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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremias Pink. Ronald K. Faulseit. Carlos Rojas Ortíz.

Mold-made ceramic figurines and whistles are a common component of Late Classic assemblages in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, yet little is known about their ceremonial significance or context of use. Our excavation of an elite residential complex at the site of Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl yielded nearly 5,000 fragments of these ritual objects, the majority from midden deposits associated with an open stone platform that likely served as a ceremonial space for the residents. A small ceramic kiln located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandi Bethke.

Despite functioning as pack animals, guards, religious figures, and even companions, dogs were never as integral to Blackfoot culture as the horse became. To date, researchers have most often characterized the relationship of Blackfoot people and their horses by framing the horse as an "upgraded model"—a "new and improved" dog. While prior experience with domesticated dogs did facilitate the incorporation of horses into the daily lives of Blackfoot people, this paper argues that the fundamental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily McClung De Tapia.

Huauhtzontli, a cultivated chenopod widely distributed in the central highlands of Mexico, is generally believed to have been domesticated in prehispanic times. However, neither the timing nor the area of domestication have been clearly established. Morphometric analyses of modern fruits of the central Mexican subspecies of Chenopodium berlandieri and revision of archaeological specimens recovered from various excavations in the region suggest that domesticated fruits were not predominant,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Contreras.

Integrating archaeological and paleoenvironmental data about the past is a longstanding archaeological goal. It is often central to basic archaeological interpretation, fundamental to addressing questions of human-environment interaction, and vital to realizing archaeology’s potential contributions to studies of vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability in the face of climate change. However, such integration faces challenges of scale, resolution, and mechanism. Increasingly abundant digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Schach. Jane Buikstra.

Children learn and communicate their social identities through dress. Thus, examinations of ancient clothing can reveal the process of socialization in past societies. The presence of child and adult sized camisas in the graves of Chiribaya children suggest that these items communicate more than a child’s living identities. Here, we analyze camisas at Chiribaya Alta to examine the process of socialization and the role of death as a potential rite of passage. The site of Chiribaya Alta, an elite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Hill. Yorke Rowan.

Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and photogrammetry provide a precise tool for high resolution surveys of arid landscapes. In 2016, as part of the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project, we undertook a large survey (32 km2) in the remote Black Desert of eastern Jordan. Although excavation has been ongoing in the survey area for several years, many extant Neolithic structures have not been properly mapped or identified because of the large number of structures and the large scale of the area. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Castillo Butters. Aldo Watanabe.

Air photography, using Drones and 2D/3D Models produced with Photogramettry, is changing the way we do field archaeology. This technology also can be a powerful tool in telling a story about the sites and the work that we, as archaeologists, do there. However, several technological adaptations have to be developed in order to take full advantage of these new technologies. In this paper, we will walk you through the process of combining air and ground based 3D modeling along the North Coast of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Whitley.

Recent changes to the FAA regulations covering the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or "drones" have clarified their use in both research and commercial operations. This paper is intended to provide an overview of low-cost entry into the use of UAVs for archaeological projects and considerations for applications in aerial imagery, videography, and photogrammetry. Using drones for documentation and interpretation is no longer uncommon, but it has been cost-prohibitive since the previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier. Matthew Peeples.

How robust were agrarian social networks to drought? Social networks can absorb climate shocks by facilitating resource flows to afflicted nodes and population flows away from them. Because this property of social networks depends on their ability to connect regions with negatively correlated rainfall, we expect the interaction between landscape connectivity and drought spatio-temporal covariance structures will select for particular network configurations. To test this hypothesis, we compare...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Mullen.

As the Tres Zapotes polity’s economic and political power diminished in the Early Classic, the eastern lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) became a political frontier as sites in this contested region strengthened ties to both Classic Veracruz and Central Mexico. It is during this time that a series of near-coastal paleodunes and estuarine lakes see an increase in occupational intensity. The ecological diversity of the dune landscape provides a unique setting to explore how the intersection of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luc Vrydaghs. Cristiano Nicosia. Yannick Devos. Alvise Vianello. Christine Pümpin.

During archaeological excavations in the center of Brussels (Belgium), often stratigraphic units containing dung – either omnivore-carnivore, including human, or herbivore – have been encountered. A multidisciplinary approach, comprising soil micromorphology, phytolith analysis and parasitology on soil thin sections, chemical analyses, including GC-MS and phosphorus measurements, was adopted to identify and characterize dung remains. In some cases dung was observed as part of the manure added to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexia Smith. Lucas Proctor.

In the 1980s, Naomi Miller’s seminal publications detailing the use and identification of dung fuel within archaeobotanical samples at Malyan provided archaeobotanists with an alternate explanation for the source of plant remains preserved archaeologically, allowing for considerations of ancient fuel use and pasturing practices. Since then, archaeobotanists have generally relied upon wood to weed seed ratios or the composition of weed assemblages to support the use of dung fuel within flotation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amaia Arranz Otaegui. Ana Polo-Díaz. Tobias Richter.

In southwest Asia the use of dung as fuel has so far only been attested at agricultural sites, which relied on the exploitation of domesticated plants and animals. In this presentation we report the first evidence for dung use by hunter-gatherers in southwest Asia 15,000 years ago. Charred dung remains were found inside two stone-made hearth structures at the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian site Shubayqa 1. This evidence suggests that dung was recurrently gathered and used as fuel. The macro- and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Siobhan Boyd. Zev Cossin. Samuel Connell. Ana Gonzalez.

