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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Hrynick. Susan Blair. Katherine Patton. Jesse Webb.

In the context of rapid social or environmental change, foodways offer a way to track how identities are negotiated amid new realities. The Protohistoric period (550–350 BP) in the Northeast was an early site of sporadic and often indirect Indigenous-European contact in North America and the Wabanaki of Maine and the Maritime Provinces were early participants in the world economic system. Analyses of the Devil’s Head and Birch Cove sites in Passamaquoddy Bay indicate that Wabanaki diets were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua J. Wells.

Archaeology’s disciplinary engagement with big data is confounded by the variety of information types recorded, variability of data due to differential preservation of materials and theoretical orientations of observers, and complexity of archaeological concepts daring to be caged in explicit digital expressions. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a linked open data hub, centered around the theoretically, practically, and interpretively fraught definition of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Gurevitz. Scotti Norman.

Burial practice in the Central Andes was transmitted continuously from the Middle Horizon (AD 700-AD 1000) onward, if not earlier in some areas, reflecting an agreed-upon understanding of Andean social identity throughout time. However, when the Spanish colonized the Andes, they drastically altered this continuity, forcing indigenous populations to bury their dead under the Church in idealized Catholic tradition. This sudden change in burial practice ruptured Andean identity as indigenous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Jensen.

Walakpa is an iconic Arctic site with spectacular preservation, due to frozen conditions. Although many believe it to have been fully excavated, Stanford was only able to reach a third of the way to sterile soil due to permafrost, so earlier occupations of the site remain unstudied. Long considered stable, Walakpa began eroding rapidly in 2013. A single recent storm removed over 30 meters of cultural stratigraphy along a 100+ meter front. Need for rapid response prompted a large volunteer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Emili Aura Tortosa.

The lapse of time between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the Holocene 8.2 cold event, can be considered as a Long Transition, in which global diachronic changes and regional processes are combined. Between 17 - 10 ky cal BP important ecological changes (increased temperatures, forestry and presence of some species of herbivores, variations in sea-level and coastline , etc), techno-economic transformations (abandonment of osseous weapons, active and passive grinding stones related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Hernandez.

A critical facet of studying past warfare is the analysis of fortifications. Fortifications are often visible on the surface, making these archaeological features identifiable through surface reconnaissance. Moreover, test pits and trench excavations into gated areas or across various sections of fortifications can be used to establish the martial functions of these archaeological features. Yet, the study of past warfare and fortifications often stumbles in the interpretive stage. How do we know...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clay Mathers.

Although conflict and conquista campaigns characterized many of the earliest encounters between Native and European groups in New Spain and La Florida, the transformation of objects, communities, and strategic policies in these areas was locally variable and changed dramatically by the close of the sixteenth century. Materials characteristic of these changes and variegated responses are found widely in the archaeological record of the American Southwest, but have seldom been explored for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallorie Hatch.

Warfare during the Mississippian Period (ca. AD 1000-1500) of the U.S. Midcontinent and Southeast has been hypothesized as an important political and social practice throughout the region. This paper will explore diachronic and synchronic evidence of warfare, comparing and contrasting evidence between large and small sites. Particular emphasis will be placed on observations of warfare patterns in the Central Illinois Valley of west-central Illinois. Skeletal remains with warfare-trauma have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Shane Miller.

The complex hunter-gatherers of the Middle and Late Archaic periods in the Tennessee River Valley of the American Southeast are well-known for displaying evidence of intergroup violence, including scalping and trophy taking. On the other hand, these time periods are also known for the emergence of exchange networks centered on items including bone pins and bifaces. I argue that the co-occurrence of exchange networks and intergroup violence was likely the result of iterated "live and let live" or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser. Milosz Giersz.

Archaeological evidence suggests that khipus—devices made of wrapped and knotted cords—were used by people living in the Wari Empire at least as early as Middle Horizon 1B. These Wari-style khipus, like their later, more famous, Inka descendants, likely carried and conveyed information using color and knots. Wari khipus differ from Inka khipus, however, in many respects including their use of colorful wrapping to make bands and patterns to convey information. Wari-style khipus survive in far...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Leslie. Kevin McBride.

