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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

The origin of rock art has frequently asked from an evolutionary and cognitive perspective to understand the dawn of making images in the Paleolithic. But in many regions of the world the beginnings of rock art production occurred later. The Central North of Chile is one of these places. In this area, the practice of marking and chipping rocks surfaces started around 2.000 BCE in coherence with the transition from the Middle to the Late Holocene and the start of many transformations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Nash. Ryan Williams.

In Moquegua the monumental provincial center of Cerro Baúl was ritually abandoned circa 1050CE. It is at this time that Wari affiliated occupation of the sacred summit ended and production of imperial Wari goods ceased in the region. This evidence does not indicate that the empire collapsed at this time, but instead suggests when Wari officials chose to withdraw from this frontier region. Why did they leave? In this paper we discuss the changing population dynamics in Moquegua at 1050CE and how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Kocer.

I examine the behavior of emulation wherein an artisan reproduces a craft on a less valuable or precious material to mimic a desired symbolic prestige good. I present cross-cultural examples of artisans making copies of a craft using different materials. Under what circumstances do people create counterfeit objects? Examples from the Gallina area (AD 1100-1300) of the American Southwest are discussed. The Gallina occupied an area on the periphery of a more socially complex polity (Chaco) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer E. Lapp.

During Pre-Columbian times, it is well-known that the societies of Mesoamerica developed monumental architecture with a high level of complexity. During this same period, much if not all of lower Central America never achieved higher complexity other than that of chiefdom level. Honduras is the one major exception. While the societies of Nicaragua had similar gods and ceramics much of this can be explained through other means. The gods that were similar were "lesser" gods and not the main gods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R.G. Matson. William Lipe.

Lipe et al. (2017) present estimates of the costs of raising maize fed turkeys. Raising a turkey required approximately one-third as much maize as a Puebloan ate in a year. Here we present the probable reason for engaging in this costly behavior. Pueblo III Mesa Verdeans had a diet heavily dependent on maize and short on other protein sources. Most importantly, it was short on two essential amino acids, lysine and tryptophan. We begin by reconstructing the height and weight of Pueblo III Mesa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael E. Smith.

Although initially developed to understand contemporary urban systems, the method and theory of settlement scaling are particularly appropriate for archaeological data. The scaling framework can be seen as an outgrowth of existing archaeological research on demography and settlement patterns. Although developed independently, the "social reactor" model that explains observed patterning is in fact well-grounded in anthropological and archaeological theory. The key process that drives change is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian McNiven. John Bradley.

Archaeological approaches to stone-walled tidal fish traps of Indigenous Australians focus on the technology and subsistence, with chronological development linked to demands of increased food production associated with demographic change and social intensification. For the Yanyuwa ‘Saltwater People’ of tropical northern Australia, old stone-walled fish traps found within the intertidal zone are associated with the creative acts of ancestral spirit beings. As such, these fish traps are imbued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

One of the classic ways the nature/culture dichotomy manifests itself in human interactions with the environment is through the categories of wild and domestic. Some have argued that this distinction is not helpful, and certainly the boundaries are complicated, but it seems most useful to start by asking whether it was meaningful to particular people in the past. Here I will explore whether wild and domestic were relevant concepts to the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük (Central Anatolia), and to some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe.

Perishable artifact analysis in the Great Basin has often focused on whole or complete pieces to address questions regarding broad social groupings and environmental adaptation. In the Great Basin, past populations targeted distinct ecological zones to tend and gather wild plant species for the manufacture of perishable material culture, and by focusing on technological organization and the manufacturing process, there is great potential to better understand how these activities contributed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen. Rachel Loehman.

Recent wildland fires of western North America are occurring in some landscapes at intensities, severities, and extents that are far outside the historical record. These fires and their ecological and social consequences are highly-reported, and there is emerging awareness of the potential for large and severe wildfires to alter or destroy cultural legacies in fire-prone landscapes. Contemporary anthropogenic land use and management have contributed to altered wildfire regimes, but this can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agata Kostrzewa.

Could shorter legs mean premature death? Stature is a highly complex trait which seems to be influenced by many different factors. To name a few; genetics, social status, through to environment, diet or health issues. However, it has been observed for some time that taller people live longer. For the purpose of current research, data from 10 multi-period sites were collected. The main focus of project is to explore the correlations between height and age-at-death. Additional to this, as it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Györgyi Parditka.

