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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dan Healan.

Technological classification of nearly 30,000 pieces of obsidian recovered from survey and excavation followed by attribute analysis of stratified random samples of some 3,400 specimens reveal several distinct modes of raw material acquisition, reduction technology, and utilization at Altica. The various modes are described from a technological perspective and their various logistical, social, economic, and political implications are considered.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Pierce.

The Postclassic Aztatlán Tradition of Western Mexico is well known for its expansive trade networks. Aztatlán merchants traded ceramics, shell, copper, and obsidian across vast distances. Obsidian provides us with a particularly unique opportunity to trace trade networks due to the compositional homogeneity of obsidian sources. Recent studies have identified the source of thousands of obsidian artifacts from numerous Aztatlán centers, allowing for an elaboration on themes such as access to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David McCormick.

Scholarly understanding of the prehistoric economy of the Pacific Coast lacks the resolution afforded its Lowland counterpart. Analysis of the Obsidian deposits at Cotzumalguapa offer us a lens through which to bring our understanding of the prehistoric economy of the Pacific Coast into focus. Surface survey and excavations near the El Baúl acropolis revealed the presence of several obsidian dumps, the result of a large-scale lithic industry in the Classic Period site of Cotzumalguapa. Thus far,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandi Lee MacDonald.

In coastal and interior British Columbia, ochre was a key component of local traditional knowledge among hunter-fisher-gatherer communities. Ochre pigment quarries are found in alpine, lowland, and alluvial geologic deposits, and each are uniquely storied locations that carry ideas about history, tradition, and place. The procurement, trade, and use of ochre from each of those locations is deliberate, and embedded within a complex set of ideas and decision-making. Provenance-based analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrés Mejía Ramón. Luis Barba.

The Formative Period site of Altica in the Patlachique range poses many problems when designing an excavation strategy. Three millennia of erosion, and centuries of chisel plowing have eviscerated the site, removing any traces of architecture and in situ remains above the tepetate (local bedrock). As such, in the early stages of the Altica Project, the primary concern was the detection and identification of sub-surface remains inside intact bedrock-incised pits. In most archaeological sites, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arman Gurule. Emily Schach. Jane Buikstra.

In the Pre-Incan site of Chiribaya Alta, animals were often included in the graves of the deceased. Cuy, or Guinea pig, are amongst the most common type of animal found in these contexts, signaling the significance of these animals for the Chiribaya peoples in life and in death. Among traditional peoples in the Andes documented ethnohistorically and ethnographically, guinea pigs are consumed as food and are also used for divination and other religious practices. At Chiribaya Alta, a site in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Foubert. James McGrath.

Ostrich eggshell (OES) is a somewhat common occurrence in Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological contexts. Ethnographically, OES are known to be used as containers, raw material for bead production, and the egg itself as a valuable food source. Archaeologically, it is difficult to determine which of these potential functions the OES fulfilled. The application of mineral pigment powder to OES may suggest a non-subsistence function for that particular piece. For this study we experimentally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florence Gaignerot-Driessen.

It is generally assumed that the Minoan Goddess remained venerated on Crete after the destruction of the Minoan and Mycenaean Palaces. In the Late Bronze Age, in the aftermath of the collapse of the palatial system, freestanding bench sanctuaries housing large terra-cotta female figures with uplifted arms and their ritual vessels appeared in a series of newly founded Cretan sites. Since their typical gesture recalls Minoan scenes allegedly representing the epiphany of a female divinity, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Petra Cunningham-Smith. Ashley Sharpe. Elizabeth Olson. Erin Thornton. Kitty Emery.

This study examines the management of dogs as a resource and status symbol in ancient Mesoamerican society. One of the few New World domesticated animals, dogs provided communities with a steady source of meat. Artistic and ethnohistorical accounts suggest that dogs may also have been selectively bred to emphasize particular body shapes and hair types, including even absence of hair. These different breeds are described as playing different roles, as participants in specific ceremonies, as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Wendt.

The Olmec are among Mesoamerica’s earliest civilizations and as such they provide a good opportunity to investigate household change in the context of developing social inequalities. Over the past few decades archaeologists have gathered household data that show the ways they transformed and remain unchanged during periods of social evolutionary change. Artifact assemblages and subsistence patterns are examined and together provide valuable insights ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Stanley.

By 900 BCE, a middle formative Olmec influence projected into the central highlands of Mexico. This became apparent with the 1930’s discovery of the regional center of Chalcatzingo and its monumental architecture created in the Olmec style. Additionally, Olmec style symbolism appeared in the modern Mexican state of Guerrero with outstanding examples like the monumental architecture of Teopanticaunitlan and the cave paintings of Oxtotitlan and Juxtlajuaca. This paper will iconographically analyze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henri Bernard. Sara Ladrón de Guevara.

In a detailed analysis of some figurines of the offering 4 of La Venta, we observed that some of them were carved wearing a mask. This is hardly visible because the representation of the mask is a realistic human face. It seems to have a close relationship with the stone masks found a few kilometers from La Venta, in the site of Arroyo Pesquero, Veracruz, a site of Olmec offering reported in 1969 by the archaeologist Manuel Torres where a lot of lithic material was discovered. Among these there...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diego Matadamas Gómora.

