Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Kubicek. Patricia Richards.

Excavations at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 1991 and 1992 recovered 1649 individuals associated with Milwaukee County’s practice from the mid-1800s through 1974 of providing burial for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals sent from the Coroner’s Office, and community poor. In 2013, Historic Resource Management Services of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee recovered an additional 632 individual coffin burials representing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary De La Garza.

Sustainable accessible data storage is as important to archaeologists as tractors are to farmers. In 2001 the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist, (OSA), was archiving 20GB of data on a 100GB server. Sixteen years later the office is serving 32TB on several server systems and plans are in place to archive 60TB over the next 4 years. In addition to space needs the office must also make this data in its many forms accessible to outside entities. In the not so distant past archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Clarke.

The bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) has been cultivated for at least 10,000 years and was the only plant species cultivated in both the Old and New Worlds before Columbus; in this sense, it can be considered the world’s first global crop. Its durable fruit shells are used for containers, apparel and musical instruments throughout the tropics, subtropics and some temperate zones worldwide. Despite the importance of bottle gourd, its distribution across many cultures, and a long-standing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Eiring. Sarah Wigley. Cynthia Munoz. Raymond Mauldin.

We report on stone tool patterns derived from several recent archaeological excavation projects in Central Texas that provide a record of lithic use spanning most of the prehistoric sequence in the region. The projects, located within a few kilometers of one another, effectively sample debitage and tools reflecting Late Paleoindian, Early and Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, and the Terminal Late Prehistoric periods. Supported by several radiocarbon dates, these assemblages span roughly 10,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giancarlo Marcone. Bryan Nuñez. Nina Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the year 2014 as part of the Qhapaq Ñan project, a long-term intervention at the site of El Guarco in the coastal town of Cerro Azul was started. The project was thought from the beginning within the framework of collaborative archaeology and the relation with local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen O'Brien. Cristin Lucas.

This is an abstract from the "Community Matters: Enhancing Student Learning Opportunities through the Development of Community Partnerships" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nuri, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in northern Sudan is the primary burial site for the Nubian Pharaohs beginning with Taharqa of the 25th Dynasty. Thoroughly looted in antiquity, the site was excavated by George Reisner, Director of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Ebel. Christyann Darwent. Genevieve LeMoine. John Darwent.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in 2012 and 2016 at Iita, located along the North Water Polynya in NW Greenland, revealed unmixed stratified deposits extending from Late Dorset habitation over 1000 years ago through Thule-Inughuit occupation and Inughuit contact with Arctic explorers ca. 1850–1917. Iita is unique in that a large dovekie colony breeds in this area annually, thus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only AJ White. Lora Stevens. Varenka Lorenzi.

Determining the timing and magnitude of Cahokia’s demographic rise and fall is crucial to understanding the reasons for its advance and collapse. Fecal stanol biomarker analysis is an emergent geoarchaeological method that may provide a more direct record of Cahokia region population change than previous population estimates. This study analyzed sediment from Horseshoe Lake, Illinois for fecal stanol content to establish a population proxy of the Cahokia region. The stanol record indicates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vakhtang Licheli.

This is an abstract from the "The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The materials discovered at the Grakliani settlement and necropolis (Eastern Georgia) date from different periods and cover the stratigraphy presented below: 1. The Paleolithic Age with an upper Pleistocene paleontological site; 2. Neolithic; 3. Chalcolithic; 4....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Pintar. María Fernanda Rodríguez.

The earliest occupations in the Salt Puna —a high elevation desert in the Andes Mountains — date to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary and are relevant to the discussion of the timing of the first exploration and colonization of South American elevations above 3500m, as well as the relationship between mountain environments and other ecological areas. The wooden shafts used in the extractive technologies of the earliest hunter-gatherers originated outside the Puna, in the eastern lowlands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Ainsworth.

Petrified Forest National Park boasts an archaeological record spanning 13,000 years of human history with occupations dating from the Paleoindian, Archaic, Basketmaker II and III, Pueblo I –IV, and Historic periods. This remarkable depth and diversity of archaeological sites has long drawn the interest and attention of researchers. Yet the public remains largely uninformed about many of the park’s unique cultural resources. Recent undertakings in public archaeology at the park are beginning to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Rasic. Joshua Reuther. P. Gregory Hare. Robert J. Speakman.

The archaeological record of Eastern Beringia plays an important role in understanding global human dispersals and settlement, and is a proving ground for testing ideas about high latitude hunter-gatherer land use, technology, and socioeconomic interaction. Obsidian provenance studies provide an excellent means to address these issues. Since 2006 we have compiled, organized and generated new obsidian geochemical analyses for more than 11,000 artifacts from 1200 sites across Alaska and Yukon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich.