Previous research on Block Island, Rhode Island, indicates that during the Woodland Period, the island was likely occupied year-round and maritime resources accounted for a significant portion of peoples’ diets. Native American sites on the island include semi-permanent villages near the Great Salt Pond and fishing, temporary seasonal, and task specific camps away from villages. Season of occupation for these sites is important to frame our understanding of a developing maritime economy. Several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Dye. Timothy Rieth.

Archaeologists sometimes claim that the refined chronologies yielded by Bayesian calibration make it possible to distinguish between Levi-Strauss's "hot" and "cold" societies. Historians of Hawai`i leave little doubt that Hawai`i was a "hot" society in the early historic period. A review and comparison of chronologies for the tempo of change in pre-Contact Hawai`i distinguishes the "cold" society reconstituted by ad hoc methods from the "hot" society reconstituted by the Bayesian method. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Hutchinson. Sarah L. Sterling. Virginia L. Butler. Carrie Garrison-Laney.

The northern segment of the Cascadia subduction zone has ruptured at least four times in the last 2000 years. Each of these giant earthquakes triggered a tsunami that potentially inundated the Tse-whit-zen village site to depths of 3-6 m and exposed it to currents of ~10 m/s. We compare the timing of these tsunamis, as recorded by wash-over deposits at Tse-whit-zen and sand sheets in the marshes at Discovery Bay, some 50 km to the east of Tse-whit-zen, with the palaeodemographic history of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only F. Scott Worman. Anastasia Steffen.

Our study examines the potential for using obsidian hydration analyses to quantify post-depositional site disturbance. The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) in northern New Mexico encompasses a diverse and dynamic mountainous landscape that people have visited regularly for millennia to access large obsidian quarries and other resources. The result is a rich archaeological record with abundant obsidian artifacts. However that record has been altered, sometimes dramatically, by physical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Snead. Ann Stansell.

Euro-American experience in the western states has been profoundly shaped by the fight for resources, among which water ranks extremely high. Traditional histories of such struggles focus on policy, macroeconomics, and large-scale social transformation. Historical archaeology, in contrast, offers the opportunity to emphasize the quotidian manifestations of these conflicts, particularly as they shaped the lives (and deaths) of local residents. Current fieldwork conducted by California State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thibault Saintenoy. Mauricio Uribe.

Located on the edge of the Atacama Desert at the foot of the Carangas Altiplano, the Belén Valley witnessed substantial construction of imperial infrastructures during the late pre-Hispanic period. The Inca occupation was mainly related to agriculture, metallurgy and a sanctuary. The Belén Valley contains, in fact, the most important water resources in the upper basin of Azapa, copper and tin mines and an important mountain summit, which formed both economic and symbolic resources of special...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi. Christian Sheumaker. Sarah Boudreaux.

Social life never proceeds in the absence of a spatial dimension that defines, brackets, segregates, alters or otherwise organizes interaction. The power to organize space emerges historically from the sweep of institutional arrangements across society and operates along many different dimensions and scales, at once establishing boundaries all the while insidiously permeating them. This historical process – this "social production of space" – is what we refer to as landscape. Landscape has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanja Hoffmann.

Indigenous scholars propose that the outside researchers most useful to indigenous communities are those willing to engage in a process of self-discovery and transformation. These researchers are willing to learn from, not just about, the people they work with. This paper contemplates the challenges and opportunities that arise when archaeologists embark on this transformative journey. I use personal examples drawn from two decades of conducting archaeology with and for indigenous communities to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brenda Guernsey. Chelsey Geralda Armstrong.

The Gitsm’geelm are a galts’ap (community) of the Tsimshian Nation. Today, Kitsumkalum is located at the confluence of the Kalum and Skeena Rivers. There are a number of documented archaeology sites in the core territorial lands, down the Skeena River to the coast where Gitsm’geelm people hold various types of resource use sites. Dałk Gyilakyaw (Robin Town), a large terraced village site replete with evidence of maintained gardens, orchards and distinct archaeological features, is located at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pryor.

After 45 years of doing archeology in both an academic and CRM context, I have come to the conclusion that archeology as I have been practicing it simply no longer works for me. For the last 15 years my archeology has been with and for Native Americans, and this collaboration has lead me to many wonderful insights and has enriched the archeology I have come to practice. This new approach is not a rejection of Western science but the blending of the best that we both have to offer. This new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Guarino.