In 1971, H.B. Nicholson classified the Mesoamerican pantheon of god’s by their symbolic elements and functions. One of the most important groups of this classification is the "Ometochtli Complex", which is exclusively constituted of gods related to the most significant alcoholic beverage in pre-Hispanic México, the octli or pulque. This drink is created through the fermentation of the agave juice. Thus, pulque gods are easily identifiable due to key elements present in their attire. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Oliver. Agusta Edwald.

Marginality is a perennial trope within the literature of settler societies. This paper is concerned with how people, past and present, become caught up with labels of ‘marginality’, among other forms of ‘identity history’. The theory is grounded in what are potentially conflicting ideas: one that places emphasis on fluidity and change, the other which takes a firm materialist stand. The apparent impasse is resolved by clearly identifying contexts—both material and historical—where temporary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie V. Kirakosian.

By definition, hunter-gatherer societies rely upon few, if any, domesticated animals. Domestication is counter to many hunter-gatherer worldviews, where human and non-human animals are seen as sharing a literal biological connection. From here, in essence, domestication is akin to slavery. Examples from the ethnohistoric and archaeological records will be used to illustrate how local Native groups in southern New England treated wild and domestic animals and animal remains in culturally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Hawkins. Melissa Torquato. Jessica Thompson. Emma James. Erik Otarola-Castillo.

The comparative study of artifact-form across time and space is fundamental to archaeological inquiry. Increasingly accessible 3D-scanning technology has allowed digital models of artifacts to have a prominent role in archaeological analyses. With this technology, researchers can generate digital 3D models and point clouds representing scanned artifacts to be later analyzed and distributed to other scientists through open source repositories. However, because comparative morphometric analyses of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Kearns.

In the long run-up to deciding the Anthropocene’s scientific status there have been few archaeological voices, as many have noted, revealing the proposed epoch’s narrow periodization of human-environment relationships. None seem to be more absent than classical archaeologists, an omission which reflects not only disciplinary cleavages but also tacit conceits about the classical world as paradoxically generative of and divorced from modern geopolitics and human-nature interfaces. From the early...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Maureece Levin. Molly Shelton. William Ayres.

Agroforestry, or the growing of tree crops, is a long-standing and key food production practice throughout much of the world. As with all systems of food production, the way that humans manage agroforests has a profound impact on their composition as well as their sustainability. For over 2,000 years, eastern Micronesians have relied largely on tree crop production, vegeculture, and fishing for subsistence. In this study, we focus on late prehistoric manipulation of floral environments on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia L. Butler.

On the northern Pacific Coast of North America, fish play an extremely important role in conceptual models related to hunter-gatherer evolution and social dynamics of household production and resource control. Our ability to rigorously apply archaeo-fish remains to these models is limited by substantial data requirements including well-documented contexts, high-resolution chronology, control over complex site formation processes and taphonomy, as well as large sample sizes. The 2004 excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Keegan.

The Bahama archipelago is the last place colonized in the New World, and the first encountered by Europeans. Previous efforts to explain the arrival of humans followed the stepping-stone model of expansion that began in the Orinoco River drainage of lowland Venezuela. Communities island-hopped through the Lesser Antilles, expanded into the Greater Antilles, and continued their northward migration through the southern Bahamas after crossing the last open water gap between Hispaniola and the Turks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Huddlestan. Amanda Marshall. Jenny Lewis.

First Nation’s heritage concerns are at the forefront of many large-scale and controversial development projects across the province of British Columbia. How developers and Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Archaeologists choose to address these concerns can significantly impact working and political relationships. CRM archaeologists are on the front lines balancing and navigating complex, and sensitive socio-political heritage issues. Our small CRM company, Kleanza Consulting Ltd. (Kleanza),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloé Andrieu. Arthur Demarest. Paola Torres. Julien Sion. Juan Fransisco Saravia.

In the Verapaz valleys, there were sites of the major exchange route used to transport jade and obsidian from the Maya highlands to the lowlands during the Classic period. The Late Classic site of Raxruha Viejo, located on the highland side of the boundary between the Classic Maya kingdoms and their Verapaz highland trading partners, has a unique architecture and material culture of highland Verapaz style but with significant lowland elements. Overall, its assemblage and architecture appear to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Madsen. Christian Koch Madsen. Ian Simpson. Michael Nielsen. Jette Arneborg.

Just before AD 1000 pioneer Norse hunter-farmers settled in Greenland and established what would be the extreme western outpost of Scandinavia and Europe for the next 450 years. The unexplained disappearance of this marginal medieval colony around AD 1450 has always puzzled researchers and has been proposed as a prime example of maladaptation to climatic and environmental deterioration at the onset of the ˈLittle Ice Ageˈ (LIA). As part of the Island Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Selena Soto.

National parks and their cultural identities have changed their meanings to visitors throughout time. The significance of national parks in the United States to visitors during the 19th and 20th centuries was to experience the nation’s heritage, admire natural resources, and/or gain monetary value. One method in understanding past visitors’ behaviors and how they viewed the significance of national parks is to analyze historic roads. Roads help determine the most frequented places whether for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean P. Larmore. Kevin P. Gilmore.

