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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Rivas. Sarah Neusius.

As part of its investigations the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has been examining multiple explanatory models for Archaic variability and change in aquatic resource use. One traditional model argues that the intensified use of aquatic animals can be attributed to population growth and aggregation. In order to test this model the EAFWG explored possible methods for reconstructing Archaic population demographics. Until recently broad-scale Archaic population reconstruction has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jillian Huntley. Steven George. Mary-Jean Sutton. Paul Tacon.

The materials used to created rock art preserve information regarding how, and in some instances when, it was made. Here we outline the field based, geochemical study of three white hand stencils on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence analysis determined that the stencils were made using a titanium dioxide pigment, almost certainly commercially produced white paint. Significantly, this helped us assign a chronology as the rock art must have been produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Zarrillo.

Genetic studies suggest that cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) domestication occurred in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and was then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the early use of cacao from the Upper Amazon site of Santa Ana-La Florida during the Ecuadorian Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hayden.

Caves have been recognized as important prehistoric ritual sites for well over a century. Yet, archaeological discussion of the rituals conducted in caves has rarely gone beyond the platitudes that they were locations for contacting the spirits, invoking powers of fertility, or burying the dead. This paper attempts to place the ritual uses of many caves in a more specific ritual context by documenting the ethnographic ritual use of caves by secret society members and relating this to some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lance Lundquist. Chris Jenkins.

What constitutes acceptable Section 106 mitigation to resolve adverse effects under the National Historic Preservation Act? Stipulations in a Section 106 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) need to be enforceable, with sufficient specificity and accountability for an Agency to monitor compliance. Are there limits to what is possible in Stipulations in Section 106 MOAs? This paper uses examples from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Regulatory Program-permitted projects to explore the concept and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Mora.

Two different scenarios have been proposed to explain sedentarization and the transition from foraging to sedentary societies. In the first a key resource or a combination of resources allows the stability of the population giving rise, over time, to sedentarization; in the second, a population concentration caused by an external change such as drastic climatic fluctuation or regional population increase with its concomitant social problems force the adoption of a sedentary way of life. In these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Goudge. Sarah Hunt.

The typological and scientific study of trade beads in Native American contexts has contributed a great deal to understanding contact period sites (ca. 1607–1783). The Cape Creek site, NC is a perfect example of British-indigenous connectivity in the contact period and is important for understanding interaction in the Southeast. Unlike other studies of this type that mostly focus on mortuary sites, Cape Creek is a village settlement and will therefore provide a different ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Martinez-Yrizar. Carmen Cristina Adriano-Morán.

Over the last decades, as a result of archaeological research inside of the Sun and the Moon pyramids in Teotihuacan, significant concentrations of chía (Salvia hispanica) seeds have been recovered in association with ritual contexts. This is particularly true in Offering 2, pit 59 of the Sun Pyramid and in Burial 6 of the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological artifacts were similar in both contexts, for example Tlaloc vessels, projectile points, pyrite disks and faunal remains, among others. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John W. Ives.

Apachean prehistory presents a significant conundrum: remarkably resilient and pragmatic people, Athapaskan speakers consistently adopted many elements of the ceremonial life and material culture of their neighbors, making for profound archaeological challenges. How do we truly know when an archaeological record was created by Proto-Apachean ancestors? The best response to this challenge is to draw upon the independent strengths of anthropological, linguistic and genetic studies to develop a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

Saint Domingue was the most important European colony of the Caribbean region, producing vast amounts of wealth through the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. It was also the setting of the only large scale slave revolt that succeeded in overturning the slavery system. In spite of this importance to Atlantic studies, African Diaspora studies, and historical archaeology, very little substantive research has been conducted on sites associated with the dwelling places of the enslaved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Aguilar. Robert Preucel.

The Pueblo Revolt period (1680-1700) was a time of considerable social unrest and instability for Pueblo Indian people. The return of the Spaniards twelve years after the 1680 revolt required new strategies of resistance. Mobility became a key form of resistance and, the Tewa world in particular, provided a landscape in which pueblo communities could seek the strength and protection to survive. Many families left their home villages and took refuge with their relatives on mesa villages and in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only McKenzie Lowry.

As recent earthquakes in Oklahoma and Virginia have shown, even regions generally thought to be far from seismic zones are never truly immune to their effects. The development over the last thirty years of seismic mount systems that safely capture objects in 360 degrees, can offer solutions relevant to collections in a diversity of environments. Focus on this goal for the past few decades has led to a realization that more can be done to protect collections in advance of threats, leading to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Cochrane.

Archaeological explanations of colonization often focus on presumed human motivations. What drives humans when faced with the potentially risky and rewarding colonization of unoccupied island regions: curiosity, wanderlust, opportunity, escape? At best, human motivation is only a partial explanation for colonization and one that is difficult to evaluate with archaeological data. In contrast, archaeologically visible, population-scale patterns of human colonization are explicable by the natural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Kissel. Agustin Fuentes.

One of the distinctive aspects of human behavior is the ability to think symbolically. However, the ability to track this capacity archaeologically is complicated by debates on what makes an object symbolic. Rather than initially asking if materials are symbols/symbolic, we offer that it may be better to ask if and how they are signs. A more nuanced view of "symbol" in the archaeological record, combined with aspects of Peircean semiotics, can help to bridge the gap between the material record...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Osorio Sunnucks. Priya Swamy.