In the course of 13 field seasons, archaeologists have carried out 23 operations across the ruined city of El Perú-Waka’. During these investigations, excavators recovered upwards of a million ceramic sherds from a wide variety of contexts; palaces, pyramids, residences, sheet middens, construction fill, ritual deposits, spoil piles, termination deposits, votive deposits, surface collections, burials, caches, and tombs. The excavation contexts are good enough, the quality of preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Garth Norman.

Norman's latest "Izapa Sacred Space" book (2013; in English and Spanish) will be introduced, highlighting shared culture contacts near and far. Izapa popularity peaked at the end of 2012 and is being rekindled with the 13th baktun zenith sun (August 13) and new year (Sept 21) calendar monuments and applied technologies. New Izapa civilization discoveries in Preclassic Mesoamerican history have been examined with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) digital imaging technology recording of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Aldana.

In 2013, an innovative study applied Bayesian statistical analysis to new AMS 14C samples taken from a Classic Maya lintel originating at Tikal. Because the lintel was inscribed with a Maya Long Count date, the authors argued that the results of their study confirmed the Calendar Correlation Constant known as the GMT. There are, however, two key problems with this new study and its conclusions. The first is an error of interpretation of the hieroglyphic text; the second is the questionable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Aldana.

Bayesian Statistics has now demonstrated its strong utility in archaeology, specifically through software that conditions radiocarbon data. Only recently has this technology been applied within Maya archaeology, however, in part because the Mayan calendar provides a much greater resolution in dating archaeological events than is possible with radiocarbon data. The Long Count in particular allows for the assignment of some events relative to each other, accurate to the day. In this paper, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kolleen Kralick. Bridget Roth. Towny Anderson. Molly Westby.

Fire lookouts are symbolic within the US Forest Service. Following the devastating fires of 1910, early fire detection became a priority, and lookout towers began to be built throughout the country. Although technology has practically made lookouts obsolete as early fire warning systems, their historic significance and a powerful nostalgia makes them the ideal subject for a preservation initiative which focuses on restoration and celebration of these important icons. In 2013 the USFS, Forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Hirth. Sarah Imfeld. Colin Hirth.

Although merchants were an important component of the prehispanic and post-conquest landscape, not much is known about the internal organization of merchant groups and the structure of their respective communities. This paper examines the size, composition, and internal organization of the small merchant community of Santa Maria Acxotla located in the Puebla-Tlaxcala basin of highland Mexico. Census data collected 39 years after the conquest suggests that specialized merchant communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Borgens.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In May 1817, French privateer Louis-Michel Aury was at a crossroads. After disembarking filibusters on the northern coast of New Spain and reconnoitering a new camp location in Matagorda Bay, he returned to Galveston Island only to learn it had been usurped by the famed pirate Jean Lafitte. Aury retreated to Matagorda Bay with more than a dozen vessels and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saskia Ghosh.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster will analyze the architectural changes of an 18th-century defensive tower called a Torreon, located in Dixon, New Mexico—previously known as the buffer community Embudo. Acting as community protection against Plains Indians during Hispanic settlement in Northern New Mexico, the Torreon’s initial use as a defensive structure may be identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Anthony.

This research looks at the institutional desecration of graves at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds as overseen by Superintendent Ferdinand Bark, the reaction of the surrounding community to that disturbance, and the ensuing investigation. The paper also explores the relationship of this historical event to the evidence from the 1990s and 2013 archaeological excavations conducted at the location of the cemetery. The event will be viewed within the historical context in which it happened...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Rivera.

Co-organized by John V. Murra and Luis G. Lumbreras, this seminar was planned as an international and interdisciplinary study on the Lacustrine Kingdoms around the Titicaca basin (Lupaqa and Paqajes), and their interaction towards the western lowlands. Murra and Lumbreras were able to gather a group of leading Andeanists and students from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, and the U.S. who worked in the field for almost three months in Southern Peru, Northern Chile, and Bolivia. The Seminar,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Quintana Ortiz.

La Puntilla-Marina is a small peninsula located south of the walled city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and west of the docks. Through the 19th century a series of projects to develop the area, consisting on the construction of colonial government buildings such as the custom’s house, armory and a military battery, as well as warehouses and dwellings, were completed. Unfortunately, part of this ward was demolished in in the mid-20th century to give way to the construction of residential units, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Pelto.

The western Upper Peninsula of Michigan was home to many mining boom towns, similar to those associated more commonly with the American West. Clifton, the town site of the first profitable Copper Mine in Michigan, attracted workers of diverse ethnic backgrounds: Cornish, German, Irish, Native American, and African American. Michigan Technological University has conducted five seasons of field work at Clifton and the Cliff Mine, and has uncovered material remains that aid in the remembrance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Whitley. Michael Konzak. Bryan Mischke. Robert Watson. Paul Engel.