Discovery of new sites as well as the reanalysis of museum collections over the last 15 years has renewed focus on the Western Dismal River (WDR) culture, which we hypothesize represents the ancestral Apachean occupation of the western margin of the Great Plains and into the foothills and high country of the Rocky Mountains, A.D. 1300-1650. Once thought to represent the initial entry of ancestral Apache in the region during the initial Na-Dene diaspora from the north, this culture is now...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ted Goebel. Kelly Graf.

Half a century ago, Alan Bryan proposed that two distinct early Paleoindian traditions occurred in North America—Clovis Fluted east of the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin Stemmed in the far west—and that these co-traditions potentially represented different founding migrations from the Old World, with Great Basin Stemmed potentially being tied to a coastal north Pacific route. Much of the research that Ruth Gruhn and her partner Bryan conducted during the next several decades, certainly into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaclyn Eckersley.

Beef Basin is a geographic area located roughly 30 miles northwest of the Abajo Mountains in southeastern Utah. Archaeologically, Beef Basin is within the Northern San Juan Region, which has seen much recent and intensive study. Most of this research has focused on the area south of the Abajo Mountains, however, leaving the northern areas, including Beef Basin, only marginally studied. I discuss the results of pottery analyses from the area and discuss recent reconnaissance survey conducted by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ridge.

Prior to the introduction of sailing technology during the 3rd millennium BCE, communication and movement throughout the Aegean Basin was greatly shaped by the region’s mixed landscape of open sea, island clusters, and mountainous interiors. Modeling the physical landscape and accounting for travel rates and physical restrictions to travel over both land and sea, I examine the nature of movement across the Aegean during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (6500-2000 BCE). Based on these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Fisher.

Translating professional archaeological research into meaningful educational experiences for the public has taken on increased urgency in recent years. Several archaeologically investigated ancient bison kill sites in North America, located in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Texas, have an on-site public interpretive facility. The experiences at seven of these sites in moving from archaeological research to developing a public interpretive center are chronicled in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Minor.

The funerary equipment of the Classic Kerma elite community included sets of ceramic vessels accompanying the primary deceased and sacrificed individuals. Stacks of beakers were placed in communal areas of graves, suggesting that the vessels were intended for group use in the afterlife. Graves with extraordinary organic preservation include woven giraffe-hair implements placed near the vessels. In comparison with ethnographic examples, these tools are beer strainers. Two graves also had vessels...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophie Minor. Nick Kardulias.

This study explores the archaeology of tourism through an examination of the multiple habitations of Fort Caswell, situated on the southwest coast of North Carolina. The brick fortification was built in the 1830s. Subsequently, it served as a U.S. Army installation from 1861 to 1945. The site has undergone extensive reconstruction due to its strategic geographic location at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, changes in function and ownership, and damages due to severe weather and war-related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Carpiaux.

Despite a long history of research into the Late Prehistory of the Upper Great Lakes, insufficient attention has been paid to the nature of early Oneota households. Little is known about their size or composition, nor the nature or degree of interaction between and among them. Contemporaneous houses of different sizes and styles have been noted together at Oneota sites in the southeastern Wisconsin, further emphasizing the need for a greater understanding of Oneota household dynamics. This study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Edwards.

By its nature, agriculture is a risky endeavor. Unsatisfactory conditions for innumerable environmental or social factors can shift harvests from a bumper crop to famine (e.g., drought, poorly timed frost, enemy raids). All agricultural societies develop practices to mitigate this risk; however, the methods employed are dependent on the environmental contexts, social settings, and historical trajectories of a given group. This study examines paleoethnobotanical and landscape data to determine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Kim. Alexander Kozintsev. Nadin Rohland. Swapan Mallick. David Reich.

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from Upper Paleolithic Siberians and deep time series in Europe challenge many traditional models of relationships between Native Americans, West Eurasians, and East Asians — commonplace units in physical anthropology — by recasting them as fusions of prehistoric ancestry streams that may unexpectedly cross-cut or fracture these categories. We evaluate new and published genome-wide data from remains attributed to Okunev — an archaeological culture of the Middle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Deryck. Russell Cutts. David Braun. J.W.K. Harris.

Original excavation of FxJj20 sites in Koobi Fora, Kenya revealed nine oxidized patches described as combustion features associated with artifacts. Here we describe new excavations at a nearby new locality described as FxJj20Main-Ext-0. This excavation extends previous work in order to explore potential combustion features with newer techniques. Three squares adjacent to a reddened feature yielded 18 bones and 33 stone artifacts. All bone was fragmented. Most stone artifacts were basalt. Nearest...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Francis McManamon.

This presentation describes a series of professional training workshops created by the Center for Digital Antiquity that are designed to introduce archaeologists to the basic aspects of managing and curating digital archaeological data. In the last quarter century, the creation and use of digital data in archaeological investigations has become routinely. Documents, images, data sets, and geospatial data in modern archaeology are now nearly always in digital formats. Research projects, CRM...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Weismantel.

Increasingly, the effects of global warming take the form of destructive movements of water, whether vanishing bodies of water that create desertification or floods that damage human habitations and take lives. The extensive archaeological record of the North Coast of Peru offers a place to study long-term human strategies for living with the dangerous and unpredictable movement of water. Despite frequent earthquakes, floods and torrential rains that re-shape land- and sea-scapes, humans...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leland Bement. Kristen Carlson.