Ethnography and ethnoarchaeology have been central to the rich development of research on multisensorial experiences of religion across cultural contexts (Meyer 2005, Moors 2005, Chao 2008). This paper will concretize the links between these religious experiences and strategic group making by presenting two cases; a Hindu diaspora in Amsterdam and Maya speaking Christians in Yucatan, Mexico. In Santa Elena, Yucatan, Mayaness is contested through tensions between various Christian denominations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Gravlin Beman.

Many local ceramic wares in northwestern Nicaragua are, as of yet, undescribed. Excavations at the site of Cosmapa Oriental in the municipality of Chichigalpa, Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua were conducted by Dr. Clifford Brown of Florida Atlantic University in 2013. Analysis of the ceramic sample in 2015 revealed two occupational periods at the site: a Late Preclassic occupation related to cultures in El Salvador; and a Classic to Early Postclassic occupation, which include Las Vegas and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trond Meling.

The red deer is one of the most common motifs at several Late Mesolithic rock carving sites along the coast of southern Norway. It is assumed that this animal was both an important food resource as well as an object of rituals and religious beliefs during this period. The focus of this paper will be to examine how the red deer appears in different contexts at settlement sites during the Stone Age, and to explore how these contexts reflect diverse activities, including rituals and ceremonies. Our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Hedgepeth Balkin. Arthur Joyce. Raymond Mueller.

From January-June of 2016, an interdisciplinary dissertation study was conducted in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico which was designed to investigate how prehispanic settlement patterning was affected by environmental productivity. The Río Verde Settlement Project (RVSP) included a continuation of the regional full-coverage survey as well as a systematic sedimentological sampling program to examine regional variation in soil fertility. This paper focuses on the initial results of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chung Yu Liu.

This article aims to examine the differences of social structure revealed (1) by the interpretations of the archaeological record through spatial analysis and, (2) by the data obtained through ethnographic research, both for same ethnic group. Applications of spatial technologies in archaeology began in the early 1980s. Although these GIS-based technologies brought about new research perspectives, their ‘effectiveness’ and ‘correctness’ needs more in-depth investigations. Using Old-Kucapungane...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson. Keith M. Prufer. Clayton Meredith. Jillian M. Jordan.

Using a Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) framework, the social and environmental factors that influenced community development have been modeled at Uxbenká, a Classic period Maya center located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains. This study focuses on settlement decision making dynamics using a chronological assessment of the expansion of settlements based on radiocarbon dating and ceramic typologies in conjunction with statistical analyses to test which factors influenced patch...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Castillo. Patricia Fournier.

Based on seminal contributions by Suzy and Paul Fish associated with full-coverage surveys and agave cultivation, this paper explores changes in regional settlement patterns in relation to land-surface morphology in the Tula region in Mesoamerica during the Classic to Postclassic periods (200 CE–1500 CE). Drawing on our field surveys, independent settlement data from the Tula Region, and landform segmentation and classification in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper illustrates that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Boisvert.

A long-term research project in northern New Hampshire has identified nearly 20 Paleoindian components within a one kilometer by half kilometer space overlooking the Israel River. Consideration of the spatial distribution of tools and debris within the components and the distribution of these components on the landscape suggest a rigorous organization of migrating bands of Paleoindians who focused on caribou hunting. Site specific topography appears to be an essential element in the selection...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Rusch.

In the Northeast and especially New Hampshire, Paleoamerican small lithic sites or scatters represents one of the most common site types. Even though represented by small lithic scatters some of these sites also contain evidence of short-term habitation, food preparation and tool production activities. Twenty km to the east, opposite the Israel River Complex, is situated a site with an area of 2 ½ acres, 11 excavation units (1m x 1m or greater) and approximately 15,900 lithic artifacts, known as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David M. Hyde. Michael Stowe.

The Medicinal Trail Reconnaissance and Mapping Project (MTRAMP) began in 2013 and just completed its fourth season in 2016. Those four seasons, plus the integration of previous mapping endeavors, has refined our understanding of the size and distribution of households and numerous landscape features that have been, or continue to be, the focus of excavations. Intensive survey and mapping of the Medicinal Trail locality has revealed, (a) that the largest, and most complex architectural groups are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Fuentes.

I will discuss the settlement pattern transformation of the Arica Highlands during the Late Intermediate Period and the Late Period (XIV-XV centuries) and the role of Zapahuira Tambo and the Inca Settlement Network System and its relationship with local communities. The latter will be carried out from an architectural and spatial characterization of some of the main Incan and Local settlements of the area. Some of the data integrated in this discussion have been gathered in my current research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Hanten.

The ideal free distribution, which predicts that individuals will assort themselves across habitats of varying quality such that all individuals receive equal fitness benefits, can be an important model in the analysis of human settlement patterning. Despite its simplicity, the ideal free distribution can be difficult to apply to archaeological problems because, in addition to often requiring estimates of population size, the model necessitates a definition of habitat "suitability" in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Corl. John Roney. Mary Whisenhunt. Robert Hard.

