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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Hawthorne. Colin Grier.

Zooarchaeological identifications provide important data related to subsistence changes and the exploitation of past environments. Previous faunal analyses at Shingle Point (DgRv-2), Dionisio Point (DgRv-3), and the Coon Bay/Perry Lagoon (DgRv-6) sites have indicated multiple occupations with important variation in archaeofaunal representation. These locales exhibit a variety of avian fauna, which are not frequently explored in detail within zooarchaeological analyses. We present new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Kollmann.

Many students eager to begin a career in the forensic sciences have never been on a crime scene and it is even more unlikely that they have ever had the opportunity to process one. This paper details the unusual circumstances that enabled Towson University students to partner with law enforcement and work on both active and cold cases that have necessitated the search for human remains and associated evidence. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vincent Pigott.

In the context of prehistoric archaeology in Thailand, metallurgy has been accorded significant attention in the literature, ranging from the origins debate to smelting technology as well as the socioeconomic contexts of copper production. An important complementary component of these discussions is seeking an improved understanding of associated human occupations. In the Khao Wong Prachan Valley (KWPV) of central Thailand, a major regional copper production center, the Thailand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Agenten. Jeanne Moe. Tony Hartshorn.

Students are assessed constantly throughout the school year. As teachers we ask ourselves how do I know that the students understand the concepts and skills? Archaeology educators should be conducting the same kind of rigorous evaluation of the professional development courses we offer teachers. Challenging our profession to know where teachers are coming from, what their needs are, where we want them to go, and how we know that they learned. What prior knowledge do teachers bring to a workshop?...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherman Horn. Anabel Ford.

Analyses of early settlement in the eastern Maya Lowlands have benefited from nearly thirty years of research targeting Middle Preclassic (900 – 350 B.C.) occupations in the Belize Valley. Frequently overlooked in these settlement pattern reconstructions is the site of El Pilar, which is situated in the limestone hills to the northwest of the Belize River headwaters. Excavations at El Pilar have primarily focused on the impressive Classic-period architectural remains that comprise the site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant McCall. Theodore Marks. Andrew Schroll. Jordan Krummel.

Various researchers have made great strides toward understanding southern African rock art through the exploration of the ethnographic and ethnohistoric records of San hunter-gatherer shamanism. In contrast, less attention has been paid to the archaeological context of the Later Stone Age (LSA) in which rock art was produced. This paper examines Middle Holocene rock paintings at the Mirabib rockshelter in the Central Namib Desert, western Namibia. Our fieldwork at Mirabib and our re-analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor King. Michael Brennan. Beverly Chiarulli. Christine Taylor. Darcie Flanigan.

Twenty years of research at the large prehispanic Maya site of Maax Na in northwestern Belize have yielded insights not only into site organization and function, but also into its role in the Three Rivers Region. Ongoing investigations of a marketplace and of local caves indicate that Maax Na, while probably not the political capital that its neighbor La Milpa was, nonetheless had a distinct and important regional function as a religious and marketing center. Investigation of water management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Billy Wilemon. Michael Galaty.

PXRF Analysis of the Pylos Linear B Tablets In 2015 and 2016 I analyzed all of the Mycenaean Linear B clay tablets and sealings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos for their chemical composition using a portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer. Sealings were used on containers of oil, wine, etc., and on baskets of tablets. Leaf-shaped tablets usually contain one entry or line of information. Page-shaped tablets contain several entries of related information. There are questions that these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Milligan. Linda Scott Cummings. R. A. Varney. Gina Laurin.

Applications for X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry as an analytical tool in anthropologically related disciplines continue to expand. Museum staff are charged with the amazing, yet daunting, task of housing, preserving, researching, and showcasing our most valued cultural treasures, and this versatile tool can help. As a non-destructive technique for investigating elemental-based aspects of material culture, handheld XRFs are an effective analytical option for museum collections. A handheld XRF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Qingzhu Wang. Thomas Fenn. Hui Fang. Xuexiang Chen. Jianfeng Lang.

In this paper I present the preliminary results of pXRF analysis of Shang-Dynasty bronzes from the Daxinzhuang site (1400-1046 BC), Jinan, Shandong province. The Daxinzhuang site has been receiving considerable research interests since the 1930s, especially when the high elite burials were excavated in 2003 and 2010. Much research has been focused on these burials and the elaborate bronzes, but there has not been any research on the chemical composition and casting techniques of the bronzes from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cosimo Sgarlata.

When ArcGis software enabled Python computer scripting language as a platform whereby users can automate tasks, edit and create new programs; it opened a door for archaeologists to enhance much of the work they do mapping, and performing spatial analysis. This session looks at the utilization of Python scripting language for automating a number of tasks which archaeologists do routinely, as well as other open source software and how its applications can lend new dimensions to the way we analyze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Knight.

Typically overlooked in economic models of commodity production, distribution and consumption in Mesoamerica, is some discussion on the initial procurement of the materials that form the basis of the ancient economies we study. Significant cultural issues, such as labor coordination, territoriality, group identity, knowledge transmission and wealth, which are all wrapped up in a dynamic political and ideological milieu, are at play in the discrete geographical loci where material procurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Rieth. Derek Hamilton.