This study explores the potential for sharing of weaponry elements during communal hunts, and the implications of sharing pertaining to the overall technological organization of Agate Basin hunting groups. K-means cluster analysis was utilized to determine whether hafted-area morphologies on Agate Basin points were standardized and displayed properties consistent with expectations we might have if sharing of weaponry elements incorporated into the preparation for a communal hunt. I argue two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Van Wandelen.

The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro served as the main conduit of transportation in New Mexico from 1598 until the 1880s, with continued regional use afterwards. Situated in strategic locations along this road were stopping points, called parajes, which travelers used to rest. Parajes are usually described as campsites in literature and less attention is given to the other activities that occurred at these sites. In recent reanalysis of collections from Paraje San Diego, a historical paraje near...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marvin Kay. Justin Dubois. Devin Pettigrew.

Experimental replicas of chipped stone sickle blades and both arrowheads and atlatl darts are used to evaluate (1) stages of sickle gloss formation as affected by moisture content of harvested wild grasses and domesticated rye cereal grains and (2) armature impact and penetration wear traces. Herbaceous plant moisture content was calculated along with the total time of harvesting by wooden sickles mounted with stone prismatic blades. High speed digital photography recorded projectile flight...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve LeMoine.

Miniature carvings recovered from Paleo-Inuit Dorset culture sites (2800-700 BP) across the Canadian Arctic and northwestern Greenland offer tantalizing glimpses of human-animal relations of this prehistoric group. Recently scholars such as Matt Betts and Mari Hardenberg have begun a productive line of inquiry drawing on representational ecology to contextualize and enrich understanding of the social nature of these relationships and the symbolic role of the carvings of polar bears in particular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pete Demarte. Samantha Walker. Dan Savage. Melissa Coria.

The settlement sub-project of the Socio-Ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) investigations was executed by engaging a variety of data collection methods in order to assess the development and overall organization of settlements of support populations in a sample of pre-industrial tropical societies from South and Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica. This presentation explores the diverse types, character, and quality of the data employed in the study, and underscores how, when...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Alt.

Fabric is rarely recovered from Mississippian sites, although there have been a few spectacular finds. There are however other lines of evidence that speak to the use and meaning of fabric in the Mississippian world. We have recovered the charred remains, or at times structured ash of what were once bags, mats, baskets or other fabric items during excavations at a few Cahokia related sites in the American Bottom region of Illinois. The Emerald Shrine Center in particular has produced these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Mazzucato.

The end of the Çatalhöyük Research Project’s (ÇRP) 25-year mandate and the consequent generation of large and unique datasets produced by the collaboration of excavators and the specialists labs provide an extraordinary opportunity to investigate patterns of early agricultural settled life, social structure and differentiation at an intra-site level through a synthetic approach capable of weaving together different data threads. In this study, a relational framework rooted in models of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Hylkema.

Mission Santa Clara de Asίs, founded in 1777, is one in a chain of twenty-one Spanish Colonial missions established along the coastal region of Alta California. Recent excavations within Santa Clara's Native American Rancherίa have revealed a plethora of objects directly and indirectly associated with textile production and use within the colonial setting. Indigenous practices from ethnic regions of California and Mexico are reflected within the assemblage of sewing/weaving tools, adornments,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Kilpatrick.

Scholars have debated the relevance of variation and standardization in artefact assemblages since the nineteenth century. Variation in artefact assemblages is used for developing typologies and examining temporal changes in artefact form. Standardisation in artefact shape is an important indicator of the cognition of early humans, socio-economic organization, and the emergence of craft specialization. Research into the causal factors of variation include testing humans sensory perceptions,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raphael Greenberg.

If archaeology is by definition strongly attached to certain academic ideals (or "scholastic fallacies"), to a particular secular, rationalist way of looking at the world, and to ever-proliferating specializations that require scarce technological resources and expertise; and if, moreover, academic symbolic and cultural capital is constantly and increasingly measured by membership in the correct status groups and by access to these scarce resources, can academic initiation of, or even...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gonen Sharon. Maya Oron. Rebecca Biton. Rivka Rabinovich. Steffen Mischke.