The Salado period occupation sites have become the focus of substantial discussion in the Southwest as it relates to broader regional migrations, population fluctuations as well as sociocultural changes. Unfortunately many of these important sites have suffered from decades of destruction and continued looting. Comparing early site notes from the Gila Pueblo and other early researchers in the Duncan/York Valley to the University of Texas at San Antonio Southwest field project survey notes, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Sheppard.

This poster presents a settlement pattern analysis calculating the relative size distribution of housepit villages along the Mid-Fraser Region of British Columbia. The pre-contact settlements in this study area, along the Fraser River plateau between Yale and Big Bar, are amongst the largest hunter-gatherer communities anywhere in the world. While previous studies in the region have concentrated on the Keatley Creek, Bell, and Bridge River housepit village sites, the research presented in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Erny.

The collapse of the Mycenaean palatial centers at the end of the Late Bronze Age (circa 1190 BCE) and the nature of society in the ensuing "Dark Age" or Early Iron Age have long been important topics in the study of prehistoric Greece. The centuries after the collapse were characterized by a seeming decrease in population, changing patterns of settlement, less political centralization, a decline in trans-Mediterranean trade and the production of luxury goods, and the disappearance of the Linear...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rudolf Cesaretti.

From an archaeological perspective, the settlements of Late Medieval Europe lie far to one end of the social complexity spectrum. But from a modern perspective, they are decidedly ancient. Without the institutions and technologies of modern capitalism or the industrial revolution, Late Medieval settlements are commonly characterized as unproductive consumers within dynamic agrarian economies. Both economists and historians have assumed that the benefits of urban agglomeration economies – their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Birch.

In the late pre-contact Northeastern Woodlands, processes of aggregation, migration, and geopolitical realignment led to the formation of settlements which give the impression of being too large to be called villages but possessed organizational structures associated with segmentary societies. This paper utilizes empirical data generated from Iroquoian community plans to present a study of scaling relationships in Northern Iroquois. The results are then considered in the context of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hanson.

In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in using urbanism as a means of investigating the economy of the Greek and Roman world. The most recent research on the relationship between urbanization and economic growth suggests that the correlation between them is not as straightforward as once thought. There is a growing corpus of theory, however, that suggests that modern settlements act as ‘social reactors’, which increase the number of opportunities for interactions between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Lobo.

The basic mathematical statement of settlement scaling involves a very simple equation (a "power law function") and variables long used in anthropology and archaeology to study the effects of demography on social processes. One could interpret the settlement scaling framework as another instance of the allometric relationship found very widely in the biological realm. But what may be more important is the fact that the framework actually incorporates a lot of accumulated insights from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Estes. Alex Badillo.

While extensive research has been conducted in and around well-known sociopolitical centers located in valley and coastal regions of southern Mexico, relatively little work has been done in the rural regions outside these core areas. Specifically, one of the understudied regions of southern Mexico is the mountainous region between the highlands and Pacific coastal lowlands. Recently, El Proyecto Arqueológico de Quiechapa (PAQuie) conducted a Full-coverage pedestrian survey of a 99 sq. km area in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Johansen. Andrew Bauer.

For five seasons, the Maski Archaeological Research Project has been collecting new multi-period archaeological and environmental data on changing patterns in settlement, agricultural, pastoral and metallurgical land-use practices from a 64km2 study area surrounding the large multi-period site at Maski. Our research documents significant temporal changes in the size, configuration, density and location of settlements, as well as those among a myriad of other sites (e.g. pastoral camps, field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellie Gooderham. Luisa Marinho. Laure Spake. Shera Fisk. Ana Luisa Santos.

This paper describes the lesions identified in the skeletal remains of a 9 year-old girl who died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Lisbon, Portugal, in the 1940s. This individual is housed in the skeletal collection at the National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon. These remains show a variety of lytic lesions on the ribs and thoracic vertebra, with complete destruction of the bodies and fusion of the vertebral arches of 4 vertebrae at a 60 angle. The individual was likely bedridden for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Hoerman.

Multiple indigenous and intrusive Borneo rock art (the additive or reductive human modification of naturally fixed-in-place stone) traditions depict figures and abstract designs that can be interpreted as sexed/gendered. Dating from the terminal Pleistocene through modern period, these images are an untapped source of archaeological information regarding the roles and interactions of the biological sexes and culturally constructed and ascribed genders. This paper uses rock art to identify and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon DeWitte.

Previous research revealed trends in periosteal new bone formation in medieval London that are consistent with improvements in health following the Black Death (c. 1347-1351). However, periosteal lesions can occur in response to a wide variety of factors at any age, so it remains unclear how the epidemic affected patterns of physiological stress specifically among subadults. To further our understanding of changes in physiological stress before and after the Black Death, this study examines...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Wineinger.

This research comprises a comprehensive study of oral health from three Prehistoric Southwest sites in order to identify sexual differences in the prevalence of dental disease after the onset of agriculture. Dental pathologies, such as dental caries and antemortem tooth loss (AMTL), directly relate to an individual’s diet, therefore indicate disparities in subsistence and dietary patterns. Previous studies have found that females exhibit higher rates of caries compared to males. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McKee. Christopher Taylor.