The use of radiocarbon dating to calculate the dates of Lapita deposits remains largely a single-step, ad hoc procedure. The accuracy of dating results can be greatly improved through Bayesian modeling. However, this depends on the number and stratigraphic distribution of radiocarbon determinations and the shape of the calibration curve. To evaluate these issues, we used Oxcal 4.2 to simulate, through the process of back-calibration, radiocarbon determinations that we could expect to receive as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Jorgeson.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become an important tool for archaeologists. However, unlike other social scientists who work with living populations, archaeologists do not have direct access to the social networks of ancient peoples. Instead, they rely on material culture to infer the presence, strength, and properties of social networks in the past. A standard approach is to compare assemblages of an artifact class among a group of sites, and quantify the similarity of those assemblages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madelaine Azar.

Ramey Incised jars, often considered to be indicative of Cahokia’s twelfth-century Stirling Phase fluorescence, are characterized by angular shoulders, polished exteriors, and incised symbolic motifs arranged around the vessel orifice. Thought to be for ritual or symbolic use, the ceramic type is not only present at Cahokia, but ubiquitous across sites in the American Bottom. However, the process through which these vessels were manufactured and then disseminated is still not fully understood....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Tsui. Liye Xie.

Traditional use-wear analysis is mostly subjective and requires considerable experience. Researchers have tried image analyzing software to quantify use-wear patterns; however, the cost of software and the lack of training to use the software made common adoption of the approach less practical. In this research, we tested the open source software ImageJ for use-wear measurement in two-dimensional images. The results show that the software can reliably quantify the polish development, the polish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Timothy Beach. Nicholas Dunning. Vernon Scarborough. Fred Valdez, Jr..

The Programme for Belize Archaeological Project is situated in the heart of the Three Rivers Watersheds, drained by the Rio Bravo, Booth's River, and Rio Azul/Blue Creek in Northwestern Belize. These three river systems, along with groundwater, springs, and wetlands, nurture what is today the tropical rainforest refuge of the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area, active farming communities, and long ago sustained multiple ancient Maya communities such as La Milpa, Dos Hombres, Chawak But'o'ob,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Sara Eshleman. Justin Telepak. Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach.

In this paper, we offer a first look at the results of a LiDAR survey of northwestern Belize performed by the National Center for Aerial Laser Mapping in July, 2016. Three survey blocks were defined – one centered on the site of Xnoha near the Mexican border and another along the Rio Hondo corridor from near its headwaters to Chetumal Bay. The third and largest, covers the sites of La Milpa and Blue Creek as well as numerous ditched agricultural areas. At the time of submission, only the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamison Rush.

Archaeologists must move beyond outdated paradigms of biological sex as an objective and cross-culturally applicable category, even when presented distinctly from gender. These paradigms prevent recognition of gender’s full variation, and exclude those outside of Western gender ideology from participation in research. To move toward a more inclusive gender archaeology, I propose that culturally-specific definitions of gender replace these epistemologies to prioritize emic viewpoints. I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Walley.

The real-world utility of academic archaeology is frequently called into question. I address this perception by demonstrating that archaeology has unique potential in the sphere of LGBTQ activism. Because archaeology deals in constructing past narratives, it has the discursive power to naturalize or denaturalize existing social structures and identities. While archaeology has a long history of reinforcing normative social categories, archaeologists have recently begun to apply queer theory,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashuni Romero. Ramón Santacruz.

Through an archaeological salvage project, the Quimicho archaeological site was explored for the first time. During the Prehispanic period there was a system of circulation of natural, human, and ideological resources, which different groups in different moments took advantage of. For this system to work, different routes of distribution of wealth were established, generating a cultural exchange between diverse ethnic groups. The Quimicho archaeological site, situated in the Northeast region of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Freidel. Olivia Navarro Farr.

Classic Maya civilization witnessed the reigns of many great queens, but the greatest in the southern lowlands was Kaloomte’ K’abel of Waka’. She presided over the routes of conquest in western Peten during the seventh century wars of Yuknoom Ch’een the Great. During her lifetime she and her consort King K’inich Bahlam turned the power of the ancient Wite’ Naah Fire Shrine, it’s Moon Goddess, its Death God Akan, and its other gods to the conquest and subjugation of Tikal. She and her city knew...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Swenson.

The co-extension of peoples, places, and things as interdependent social actors were fundamental to Andean spatial ontologies. For instance, the "multiflex" Paria Caca of the Huarochiri Manuscript was manifested as five eggs, five falcons, five brothers, and a great mountain that still bears his name. In this paper, I argue that quintessential locales in the ancient Andes were often places where wholes and parts, microcosmos and macrocosoms, interiors and exteriors, and complementary opposites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Ryan Williams. Donna Nash.

In this paper, we review our use of digital technologies to model archaeological landscapes over the past two decades in Peru and Bolivia. We focus on three scales of analysis in four thematic areas that leverage state of the art technology and GIS modeling as a means for understanding the archaeological record. Our scales run from the built environment of local sites and monuments to regional agricultural landscapes to subcontinental interaction spheres. We look thematically at modeling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carley Crann.

When radiocarbon dating archaeological material, it is paramount to understand how the object was conserved and which conservation products were used in order to determine: 1) the best location on the artifact to sample; 2) how to remove the consolidant physically and/or chemically, and; 3) whether or not the consolidant was successfully removed. The archaeologist usually knows the approximate age of the artifact given the context in which it was found so when the radiocarbon age is not as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Lassen. Erin Keenan Early.

