascón.

El área geográfica denominada Sierra Sur es una de las 8 regiones que comprende el estado de Oaxaca. Desde épocas muy antiguas, las sociedades aquí establecidas han presentado un desarrollo paralelo a los demás grupos culturales que caracterizaron la superárea denominada Mesoamérica. Hasta hace algunas décadas, se pensaba que dichos grupos estuvieron aislados, lejos de la influencia de grandes centros rectores como Teotihuacán, o en su caso Monte Albán. Durante el desarrollo correspondiente a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sam Nixon. Simon Kaner.

Most studies of Silk Road connections between East Asia and Europe focus on exchanges between China and the Roman and Byzantine worlds. In Japan however the eastern Silk Road terminus is regarded as Nara where the Imperial Palace gathered a wealth of treasures from Central Asia. At the other end of Eurasia, silk and Buddhist images discovered in northwestern Europe testify to the Silk Road’s significance beyond its commonly-accepted western terminus. This presentation seeks to insert these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana D. Kollmann.

Patricia Calloway was reported missing from Henderson, Kentucky on March 3, 1993. She was last seen in the company of her brother-in-law, Gene Calloway. On October 17, 2012, arrest warrants were executed for Gene and his wife Debra for the felony counts of homicide, kidnapping, tampering with evidence, and retaliation against a participant in a legal process. Debra was convicted, but Gene died while awaiting trial. Prior to his death, Gene prepared a crudely drawn map of the body disposal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew D. Lints. John W. Ives.

While the Promontory caves are well known for their preservation of perishable cultural materials, the red-ochre pictographs inside Promontory Cave 1 have attracted less attention. The conditions within the cave provided a ‘safe haven’ for organic artifacts, but the pictographs themselves have varying degrees of visibility, from quite good to poor. Archaeologists have relied solely upon descriptions made by Julian Steward during his 1930s work. Advancements in digital imagery and rock art...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Ordinario.

This presentation explores the possibility of predicting house pad footprints in the Old Kiyyangan Village, Ifugao, Philippines by looking at the density of artifacts in upper levels of excavation units. Knowing the artifact density in upper levels would help future excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village site when digging new units. I hypothesize that there would be a higher artifact density between 30-50cm below datum in each trench which are on the edges of a house platform. In addition, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariana Muñoz-Rodríguez. Steve Ashby. Lena Holmquist.

The hair comb is one of the most commonly recovered bone artifacts from early medieval sites in Northern Europe, particularly in Viking-Age Scandinavia. Beyond the bone hair comb’s association with technological innovation, it acts as a powerful proxy for urbanism, human migration, and long-range trade in Viking-Age towns. Yet despite this prevalence, the bone hair comb remains understudied in recent years and few multi-site syntheses have been undertaken. Existing studies have focused on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn E. Davis. Scott Ortman.

Initial applications of settlement scaling theory focused on measures derived from the built environment, such as house density and settled area. Although this is appropriate, the theory actually focuses on the role of social networks in socioeconomic rates, and thus connects to a variety of artifact-based measures of such rates. In this paper, we develop these connections using data from the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico. We first compare pueblo room areas to show that socioeconomic outputs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Ozbun. John Fagan.

Reading the ancient language of lithic reduction technologies from archaeological assemblages of flakes and flaked-stone tools requires practical knowledge of key physical attributes and their interrelationships. Lithic literacy begins with understanding the basic anatomy of flakes and flake scars formed according to the laws of fracture mechanics. Variability in the expression of this basic anatomy directly reflects characteristics of the lithic material, mechanical actions applied, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Davis. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

Throughout the Maya Lowlands, archaeologists have identified Terminal Classic deposits associated with the final activities in ceremonial spaces. These features include concentrations of cultural material deposited in the corners of plazas and courtyards. At the site of Baking Pot, Belize, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconaissance (BVAR) project has identified several of these terminal deposits. This presentation will shed light on the types of artifacts being deposited during these final...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ying Nie. Dong Wei. Hua Zhang. Dongya Yang. Hong Zhu.