The area of Cayambe in the northern highlands of Ecuador is marked by the physical remains of successive waves of Inca and Spanish imperial expansion and their enduring consequences. Across the landscape high altitude fortifications evidence the drawn-out struggles between expanding Inca and local forces during the 15th century. Similarly, elite haciendas that transformed the rural countryside in the interests of imperial and state power continue to dominate the social and political landscape....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Arnn. Nathan Goodale. Alissa Nauman. Bruce Wegter.

Isotope ecological signatures can add to the overall understanding of terrestrial and aquatic species’ diets that are present at an archaeological site. In this paper we analyze fauna specimens from across the breadth of species found at the Slocan Narrows site, an aboriginal pithouse village occupied from 3,100 cal BP to the late 18th century in the Upper Columbia River area of the interior Pacific Northwest. We utilize EA-IRMS to measure δN, δC, and δO isotope ratios to obtain an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Neusius. Bonnie Styles.

The formation of the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has brought together zooarchaeologists responsible for the analysis and interpretation of a large number of significant faunal assemblages from Archaic period sites. Our collaboration has led to the preservation of nearly 60 significant faunal datasets from 21 archaeological sites in several areas of the U.S. interior Eastern Woodlands in the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). This collection of datasets has been integrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alper Basiran. Cevdet Merih Erek.

The occupation of man has played an important role on cultural innovation; at the same time this process has always been a requirement of daily life for generation continuity. Since the start of human life history, choosing of places for occupation species has had different features. For example, the cave or rock shelters were preferred by Paleolithic man and they have hot style caves and/or shelters due to the period; this developed in Pleistocene climatologic conditions that were cold because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Lopez. Martha Cano.

In First Americans research in Colombia, the last three decades of the 20th Century were significant in terms of enthusiasm and motivation. Studies carried out by scholars such as Ruth Gruhn and Alan Bryan in Venezuela and other places were fundamental references for Colombian teams and encouraged advances in Pleistocene archaeology. Gonzalo Correal, Thomas Van der Hammen and Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, among others, followed widely their contributions. Following Colombian generations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Roney. Robert Hard. Karen Adams. A. C. MacWilliams. Andrea Thomas.

Recent excavation and survey documents substantial use of the Upper Gila River Valley in Arizona during the Early Agricultural period. We have identified at least two classes of Early Agricultural period sites in the Duncan region, cerros de trincheras and river terrace sites. Both contain residential architecture and evidence of a diversity of activities. Round Mountain, a cerro de trincheras, contains 1.9 km of walls and terraces and 16 rock rings and was constructed on a 640 foot hill during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Nebbia.

During the 4th millennium BC a number of considerably big settlements have developed in the territory of modern Ukraine, thus constituting the biggest sites in Europe at that time. Mostly investigated only as single entities these "mega-sites" have never been considered thoroughly as part of the whole landscape of Trypillia settlements. Some scholars have argued that these could have been examples of early formed urban centres (aka "proto-cities"), others, instead, proposed that these were big...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nina Schreiner. Kathleen M. S. Allen.

During the early contact period in Northeastern North America, Native groups traded with both other Native groups and a variety of Europeans. Early trade began on a small scale with all parties eager to gain goods. Investigations at Carman, a Cayuga Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) site occupied in the late 1500s, produced a quantity of shell beads, along with a small number of metal items refashioned from European copper and brass fragments. This paper is an analysis of the worked and unworked shell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ofer Bar-Yosef.

For over 2.6 million years foragers did not demonstrate that cultivation was a way for obtaining food stability although occasional events may have escaped the archaeological records. Cultivation by hunter-gatherers across the continents (except for Australia) emerged during the Terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene as a response to limitation on mobility due essentially to competition among growing populations conceived archaeologically as "relative demographic pressure". The paper will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helina Woldekiros.

Animal herding formed a central component of pre-Aksumite (>800 B.C.E – 450 B.C.E) and Aksumite (450 B.C.E-800 C.E.) subsistence economies in the North Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands. Despite this, detailed understanding of animal utilization and diversity of species is lacking for this period. New data on species abundance and radiocarbon date from the site of Mezber in the North Ethiopian highland throws a new light on the earliest mixed farming communities in the Horn of Africa over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Sandweiss.

The coastal Atacama Desert in southern Peru has some of the oldest and best documented fishing sites in western South America, including Terminal Pleistocene through Early Holocene components at Quebrada Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay and Early to Middle Holocene components at the Ring Site and Quebrada de los Burros. These sites have offered insight into the antiquity and variability of the early fishing tradition, the antiquity and features of coast-highland interaction, and coastal settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victor Emmanuel Salazar Chavez. Jeffrey Blomster.

Public spaces appeared early in Mesoamerica, often linked to emerging communal identity and/or socio-political complexity. Their construction, and subsequent maintenance and renovations, reflect the collective effort of different social actors and corporate entities. In Mesoamerica, public space first appears during the Early Formative period (1500-900 BCE), a time of emerging socio-political complexity at sites such as San Lorenzo, San Jose Mogote, and Paso de la Amada. The arrangement and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chang-Hwa Kang.

Overseas exchanges are a key interest in Jeju archaeology as several sites there document intricate networks in early historical periods. The term "Tamra" is first appeared in the "Samguk Sagi (History of the Three Kingdom, 1145)," and is widely believed to refer political entities in Jeju. In archaeology, "Tamra" often refers to the period from c. 200 BC to AD 1105, and if further divided into three phases. The Tamra Formation period (200 BC–AD 200) marks a population increase and increasing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Ware Van Der Voort.