The Salvadoran civil war, fought from 1980 to 1992, devastated the country and left 75,000 to 100,000 people dead. Much of the worst fighting was in the northeastern department of Morazán. Numerous battles were fought there, where several terrible civilian massacres occurred as well. Through most of the war, northern Morazán was a primary stronghold of the FMLN guerillas. The poster examines two civil war sites in northern Morazán. The first, Cerro Pelón - the northern spur of Cerro Gigante, was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Von Petzinger.

It has been proposed that much of the rock art of Upper Paleolithic (UP) Europe can be interpreted as the result of shamanistic visions and related spiritual practices (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1998; Clottes and Lewis-Williams 2001; Lewis-Williams 2002; Whitley 2005). This theory is based on a combination of analogy with modern hunter-gatherer groups, and recent neuroscience studies on the universality of human physiological response when in a trance state. Specific geometric signs found...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter W. Stahl. Josefina Vásquez Pazmiño. Florencio Delgado Espinoza.

The material record of Ecuador’s Early Formative Valdivia culture has long been approached from the perspective of a New World, particularly an Amazonian, shamanism incorporating foundational features of animistic ontology. More recently enigmatic stone plaques from Northern Manabí Province have been included in the non-secular repertoire of later Valdivia phases; however, their temporal and spatial associations remained poorly known. Investigations in the Coaque Valley clearly establish their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyce De Carteret. Sarah Newman.

The Classic Maya city of El Zotz, relatively small compared to its neighbors, is situated geographically, and at times politically, between El Perú-Waka’ to the west and Tikal to the east. The archaeological site occupies an elevated position within the Buenavista Valley, a southwest to northeast corridor running for some 32 km to the north of the Lake Petén Itza region. The valley connects the northeast and northwest Petén, from Chetumal Bay to the Bay of Campeche, placing the site in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maureen Meyers.

Frontier areas differ from non-frontier areas in multiple ways; one is by a more intense degree of interaction with other cultures. To successfully settle a frontier area, frontier groups must not just interact but also socially integrate with other groups. Craft production is one way social integration occurs. At the Middle Mississippian-period Carter Robinson site, there is evidence for the production of shell beads. This paper presents this evidence, which includes all stages of shell bead...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Reeder-Myers. Torben Rick.

Shell middens, like other forms of coastal cultural heritage, are heavily threatened by sea level rise, climate change, and human land use. These sites, however, store information about these same challenges in the past. We present results from recent research near the mouth of the Rhode River, a small sub-estuary of Chesapeake Bay in eastern North America. We chose an area we knew well, having worked on the 31 previously recorded shell middens, to test the importance of more specialized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabelle Lulewicz. Victor Thompson. Thomas Pluckhahn.

Coastal fisher-gather-hunters often have a deep connection among their ritual practices, economic systems, and the built environment. Emerging trends and traditions of cooperation within forager communities can have lasting impacts on group social organization and can be instrumental in the development of early villages. The Crystal River region of the Gulf Coast of Florida, U.S.A provides an interesting locale to explore the intersection between shell mound architecture and cooperative mass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Williams.

This poster presents new data from five shell midden sites on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska in order to examine how shellfish-harvesting strategies changed during the middle to late Holocene. The accessibility and resilience of shellfish beds on the coastal margin makes them valuable resources that complement more seasonally-restricted food sources such as salmon runs. In order to meet the increasing needs of permanent settlements that emerged during the middle Holocene, shellfish management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Leclerc. Terence Clark. Gary Coupland. Bernd R. Schöne. Meghan Burchell.

This paper presents the results of annual growth pattern analysis and geochemical analysis of live-collected and archaeological shells from the Sechelt Inlet, southern British Columbia. Annual growth line analysis of butter clams (Saxidomus gigantea) from three sites in this region revealed an intensive pattern of shellfish collection relative to other large village sites on the Pacific Northwest Coast. This variability suggests there may also be differences in seasonal collection patterns. To...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Meanwell. Elizabeth H. Paris. Roberto Lopez Bravo.

The Early to Late Postclassic Period transition brought substantial changes to the political and economic organization of many regions of Mesoamerica. For the networked polities of highland Chiapas, these changes included substantial decreases in population at existing monumental centers; the establishment of new political centers in several principal highland valleys, and the establishment of an expansionary Chiapanec state in the Central Depression, centered on the city of Chiapa de Corzo....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Clark.

Mobility is a central part of the contemporary, traditional, historical and prehistorical economic strategies employed by hunters and pastoralists in Mongolia. While mobility is often contrasted with sedentism, there is much variation within the practice of "mobility" and how it is employed. Residential and logistical mobility are often used heuristics to discuss variations in mobility. A critical application of these terms to the archaeological record of Northern Mongolia illustrates their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Butler.

This paper explores the relationships between the people, objects and practices that created an Early Classic communal mortuary space at the site of Charco Redondo in the lower Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca. The Early Classic follows the collapse of the first Rio Viejo polity, and significant differences in mortuary practices may signify a transformation in how power and authority were constituted. While communal internment continued, burials were generally undisturbed by later internments and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregson Schachner. Matthew Peeples. Paul Reed. Kellam Throgmorton.

