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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Kirk.

For much of Europe, castles represent a point of cultural heritage and national pride. Yet, even though the study of castles has long been of interest to scholars, few researchers have moved beyond intraregional analyses to examine interregional trends in the manifestation of these monuments. Traditional archaeological investigations examining cross-cultural differences have been hampered primarily by language barriers and differences in how researchers approach questions pertaining to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yongsheng Zhao. Wen Zeng. Shangwu Jiang.

The kneeling facet is formed on the metatarsal heads because of perpetual kneeling over a long period of time. It was observed in several sites in China. We analyzed the metatarsus of individuals of the Bronze Age from four sites in Shandong Province, China: (1) Daxinzhuang, (2) Liujiazhuang, (3) Chengziya and (4) Houzhangda. We found that the kneeling facet is ubiquitous in bronze age individuals. No significant difference of the frequency is observed either between the sexes or among the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Kulaga.

CA-LAN-229 is a prehistoric archaeological site and an ethnohistoric Chumash village, Talepop, in the interior Santa Monica Mountains in southern California with evidence of human occupation stretching nearly 9000 years. There are both chronometric and ethnographic lines of evidence which indicate a punctuated occupation from 5000 BC up until the 1800s. The longevity of the occupation of the site provides a rare opportunity to study and test chronologies. The site is also distinctive because of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meenakshi Vashisth.

Bairat is a region located in the present day, Viratnagar tehsil of Jaipur district in Rajasthan. So far it is known for yielding two Ashokan inscriptions in the 19th century and being identical with the mythological Viratnagara of Mahabharata. This paper develops a larger understanding of the history of Bairat by studying its material culture which came into light after post-Independence excavations and explorations. To understand the settlement from about 7th century BCE upto 3rd century CE, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chong Yu.

This research is based on all published zooarchaeological study on Chinese Neolithic and Early Neolithic sites and mainly focuses on the animal subsistence economy in the same period. With the advent of quantitative analysis, refined models can now be built and analyzed from all the published data. The application of big data studies on animal remains provided information of range and relative importance of taxa and their possible change through time-scale and region which may reflect an ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Sosa. Nicolas Jew. Renè Vellanoweth.

This study examines lithic debitage and artifacts on exotic raw materials from the Tule Creek Village (CA-SNI-25), a late Holocene site (3500 cal BP to the Mission Era) and one of the last occupied villages (500 BC – 1700 AD) on San Nicolas Island. In contrast to the shell bead trade off the island, little is known about what materials were brought to the island. Excavations yielded over 100 lithic artifacts from two significant components at CA-SNI-25 with the majority consisting of imported...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Kennett. Brendan Culleton.

The newly established PSU AMS Radiocarbon (14C) Facility provides high-precision measurements of 14C content in a wide range of carbon-bearing materials. Our primary mission is the study of human-environment interactions in the past and present with the goal of working with archaeologists in the context of inter-disciplinary environmental research. The facility operates a NEC 1.5 SDH 500kV Tandem Pelletron accelerator optimized for relatively small samples, requiring only 700µg of graphitized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Madsen. Sean Dolan. LeAnn Purtzer.

The frequency and severity of wildfires in northern New Mexico over the past several decades have increased, and wildfires often impact archaeological sites. In May of 2000, the Cerro Grande Fire burned approximately 48,000 acres of land in northern New Mexico including 7,650 acres within Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Following the Cerro Grande fire, wildfires continue to pose a threat to the Los Alamos community, LANL facilities, and cultural resources. In 2001, LANL implemented the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dianna Doucette.

Artifact types are often used as markers of social boundedness or "ethnicity" although the relationship between typology and culture remains a very complex and poorly understood issue. Projectile points from the Narrow-stemmed Tradition (also called the Small Stemmed Tradition) are ubiquitous in southern New England and can rarely be attributed to a single component Native American archaeological site. Attempts have been made to seriate this style of point with varying success, given its style...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin De Lucia.

This paper will explore shifting patterns in ceramic consumption and stylistic design during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1350) at the site of Xaltocan in the Basin of Mexico. Xaltocan is the only site in the northern Basin of Mexico associated with a large percentage of early Black-on-Orange pottery. This same pottery is rare at contemporaneous sites located a few kilometers away. Because Black-on-Orange ceramics were used by elites and commoners alike, and also cross-cut various ethnic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Buck. Donald Sabol.

We determine the detection limits of sub-pixel artifacts (site midden, obsidian artifacts, and pottery) using airborne and spaceborne image data. Research results are presented from the Glass Mountain Site in northern CA and the Boquillas site in southern Arizona. Multiple visits were made at different seasons over three years. Visible, SWIR, and TIR spectral characteristics of targets and background were measured in the field. A spectral library has been constructed from ~200 target and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Wolff. Donald H. Holly, Jr..

The earliest colonization of the island of Newfoundland was by a coastal and marine oriented people belonging to the Maritime Archaic tradition (ca. 8,000-3,200 B.P.). The exact timing and nature of that colonization and subsequent ‘settling in’ process remains largely unknown. Part of the reason for this is the dearth of well-dated, systematically excavated habitation sites on the island during the Archaic period. In the summer of 2016, our excavations at the Stock Cove site on the coast of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Babala. Joseph Reti.