The Gault site is a lithic procurement site and campsite in Central Texas with components ranging from earlier than Clovis to the Late Prehistoric. For the most part, absolute dating at Gault has relied on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which has a high standard error. AMS dating on sparse charcoal samples has been conducted as well, but with mixed results. In particular, the charcoal from the Clovis and lower strata failed to yield viable radiocarbon dates. While faunal preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fiona Petchey. Geoffrey Clark. Patrick O'Day. Richard Jennings.

One of the most enigmatic human dispersals into the Pacific is the colonisation of the Mariana Islands. Here the interpretation of radiocarbon (14C) dates from early settlement sites are hotly debated. One interpretation suggests the Marianas were colonised directly from the northern Philippines around ~3500 BP. However, the age of one of the earliest Mariana sites; Bapot-1, has recently been revised down to ~3200-3080 cal. BP following research by Petchey et al. (in press) which demonstrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigid Grund.

Prehistoric archaeologists traditionally focus on periods of stability rather than change when constructing regional cultural chronologies, even though explaining periods of change is equally if not more important than explaining periods of stability. The advent of large radiocarbon date databases and the proliferation of open source computing programs such as program R have recently provided archaeologists with the tools necessary to begin understanding prehistoric transitions with high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Carleton. Mark Collard. Dave Campbell.

Archaeologists have long been interested in cyclical human-environment dynamics. This interest is indicated by the dozens of published studies that refer to "adaptive cycles" and by the fact that one of the highest cited papers in the history of archaeology focuses on the impact of cyclical drought on the Classic Maya. Unfortunately, recent work suggests that identifying cycles in archaeological and palaeoclimatological time series data can be challenging when the observations are dated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brown. James Chatters. Patrick McCutcheon. James Feathers. Steven Hackenerger.

In the Pacific Northwest of North America, the radiocarbon dating of charcoal has become the standard for assigning age to archaeological contexts. Other dating techniques are seldom used. Underused techniques like luminescence dating can apply when organic materials for radiocarbon dating are absent, unreliable or not associated with events of interest. In the Pacific Northwest, luminescence dating is beginning to be used for dating features containing fire-modified rock. By dating the last...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Brown. Kevan Edinborough. Andrew Martindale. Kenneth Ames.

We present the results of a simulation based test for the existence and significance of two known demographic event horizons. We extend the Shennan et al. (2013) summed probability distribution frequency method to provide a value of statistical significance for the period between two defined calendar dates. Case-study one extrapolates population data from the Western historical record relating to the catastrophic European Black Death and finds a consistent statistically significant drop in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurora Montúfar López.

This paper examines two ritual expresions: the offering 102 of the Aztec Great Temple of Tenochtitlan (1436-1502) and the "promise" to the Santa Cruz or rain petition ceremony in Temalacatzingo, Guerrero, Mexico (2007, 2008 and 2010). It analyzes the consumption of botanical materials, such as copal resin, amaranth seeds, ahuehuete branches, yauhtli flowers, guajes and beans in both rituals. It identifies similarities in the way those materials were used, and proposes that this fact demonstrates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Burger.

Bone whistles recovered from archaeological sites of the Rio Chama watershed are recognized widely as markers of the ceremonial elaboration that accompanied coalescence, the concentration of large populations into dense settlements, and set the Pueblo IV period (AD 1275-1600) apart from earlier occupation in the region. And yet, we know little about how ancestral Pueblo groups employed these instruments and even less about the socio-environmental contexts and relationships to sound generation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Risa Carlson.

In 2009, Carlson & Baichtal used the age and elevation of raised marine deposits left during the highest marine transgression to create a hypothetical early Holocene shoreline in the Alexander Archipelago of southern Southeast Alaska. Over the past seven years, archaeological surveys that employed this predictive model revealed over twenty new early Holocene sites. Our understanding of the Holocene island landscape has increased dramatically with the discovery of these sites in new geographical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catriona Gibson.

The prehistoric record of Britain is punctuated by episodes of monumental building, with the Early Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age being particular cases in point. Yet the Neolithic megalithic monuments and long barrows are quite different forms of funerary and ritual architecture compared to the succeeding Bronze Age barrow traditions. The former could be continuously accessed and activated until their final blocking. On the other hand, once a mound was erected over a Bronze Age grave, that...

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

Little is known from the present-day archaeological perspective of early colonial realities of Margarita and Coche islands located in north-eastern Venezuela, in the state of Nueva Esparta. Moreover, the island of Coche has never been surveyed archaeologically. This paper discusses the preliminary results of systematic archaeological surveys of Coche and the southern coast of Margarita Island, carried out within the frame of the Nexus 1492 ERC research project coordinated by Leiden University....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jupiter Martinez. Amanda Ríos.

La Cueva is a cliff dwelling built by the Casas Grandes people in the Sierra Madre Occidental in Sonora, México. It has been studied by the Sierra Alta de Sonora Archaeological Project with the aim of understanding the Subregional System on the mountains. So far, we have identified a protohistoric component and a prehistoric occupation from the Viejo and Medio Period (900-1450 A.D.). But the most relevant information is related with the mezcaleros knives, an industry well identified. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Sabrina Trinh. Emily Zheng. Falko Kuester.

Arma Veirana is a Middle/Upper Paleolithic cave site of the Maritime Alps of Liguria, Italy, which has the potential to offer insight into the interaction between Modern Humans and the Neandertals. Preliminary excavations have shown a continuous occupation between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic time periods, yet the complexity of the cave morphology and geology have made it difficult to isolate erosion as well as environmental and non-natural factors to understand the full image of hominin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dombrosky. Emily Jones. Seth Newsome.