This paper explores artificial cranial deformation from two archaeological sites in China. Jilintai cemetery (2500 – 2000BP) is located in Yili region, northwestern Xinjiang, and Yingpan cemetery (2000 – 1500BP) is located in Yuli county, northeastern Xinjiang. A total of 253 crania (202 from Jilintai and 51 from Yingpan) were examined in this study. Crania were measured according to the Standards Book, and 11 angles and 6 indices were calculated. Statistical analyses include discriminant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Frank Bayham.

Artiodactyl representation in the archaeological record can be a particularly sensitive indicator of past human-environmental interactions due to their status as a high-ranking prey item. In this study we explore terminal prehistoric and protohistoric patterning of artiodactyl exploitation in the archaeofaunal record in Northeastern California. Specifically, this study examines previously published zooarchaeological data derived from residential sites situated along the Pit River in conjunction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao. Luis Jaime Castillo.

The study of occupational stress markers was an attractive investigation field some years ago, due to the alleged possibility for the identification of ancient activities through skeletal changes. Nevertheless, a critical vision of the issue evidences that this relation is not so easy to establish, because bone biology is complex and also because different activities may produce similar changes. This does not mean that this type of studies should be abandoned. On the contrary, it is a call for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Éloi Bérubé. Shanti Morell-Hart. Sophie Reilly.

Since 2013, the McMaster Paleoethnobotanical Research Facility (MPERF) has explored questions surrounding the relationship between humans and plants, including plant cultivation and collection, consumption and social uses of flora, and interactions between people and landscape. Active projects address human-plant dynamics throughout different regions of Mesoamerica, South America, and Ontario, at time periods ranging from the Late Pleistocene through historic periods. With recent support from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Svend Hansen.

The Neolithic way of life arrived in the Caucasus at the beginning of the 6th Millennium B.C. Recent excavations in Arukhlo in the Republic of Georgia, not far away from the capital Tblisis, shed light on the occupation of the place between 5800 and 5400 BC. The buildung activities on the site were several times interrupted by digging deep ditches through the village. In the presentation it will be argued that Arukhlo and probably other places were centres of ritual activities.

DOCUMENT Citation Only George J. Micheletti.

The ceremonial architecture of Pacbitun’s epicentral plaza was recently discovered to have underwent a drastic early Late Classic (AD 550 – 700) transformation. The assemblage, originally designated as a Southern Lowland architectural archetype known as an E Group complex, was uniquely modified physically and adopted an intensive mortuary practice that seemingly altered the group’s function. The inclusion of several Late Classic elite interments suggests that Pacbitun’s ceremonial assemblage had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hemmamuthé Goudiaby. Lydie Dussol.

From 2014 to 2016, the intensive excavation of the residential unit 5N6 in Naachtun (Guatemala) has yielded 13 burials intricately linked with the evolution of the architecture. Put together, these funerary contexts allow for a fine-scale reconstruction of the local dynamics and everyday life in the unit. However, funerary archaeologists often fail to consider the burial itself as a micro-context, a combination of significant gestures and actions that can be analyzed using the same principles as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leore Grosman. Natalie Munro.

A chief source of information on archaeological cultures is gathered from excavated cemeteries. Burial location and treatment provide insight into many aspects of the daily life, social organization, and ideology of past human populations. In particular, the location and organization of human interments can reveal how past cultures perceived their natural surroundings and their place within them. Through burial, an individual returns to the soil of their homeland symbolizing the connections...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Lara Barajas. Fiorella Fenoglio Limón.

El hallazgo y recuperación de los restos de un bulto mortuorio que contenía el esqueleto de un individuo masculino permitió, dadas sus características, plantear la hipótesis de que se trataba de un cazador recolector que habitó en esta zona antes de la llegada de los grupos sedentarios a la región; para confirmar dicha hipótesis se realizaron diferentes fechamientos a los materiales arqueológicos de éste y otros contextos hallados en la zona. En esta ponencia se dará a conocer los resultados del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Stephenson.