Subconscious expressions of cultural identity can be found in low-visibility attributes of every-day processes such as lithic production. In the late 13th century, Kayenta migrants into the southwestern New Mexico maintained or adapted many archaeologically visible traditions. This research examines lithic debitage assemblage morphology and attributes from three archaeological settings: southwestern New Mexican sites, Kayenta sites, and Salado sites (representing post-migration communities)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Crowley.

Cattle played a critical role in the economic and socio-political structure of the Iron Age in Ireland, yet the nature of this relationship is not yet clear. The Irish Iron Age (~500 BC - AD 500) is characterized by scant settlement evidence yet with several large, complex, ceremonial centers. It has been difficult, therefore, to contextualize the nature of social change leading into the Early Medieval Period. The Early Medieval Period (~ AD 500-1100), emerged with a fully-developed dairying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Jolivette. Ross Smith. Shelby Anderson.

Intensification of marine resource use is well documented over the last 1000 years in northern Alaska, but the role of other resources in the subsistence economy is poorly understood. In order to better understand the full range of subsistence activities, and to reconstruct season of site occupation, we undertook analysis of faunal materials from several Thule Phase sites located on Point Spencer, Alaska. The subsistence remains from a large site near the tip of the peninsula (TEL-8) were found...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Wallman.

From the 17th through 20th centuries, the Caribbean region experienced unprecedented demographic and environmental change, with the rise and fall of sugar monoculture and the institution of chattel slavery. These transformations were a result of power imbalances at many scales, and the economic, ecological and social consequences of the migrations and interactions were significant and long-lasting. During the Colonial Period, enslaved communities developed diverse socio-ecological practices to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tongli Qu.

The paper presents the taphonomic and zooarchaeological analyses of the fauna from the Laonainaimiao site of Late Pleistocene in the central plain area of China. The taphonomy observation shows that the bones were accumulated by human activity. The taxa of the fossil assemblage is composed mainly of Equidae and Bos primigenius, followed by gazelle, deer, wild boar, rhinoceros etc. Most carcasses of Equidae and Bos were likely to be transported to the site as a whole. The carcasses were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Atilio Zangrando. Augusto Tessone. Angélica Tivoli. Jonathan Nye. Suray Perez.

Predictions based on resource distribution and abundance throughout patches (i.e. patch choice model) are critical to model human-specific decisions. However, information about past abundance or distribution of preys is rare, and archaeological evaluations are normally based on modern ecological parameters. This procedure can face some problems since species distributions are likely to have fluctuated along time as a consequence of different environmental factors, or as the product of human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Hermes. Michael Frachetti. Paula Doumani. Ekaterina Dubyagina. Cheryl Makarewicz.

This paper presents carbon and oxygen isotopic values incrementally sampled from mandibular molars of domesticated livestock from pastoralists sites in eastern, central, and northern Kazakhstan with Bronze and Iron Age occupations. The intra-tooth patterning of δ13C and δ18O values are used to characterize millet consumption from foddering and grazing on stubble in harvested fields. Results indicate that some animals were seasonally consuming large proportions of C4 plants as early as 2400 cal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Depalmas. Francesco di Gennaro.

The paper focuses on some aspects of food production and preparation of meals in the poorly equipped context of the protohistoric village in Italian territory. Some arrangements that have already been observed or reconstructed on archaeological basis, specifically when connected to particular found tools are discussed. With specific reference to the Italian protohistory, research on these items has been sometimes supported by ethnographic comparisons. In this search some already stated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Weaver.

The coastal wine and brandy-producing estates owned by the Society of Jesus in Nasca held captive a large enslaved population in the 17th and 18th centuries. With a combined population of nearly 600 slaves of diverse sub-Saharan origins, San Joseph and San Xavier de la Nasca were the largest and most profitable of the Jesuit vineyards in the viceroyalty of Peru. These estates were also home to black freepersons and itinerant indigenous and mestizo wage laborers who engaged, exchanged goods,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevan Edinborough. Peter Schauer. Andrew Bevan. Mike Parker-Pearson. Stephen Shennan.

What factors influenced non-agricultural production in prehistory? This has long been a topic of debate in prehistoric archaeology, because it relates to the question of whether people in prehistoric societies had ‘economic’ motivations and what those might have been. The paper presents the first results of the NEOMINE project, which is analyzing the evidence for stone quarrying and flint-mining and the factors affecting consumption of their products by Neolithic early farming communities in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Schleher. Kate Hughes. Jamie Merewether. Michael Lorusso. Grant Coffey.

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center is beginning a multi-year project at the Haynie site, a Chaco outlier in the central Mesa Verde region of southwest Colorado. In 2016, the goal was to assess the spatial and temporal characteristics of Haynie through in-field analyses of pottery and chipped-stone artifacts from the surface. This was done via systematic dog-leash collection units placed across the site, as well as judgmental analysis of artifacts in disturbed contexts. Through analyses of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Whisenhunt.

This research project examines prehistoric population aggregation and abandonment processes by analyzing how communities in Arizona’s York-Duncan Valley nucleated, and then dispersed in or abandoned the region from the end of the Early Agricultural period to the Salado period. The Upper Gila River Valley offers a unique opportunity to understand these dynamics. The research explores the interplay of ecological and demographic pressures within a resilience theoretical framework. I suggest that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon Gabler.

Cultural resources management companies are routinely caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place in NHPA Section 106 compliance projects. On one hand, SHPOs prefer to evaluate a project based on the results of 100-percent survey at their preferred survey interval, often requiring shovel testing at 15-meter intervals or closer (especially in the eastern US, where surface visibility is typically low), in order to identify all archaeological sites, whether they end up eligible for the NRHP...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ankele.