The Pueblo IV period (ca. AD 1300–1600) in New Mexico was a time of great societal change, and the religious significance of birds is thought to have flourished during this time period. In particular, whistles and flutes, commonly made from the ulnae of birds of prey, become ubiquitous in the Pueblo IV Middle and Northern Rio Grande. The importance of birds to Puebloan society has been well-documented ethnographically: raptors (primarily eagles) held captive by modern Puebloan groups are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Gearty. Laurie Webster. Benjamin Bellorado. Louie Garcia.

Perishable materials that provide information about prehistoric weaving traditions rarely survive in archaeological contexts. The arid environment in the U.S. Southwest, however, has allowed many perishable materials to preserve in excellent condition. Numerous objects collected from the U.S. Southwest, and which are spread out in museum collections across the United States, represent a varied range of textiles and also the material correlates of textile production, including wooden spinning and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Beller.

Recent excavations at Shishan Marsh 1 in the Azraq Basin, Jordan, have uncovered several artifact-bearing layers that date to the Middle Pleistocene. A paleoecological assessment of sediments from this period indicates predominantly warm and dry conditions in the region, similar to those of the present. Hominins living under these harsh conditions were forced to contract around a receding spring- and wadi-fed water source for subsistence. In this way, the distances they could venture to acquire...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nissen.

During the comprehensive survey of the Maya city of Aventura, Belize, the Aventura Archaeology Project (AAP) identified 29 structures located within the confines of the site’s largest monumental plaza, the A Plaza. While Maya plazas tend to be open places for ritual performance and/or market exchange, the structures in Aventura’s A Plaza, constructed with "seemingly" no regard to the orientation and layout of the site’s other monumental architecture, suggests the possibility of an alternative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Wesp. Traci Ardren. Melissa Haun. Harper Dine. Roger Sierra.

The arrival of Europeans to the Americas in the sixteenth century forever changed processes of cultural integration. This paper explores how small Maya communities in Central Yucatan navigated the process of integration of new religious practices and the use of pre-existing structures in the landscape. This examination stems from recent excavations of two different rural chapel structures at the site of Cacalchen, located in the greater Yaxuna region between the towns of Yaxcabá and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Haddow.

At Çatalhöyük, as elsewhere in the Neolithic Near East, there is an emphasis on the manipulation and redistribution of human body parts, with particular attention paid to the skull. Evidence for this practice occurs with the observation of ‘headless’ primary burials and the secondary re-deposition of disarticulated crania and mandibles within primary and secondary burial contexts. The manner in which these practices were carried out and the motivations for such behaviour have been the subject of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dale Croes. Ed Carriere.

Ed Carriere and I have been working with the U.W. Burke Museum to replicate 2,000 year old waterlogged archaeological basketry found in the early 1960s from along the Snoqualmie River near Seattle. Ed learned old style split cedar limb/root clam basket making from his Great Grandmother, Julia Jacobs, who raised him. Ed’s goal has always been to go back as many generations in his family to master their work. As a wet site archaeologist specializing in ancient basketry on the Northwest Coast, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Betz. Jessica Pearson.

Two decades of excavation at Çatalhöyük have produced a skeletal assemblage of approximately 555 individuals from primary, secondary, and primary-disturbed Neolithic (7100-6000 cal. BCE) deposition contexts. As personnel and digital technology have changed, integration of the large body of legacy bioarchaeological data with current research has posed many challenges. Often, analyses of osteological data patterns have relied on broad comparisons of temporal and spatial categories drawn from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sachiko Sakai.

Although the ceramic chronology in the Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan area requires more well-dated ceramic assemblage, there are some generally accepted diachronic trends based on surface treatment and form. Corrugated ware, for example, is believed to date around A.D. 1050. Rim eversion of jar is also often used as time indicator; sharply everted rim is considered to be associated to later time period, and little or no everted rim is associated to earlier time period. This information may be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Piscitelli.

The Late Archaic Period (3000-1800 B.C.) was a time of dramatic cultural transformations in the Central Andes. At the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C., at least 30 large, sedentary agricultural settlements with monumental architecture appeared between the Huaura and Fortaleza river valleys in a region known locally as the "Norte Chico" ("Little North"). Given the quantity, size, and complexity of monumental architecture at these sites, as well as the unique settlement patterns, some have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Menzies.

Archaeology on the north coast of British Columbia has focussed on three zones of attention: Namu, Haida Gwaii, and Prince Rupert Harbour. These loci have created a kind of orthodoxy that, while reasonable in certain aspects, has unduly shaped contemporary political interactions between First Nations and the state. This paper draws from an Indigenous intellectual framework (that has appropriated the tools and techniques of anthropological archaeology) to challenge and redefine the orthodox...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Padula.

Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park (CI124B) contains the remnants of a nineteenth-century sugar mill, associated with Margarita plantation located in Homosassa, Florida. At present, documentation of the plantation boundaries is limited and locations of various associated buildings, including slave quarters, are unknown. To address this issue, a reconnaissance survey is underway in the vicinity of the mill to identify associated plantation structures and boundaries. Preliminary results...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magda Ciesla. Anna Kraszewska. Pawel Valde-Nowak.