Complicated stamped pottery vessels, and the carved wooden paddles used to stamp them, were produced in Southeastern North America beginning early in the first millennium AD and continued in some quarters well into the 19th century. Much of the research on paddle designs has focused on the highly decorative and diverse Woodland Period expressions, with little attention given to later, more repetitive paddle stamps. In this paper, I bring the methods of analysis used to study Woodland paddle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Crumley.

As recent events demonstrate, power can manifest entirely outside the framework of state hierarchies and beyond their control. Beginning with the premise that tension between competition and cooperation exists in all human societies, we must explore the ways rules and norms permit or deny each, and how both interact with history and changing conditions to forge institutions. Today, new ways to stabilize societies and reduce conflict must be found. One of the most important conditions for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Sanmark.

This paper investigates the interrelationship between the elite and the wider community at Scandinavian assembly (thing) sites in the late Iron Age. Monuments suggest that these sites were designed by the elite for the performance of elite rituals, such as legitimising power and kingship. At the assembly, laws involving ethnic identity and group belonging were publicised and enforced and the sites themselves must therefore have had a role to play in the creation and upholding of collective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Halliday.

This study examines the changes in the strength of relationship between dental and skeletal ages against chronological age in a sample of known sex and age skeletons using bivariate correlations and linear regression models. The sample is selected from the Electronic Encyclopedia on Maxillo-Facial, Dental, and Skeletal Development by Dr. Arto Demirjian, and consists of 483 observations from 78 individuals aged 6 to 19 years. The results indicate that while dental maturity has a stronger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Johnson. Guido Pezzarossi.

Postclassic Maya settlement patterns have long been explained in terms of the increasing defensibility in the transition from Classic period settlement patterns. Drawing on arguments for the increased militancy and conflict that characterized the Maya region in the wake of the Classic "collapse", this narrative has endured despite minimal cross-context, large scale assessment. This paper presents the results of a large-scale, in-progress diachronic geospatial analysis of Maya settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Redding. Andrea Poli.

Relative bone density has been utilized as a proxy for differences in survivability among mammal bones during pre- and post-depositional fragmentation/destruction processes. Since bone remodels during an animal’s lifetime to resist directional forces and cancellous bone forms patterns of trabeculae oriented in directions to compensate for forces exerted on the bone, I think that estimates of density of a bone are an inadequate proxy for survivability. In an attempt to develop a new proxy for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Jirsa. Tamara Dogandžic. Kathryn L. Ranhorn. David R. Braun.

Given the low frequency of retouched stone tools in many Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblages, the analysis of edge damage on unretouched artifacts offers a promising depth of insight into tool-use behavior. Taphonomic process such as trampling, however, can also cause edge damage on lithic artifacts. As part of the investigation of GaJj17, an MSA site in the Koobi Fora region (Kenya), we conducted an experiment designed to investigate differences between edge damage resulting from use and that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norbert Stanchly. Stephanie R. Orsini. Marcus England.

This paper examines human-animal interaction between the ancient Maya and the black-throated bobwhite (Colinus nigrogularis), a small quail resident to Central America. We provide a literature review of the occurrence of bobwhite remains in Maya faunal assemblages. Unpublished faunal analyses by the primary author, in conjunction with the published literature, suggest that the bobwhite, like many animals in Mesoamerica, was of greater importance to the Maya than as a mere dietary food. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Price. Rebecca Bliege Bird. Douglas Bird.

Access to water, food, and other resources is a critical factor structuring hunter-gatherer mobility, but few landscape-level studies have examined how resource availability influences where foragers go and how long they remain at one place before moving on. Using a newly available set of aerial images from the Western Desert of Australia taken in 1953, we utilize a simple ideal-free distribution model to reconstruct forager mobility by the fire footprints they leave behind. We examine three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celeste Samec. Hugo Yacobaccio. Héctor Panarello.