In comparison to the Late Paleoindian period (10,000-8,000 rcybp), the Early Archaic (8,000-6,500 rcybp) in the Gunnison Basin, Colorado is a poorly understood time because of its relatively light archaeological signature. Not only do we have a lighter archaeological record, but we also see a change in technologies, such as projectile point types in this transitional period. Some archaeologists explain these observations as a result of changing environments and shifting settlement processes as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Burchell.

Advances in archaeological sciences demonstrated the (almost) unlimited potential to apply new methods and techniques to existing and under-utilized archaeological collections. Developing programs of research using innovative and multi-disciplinary approaches to the analysis of material cultural, hard tissues, sediments and organic remains are critical to move the discipline of archaeological sciences forward. More critical, is the balance between technical skills one learns to become an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Walshaw. Jack Stoetzel. Matthew Pawlowicz.

Urbanization along the Swahili coast coincided with an increasing importance of Islam, stone architecture, and materials traded through connections built inland as well as with Indian Ocean merchants. Archaeobotanical data from the town of Chwaka on Pemba Island, Tanzania (AD 1100-1500) suggest that foodways turned towards Asian crops, including rice and legumes, during the urbanization process. Beyond subsistence, crops held political power. Jeffrey Fleisher (2010) has suggested that feasting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie De La Torre Salas. Isabel Rivera-Collazo.

The varied definitions of cultural heritage imply that archaeological sites and their landscapes are important for the shaping of local cultural identities. Nonetheless, many of these definitions are unclear about the relationship that communities can have with archaeological sites. Using place attachment theory and a knowledge-centered approach, I explore the cultural and historical knowledge that people have regarding their cultural heritage, their general perception of archaeology, their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aitor Ruiz-Redondo.

In the field of graphic activity, the recent Magdalenian (14,500-11,500 BP) is characterized by a homogenizing process along a vast territory in southwestern Europe. It also represents the most splendorous rock art period and, at its end, figurative graphic activity suddenly disappears from Europe for millennia. A representative assemblage of recent Cantabrian Magdalenian rock art sites has been studied. The results of this research led to the discovery of several unpublished figures and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Morton.

For nearly two thousand years, the E-Group at Yaxnohcah served as this city’s spiritual and administrative heart. From the early facet of the middle Pre-Classic through the Terminal Classic, as the rest of the site grew, morphed, and ultimately fell into disuse, this group continued to be remodelled, refurbished, and rededicated. Further, in a stunning testimony to social memory, and after a period of clear abandonment, it became the focus of Post-Classic activity that included the erection of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Aguirre.

In the seventh field season of the Templo Mayor Project, we discovered various ritual deposits in an inverted pyramidal monument located west of the monolith of the Tlaltecuhtli Goddess. We determined that this space symbolized the threshold to the underworld, or realm of the dead. In this space we made the exceptional discovery of the Offering 125, associated with the ruler Ahuítzotl (1486-1502 CE). In this offering we found three flint knives that were dressed like Ehécatl-Quetzalcóatl (God of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Barber. Guy Hepp. Jeffrey Brzezinski. Arthur Joyce.

Mesoamerica has a long tradition of masking, as evidenced by representations of masked individuals, and the masks themselves, extending back to at least the Early Formative period. In the lower Río Verde valley of Oaxaca, evidence for masking exists throughout the Precolumbian sequence, from the earliest villages to Postclassic settlements. This evidence often consists of figurines depicting masked individuals or representations on ceramic vessels and carved stones. Recent excavations have also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Hollinger.

The late prehistoric Oneota tradition developed and spread rapidly across an immense territory in a very short period of time. That expansion, and the period of territorial stability which followed were marked by violence on large and small scales. Taking of human trophies was an integral component of the violence of the time and was steeped in warrior tradition, religious ritual and symbolism reflecting broadly held ideologies. Trophy taking was likely more common than has been acknowledged....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benno Fiehring. Hans Martz de la Vega.

With only scarce information on the topic, we have undertaken an archaeoastronomical investigation in Tamtoc, because we consider that the relations between its architecture and phenomena in the sky constituted an important element for the harmonic integration of it’s urban space, which probably supported oral discourse in the past. The measurement of the building’s orientation in relation to the local horizon, allows us to know the specific calendric dates at which the sun aligns with the axis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Hill. Thomas Loebel. John Lambert.

Census of avocational and public collections for Folsom and Midland artifacts from Illinois and Wisconsin signals a substantial Folsom occupation in the Upper Midwest. Over 200 points and preforms demonstrate a southwest–northeast pattern of point manufacture, use, discard, and loss across much of Illinois and the southern third of Wisconsin. The distribution of these artifacts overlaps to a large extent; however, most Midland points occur in Wisconsin. This non-fluted weaponry is interpreted as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Herrmann.

Archaeological excavations by the Proyecto-Paleoetnobotánico Río Jama (PAPRJ) in the Jama River Valley of northern Manabí, Ecuador, have established a cultural chronology spanning over three millennia of prehispanic occupation. One of these occupations, the Tabuchila Complex of the Late Formative Period (1000 BC – 500 BC), remains poorly understood. Excavations at three sites in the Jama Valley in the 1990s recovered ceramic, lithic, obsidian, paleobotanical, archaeofaunal, and human skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Peeples. Barbara Mills. Jeffery Clark.