Short-term settlement of Middle Palaeolithic hunters leaves a specific tool kit on an archaeological site. In spite of this well known fact, in some cases, concerning the duration of stay of groups of Neanderthals, mere techno-typological analysis of inventories seems insufficient. Analysis of raw materials exploitation, combined with information about long use, or re-working of certain artifacts appears to be helpful. On most sites from the Middle Palaeolithic era, archaeological data,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Stewart.

Archaeologists have long understood that the Lower Chama Valley in New Mexico was home to a large Tewa population during the Classic Period (A.D. 1340-1540) but the area underwent dramatic depopulation by A.D. 1600. The precise timing, motivation and movements of people are unclear due to the lack of chronological control in the region. One way to address this chronological problem in the Lower Chama Valley is through analysis of the abundant and locally produced biscuitware pottery. Bandelier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Lopez Varela.

In eradicating poverty through infrastructure building and welfare policies in the State of Morelos, the commodification of the landscape is causing people to forget the social practices of distant pasts. Memory is intimately linked with the landscape, as it creates a sense of place that legitimizes the many identities and social worlds that have existed through time. By exploring current human practices in the landscape, this study illustrates how habit memory translates and maps fragmented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Carmichael.

Polychrome ceramics of the Nasca culture (south coast of Peru, c. 100 BC - AD 600) are world renowned as one of the most colorful and artistically complex creations of the ancient Americas. Up to ten distinct colors depicting fabulous supernatural creatures adorn unique vessel forms with eggshell thin walls fixed in perfect oxidizing firings. Such masterpieces fill art books and spawn enthusiastic but fanciful speculations about Nasca society and its artisans. This paper rounds out the view of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Acebo.

The Santa Ana mountain landscape of contemporary Orange County, California, has been dichotomously characterized as "a wild frontier" and "a tamed indigenous space" where the material and social histories of indigenous communities are downplayed and legacies of Spanish, Mexican and American colonial society are both solidified and continued. Within this landscape, the Black Star Canyon Village site (CA-ORA-132) objectifies this binary historicity as the site constitutes a prehistoric/historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ball.

Archaeologists in southern Ontario have taken up a number of diverse perspectives for coming to an understanding of past human-environmental dynamics. While these disparate perspectives all produce something of value and contribute to the bigger picture of human-environmental relationships in the region there has been little work done in synthesizing their contributions or consolidating said perspectives into something more cohesive. This discussion is therefore focused largely on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Steele. Emily Jones. Jonathan Dombrosky.

Although the Spanish documentary record from 17th century New Mexico describes challenging environmental conditions, faunal analyses from this time and region largely suggest a period of environmental amelioration. However, many of the assemblages that have been used to argue for improved conditions are from indigenous sites. Here, we present data on taxonomic relative abundance from the 17th century zooarchaeological assemblage from the Isleta Pueblo Mission Complex, and then use those data to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennie Sturm.

Remote sensing has been an integral part of Chacoan archaeology for several decades, helping to identify and map the broader landscape in and around the canyon. Early remote sensing studies, while pioneering, were often experimental and limited by the available technology. As the technical aspects of remote sensing continue to improve with advancements in computer power and data processing, it is now possible to move beyond experimental studies and broad characterizations of the Chacoan...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milosz Giersz.

The Peruvian site of Castillo de Huarmey located on the desert coast some 300 kms north of Lima and 4 kms east of the Pacific Ocean, is widely known for the 2012-13 discovery of the Middle Horizon imperial mausoleum with the first undisturbed Wari high elite women’s multiple burial. The tomb, which concealed 64 individuals was accompanied by an abundance of valuable grave goods such as gold and silver jewelry, fine pottery, religious paraphernalia, and textile production materials and tools....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Brzezinski.

This paper presents the preliminary results of recent excavations carried out at Cerro de la Virgen, a 92-ha hilltop site located in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The lower Verde’s first complex polity emerged during the Terminal Formative period (150 BCE – CE 250), during which Cerro de la Virgen was one of several secondary political centers distributed around the region’s political seat, Río Viejo. Current research at Cerro de la Virgen is designed to study the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Verna Gentil. Elijah J. Hermitt. Jeffery B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo.

The site of Conil is located in the modern community of Chiquilá on the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. In 1528 Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador, reported that Conil was a large town consisting of 5,000 houses. Conil was abandoned in the middle of the 17th century and was not reoccupied again until the 19th century, when it was named Chiquilá. William Sanders was the first archaeologist to work at the site in 1954, but the site core was not mapped until 2005 by Glover. Further...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kent Mead. Megan Weldy. Kevin Pintz.

This poster presents evidence of a singular Late Archaic period habitation feature. Recent compliance excavations conducted at site LA 45730 along the Pecos River east of Carlsbad, New Mexico have provided rarely seen evidence of occupation in the Permian Basin. A small pit structure exposed in a highly eroded floodplain terrace provides an opportunity for further insights. Few such structures have been fully documented in this region. Material remains recovered from the pit structure provide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Rafferty.

Analysis of organic residues continues to be a productive method of extracting information from prehistoric material culture. This paper presents current results of several ongoing research projects, involving several teams of researchers. Two projects present recent research into the origins of tobacco smoking through the analysis of tobacco pipes, including a sample of pipes associated with the Southeastern Late Archaic Poverty Point culture, and a second sample of pipes associated with Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Whitehead.