The relationship between human groups and animal populations in the past can be studied through stable isotope analysis of zooarchaeological remains. More specifically, the isotopic analysis of domestic animals’ tissues can help us to investigate herd composition, diet and mobility strategies employed by herders in the past. However, before these methods can be applied to resolve such questions, variation in isotopic composition and its causes must be addressed and explored by a modern reference...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Syvertson. Virginia L. Butler.

Tse-whitzen is one of the largest village excavations on the Northwest Coast; more than 1,400 features were documented and an estimated 234,563 fish bones were recovered from ¼" mesh alone. While research potential is great, the challenge of sampling such a huge assemblage is daunting. Previous research has focused on the >1/8" mesh matrix from "C" buckets, which emphasizes small-bodied fishes. To track changing representation of large-bodied fish through time and space, we devised a method of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Jose Rivera Araya. Suzanne Pilaar Birch.

The sociopolitical reorganization of the Maya that took place during the Terminal Classic (AD 850–1050) has been interpreted as being correlated to regional environmental change, specifically drought. However, few climate reconstructions come from the southern Maya lowlands where the decline occurred during this period. While most paleoenvironmental reconstructions lack a local, site-related signature and instead reflect regional trends, stable isotope analyses of herbivore faunal remains have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kuzminsky. Mark Hubbe.

Many scholarly debates in South American archaeology have centered on the discovery and cranial morphology of the earliest inhabitants known as Paleoamericans that predate 8,000 years BP. Although it was initially hypothesized that cranial differences between Paleoamericans and later populations may reflect distinct biological populations or migration patterns that occurred after the initial colonization of South America, recent genetic data show biological continuity throughout the Holocene in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Parker.

Glues and adhesives have been used since ~200,000 years ago. A significant question about glues and adhesives in prehistoric contexts is exactly what level of holding strength do various blends have. A widely used glue in prehistory is pine pitch; whose ingredients are pine sap, ash, and a binder, such as dried grass. An experiment is presented here to determine how strong variations in concentrations of these ingredients affect holding strength. Six different variations of the glue were used,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Metin Eren. Angelia Werner. Crystal Reedy. Andrew Kramer.

In the 1930s, F. H. H. Roberts proposed that lateral basal grinding was executed on Paleoindian projectile points to limit damage to the lashings that attached them to their shafts. This assumption is logical and widely accepted, but remains empirically untested. Here, we present an experiment that examines the role of lateral basal grinding in replica Clovis projectile points made of Texas chert. We compare via controlled ballistics experiments large samples of points with lateral edge grinding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eden VanTries.

Historic Hanna’s Town, a colonial settlement in western Pennsylvania, was founded in 1769 and quickly made history by becoming the first county seat west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1773. In 1775, Hanna’s Town made history again by signing the Hanna’s Town Resolves, stating that they would take action if British tyranny continued. Hanna’s Town soon became embroiled in the Revolutionary War and as a result was attacked and set on fire by the British and Seneca. Hanna’s Town did not recover from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milena Carvalho.

In Europe, differences in subsistence between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans are one of the ways in which archaeologists detect behavioral shifts in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. In this paper, I present faunal and stable isotopic analyses of Oryctolagus cuniculus (the European wild rabbit) from levels C.6, C.7, C.8 and C.9 of Gruta Nova da Columbeira, a Mousterian cave site located in central Portugal. I use these data to test two subsistence models: 1. Anatomically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Rees. Samuel Huey. Scott Sorset.

In April of 2010, the Macondo well blowout and Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion led to the discharge of an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil from Mississippi Canyon Block 252 (MC 252) in the north-central Gulf of Mexico. Within three months the Macondo blowout became the largest marine oil spill in history, impacting more than 1,000 miles of shoreline. Disaster response and cleanup were followed by studies of subsequent impacts on coastal and marine ecology, natural resources,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Hodgetts. Laura Kelvin.