We see archaeology in the twenty-first century as an increasingly cumulative enterprise. The sheer volume of data produced in recent years has both facilitated and necessitated new approaches to synthesis that involve the compilation of massive databases and the development of new platforms for archiving and accessing data. ‘Big data’ compilations are poised to be the backbone of many new advances but with ‘big data’ come big challenges. In this presentation, we summarize several daunting issues...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Wurster. Kate Hughes. Shanna Diederichs.

Basketmaker III (A.D. 500-725) was a period of technological and social change for Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the northern Southwest. Along with population expansion, territorial colonization, and the development of original social institutions, Basketmaker III populations invested in a new technological complex that included fired pottery and dry-land agriculture. Lithic reduction activities are an understudied component of this social and technological complex. Our research captures a range...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Silliman.

Talking about "heart-centered archaeology" is not necessarily easy, but it is easily necessary. Those of us who work with descendant communities know the power of the personal in making those projects possible, desirable, and enjoyable. As analytical as we must be, we must also have open hearts to those who experience the past(s) in more palpable, less academic, more heart-centered ways already. These can be profoundly transformative and positive, as they require more emotional and personal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Morison.

This paper presents analyses of Late Roman pottery from the Gymnasium complex at ancient Corinth, Greece. Ceramic vessels from well-stratified deposits in multiple functional areas of the complex, dating from the late 4th through late 6th centuries CE, provide evidence for patterns of community resilience and adaptive capacity over a period of significant socio-economic change. Analyses of the Gymnasium ceramic assemblage reveal significant shifts in Corinth’s engagement with pan-Mediterranean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe. Amy Meehleder. James McGrath.

Prehistoric occupations in rock shelter deposits are frequently of interest to archaeologists because of potentially good preservation of material culture and the possibility of multiple occupations in stratigraphic succession. Those sought-after phenomena are frequently occluded by subsequent accretional or intrusive historic occupations. This is particularly complicating when modern investigations are carried out in the context of poorly documented earlier archaeological excavations....

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

The Rattlesnake Canyon mural represents one of the most well-preserved and compositionally intricate rock art murals in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, and perhaps the world. Deposited gravels from a major flood episode in June 2014, however, raised the canyon floor approximately 10 feet, enabling future floods to destroy the fragile panel. This presentation provides an update on emergency documentation efforts currently underway at Rattlesnake Canyon. Documentation and analyses of this mural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Freeman. Mary Oster. Jason Theuer.

On July, 6 2016 it was announced that management of the Coyote Hole rock art site located near the village of Joshua Tree, California would be transferred from the San Bernardino County Flood Control District to the Native American Land Conservancy. The site’s proximity to Joshua Tree National Park (JOTR) provides a unique opportunity to compare this highly-accessible site with unregulated visitation to similarly threatened sites that are managed by JOTR. The publication of sensitive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Overholtzer. John Millhauser.

Studies of Spanish colonial capitalism often exclude Mesoamerica or relegate it to a peripheral and dependent role in the emerging global economy. Despite pre-Hispanic antecedents for many capitalist practices, such as market-based circulation and market dependence, the economy that emerged in New Spain is often portrayed as a function of the European economy. In contrast, we follow Pezzarossi in considering how colonial shifts in consumption were informed by pre-Hispanic practices and were not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryn Letham. Andrew Martindale. Kisha Supernant. Kenneth Ames.

3D mapping, percussion coring, and radiocarbon dating are used to explore the geoarchaeology and chronology of two villages composed of massive shell deposits in the Prince Rupert Harbour. We map out accumulation and development of these sites through time and demonstrate that they are major anthropogenic coastline modifications, which, with dozens of other large villages in the area, form a substantial built environment. As well as providing well-drained terraformed terraces on which to build...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Baxter-McIntosh. Crystal C. Glassburn. Robert C. Bowman. Morgan R. Blanchard.

Monitoring and salvage archaeology is often viewed as an anathema to the archaeological record. Nevertheless, both situations frequently occur within CRM contexts. Here, we present analyses of lithic material, organic tools, pottery, and fauna from two subsurface house features in Kotzebue, Alaska. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the two sites are roughly contemporaneous, dating to the end of the Medieval Warm Period, and are associated with the Western Thule tradition. The materials were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Munoz. Jeremy Freeman. Carolyn Boyd.

One of the most important, yet often neglected, components of any archaeological project is what happens outside of the field—processing the data. Without meticulously organizing and archiving the data we collect, these fast accumulating pieces of information become no more useful than a pile of papers pushed to the corners of our desks. Worse yet, irreplaceable data could be lost. Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center is taking measures to avoid this pitfall by developing methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Min Li.

This paper deals with changes in religious practices during a period when 'Nature' is least stable in early China. It focuses on the rapid spread of new ritual practices and emergence of new ritual networks during the Longshan period (ca. 2300-1800 BCE) as evidence for religious responses to the extraordinary climatic crisis of the late third millennium BCE. It explores the diverse manifestations of the ecological crisis in geomorphological evidence and their implications for a changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Adams.

Ancient diets in the Hohokam area of central and southern Arizona included indigenous domesticates. Evidence for domesticated Little Barley (Hordeum pusillum), Mexican crucillo (Condalia warnockii), and amaranth (Amaranthus) rests on morphological changes. Range extensions into higher/lower areas are cited for management of agaves (Agave) and cholla (Opuntia) plants. Here I consider the process of domestication, and suggest that one or more mutations in nature plus one observant human may be all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Richter.

