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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Wilson. Christopher L. Hill. Patrick J. Rennie. David C. Batten. Linda Scott Cummings.

The Sheep Rock Spring site (24JF292) lies in a small SW Montana valley between Sheep Rock and a residual tor. A late Quaternary sequence (>5 m) supports a chronostratigraphic model from dates on charred material in the upper two units: (1) basal rock landslide diamicton; (2) down-valley debris flows; (3) final Pleistocene-early Holocene (FP-EH, >10,200-8700 RCYBP) channel/floodplain alluvium and paleosols; and (4) mid-Holocene (MH, ca. 6000-5430 RCYBP) alluvial/colluvial fan with paleosols....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rolfe Mandel.

The Coffey site in the Big Blue River valley of northeastern Kansas is best known for its stratified Middle Archaic components. However, recent investigations at the site recorded stratified Late and Middle Paleoindian cultural deposits and what may be an Early Paleoindian or Pre-Clovis component in the late member of the Severance Formation, a Wisconsinan-age lithostratigraphic unit that occurs as a remnant beneath the T-1 terrace of the Blue River. The late member of the Severance Formation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johnathan Grieve. Whitney Spearing.

Lithic artifacts produced from fine-grained volcanic (FGV) tool stone material, such as dacite, dominate archaeological assemblages from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. While this heavy reliance on locally or regionally available FGV has been previously well documented, subsequent geochemical analysis has predominately focused on material from well-known procurement sites or sources located within the central and southern portions of the Interior Plateau. In this paper, we present the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José M. Capriles. Nicholas Tripcevich. Axel Nielsen. Michael Glascock. Calogero Santoro.

Obsidian is not only an excellent raw material for the manufacture of stone tools but because of its compositional homogeneity, it can also be related to specific geographic sources. The geochemical characterization of obsidian sources can help to determine the geographic origin of different stone tools as well as aid to infer patterns of resource utilization and exchange. Although some of the most important obsidian sources in the Andes have been identified and adequately characterized, many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Glascock.

The indigenous peoples of South America have been producing pottery for more than 7,500 years. Pottery was made into vessels for the cooking and storage of foods, funerary urns, toys, sculptures, and a wide range of art forms. Due to the regional differences in the composition of raw materials used to manufacture and decorate pottery, geochemical investigations of pottery have proven successful for studying trade and exchange, changes in technology, provenance, etc. Some of the methods used to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Fertelmes.

A recent geochemical provenance analysis of Hohokam vesicular basalt grinding tools argued for the nucleated production of trough manos and metates during the Pre-Classic (A.D. 500-1100) and Classic (A.D. 1100-145) periods (Fertelmes 2014). One locus of production was suggested to have been the primary village of Upper Santan, which acquired vesicular basalt from the Santan Mountains and then distributed finished or nearly complete grinding tools to settlements across the Middle Gila River...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathaniel Perhay. Nathan Goodale. David G. Bailey. Alissa Nauman. Anna Marie Prentiss.

A geochemical investigation of the early floors of Housepit 54 provides insight into the daily activities of household occupants. Excavations of Housepit 54 revealed 17 superimposed floors and roofs. The earliest dating floors were excavated in 2016 with sediment samples systematically collected across each floor level. In this study we use both EDXRF and WDXRF techniques to provide reliable compositional data on the floor sediments. With the use of XRF data and geospatial tools we are able to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben A. Shepard. Vladimir Bazaliiskii. Olga Goriunova. Michael Richards. Andrzej Weber.

We present the results of a large-scale comparative study of individual life histories among hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the western coast of Lake Baikal (Russian Federation) during the Late Neolithic (5700-4900 cal BP) and Early Bronze Age (4900-3700 cal BP). More specifically, we employ data on stable strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) values from tooth enamel collected from human molars (M1-M3), along with associated data on variation in isotopes of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elise Dufour. Nicolas Goepfert. Gabriel Prieto. John Verano.

Excavations at the Chimú site of Huanchaquito located in the Moche Valley (northern coast of Peru) leaded to the discovery of an exceptional sacrificial deposit of more than 200 domestic camelid skeletons. This finding adds to the many testimonies of the presence of camelids on the Peruvian coast during the pre-Hispanic era. The abundant presence of animals suggests - but does not bring definitive evidence - that breeding took place locally in an unfavorable arid environment. Measurements of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Roos. Julie Field. John Dudgeon.

At some point between initial colonization and first contact with Europeans, Fijian economies transformed from being dependent upon marine foraging to dependence upon intensive agriculture. The timing and spatial pattern of this transition has beguiled archaeologists because the archaeology of Post-Lapita, "Mid Sequence" archaeology has been so scantily preserved and recovered. We employed geoarchaeological coring of terrestrial soil and sedimentary sequences along a transect from near the coast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kelley. Ben Marwick. Son Pham. Hoàng Di?p. LamMy Dzung.

Hoabinhian typologies dominate stone artifact analysis in discussions of late Pleistocene archaeology in mainland Southeast Asia. Although, the objective reality of the types in this system has been questioned, there has been little empirical work to test the usefulness of the commonly used types as discrete entities. We collect 3D scan models of 110 artifacts from Mau A, a recently excavated site in northern Vietnam, where the Hoabinhian was was first described. We derive semi-landmarks along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clayton Meredith. Christopher Merriman. Jessica Thompson Jobe. Keith Prufer.