Human occupation of the Little Steamboat Point-1 (LSP-1) rockshelter in southcentral Oregon began ~9,600 cal BP. Artifacts recovered from the pre-Mazama deposits include a faunal assemblage comprised primarily of leporid remains and a lithic assemblage dominated by informal flake tools. I designed and conducted an experiment using replicated obsidian flake tools to identify leporid processing strategies employed by Early Holocene occupants. I performed hide, carcass, and meat processing tasks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Rhodes.

Nachcharini Cave represents evidence from the early Holocene Levant, spanning the transition from hunting to herding in this region. It is located in an alpine environment, rare for Levantine sites at 2100 metres above sea level. The archaeofauna shows a clear predominance of wild sheep remains over wild goat, presenting a possible source for early domesticates. Taphonomic analysis of remains from the Natufian, PPNA, and PPNB periods at Nachcharini show significant differences in formation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Munro. Jacqueline Meier. Lidar Sapir-Hen.

An expanding catalog of faunal assemblages spanning the Late Epipaleolithic through Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) periods in the southern Levant points to growing human control over taxa that eventually become domesticated (wild goat, wild pig and wild cattle). This change in human-animal relationships occurs several centuries if not millennia before evidence for full-fledged management and domestication are visible in the archaeo-zoological record. We explore this shift by referencing data from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindi Masur. Jean-Francois Millaire.

Previous research on plant foods and social memory in the Andes has primarily focused on ritual feasting amongst elite segments of society within the confines of exclusionary monumental spaces. However, it is vital to look beyond elite-directed activities and consider ritualized commoner and quotidian practices as integral to community building and memory making. This paper will demonstrate how domestic food production and consumption, the construction of agricultural landscapes, and wild plant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Humphris. Michael Charlton.

Since 2012 archaeometallurgical investigations have been undertaken at the Royal City of Meroe, a capital of the Kingdom of Kush situated c. 250 km north of modern day Khartoum, Sudan. During the research, a chronological history of iron production at this site has been generated that spans at least one thousand years. Insights into various stages of the chaîne opératoire of iron production have also been revealed, including the location and techniques of iron ore extraction, the procurement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carey Garland. Laurie Reitsema.

This study examines internal enamel micro-defects and incremental isotopic data from tooth dentin to reconstruct early life stress and dietary histories of Guale individuals interred at the Late Precontact/Early Contact period site of Fallen Tree (A.D. mid-1500s) on Saint Catherines Island, Georgia. Fallen Tree presents a new point in the chronology of indigenous biocultural adaptation to Spanish missionization in the southeastern United States. Missionization is associated with increased...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel W. Grossman. Timothy C. Kenna.

This presentation will discuss the results of processing eight high-resolution Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon determinations on charcoal found in association with poorly dated ceramics and copper-alloy artifacts recovered from an important pre-Inca site, Waywaka, in the south-central highlands of Andahuaylas, Apurimac, Peru. Excavations at Waywaka revealed a naturally stratified series of deposits of Pre-Inca cultures spanning nearly four millennia. In the bottom-most layers was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Denis Sharapov.

First polities in the Eurasian steppes are documented by the Greek and Chinese historical accounts of the Scythians (9th-3rd centuries BC) and the Xiongnu (3rd century BC – 1st century AD). Archaeologically, these entities manifested themselves in complex settlement networks, consisting of fortified sites, dispersed farmsteads, and mobile pastoral camps. Earlier roots of political organization in the Eurasian steppes are largely limited to funerary and ceremonial monuments, which presumably...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Tache.

Accumulating evidence point toward hunter-gatherer communities as the first inventors of ceramic containers in many parts of the world, but the incentives behind this technological innovation remain elusive. In this presentation, archaeological information and biomolecular data from organic residues analyses are combined to support a scenario in which pre-agricultural communities in Northeastern North America used early pottery as a fat rendering device, whether the fat came from fish oil or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Signe Valentinsson.

Petrified Forest National Park is notable for the diversity of its ceramic assemblages which encompass several major ware groups. The earliest ceramics sequence saw one of the most dramatic shift in pottery production techniques at any time in the park, from the paddle and anvil, micaceous tempered Adamana Brown Ware, to the coil and scrape, sherds and sand tempered white wares and grey wares that dominate the rest of the park’s ceramics assemblages. This poster presents a characterization study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Gilbert. Kye Miller.

Researchers studying architecture in the southwest Cibola region have generally focused on Pueblo II to Pueblo IV aggregated above-ground masonry pueblos. Although these structures provide abundant information about past lifeways, little research has been conducted on pit structure architecture in this region. As such, there is much to be learned from earlier structures dating to the Basketmaker and early Pueblo periods in the southwest Cibola. By characterizing early architectural practice in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Briana Pobiner.

Two key resources that would have conditioned hominin behavior and habitat preferences in the Early Stone Age of Africa are food and water. This talk presents an examination of spatial relationships of these resources from a modern taphonomic and ecological study of large mammal carcasses at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya. The locations of fresh carnivore kills and older bone scatters that still retained within-bone nutrients (marrow and brains) are examined to determine whether these dietary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer.

The Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) cave site of Manot, western Galilee, Israel yielded remains of the Ahmarian and Levantine Aurignacian technocomplexes. The malacofauna assemblages from the two technocomplexes were analyzed (NISP=1180). Dozens of ornamental shells, mostly deriving from the Aurignacian assemblages, include perforated Nassarius gibbosulus, Columbella rustica and Antalis spp. as well as two cowrie beads found in association with human bones. The comparison of the Manot assemblage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisabetta Boaretto. Bridget Alex. Valentina Caracuta. Eugenia Mintz. Lior Regev.

The timing of Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) traditions in the Levant bears significance for understanding modern human dispersals. Despite intensive research, the Levantine EUP chronology has not been resolved because most chronometric dates come from old excavations and outdated analytical methods. Here we report dates from Manot Cave, Israel, which constitute the largest series of EUP radiocarbon dates (n=55) from current excavations and state-of-the-art analytical methods. A new strategy in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jina Heo.

Mahan, composed of 54 polities in central and southwestern Korea, grew rapidly from 100 BCE to CE 300, by which time it covered about 40,000 square kilometers, with a population of roughly 500,000. During much of this time, urban zones became the dominant residential mode at both local and regional levels, but without suggesting a strong central authority. No unequivocal capital cities have been identified. At the same time, there is evidence of a dual-urban organization with distinctive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Downey. Randy Haas.

This study uses statistical tests known as "early warning signals" (EWS) to determine whether declining socio-ecological resilience presaged a pattern of collapse during the Early Neolithic Period in Europe. Our earlier research has shown with a high degree of certainty that radiocarbon-inferred human demography during the Neolithic exhibits a boom-and-bust pattern. In this new study we analyze our meta-database of radiocarbon dates in order to determine whether societies on the verge of major...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Noack Myers.

On the eastern edge of North America, native canine populations were brought into contact with foreign human and canine populations in the 17th century. This paper utilizes multiple types of data to address the dynamics between human and canine groups in spheres of interaction evidenced by archaeological remains from multi-component sites on the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic coasts of the United States spanning the late pre-Columbian and contact periods.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Gore.

Investigating prehistoric landscape use is significant in understanding adaptive strategies in the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. One way to begin to address landscape use is through lithic procurement and selection studies; these are significant in understanding prehistoric human behavior because procurement and selection behaviors shape toolkits, mobile strategies and settlement patterns. An initial step in addressing these problems is attempted through examining lithic artifacts from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Motta. Scott Russel.

Recent research reevaluating the evidence for consumption of millet in Archaic and Roman Italy indicates that its role has been underestimated. New findings from Iron Age and Archaic contexts at the Latin settlement of Gabii clearly support a more nuanced and complex situation than the one portrayed by ancient Latin authors and modern scholarship alike. The recovery of significant quantities of millet at Gabii is in sharp contrast with the absence of this crop in similar contexts from Iron Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keitlyn Alcantara.

Late Postclassic Central Mexico is defined by significant political change, with the Aztec Triple Alliance quickly dominating the political landscape. As the triple alliance materialized in the 15th century, Tlaxcallan simultaneously emerged as a key market center, connecting trade in the central highlands to the Gulf Coast. As the alliance expanded, Tlaxcallan remained a uniquely unconquered space, yet the conditions of its autonomy are unclear. Siege of trade routes and the manipulation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime Awe.

The ancient Maya expressed complex ideological and cosmological systems through diverse material practices. The ritual caching of objects, particularly offerings of chert and obsidian eccentrics, was a common manifestation of this integrated worldview throughout the Maya Lowlands. The study of these caches allows archaeologists to explore elements of ancient Maya ideology, which were shared across broad temporal and spatial landscapes. With over 100 years of previous archaeological research,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Woollett. Paul Adderley. Céline Dupont-Hébert. Guðrun Alda Gísladóttir. Uggi Ævarsson.

The Archaeology of Settlement and Abandonment of Svalbarð research program has reconstructed chronologies of settlement movements on the Svalbarð estate (extreme north-east Iceland), from the 9th to the 19th century AD, as well as their environmental and socio-economic contexts. Settlement expansions occurred in the 10th to 13th and the 18th to 19th centuries AD, interspersed with waves of widespread abandonment after ca. 1300 and 1800. Analyses of amended soils and of soil and air temperature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hart. Luisa Aebersold. Nicholas Brokaw. Sheila Ward.

Archaeological research requires interdisciplinary scholarship to answer broad questions relating to resilience, social complexity, climate, and environmental impacts in Mesoamerica throughout ancient Maya times and into the present. RBCMA, PfBAP, plant ecology, and paleoethnobotany have provided a platform to reconstruct ancient Maya landscapes, which delves into the nuances of human-environmental relationships in northwestern Belize. Ecological studies of the impacts of ancient Maya on soils,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Caldwell. Dana Lepofsky. Robert Losey.

Coastal peoples around the world have complex systems of marine management that are situated within and influenced by a myriad of social and ecological actions and contexts. On the Northwest Coast of North America, as elsewhere, understanding the physical and non-tangible aspects of these systems requires using diverse kinds of knowledge and data. In this presentation, we bring together traditional ecological knowledge of Tla’amin First Nation elders with archaeological data to understand the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Codding. Erick Robinson. Nathan Stevens. Terry Jones. Robert Kelly.

Ethnographic populations throughout Western North American sometimes relied on strategies and institutions to protect resources, patches, and territories for exclusive use. But explaining why and identifying when these exclusionary practices emerged (and dissolved) in the past remains difficult. Based on predictions from ecological and evolutionary theory, individuals should only engage in territorial behavior when the benefits of exclusive use, such as subsistence gains, are worth the costs of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Martin Menz.