SWCA has performed seven data recovery projects in southeast New Mexico between 2015 and 2016 with TRU (Transect Recording Unit) surface survey, collections and analysis. Notable sites have included an archaic pit house structure, a bedrock mortar site and several coppice and parabolic dune sites. A summary of the excavation work will be presented, focusing on highlights from three of these sites. The results of TRU surface collection and analysis will be presented in conjunction with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Kimball.

As Keeley (1982) pointed out some time ago, the recognition of microwear traces due to hafting is an important source of information not only about how stone tools were prepared for use, but how their differential discard affects the recognition of site structure and site function. This is because the economy of different hafting arrangements and the act of "retooling" is different for hafted versus unhafted tools. In an effort to consider the variable range of hafting traces among Native...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Esdale.

When studying the technology of mobile foraging groups, tools and cores that pass through a site can be even more informative than those that end up deposited there. This is especially true in regions like interior Alaska, where cultural historical frameworks rely on the presence or absence of specific technologies or tool forms. A flake-attribute based debitage analysis combined with a minimum analytical nodule analysis can be integral for recognizing artifact transport. Examples from Archaic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Desiree Martinez. Wendy Teeter. Karimah Kennedy-Richardson.

For 10 years, the Pimu Catalina Island Archaeology Project (PCIAP) has worked with the Gabrielino (Tongva) community to create a research agenda that acknowledges the Tongva’s cultural knowledge of the environment. Based on an Indigenous archaeology approach, PCIAP’s work recognizes that previous interpretations of Island Tongva settlement patterns do not accurately reflect how the Island Tongva viewed themselves upon the landscape nor their relationships to the people and items around them ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Ervin.

Elaborately constructed earthworks indicate monumental behavior requiring unique social processes to produce. This paper presents new subsurface data on the Late Archaic Poverty Point earthworks at the Jaketown site in the Mississippi Yazoo Basin. Unit excavations and soil coring demonstrate detailed and complicated internal architecture standing in contrast to earlier mounded landscapes in the eastern United States. Challenging traditional agrocentric models for socially complex societies, this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Diego Luna.

La Sierra Juárez es una región montañosa ubicada al noreste de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca. Pese a ser adyacente a ésta, hasta el momento, las investigaciones arqueológicas se habían enfocado en pocos sitios. En esta ponencia se expone el diseño de la investigación regional actualmente en curso: las preguntas; el método, el cual puede emplearse en otras zonas montañosas con características topográficas similares, y que integra la interpretación de la geoforma y de ortofotos digitales, al...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Cummins.

Based on an examination of ceramic Chorrera, Jama Coaque and La Tolita figurines from the coast of Ecuador, this talk discusses the central role of the mold as both a forming technique and as a means to create a stable visual tradition from generation to generation. It will also suggest the impact on later traditions on the coast, such as the Moche tradition.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omar Alcover. Charles Golden. Andrew Scherer.

Etic distinctions between "sites" and "landscape features" and the limits of pedestrian survey have long influenced how scholars in the Maya lowlands model social and political dynamics of the region. The adoption of remote sensing technologies, particularly LiDAR, has improved our ability to identify anthropogenic features over wider areas. Yet remote sensing data collection remains centered on known "sites" and data serving to further expand the mapped boundaries of ancient "cities,"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Bardolph. Brian Billman. Jesus Briceno. Gabriel Prieto.

This paper examines the relationships between food, identity, and social inequality on the Prehispanic Peruvian North Coast through a paleoethnobotanical perspective. We reconstruct household culinary practices to address the roles that food played in the migrant experience of highlanders that settled in a traditionally coastal river valley. This migration occurs just prior to the consolidation of the Southern Moche polity, one of the earliest state polities in the Americas and characterized by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Porth. J. Lynn Funkhouser. Susan Scott. John Blitz.

Consuming food as a large group in a ritual context generates and reaffirms the social obligations of the participants and the sponsors of the ceremony. This paper evaluates models for feasting from the Mississippian center of Moundville, located in west-central Alabama. Feasting has not been documented in midden assemblages from the site because a wide range of ceramic vessel sizes and a diverse range of faunal species have been recovered. This indicated that the consumption of symbolic species...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Gardner. Eric J. Bartelink. Antoinette Martinez. Alan Leventhal. Rosemary Cambra.

Breastfeeding and weaning practices (BWPs) are deeply personal, influenced by individual choices, circumstances of health and opportunity, community support, and cultural norms. This presentation will discuss the advantages and challenges of using bone collagen composition to interpret breastfeeding and weaning practices, using data from the Yukisma Mound (CA-SCL-38), a Late Period (~740-230 BP) ancestral Ohlone mortuary site in Santa Clara County, California. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich.

California is geographically separated from the rest of North America by high mountain ranges and extensive deserts, but paradoxically the region's Mediterranean climate may have facilitated the imposition of Euroamerican colonial rule in the late 18th century. In particular, many scholars suggest that ecological changes accelerated political changes in the missionized portion of California's coastal strip. There, the rapid spread of invasive plant and animal species had far-reaching effects on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Reamer.

In the literature on monumentality there is little to no discussion of pre-contact Native American monuments in the northeastern United States. However, this does not mean the region was completely devoid of monumental architecture before the arrival of European, but monuments are not a common topic of archaeological research in the northeast. In this paper, I will discuss two structures- shell mounds, and stone and brush heaps- and argue that they should be discussed as monuments and further...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Wright. Ethan Grossman.