For several years, we have been working with Inuvialuit community members from Sachs Harbour in Canada’s Northwest Territories, developing a research partnership called the Ikaahuk Archaeology Project (IAP). Many Inuvialuit connect with the past through "doing"; engaging in a range of traditional and non-traditional activities. Through them, they come to know the past physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. While archaeologists primarily engage with the past intellectually,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Striebel MacLean.

Guided by contemporary humoral theory, 18th-century Europeans believed climate and bodily humors to be mutually influential and correlated in their effect on human temperament, appearance, and behavior. Resettlement to a new climate was understood to create humoral imbalances fundamentally affecting an individual’s character and even physical appearance including skin color. Subject to the effects of tropical climate British settlers to the West Indies thus transformed were viewed as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shuicheng Li.

After 4,000 BC, prehistoric populations in southern Kazakhstan and the western side of the Urals in Central Asia began to migrate towards southwestern Siberia. At the same time, Yangshao culture began to spread, and the scale of their expansion towards the northwest was the greatest. The causes are likely multifold. Firstly, the emergence of agriculture in Holocene leaded to the increases in population pressure. Secondly, the arrival of the Copper Age increased the demand for metals such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Wiegand.

When excavating archaeological skeletal remains it is not uncommon to find them disarticulated and even commingled with other sets of remains. To study these remains it is paramount to first accurately and efficiently re-associate all skeletal elements. Re-association of skeletal remains is necessary before any other form of analysis (ancestry, sex, age, stature etc.) can be performed. While analog methods have been previously applied to standardize this task the advent of digital modelling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Boeda. Christine Hatté. Michel Fontugne. Christelle Lahaye.

The research our teams are conducting in the parc of Capivara in Brazil since 2008 lead to reveal 6 new Pleistocene archaeological sequences . The sites are all located within a 20 km area and stem from different sedimentary and topographic environments including: open air, rock shelter, cave at the bottom of cuesta or in karst. Each of the sites shows different sedimentary sequences, including different archeological horizons and different typo-technical compositions. The dating that we have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson. Heather McKillop. Brooks Ellwood.

Witz Naab and Killer Bee contain some of the last remaining above-ground mounds of a once-thriving salt industry in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, a large salt-water system in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Documented sea-level rise during the Terminal Classic has submerged the once thriving Classic period (A.D. 300-900) Maya salt works. Excavations and magnetic susceptibility were conducted as part of the author’s dissertation research at Louisiana State University (LSU). This excavation is part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Davis. Omry Barzilai. Ofer Marder.

Area E of Manot Cave, Western Galilee, is found at the top of the western talus, close to the apparent natural opening of the cave, which was blocked approximately 30 kya. The area appears to be the natural end of the living surfaces, with the main living area possibly being closer to the natural entrance. Area E is composed of two sedementological Units; Unit 1, which is composed of topsoil and Unit 2, which contains the archaeological layers. Unit 2 in area E is divided into nine...

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

The Shuar, native to Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador, prepared shrunken heads to serve as trophies following battle, in response to their cultural beliefs. Authentic shrunken heads (tsantsas) were prepared in a precise manner and exhibit key morphological characteristics. Forgeries, including primates and inauthentic human preparations, were marketed to tourists and private collectors to profit from the "savage" image surrounding the Shuar. Inauthentic shrunken heads were prepared in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencia Pezzutti. Christopher Fisher. Conrad Albrecht. Sharathchandra Pankanti. Francesca Rossi.

Here we present preliminary results from a collaborative project between archaeologists and IBM research scientists focused on developing a cost-efficient algorithm for the automated recognition of archaeological features (objects) from LiDAR data. Our research focuses on challenges of: 1) multidisciplinary work integrating expertise from diverse disciplines, 2) identifying complex archaeological features in the context of a dense urban site in a rugged topographic setting, and 3) developing a ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Cordova. Benno Fiehring.