Recent geoarchaeological investigations in southern Belize have focused on the Paleoindian to Archaic site of Tzib’te Yux located in the Rio Blanco watershed and dating between 3000-12500 BP as well as adjacent river terraces. Landscape-level vegetation changes are apparent within the area in the form of forest clearance by 5000 BP. Evidence of pedogenesis derived from four years of excavations and sedimentation rates established through modeling and high-precision 14C AMS dating have produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Hanks. Roger Doonan. Nikolai Vinogradov. Elena Kupriyanova.

The combination of social, economic, and political variables that led to greater levels of sedentism and demographic growth in human societies has long been a key topic within the study of world prehistory. Indeed, the comparative study of such dynamics has been at the very core of anthropological archaeology with numerous classic case studies stemming from fieldwork in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Near East, and China. The Eurasian steppes, a vast region stretching half way around the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Urban. Linda Chisolm. Sturt Manning. Jeffrey Rasic. Andrew Tremayne.

Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves have seen increased use of geophysical methods for cultural resource management and archeological research in the past several years. Here we describe the results of geophysical surveys conducted at several of Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves in the summer of 2016 as part of an ongoing effort that has span several field seasons and has now included eight parks and preserves. Examples from 2016 include research at Gates of the Arctic National Park and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelio Lopez Corral. A. Gabriel Vicencio Castellanos. Bianca L. Gentil. Nora A. Pérez Castellanos.

Chemical analysis of obsidian is a useful proxy for studying the control of obsidian goods exchange and the presence of pre-Hispanic geopolitical boundaries. Recent studies on obsidian sourcing show that during the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1250-1519), regional altepemeh imported obsidian from several sources within highland Mesoamerica. Analysis of data suggests that no single political entity fully controlled the distribution of obsidian goods from a particular source, suggesting that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Suina.

Pueblo Indians have successfully managed social and environmental situations for thousands of years by moving our villages. However, after the Spanish invasion and the Anglo imposition, we were no longer as free to move. We've had to engage foreign ideas at our home villages in some cases very rapidly. Those in the 1950s were unlike anything we had seen in my pueblo. Seventy years' changes in America happened in ten years not giving us much time for careful thought as to what side effects these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hunt. Marcos Llobera. Jacob Deppen.

In this paper we present preliminary results of three campaigns of intensive survey carried out as part of the ongoing Landscape, Encounters and Identity project being undertaken in the NE of the island of Mallorca (Spain). The project is uniquely situated to explore the confluence of various archaeological evidence (surface scatters, LiDAR, 3D photogrammetric models) and the interpretative challenges these pose. Our paper here will focus primarily on the results recovered through intensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lattanzi.

One cannot truly "source" the raw material of an artifact back to its geologic origin. One can chemically characterize an artifact's raw materia,l to a degree, to make an interpretation as to its likeliest point of origin. As we are dealing with a completely heterogeneous material - copper - archaeologists can only best guess the likely geologic source for the cultural artifacts they are testing. The chemical differentiation of distinct geologic deposits of native copper has been well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Miller.

This paper considers the assumptions, limitations, and greater implications that a theory of integration-disintegration has for analyzing social change across space and time. It reviews the historical foundations of the concept of integration as it emerged in enlightenment social theory and considers how the concept of integration has been repeatedly and uncritically co-opted into various discourses of archaeological theory. An alternative framework for thinking about social change will be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beau Murphy. Cristián González Rodríguez.

While anthropologists are often concerned with profiling the socioeconomic character of the cultures they study, this task can be challenging for archaeological researchers investigating long-abandoned settlements. Intrasite socioeconomic reconstructions in particular may depend upon such factors as the accurate detection of specific production activities and the partitioning of architectural features into socially informative categories. This paper presents a case study on this topic wherein...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Hoover. Patrick Mullins. Brian Billman.

Huaca Menocucho is a prehistoric monumental center located in the middle Moche Valley on the northern coast of Peru. The site shows evidence of several construction and occupation phases of the Moche Valley cultural sequence (Prieto & Maquera, 2015). Huaca Menocucho and the surrounding area have faced looting and destruction from several sources. In July 2016, MOCHE, Inc. conducted a drone survey combined with a systematic surface artifact survey to record information about activities and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wolf.

GIS techniques are no foreigner to Mesoamerican studies though the hybridization of digital analytics and human identity is incomplete. In recent years suites of technologies have allowed for better visualization of data within archaeological projects. Though computer programs and higher profile data-gathering techniques have become widely embraced by the archaeological community, research should be rooted in cultural proclivities as well. By recording the complex shifts in topography via remote...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nyra Chalmer. Spencer Greening. Chris Picard. Ginevra Toniello. Dana Lepofsky.

The Gitga’at First Nation, traditionally known as the Gitga’ata, of the Tsymsyen peoples on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia is facing major marine developments in their ancestral territory, most notably tanker traffic related to several crude oil and liquefied natural gas export projects. While the Gitga’ata hold extensive oral knowledge about their history and past landscape use, until recently, little was known about the territory archaeologically. To address this knowledge gap, in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn. Doug Anderson.

Exploring early contact between native peoples of Alaska and Eurasian cultures provides important information on the movement of people and materials throughout greater Beringia. Glass trade beads are particularly well suited to explore these relationships, as they were not made locally and high-precision chemical analyses can provide string evidence to the production origins of the beads. Glass beads were recovered from excavation of a site dating from the late 1700s to early 1800s, just before...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Duff. Judith Habicht-Mauche. Rob Franks.