Geospatial analysts are now capable of developing increasingly accurate models of past and future ‘shorelines’ and the predicted impacts they might have on archaeological sites or cultural landscapes. But GIS alone cannot realistically simulate hydrodynamic effects, terrain displacements, or changes in vegetation communities, water bodies, and atmospheres. Funded by the NCPTT, this study combines GIS analysis of LiDAR terrain and bathymetric models with the photorealistic 3D modeling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Bey. Stephanie Simms. Betsy Kohut.

This paper examines the evidence for what and how the Maya of the Puuc region ate during the long history of occupation of this region. Data collected from almost two decades of research by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project and covering close to two millennium of occupation are used in this exploration of eating. Household archaeology primarily from the site of Kiuic and the suburban site of Stairway to Heaven, and ceramic data from throughout the BRAP study area provide insights...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Garrido. María Teresa Plaza. Soledad González.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern Atacama Desert boasts a long mining history that evolved within small-scale kinship groups. In the Cachiyuyo de Llampos mountains, most mines were consistently exploited sporadically over time, resulting in a settlement pattern characterized by scattered mining camps from the Formative period up to the 20th century. Despite the arrival of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerad Smith.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to interpret the spatial patterning of the Swan Point Locus 2 site, interpreted to be a seasonal residential site. The site, located on a hill overlooking a small northern tributary of the Tanana River, consists of several features in excellent preservation. The assemblage suggests a pattern of features and artifacts consistent with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Vaughn. Michiel Zegarra. Beth Grávalos.

This paper reports on the 2014 field season at Cerro Tortolita, a predominantly Early Intermediate Period (EIP) site in the Upper Ica Valley. While the site has been known archaeologically for at least four decades, no systematic investigation has ever been undertaken there. Our work documented the numerous sectors of the site and through vertical excavations established a preliminary chronology. We found that the site has an extensive ceremonial/ritual component including a U-shaped platform...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Munro.

The Cosma Archaeological Complex was first documented during a survey in the summer of 2013, outside of the small community of Cosma, Peru. Cosma is located 2600 M.A.S.L at the headwaters of the Nepeña river valley, in the Department of Ancash. This past season was the first to map and excavate within the site complex, which includes three Early Horizon temple mounds, a domestic area, and a hilltop fortress. The 2014 work focused on the main mound of Karecoto, a multistoried ceremonial mound,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Meer. J. Ryan Young. D. Shane Miller. Albert C. Goodyear.

In 1984, Goodyear and Charles conducted a survey of an area adjacent to the Savannah River encompassing the Allendale Chert quarries, which includes the multi-component Topper Site (38AL23) in Allendale County, South Carolina. During the summer of 2015, Mississippi State University revisited a 102-acre area included in this survey. The survey revealed a near continuous scatter of lithic debitage throughout the project area, at varying depths across different geomorphological settings....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Neyland. Alexis Catsambis.

The Sunken Military Craft Act (SMCA) was enacted on October 28, 2004. The SMCA preserves and protects from disturbance all sunken military craft owned by the U.S. government, as well as foreign sunken military craft submerged or buried in the seabed within U.S. territorial waters. The Navy's sunken ship and aircraft wrecks remain U.S. property regardless of their location in U.S, international, or foreign waters. Ownership is not changed by the passage of time. These wrecks may not be disturbed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shaelyn Rice. Geoffrey McCafferty. Sharisse McCafferty. Dieuwertje van Boekel.

Expanding on prior field seasons, the 2016 field school at El Rayo, with the support of the Institute for Field Research, continued the exploration of the unique Bagaces to Sapoa transition period site, located on the Asese Peninsula, Lake Nicaragua. This season focused of the excavation of four loci, continuing to explore previous questions regarding cultural activities in Pacific Nicaragua. Loci 2 and 4, which had been studied in previous field seasons were expanded, while new Loci 6 and 7...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Graf. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel.

In 2013 our team began a 3-year testing project to assess the research potential of the recently-discovered McDonald Creek archaeological site (FAI-2043). The site is located in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska south of Fairbanks. Site testing indicated a well-stratified and reasonably preserved multicomponent site situated in unconsolidated eolian sand and silt deposits atop an ancient alluvial landform. Three cultural components have been identified so far, dating to the early Allerød,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza.