El estudio de la organización política de la región de Tamtoc, tiene por objeto indagar en las relaciones que existieron entre los individuos, las formas en que ejercieron el poder político y la naturaleza y escala de su organización. Para realizar este propósito llevamos a cabo un programa de prospección arqueológica con el objeto de reconstruir los patrones de asentamientos y posible uso del antiguo paisaje. En esta ponencia presentamos los resultados de dos temporadas de trabajo en campo.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nyree Finlay.

Adapting contemporary archaeological techniques used in the recovery of Francis Bacon’s Reece Mews studio, this project documents the collecting practice of an avocational lithic fieldworker on the Isle of Arran, Scotland who assembled a substantial heritage archive including significant archaeological objects, prehistoric assemblages and geological specimens. Treating her abandoned artefact analysis table and intact workrooms as sites it used traditional and multi-media techniques to record her...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Seltzer.

The Spanish conquistadors and missionaries created upheaval in the Pueblo world and increased interaction with external groups upon their arrival in the Rio Grande area during the 16th century. The social tensions that were exacerbated forced a blending of ideas and culture. Important concepts to the Pueblo people were often displayed through ceramic iconography. Whether the transference of ideologies exists in ceramic iconography becomes a focal question. Archaeologists have suggested that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Nielsen.

Since the 1960s, Mexicayotl communities––or communities focused on Mexican Indigenous revivalism––have pursued an Indigenous cultural recovery. In the United States, these efforts have gained traction among Danza Azteca communities who increasingly employ pre-Hispanic flutes, rattles, and other Mesoamerican instruments in their rituals and performances. Danza Azteca communities have drawn on lines of inquiry that parallel those of Robert Stevenson (1968: 17, 18), including the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

New investigations of primary source material reveal that the final days of Aztec were extensively recorded (but not published) by Earl Morris. This paper will present analyses of burial, feature, architectural and artifactual data that indicate a chaotic and tumultuous end at Aztec preceded by behaviors that differed drastically from Chaco Canyon or in other 12th century great house sites. These practices are seen in mortuary data, in room remodeling the increased frequency of habitation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster. Edward Jolie.

Earl Morris recovered more than 1500 perishable artifacts from the West Ruin of Aztec, but his publications provide only a glimpse of the diversity, richness, and strong research potential of this relatively well-preserved and well-provenienced perishable collection. In this paper, we discuss our recent re-analyses of these assemblages and present new insights related to Chaco-Aztec relations and the organization of ritual practice, society, and craft production at Aztec. We also highlight...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Bednar.

As part of the on-going research into the development of socio-political complexity at the Maya site of Yaxnohcah, the Proyecto Arqueológico Yaxnohcah has been conducting investigations in the Baalche’ Group, a large courtyard group located at the center of the site. The group sits adjacent to many prominent architectural features, including a Preclassic period E-Group assemblage, a ball court, and a water reservoir. Radiocarbon dating and ceramic analysis has revealed that the Baalche’ Group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Kroot.

Archaeological ethics require all sites identified on survey to be reported and described in such a manner as to allow for the archaeological community to understand their research potential. This can present a challenge in regions without a significant body of previous research to aid in the interpretation of finds. The Bandafassi Regional Archaeological Project in southeastern Senegal faces just such a situation. A research question driven survey strategy, directed at the archaeological record...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steffan Gordon. Hongbin Yue. Zhanwei Yue.

Excavations at the locus of Tongle Huayuen in the Late Shang Dynast (ca. 1250-1046 B.C.E.) capital site of Yinxu, near the modern city of Anyang, uncovered the remains of a small aboveground earthen structure (2015ALNF1). The recovery of wall and ceiling remains, much of which displayed considerable fire-reddening, from refuse pits associated with building foundations provided the opportunity to examine non-elite, non-palatial architecture in greater detail than has generally been possible at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul R. M. Miller. Paola Cortez Bianchini. Paola May Rebollar. Marta Adriana Pedri. Luis Renato Nascimento.