LA-ICP-MS is used to examine glaze-paint pigmenting strategies during the Pueblo IV period in the Upper Little Colorado and Western Zuni Regions of the American Southwest. These data are integrated with INAA sourcing information and compared to glaze-paint strategies from other areas of the late precontact Southwest to define cross-cutting technological communities of practice and to trace the circulation of ideas, production techniques, raw materials and finished objects through networks of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Huiru Lian. Dorian Fuller. Yijie Zhuang.

Located at the Lower Yangtze River, China, Mojiaoshan Site is a 'palace' and center of Liangzhu Culture. On the edge of the Mojiaoshan platform, a waste accumulation of rice (H11) was found in recent years. Based on the archaeobotanic remains from this accumulation, this paper tries to preliminarily discuss the rice exploitation at Mojiaoshan Site. By conducting a charring experiment aiming to distinguish the rice broken before charring from rice broken after charring, the research tried to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Storey. Gina Buckley. Douglas Kennett.

Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley, and perhaps the only first-farming village site in the Basin of Mexico that has survived to modern times. Thus, it provides a rare glimpse into life during the Early-Middle Formative period. While only four burials comprising four individuals were recovered from pits dug into bedrock, each tells a unique story.Two individuals are older-aged females, the third, a middle-aged male, was accompanied by prestigious nonperishable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Arkush.

The West Fork Rock Creek site (10-Oa-275) is a late prehistoric-aged seasonal camp in southeastern Idaho containing 11 occupational surfaces dating between A.D. 750 and 1800. Several living floors and non living floor deposits contain both Promontory Gray and Great Salt Lake Gray ceramics, along with the butchered remains of bison and pronghorn. This paper explores associations between site occupants and Promontory groups to the south, especially those of the Promontory Peninsula, and considers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Russell.

The world in which native Sicilians and Sardinians exist in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC is an increasingly connected one. As we move beyond static, binary, and often uni-directional frameworks for assessing social and material change (e.g., ‘acculturation’), beyond the entrenched categories of 'Mycenaeans' or 'Cypriotes' vs 'natives', there is an opportunity to explore new analytical avenues to describe or explain the socio-cultural shifts that occur on these two islands. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Niziolek. Amanda Respess. Gary Feinman. Laure Dussubieux.

Globalization has become a central concern of anthropology, and recently scholars have debated its definition, origins, and social implications. For example, some contend that it is a process associated with modern times while others argue that the first long-lived networks involving regular, trans-regional trade emerged between East Asia and the Mediterranean around AD 1000, and even earlier with other regions. It has become increasingly evident, based on a growing corpus of data, that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Smith.

Icelandic Viking Age (9th-11th century) textiles are less frequently reported than their medieval counterparts, yet mineralized pseudomorphs adhering to copper alloy objects from burial contexts and a small number of items that survived in their organic forms suggest that this North Atlantic colony's textiles filled multiple roles and were produced through technical approaches with diverse origins. In the North Atlantic's Viking Age, some textiles were used as a form of currency within a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Farmer.

This paper asserts that certain Ancient American painted figures traditionally associated with established rain, agriculture or fertility deities, such as the Aztec "Tlaloc," in fact evolved from previously established Archaic pre-agricultural traditions that had already defined certain spiritual entities as "rain" or "thunderstorm" deities without reference to any formal agricultural practices. Evidence is drawn from iconographic and contextual analysis of anthropomorphic figures and motifs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Depret-Guillaume.

This interdisciplinary project evaluates the relationship between Spanish and indigenous religious practices and their respective political objectives in proto-historic and colonial New Mexico. Beginning with a discussion of the emergence of a new religious idiom in the Pueblo world during the fourteenth century CE, I investigate the entanglement of political and economic forces with religion up to the conquest of the region by Anglo-Americans in the mid-1840s. In doing so, I highlight the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shakour. Ian Kuijt.

It is widely recognized that archaeologists have the potential to contribute in meaningful ways to local communities. However, it is also important to consider the tangible and intangible nature of these contributions given the diverse and, sometimes, competing interests among various stakeholder groups along with the seasonal nature of academic archaeological and heritage research. Multi-year collaborative projects often facilitate greater general awareness of local heritage, open new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

When metals were introduced in Mesoamerica ca. AD 850 they were used with both utilitarian and decorative purposes. Copper artifacts were turned into fishing hooks, tweezers, or axes. However, silver and gold were mostly used in jewelry production. Several deities were fashioned in gold as well as animals associated with gods. They included pendants, nose-rings, necklaces, etc. Warriors were also depicted as pendants, and there are examples in discs too. The context where the objects have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Worthey. Joaquín Arroyo Cabrales.

El Fin del Mundo, Sonora is the only known site where Clovis artifacts have been found in association with the remains of gomphotheres (Cuvieronius sp.), dated to 11,550 ± 60 rcyBP. Analysis of the faunal remains from the site confirms the presence of two juvenile/sub-adult gomphotheres (Cuvieronius sp.) found in close association with Clovis artifacts. A second bone bed located beneath the cultural layer, dated to ≤12,180 ±40 rcyBP, contains the remains of gomphothere, mastodon, mammoth, horse,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sue O'Connor. Julien Louys. Stuart Hawkins. Shimona Kealy. Clara Boulanger.