The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. This transition is traditionally seen as a short, war-ridden horizon reflecting the arrival of the Tumulus culture population. Recent research, however, emphasizes the complexity of these transformations, and suggests a longer, less abrupt transition, in which existing Middle Bronze Age populations play a significant role in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Magdalena Antczak. Andrzej T. Antczak.

Drawing from archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnohistory, ethnology, and avian biogeography, this paper aims at (re)constructing the interrelations between indigenous peoples and birds in north-central Venezuela, between AD 1000 and 1500. Amerindian narratives and premises of perspectival ontology from the South American Lowlands suggest that certain birds were more closely interrelated with humans then other beings. The analyses of nearly 3000 avian bone remains recovered in six late Ceramic Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card.

Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray was a major figure in the creation of professional archaeology in the United Kingdom, President of the Folklore Society, and advocate for women’s rights in higher education. However, another major part of her legacy was the mainstream acceptance of the concept of the "witch-cult," a hidden ancient religion dating back to the Pleistocene but continuing until at least the seventeenth century when it was persecuted by witch-hunters. Historians have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Jamieson.

Medieval motte castles are large flat-topped earth and stone mounds, often coupled with an enclosure or bailey, and represent a characteristic component of the British landscape. Mottes often dominate their immediate surroundings, with many remaining visually impressive monuments to this day. Although their creation often involved substantial landscape change, it is becoming increasingly clear that continuity could also be maintained. Many mottes were placed at points in the landscape with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer French.

Demography has re-emerged as a growing research area within archaeology. Recent studies have refined archaeological demographic methods and developed models which cite demographic change as a key variable in explaining social and artefactual change. However, one aspect which has not been explicitly acknowledged is how archaeological demography is intrinsically concerned with women. In this paper I explain the importance of women to the demographic regimes of small-scale societies and discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Alderson.

In Oceania, archaeologists have examined perishable ethnographic items to gain fresh insights into past people’s identities. This paper presents a new analysis of 19th and 20th century Micronesian loincloths from European and American museums, explaining how their construction offers insights into islanders’ socio-political identities during a period of rapidly intensifying global interconnectivity. On the island Kosrae, Micronesia, tol (loincloths) were the primary garment of every polity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Chamberlin.

Katherine Spielmann's work in the Salinas Pueblo area of New Mexico has, among other things, emphasized how ritual and economic interconnectivity among late prehistoric pueblo villages articulates with internal social and cultural changes. One thread of this work, developed by several of her students, has been change in gender relations during the rise of the large towns of the Pueblo IV period (AD 1400–1600), especially involving women's roles in exchange, production, and ceremonial life....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amelia Jansen. Martin Walker. Heather Woods. Alexander Craib. Anita Lehew.

The Topper Site (38AL23) is a multi-component prehistoric site located along the eastern bank of the Savannah River in South Carolina. The focus of ongoing University of Tennessee, Knoxville excavations at the Topper Site are the extensive Woodland and Mississippian occupations that have until recently gone unexamined. To date, two block excavations and a dispersed 1x1m unit survey have been completed to better define these later occupations. Excavations have also resulted in the mapping,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Everhart.

The Caldwell Mound was a prehistoric conical mound located in the central Scioto River Valley, in modern-day Ross County, Ohio. Excavated by prominent amateur archaeologist, Donald McBeth in 1942, the Caldwell mound revealed a unique, if detailed funerary complex. Yet, these results remained largely unpublished. Exhibiting characteristics historically considered "Adena" and "Hopewell", the Caldwell mound presents either a call to update local cultural systematics or adds data speaking to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Inge Særheim.

Place-names are important sources to understand and reimagine past conceptions of the landscape. Toponyms map animal lives on to the landscape. In some cases, however, words for animals – wild as well as domestic – are used as metaphors. In some names denoting sunken rocks along the Norwegian coast, e.g. Sugga (’sow’), Oksa (‘bull’), Hesten (’horse’), Porthunden (‘watchdog’), the words either refer to the shape or sound of the locations, or to some special circumstances, e.g. dangerous rocks in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Lazcano Arce. Marianne Sallum.