The "true garden" or "Bai Kui" of the Kashinawá, Pano language speakers in the state of Acre, Brazil, is described here as an example of the original horticulture which occupied the arc of dry forests in southeastern Amazon. Improved forms of manioc, peanuts, and peppers evolved during 9,000 years of cultivation and were exchanged with farmers on the Pacific Coast to improve garden diversity in an ancient and far-flung cultural interaction sphere. The connectivity required for long-distance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marijke Stoll.

As a specially marked category of public architecture, ballcourts were both socially-integrative and socially-divisive spaces through hosting games and other important ritual activities. Moreover, research has shown that ballgames in Oaxaca acted as mechanisms of social mediation within and between different ethnolinguistic communities. The distribution of ballcourts is therefore significant and expresses underlying social and political relationships. The Nejapa region is a frontier zone between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Coppe. Veerle Rots. Marc Pirlot. Valérian Clarenne.

Projectile points have recently taken a prominent position in debates on the complexity of Paleolithic human behavior. While the appearance of hunting weapons in the archaeological record was a central element in early discussions, the debate has shifted towards the appearance of specific projecting modes. Given that the organic propulsion tools (bow, spear-thrower) are only rarely preserved, energy has been invested in experiments to explore how the projecting mode can be identified based on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Raffield.

During the mid- to late-9th century, historical sources attest to large Viking raiding-fleets and ‘armies’ operating in northwestern Europe. These itinerant groups were not only seeking plunder but also land to settle, and some managed to establish colonies and enclaves with varying long-term success. The size and impact of these groups came under scrutiny during the latter half of the 20th century, when some scholars sought to downplay the influence of warfare as a catalyst of social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Frieman. James Lewis.

The idea of the journey is central to many narratives of European Bronze Age social structure, economy, and cosmology, but the mechanics of journeying in the Bronze Age are rarely discussed. We know that objects and raw materials travelled great distances, we think that exotic things and ideas were sought after, and it appears that Bronze Age people maintained ties with kin and trading partners over very great distances. Much of this distance was inevitably traversed on water; and riverine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Fernandez Diaz. Ramesh Shrestha.

The Fundación Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya (PACUNAM), a non-governmental-organization (NGO) from Guatemala, works for the promotion and preservation of cultural and natural patrimony contained within the Mayan Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in the department of Petén in Guatemala. To aid with their preservation and promotion goals, PACUNAM, has developed a plan to perform an airborne lidar and hyperspectral survey of nearly 14,000 km² of the MBR and neighboring regions over a three year period....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Bewley.

The competition for funding is increasing, as demand increases but the sources of funds diminish, especially if there is a research element in any proposed project. This paper will explore the possible routes for funding and the potential and pitfalls of using a "basket" approach to raising funds for archaeological projects in the public sector (i.e., charities and non-commercial), including universities. It will also look at different approaches for funding significant heritage-based projects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Junker.

Archaeological studies of 'warfare' in their cultural settings have multiplied over time and include analyses of fortifications, military equipment, warrior paraphernalia, and human skeletal trauma, usually spanning broad time scales and including diverse archaeological contexts (e.g. town walls, weapons production workshops, cemeteries) that are often remote from the actual locales where warfare is carried out. In contrast, 'battlefield' archaeology focuses on relatively temporally compact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter G. Roe.

Recent trace analysis of Greater Antillean culinary implements finds a paucity of evidence for manioc until late times. This is anomalous since it was believed that manioc accompanied the first truly horticultural and ceramic-producing groups, the Saladoids, from the Orinocan lowlands of South America through the Lesser Antilles to Puerto Rico at 800-500 B.C. Such late occurrence also contradicts the fact that manioc is a lowland cultigen, spanning northern tropical South America. Actual tubers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Raul Ortiz. Takeshi Inomata. Barbara Arroyo.