"Fishing is much more than fish... It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers" (Herbert Hoover, 1963. Fishing for Fun-and to Wash Your Soul. Random House) In the vast oceans separating continental Sunda and Sahul are more than 17,000 islands that make up the Wallacean Archipelago. Lying to the east of Huxley’s Line, these islands are characterised by unbalanced and depauperate terrestrial faunas but support some of the world’s most bio-diverse marine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul R. Duffy. Györgyi Parditka. Justine Tynan. Ádám Balázs.

The Great Hungarian Plain is densely populated with fortified tell sites dating to the second millennium BC. At the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c.1400 BC), however, these settlements were abandoned. Traditionally, archaeologists argued that locals were run off by invading Tumulus culture groups or suffered an environmental disaster. The lack of non-tell contexts and radiocarbon dates bridging this transition precluded an understanding of what changed after the tells were abandoned, and what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morag Kersel.

In an ideal world there would be no looting, selling, or collecting of archaeological artifacts. But, given the centuries old lure of material from the Middle East, it is unrealistic and naïve to think that there will be a cessation of collecting. This desire for Holy Land antiquities has resulted in a bifurcated community of consumption: those willing to purchase undocumented artifacts, and Good Collectors, the discerning individuals and institutions who ask questions about archaeological find...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Hammerstedt. Jami Lockhart. Amanda Regnier. George Sabo. John Samuelsen.

This poster presents the results of GPR survey at the Brown Mound, an earthen platform mound at the Spiro site in eastern Oklahoma. The mound was targeted by looters in the 1930s and was subsequently tested in the 1930s and 1980s by professional archaeologists. However, Brown Mound remains poorly understood because, for the most part, these excavations did not extend deeply enough to provide good information on mound stratigraphy or internal features. Our survey obtained nearly 100% coverage of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tate Paulette.

The states that emerged in Mesopotamia during the fourth and third millennia BC were fundamentally agrarian states. They were built on the production, stockpiling, and redistribution of grain, and they invested an enormous amount of energy in managing and monitoring the grain supply. In this paper, I draw particular attention to grain storage and its pivotal role in the rhetoric and the logistics of state making in Mesopotamia. Grain storage facilities were positioned, both physically and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Hicks. Viðar Hreinsson. Árni Daniel Júliússon. Astrid Ogilvie. Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir.

The intersecting tensions among Iceland's hay cultivation, livestock productivity, and climate have a long history and a significant influence on both political discourse and local knowledge production. In the 18th century, Iceland was assessed by its Danish colonial government as being a marginally productive region in terms of its significant rural surpluses. Even in spite of producing some surplus, the country struggled with periodic famines until the late 19th century. These events and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Beaver.

Roughly one in eleven individuals buried in historic-period cemeteries in Stevens County, Minnesota died before reaching one year of age. This paper examines the gravemarkers of a subset of the 913 infants buried between 1870 and 1970, looking at both chronological and contemporary variation in style, production, and information recorded. Explanatory factors examined include religion (using the cemetery of burial as a proxy), evidence of associated maternal mortality, and when available,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thomas.

More than 1500 incised stones have been documented from the Great Basin. By defining object itineraries of individual artifacts, it is possible to animate the archaeology from static to active by emphasizing motion and interaction, fragmentation and accumulation. Tracing both provenience and provenance, we can learn how these objects moved through time and space, intertwining with people and places. It is possible to craft a cartography sufficiently powerful to tease out an underlying, basic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley McCall.

The Great Hungarian Plain (GHP), which occupies part of Hungary and five surrounding countries, was a gateway to population influx and cultural admixture along the Eastern Steppe corridor. The GHP was a hub of cultural change, including a shift in settlement patterns, during the transition between the Neolithic and Copper Age and again during the Bronze and Iron Ages. This research uses stable isotope analyses to examine transformations in the GHP area and how these changes evolved over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Innocent Pikirayi. Federica Sulas. Tendai Treddah Musindo. Elton Munyaradzi Sagiya.

In southern Africa, Great Zimbabwe has long been the focus of research, debates and preservation as the remains of what was once the urban centre of a vast state system. As new research findings are reframing the development of the Zimbabwe civilization in the region, local environmental settings and natural resources at Great Zimbabwe remain poorly understood. Using approaches in geoarchaeology, this paper presents Great Zimbabwe as a living landscape. New soil sequences from within and around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rick Budhwa. Dana Evaschuk. Donald Dixon. Jocelyn Franks.

Located atop the shores of Green Lake, and on Shuswap First Nation traditional territory, a First Nations burial site was slumping into the water. Long bones began emerging 40 years ago, when the local landowner was just nine years old. In 1997, archaeologists relocated one burial; but up to 15 individuals remained in this sliding cemetery. Since 1997, provincial government Archaeology Branch has worked toward moving those individuals. In July of 2013, Crossroads Cultural Resource Management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Sheridan. Pierre Pétrequin. Michel Errera.

The results of a major, French-led international research program investigating the use of jadeitite and other Alpine rocks in Neolithic Europe - Project JADE and JADE2 - are summarized. The significance of the green color of most of these rocks, and of the montane location of their sources, is discussed in terms of the belief systems of the people who made, exchanged, and used the axe- and adze-heads and disc-rings made of these materials. The ways in which these materials were recognized in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Stauffer.

This paper provides an investigation of Cahokia’s East plaza and its associated architectural remains. Defined here as the area bounded by Mounds 31, 36, 38 (Monk’s Mound), and 51, the plaza was initially distinguished by an absence of surface debris, noted during controlled surface collection efforts in the Ramey Tract by Elizabeth D. Benchley and Barbara J. Vander Leest. Based largely on ceramics that were acquired by these investigators, the proposed time of construction has been placed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Harris.