Eight excavation seasons (2007-2014) at the Mousterian site of Nahal ‎Mahanyeem Outlet (NMO) on the banks of the Upper Jordan River offer a ‎glimpse into the life ways of MP people during a hunting expedition in the ‎Upper Galilee. This open-air site, OSL dated to ca. 60ky BP, is interpreted as ‎recording a series of short-term hunting events. The NMO horizons, with ‎their small number of lithic artifacts, unique typological composition and ‎evidence for task specific hunting and butchering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Aldenderfer. Leslie Aiello.

Over the past 15 years the Wenner-Gren Foundation has received approximately 3,000 applications for research funding from archaeologists (students and established scholars) and have funded just under 500 of these requests (success rate = 15-16%; grand total of funds awarded = $8,050,000). The Foundation does not fundraise and thus the amount we can award each year is dependent on the financial markets. A particular challenge is to maintain and grow the spending power of the endowment, while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roger Colten. Susan deFrance. Michelle LeFebvre. Brian Worthington.

The Caribbean islands had limited endemic terrestrial fauna and they lacked any of the New World domesticated animals until fairly late in prehistory. Given the depauperate terrestrial fauna of these islands the early Native American inhabitants relied on marine resources and endemic rodents for a significant proportion of the animals in their diet. It has been argued that rodents from the family Capromyidae, various species of hutia, were managed and perhaps domesticated in the Caribbean. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Hammer. James M. Potter. Terry Knight. Lynn Hartman.

The Ute Mountain Reservation in the Four-corners region of the American Southwest contains some of the most spectacular and numerous prehistoric archaeological sites containing standing architecture in the country. Combining research and preservation efforts at these sites is a priority of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Historic Preservation Office. The West Mancos Project focused on three sites along the Mancos River containing the remnants of circular towers. Preservation and research efforts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Jenkins.

Recent research into the chronology and character of Western Stemmed Tradition occupations at the Paisley and Connley Caves provides new insight into the settlement-subsistence patterns and social organization of the period >13,000 to 9000 cal. BP. Human populations may have been larger, more social, and territorially constrained than previously envisioned. Long distance movement of obsidian artifacts across the landscape probably reflect brief population agglomerations (festivals) scheduled to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Reid. Franklin Foit, Jr..

Recent reviews of the radiocarbon record for Western Stemmed components on the Columbia Plateau suggest a post-Clovis age for this tradition. Controversies over the timing question are intensified by highly selective frames of references for mapping regional patterns of site distribution. Some sites are highlighted, other relevant sites ignored, and still others find their way into the debate through uncritical confirmation bias. This paper focuses on the latter confusion, examining the use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

The use of personal amulets appears to have been a common practice among northern hunting peoples of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Many of these amulets were intended to facilitate individual human relations with sea mammals. Cooperative whaling, however, required the development of an amulet that mediated group relations with prey. This paper describes a set of Alaska Eskimo whaling "charms" dated to the late 19th century and identified in museum collections from across the United States. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carly Ameen. Ardern Hulme-Beaman. Allowen Evin. Greger Larson. Keith Dobney.

Tooth crowding is one of several criteria used for the identification of domestic animals in archaeological contexts, and is used frequently in dog domestication studies to support claims of early Palaeolithic domesticates. Studies of crowding have varied in their quantitative approaches, and can be improved by more robust statistical testing and the incorporation of more specimens with secure wild or domestic identifications. Here we present a landmark-based method for analyzing tooth crowding,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Donner. Alejandro Arteaga Saucedo. Kaz van Dijk. Alexander Geurds.

The Proyecto Arqueológico Centro de Nicaragua (PACEN), directed by Alexander Geurds, has recently conducted archaeological research in Chontales, Central Nicaragua. The main focuses of the study include the identification of the different types of settlements, understanding site and mound morphologies, as well as re-defining the regional pottery sequence. Therefore, the authors of this paper carried out a systematic full-coverage high intensity survey of a 52 square kilometer area, a complete...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bianca Gentil.