Pan de Azúcar de Nivín is located 23km east to the city of Casma, in the small town of Nivín, at the right margin of the Casma River Valley in the Department of Ancash, Peru. In June and July 2017, a team of archaeologists from Louisiana State University carried out mapping and excavation operations at this important archaeological complex. Through limited excavations, architectural mapping, surface collection and the analysis of associated materials, the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordin Muller. Shannon Boomgarden. Brendan Ermish.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through excavation methods the staff and students of the Range Creek Field Station looked to explore an indentation formation in a section of Range Creek known as the Cove. The hope was to uncover and explore the possibility of potential precontract irrigation systems. It is known that historic farmers would take advantage of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Ahlman. Ashley McKeown. Nicholas Herrmann. Fred van Keulen.

This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The second year of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Exploring Globalization through Archaeology project included archaeological investigations of the sugar works site (SE095), bioarchaeological investigations of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Wolf.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Remotely sensed lidar data has proven to be a boon for Maya archaeology, from its beginnings at Caracol in Belize, Copan in Honduras, to consortiums of various archaeological projects like Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, La Corona, Holmul, and elsewhere. In a relatively simple regiment of sensing, detailed cartographic maps can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Wynia. Devin Martin. Douglas Wilson.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Public Archaeology Field School at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, in Vancouver, Washington, is a long-standing partnership between Portland State University, Washington State University Vancouver, and the National Park Service. The program teaches archaeological field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Wardle.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jalieza is an important archaeological site in the Valley of Oaxaca that was founded during the Early Classic (AD 200-500). It is an especially useful case study for understanding how and why the Zapotec state fragmented. Previous excavations at the earliest sector of Jalieza, a hilltop called Cerro Danilín, suggested that the site may have resisted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Munro.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the Cosma Archaeological Complex, located in north-central Peru, have revealed a potential missing link, both temporally and geographically, in understanding the origins of corporate labor and the construction of public monuments associated with the Late Preceramic period. A suite of radiometric dates at two temple mounds with Kotosh-Mito...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Robb.

The mountains of southern Calabria above 1400 m were used throughout prehistory and history, but except for an attempt to found highland agricultural settlements in the Greek period, they were always used for special purposes rather than as primary centres of habitation. The 20th century saw a massive transformation in land use, with intensive state investment in creating new kinds of mountain landscapes dedicated to special purposes. These purposes included political control, economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Pitblado.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 1999 to 2013, members of the Rocky Mountain Paleoindian Research Program (RMPRP) conducted extensive survey and numerous test excavations of very ancient sites in the Gunnison Basin, southwestern Colorado. During that period, researchers learned much about the timing of initial human use of the Basin and how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Melcher.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute began making extensive use of digital technology to aid in archaeological research. The past 25 years of research have left a plethora of data on a variety of digital media. Current work on developing a new interpretive plan for downtown Pensacola, Florida made it necessary to update and combine as much of this data as possible. Updating this information required the use of a variety of hardware and software...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Carroll.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGRA) became law on November 16, 1990, requiring Federal agencies and museums to repatriate Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. During the 25 years since its enactment, the National Park Service (NPS) has been responsible for both implementation of the Act and compliance with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Wichlacz.

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This work tests the feasibility of using 2D geometric morphometric analyses of archival vessel profiles to reevaluate vessel form classifications from Pueblo Grande in order to aid in asking new questions of the dataset. Two-dimensional profile drawings of whole and reconstructible ceramic vessels were routinely made during archaeological projects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kea Warren.

Among the artifacts found at the site of Calixtlahuaca, excavations recovered an unusually large quantity of sherd disks. Calixtlahuaca is an Aztec Postclassic (AD 1130-1530) site located in the Toluca Valley of Central Mexico. These sherd disks, or tejos, were created from bowls and pots broken during antiquity. The potsherds were worked until they were circular in shape. Other researchers have suggested potential uses for these worked sherds, including gaming tokens (for the game patolli), net...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Stromberg.

Grass-dominated ecosystems occupy >40% of Earth’s land surface today. Documenting when this prominent biome emerged was traditionally hampered by the rarity of identifiable grass fossils. Recently, phytoliths have emerged as a vital tool for tracking the evolutionary history of grasslands. Key to understanding ancient grassland composition is studying the 3-D morphology of silica grass short cell (GSSC) phytoliths. GSSCs have long been known as broadly diagnostic within grasses, but a landmark...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carey Baxter. Michael Hargrave. George Calfas. Samuel Vance. Andrew Hamblin.

Archaeologists managing cultural resources on military installations have increasing opportunities to leverage unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), LiDAR, ground-based 3-D scanning, near-surface geophysics, and other remote sensing methods into their Cultural Resource Management (CRM) practices. These techniques are being integrated into CRM work under controlled conditions where adequate time and technical expertise is available. Military archaeologists are also developing Cultural Property...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gutoski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I have been searching for the photographs and tracings made by J. Louis Giddings in June 1940 as reported in the American Antiquity, Vol. 7, No. 1 (July 1941) since I was an undergraduate student in anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in 1992. When entering the program for my master’s degree in the 2000’s I had to content myself that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Stratton. Michael McIntyre.