The work reported here represents the initial results of recent NSF supported field research near Mariana and Cebolleta mesas in west-central New Mexico. These investigations targeted previously known Pueblo II and Pueblo III communities on both public and private lands for detailed mapping and in-field artifact analysis. While the ware-level diversity of ceramic assemblages in the region has long been known, our work employed new methods of analysis of corrugated vessel forming techniques,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Seeman. Kevin Nolan. Mark Hill.

The dramatic uses of copper by Ohio Hopewell social networks have been studied for over one hundred years and have resulted in a diversity of archaeological perspectives. Our recent physiochemical study of particular Hopewell artifact classes is the most extensive to date and has resulted in source identifications that require that extant models be revised in light of our findings. Particular attention will be given to the implications that: 1) a diversity of Lake Superior outcrops were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andre Carlo Colonese. Cecile Brugere. Rafael Brandi. Arkley Bandeira. Alpina Begossi.

How might knowledge of past fisheries contribute to the future sustainability of modern coastal societies? Small-scale coastal fisheries provide a crucial source of food and livelihood to millions of people living in South America. Such coastal economies are founded on long-established knowledge that is deeply rooted in the past. Whilst marine conservation, dwindling fish stocks and environmental sustainability have driven the research agenda in recent years, government and international...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Etnier.

The mammalian component of the Tse-whit-zen village (WA) midden samples is typical of Northwest Coast archaeological sites. However, overall identification rates are quite low, with only 8% to 11% of the overall number of mammal specimens (NSP) identified beyond Class. This pattern is driven by fragmentation and burning, with burned bone making up 18% to 44% of NSP. Burning rates peak in Chronozone 5 (CZ5, 525-1000 BP), while identification rates decrease steadily through time. Artiodactyls...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiangming Dai.

In ancient China, a number of ethnic groups and polities rose and declined in northern China. The competition and wars between these frontier polities and Central-Plain dynasties occurred frequently in Chinese history. A series of new archaeological discoveries in recent years have revealed that Shimao was the first state-level society emerging in northern China. The Shimao social group was mainly distributed in the Ordos region, where the social complexity experienced a leaping development in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Nimura.

Scandinavian rock art was created from the Late Neolithic through the Early Iron Age. The majority of these images were produced in the Bronze Age – a period when postglacial isostatic uplift altered much of the Scandinavian coastline. Although the lexicon of rock art motifs is diverse in Scandinavia, this paper will focus on two key figurative motifs: ships and human feet. It presents results from two different studies. The first is a Scandinavian-wide GIS-based analysis that explores the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordi Rosell. Ruth Blasco. Florent Rivals. Maite Arilla.

Short-term human occupations can be developed in very distinct places and be related to very diverse functions. The low number of items left by the human groups in these sites usually generates discrete assemblages, which often adds difficulties to the subsequent archaeological interpretations. In the European Middle Paleolithic, are common short-term human occupations in caves and rock-shelters frequented by carnivores as well (bears, hyenas, large felids, canids and other small carnivores) as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsey Kitchell. Alex Elvis Badillo.

Researchers working in the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca, Mexico are often documenting sites that have not yet been studied by western scholars. 3D modeling (via photogrammetry) and 3D printing is a quick and low cost way we can begin sharing this new information with other scholars and the public, while simultaneously enhancing the documentation of archaeological landscapes and artifacts. In the 2016 field season of Proyecto Arqueológico de Quiechapa (PAQuie), we pilot tested the use of low cost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer.

Site signage has long been used to inform people of the importance and fragile nature of rock art and consequences of damaging the images and related cultural remains. Many styles of signs, with variable content, amount of information, and degrees of threatened legal action, have been used around the world, and their effectiveness may be evaluated by damage to the sign, associated rock art, and surrounding landscape. Other factors, such as fences, walkways, distance from roads, and presence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randy Haas. James Watson. Carlos Viviano. Mark Aldenderfer.

We report on the recent archaeological discovery of a 7000-year-old population of hunter-gatherer burials and discuss the key insights they offer into how hunter-gatherer societies may have maintained cooperative structure against evolutionary odds. Sixteen human burials interred at the site of Soro Mik'aya Patjxa in the Andean Altiplano of Peru consistently exhibit intentional artificial cranial modification (ACM)—the irreversible shaping of human crania during infancy. Our analysis of cranial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Mullen.

Within the corpus of San rock art in the South African Drakensberg mountains is a category of highly embellished, oversized anthropomorphic figures termed Significantly Differentiated Figures (SDFs). Such images have previously been interpreted as San ritual specialists' conceptualisation of themselves, in metaphor, as a result of the arrivals of African farmers and European colonists. This paper, drawing on new data gathered during surveys of the Matatiele region in the Eastern Cape, South...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Mackay. Sam Lin. Lachlan Kenna. Alex Blackwood.

Heat treatment of silcrete in the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa has been taken to indicate cognitive complexity. This inference is based on the argument that silcretes require well-regulated heating and cooling rates to avoid thermal fracture. Alternative arguments have been made that silcrete can be heat treated with limited control over temperature gradients, and thus that heat treatment may have been a relatively simple process. These apparently contrasting positions elide the fact that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dexin Cong.