Intensification has long been equated with the rise of tightly-controlled economies, often in association with incipient social inequality. Previous research has sometimes suggested that centralized control is necessary both for the development of intensification as a viable economic strategy, and for the management of its repercussions. Here, we present evidence from Kolomoki, Crystal River, and Roberts Island, three prominent Late Woodland (ca. A.D. 500-1000) mound centers of the American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Meyer-Lorey.

Access to imported goods by premodern societies implies economic intensification and long distance trade and interaction. Investigations in the Old Kiyyangan Village (OKV), Ifugao, Philippines have indicated that Southeast Asian and Chinese tradeware ceramics began to influence social interactions as early as 600 years ago. This presentation reports on our work in OKV that highlights the role of outside trade in the development of social differentiation in the region. We focus on the period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Jones. Mohammad Najjar. Thomas Levy.

The late 12th and 13th centuries AD in the southern Levant are a period of increasing political centralization, ending the political instability caused by the fragmentation of the ‘Abbasid Empire in the 10th century AD. While the 11th and early 12th centuries are marked by near-constant shifts in political sovereignty, by the 13th century control was contested only between the Ayyubid rulers of Cairo and Damascus. A third center — Karak, in central Jordan — was, however, able to achieve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lingyi Zeng.

In this paper I will present the results from analyzing and comparing ceramics from multiple contexts, including ceramic production centers, burials and residential areas during the Mongol period. I adopted Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF), a very effective and non-destructive way to analyze the chemical compositions of their pastes, glazes and pigments of samples from Jingdezhen, Inner Mongolia, and other areas of the Mongol Empire. Other scientific techniques and statistic methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Freeman.

A basic premise of economics is that more secure property rights reduce conflict and provide an incentive for individuals to invest capital to increase productivity. This premise underlies recent theories developed by archaeologists that food production and more secure property rights, by necessity, co-evolve. The argument goes like this: Dense and predicable resources provide an incentive for more secure property rights and more secure property rights provide an incentive for individuals to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth.

This paper attempts to synthesize the influence of raw material quality and abundance, mobility patterning, and social organization on the lithic assemblage. Each factor has been shown to have significant effects on the chaîne opératoire of lithic technology; acquisition of raw material, discard, and recycling. Following a literature review, distinct archaeological correlates to a wide variety of behaviors are used to analyze the lithic assemblage from Woodpecker Cave, a multi-component...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Premo.

The "demographic hypothesis" provides a recent example of how models can play an important role in driving new and interesting archaeological research. Influential models by Shennan and Henrich inspired the notion that, holding all else constant, members of larger populations ought to display more diverse and more complex toolkits than those in smaller populations. Empirical tests of this idea against the material culture of recent small-scale societies have yielded mixed results, raising valid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Winterhalder. Luis Pacheco-Cobos. Carmen Cortez. Estrella Chevez. Chloe Atwater.

School enrollment in traditional communities potentially compromises young peoples’ participation in agro-ecological subsistence activities that encourage the development and practice of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Drawing on data from a Maya community located in Toledo District, Belize, we compared the time allocated to agro-ecological activities for school going (SG) or non-school going (NSG) male and female youth between the ages of 13 and 18 years. We find that SG males spend...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luisa Marinho. Shera Fisk. Ellie Gooderham. Laure Spake. Hugo F. V. Cardoso.

Diaphyseal lengths are routinely used to estimate age in juvenile skeletal remains. However, the effects of bilateral asymmetry in bone growth on the estimation of age have not been properly addressed. This study uses a sample of 26 individuals of known age (birth to 11 years) from the skeletal collection housed at the Natural Museum of Natural History and Science, in Lisbon, Portugal. Diaphyseal length of the humerus, radius, ulna, femur, tibia and fibula, were collected from the right and left...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tessa Plint. Lisa Hodgetts. Fred Longstaffe.

Stable isotope values obtained from modern faunal skeletal material often provide important comparative data in zooarchaeological investigations of past food-web dynamics and human-animal interactions. Unlike archaeological material, modern faunal material requires additional time-consuming preparatory work prior to analysis (i.e. defleshing). Cooking and the application of proteolytic enzyme are quick and effective methods, but it is unclear if these techniques alter original bone collagen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Leader. Aylar Abdollahzadeh. Sam Lin. Harold Dibble.

Previous controlled experiments have illustrated that exterior platform angle and platform depth have a strong influence on the size and shape of a flake. Using specially made cores and a hydraulic knapping machine we present results from two new controlled experiments. The first of these involves altering the exterior and lateral margins of the platform and seeing the effects these changes have on flake mass in relation to platform depth. In the second controlled experiment, glass cores...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernd R. Schöne. Katharina Schmitt.

Stable isotope signatures of bivalve shells serve as important proxies of past environmental conditions. However, such data can be biased as a consequence of physical and chemical pretreatment and contamination during sampling. To systematically assess these issues, homogenized aragonitic shell powder, as well as Carrara marble powder (calcite) were exposed to ultrasound, a set of different staining solutions and cleaning agents that are typically employed in bivalve sclerochronology....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucyna Bowland.