The National Register (NR) Criteria are supposed to assist in defining the significance of a cultural resource - bringing some order to chaos. But whose interpretation of significance? Were the criteria based on the agreement of culturally diverse individuals? Or the result of those that felt we needed to show some resources are better than others, using an objective checklist approach. Either it can answer "important" research questions or not. Either George Washington slept here or he...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late-nineteenth century, Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marimar Becerra Alvarez.

La arquitectura es una forma de expresión cultural producto de la abstracción humana, a través de ella el hombre materializa ciertas ideas y va modificando su entorno para construir paisajes que son determinados por los procesos históricos y que responden a sus necesidades funcionales, prácticas y estéticas. En la zona costera de la Sierra de Santa Marta se tiene el registro de pequeñas estructuras arquitectónicas superficiales de forma circular asociadas a los sitios portuarios de la costa. En...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Efrain Ocasio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Named the most valuable shipwreck to be recovered, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha was part of the Spanish Tierra Firme fleet bound for Spain in 1622 until a severe hurricane sank the vessel off the Florida Keys. In 1985, treasure hunter Mel Fisher and a crew of salvage divers uncovered the main hull of the Atocha along with a vast number of valuables. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolina Guedes.

The use of digital photogrammetry and 3D scanning as tools for archaeological heritage record, analysis and dissemination has increased markedly in recent years. Using these technologies a post-doctoral project is currently in progress at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE) of São Paulo University, Brazil with the scope to document, record and analyse the animal stone figurines collection at the Museum. The objects are threefold: 1) to use photogrammetry and 3D scanner technologies to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dirk Rieke-Zapp. Elisabeth Trinkl.

Several hundred attic head vases are known worldwide and stored in museums and collections. In 1929, Beazley has categorized twenty groups based on stylistic properties and historic methodology. Head vases are assembled in several steps, most important for our comparison is the moulding of the head area. Since moulds were used to shape the heads, our initial hypothesis was to perform a quantitative comparison of head shapes based on digital scan data. Comparison of scan data is straight forward...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jurgen Schulze. Connor Smith. Philip Weber. Thomas DeFanti. Thomas E. Levy.

We created a walk-up virtual reality system consisting of six large 3D TV displays with 4k resolution, for easy dissemination of spatial and three-dimensional archaeological findings. We call this system the CAVE Kiosk. The system has been placed in the campus library to make it easily accessible to the entire campus community. We currently support three types of data: regular photographs, high resolution panoramic stereo photographs, point clouds such as from LIDAR scanners, and 3D models such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Neville. Tiffany Birakis.

Three-dimensional digitization technology is opening up a new world of opportunities for the analysis and manipulation of artifacts without the risk of extraneous handling of the original, which could compromise preservation. This poster examines the practice of digital scanning on a collection of Mesoamerican spindle whorls at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, Florida, discussing the hardware and software used for digitization, as well as the process of creating accurate three-dimensional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Faithleigh Podzimek. Ben Kreimer. Phil Geib.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our research involves creating and analyzing a 3D model of an inaccessible petroglyph panel in southeastern Utah. The rock art panel occupies the cliff face of an alcove approximately 10–30 m above the modern ground surface. Such heights make documentation difficult; this lofty position likely caused the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carey Baxter. Anthony White.

This is an abstract from the "Application of Geophysical Techniques to Military Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The United States Army Corp of Engineers, Engineer Research Development Center, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL) is home to one of the largest cultural resources research teams in the DoD. In recent years our team has assisted the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolina Gonzalez. Jake Harris. Curtis Marean. Daniel Joyce. Erik Otárola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently, an alarming number of plants and animals are on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss caused by human activities and climate change. Though numerically unprecedented, this may not be the first instance of a human-driven mass extinction. For decades, scholars have hypothesized that human predation led to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lila Jones. Eileen Johnson.

Whiskey Flats, an archaeological site on the Llano Estacado (western Texas), is dated to the mid-18th century and represents Comanche occupation. Ongoing fieldwork has produced a vertebrate assemblage that includes coyote (Canis latrans) and a larger canid (Canis spp.) of a species that remains undetermined. The species of canids that may have been present at the time of deposition are grey wolf (C. lupus), coyote, domestic dog (C. lupus familiaris), and possibly red wolf (C. rufus). The Canis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren Davis. Alex Nyers. Daniel Bean.