Open air camps from the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene pose significant challenges in excavation, analyses, and interpretation. This international symposium provides a formal setting to continue a series of discussions on site formation, analytical trends, and interpretations. Key topics include defining site boundaries, contemporaneity of activity areas, population estimates, and the possible effect of thresholds in the arrangement and longevity of site use. Of particular interest is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Andrews. Brooke Morgan.

Studies of intra-camp spatial organization and activity area patterning in open air camps often result in significant insights into forager behavior and social organization, but the complex spatial patterning in artifact distribution that can occur from the combination of long-term habitation, repeated habitation of the same area (due to reoccupations or to natural and/or cultural bounded space), and natural formation processes can be difficult to disentangle. A first step in doing so, however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Welch.

Archaeologists share formidable qualities of mind and temperament: observational acuity, organizational skill, perseverance. These are necessary, of course, in the sifting through of vast arrays of questions to address, evidence to harness, methods to deploy, and interpretive lenses to employ. Such rigor-making attributes may not, however, be sufficient for effective practice at hazy contacts among material pasts and intangible presents, for negotiating meanings and values out of that haze, or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Tripcevich. Lisa Trever. Chris J. Kennedy. Eric Kansa. Michael D. Glascock.

Obsidian sourcing studies which provide valuable insights into archaeological mobility and interaction are enhanced by the availability of geochemical analyzers, and especially by the proliferation of portable X-ray fluorescence units. This year we are introducing an open source system for analysis of geochemical datasets available in web-based repository and based on R-Shiny, a browser based analysis and visualization system built on the R project. The Andean Geochemistry data archive, a new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McCray.

In an area that has been considered marginal both geographically and in the narrative of South American prehistory, new research shows extensive settlement, landscape modification, and interaction between inhabitants of the eastern slopes of the Andes and their neighbors. The site of Wimba, located in the Amazonas department, in the northeastern Peruvian montaña – the tropical montane forest between the highland Andes and lowland Amazonian rainforest – is one of the best known archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Humphreys. Clarissa DiSantis Humphreys.

The potential archaeological fieldwork holds for facilitating positive change among disabled military veterans has only recently begun to be explored. Since 2012 three dedicated veterans’ archaeology programs have been developed within the United Kingdom (Breaking Ground Heritage, Operation Nightingale, and Waterloo: Uncovered), and one has been created within the United States (Operation Nightingale USA). These programs share an interest in integrating disabled serving and ex-service personnel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lei Sun. Wenquan Fan. Ligang Zhou.

Oral health (caries, antemortem tooth loss (AMTL), enamel hypoplasia, and dental attrition were assessed in human remains from Tianli cemetery, Xinzheng, Central China (Zhou Dynasty, ca. 8th-5th Century B.C.). This study explores diet and eating habits in a population practicing dry land agriculture. Males exhibited greater frequencies of enamel hypoplasia than females. In contrast females suffered more from caries, AMTL, and tooth wear than males. Heavy wear on the upper anterior teeth is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Berger. Liping Yang.

The Middle Yangshao cemetery at Yangguanzhai is the first cemetery of this period ever found in the Loess Plateau of China. This paper presents the results of an analysis of the oral health of this population, which found lower rates alveolar abscesses, occlusal wear, antemortem tooth loss, caries, calculus, and linear enamel hypoplasias than would be expected in a typical Neolithic agricultural population. This sheds light on the diet of the Yangguanzhai population. The paper also places the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Turney.

The history between the Wupatki Basin Navajo, the National Park Service, and various local ranchers has resulted in the Navajo being driven from this part of their ancestral homelands. The results led to loss of land and connection to family members, some of whom were driven across the Little Colorado River and formed new settlements. My research this summer has been to chart the genealogy of the Wupatki Navajo and extended family, visit Navajo sites within the Flagstaff National Monuments and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karly Law.

In 1992, amendments were made to the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) to include provisions for Indian tribes to assume the responsibilities of the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) on tribal lands, and establish the position of a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO). THPOs are responsible for conducting a comprehensive survey of tribal historic properties and maintaining an inventory of such properties, preparing and implementing a tribal-wide historic preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Russ. Ryan Hunt. Natalie Prodanovich.

Chemical analysis of organic residues from archaeological artifacts is shedding new light on past human activities. Here we report on the residue analysis of smoking pipe fragments and residues scraped from pipe sherds. Our goals were twofold: 1) to ascertain whether nicotine was present in the residues, thereby providing a positive indication for tobacco use; and 2) to identify the presence of other biomarkers that would allow us to establish which other plants were smoked, furthering our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Langley. Sue O'Connor. Jane Balme.

Exploring intangible behaviours—such as the decoration of oneself, or the manufacture of clothing or baskets— in the deep past is often beyond the reach of archaeologists. The microscopic examination of use wear and residues, however, allows researchers to gain significant insights into such ‘invisible’ behaviours. Organic artefacts recently excavated from sites located in both northern Australia and Timor-Leste (Island Southeast Asia) were microscopically examined for use wear and residues, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marjolein Admiraal.

Prehistoric people of coastal southwest Alaska used clay and stone vessel technologies for the past 3,000 years. Despite the challenges that the cold and humid subarctic climate posed to the procurement of clay and the drying and firing of pottery, people invested their valuable time and energy in the manufacture and maintenance of these durable vessels. Why? What role did container technologies play in the wider process of food procurement and processing? An increased focus on marine resources...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Schuldenrein.