During the Epiclassic Period (650-950 CE) was the peak of Xochitecatl-Cacaxtla. It became the most important center in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley. There were numerous small groups who vied for a place in the landscape after the fall of Teotihuacan in the central highlands. There was a clear hierarchical division, as the society was formed by the elite, priests, and groups of peasants. The artisans were different specialists whose work allowed for the biological and social reproduction of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lise Truex.

To test the value of the neighborhood concept in archaeological practice, this paper relies on a model of socioeconomically diverse, urban Mesopotamian neighborhoods and tests the model by analyzing households within a neighborhood at Tell Asmar, Iraq. Tell Asmar became one of several major urban settlements in the Diyala River region, with occupation of the site extending back into late prehistory. The dataset comprises a subset of archaeological evidence recovered from the Tell Asmar Northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Latham.

The use of dogs to pull or carry loads is well documented in the recent and historic past, but the origins of these working relationships are not well understood. Although it is likely that humans utilized dogs for transport activities in the prehistoric period, there is no clear archaeological evidence of dog transport until the historic era. Some archaeologists have suggested that pulling or carrying loads leaves unique signatures of stress on the skeletons of dogs. The use of skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Brighton.

In Ireland, historical, post-medieval, or modern world archaeology as a discipline is located on the margins. The time period and material comprising our research is argued by many to be relevant only to the pursuits of historians and folk studies. In this paper I discuss the importance and relevance of a discipline on the margins and the study of Ireland’s impoverished class during the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This marks one of the most dynamic periods in Ireland’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert O'Boyle. Erich Longie. Dianne Desrosiers.

Not long ago, the Spirit Lake Oyate and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate were a single band, part of the Dakota Nation, living in the homeland we had occupied for millennia. Manifest Destiny, greed, and racism led to war and the establishment of reservations. Over the decades, the US Government separated our people as they divided the land for settlement. Today, we are working together to bring our people back together based on the places that matter the most. Together the Spirit Lake Tribe and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Scarre.

The origins of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline lie in the New Learning of the 16th and 17th centuries and derive from a number of sources: antiquarian researches in northwest Europe; European exploration and the encounter with non-European peoples; and speculative accounts of human origins and development. It was only in the 19th century that these strands first began to be woven together to create a global narrative of human prehistory. Such a narrative raises a number of problematic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Shawn Graham. Eric Kansa.

Digital data play increasingly prominent roles in archaeological research. At the same time, the Web has become the key medium for professional and public communication including the transmission of research data. The "Web of Data" represents a fundamental paradigm change. Increasingly, data are no longer packaged in discrete files (spreadsheets, database files) for download. Instead, many datasets come from dynamic information services (APIs, or Application Program Interfaces) and link with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Baker.

A central tenant of military philosophy is "adapt, improvise, and overcome". Navigating battlefields requires constant adaptation to dynamic surroundings due to the interplay of several variables such as 1) pre-existing landscape and terrain, 2) enemy defenses, 3) enemy opposing forces, and 4) friendly and enemy fire. To successfully navigate the archaeology of a historic or prehistoric battlefield, archaeologists must attempt to understand the variables (such as those listed) that contributed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fitzpatrick. Matthew Napolitano. Elliot Blair.

Glass beads have long played an important role in Micronesian societies. Oral histories and ethnographic accounts describe how clay and glass beads ("udoud") in Palau functioned as traditional forms of currency in exchange relationships and were apparently used by islanders from Yap several hundred miles away to negotiate access to limestone quarries that enabled them to carve their famous stone money disks ("rai"). Evidence shows that both stone money quarrying and the exchange of high-valued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda R. Manzanilla.

In corporate societies such as Teotihuacan, it is not easy to detect the places where the ruling elite dwelt, made decisions, managed goods and labor, or participated in cult activities. Teotihuacan is very different from the Maya urban sites: no royal tomb has been found, rulers are not depicted or easily recognized. The corporate organization may have permeated the ruling elite, where a possible council of lords may have headed the Teotihuacan state. Xalla, with a surface of ca. 50,000 m2, is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum. Doug Tilden. Jaime Awe.