Past studies have noted the carnivore digestion process results in the enlargement of foramina and expansion of Haversian canals within the bones; however, it is not clearly known or taphonomically documented whether acid erosion from soil produces similar signatures.Although bones are oftentimes found within soil matrices, some at highly acidic levels, undoubtedly affecting the preservation and appearance of the remains, the effects are still poorly understood.Studies of erosion on bone mainly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ripan Malhi. Jerome Cybulski. John Lindo. Michael DeGiorgio. Joycelynn Mitchell.

In 2008 a partnership was established with the Coast Tsimshian to use genomics as a novel avenue of research to learn about the population and evolutionary history of these First Nations. Community based research methods were used as a way to establish research goals that were respectful and mutually beneficial to all parties. Through this partnership we have been able to gain insight into the present-day and ancestral Coast Tsimshian genetic structure. Specifically, we have demonstrated a close...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Legare.

Management of the Jornada del Muerto segment of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail over the last 9 years has provided insights into a wide range of behaviors and perceptions about a physical manifestation of history and its meaning and role in our lives. As with many historic/archaeological sites, there is a mythic El Camino as well as an archaeological/historic El Camino. Trail management is sometimes a question of balancing and enhancing and sometimes a question of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Saul Alcantara Salinas.

El denominado Occidente Mesoamericano, presentaba características únicas que lo diferenciaban del resto de las culturas de esta súper área cultural; diferencias que son claramente observables en el sistema funerario que fue utilizado por estos grupos, al cual se le denominó como: "Tradición de Tumbas de Tiro". El legado patrimonial que dejaron estos grupos se encuentra en prácticamente todo el territorio del estado de Colima, desafortunadamente este se ha visto alterado por la práctica que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Chyla.

Huarmey valley, at the southern fringe of Peruvian North Coast, was inhabited for millennia. It is a rich, multi-cultural area, where almost all types of archaeological sites are represented. The discovery of an imperial mausoleum at El Castillo in 2012/13 is an example how little we know about this region. During the previous seasons modern state-of-art techniques of documentation were used on daily basis at the time of excavations. The successful attempts to implement new non-invasive, remote...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Farias. J. Heath Anderson.

En los años setenta, el arqueólogo Enrique Nalda describió por primera vez un nuevo tipo cerámico, lo cuál denominó Xajay Rojo Inciso Postcocción (RIP). En las décadas después surgieron nuevas investigaciones que giraban en torno a la definición cultura-histórica de lo Xajay que resultaron en el registro de cada vez más asentamientos asociados con el tipo. Actualmente se sabe que los sitios pertenecen temporalmente a finales del Clásico y durante todo el Epiclásico, y que se encuentran...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miroslava Rodríguez.

El presente ensayo utiliza documentos del registro histórico para investigar la reasignación de significados al Cerro Magoni por diferentes grupos desde el siglo XVI hasta su presente definición como parte del Ejido de la comunidad Huerto Nantzha mediante el marco conceptual de la territorialidad. Ésta consiste en la apropiación y dominación de un espacio mientras que el territorio es distinguible y defendida por su dueño y defendida. El poseedor será quien dote de significados específicos al...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carpenter. Guadalupe Sanchez.

We discuss Paul and Suzy Fish´s integral role in archaeological research in northwest Mexico, an important region that has been little studied by relatively few archaeologists to date. Over more than 25 years, along with our colleagues and many students, our archaeological investigations have included a reanalysis of the funerary mound at Guasave, Sinaloa and an evaluation of the relationship between Mesoamerica and Northwestern Mexico, the Pleistocene people of Sonora and Mexico, the Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirko De Tomassi.

La presente ponencia trata de analizar las prácticas funerarias que se llevaban a cabo en distintos conjuntos domésticos excavados en el territorio dominado por la ciudad de Copán durante el Clásico Tardío. En la sociedad maya, las relaciones consanguíneas con los antepasados cobraban mucha importancia para el mantenimiento del poder. Las unidades sociales que se fundan en los lazos de parentesco implican desigualdad en la participación en el poder, definida con base en la proximidad al ancestro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivonne Pérez Alcántara. Lane F. Fargher. Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza. Richard E. Blanton. John K. Millhauser.

Las investigaciones arqueológicas e históricas sobre la ciudad y estado Posclásico de Tlaxcallan muestran que éstos fueron construidos a través de estrategias político-económicas altamente colectivas. El resultado de dichas estrategias fue una República que enfatizó la toma de decisiones por consejo, la justicia social, el reconocimiento de mérito y el abasto de bienes públicos (especialmente seguridad pública y redistribución de riqueza acumulada por el Estado). La prospección sistemática de la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana M. Jarquin. Enrique Martinez.

Los trabajos de investigación arqueológica en el Palacio Norte de La Ciudadela de Teotihuacan permitieron establecer que dicho recinto fue construido en relación a la consolidación del poder estatal y su autoridad además de su legitimación. Lo anterior en la búsqueda del reconocimiento de la población hacía los funcionarios que representaban un sistema económico, politico, y religioso, como un todo, basado en instituciones estructuradas de manera tal que, regían todos los aspectos de la vida de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maribel Piña Calva. Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava.

El registro de los monumentos arqueológicos, muebles e inmuebles, que de acuerdo con la legislación mexicana vigente, son patrimonio de la nación, implica, amén de un ejercicio académico, un instrumento legal de protección, en tanto que significa el reconocimiento de la existencia física de dichos bienes patrimoniales, a través de su inscripción en un Registro Público. Esta tarea, iniciada hace más de setenta y cinco años, está encomendada al Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Del Rocío Vera Flores.