What were the Huastec region’s interregional relations during the Pre-Columbian period? This is one of the pressing questions about the Huasteca that archaeologists, linguists, and art historians have tried to tackle since the nineteenth century. Scholars have identified cultural relations with the southeastern United States, central Veracruz, central Mexico, west Mexico, and the Maya region. Yet, the archaeological data supporting these identifications are sparse because few scientific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Perkins. Travis Stanton.

The island of Cozumel has long been known to have been a quintessential place in Late Postclassic Maya culture as the home to the shrine of Ix Chel, the lunar goddess of childbirth and fertility. Maya women of this period were expected to make the pilgrimage to the shrine at least once in their lives, which would have transformed the island into one of the most dynamic and multicultural social contexts throughout the late Maya world. Added to the fact that the island is the easternmost part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Belmaker. Ekaterina Sevastakis.

This study presents the taphonomic history of the small mammal assemblage of Hayonim E, Israel, and compares it to those of other Middle Paleolithic (MP) sites. Levantine paleoecological changes during the MP have implications for hominin dispersal into the region. It has been suggested that a comparison of faunal assemblages from Hayonim (160–130 Kya), Qafzeh (120–90 kya) and Amud (75–45 kya) indicate a shift between glacial and interglacial fauna which mirror dispersals by Neanderthals and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Wilson. Cynthia M. Fadem. Victoria P. Johnson. Audax Z. P. Mabulla. Charles P. Egeland.

A variety of post-depositional processes can add to, subtract from, and/or spatially reconfigure archaeological deposits. The challenge for archaeologists, then, is to unravel these processes in order to assess the fidelity with which a given deposit reflects hominin behavior. BK East, an early Pleistocene locality in Olduvai Gorge’s middle/upper Bed II, preserves stone tools, butchered animal bones, and hominin remains. This rich archaeo-paleontological collection rests within an interbedded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liat Lebovich. Victoria P. Johnson. Ryan M. Byerly. Cynthia M. Fadem. Charles P. Egeland.

Bone assemblages from modern landscapes can help address a variety of issues, from the degree to which bone scatters accurately reflect local habitats to what variables condition the deposition, preservation, and spatial distribution of faunal material. In 2015, systematic pedestrian survey recovered ~350 bone specimens within a 200m x 200m area of open grassland about two kilometers north of Olduvai Gorge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Weathering profiles suggest an exposure,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Sievert.

Use-wear has often been used to try to understand stone tools and tool types themselves. By focusing on lithics as used in specific tasks within activities that are part of larger contexts, relationships can be demonstrated and mapped using concept mapping tools. Use-wear studies deriving from complex agricultural sites in the Midwest are coupled with looks at activities performed by modern Native Americans.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Hendy. Andre Colonese. Matthew Collins. Oliver Craig. Eva Rosenstock.

Ceramic vessels are abundant in the archaeological record as one of the surviving remnants of past food preparation and consumption. Organic residue anaysis has been widely applied to determine the use of ceramic vessels, with approaches typically focussing on the recovery of lipids. Here we present a novel method for extracting dietary proteins from pottery residues using LC-MS/MS and report the detection of tissue-specific dietary proteins down to the species level. Using this approach, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Glover. Brennan Collins. Robin Wharton. Marni Davis.

How do English, History, and Archaeology professors begin collaborating? In our case it was our mutual interests in the history of Atlanta and incorporating digital methods into our courses. In this paper we discuss our intertwined collaborations at Georgia State University. These involve Wharton's incorporation of archaeological materials from the MARTA archaeological collection in her Expository Writing course. Students in this course take advantage of the computing resources in the library's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Cook. Meghan Burchell.

Higher education pedagogy and university administration are pushing technologies as a way of increasing engagement and contact with students, rolling out digital learning environments and handheld devices aplenty. This shift has been critiqued as a fad but can it be harnessed to address the longstanding goals of public anthropology and calls to decolonize the classroom? Embracing multivocality, diversity, inclusivity and collaboration is complex, and opportunities to teach in a way that moves...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norma Valentin. Gilberto Pérez Roldán. Erika Lucero Robles. Israel Elizalde Méndez.

In the seventh season of excavation at the Templo Mayor Project (2007-2014), 25 bone awls were recovered from offerings found in front of the staircase of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. We were able to determine that the bone awls were elaborated from bones of birds and mammals, such as eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), jaguar (Panthera onca), mountain lion (Puma concolor), wolf (Canis lupus) and whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus). The bone awls were recovered from five offerings (120, 121,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Carr. Alma Gabriela López Rivera.

This study addresses one of the fundamental goals of the TRIMP - to contextualize local processes with broader patterns on regional scales - by combining formal technological and geochemical source analysis of obsidian recovered from recent archaeological excavations at Cerro Magoni, a hilltop Epiclassic site in Tula, Hidalgo. Archaeologists can use a variety of archaeometric techniques to better understand ancient interaction networks. Obsidian is a chemically homogeneous volcanic glass that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebekah Truhan. Jacob Foubert. Luke Stroth.

Fire cracked rock (FCR) is an artifact category that has not received much attention, normally reduced to counts and weights. However, FCR is a dynamic material that undergoes a specific sequence of changes. In this poster, the authors propose different ‘stages’ corresponding to different hot rock technologies and features, such as hot rock cookery, hearths, and limestone temper. An experiment is designed to identify the physical and geochemical changes that occur during hearth construction and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Wygal.