This study aims to identify patterns of resilience by distinguishing diachronic socio-economic processes through the measurement of change and continuity of multi-level sites in the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley. This will be done via demographic, political, and economic markers during the Classic-Postclassic transition. This project focuses on identifying specific processes that lead towards socio-economic resilience during times of stress. Based upon surveys conducted in the 1960s and 70s, presented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandon McIntosh.

This paper documents the environmental conditions of the Tularosa Basin/Hueco Bolson during the Late Formative Period in the Jornada Mogollon Region of the U.S. Southwest by comparing stable carbon isotope values of black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus) from archaeological site LA 12361 to modern jackrabbits in southern New Mexico and west Texas. Recent research by Stephen Smith and his collaborators provides evidence that carbon isotope values of jackrabbit bone collagen produce an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries. John Morris.

A series of exploratory surveys along the northern edge of the Belize River Valley in the area of the Aguacate lagoon has gradually revealed a surprisingly dense distribution of minor centers of the Classic Period Maya. These centers are situated in a zone of intersections, the nature of which shaped their presence in the landscape. Politically, the region lies at an interstice between the spheres of influence of several powerful, well-known polities. Geographically, the site complex is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Flynn.

Archaic Period dwellings have largely gone unnoticed in New England due to poor preservation and thousands of years of bioturbation. However, a concentration of post molds, large and small pits, and fire hearths uncovered at the Halls Swamp Site in southeastern Massachusetts are attributes that characterize, and have been associated with, the few Native American semi-subterranean dwellings identified in New England. Recognizing structural attributes is essential for understanding Native American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kisha Supernant. Natasha Lyons.

Within the discipline of archaeology, we conventionally employ rational, science-based analyses to examine ancient cultures. Yet the lives of archaeological practitioners, contemporary descent communities, and the ancient peoples we study, are more than just minds and bodies. In this paper, we outline a framework for a heart-centered archaeological practice that draws from foundational literature on feminist, indigenous, and community-based archaeologies. We posit that a heart-centered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gwen Bakke. Karen Lupo.

The presence and abundance of cut marks in zooarchaeological assemblages are often used to infer carcass acquisition strategies, butchery patterns and the general availability of prey. In this paper we analyze cut mark data derived from three hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeological assemblages (East African Hadza, Central African Bofi and Aka and Paraguayan Aché) to investigate how well carcass-size and distribution of meat predict cut mark frequencies as measured by conventional measures such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kaplan.

In 1978 archaeologists partially excavated a frozen Middle Dorset Paleoeskimo midden on Avayalik Island, a far outer island at the tip of Labrador, Canada’s uninhabited northern coast. They recovered hundreds of organic artifacts unlike any found in Labrador’s other Middle Dorset sites, which contain only lithic tools. Faunal remains suggested a North Atlantic quite different from that of the present day. In 2016 Kaplan returned to Avayalik and documented the ongoing destruction of the site....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Lake.

In 1972 David Clarke argued that "models are pieces of machinery that relate observations to theoretical ideas." That "machinery" does not have to be computational, or even quantitative, but with the resurgence of interest in simulation, the adoption of methods from evolutionary biology and the development of more sophisticated spatial statistics, it is increasingly both. Many of the papers in this session are case studies that explore exactly the issue of how effectively we can use models to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Frederick. Meghan Howey.

Physical food storage is one mechanism hunter-gatherers use to even out the variability of subsistence resources throughout seasonal cycles. Food storage facilities are typically plain, undecorated constructions basic to mundane needs and as such, food storage features do not necessarily appear at first look as social technology, that is, as objects that extend personhood. However, we suggest food storage facilities, in ensuring the fundamental continuation of the human body, can never be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Summer Moore.

Anthropological discussions of gender and sexuality in colonial-era Polynesia have often focused on the introduction of Western clothing styles and the relationship between changing modes of dress and the negotiation of new social identities. Because clothing is highly perishable, however, there have been few opportunities to address this topic through the archaeological record. My paper presents an analysis of an exceptionally well-preserved collection of archaeological cloth from Nu‘alolo Kai,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Haines. Kerry Sagebiel.