El suelo que sólo sea visto como una mercancía que otorgue seguridad económica y sobre el cuál no se regule su uso, adquiere una mayor complejidad al ser parte, además, de un contexto arqueológico. En este sentido, uno de los principales retos de la arqueología en México es conservar a largo plazo las zonas arqueológicas que la ley refiere y todos aquellos sitios de gran valor y extensión, que son investigados año con año y que requieren de un diseño de conservación como política cultural,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hill. Gregory Lattanzi. Matthew Sanger. Matthew Napolitano. Laure Dussubieux.

Excavations conducted at the McQueen Shell Ring site on St Catherines Island off the coast of Georgia recovered several fragments of a copper artifact. These fragments represent an artifact made from a thin sheet of copper, and were recovered from a Late Archaic feature with calibrated radiocarbon dates placing its use between 2300 and 1800 BC. Seven of these fragments were analyzed at the Elemental Analysis Facility of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History to determine elemental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verónica Ortega.

El complejo arquitectónico Quetzalpapálotl ocupa un lugar privilegiado en la Plaza de la Luna, en el centro urbano de la antigua Teotihuacán. En recientes años (2009-2013) hemos realizado una investigación enfocada a comprender el uso de los espacios y su posible asociación con la élite teotihuacana, a través del reconocimiento de los elementos de prestigio que diferenciaron a sus ocupantes del resto de los pobladores. En esta ponencia expondremos nuevos datos respecto de la funcionalidad del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evangelia Tsesmeli. David Eck.

Eligibility of an archaeological site in the National Register is determined on four basic criteria. This research discusses the nature of eligible nominated sites in regards to their temporal and spatial affiliation on New Mexico State Trust Lands as they are recorded in the New Mexico ARMS database. Correlations with available archaeological surveys, terrain visibility, and the way we regard and define what an archaeological site is are also examined.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Berquist. Erick Casanova. Abigail Gamble. Samantha Seyler. Steven Wernke.

The archaeology of Spanish colonialism in the Andean region is coming into increasing focus with the documentation of Spanish colonial doctrinas and reducciónes, along with the excavation of religious structures, public spaces, and elite and common indigenous households. However, we still lack a clear comparative diachronic perspective of how Spanish colonialism affected the daily lives and values of indigenous Andean peoples. This paper presents the results of the 2016 excavations of three...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vincent Francigny.

Sai Island, located in northern Sudan between the 2nd and 3rd Nile cataracts, boasts a rich archaeological history spanning from the Paleolithic to modern times. Recent archaeological excavations conducted by the French Unit of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums have focused on a small elite Meroitic necropolis (300BC-350AD). Similar to other fringe elite Meroitic cemeteries such as Sedeinga, the Sai Island cemetery features pyramid mortuary structures with descendaries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tosha Dupras. Vincent Francigny. Amanda Groff. Alex de Voogt.

Five Meroitic necropoli have been identified on Sai Island, located in northern Sudan between the 2nd and 3rd Nile cataracts. Recent archaeological excavations conducted by the French Unit of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums have focused on a small elite Meroitic necropolis (300BC-350AD). Although the archaeology of this necropolis is complicated by interments from other periods and looting, here we present the initial analyses of the Meroitic elite skeletal remains in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Fontes.

The Vasco-Cantabrian Middle Magdalenian (14.3-13.2 ka uncal. BP) remains intangible—known in the region from relatively few archaeological sites and principally defined on the basis of portable art items with Pyrenean origin. Recent research undertaken with collections from Urtiaga cave (Guipúzcoa, Spain) has included two radiocarbon assays of Level E that date to the Middle Magdalenian interval. This level lacks diagnostic portable art items, however, lithic and faunal analyses (conducted by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Weisskopf. Dorian Fuller.

While grain crops, such as rice, are relatively easy to identify in the archaeobotanical record, evidence for early agriculture in the wet tropics can be elusive. In this region staple foods were not always grain-based and even today wild plants play an important role. So how do we identify ancient food pathways? Unlike temperate parts of the world, charred material rarely preserves, so this is where micro fossils such as phytoliths and starches come into play. I use phytoliths in combination...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrzej Rozwadowski.

Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Indigenous people in Siberia and Central Asia began to pay more attention to their past, which since then has been vigorously explored as a source of cultural identity. Particularly interesting aspect of this process concern contemporary use of prehistoric rock art. In the presentation I will refer to different contexts of such uses, which imply negotiating of the identity. Basing on the examples, I will show that rock art in Siberia and Central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Hampson.

In this paper, I consider embodied rock art motifs in two rock art regions: far west Texas and northern South Africa. By employing the tools of embodiment theory, certain motifs in both regions can usefully be seen as expressions of how indigenous ontologies were perceived, how things were, and how identities were tied to physical beings and manifestations of physical beings. As with research on ritualistic ontologies and the process of making rock art, embodiment theory can help us overcome the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liam Brady. John Bradley.

As an interpretive tool for rock art studies, the concept of embodiment has much to offer especially when used in conjunction with ethnographic data. In this paper we focus on embodiment in the context of relatedness using a case study involving Yanyuwa rock art from three sites – Muluwa, Wulibirra, and Kamandaringabaya – in the Sir Edward Pellew islands in northern Australia’s southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region. Although not stylistically similar, the rock art from these sites is intimately...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dagmara Zawadzka.