The "Silk Road" describes the cultural communication routes established in the Han and Tang Dynasties. The term, coined by German scholar Richthofen (李希霍芬) in the historic literature, has since spread globally. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China, located in the line of communication between East and West, was part of the Western Region in Chinese historic literature. Because of the unique climate conditions of Xinjiang, preservation of ancient remains is excellent, providing a rich...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Schultze. Colleen Zori.

Silver was an important component of the Andean prestige economy with bestowal and display of silver and silver-alloyed objects constituting a vital tool of Inka statecraft. The quest for mineral wealth was thus a motivating factor for Inka conquest of the South Central Andes. Nonetheless, the impacts of imperial incorporation on the organization and technology of metal production differed across this region of the empire. Focusing on the purification of silver ores, we present two case studies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keri Rowsell. Matthew Collins.

Opportunities for the biomolecular study of archaeological human skeletal remains (HSR) can often be limited by museum regulations that only permit non-destructive analyses. This restriction, coupled with the fairly common practice in England of quick reburial (due mainly to a lack of storage space), can result in a wealth of information being lost. It is therefore important that bioarchaeologists work to establish successful non-destructive methods for the biomolecular analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Ewing.

The production and functional properties of sinew thread are integral to the creation of Arctic Clothing. I focus on the creation of sinew thread from tendons and how production techniques affect thread usability in clothing production. Specifically, the strength and pliability of sinew thread. My reproduction of sinew threads is modeled upon the sinew used in extant Western Arctic garments in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The strength of sinew thread is compared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marimar Becerra Alvarez.

Un sitio con características portuarias, en el cual se da una dinámica de un flujo constante de bienes, personas, información, etc., no sólo necesita captar y distribuir, sino también cerciorarse de la preservación de dichos bienes. En este panorama, los sistemas de almacenamiento son eje fundamental, ya que preservan los bienes hasta el momento en que son requeridos por el usuario final, lo que implica que los sistemas de almacenamiento deben estar organizados y estructurados para coincidir con...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Conner Awayda. Leslie Aragon.

Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona’s Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school excavations at the Gila River Farm Site (LA 39315) produced interesting results from the 2016 field season. The Gila River Farm Site is a Cliff Phase (A.D. 1300 – 1450) Salado site located on the first terrace of the Gila River, in southwestern New Mexico. It was recorded by archaeologists in the 1980s but had never been excavated. Although now protected on land owned by the New Mexico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Tsouras. Michael L. Terlep. David Lewandowski. Wesley Gibson.

In the context of surface archaeological inventory, sites are typically regarded as static entities about which numerous inferences can be made regarding function, temporal affiliation, and potential for subsurface deposits. These inferences are often the primary tool used to inform National Register of Historic Places eligibility recommendations, as well as guide testing and/or data recovery strategies ahead of various development or other federal undertakings. In many regional areas and with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Ziegler. Shannon Warren. Ssebuyungo Christopher. Silindokuhle Mavuso. Kathryn Ranhorn.

The Koobi Fora Formation (KF Fm.) of the Turkana Basin in Kenya is comprised of a Plio-Pleistocene sedimentary sequence that has produced unprecedented paleoanthropological discoveries. Previous work in the KF Fm. reported an archaeological locality, GaJj17, exhibiting in situ Middle Stone Age (MSA) material eroding from an indurated sandstone. Understanding the depositional context of this locality required further geologic study as few MSA localities are represented in the KF Fm. This is due...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francesco Berna. Elisabetta Boaretto. Stephen Weiner.

Manot Cave, represents today one of the richest Upper Palaeolithic assemblages in the Levant. The site has produced a 55,000 year old anatomically modern human skull, as well as Middle Paleolithic to Post-Aurignacian lithic and bone artifacts. The rich assemblage is found in an "unusual" situation, with an in situ occupation area at the top of a talus and close to a currently blocked entrance. The occupation area defined by in situ combustion features is replete with artifacts, and so is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Saturno. Robert Griffin. Thomas Sever. Boris Beltran.

Fifteen years of field survey and image processing of commercial satellite optical data have contributed to robust site maps of San Bartolo and Xultun, among other PROSABA sites in northeastern Peten. The recent acquisition of lidar-derived DSM and DTM data through PACUNAM has made new types of analyses possible, including the validation and enhancement of the site maps. We present recent mapping discoveries in the PROSABA region and research into the validation and extrapolation of settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Parker VanValkenburgh.

Far from being mana from the future, aerial imagery has been integral to both the practical and conceptual dimensions of archaeological survey almost from its inception. In this presentation, I argue that aerial photography captured via private and state-funded reconnaissance in the 1930’s and 40’s played a transformational role in the emergence of regional approaches in Peru’s desert coast in the mid 20th century. I discuss how the use of aerial imagery has both enabled and constrained the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Hammer. Dan Lawrence.

In the last decade, the number of landscape archaeology projects in South Caucasia has dramatically increased. South Caucasia geographically and disciplinarily sits between two early centers of survey archaeology (Near East and Mediterranean), each with its own methodologies and primary questions. The mountainous landscapes of South Caucasia, the high degree of population mobility in many periods, and the extent of Soviet land engineering challenge archaeologists to develop hybrid survey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Lycett. Andrew Bauer. Mannat Johal. Marco Madella.