Jade has been long recognized by archaeologists as an important trade item among ancient Mesoamerican cultures. This is particularly true for ancient Olmec and Maya cultures where it also is seen as an indicator of social status. Unfortunately, the precocious development of Olmec society, lead many early archaeologists to an over-emphasis of Olmec influence on the Maya during the Formative Period (ca. 1000-400 BC). This is particularly noteworthy in the attribution of jade "spoons" to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Saldana. Samantha Lorenz. Jocelyn Acosta. Marilyn Bueno.

The importance of subterranean space has been well established through studies of Maya sacred landscape. The Maya word "che’en" is used for any natural feature that penetrates the earth such as caves, cenotes, rock shelters, chultuns, sinkholes, springs and crevices, all spaces where the sacred nature of animate Earth are expressed. In the Three Rivers area of the southern Maya lowlands, non-cave Maya archaeologists appear to be at a loss on how to engage landscapes where sacred landmarks take...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Dye. Keith Jacobi. William DeVore.

Violence in the daily lives of individuals in late prehistoric eastern North America took many forms. Exposure to violence was pervasive and persistent. From the time you were born until the time you died you were a witness, a participant, and possibly a victim. In some instances death was a not release. In the Tennessee Valley of northern Alabama two Mississippian sites, Kogers Island (1LU92) and Perry (1LU25), demonstrate a range of evidence for interpolity violence. Familiar examples of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estelle Praet. Peter Eeckhout. Milton Lujan Dávila. Sylvie Byl.

Traditional accounts of the conquest of Peru are well known and universally accepted: in 1535, Francisco Pizarro – who had arrived two years earlier – decided to create a new capital in the neighbouring Rimac river valley, which would one day become the current city of Lima. In order to achieve this, Pizarro forcibly displaced all the contemporary inhabitants of Pachacamac, leaving this major Inka pilgrimage site completely abandoned. However, new finds recovered during the 2016 excavations at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Dolan.

Archaeologists often assume that Ancestral Pueblo groups in the North American Southwest built small one- to three-room structures to serve as temporary fieldhouse shelters for extracting agricultural resources during the farming season, and to minimize transportation to and from their larger villages. If fieldhouses were associated with agriculture, then they should be found near agriculturally productive fields. To determine if there is an association between agriculture and fieldhouses during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Riley.

Perched along the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau, the Tavaputs Plateau is best known among archaeologists for its interior canyons, including the incredible rock art in Nine Mile Canyon and the well-preserved Fremont communities located in Range Creek Canyon. Despite the greater water resources and arable land along the Book Cliffs escarpment of the plateau, it has received little professional attention. This research program focuses on a small segment along the Grassy Trail Creek, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoff Smith. Elisabeth Noack. Nina Maria Schlösser. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser. Radu Iovita.

Recent zooarchaeological and isotope analyses have largely settled the debate surrounding Neanderthal hunting capacity. The vast numbers of Middle Palaeolithic sites containing the butchered remains of large ungulates demonstrates the ability to obtain and, often, highly process these carcasses. Nevertheless, evidence for the effectiveness and ubiquity of Neanderthal hunting technology, specifically composite hafted tools, has not been illustrated across either their entire spatial or temporal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca L. Simon.

More often than not, cultural resources on private land experience development and/or intentional disturbance. Data from sites are often lost or compromised during these activities. Occasionally, landowners keep notes on material culture that may be passed on to archaeologists. Incorporation of these data is important to understanding the condition of the site and maximizing interpretations of the past. As Crow Canyon Archaeological Center embarks on a new multi-year research project, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Quiroz. Katherine Miller Wolf. Hannah Plumer. Yasser Musa.

Funding in small developing countries like Belize for archaeological research and post excavation curation remains one of our greatest challenges to preserving our tangible cultural heritage. The state of curation of human remains and artefact collections at St. John’s College in Belize City is a perfect example of what can go wrong when there is not established a properly funded and managed curation program both at the national level or the institutional level. This paper highlights the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Ringelstein.

A colonial archaeological assemblage from Santa Catalina Island, California contains both "traditional" native materials and substantial Euro-American trade goods. Archival sources and artifacts suggest that the native islanders, known as the Pimu Tongva people, opportunistically acquired trade goods from Euro-American seafarers for close to 300 years. Although the bulk of the trade items appear to be European in origin, recent insight suggests that some of the materials have associations with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Selene Yuridia Galindo Cumplido.