We describe a digital 3D geometric morphometry approach that employs GIS-based routines to extract information about the form of Western Stemmed Tradition projectile points from sites located in the Columbia River Plateau of the Pacific Northwest. These data are used to describe a number of novel morphometric measures and to compare the design characteristics of regional early stemmed projectile points. We explore issues of artifact use, rejuvenation and repair and how these aspects can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuqi Li.

Most archaeologists would agree that ancient irrigation systems preserve important information about the technology, economy, and social organization of past societies. However, considering that archaeologists generally lack training in hydraulics, it is often difficult for us to extract much information from an ancient irrigation system beyond basic description and chronology. Thanks to the recent development in drone technology and flow modeling techniques we now have the option of generating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Begley.

Ancient eastern Honduran populations utilized foreign symbols in limited elite contexts, such as site planning and architecture, but most elements of material culture reflect clear connections to Lower Central America. Iconography seen in petroglyphs appears significantly different from that seen in other media, and may yield additional information and insights into identity formation and interactions within the region. For many reasons, these petroglyphs have not been extensively studied. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Nash. Nina Neptune. Devyn Cabral. Emily Demers. Ellen Spensley Moriarty.

This is an abstract from the "Capturing and Sharing Vermont’s Past: 3D Imaging as a Tool for Undergraduate Research and Community Engagement" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2019, the Castleton Hidden History Project has conducted excavations around Granger House, a nineteenth-century home on the campus of Vermont State University-Castleton that will become a local history museum. Ongoing interdisciplinary work centers on investigating the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Waters. John Vandergugten. Gavin Donathan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology is of great public interest, but a lack of approachable academic and popular materials may deter public engagement with our field and our research, meaning archaeologists must develop innovative means of communication. It is also vital that we make our work more accessible to local community members, whose history we are often excavating. Digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Richards-Rissetto. Michael Auer. Jennifer von Schwerin. Nicolas Billen.

From the early 5th to early 9th centuries, a dynasty of sixteen kings ruled at the ancient Maya site of Copan, Honduras. In the mid-7thth century, Chan Imix K'awiil or Ruler 12, is believed to be the first of Copan’s rulers to erect stelae outside the city’s main civic-ceremonial group. Why did he do this? Did these stelae exist as solar markers? Did they serve as territorial markers? Or, were they part of a communication system? Scholars have set forth these and other hypotheses, to explain the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Burns. Beau Kromberg.

The measurement of platform angles on lithic flakes by hand is notoriously difficult, and is plagued by intra- and inter-observer variability. The measurement method proposed in this poster uses 3D models of flakes loaded into Blender, a free open-source 3D design program. After identifying the platform, two points (a) and (b) are defined at the intersections of the left and right lateral margins and the platform. A line (a-b) is drawn between these two points, ignoring any platform roundedness...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Fehrenbach. Ben Hammer.

Aerial photography with unmanned aerial systems (UASs), 3D modeling through photogrammetry, and the development of virtual reality environments are methods that are taking root within the discipline of archaeology. Developments in hardware and software over the past several years have led greater numbers of archaeologists to adopt these methods with more diverse applications. PaleoWest Archaeology, working under contract with our partners at PacArctic for Naval Facilities Engineering Command...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisabeth Hyde.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photogrammetry and 3D Modeling are tools that are greatly underutilized in excavation. Yet, they are very helpful to archaeologists. There are both drawbacks and benefits to using 3D modeling. However, this study of features in southeastern Utah shows that the positives outweigh the negatives. Although they can be tricky and time consuming to generate,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Love. Andrew Vaughan.

Artifact collections and skeletal remains curated in multiple facilities and stored in variable conditions across the globe contain a wealth of archaeological knowledge. Access to data about these collections, much less the collections themselves, can be restricted both by policy concerns and practical considerations. Recent technological advancements have made creating high quality digital representations of both artifact and skeletal material possible. In this paper we compare two methods of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Van Alstyne.

On the Shivwits Plateau, there is scarce information concerning how the Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan people constructed their pueblos. This is a result of post-depositional processes that have destroyed much of the building materials. To overcome this hurdle, 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) is allowing archaeologists to reconstruct these ancient structures digitally. These digital 3D models output volumetric data that are used to estimate material quantities, labor investments, and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower. Kathleen M. O'Meara. Ioana A. Dumitru. Clara J. Hickman. Jacob L. Bongers.

Three-Dimensional modeling is rapidly transforming reconstruction, visualization and conceptualization of ancient architecture. Many archaeologists are enthusiastic about 3D modeling and implementation of 3D methodologies has been rapid; others remain skeptical that the outcomes of 3D modeling justify the time and resources expended. This paper considers the strengths, weaknesses, and future prospects of 3D models. We discuss results of two projects that used photogrammetry and advanced GPS to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation consists of video demonstrations with live commentary in which the author describes how to create 3D models of small ceramic artifacts using structure-from-motion photography (photogrammetry). In particular, the focus will be on troubleshooting common issues that arise during model generation of sherds and fragmentary and complete...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leszek Pawlowicz.