We review the archaeological evidence for land use patterning in South Asia over the past 6,000 years as part of a larger effort of the PAGES-supported Landcover6k and LandUse6k project to reconstruct global land use and land cover data sets for the purpose of improving models of anthropogenic land cover change used by climate scientists. Here, we use archaeological and paleoecological data from our study areas to trace land use shifts from the Southern Neolithic through the Middle or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gareth Williams.

In the 9th century, Viking 'armies' are recorded raiding (and in some cases conquering) in Britain, Ireland and the Frankish kingdoms. Contemporary sources indicate that the largest of these were comprised of hundreds of ships and, by inference, thousands of men. Many of these accounts give round numbers, and historical opinion is divided between those who accept that the figures may represent approximations rather than absolute historical fact, but are nevertheless representative of very...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julian Richards.

Archaeological data may not yet meet the criteria for Big Data, but the growth of archaeological cyber-infrastructures is providing the foundations for ‘big data’ research. Using digital repositories such as the ADS in the UK and tDAR in the USA, we have access to millions of records, from multiple resources. Data and text mining tools allow us to extract information from published and unpublished fieldwork reports, whilst the ability to create Linked Open Data or to integrate metadata via...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Albanese.

The cluster of sites on Borzi Hill near the village of Tzannata on the island of Kefalonia includes several habitation areas and various tombs. The evidence suggests an extensive occupation during the Mycenaean (Late Helladic) Period, including the largest tholos or "beehive" tomb in the Ionian Islands. The tomb was built around 1350 BC at the same location as an older tomb that had collapsed. Although the tomb was looted in antiquity, excavations have yielded a number of notable finds including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramona Harrison.

This paper presents results from multidisciplinary investigations at two Icelandic sites from the same region: Skuggi and Siglunes. The small subsidiary farm at Skuggi was likely settled during the earliest stages of Icelandic colonization and was located on a steep mountain slope, about 150 m above the valley bottom. Ideas on its occupation history and causes of abandonment will be discussed, as well as the possibility that the decision to abandon the settlement was heavily influenced by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James McGrath. Rebekah Truhan. Adam Skibbe. James Enloe.

Woodpecker Cave is a small, limestone rock shelter occurring on a drainage of the Coralville Reservoir in Johnson Country, Iowa. The site was originally excavated in 1956 by Warren Caldwell and has been the home of the University of Iowa archaeological field school from 2012 to 2016. The University of Iowa excavations identified Late and Terminal Woodland materials with a high concentration of roofspall contributing to the archaeological deposits. When combined with recent terrestrial LIDAR...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Burley.

Current research into the earliest Lapita occupation of Fiji and Tonga emphasizes the importance of small offshore island settlement choices for founder populations. Associated faunal data typically illustrate reliance on reef and marine resources that, in turn, have resurrected 1960s "strand looper" interpretations for Lapita economy, with little to no reliance on agricultural production. Recent studies at early Lapita sites at Kavewa (northern Fiji) and Nukuleka (southern Tonga) provide an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Dyer.

Experimental bioarchaeology can aid identification of prehistoric weapons and inform current understanding of the context of violence and social interactions in small-scale societies. Determining the direct mechanism of cranial blunt force trauma in prehistoric cultures is currently a complex issue. A vast array of tools and weapons exist that can produce blunt force injury, complicating identification of individual weapons associated with archaeological cranial injuries. This paper presents a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Becca Peixotto. Ella Beaudoin. Emily Duncan.

The Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina was home to disenfranchised Native Americans, enslaved canal company laborers and maroons who lived in the wetlands temporarily and long term ca. 1660-1860. In the past decade, the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study (GDSLS) has intensively investigated only a few maroon and enslaved labor sites, leaving vast swaths of inhospitable and challenging swampland archaeologically unexplored. Current research seeks to identify new sites in remote...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Rankin. R. Michael Stewart.

The Snyder Site Complex consists of stratified, multicomponent prehistoric localities at Carpentersville, New Jersey, situated on a series of terraces adjacent to the Delaware River. The Paleoindian components of the complex stand out because of the extensive landscapes involved, the number of fluted bifaces and diagnostic tool types that can be associated with occupations, and the fact that it is revisited throughout the Paleoindian period. Research that has been completed at the complex has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Smith.

Much of the research done on weaning practices among ancient societies is directed toward biological aspects of the weaning process. Some researchers have, for example, attempted to identify a ‘natural’ weaning age determined by human primate origins. Surveys of weaning age among modern and ethnohistoric populations, however, demonstrate that weaning age is highly variable across diverse economies and categories of social organization. This pattern (or lack of pattern) suggests that a range of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Miller.

Ethnobiologists have demonstrated that shared human cognitive processes generate cross-cultural regularities in how people categorize the natural world. The human ability to recognize taxa means that plant and animal classification is not totally arbitrary. In addition, ancient people would have had place-specific knowledge of the particular plants and animals living in the territories they frequented. Representations of plants and animals in relation to each other in a landscape therefore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dusan Boric. Marija Edinborough. Emanuela Cristiani. Doug Price. Olaf Nehlich.