This paper presents an ethnographic account of the people of Quitovac, Sonoras yearly journey to the sea. The village is set amidst the Altar desert. Every year the people of this town take a trip to the Sea of Cortés and make the shore a very special place. I present this account from the perspective of communities of practice emphasizing how the activities they undertake are the result of a continual interaction between people and places and between the distinct actors present. I also take...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Parker. Christopher Parker. Brian Codding.

Research exploring the complex human decisions that lead to territoriality have largely focused on defensibility. Here we explore territoriality using an ecological and evolutionary model from behavioral ecology: the marginal value theorem (MVT). Based on the principal of diminishing returns, the MVT predicts that the utility of a plot of land will decrease with each additional plot, therefore people should defend an area only at a threshold when it becomes energetically beneficial within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Ozorio De Almeida.

One of the most insightful contributions recently put forward by Anthropology and Ethnoarchaeology is related to the concept of the "communities of practice". It is naturally connected to issues such as the relation between language and material culture, transmission, identity, persistence, structure as well as the limits of socially permitted restructuring of practices, and even the possible contingencies which might cause deep change and break the structure and, therefore, Tradition. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Gayo. Daniela Valenzuela. Isabel Cartagena. Calogero M. Santoro. Claudio Latorre.

There is a growing volume of literature arguing that camelids were a local resource for Prehispanic societies that inhabited the coastal and intermediate Andean valleys from Peru. Indeed, existing evidences show uninterrupted herding practices along the Peruvian lowlands (>2,000 masl) at 8°S-16.5°S during the interval 800 BC-1100 AD. Although camelids archeofaunal remains, textiles and iconographic representations are recurrent in low-elevation sites from the northernmost Chile (17°-19°S), the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Valenzuela. Bárbara Cases. Persis B. Clarkson. José M. Capriles. Victoria Castro.

Llamas were one of the most valued animals in the Andes. Their importance has transcended the subsistence sphere as they were not only used as a source of food but also served for medicinal and ritual purposes; their fiber was fundamental for manufacturing textiles, and they were a source of symbolism and "food" for thought and ideologies. Nevertheless, their use as pack animals in exchange caravans has been prominent, stimulating intense mobility and long distance traffic between diverse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Ballantyne.

This paper is inspired by consideration of how charred plant macrofossil assemblages relate to past human lives, as one component of the small artefactual debris on settlements. Cultural decisions regarding activity location, rhythm and ‘waste’ deposition mean there can be wide variation in the archaeological remains of an otherwise identical plant processing activity; this issue is common in archaeology as many classes of material, including plant assemblages, are understood with models from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Marla Toyne.

Traditional archaeological practice involves horizontal mapping and excavations of ancient settlements and cemeteries, but bioarchaeological research of mortuary practices in the Chachapoyas region of northeastern Peru is stymied by the challenging vertical slopes, almost constant rain, and the placement of burial structures on seemingly impossible to reach ledges on exposed rock escarpments. Exploring and registering archaeological vestiges of these cliff cemeteries requires the combination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Moreiras Reynaga. Jean-Francois Millaire. Fred J. Longstaffe.

We present preliminary interpretations of the residential patterns of Aztec sacrificial subjects from the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and the Templo R of Tlatelolco (present-day Mexico City) who died during the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1400–1519). The study uses oxygen isotope analysis of bioapatite phosphate to assess whether these individuals lived in the Valley of Mexico during the last years of their lives or were brought in from distant Aztec provinces. Tissues analyzed also include...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Knüsel.

In 1957, Christopher Hawkes (of the ladder of inference renown) wrote: "…. the most scientific and therefore the best, because the purest, kind of archaeology is the prehistoric kind, where individuals are nameless and unknown, and so cannot disturb our studies by throwing any of their proud and angry dust in our eyes."1 Because the social identity of the deceased cannot be identified from human remains without analysis, osteobiography, the bioarchaeological reconstruction of the lives and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christa Schieber De Lavarreda. Miguel Orrego.

Three decades of research at Tak’alik Ab’aj have repeatedly confirmed that this ancient site at the southwestern piedmont of Guatemala was an important link of the transcultural trade-network along the Pacific littoral of Mesoamerica. This presumes strong and functional interactions among the stronghold-players of this hanseatic system operating during a given timespan by means of a common shared concept proposed as "market of rituality", permeated in each case according their own local nature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Dillehay.