Inquiries into ground stone disk beads in the Salish Sea region have focused on frequency counts at one particular archaeological site, regional syntheses of distribution, or the use of beads as a means to explore Coast Salish expressions of wealth and status. Although these studies provide important information relating to the social role of these beads, they are either too broad in focus or ignore the interplay of beads between neighbouring sites. This presentation examines the inter site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Smith.

Ground stone technology is an early component of the African Middle and Late Pleistocene hominin behavioral package. However, very little attention has been paid to quantifying Pleistocene ground stone variation in Africa. This paper describes a ground stone assemblage from the site of Mochena Borago in Southwest Ethiopia. The site plays a key role in testing the hypothesis that the highlands of Southwestern Ethiopia acted as a refugium for hunter-gatherer populations looking to escape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Williams. John Kelly.

A huge resistivity anomaly discovered several hundred meters NE of Monks Mound was subjected to coring and test excavations in 2012. This testing revealed a series of major prehistoric landscape uses/modifications through time, some quite unexpected. The prehistoric sequence of events at this location, though still in need of further clarification, appear to infer significant shifts in communal priorities through time.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sebastian Dring. Stephen Silliman. Natasha Gambrell. Ralph Sebastian Sidberry.

Collaborations between archaeologists and Native communities have expanded significantly in the past 20 years. For most, this is recognized as an important and healthy development on methodological, theoretical, practical, and political grounds, especially when anchored deeply in the communities themselves and designed to address political as well as professional issues. We have worked together in different capacities for more than 13 years on the Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Ramsey. Tobias Richter. Danielle Macdonald. Lisa Maher.

The concept of ‘place’ is given structure and meaning by human experience and can be viewed in several forms, including art, monuments and architecture. However, the by-products and material remains associated with the impacts of daily hunter-gatherer place-making, including food and material production as well as processing waste, are also important expressions of human experience and the construction of ‘place’. These material remains provide critical archaeological insight into how people in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ort. Brian Robinson.

The Bull Brook Site in Ipswich, Massachusetts is one of the largest and seemingly most spatially organized Paleoindian sites in North America. The intra-site activity patterning of flaked stone tools helped us to distinguish the site as a large aggregation of inhabitants, as opposed to small occupations taking place over time. The strong pattern of interior and exterior activity differences, or concentric rings of activity, are difficult to explain except by an organized social event. Who then...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Asher.

The time-sensitive characteristic of gunflints makes them important chronological markers at archaeological sites. This poster reviews gunflints from select sites primarily within the eastern Central Plains that have known dates and well documented histories. Lithic materials, origin of manufacture and method of production, as well as technological characteristics of gunflints are discussed. English, French, and Native made gunflints are considered. Native produced gunflints offer an opportunity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynneth Lowe.

El presbítero Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona fue un destacado intelectual yucateco y precursor del estudio científico de la arqueología maya, que culminó sus esfuerzos con la inauguración del Museo Yucateco en 1871 en base a sus propias colecciones. El análisis de diversos documentos de archivo ha hecho posible conocer los antecedentes de tal institución durante el Segundo Imperio mexicano. El emperador Maximiliano mostró un notable interés por la historia y las culturas indígenas, al igual que la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah K. Campbell. Erin Benson. Brendan Culleton. Douglas Kennett.

Tectonic activity along coastlines can subtly or radically alter the substrate and elevation of the intertidal zone, thus affecting benthic marine invertebrates; however, there is no single signature for impacts. Research following mega-earthquakes in the last decade shows that the nature of the effects varies widely across taxa and locations. Analysis of the Tse-whit-zen village invertebrate fauna shows that mean sizes of bivalves of the genera Macoma, Leukoma, Saxidomus, and Tresus, and also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt F. Anschuetz. Kurt E. Dongoske.

Archaeological collaboration with traditional Pueblo communities faces many practical challenges. Archaeologists typically expect cultural practitioners to accept what archaeology entails as a scientific discipline and its approach to understanding the past. Within traditional Pueblo perspectives, archaeological excavation might not be an appropriate measure for mitigating adverse effects in the federal Section 106 compliance process. Rather than asserting the primacy of their preferences and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Allen.

Settlement patterns and mobility during the Halaf period (ca. 6000-5400 B.C.) are known primarily from Late Halaf sites. On the basis of the Late Halaf pattern, Halaf economies have been characterized as having segmentary organization with some degree of pastoral specialization reflecting a broad pattern of long-term mobility. However, the paucity of floral and faunal studies, particularly for the Early Halaf, limits the visibility of economic variability over the course of the Halaf. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorena Medina Martínez. Raúl Barrera Rodríguez. José María García Guerrero.

En el año 2016 el Programa de Arqueología Urbana (PAU) del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), llevó a cabo excavaciones frente a la Catedral Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México. Además de encontrarse vestigios arquitectónicos de inicios del periodo virreinal, se descubrió una lápida mortuoria con un epitafio alusivo al canónigo Miguel de Palomares. Al continuar con la excavación, se localizó un entierro secundario que debe corresponder al personaje mencionado en la lápida....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Michael Love.

This paper concentrates on the vast corpus of hand modeled ceramic figurines from Preclassic Pacific slope of Mesoamerica, in particular those from Middle Preclassic La Blanca, Guatemala. We argue that, within this collection of figurines and related ones from elsewhere in Middle Preclassic Mesoamerica, one can find evidence for the concept of replication – or an emphasis on a recurring "type" or "character" – that pre-dates the invention of the mold. Although Preclassic figurine assemblages are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Murray. Daniel Stueber. April Nowell.

