Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Huggett.

Computing devices have been increasingly used by archaeologists since the 1950s, their adoption accelerating significantly since the 1980s with the availability of personal computers. What is the nature of this changing relationship and what are the implications for archaeology (and computing)? These questions will be addressed through the metaphor of the interface. We are accustomed to the textual and graphical user interfaces as a means of negotiation between archaeologist and computer, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Peterson.

Archaeology, as a science, has a long history, not all of which has been ideal. Archaeologists in one generation are routinely dismayed with the work of previous generations of archaeologists. Sometimes this less than satisfactory work is due to a lack of knowledge at the time, as we learn more with each new technological advancement, and with each new generation of archaeologists. However, more often than we would like, these flaws in past archaeological work are due to apathy or negligence. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hillary Kiazyk.

The recent incorporation of 3D imaging into the field of archaeology has opened many doors with regards to accessibility of archaeological materials. While this promotes research by inviting a much broader research discussion, it also poses questions of ownership of materials. This poster will explore new ways that archaeologists, descendant communities and people of the general public are now interacting with archaeological materials as well as some of the challenges, benefits and problems...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart. Marcello Canuto. Tomas Barrientos.

The integrated program of epigraphic and archaeological research at La Corona, Guatemala aims to document, analyze and understand the development of this highly unusual Maya center during of the Classic period. Known as Saknikte’ in ancient texts, La Corona served as the locus of a small court with its own dynastic history and exhibiting close and long-lasting familial and political ties with the far larger Kaanul or “Snake” kingdom centered at Dzibanche and Calakmul. Architectural excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aryn Schriner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Established to document, preserve, and share the rich heritage of the miners and mining families that once populated Eckley Miners’ Village in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Eckley Miners’ Village Museum currently plays a pivotal role in the commemoration of anthracite mining heritage. A cell phone tour is one method the museum uses to educate the public...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Yaeger. M. Kathryn Brown.

One hallmark of Joseph Ball’s research has been integration of archaeological data and ethnohistorical and historical data, put to the service of addressing larger anthropological questions. In this paper, we present new data to examine one research question studied by Joseph Ball and Jennifer Taschek: Classic Maya political dynamics in the Mopan Valley of western Belize. This valley was home to five large centers, spaced 1 to 5 km apart: Las Ruinas de Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamara Bray.

The incorporation of signs and symbols derived from an ancient, indigenous past has a long and venerable history in the tradition of New World muralism. As an important form of public art, murals merit a more sustained consideration of content, context, and communicative intent. The use of specific, realistic archaeological content in contemporary works is an interesting phenomenon that underscores the relation between the politics of identity (re-)construction and historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anneli Ekblom. Michel Notelid.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in Mozambique: Current Issues and Topics in Archaeology and Heritage Management" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over a period of several years (from 2003 to 2018), we carried out interviews on local history in combination with archaeological surveys, vegetation studies, and livelihood assessments in several villages in Limpopo National Park (LNP), southern Mozambique. We present the results of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torben Rick.

While debate continues about when the Anthropocene began, many researchers have shifted focus away from questions about the onset of the Anthropocene to questions of why, how, and what next? Museums are poised to play an important role in societal and scientific conversations about the pressing issues of the Anthropocene and how best to move forward in the age of humans. Building on a variety of ongoing efforts, I discuss the role of museum based archaeological research, collections, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge De Juan Ares. Yasmina Cáceres Gutierrez.

The geographical location of Cape Verde islands made them one of most important places in early Portuguese exploration of African coast. The first European settlers were favoured by the Portuguese monarchy in the relations with African coast. Since 1472, they were forced to carry out exchange with local goods. This encouraged the development of cotton and sugarcane crops with slaves from the "Guinea Rivers", as was common in other Atlantic islands and the American colonies. The excavations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Marek-Martinez.

For many Native American tribes, archaeology has been a tool used to dismantle and displace tribal narratives of the past. However, with the development of such approaches as Indigenous archaeology and community based participatory approaches, innovative collaborative projects have emerged, which have changed the way tribes view archaeology and how they engage with archaeological practice. My experiences working with Navajo communities have changed my approach and assumptions when engaging with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Thomin.