We examine the ancient Maya nursing practices and children’s diets at the archaeological metropolis of Tikal, Guatemala, through stable isotopic analysis of permanent teeth in adult skeletons. Stable carbon isotope analysis of tooth enamel permits a measure of the relative amount of carbon from maize foods in the diet, and helps track the introduction of solid foods into the children’s diet. Stable oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel reflect the sources of water that children consumed, and shed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grant Snitker.

Charcoal is produced by the incomplete combustion of plant tissues and is used as an indicator of prehistoric fire activity in archaeological and paleoecological contexts. For millennia, humans have played an active role in shaping fire regimes, making the quantification and analysis of paleo-charcoal important for understanding long-term, social-ecological systems. Globally, prehistoric transitions to agriculture often coincide with increases in fire frequency and changes in vegetation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramón Ocasio Negrón.

This paper will present the benefits and limitations of incorporating census data in the analysis of household units in San Juan, Puerto Rico to archaeological investigations. The objective of this research is to study part of the population that resided in four streets, located west of the Cathedral in the capital of San Juan during 1910. The Cathedral Ward was selected with the understanding that the area was associated to elite residents since the 16th century. Specifically, this research is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Christensen.

During the Chinese Spring Offensive of April and May 1951, Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces pushed United Nations troops back from their defensive lines in the Republic of Korea, with extensive casualties on both sides. Because UN forces were driven back, many of the dead were not recovered and identified until the battlefields were retaken. In some cases this occurred days after the battle, but for many it was weeks, months, or even years later. Individual Deceased Personnel Files (IDPFs) for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Perez-Juez. Kathryn Ness. Ricardo Elia. Meredith Langlitz. Ilaria Patania.

Isla del Rey is a small off-shore islet, located on the Spanish Balearic Island of Menorca. The island is well known for a British Naval Hospital, constructed over multiple periods of British occupation in the 18th century. The hospital was used for 250 years by the British, French and Spanish, and abandoned in the second half of the 20th century. In 2013, the Boston University Field School in Archaeology and Heritage Management began investigating the building, which had not been previously...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Pryor. Alistair Pike. Jirí Svoboda. Alexander Dudin. Clive Gamble.

This presentation reports isotopic data collected for an investigation of food storage behaviours at the European Gravettian sites of Dolní Vĕstonice-Pavlov (Czech Republic) and Late Glacial site of Kostenki 11 (Russian Federation) dated between 30,000-20,000 years ago. Our methods use strontium isotope (high-resolution measurements by laser ablation) and oxygen isotope analysis to investigate seasonal mobility of the main prey species: woolly mammoth, reindeer, horse, fox and wolf. The isotopic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Van Horn. Adi Eliyahu. Naama Yahalom-Mack. A. E. Killebrew.

Recent excavations (2010 – 2016) at the Mediterranean port city of Tel Akko, directed by A.E. Killebrew and M. Artzy, have uncovered abnormally large quantities of iron slag and remnants of iron working spanning the 6th – 4th centuries BCE. This mid-first millennium smithy, which smelted iron on an industrial scale, is the only known iron working facility in the Levant dating to the Persian period, providing an unparalleled opportunity to explore iron production at a Phoenician maritime center....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elspeth Geiger.

The Saginaw Valley provides one of the most robust records of Michigan’s prehistoric subsistence history. Of this 10,000-year history, the Middle Woodland to Late Woodland regional transformation has been a particular point of interest concerning local subsistence practices. Previous research has hypothesized a three-zone seasonal subsistence strategy as an essential element of the Saginaw Valley Late Woodland adaptive shift. In particular, this regime included a reliance on riverine and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Golubiewski-Davis.

This project is a case study using 3D scans of Late Bronze Age swords (~1200-800BC) to recreate community networks of knowledge. Measurements from 111 3D scans of bronze sword hilts were taken based on characteristics related to manufacture and style, including cross sections. Fourier analysis was used to represent the curvature of cross sections numerically. The measurements taken and the results of the Fourier analyses were then processed using principal component analysis to combine related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Hill. I. Randolph Daniel.

Until recently, the prehistoric culture-history of the coastal plain has remained the least understood in North Carolina due to a lack of known sites with stratified context and dateable components. Sites, such as Barber Creek (31PT259) and Squires Ridge (31ED365) situated along the Tar River, have archaeological data that can test the previous model (Moore and Daniel 2011; Phelps 1983). The excavations at these two sites have established the presence of archaeological sequences of four...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Szymon Surma. Tony Pitcher.

Whales obtained through various combinations of hunting and scavenging have long provided coastal communities worldwide with sustenance and many raw materials. However, global whale populations have been severely depleted by commercial whaling. This study combined historical abundance reconstruction with ecosystem modelling to investigate the effects of whaling on the abundances and ecological roles of five large whale species (blue, fin, sei, humpback and sperm) in northern British Columbia...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Casar. Pedro Morales. Ernesto Velasco. Abigail Meza.

Bone and teeth were analyzed from multiple burials from a mortuary cave in the North of Mexico, dated around 1400 and 400 BC. Samples from 14 jawbones were analyzed to obtain the δ13C and δ15N of the bone collagen as well as δ13C and δ18O in bone bioapatite; M2 or M3 from the jawbones were cut into a series of layers to obtain multiple isotopic signatures from enamel, structural carbonate and collagen from the dentine of each tooth, representing different periods in the life of the individual....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giada Ferrari. Mathieu F. Robin. Claudia Vigano. Michael G. Campana. Christine Grossen.