Geoarchaeology is increasingly concerned with the analysis of perishable remains related to both the geological and archaeological components of a sediment matrix. Geological components range from measuring the age of 14 C to quantifying and classifying the organic content of an ancient soil, to identifying the source of organic materials in anaerobic (poorly drained) landscapes. More recently, organic matter studies have been applied to historic artifacts and the deposits in which they are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marika Low. Alex Mackay.

The Early Later Stone Age (ELSA) represents the onset of sustained microlithic technology in southern Africa. The ELSA is, however, poorly defined with respect to its technological characteristics and organisation. In this paper we identify key features of the ELSA at Putslaagte 8 (PL8) rockshelter in the south-west of southern Africa, dating ~25-22 ka. The assemblage features relatively expedient production of hornfels blades using natural ridges of cobbles from the nearby Doring River. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weiyu Ran. John Walden.

This presentation focuses on intra and inter polity organization of the Late Classic (600-900AD) Maya polities in the Rosario Valley, Mexico. Past approaches have generally used civic-ceremonial architecture to investigate settlement hierarchy, here however, the focus is turned to interaction. This approach explores how the strength of interactions between settlements can be used to explore political hierarchy. To measure the strength of interactions, a formula borrowed from the law of gravity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Wilson. Timothy Pauketat.

What practices generated the largest and most complex Mississippian centers? We examine this issue through an analysis of Mississippian public and ritual architecture from Moundville in west-central Alabama and Cahokia in southwestern Illinois. Politico-religious buildings and associated practices or powers constituted the historical development of both places. Cahokians created a wider variety and more complicated distribution of such buildings than did Moundvillians. We argue that the Cahokian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxime Aubert.

The recent discovery of cave paintings in Sulawesi dating to at least 40,000 years ago has altered our understanding of the origins and spread of the first painting traditions. This suggests that either rock art developed independently in Europe and Southeast Asia at about the same time, or that our species invented this trait prior to its initial expansion from Africa. Here I will discuss the implication of this discovery as well as new evidence from Borneo with the aim to deepen our knowledge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arie Boomert.

Although Trinidad is referred to in various myths of the Warao and Arawak of the Orinoco delta and the Guiana coastal zone, only one mythical tradition is known which was documented among the Amerindians formerly living on the island. Explaining the origin of the major asphalt seepage known as the Pitch Lake in southwest Trinidad, this myth appears to be closely related to part of a mythological cycle related by the Lokóno (Arawak) of Guyana and northwest Suriname which narrates the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Crothers.

Property-rights require fundamental forms of cooperation. On a global scale, foragers maintained open-access property regimes, in which no one is excluded from using resources. In the most basic form, foragers cooperate simply by avoiding conflict—agreeing to share. These conditions will hold as long as the cost of excluding others from a resource exceeds the benefits derived from that resource and because cooperation increases reproductive success under conditions of low population density—in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Branden Rizzuto.

This paper highlights the preliminary results of an ongoing study that aims to further characterize the origins and subsequent development of arsenic bronze technologies on the north coast of Peru. While the production of arsenic bronze on the north coast has been studied in detail over the last several decades, the spatial and temporal origins for the use/production of these alloys – and how they spread throughout the region during the Middle Horizon (600 – 1000 CE) period – are not yet fully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Guiterman.

The regional integration of Chaco Society includes the procurement of goods and materials from distant landscapes. Wood incorporated as roof beams, door and window lintels, and other building elements is no exception. Hundreds of thousands of trees were felled and hand-carried from mountain ranges over 50 km from Chaco Canyon. Using tree-ring width patterns of beams compared to tree-ring chronologies from potential harvesting areas, we have begun to reconstruct the dynamics of timber procurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Hansen. David Wahl. Thomas Schreiner. Donald W. Forsyth. Edgar Ortega.

Recent multidisciplinary investigations in the Mirador-Calakmul Basin have provided evidence of human sedentary occupation by about 2600 B.C. Data from coring of shallow lakes and from small residential structures with postholes in bedrock below Middle Preclassic platforms show evidence of corn pollen, isotopes, and human presence by this early period. Archaeological investigations at sites such as Nakbe, El Mirador, Xulnal, Wakna and El Pesquero, among others, have identified architectural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Sawchuk.

Herding spread into Eastern Africa ~5000 BP, but mechanisms of spread are still debated (migration, diffusion, or a mix). If herders migrated from desiccating areas of the Sahara, Sahel, or Ethiopian Rift, they would have passed through the Turkana Basin, where the earliest livestock coincides chronologically with the construction of megalithic "pillar sites." Recent excavations at 3 pillar sites revealed extensive human burials, plus caprine remains and zoomorphic artifacts suggesting these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fred Valdez. Debora Trein.

The introduction of a large-scale regional project in northwest Belize began as a more modest endeavor in northeast Guatemala. How the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) began, how it has modified through several decades, and what we anticipate as its future are discussed. A brief review of select projects within the PfBAP are mentioned as examples of overall program interests. Importantly, the PfBAP relationships with the Belize Government, local communities, and other entities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Barse.