Perceptions of self and of personhood are fluid within animic ontologies that tend to stress spiritual similarities between humans and non-humans. This fluidity is reflected in concepts of bodies. Bodies endow their owners with particular qualities, perceptual skills, behaviours and ultimately, identities. Beings can transform their bodily appearance, therefore what is perceived by an onlooker does not necessarily correspond to the being that is perceived. In the Canadian Shield, depictions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chao Zhao.

The lithic remains of blade manufacturing have been found in the Central China Plain dating to roughly 25 ka B.P. Based on chaîne opératoire analysis of lithic assemblages from Dongshi and Xishi sites, the blade industry in this region shared many features in common with typical blade industries of Western Eurasia. Such discovery challenges the presumption that the hinterland of East Asia lacked the development of blade industrialization during the Paleolithic age. The emergence of blade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Barcelo. Florencia Del Castillo Bernal.

In this contribution we present the results of a computer simulation of an "artificial society", implemented to understand how cultural identities and cultural standardization may have emerged in a prehistoric hunter-gatherer society as a consequence of restricted cooperation. The aim of the model is to explain how diversity and self-identification may have emerged in the small-scale societies of our prehistoric past. The computer model explores some possible consequences of theoretical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Johnson. Timothy Taylor.

During the Pontic Iron Age, ca. 700-300 BCE, large fortified settlement complexes that encompass areas between 100 ha and 5,000 ha emerged along the forest-steppe and steppe boundary in Ukraine. At Bel'sk, the largest settlement complex of its kind with three separate settlements were linked by a fortification wall spanning 33 kilometers, delineating a massive urban internal space from its hinterlands. Despite one hundred years of periodic archaeological investigation, much about the Bel'sk...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Iyaxel Cojti-Ren.

In this paper I will explore how the western Kaqchikel managed from being military auxiliaries to the K’iche’ kingdom to become and independent and expansionist polity, and how this transition was reflected in the material culture of their two last settlements. I will use ethnohistorical documentation to inform how the western Kaqchikel conceived their auto determination, and how they reached it after they abandoned their first capital Chi Awar after breaking their political alliances with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuzhang Yang. Zhijie Cheng. Weiya Li. Ling Yao. Juzhong Zhang.

In this research, flotation and starch analyses were conducted on samples from eight archaeological sites in the upper and middle HRV. The results indicate that the mixed farming of rice and millet first appeared in the later phase of the middle Neolithic in the regions of the Peiligang Culture, then developed quite rapidly in the late Neolithic (6.8–5.0 ka BP), finally becoming the main subsistence economy at the end of the Neolithic in the upper HRV. However, there are obvious differences in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Wolf.

Curators and conservators have been wading through water for decades to rescue museum collections after natural and man-made disasters. The urge to "fix" things that have broken seems to be rooted in our DNA. Since 2003, I have had the opportunity not only to be a part of the emergency response community, but to witness the impact of these events on responders and collections. At the same time, there has been the development of an entire museum emergency response profession, a dramatic uptick in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thegn Ladefoged. Benjamin Davies.

Cultivation in the Leeward Kohala Field System (Hawai‘i Island) required sufficient rainfall for crops to flourish. Periodic droughts restricted production to upper elevations where orographic rainfall was higher and more dependable, likely influencing the labour needs and settlement patterns of resident populations. We employ a series of spatially-explicit agent based models incorporating cultural conceptions of kapu (sacred) and noa (profane) in conjunction with environmental parameters and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Waters.

Ruth Gruhn was an early advocate for a human presence in the Americas prior to Clovis. Gruhn and her late husband, Alan Bryan, excavated and reported on early sites in both North and South America and championed the Pacific coast as the route taken by the earliest people to reach the Americas. Their predictions have become a reality. Genetic and geological evidence is supporting a coastal migration route into the Americas. Recent discoveries at the Page-Ladson site, Florida, the Debra L....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Jackson. Linda A. Brown. Brett A. Houk.

Twenty-five years of archaeological research in northwestern Belize have yielded a robust regional database, allowing a rich and diverse picture of ancient Maya life to emerge. As part of this research, multiple projects have recently adopted innovative digital technologies using new methods to record and envision ancient sites in novel ways. This paper presents some of the ways in which researchers have engaged with digital technologies that allow for the collection of new types of data, as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Baxter.

Childhood is a stage of life that engenders particularly empathetic and emotional responses from people, and those reactions affect how the topics of children and childhood are perceived, impact the individual(s) conducting research, and shape the ways we think about children as subjects. This paper is a wide ranging exploration of my experiences in the archaeological study of childhood, which includes both the role of emotion when interpreting childhood in the past and the emotional contexts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Alan Covey. Miriam Aráoz Silva.

Located in the Andean highlands of northern Peru, the Inca administrative center at Huánuco Pampa served as a provincial capital, drawing thousands of tributary households into scripted encounters with imperial officials on festive occasions. Inca site planning created spaces for performing diverse identities and reinforcing relationships between local people and Inca elites. After an unsuccessful Spanish attempt to establish a town within the central plaza of the site, Huánuco Pampa faded to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krish Seetah.

Between 1855-59, the island of Mauritius, with a landmass of only 2040 km2, was producing 10% of the world’s sugar: a staggering testimony to the power of imperial influence on ecology. The transformations that this intensification in cane production resulted in were far reaching. One facet that remains poorly understood is the context of disease, despite a well-developed historical narrative . This paper presents details of a series of malaria epidemics that plagued the island from the 1850s...