Although handaxes are one of the longest lasting and most iconic stone tools in the Paleolithic, little experimental work has been done to inform archaeologists about handaxe function. The research presented here explores handaxe function using low powered microscopy and an image-based GIS approach. 32 handaxes were created with chert collected from outcrops in the region surrounding Shishan Marsh-1. For the purpose of this study, the researchers focused on experiments involving subsistence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Clayton.

A hallmark of the material culture of Teotihuacan, the largest city of its time in Mesoamerica (ca. 1-600 CE), is the wide circulation of a variety of mass-produced goods, including objects used in household ritual. Items made from molds included masks, figurines, ceramic vessels, and decorative attachments to large incense burners, which are often found in domestic refuse and in ritual contexts such as burials. Although such artifacts appear alike, they were not uniformly distributed across the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt.

In this paper, Dental Microwear Texture Analysis is used to evaluate the teeth of dogs recovered from Late Prehistoric sites to investigate the idea that these animals had their natural diets modified by their human counterparts. This study compares microwear from wolves (Canis lupus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) to that of archaeological dogs recovered from various sites that represent human mobile groups of the Northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains. Varied practices have been described in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gayle J. Fritz. Karen R. Adams.

Chenopodium seeds are ubiquitous in archaeobotanical samples from sites across the U.S. Southwest, commonly interpreted as representing the harvest of wild populations or weedy plants that were encouraged to grow in garden plots and agricultural fields. Up to 75% of projects from various SW U.S. regions contained Chenopodium, and/or Amaranthus, and/or Cheno-am seeds. Archaeobotanists differ in how they recognize and report these seeds. At least 22 wild species of Chenopodium are native to one or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

While known primarily as an Aztec specialist, HB Nicholson was instrumental in beginning a dialog on regional iconographies. A key example of this dialog was his work on deity complexes. Building on his mastery of the ethnohistorical data, Nicholson’s work on deity complexes attempted to locate particular deity groups with certain regions. This essay looks at Nicholson’s hypotheses on Gulf Coast iconography and how those hypotheses have helped shape the regional iconographies now being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Hulse. Sarah L. Dubois.

In the Portland Basin north of the Columbia River, the oldest sites (5,000 years BP and older) tend to be larger than younger sites, have a more diverse array of artifacts, and lie in upland areas. Sites post-dating 5,000 years BP vary in size, tend to have specialized artifact types, and are found at a wide range of elevations. We hypothesize that the lack of older sites at lower elevations is due to changes in subsistence strategies, rather than differential preservation of older materials. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Clark.

Heritage is never static, rather it is a constantly evolving set of practices, beliefs, and tangible touchstones. Collaborative archaeology sits firmly in that thicket, whether through the data we uncover, the stakeholders we engage, or even the media attention we draw. The archaeology of Amache, the site of a WWII-era Japanese American incarceration camp, is an exemplary test case for how research intertwined in a contemporary community can recast our discipline’s relationship to heritage. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Lauer. Stephen Acabado. Chin-hsin Liu. John Krigbaum.

The Ifugao of the highland Philippines responded to Spanish colonial incursions in adjacent lowland towns in the early 1600s by consolidating their political, social, and economic resources. This period saw the introduction of wet-rice agriculture and subsequent expansion of irrigated terraced agriculture in the region. These social and economic changes suggest an increased reliance on rice and a decreased dependence on a broad-spectrum diet. It is hypothesized that changes in diet and larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yawei Zhou. Qipeng Yan. Wanfa Gu.

The Wanggou site, located in the Lower Yellow River valley, is a large Yangshao culture cemetery, dating to 7000-5000 BP. Two hundred and eleven skeletons were examined for variations from normal morphology, including non-metric traits, to characterized pathology of the Neolithic Age residents of Central China. This paper examined skeletal evidence of bone disease, trauma and musculo-skeletal stress markers (MSM) of ancient residents. A prevalence of spina bifida, spondylolysis, lumbarization,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karin Larkin. Michelle Slaughter.

Eighty years ago, Cragmor Sanatorium in Colorado Springs was a celebrated asylum for wealthy tuberculars and one of the premier facilities in the West. The history of the sanatorium is colorful and perhaps legendary. It includes housing movie stars, Mafioso and millionaires in the 1920s to 1930s and later Navajo patients in the 1950s. Once it became part of the University of Colorado system in 1965, much of the original history was subsumed under the growing campus. This project seeks to recover...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksa Alaica.

The herding of camelids in the pre-Columbian past impacted daily and ritual life of peoples residing there. During the Late Moche period of Peru, camelid herding was a major factor in the trade and exchange of goods, people and ideas. The extent of herding and the degree of camelid breeding in the coastal desert has been understudied. This paper will discuss the patterns in camelid age profiles and pathologies to inform the extent to which camelids where traveling along the coast and into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phil Stastney.

Establishing a robust chronology is fundamental to consideration of the ritual significance of mounds. This can be as simple as placing a mound or group of mounds into their chronological and cultural context, exploring the chronological relationships between mounds and the pacing of mound construction, through to unpicking sequences of construction, use and reuse of a single mound. Fixing the act, or acts, of "mounding" in time is no less important than fixing them in their place in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Cleghorn. Ximena Villagran. Benjamin Schoville. Daniel Peart. Hannah May Keller.