Alaska archaeologists continue to disagree on a unified culture history. The primary point of contention surrounds the presence or absence of microblade technology in central Alaska and the meaning of the Nenana and Denali complexes. While some interpret the former as a unique manifestation representing a separate migratory population, others disagree; and, the Denali complex has become a catchall category for a variety of artifact types leading to questions over its conceptual validity. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Horowitz. Lisa Fontes.

Technological organization approaches to studying lithic technology provide a framework through which to view relationships between people and their technology. Such approaches help us address a wide variety of subjects including mobility, access to raw materials, risk, and time and energy costs. We will address the impact of Beck and Jones’ research on organizational approaches to lithic technology, in particular on the study of mobility and resource acquisition using two case studies: Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sibeli Viana. Maria Gluchy.

We’ll present reflections about the technological variability of two regions of Brazil, the Central Plateau and the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Both are dated from the ancient Holocene and the results comes from techno-functional analysis applied in lithic materials evidenced in sites of these regions. The Central Plateau is characterized by the Itaparica Techno-complex, composed of instruments with silhouette easily identifiable. The technical design allows a standardized hafting and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Lopez Varela.

Mexico’s government attempts to eradicate poverty through infrastructure building and welfare policies have changed the social dimension of griddle and basket making at Cuentepec, in the State of Morelos Mexico. For generations, the house embodied the knowledge of making griddles and baskets, evoking people to remember fragments of the social practices of distant pasts and collectively lived histories. The act of remembrance is compromised with the building of welfare landscapes. Memory is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Miller.

Among the class of Late Classic Maya figurines generally considered to be from the Island of Jaina, molds were used to form entire objects as well as individual body parts. Molds may also have been taken of one finished figurine in order to generate a new object that would be slightly larger than the original, sometimes resulting in cascading generations of related works. Production techniques of the ceramic mold may also have been deployed for individual body parts, particularly the human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karime Castillo-Cardenas.

Glass arrived in the Americas as a fully developed technology and glass workshops appeared in New Spain soon after the establishment of the colonial regime. Little is known about the way this technology was adapted to the local resources and conditions, the variety of products made, and how this technology changed and assimilated within the viceregal world and the Spanish Empire at large. Through a multiscalar and multidisciplinary approach incorporating archaeology, history, ethnography and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Loyola. Isabel Cartajena. Lautaro Núñez.

Actualmente se reconoce que los grupos humanos que colonizaron el Desierto Meridional de Atacama (22-25°S) desde la transición Pleistoceno tardío-Holoceno temprano (12.6-10.2 ka AP) accedían a la amplia diversidad de ambientes disponibles en este árido paisaje. Desde los oasis de borde de salar, los paleohumedales y quebradas de la precordillera, hasta los paleolagos de la alta puna, estos espacios fueron articulados a través de circuitos de movilidad estacional. Por otro lado, la colonización...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Peacock. Michael Galaty. Dylan Karges.

Mississippian-period pottery in the eastern United States is overwhelmingly described as "shell tempered," with occasional reference to poorly defined "paste" categories in traditional typologies. Researchers recently have begun to note a high level of variability in the kinds of additional temper added to what macroscopically appears to be shell-tempered wares. An example is provided by the ceramic assemblage from Lyon’s Bluff (22OK520), a mound and village site in northeast Mississippi dating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook Hale. Nathan Hale. Ervan Garrison.

When Hurricane Hermine made landfall approximately 5 miles southeast of St. Mark's, Florida, on September 1st 2016, it passed directly over several known submerged prehistoric archaeological sites in Apalachee Bay. This was less than one month after we had completed geoarchaeological investigations at one of them, the Econfina Channel Site, 8Ta139. The passage of the hurricane has allowed us a unique opportunity to assess what, if any, effects the storm had on the site. This study is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Brandt. Lucas Martindale Johnson. Abebe Taffere.

With over 33,000 total excavated flaked stone artifacts and >18,000 analyzed from deposits in primary context, Mezber offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of lithics in Pre-Askumite societies. Using multiple raw materials and reduction sequences, knappers produced a wide array of LSA/Neolithic tools for domestic use, and a narrower range for specialized activities. Locally available chert was the most common raw material, although pXRF results indicate ≥3 as yet unknown distant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Pritchard. Johannes Loubser. Jan Simek. L Mashburn.

Located in northeastern Alabama, Painted Bluff contains motifs similar to ones found on Mississippian ceremonial objects, and an associated charred river cane dating to between AD 1300 and 1440. Approximately 80 images were recorded on the limestone cliffs of the bluff, most of which are red ocher paintings, a few done with yellow pigment, one containing white, and at least three separate thinly-plastered surfaces with fine-line incisions. Following initial recording of the site by Simek,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lopez.

Located today in Chicago’s Newberry Library, the 1524 Nuremberg Map, representing the pre-Hispanic city of Tenochtitlan on the eve of its conquest to Hernán Cortés, is an ink-and-watercolor image on paper, measuring 47.30 x 30.16 cm. Produced by an anonymous author in an unknown workshop in the German city of Nuremberg, it first appeared in the Latin edition of Cortés’ Second Letter to the Spanish monarch Charles V. It is the earliest printed map of a New World city and although it is a highly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randolph Widmer. Rebecca Storey.