The archeological sequence developed in the Upper Orinoco in the vicinity of the Atures Rapids has not only local continuity through time but exhibits broader relationships with northern South America. The earliest preceramic components in the region, dated to ca. 10,000 BP, can be linked to comparable occupations that have been documented in the Sabana de Bogota. Slightly later preceramic components represented by distinctive contracting stemmed projectile points show links to sites in central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Pathy-Barker.

New technologies must be utilised and our new online resource is a ''great tool''and invaluable for teachers and students. The aim of the online project is to increase awareness to the rich Japanese cultural Heritage and archaeology. ORJACH is providing fantastic educational resources and ''fun'' materials for teachers in the form of lesson plans, worksheets and a hands on finds box for use in primary and secondary schools via an online interactive gateway. I will be demonstrating the successful...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Bruns. Elizabeth Sobel. F. Scott Worman. Jack Ray.

Many traditional anthropological studies used acculturation theory to understand Colonial era Native American cultural dynamics. Acculturation theory assumes a process of gradual culture change through the adoption of European culture. More recently, anthropologists have incorporated additional concepts including agency, scales of analysis, and historical silencing to more productively investigate not only indigenous culture change but also continuity during the historic period. The project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Boren.

New research on the history of the Pensacola Bay region from the late Mississippian to the Protohistoric period is clarifying previous understandings of cultural sequences. Two recently discovered sites have created opportunities to apply new dating technologies to culture historical questions. The first site is in an incredibly dynamic area of sand dune formations on a barrier island. The second site is associated with the Luna Settlement of 1559-1561 and survives partially intact despite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jürgen Van Wessel.

Recent excavations at the nineteenth century St Peter’s Burial Ground, Blackburn (UK) are the first to demonstrate the immense value of photogrammetry for recording human remains on a large scale. Photogrammetry is the process of using photographs to record objects in a measurable way. Recent developments have made the technique accessible and capable of high levels of detail in both geometry and texture. These attributes make photogrammetry very appealing to archaeologists and it should now be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyxandra Stanco.

Numerous studies have been conducted regarding the influence of activity-related stress on postcranial elements such as the upper and lower limbs, but few studies have considered the vertebral column in relation to inter-populational variation. This study examined the vertebral columns of two prehistoric skeletal populations. The Indian Knoll site (n=98), representing a population of hunter-gatherers, is located in Ohio County, Kentucky along the Green River and is dated between 2558 and 4160...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Becker.

This study evaluated evidence of osteoarthritis in the multiple joints of the wrist and hand (ulnae, radii, carpals, and metacarpals, finger phalanges), ankle and feet (tibia, tarsals, metatarsals, foot phalanges), spine (cervical, thoracic, lumbar vertebrae), and temporomandibular joint from human skeletal remains previously excavated from Tiwanaku sites within the Moquegua Valley of Peru (AD 500-1000). Osteoarthritis, a type of degenerative joint disease with a complex etiology, has been shown...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hua Zhang. Deborah C. Merrett. Zhichun Jing. Jigen Tang. Dongya Y. Yang.

This study investigates the prevalence of osteoarthritis of commoners at Yinxu, the last capital of the Late Shang dynasty (ca. 1250 – 1046 B.C.), to study lifeways and stress of early urban populations in ancient China. A total of 197 adult skeletal human remains from five sites were analyzed to examine eight joints of upper and lower limbs in addition to three indicators of spinal osseous changes. The clear sex difference of elevated osteoarthritis prevalence in males indicates a strong gender...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo Appleby.

Osteobiography is an increasingly popular approach, but one that can have the effect of producing unproblematised, individualised approaches to the life course. In this paper I wish to explore how we can create a theoretically informed osteobiography. I propose two strands to this. Firstly, rather than osteobiography being something that ‘happens to’ individuals living in a society, I suggest that it constantly emerges through inter-relations with culturally specific understandings of the person...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Robb.

Osteobiography provides a rich conceptual basis for understanding the past, but its conceptual basis has never been systematically outlined. It both stands in conceptual opposition to a traditional statistical approach to bioarchaeology modelled upon clinical studies in biomedicine, and is interdependent with it. As such, its position mirrors those of clinical case histories as opposed to statistical studies, participant-observation ethnography as opposed to quantitative sociology, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estella Weiss-Krejci.

This paper will discuss the research history of "osteobiography" in German-language anthropology and archaeology. That the term "Osteobiographie" is actually not in use does not imply that the concept does not exist. Although German-speaking prehistoric anthropologists were and still are predominantly focused on population research, science-based stories relating to individuals have been told, for instance, about Ötzi the Iceman. On closer inspection such narratives reveal a tendency to surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Sender. Daniel Peart. Hannah Keller. Naomi Cleghorn.

Analysis of ostrich eggshell (OES) fragment distribution at Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH-1) revealed taphonomic patterns. The variation of OES features and its distribution indicates that the OES was being used and processed differently in temporal and spatial context. KEH-1, a cave on the southern coast of South Africa, was inhabited by early modern humans throughout the Middle and Late Stone Age. Hearth features are prevalent throughout the sequence, providing evidence of occupational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberta Boczkiewicz. Jean Hudson.

In this paper I compare Otolith metrics from two coastal sites in the Moche Valley, Gramalote and Cerro La Virgen. This comparison is aimed at evaluating possible shifts in fishing strategies as reflected in the range and normative values of fish size over time. Gramalote is a small politically autonomous fishing village occupied during the Initial Period. Cerro La Virgen is a large town occupied as part of the expanding political empire of the Chimu during the Late Intermediate Period. The two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phoebe Yates.