In Europe, Greece and the Balkans were the first areas to be reached by expanding Neolithic, agricultural lifestyles. The Danube Gorges of the central Balkans represents one of the best case studies in Europe for studying bioarchaeological consequences of the change from foraging to farming thanks to abundant settlement and mortuary record found here. It also provides a good regional anchor point for the contextualization of other contemporaneous sites across the Balkans. A large number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Whitaker. Jeffrey Rosenthal.

We use a model developed using Geographical Information Systems software to examine the extent to which the suitability of habitat surrounding archaeological sites in Central California affected hunting decisions for three artiodactyl taxa: elk (Cervus elaphus), deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and pronghorn (Antilocapra americana). Model findings are compared to a database of 100 archaeofaunal assemblages from the same area. We find that the model predicts the presence and relative abundance of elk...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Williams. Nancy Williams. Thomas Foster. Briggs Buchanan.

The proto-historic and historic periods were times of great social change among Native Americans of the southeastern United States. The era saw mass migration and shifts in political association. The indigenous tribes of the Chattahoochee River, later known as the Creek, were no exception to the cultural changes of the time. The current historical and archaeological interpretation of these changes suggests that the Creek became more closely aligned, culturally, through time. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Swantek.

Economic and social leaders create and maintain unequal or dominance relationships within and between communities by controlling labor, and limiting access to technological, material and ideological resources, and trade networks. Through these kinds of actions and interactions, social networks are structured and restructured altering the flow of goods, services and information. From this bottom-up process, social complexity emerges. To understand how the structure of underlying social networks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariane Burke. Colin D. Wren. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

Risk-reducing strategies allow humans to manage ecological risk while minimising disruptions. Unpredictable resource fluctuations, i.e. ecological risk, are driven by a combination of climate conditions and climate variability. Under extreme conditions reduction strategies may fail, however, forcing a reorganisation of the social and economic structure of affected populations, as well as their technological systems. Risky conditions during the LGM, for example, affected the spatial distribution...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yiping Li.

The Liangzhu Culture (3300–2000 BC) and the Songze Culture (4000 – 3300 BC) are two Neolithic cultures in the lower Yangtze River Delta in China. The two cultures are quite similar in many aspects especially those reflected on ceramics. This research intends to study the difference of social hierarchy between two cultures through an analysis of jades collected from over 20 archaeological sites in the Lake Tai region. By doing so, it is argued that jades in the Songze Culture are precious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Cuellar.

This paper focuses on the development of a central place in the Quijos Valley, Eastern Andes of Ecuador. Based on an intensive survey of the site complemented by small excavations, I offer a spatial, demographic, social and economic characterization of this central place with the goal of discussing and contrasting views on the development of social differentiation, hierarchy, and centralized political authority in ancient chiefdoms. Contextualizing this in a body of regional settlement pattern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Yerkes. Attila Gyucha. William Parkinson.

Investigation of social dynamics at Neolithic tells, Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor, Hungary, included surface collection, geophysical and geochemical surveys, targeted excavations, micromorphology, stable isotope studies, compositional analysis, and contexual analyis of 14C dates, cultural materials, and burials. Both sites were established ca. 5200 B.C., cal., and they are located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River, seven km apart. However, they have different dimensions and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Tykot. Kyle Freund. Andrea Vianello.

In the western Mediterranean, obsidian was an important lithic material, coming from four Italian islands and found at archaeological sites up to several hundred kilometers away. Analytical studies of many thousands of artifacts have identified their specific geological sources, and revealed chronological and geographic changes in their selective use through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (ca. 6000-1000 BC). These data are used to assess economic and social dynamics regarding access to and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María José Culquichicón-Venegas. Aleksa Alaica.

Assessing social dynamics in the past through archaeometry is more readily possible by constructing questions that more actively engage with issues beyond subsistence and technology. As archaeologists we are capable of reaching these higher-level interpretations of the past. In this paper, the use of camelid age profiles will bring insights into the kinds of value placed on the camelid body and the kinds of constrains and affordances that camelid herds would have placed on the Late Moche...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Hunt.

The spread of ‘Palace Ware’, an 8th–7th century BCE drabware, across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape coincides with the annexation of territory and establishment of vassal states and buffer zones throughout the ancient Near East. Consequently, Palace Ware has been considered ‘imperial’ material culture and equated with imperial identity. This unilateral, top-down interpretation reduces material expression of complex interregional, intercultural interaction into either imposition or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Ewonus.

Field, laboratory and archival archaeological research has helped to reconstruct important parts of the ancestral seasonal landscape in the southern Strait of Georgia. Contextual understanding of place provides a baseline for questions of sociality during the last c. 5000 years prior to the colonial era. Evidence illustrates several of the historical processes through which community identities were brought into focus in the Coast Salish world. As an example, I explore what is known about one of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Medchill. M. Kyle Woodson.

Some social theorists contend that the critical threshold in the development of complex, ranked societies is the emergence and institutionalization of inequality, or a formalized hierarchical organization that is inherited and reproduced. One pathway that elites take in establishing and institutionalizing political power is by attaining control over the economy. A key strategy of establishing economic power is to mobilize and store food surpluses. For the prehistoric Hohokam of southern Arizona,...