Human activity has driven several mammal species close to extinction. The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) suffered a severe bottleneck during the 19th century, when overhunting and habitat loss resulted in less than a hundred individuals surviving in the Italian Alps. Since then, the Alpine ibex has been successfully reintroduced across the Alpine ridge. Genetic analyses reveal a low genetic diversity in all extant populations, a common phenomenon in species that have gone through a recent bottleneck....

DOCUMENT Citation Only XinWei Li. Jorge Ramos.

8N-11 is a sub-royal elite residential compound located at the end of the eastern causeway (sac be) in the densely settled Las Sepulturas zone about 850 m from the Copan Main Group. Monumental architecture, carving style and representations of figures with royal attributes demonstrate the high status that residents of the 8N-11 enjoyed in Copan society. In collaboration with the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History and the Anthropology Department of Harvard University, Project IACASS...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Loubser.

As part an overall effort by the Tennessee Valley Authority to conserve, manage, and present Middle Mississippian era pictographs and petroglyphs to a visiting public, Stratum Unlimited recorded 101 motifs from 47 panels at Painted Bluff, a steep south-facing limestone cliff overlooking the Tennessee River in northeastern Alabama. Results from the recording include an assessment of pictograph and petroglyph techniques, types and numbers of motifs, stratigraphic overlap and sequencing of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helena Horta. Paz Núñez-Regueiro. Clotilde Castelli. Valentina Figueroa. Catherine Lavier.

The Musée du Quai Branly holds a snuff tray allegedly from Tiahuanaco. It was collected by the geologist Georges Courty during the archaeological excavations conducted on the site by the French Scientific Mission to South America in 1903. The wooden artifact, with inlays of turquoise and metal, is delicately sculpted in low relief, perforated and engraved. Its fragmentary condition has restricted its analysis. A study and conservation plan enabled the recovery of its shape (trapezoidal) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magdalena Schmid.

The timing and patterns of first peopling offer exciting opportunities to understand the legacies of colonization. In particular, islands are defined territories where colonization processes can be tracked through a rigorous synthesis of empirical data and a systematic application of Bayesian statistics. Iceland provides one of the world’s premier case studies for human interactions of pristine ecosystems because its colonization in the 9th century occurred relatively late in history....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bethany Whitlock. Kari Lentz.

During the 16th century Viceroy Toledo ordered a series of reforms in the Viceroyalty of Peru that involved the forced resettlement of the native population into planned nucleated settlements (reducciones). Toledo believed that these standardized built environments, in conjunction with ecclesiastical regulation, would produce idealized colonial communities. This paper presents the initial results of recent excavations in the rectory at Mawchu Llacta, a reducción in the Colca Valley. The rectory...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Howe.

The Red Bluff Project is an earthen dam in Texas on the Pecos River near the New Mexico border. A preliminary geological report of the originally named Angeles Dam Site in Texas by Geologist Kirk Bryan in 1929 found the dam site favorable but he made no conclusion on feasibility. This discussion will talk about the work Dr. Bryan contributed to the later construction of this dam and the later name change to the Red Bluff Project. Emphasis will include the construction of the dam from 1934 to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Velliky. Martin Porr. Nicholas Conard.

Some of the most informative artifacts regarding early symbolic behaviors in Europe come from Hohle Fels Cave, Germany. Hohle Fels (HF) boasts a detailed Upper Paleolithic sequence, and an extensive array of ochre artifacts. In this project, we systematically investigate the ochre assemblage at HF by quantity, type and modification, and proximity to other archaeological features. The ochre assemblage includes painted limestone pieces, faunal elements, fossils, and potential grindstones with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Landry.

Archaeologists consider macaws highly valuable trade items which served an important economic and ritual role in the prehistoric Southwest. Costly to acquire, brightly colored, and difficult to keep, macaws are often an exciting indicator of social complexity. There is a consensus that the bright red Scarlet Macaw was used and traded with greater frequency than the emerald green Military Macaw in the American Southwest. Yet variation in size and morphological similarity of Ara sp. postcrania...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kye Miller. Steven Gilbert.

Previous researchers have proposed that early red ware traditions in Southeast Utah (i.e., Abajo Red-on-orange) represent an intrusive practice in an area generally dominated by black-on-white ceramics. This red ware "intrusion" has previously been interpreted as possibly representing the in-migration of southern groups into Southeast Utah and Southwestern Colorado. Using the communities of practice approach, this paper characterizes pit structure architectural practice in relation to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly. James Brown.

By the early 19th century the group of mounds we now recognize as Cahokia mounds was called the Cantine mound, with Monks Mound referred to as the "Great Cahokia" mound. Actual boundaries for the site were not established until the 1950s. For the inhabitants, the site was probably without bounds and our definition of Cahokia is to a large extent fulfills our society needs that relate to legal aspects of ownership and historical significance. The natural landscape is a palimpsest of features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pablo Mendez-Quiros.

En este estudio proponemos una reconstrucción de la red vial de los Valles Occidentales meridionales. A partir de un trabajo de analisis e interpretación de imágenes satelitales. Esta red estuvo organizada sobre la base de diez rutas troncales, diecisiete nodos de primer orden y siete de segundo orden. Analizamos el funcionamiento del sistema de senderos, caminos y poblados durante los períodos Intermedio Tardío y Tardío y su relación con prácticas de movilidad diversas y convergentes....