This poster will discuss the topographical changes of the Athenian Acropolis and how it affected the city’s identity. The Acropolis is an iconic monument defining Athens as a city. It was erected in pre-classical times, and has been the center of religious festivals and the city itself ever since. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered Athens and made it their own. Most monuments, including the Acropolis, were altered to fit the Turkish lifestyle, giving the monuments a different function than the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Sonderman. Stefan Woehlke.

Over the past 15 years NPS Collections from Texas to Maine have faced devastating impacts from hurricanes and other climate related events. During this time, Hurricanes such as Isabel, Ivan, Katrina and Sandy have wrought havoc on NPS museum collections. Although not subjected to direct impacts from these recent hurricanes, National Capital Region (NCR) parks have been heavily damaged by their collateral impacts, typically in the form of flooding along the Potomac Valley. It is simply a matter...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maggie Morgan-Smith.

Drawing on recent excavation and oral history data from the site of Rancho Kiuic, this paper will compare information related to two chapels located within the community. Formerly known as San Sebastián, the community functioned from the late Colonial to National periods as a ranching operation occupied by several generations of Maya-speaking landowners and laborers. Though the two chapels (Capillas I and II) share a number of structural and temporal characteristics, their respective locations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah MacDonald. Brian Yaquinto.

Obsidian is a rare raw material in northwest Colorado. As no naturally occurring sources have been identified in the region, obsidian artifacts recovered at archaeological sites were likely brought in through exchange or direct procurement during seasonal foraging routes. Using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis to identify obsidian sources, this poster addresses three questions related to obsidian artifacts found in the Colorado Bureau of Land Management, White River Field Office (WRFO): what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay.

Although evidence for the use of caves and earth openings as shrines in the North American Southwest begins in the Pleistocene, this practice intensified greatly after the development of agriculture. Many of the region’s major shrines appear divisible into three categories: controlled shrines, to which access was restricted by surface architecture; contested shrines, which were located equidistant between two or more surface sites; and remote sites, which may have marked cultural boundaries....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Williams.

This study investigates the overall spatial patterns in diagnostic Folsom artifacts from the Central Plains, including distributions of reduction stages and projectile point fragment types. Examination of the overall distribution of reduction stages reveals that Folsom and Midland projectile points are concentrated in western Nebraska and along the southern tier of Nebraska counties bordering Kansas. Folsom preforms were concentrated in western Nebraska, with approximately half of them found at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatianna Menocal.

An integral component of the cultural resources management program at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) is the monitoring of cultural resources that have been determined eligible to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The Desert Research Institute periodically conducts field evaluations of these cultural resources in order to document their condition and note any deterioration due to natural processes or unauthorized activities. NRHP eligible properties at the NNSS include...

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

Chupadero Black-on-white ceramics were produced in the Salinas and Sierra Blanca regions of New Mexico beginning around A.D. 1100. They quickly gained popularity, covering a geographic region that encompassed much of the modern state of New Mexico, west Texas, southeastern Arizona, and northern Chihuahua. Yet, despite their popularity, little is known about the exchange mechanisms that yielded Chupadero Black-on-white’s impressive distribution. ArcGIS contains analytical applications that can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Fitzsimmons.

The cities of the western Peten shared a common history and several ceramic traditions. In the northwest along the San Pedro Martir River, archaeological sites like El Peru (Waka’), Zapote Bobal (Hiix Witz), La Joyanca, and La Florida (Namaan) flourished with seemingly few—if any—clashes between them for the entirety of the Classic Period. That being said, we know that this region was greatly affected by the Tikal-Calakmul wars. There was even a ‘road’ or route between the sites allied to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia I. Alvarado.

Xochicalco is a hilltop site located in the mountain range of the western part of the modern Mexican state of Morelos. Archaeological investigations carried out in the upper part of the site between 1994 and 2009 have provided several breakthroughs in our understanding of one of the most representative sites of the Epiclassic period in Mesoamerica. The site’s major building complex, known as the Acropolis, is situated on the very top of the hill. Covering approximately a hectare, this group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Maillot.

Muweis is located in the Shendi reach, about 300 kms north from the capital of Sudan, Khartoum. Its palace has been excavated by the Louvre Museum since 2007. It is part of the Meroitic Kingdom (350 BCE - 350 CE), which covered an area of 1500 kms on the Middle Nile Valley, making it the most important political structure known in Sub-Saharan Africa until the 19th century. In 2008 a medieval necropolis was discovered among the remains of the palace, under the debris of a small house situated at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

La Joya was the capital of a very small state during the 1st millennium AD in South Central Veracruz. This region is rarely associated with major political power, though obviously it was of high prestige in the Mesoamerican world in terms of the distribution of the paraphernalia associated with the ballgame ritual. Two contemporary monumental platforms at the site can be interpreted as palaces, with administrative, residential, ritual, and service areas, one possibly housing a political and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Woo.

The East Alligator River Region has undergone considerable environmental change throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene, with changing sea levels dramatically altering the ecosystems of this region. Current archaeological models for this region indicate that people adapted their economic activities to successfully exploit these shifting environments. Molluscs have played an important role in the economic activities of these groups and often comprise large portions of the regional assemblages,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Smith. Thomas Leppard.