Interdisciplinary investigation of the large coastal mounds of Huaca Prieta and Paredones and their associated domestic settlements represent Preceramic human occupation as far back as ∼14000 cal BP. Research at these sites has documented a long Preceramic sequence from the activities of the first maritime/terrestrial foragers from the late Pleistocene to early Holocene to the construction of the mounds and the introduction and development of agriculture and monumentality from the middle to late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agni Prijatelj.

White bones in black caves: cave burials and social memory Caves have always been part of contemporary, living landscapes: as such, they have acted not only as natural, cultural, social, economic and ritual places, but also as political locales. One of the most recent, and contested, examples of this phenomenon in Slovenia is the use of karstic shafts as sites of post-war executions between May 1945 and January 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Such sites of mass executions are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Cox. Carolyn Boyd.

The prehistoric hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands created some of the most spectacular rock art of the ancient world. Perhaps the greatest of these masterpieces is the White Shaman mural. This presentation provides an introduction to our recently-published book The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative, which is one of the most comprehensive analyses of a rock art mural ever attempted. Drawing on twenty-five years of archaeological research and analysis, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. James Córdova. Mary E. Pye.

The caves of Cauadzidziqui and Techan offer contrasting views of how Olmec style appears in eastern Guerrero. Cauadzidziqui presents large-scale paintings of individuals with Olmec style symbols and objects plastered over what is believed to be local late Archaic paintings—essentially graffiti placed in a sacred locale along a primary route between the highlands and coast. The Cave of the Governors presents 3 or possibly 4 jaguar sculptures carved out of living rock, flanking the interior...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Van Gelder.

The study of finger flutings, lines drawn with fingers in the soft surfaces of cave walls and ceilings, allows for the identification of unique individuals within a cave’s context. In early years of research we were able to identify men, women, and children in some of the 15 caves which have been studied. These led to discoveries as to which individuals which were often found together in their movement through the caves. The intimacy of cave spaces with artists working side by side, sometimes in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ronald Faulseit. Jeremias Pink.

Dainzú, located in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, has a long history of religious-ceremonial significance. In the Classic Period (A.D. 200 – 900), the site expanded significantly from its once small core into an urban settlement covering around 4 km2. Our mapping project reveals that the new site construction was carefully planned out to represent a "cosmogram", or spatial representation of the ancient Zapotec ritual calendar. After the decline of Monte Albán, Dainzú was slowly abandoned as people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lance Pursey.

Recent insights into how urbanism and permanent settlements can function and be integrated into mobile societies has helped to overturn the notion that human societies ‘progress’ from mobile forms of production through irrigated agriculture to urbanism. Indeed the Liao Empire (907-1125CE) of Northeast Asia shows how these three modalities can coexist and be interdependent. City and kiln sites, standing architecture and tombs are distributed extensively through the former Liao territory, and yet...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Monson. Jeffrey Brzezinski.

Previous archaeological excavations in the lower Río Verde Valley in Oaxaca, Mexico have provided evidence for communal ceremonies since the Late Formative (400-150 BCE). The Terminal Formative (150 BCE-250 CE) period saw a continuation of communal ceremonies at hinterland sites along with the emergence of the region’s first polity, Río Viejo. The maintenance of these practices in the hinterland during the increasing urbanization occurring at Río Viejo suggests their importance in community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Simmons.

Why humans colonize unoccupied lands, such as islands, has always intrigued scholars. Over the past few decades, researchers working on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus have documented both a Late Epipaleolithic occupation and a more substantial early Neolithic colonization episode. The number of such sites remains limited, but is growing with continuing research. For the Neolithic, both Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and PPNB occupations are now well-documented, and are as early as mainland sites....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Nash. Ryan Williams.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Kocer.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer E. Lapp.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael E. Smith.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian McNiven. John Bradley.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen. Rachel Loehman.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agata Kostrzewa.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Györgyi Parditka.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Jamieson.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer French.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Alderson.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Chamberlin.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Everhart.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Inge Særheim.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Lazcano Arce. Marianne Sallum.

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