Teotihuacan was a large and populous city at its height with an estimated population of 100,000 people. Since it lies in an arid landscape with neither domesticated animals as a source of dung for fuel nor oils from tree seeds these fuel sources could not have been used for cooking, lighting and to a lesser degree heating. Only wood from trees and shrubs and other plant materials could have been used for fuel. These have been identified in charcoal from archaeological deposits at Teotihuacan,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lozano.

There is extensive evidence of the exchange that occurred between Teotihuacan and the Maya area and new evidence has continued to surface in recent archaeological literature and in museum collections. This paper has several main objectives, first to revisit the history of research and analysis of iconographic symbols and epigraphy within the Maya area that notes a Teotihuacan influence. Secondly, to point out that the Maya obtained Central Mexican symbols and writing not merely for their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase. Jonathan Paige.

Stone tools and debitage were recovered from Late to Terminal Classic contexts of the site Nohmul in 1978 as part of a dissertation project. Since then, Nohmul has been heavily damaged by a road contractor who used structures from the site as road fill. Additionally, the chert production economy in lowland Mesoamerica has become an issue of great debate. Nohmul is situated roughly 30 kilometers from the Northern Belize chert-bearing zone and 30 kilometers north of Colha, the argued center of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanuel Beyin. Hong Wang. Mary Prendergast. Katherine Grillo.

Lake Turkana in northern Kenya has played a central role in generating archaeological and paleoclimatic datasets relevant to studying key transitions in human prehistory. Generally, despite its rich Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossil record, the later prehistory of the basin, particularly the period between 50 and 10 ka, remains comparatively underexplored. In this paper, we discuss new radiocarbon dates from two recently excavated sites in West Turkana, namely Kokito 01 (GcJh11) and Kokito 02...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abebe Taffere.

Archaeological excavation which had been conducted in 2009 and 2010 in the Ziway- Shala Basin, close to the Bulbula River Canyon at B1s4 site, has yielded lithic assemblages and few faunal remains. Two human occupation horizons (PS1 and PS2) were identified which are separated by an occupational hiatus at the very end of the terminal Pleistocene. Analysis of debitage on both unit levels indicates the presence of similar features that lead us to assume that B1s4 lithic industry was oriented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Knell.

This paper represents a first attempt to reconstruct the occupation span of Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene foragers around pluvial Lake Mojave, Mojave Desert, California. Models suggest and research indicates that foragers were more sedentary and made shorter moves around large, productive resource patches (large lakes, marshes), but made more frequent and longer distance moves when resource patches were small and/or widely scattered. Lake Mojave at its Pleistocene maximum was 300 km2 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Davidson.

As "beachheads of empire" 16th -17th century European colonies in eastern North America vigorously pursued trade relations with Natives to secure raw materials for export to an emerging global market. Exchanges of furs and hides, slaves and other commodities stimulated economic activity throughout eastern North America. Production of hides for exchange was widespread among native groups located on colonial peripheries. To contrast, relatively little research has evaluated the degree to which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Frachetti. Edward Henry. Taylor Hermes. Elissa Bullion. Farhod Maksudov.

Using remote sensing techniques along with standard archaeological survey in 2011 our collaborative team discovered the Silk Road city of Tashbulak, located at roughly 2000m elevation, in the mountains of Uzbekistan. The modern environmental and political particulars of this high-altitude city made the use of aerial photography and Geophysics essential tools for documenting this unexpected mountain site and allowing for clear documentation and targeted research in a (geographically) restricted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Jazwa. Douglas Kennett. Bruce Winterhalder.

The location of archaeological settlement sites is influenced not only by the distribution of ecological resources, but also cultural factors including conflict between neighboring populations. The ideal free distribution is a human behavioral ecology model that has been used to understand the establishment and persistence of settlement sites in the archaeological record. On California’s northern Channel Islands, the number and location of settlement sites expands over time until the Medieval...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Bayham. Kasey Cole.

Being a high-ranking prey item, large game are often desired for their economic and prestige values, both of which may be converted to an individual’s status. As such, big game can serve as a potential axis for competition between linguistic or ethnically distinct groups particularly under conditions of population stress leading to resource depression. This dynamic has been modeled using an evolutionary ecological approach that combines an amalgam of standard foraging models with the added cost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wei-chun Chen.

In the 17th century, Taiwan was considered as an outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company to trade with China and Japan, and to compete with its European counterparts in the region. Located in the contemporary Tainan City, Taiwan, Provintia stood as the Island’s first planned city by the Dutch in AD 1625, the second year when they traded the city land with 15 cangan cloth from the indigenous Siraya. In AD 1653, a fort, called Fort Provintia was constructed as a result of Han Chinese rebels...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brea McCauley. Mark Collard.

Recently there has been a surge of interest in the possibility that demography affects cultural evolution. Some authors have proposed that population size affects the appearance and retention of innovations and therefore influences the complexity of a population’s cultural repertoire. Others have averred that it is not population size that drives cultural complexity but rather population pressure (the ratio of population density to the density of available resources). Still others have argued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugo Cardoso. Joana Abrantes. Laure Spake. Luis Rios.

Little work has been done on whether juvenile age estimation methods perform well beyond the population that was used as a reference. This study uses a sample of 81 known-age juvenile skeletons, aged between birth and 12 years, combining data from archaeological, anatomical and forensic reference collections in the US, Canada and South Africa. Ages were estimated from the diaphyseal lengths of the humerus, radius, femur and tibia, using Cardoso et al. (2014) and Stull et al. (2014) prediction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Wichlacz. David Abbott.