Recent excavation of Structure A9 at the site of Xunantunich, Belize, confirmed that the mound represents the remains of a medium-size temple dating to the Late Classic period. Sub-surface excavations along the central axis of the mound revealed a large, vaulted chamber containing the remains of an elite individual. Two hieroglyphic panels flanking the building’s front staircase identify a link between Xunantunich and three other Classic Maya polities: Caracol, Naranjo, and Calakmul. Exploration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Floyd Aranyosi. David Davis. Ashley Garrett. Caroline Hartse.

Olympic College has created a field school around the historic Japanese immigrant site of Yama Village, on Bainbridge Island, WA. A field school associated with a community college offers access to professional training to a selection of students who would otherwise not have access to this education. Our multidisciplinary approach provides students with comprehensive field experience in the effort to recover this "hidden chapter" in Washington State history.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khadene Harris.

Caribbean ‘yards’ and their associated structures have long been of interest to archaeologists determined to understand how the domestic spaces of enslaved laborers both embodied and reflected kinship ties, labor arrangements, and socio-political shifts. Often regarded as an elemental feature of Caribbean society, houseyards are the spaces where the repeated acts of daily life took place, as a result, understanding how enslaved laborers utilized and altered their domestic space over generations,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Enah Montserrat Fonseca Ibarra. Sharon Herzka. Miguel Téllez. Miguel Santa Rosa del Río. René Vellanoweth.

Knowledge of patterns of subsistence and seasonal settlement strategies on the northwest coast of the Baja California Peninsula is still scarce. In order to identify shellfish harvesting patterns from Middle to Late Holocene, oxygen isotope determinations from 66 California mussel shells (Mytilus californianus) from three archaeological sites in the coastal area of Bajamar-Jatay were analyzed. The results suggest that mussels were collected mainly during the fall and winter seasons (63.6%);...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Fillios.

Most zooarchaeologists are familiar with the uncertain feeling when faced with identifying material in the absence of a physical comparative collection. In response to this challenge, numerous photographic atlases have been produced to provide researchers with access to collections while in the field. Unfortunately, 2D images are constrained by their inability to be ‘handled’ and measured in the same way as a physical specimen. The UNE Archaeology virtual bone project was initially developed as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Horowitz.

Ceramics are intimately tied to both foodways and normative behavior within a culture. The appearance of a new shape or the long-term persistence of an old shape must be contextualized by first investigating the use to which the vessel was put, a use that can be inferred through multiple lines of evidence and explored using a variety of approaches. Recent excavations at Alalakh have illuminated the site’s Late Bronze I period, especially the troubled 17th-16th century BC transition from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hali Thurber. Justin Uehlein.

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hobos and other transient workers crisscrossed the nation, taking temporary jobs wherever capital demanded labor that exceeded local resources. Despite their contingent status as surplus laborers, hobos were cast as morally bankrupt deviants, insane, and sexually ambiguous men by media outlets across the nation. State laws and county and town ordinances were summarily passed barring hobos from entering towns, cities, and otherwise populous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Tune. Heather L. Smith. Stephen Yerka.

The transition from Clovis fluting techniques to the variety of later Paleoindian fluting methods and fluted-point morphologies represents one of the earliest major technological shifts currently known in North America. This transition generally coincides with the beginning of the Younger Dryas, and much speculation exists concerning potential correlations between changes in environmental factors and Paleoindian technologies. Some researchers argue that late Pleistocene ecological transitions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

The multi-year study of the ceramic figurines of Tres Zapotes recovered from archaeological explorations at the site center and the surrounding area indicate patterns of interactions throughout the development of the region. Supplemental museum specimens from past excavations at Tres Zapotes, residing in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, were also incorporated into laboratory analysis. The data are examined for evidence of exchange with other communities,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge Flores.

Archaeology as an academic practice in the northern Ecuadorian Andes has concentrated on a constant exploration of hypothesis about the past with the intention to acquire better and more accurate understanding about the origins and development of complex societies. Since the 1970’s, scholars have produced valuable outcomes directed to those goals analyzing evidences concerning to the dynamism of Prehispanic societies in terms of regional distribution, social relations, environmental constrains,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Acabado.

The origins of the extensive wet-rice terrace complex in Ifugao, Philippines have been recently dated to ca. 400 years ago. Previously thought to be at least 2,000 years old, the recent findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project show that landscape modification for terraced wet-rice cultivation started at ca. 1600. The archaeological record implies that economic intensification and political consolidation occurred in Ifugao soon after the appearance of the Spanish empire in the northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Otárola-Castillo. Jesse Wolfhagen. Max Price.