In 2014 the Florida Public Archaeology Network began producing a webisode series titled "Archaeologyin3 Minutes." These three-minute videos are designed to highlight archaeology in the state of Florida and feature the research of faculty and students at the University of West Florida. In 2015 one of these videos was awarded First Place Winner and People’s Choice Award for the Video Category in the Archaeological Photo and Video Festival Competition hosted by the Society of Historical Archaeology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Piccini.

Ruth Tringham belongs to a small group of archaeologists who engage seriously with the media practices through which archaeology disciplines itself. She has tirelessly worked to place audio-visual media – from film to networked media – at the heart of how we think about and do archaeology. In a 2009 paper about the UC Berkeley Archaeological Film Database, Tringham sought to move debate beyond reductive critiques of archaeological accuracy to explore how it is that we watch films about the past,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Soler-Arechalde. Cecilia Caballero-Miranda. Ma Carmen Osorio. Itzayana Bernal.

Archaeomagnetism is a dating technique whose application has been rising. This technique originally required burned materials, but in certain Mexican archaeological sites, volcanic products with magnetic minerals were added to the stucco mix, enhancing the geomagnetic field record and allowing us to determine it in non-burned samples. Thanks to this the number of dating events increased, improving the detail of the chronologies; a clear example of this happened in Teopancazco's neighborhood. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby A. Jones. Eric Blinman. Jon Lohse. J. Royce Cox.

This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Directional archaeomagnetic techniques were used to propose use-history models for two burned rock features at archaeological site 41AN162, in Anderson County, Texas, USA. While common in the region, such burned rock features are rarely associated with cultural artifacts that indicate their function. Archaeologists have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Soler-Arechalde. Laura Beramendi-Orosco. Galia González-Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results of three sampling stages carried out in Xalla, a neighborhood with the Teotihuacan government offices under the direction of Dr. Manzanilla in 2001, 2003, and 2012 are presented. A total of 28 archaeomagnetic samples were taken and processed in the Laboratory of Paleomagnetism of the UNAM....

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Deaver. Mark Chenault.

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present an overview of changes during the Hohokam Classic period relative to the platform mound developmental sequence as documented during the 1968 and 1984 excavations at Las Colinas Mound 8 and the 1973 excavations at Escalante Ruin Group. Using the archaeomagnetic data collected from Las Colinas Mound...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Francisco Sanchez Guerrero. Blanca Maldonado. David Larreina. Luis Velázquez. Fernando May.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the characterization of technological processes used for producing copper at the archaeological site of Jicalán Viejo, Michoacán, in Western Mexico, which includes both prehispanic and colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nigel Chang.

Recent excavations have shown that mining for copper ore in upland Savannakhet Province, south-central Laos, began at least 2500 years ago. We suspect that it may have begun even earlier. This paper considers who might have been living in this area prior to the introduction of mining and smelting technology and how the relationship between these prior occupants and their environment might have changed with this new technology. The scale and nature of the impact would have differed, depending on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Gjesfjeld.

Traditional archaeological analysis of pottery remains in East Asia has often emphasized macroscopic features of pottery including decoration, vessel form and paste composition. While these features are important in characterizing the cultural and technological aspects of pottery, microscopic and archaeometric analyses have the potential for enhancing traditional pottery research in this region by developing novel insights into social processes such as the transmission of information and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Eeckhout. Kusi Colonna-Preti.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2014 to 2018, we excavated Building B15, a small temple decorated with mural paintings at the archaeological site of Pachacamac. These are the first paintings discovered on the site since 1938. On the walls, as on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reyna Solis. Emiliano Melgar.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main goals of the archaeological researches in Teotihuacan is the analysis and classification of the material culture in order to distinguish local and foreign goods among this multiethnic settlement. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Trujillo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical studies of rock paintings in Colombia help to reflect on the technological processes used by the painting peoples to make these representations. With the use of analytical techniques, the chemical and molecular composition of pigments and of possible raw materials used in their manufacture are identified. Geochemical and mineralogical analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Wright.