This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 3D photogrammetry, creating digital 3D models using multiple photographs, has become a popular tool for documenting, analyzing and sharing archaeological artifacts and sites. In some cases, though, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) can be a useful...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Waber.

Digital photogrammetry is fast becoming a popular method for 3D landscape, feature, and object modelling. The ease with which photogrammetrically-derived models may be analyzed with conventional GIS software has streamlined archaeological landscape analysis. These same tools are eminently scaleable, facilitating comparable analyses of much smaller surfaces: those of lithic artifacts. Using 3D digital photogrammetry and GIS software, I propose a method to locate, define, and quantify edge damage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan Simek. Stephen Alvarez. Alan Cressler. Jordan Schafer.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The production of 3D models with photogrammetry has seen some recent application in rock art studies as a means of documenting sites and presenting them to the public. However, the use of photogrammetric models as data sources for discovery and analysis has received little attention. In this paper, we present work at 19th...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Kraus.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 3D printing and scanning technologies may have progressed to a level where the interested public can start to affordably engage with agency archaeologists and artifacts in a new way. Simple 3D scanning applications for smartphones now allow for rendering print files of small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Garnett.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Computer controlled additive manufacturing (3D printing) shows great potential for experimental archaeology, particularly lithics experimentation. As demonstrated by pioneering works in the current literature, 3D models of lithic artifacts can be printed to enable mold making and replication in porcelain, with far lower labor investment than through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card. Salem Arvin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The primary serving vessel at the sixteenth-century Spanish colonial site of Ciudad Vieja, El Salvador, is an indigenously produced brimmed plate made in the form of Italianate majolica. These vessels were produced in a Mesoamerican technological tradition and were painted with a modified version of designs found on pre-Hispanic Pipil pottery in southeastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Sullivan.

The integration of GIS and 3D modeling now allows for the recreation and visualization of entire ancient landscapes. 3D Saqqara uses these capabilities to create a truly four-dimensional exploration of the cemetery of Saqqara, Egypt. The project offers a workflow for how 2D archaeological and architectural data can be transformed into 3D representations of the ancient built and natural environment, while maintaining the geo-spatial coordinate system of GIS and allowing for both quantitative and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Golubiewski-Davis.

As 3D scanning is integrated into the archaeological tool kit, more objects are being captured using a variety of scanning methods and specific scanners. This poster explores how laser scanning, white light scanning, and photogrammetry compare across the Next Engine, Breukmann (300mm and 90mm lenses), David SLS-2 (30mm and 60mm pattern sizes), and photogrammetry (compiled with Agisoft Photoscan) using a Gauge Repeatability and Reliabity test. Five objects were scanned five times using each of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

Cave archaeologists around the world are increasingly utilizing many new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork, including digital imaging and scanning technologies. In this presentation I demonstrate a portable and cost-effective approach to digital imaging of parietal art. To this end, I used an Occipital Structure Sensor 3D scanner, mounted on an iPhone 6, to document various monumental modified speleothem sculptures in the subterranean realm of the ancient Maya of Belize,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andreana Cunningham.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Facial approximation is a salient tool in archaeology that aims to estimate the likeness of past peoples based on historic, anatomical, and artistic evidence. This project used an iterative and community-oriented approach to 2D manual facial approximation for three decedents buried at Rupert’s Valley Burial Ground in St. Helena. Rupert’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Koller.

This paper explores the organizational impact of Spanish contact on the island of Luzon, Philippines from the 15th-19th centuries through an analysis of sound landscapes (soundscapes) that are produced by the habitual ringing of Catholic Church bells. Church bells in Luzon were intended to notify local residents of prayer congregation or of impending ‘Moro’ attacks; however the bells were also Spanish territorial markers that flaunted power and demanded the attention of residents living within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Vizcarra. Amanda Zetz. Marisol Cortes-Rincon, Ph.D.. Raylene Borrego. Kristen Harrison.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of digital technologies and the use of advanced photogrammetry programs for modeling archaeological excavations and sites have opened new possibilities for spatial analysis in archaeology and the reconstruction of archaeological contexts. Among its main objectives, the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeology Project investigates the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Campbell. Ismael Martínez.

Islands are territories that allow us to assess phenomena and processes in a way that is impossible to do in the mainland. One of these concerns the human interaction with animals that are usually considered as wild. The case of Mocha Island (Chile; South Pacific, 38,36°S) is remarkable because of its small size (50 km2), proximity to the mainland (30 km), three different and independent human occupation events, and an endemic terrestrial fauna constituted only by small reptiles, amphibians,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Flexner.