The Mediterranean islands were colonized sporadically ~12–4.5 kbp by agropastoralists practicing mixed cereal, pulse, and fruit farming augmented by husbandry of ovicaprids, pig, and cattle. While the timing of these colonization events is relatively well-understood, the palaeonenvironmental impacts of the introduction of this Neolithic package are not, particularly in terms of relative uniformity or variability. Here, we collate the available radiometrically-anchored palynological data for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elijah Hermitt. Kirk French.

The Palenque Pool Project began excavations of the largest pool of the Picota Group in the Classic Maya site of Palenque in 2014. This group is located one kilometer from the Palace on the western edge of the site. Although the function of the pool is still unknown, its placement adjacent to one of Palenque's two stelae and its similarity to modern Maya examples, suggests ceremonial use. Prior research shows that a laborer could transport 586 kg of limestone per five-hour person-day from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Huff.

Climate variability generates both opportunities and limitations for subsistence strategies, as well as related settlement patterns and technologies. While not the only driver of behavioral change, climate is a critical force in shaping patterns of past behavior. This paper presents the results of lithic analysis of three sites from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea that span 20,000 years of occupation. Additionally, the findings from a summed probability distribution analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akacia Propst. Megan Perry.

The population of Petra, Jordan, from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD appears to have rarely suffered from infectious diseases as suggested by the paleopathology profile of those buried on the site’s North Ridge. However, many infectious diseases in the past killed their hosts before skeletal lesions could form so to be documented. Cemetery-level age-at-death profiles provide an important supplementary record of disease-related mortality risks faced by archaeological populations by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Poulson. Susan C. Kuzminsky. G. Richard Scott. Tiffiny A. Tung.

Long-considered a nuisance, dental calculus has recently enjoyed attention as a potentially useful alternative biomaterial for a variety of anthropological applications, including stable isotope analysis as a technique to study paleodiet. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of dental calculus have been measured for populations near Arica, Chile in the Atacama Desert (Archaic-Late Intermediate period), and post-Wari (Late Intermediate Period) populations from the Ayacucho Basin, Peru in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia M. Fadem. Gavin Curry. Gabriel Rehm. Matthew Evans.

Current work at DKE and BKE in concert with The Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) has exposed Bed I and Bed II deposits, respectively. At DKE a series of tuffs and siltstones, including paleosols, indicates DKE hosted a series of productive landscapes through time. Paleosols have well-developed blocky structure and host large concentrations of fossils. At BKE sandy fluvial deposits adjacent to siliceous siltstones confirm previous descriptions of site materials. Cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelina Perrotti.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a palynological investigation of sediments from Sloth Hole (8JE121), a site in the Aucilla River. The Aucilla River in Northwestern Florida creates a unique preservation environment that has produced rich cultural, faunal and botanical records from the Late Pleistocene to the present. Archaeologists and recreational divers alike have recovered probable Paleoindian-aged bifaces and a possible butchered mastodon fibula from Sloth Hole. In addition, an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Downey. Sydney Hanson. Molly Carney. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes.

I have spent the last year gaining laboratory experience in the Paleoethnobotany laboratory at Washington State University. My purpose in the lab was to aid two graduate students with their master’s thesis research. Thus far, I have learned the basics of paleoethnobotanical analysis through examining material from both the Old World (Thailand) and the New World (the Pacific Northwest). These basics include how to identify different types of seed and wood charcoal, how to properly organize and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitchell Ma. Hua Zhong.

Yangguanzhai is a valuable resource for paleoethnobotanists to understand human-plant interactions in Neolithic northwestern China due to its excellent conditions for the preservation of macro-botanical materials. In recent years, several palaeoethnobotanical studies on Yanguanzhai have been carried out on site, yielding many results that greatly contribute to our understanding of Neolithic agriculture in the region. Presented in this paper are the results of two systematic flotations conducted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Battillo.

Paleofecal research has benefited from many recent methodological advances, such as SEM and high-throughput DNA sequencing. However, as our results grow both more robust and more precise, our interpretations have not always followed suit. Researchers are eager to establish what was on the menu, but often more cautious in exploring the biocultural and evolutionary implications of those findings. Some scholars have argued that it is difficult to apply human behavioral ecology (HBE) models to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Smith.

For more than a decade, the University of Nevada, Reno has conducted archaeological survey in the northwestern Great Basin, searching for Paleoindian sites under the auspices of the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (formerly the Sundance Archaeological Research Fund). Our work has identified a rich record of early occupation in southeastern Oregon and northwestern Nevada. Additionally, we have reanalyzed existing collections of Paleoindian artifacts from Last Supper Cave and Hanging...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Lawrence. Charles Frederick. Arlo McKee. Charles Koenig. Stephen Black.

One of the fundamental research questions of the Ancient Southwest Texas project was to determine if there was Paleoindian occupation of Eagle Cave. Excavations during the 2016 field season explored the Paleoindian age deposits and revealed tantalizing evidence of human presence at that time. One clear occupation was revealed (discussed in another presentation in detail by Castañeda et al.) but beneath this were several deposits that appear to be decomposed fiber beds which are associated with...