The application of Bayesian analysis on radiocarbon dates from key sites in southern Mesoamerica has contributed to chronological revisions, which are leading to a re-evaluation of social processes among major political centers. Main challenges in this analysis include long occupation and mixing of old carbon in construction fills; poor preservation in the tropical environment; and the paucity of short-lived plant remains. Key steps in our application of Bayesian analysis on Mesoamerican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Osborn.

Zooarchaeology offers a rich source of data for exploring a number of important questions, from domestication and subsistence to ritual practices and political economy. However, issues of equifinality frequently arise, making it difficult to interpret faunal assemblages as different agents and processes may create similar archaeological signatures. Researchers are often forced to make subjective choices when suggesting preferred explanations for their data. Such approaches are subject to human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. Brendan Culleton. Claire Ebert. Jaime Awe. Douglas Kennett.

Chronology-building in Maya archaeology has long been dominated by relative ceramic typologies based on excavations conducted in the 1950s, with date ranges temporally grounded by long-count calendar dates and a small number of imprecise radiocarbon dates. Higher-precision chronologies based on more recent methodological innovations in radiocarbon dating, including Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating, Bayesian statistical modeling of radiocarbon dates, and ultrafiltration and XAD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bill Buhay. Yadira Chinique de Armas. Mirjana Roksandic. Roberto Rodriguez Suarez.

Reconstructing paleo-diets from bone-collagen isotope values (carbon and nitrogen) requires proper knowledge of diet-collagen isotopic fractionations (∆d13Cdiet-col, ∆d15Ndiet-col). While these isotopic fractionations vary considerably among previous human paleo-diet reconstructions, some more recent studies have successfully employed "non-static" dietary offsets. New research suggests that non-static diet-collagen isotope fractionations is best when attempting to reconstruct paleo-diets of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. Brendan Culleton. Jaime Awe. Douglas Kennett.

Sedentary agricultural villages, ceramic technology, and evidence for institutionalized socio-economic inequality first appeared in the Maya lowlands during the Preclassic Period (1200 cal BC – cal AD 300). The chronological details of these significant cultural developments between different regions of the lowlands remain unclear in many cases because of an emphasis on local ceramic typologies that are often difficult to correlate. We use a Bayesian framework to model high-resolution AMS 14C...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Curtis Marean. Jacob Harris. Jessica Thompson. Kiona Ogle.

Bone surface modification (BSM) remains a primary source of taphonomic inference in paleontological and archaeological contexts. However long-standing debates in BSM studies have undermined the utility of this approach. We use an objective machine-based learning algorithm rooted in Bayesian probability theory designed to quantify the level of uncertainty associated with a formal assignment of agent to individual BSM. Our multivariate Bayesian model, trained on large assemblages of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurora Skala.

This presentation will showcase a cultural rediscovery and ethnoarchaeology project taking place in Kitasoo/Xai Xais Nations’ traditional territory on the Central Coast of BC in the town of Klemtu. In 2016, First Nations youth created a pictograph in their community using traditional materials and subject matter. The first painting of its kind in this area for approximately one hundred years, it is a significant statement on the landscape. By encouraging youth to engage with archaeologists and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Olson.

The Relict Shoreline Survey is the longest running intensive study of ancient shorelines and beaches ever done at Isle Royale National Park. Within the five years it has been implemented, the number of known Archaic sites on the island has more than doubled. Government agencies, universities, private museums, and volunteers have all played vital roles in the success of this study. This presentation will briefly review past Relict Shoreline Surveys and elaborate on the most recent findings of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Barbier.

Marine shell beads played an important role within broad interregional exchange networks in California for several millenia. Previous scholarship has demonstrated the relationship of shell bead production and exchange to increasing socio-political complexity in the Santa Barbara Channel region during the Late Period, ca. 900 B.P. However, this relationship is less understood for earlier periods. Additionally, the morphologically-distinct bead types produced during the Late and preceding Middle...