An understanding of the nature of late Classic period settlement at Las Colinas is an important element in understanding the broader social changes that took place across the Phoenix Basin during this time. One perspective on settlement at Las Colinas figures prominently in the recent "core decay" model proposed for the Phoenix Basin Hohokam. In response to this model, we propose new alternative scenarios for late Classic period settlement at Las Colinas. We test these alternative settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Lena Jones.

"Environmental rebound" has been proposed by a large number of researchers to explain the disjuncture between the reports of American environments by early Spanish explorers and the long-term human impacts evidenced in the archaeological record of North, Central, and South America. However, by definition environmental rebound may be caused by multiple factors: changes in human population numbers, settlement patterns, resource acquisition and/or land use may all have contributed to a rebound of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martina Steffen.

Archaeological applications of ethnographic models require that variables derived from the activities of living people be translated into archaeological terms. Enloe suggested that processing caribou (Rangifer tarandus) carcasses for food storage should be recognizable in patterns of bone fragmentation. He predicted that relatively uniform and large-sized bone fragments would result from mass processing for marrow as part of logistic collector subsistence strategies, compared with smaller and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Lewandowski. Theodore Tsouras.

The presence and proportions of well-dated ceramic wares and types are used to date the occupation of sites across the Southwest, often to general periods or phases that exceed a site's likely occupation span. Various methods have previously been used to refine the dating of archaeological sites using ceramic artifacts. Recently, Logan Simpson conducted a Class III cultural resources survey of Peabody Western Coal Company's leased lands on northern Black Mesa, Arizona. This study uses ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Keeney. Robert Bowman.

Magnetic susceptibility (MS) is the measure of a material’s potential to hold a magnetic field, the variation of which can indicate anthropogenic forces acting upon a substrate. In Alaska, diachronic MS analyses have been useful when investigating environmental change and anthropogenic variation through time in deeply-stratified subarctic interior sites. Synchronic MS approaches, on the other hand, use surficial MS probe mapping to analyze contemporaneous variation across space and can reveal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Bergin. Salvador Pardo Gordó. Michael Barton. Joan Bernabeu Aubán. Nicolas Gauthier.

Much initial research into the arrival and dissemination of agriculture in Europe has focused on identifying the speed and direction of the arrival of Neolithic subsistence. More recent work has begun to examine the chronological and spatial patterning of the spread of agriculture with the goal of identifying important sociological or environmental factors that affected the timing and location of agricultural settlement. In this context, agent-based computational modeling is emerging as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Ledogar. Jessica Watson.

Galliformes, or game birds, are one group of birds commonly utilized by prehistoric people that are particularly difficult to classify beyond family. In addition, bird bone assemblages are often fragmentary and poorly preserved, making avifauna notoriously difficult to identify to species, even by trained specialists. Non-identified bones lead to a decrease in information available about taxa present at the site, hunting preferences of the site inhabitants, environmental conditions, and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianne Boileau. Elspeth Ready. Cédric Beauval. Marie-Pierre Coumont. Eugène Morin.

Archaeozoologists generally consider that counts are replicable data accurately representing the initial abundances of elements, individuals or taxa. However, few studies have examined these assumptions with control data. To test the robustness of NISP (Number of Identified SPecimens) and MNE (Minimum Number of Element) counts, we conducted a blind test that involved the analysis of two large experimental samples composed of known red deer (Cervus elaphus) and cattle (Bos taurus) elements. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Divido.

This poster presents methodologies for testing the use of 3D scanning in its ability to capture quality 3D images of faunal bones for comparative purposes. An investigation of prior studies confirms that 3D scanning has successfully been used in aspects of archaeological research. Yet, the full potential for the use of 3D scanning in zooarchaeology is still unclear. At present, zooarchaeologists often have to resort to loaning physical bone specimens from other institutions when comparative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Cruz. Samuel Duwe.

According to tradition, soon after emergence into this world the Tewa were split into two peoples – the Summer and Winter – and were tasked with finding the "middle place," or the location of their eventual historic villages. The Summer People traveled along the Jemez Mountains practicing agriculture, and the Winter People journeyed along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains eating wild game. On their travels southwards the people stopped twelve times and these are represented as ancient villages....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Porter Swentzell.

Tewa history is the story of places. The narrator emplaces a story within the context of Tewa time by naming the place at which the story takes occurs. By using a Tewa place-based approach to narratives of the past, I demonstrate three important points. First, that history is an ethical act. Tewa history helps reproduce the values of good humanness. Second, that Tewa place-based history reconnects the narratives of the past with people’s relationship with land and linked responsibilities. As...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hanks.

Since the late 1990s, paranormal investigating has emerged as a popular means of seeking knowledge of the ghostly or paranormal in England. Paranormal investigators are self-fashioned experts who aim to balance scientistic and spiritual perspectives in hopes of proving or disproving the existence of ghosts from an objective perspective. They dedicate significant amounts of their leisure time to reading about, talking about, and researching ghosts or the paranormal. English paranormal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Miller. Naomi Sykes.

Stable isotope studies have become common-place in archaeological investigations of human diet and mobility, often underpinned by small comparative studies of associated animal remains which are generally utilised as baseline data. However, the value of moving beyond such anthropocentric studies and of analysing animals in their own right is becoming increasingly recognised. Detailed research on animal diet and mobility is enhancing our understanding of animal management and patterns of...