Zooarchaeologists evaluate fundamental and challenging questions about human nature. Many of these questions are answered through statistical modeling and hypothesis testing. However, statistical software tailored to answer zooarchaeological questions remain unavailable. To alleviate this problem, in 2016, we unveiled "zooaRch", a statistical software designed with zooarchaeological statistical problems in mind. ZooaRch is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Zooarchaeologists who wish to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Nowakowski. Chrissina C. Burke. Caitlin M. H. Bishop.

This presentation provides an update on prehistoric Southwest dog pathologies from the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collections. Our zooarchaeological analysis of healed cranial lesions and tooth wear has not only expanded on earlier research accomplished in previous years but it has redefined the prehistoric dog’s role in the agricultural Southwest. Typically, domesticated dogs are identified as beasts of burden, which has inhibited sufficient and further analysis of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Bobolinski.

Housepit 54 at the Bridge River pithouse village in south-central British Columbia provides a glimpse into the complex cultural practices that occurred at this area in the past. This village, which includes approximately 80 semi-subterranean structures, was occupied during four periods, approximately 1800-1600 cal. B.P. (BR 1), 1600-1300 cal. B.P. (BR 2), 1300-1000 cal. B.P. (BR 3), and 610-45 cal. B.P (BR 4), firmly placing the site within both a historic and a pre-Colonial context. It is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peng Lyu. Katherine Brunson. Jing Yuan. Zhipeng Li.

This paper reviews current evidence for the origins of domestic cattle in China. We describe two possible scenarios: 1) domestic cattle were domesticated indigenously in East Asia from the wild aurochs (Bos primigenius), and 2) domestic cattle were domesticated elsewhere and then introduced to China. We conclude that the current zooarchaeological and genetic evidence does not support indigenous domestication within China, although it is possible that people experimented with managing wild...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Siavash Samei. Deborah Olszewski. Natalie Munro.

Economic decisions of Late Pleistocene foragers bore heavily on the nature, timing, and intensity of the adoption of agriculture in different parts of Eurasia. Decades of intensive research in the Levant and Anatolia have made significant contributions to our understanding of Late Pleistocene economic strategies in the western parts of the Near East. A recent surge of interest by Iranian researchers and internationally collaborative teams in Paleolithic archaeology of Iran has renewed attention...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yayi Wang. Quanjia Chen. Chunxue Wang.

Lower Xiajiadian Culture is an early Bronze Age archaeological culture (4,000 BP) in Northern China, located at western Liaoning and southeastern Inner Mongolia. This study explores two different kinds of oracle bones from this cultural period: (1) made of cattle scapular was thought to have been burnt in divination and (2) bone of a mid- to large-sized mammal hoof,thrown during divination. The latter has been scarcely mentioned in the previous research and has not usually been treated as an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle LeFebvre. Susan deFrance. George Kamenov. William Keegan. John Krigbaum.

Bahamian hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami) are small sized rodents endemic to the Bahamas. Fossil and subfossil records indicate broad geographic distribution of the rodent across the Bahamas in the past, while today Bahamian hutia naturally occur on one island. Bahamian hutia have received little attention archaeologically resulting in critical gaps in our understanding of both natural and anthropogenic patterns in Bahamian hutia distribution and life history. In conjunction with "traditional"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Wilcox Black.

The study of animal remains from archaeological sites has proven to be an invaluable approach to understanding past social, economic, and political practices. Despite the diverse behaviors and sets of relationships animal remains can index, faunal analysis has been an underutilized approach to studying Indian history and prehistory. In this paper, I present new research and zooarchaeological data to demonstrate how human-animal engagements changed throughout the Neolithic (3000-1200 BCE), Iron...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Buckley.

Biomolecular methods can vastly improve the confidence in species determination of animal bone in a manner that, unlike traditional morphology-based methods, is not subject to the skills of the analyst. Until recently these have largely focussed on ancient DNA-based approaches, and so have been at costs too great to become widely used for most archaeofaunal assemblages despite being available for more than thirty years. However, within the last decade I have pioneered the development of a...