The Agulhas Bank Paleoscape (ABP), a broad coastal plain that is now a submerged continental shelf off the south coast of Africa, would have presented early modern humans with a variety of potential foraging options. A rich Middle Stone Age record documents the presence of early coastal foragers as well as terrestrial hunter-gatherers in the ABP. At Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1, both strategies are represented in a sequence spanning the end of the Middle Stone Age (about 40 ka) through to the end...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan Olson.

While daytime is often reserved for fairly mundane activities, most archaeological questions have focused on this time period. A wide variety of activities though cross the day into the nighttime, or occur only after dark. It is during the night when Mesoamericans recreated much of their mythology in ritualistic acts. This paper explores the use of household temazcales as nightly ritual spaces. These saunas were not only found in large communal spaces, but also in households. For what were the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liang Chen. Yan Zhang. Jing Zhao. Zhouyong Sun. Elizabeth Berger.

This paper investigates the impact of social and environmental changes on the health of people living during the Warring States period (ca. 5th – 13th Century B.C.) on the Shanbei Loess Slope, a marginal area that connects the Guanzhong Plain and the Shanbei Plateau. Two human skeletal assemblages representing two different cultural settings, but with a longstanding history of conflict, were selected: (1) Zhaitouhe cemetery (n=73) (Xirong Culture, the minority) and (2) Shijiahe cemetery (n=33)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Peacock. Ally Poniedzielnik.

Inscription preservation and study is an important part of heritage and historical archaeology. Particular to Jewish cemeteries and their communities is the presence of Hebrew inscriptions such as blessings, or the deceased’s Hebrew name. Our project focused specifically on comparing rates of weathering between Hebrew and English, and we hypothesized that Hebrew inscriptions decayed faster than English ones. We estimated that Hebrew inscription would decay faster because of the curvature of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Tosa. T J Ferguson. Matthew Liebmann. John Welch.

We examine migration, travel, landscape, and place names as key elements of Hemish (Jemez) identity. Language is a key element of Hemish identity, and place names figure prominently in Hemish historical and cultural discourse. The place names that define the footprint of Hemish ancestral territory are associated with the migration that culminated in the occupation of Walatowa and with pilgrimages and land use that take Hemish people back into areas where their ancestors formerly lived. Jemez...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Goldstein. Michael Storozum. Fiona Marshall. Rachel Reid. Stanley Ambrose.

Mobile herding societies are often considered to leave behind few traces in the archaeological record, however pastoral settlements may have helped shape the broader landscape. Herders relying on domesticated cattle, sheep and goat arrived in the most productive grasslands of East Africa >3600 calBP years ago. Our collaborative research investigates the legacies of their land-use through geoarchaeological analyses. We present results of analyses of five Pastoral Neolithic era archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Goepfert. Gabriel Prieto. John Verano.

Although domestic Andean camelids are native from the highlands they have been largely present in the Peruvian coast since the end of Early Horizon (near 200 BC). This presence stresses the symbolic, ritual importance and economic values of camelids. In 2011 an impressive human and animal sacrificial context dating from the Chimú period was found in Huanchaquito near Chan Chan on the northern coast. At least 130 children and 200 camelids were uncovered during the successive excavations that took...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roland Fletcher.

Urban as a label is a problem. This was recognised by Childe and Adams and is re-iterated in the 21st century. Varied definitions apply in different regions, some huge settlements are excluded - apparently arbitrarily, others go in and out of "urban" fashion. Concurrently, the term "urban" has huge cachet, providing social dignity, national respect and access to research funds. The news media rarely refer to "The Lost Village" with awe. The conundrum is that while western European languages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Weiss. Vince Pigott.

A new series of AMS dates from the Khao Wong Prachan Valley (KWPV) in central Thailand addresses several key questions in the region, including the dating of the initial settlement of the valley, the duration of the pre-metal period, the first appearance of copper-base artifacts, the beginning of large-scale crucible-based copper smelting and production at the site of Non Pa Wai, the shift to a different copper production technology used at Nil Kham Haeng, and, the occupation span of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Miller.

Along Florida’s 8,000 miles of shoreline, nearly 4,000 archaeological sites and over 600 recorded historic cemeteries are at risk from coastal erosion and rising sea levels. The matter remains complex in Florida where despite the 20 percent higher rate of sea level rise compared to the global average, "climate change" remains politically taboo. This paper will outline ongoing efforts to engage the public in monitoring coastal sites and the creation of the Heritage Monitoring Scout (HMS Florida)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willeke Wendrich.

Archaeologists have realized for a long time that in the struggle to fund field work, working on publications and the cost of publishing archaeological results are often not covered. With the increase in digital recording and digital publishing this problem is not solved. On the contrary, it is exacerbated by a number of additional tasks and responsibilities. These range from a changing publication model, where open access is becoming increasingly important, and journals request payment to make...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Randall. Bethany Jay.

There are many challenges that educators face when teaching slavery in middle and high school classrooms. Archaeology-centered activities offer unique ways to talk about and incorporate histories often left out of the historical record in a manner that can engage students in important and meaningful conversations on the subject. The authors will share their experiences and strategies in using archaeology as a lens to talk with students and teachers about this important period in American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mai Takigami. Fuyuki Tokanai. Minoru Yoneda.