A mounded landscape in south Vanuatu provides archaeological evidence relating to chiefly performance, voyaging, and ritual transformation during a period of cross-cultural contacts spanning 400 years or more. The site of Kwaraka is located at the southern end of Tanna Island. The area has a view on clear days of the neighbouring islands Futuna and Aniwa, and there is ethnohistoric evidence of long-term patterns of interaction between Tannese people and the people of these nearby islands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sahra Talamo. Wioletta Nowaczewska. Andrea Picin. Adam Nadachowski. Jean-Jacques Hublin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It may be a cliché to say that art is a form of symbolic behavior and modern cognition as old as humankind itself. In Europe, recurring evidence of body decoration and artistic expression is associated with the emergence of cultural innovations introduced by Homo sapiens in the Upper Paleolithic. Thus far, the earliest manipulation of animal teeth to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Karberg.

As part of the work undertaken as part of the rehabilitation of the historic Federal Office Building at 50 United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, the US General Services Administration uncovered some of the remaining foundations for San Francisco’s old City Hall, which was destroyed in the earthquake of 1906. These foundations represent the easternmost extent of the city hall, which had not been previously documented. Previous work on the rehabilitation project had turned up artifacts that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Carney. Naomi Scher. Shannon Tushingham.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food security is fundamental to strong, resilient food systems, and healthy communities. It exists when all people have consistent access to nutritious and culturally appropriate foods, gathered and distributed in socially acceptable ways. Archaeology offers a means of documenting and understanding deep time histories and legacies of food...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marina Lemly. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaic people and Classic Period Maya played important roles in shaping their environments. Through early deforestation and later agricultural erosion humans have modified the world they lived in. This study aims to show the role the Maya had in the environmental change in their region. We report results of analysis of a 5,500-year-long profiles soil from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jade DAlpoim Guedes. R. Kyle Bocinsky. Sturt Manning.

The timing and mechanics of the spread of agriculture to the Tibetan Plateau—one of the most challenging environmental contexts on Earth—is a focus of recent work and debate. In research on the spread of agriculture, researchers have sought evidence for the earliest, furthest or highest occurrences of diagnostic elements. However, the case of the Tibetan Plateau illustrates a key flaw in current work: archaeologists have often uncritically interpreted the presence of plant domesticates at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Morrison.

Tropical environments vary significantly in terms of rainfall and seasonality; these differences make a difference in the kinds of land use strategies that work over the long term. This paper reviews some of the opportunities and constraints of tropical environments in South Asia, considering the range of land use practices deployed over the last 6,000 years in this region. I argue that some practices which could be called sustainable also come at a high cost in terms of human dignity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Boles. William Iseminger. Lori Belknap.

This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Guth dugout is named for the finder Matt Guth, who found the dugout on a sandbar in a meander portion of the St. Francois River in 2008. The dugout was exposed after floodwaters receded and due to the find location, Guth was determined to be the rightful owner. The dugout was over 6 m long and in remarkable shape given its age. In 2009, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah McDaniel. Michelle Stegner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1943, 75,000 US military troops descended on the small town of Bend in central Oregon to engage in a corps-on-corps training exercise in preparation for overseas battle. The Oregon Maneuver consisted of eight mock battles, or “problems,” that pitted Red Force against Blue Force teams—including infantry, engineers, tank battalions, and air...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Blaber.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1977 Drs. Chester DePratter and David Hurst Thomas began a complete perimeter survey of St. Catherines Island. In their initial survey they identified more than 100 new archaeological sites that were either visible on the surface or eroding out of the bank of the island. Many of these sites were not investigated again until January 2017 when archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Tremblay. Daniel E. Ehrlich.

During excavation, it is often safer to record areas separately and later identify associations between strata across a site. Such practice waits until detailed analyses can be conducted and avoids erroneously comparing material from separate depositions. However, the process can lead to more identified strata than are truly present. This project considered relative frequencies of pottery fabrics as a multivariate dataset to characterize and analyze site formation at the Lower Town site of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seren Griffiths. Erick Robinson. Philip Buckland. Ralph Fyfe. Kevan Edinborough.

The 8.2ka ’event’ is represented by significant cooling in multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental records (e.g. Alley et al. 1997; Kobashi et al. 2007; Thomas et al. 2007; cf. Wiersma 2008). This temperature drop, and its related consequences, have been presented as factors in human social changes across Europe and the Near East (e.g. Roberts et al. 2011; van der Plicht et al. 2011). However, given the complexity of regional and local ecosystems, the impacts across broad geographical scales were likely...