Maize was one of the important crops for Inca political economics as a ritual and a staple food. In previous study of sacrificed children mummies found at Mt. Llullaillaco, the individuals particularly consumed C4 resources (such as maize, amaranth and domestic animals raised with C4 plants) in ritual activities. Contrary, the dietary compositions of Machu Picchu skeletons have shown diversity. The individuals from Mt. Llullaillaco and Machu Picchu were most probably immigrated from different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Surovell. Randy Haas. Matthew O'Brien.

Ethnoarchaeological studies attempt to link human behavior to the material residues they produce for the purpose of developing archaeological method and theory. Traditional studies in spatial ethnoarchaeology, however, have focused on the mapping of material remains, but the spatial distribution of the behaviors that produced them, the thing that interests us most, has gone largely undocumented and for good reason. Until recently, it was not technically possible to map people in space in a way...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Hansell.

Archaeological investigations often result in large quantities of stone and ceramic artifacts which, after being catalogued and analyzed, are stored in accessible places and rarely used for further research, student training or public education. Digital technology is changing this. It is revolutionizing the way we do research, archive our results and communicate with others. Based on a sample of time- or functionally-sensitive stone tools from the 1st millennium BC component at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Whitesides.

Introducing a 1944 translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Aldous Huxley concisely described what he called The Perennial Philosophy. Despite the apparently distinct cultures of the world, he said, "beneath the confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor." This perception of an underlying unity among the "higher religions" of the world has led Perennialists to feel a greater sense of ownership and hence freedom in interpreting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Rivas. Brent Woodfill.

Salinas de los Nueve Cerros was a massive city in west-central Guatemala that was built around the only non-coastal salt source in the Maya lowlands. In spite of this lowland location, highlanders were drawn to it for its agricultural potential and the rich concentration of salt. In this paper, we will look at the three major colonization attempts of the saltworks and the surrounding region by Maya highlanders—the Early Postclassic, the conquest period, and the late 20th century. After the city...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Garrison. Stephen Houston. Omar Alcover Firpi.

The ancient Maya kingdoms of El Zotz and Tikal, while not comparable in size or influence, share a geographical region in the central Peten of Guatemala. Tikal is located at the eastern head of the Buenavista Valley, the northernmost east-west corridor of the Peten Karst Plateau, with El Zotz situated 23 km to the west at the intersection of the valley and a north-south drainage leading to El Mirador and the northern Peten. A steep limestone escarpment and the karstic uplands north of it bind...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Humes.

Religious proponents are increasingly challenging academic research on India and its religious past. Book burnings, petitions, and even riots, have resulted when religious adherents have felt maligned by the scholarship of academic archaeologists and historians. In my presentation, I will introduce and clarify the complicated history and major debates regarding key archaeological finds in South Asia. In particular, I will discuss debates regarding the history of the "Aryan" and the ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Marinkovich. Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jennifer Leonard. Cady Rutherford.

This paper will present preliminary results of archaeological investigations concerning the spatial arrangement of hinterland causeways and their function within inter and intra-site exchange networks. This research is a subsidiary project of the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology (DH2GC) Project, a transect settlement survey analysis of hinterland communities situated between the sites of Dos Hombres and Gran Cacao, in northwestern Belize. A primary goal of this research is to explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Peterson. Elisa Moes.

The Jewish cemetery in Victoria, BC is home to approximately 300 interments and is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Canada and the second largest in western Canada. This study explores the Jewish community of Victoria during its earlier period of use from 1914 – 1918 using four individuals from a variety of economic, social, political, and gender specific backgrounds. The goal of this research was to investigate the biographies of four people buried at Emanu-El cemetery who died during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirsa Islas Orozco.

The historical center of Mexico City is a canvas of superimposed maps in which we can perceive history through the streets and architectural diversity. In this territory the Mexica Empire was settled as well as the colonial city. Later, this area was essential for the independence conflict and revolution. Nowadays is the political and cultural center of Mexico. The historic heart of the city has been the setting of outstanding incidental discoveries, of great significance for Mexican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Fulkerson. Shannon Tushingham.

The Manila site (CA-HUM-321) is a stratified prehistoric midden site with a long history of use by the Wiyot people. This study, the first of its kind from Humboldt Bay, reveals the results of constituent analyses of excavated materials. Fine-grained analysis of dietary residues from Manila reveals the earliest documented (1,309 cal BP) evidence of mass harvested foods, smelt fishing, and intensive shellfish procurement on the North Coast of California. Paleoethnobotanical analysis of seeds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Greening. Dana Lepofsky. Mark Wunsch. Nancy Turner.

For many Indigenous Peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes’ geological features, the plant and animal communities, and associated archaeological and paleoecological records. Some of these landscapes, recently termed "Cultural Keystone Places" (CKPs), are iconic for these groups and have become symbols of the connections between the past and the future, and between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Chia.

When the Tiv, a Bantu language speaking group migrated into the Benue Valley of Nigeria from southwestern Cameroon over five hundred years ago, they faced hostilities from different groups in the valley. Hilltops readily served as important settlement locales to protect the Tiv from violence and conflict. As they migrated from one hilltop to another they eventually settled over much of the Middle Benue Valley. Archaeological research in the valley has investigated these ancient hilltop sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Catherine D'Andrea. Valery Terwilliger.

Recent archaeological survey, excavation, ethnoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted in northeastern Tigrai by the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) has produced new insights into the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE-CE 700). The principal ETAP excavations thus far include the Pre-Aksumite site of Mezber (1600 BCE-1CE) and Ona Adi (c. early 1st millennium CE) which was inhabited during the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Both sites were occupied...