Mural art is an artistic expression common to most of the Prehispanic societies and it was often investigated though iconographic point of view. Nevertheless, the recent researches particularly on Moche mural paintings (1st-8th century) have demonstrated the archaeometry contribution to study these polychromic vestiges. Indeed it constitutes a valued tool to apprehend these ancient societies and to preserve its exceptional painting patrimony. Thus, until 2012, a new research project is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Ortiz Ruiz.

The characterization of the ring structures made ​​during the past two years allowed strongly suggest the presence of kilns for lime production used by the Maya of the Classic and evidence of use in the Colonial Period. Archaeometric techniques used in this research were critical in the mineralogical characterization, dating and obtaining organic waste associated with the production of lime. In this paper I present the results of two years of work that allowed characterizing the limestone used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Melgar. Reyna Solís.

This is an abstract from the "The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The new archaeometrical characterization of the lapidary objects from Xalla allowed us to distinguish local and foreign goods among this palace compound inside the multiethnic settlement of Teotihuacan. In this paper, we will present different nondestructive techniques (UVF, IRR, OM, SEM-EDS, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashlee Hart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In American archaeology the use of archaeometric testing such as neutron activation analysis and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry have become increasingly utilized since the 1960s. These techniques, adopted from parallel disciplines including geology, continue to be relatively underrepresented approaches out of Western European and American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Krummel. James Watson.

The La Playa archaeological site in the Sonoran Desert represents one of the earliest agricultural settlements in northwest Mexico. Over 310 mortuary features have been uncovered during salvage excavations since the site was discovered in 1930, revealing a wide variability in mortuary practices that may reflect specific treatments for pathological or transgressive individuals after death. This paper describes analyses of burials uncovered during the 2017 field season utilizing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lourdes Pérez Iglesias.

The study of bone modifications in archaeology becomes an important source of information for understanding aspects of food anthropology and extinct human groups, as well as it improves the knowledge of these aspects in poorly documented historical stages. This applies to the first moments of Spanish colonization in the north of Holguin. This paper includes elements of the exploitation of faunal resources in two marked Indo-Hispanic archaeological contexts in northeastern Cuba: Chorro de Maita...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Keegan. Michael Pateman.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It has long been assumed that the Bahamas were colonized by Ceramic Age peoples who began their expansion into the Caribbean islands from northeastern South America about 500 BC. The widespread occurrence of pottery in the Bahamas (Palmetto Ware), and the timing of initial ‘Lucayan" settlement in the Bahamas is dated to AD 700-800 ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harold Kelly. Raymundo Dijkhoff.

Archaic Age migration and settlement on Aruba The Archaic Period of Aruba falls between 2500 BC to 900/1000AD and is characterized by nomadic ‘fisher-hunter-gatherers’ with a predominantly marine, coastal orientation, occupying different areas of the island. Their diet consisted mostly out of marine food and to a lesser extent hunting of small game and foraging. The majority of the so-called preceramic sites are coastal shell-middens predominantly located on limestone. The sites of Canashito and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Hofman. Angus Mol. Emma Slayton. Menno Hoogland.

This paper builds on the idea that Caribbean Archaic Age communities were highly mobile and connected. Study of fisher-collector sites in the Northeastern and Southern Caribbean has shown that Archaic Age communities managed extensive subsistence/ resource/activity systems, involving intra-archipelagic and mainland-island voyaging. The connectivity patterns and resource landscapes of these two regions will be discussed. We see a set of vital resources, which would remain important for later...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard George. Claire E. Ebert. Sarah B. McClure. Barbara Voorhies. Douglas J. Kennett.

Long-distance trade of obsidian formed an essential part of inter-regional Archaic and Formative Period Mesoamerican economies (~3,500 BC-AD 250). We analyzed obsidian artifacts (n=522) from Late Archaic through Late Formative Period deposits at the sites of Puerto Marques and La Zanja in the Acapulco Bay region of Guerrero, Mexico using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to assess the economic importance of different obsidian sources through time. The presence of obsidian artifacts at Puerto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Stiger.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A series of archaeological structures ranging in date from Folsom (10,400 RYBP) to Middle Archaic (3000 RYBP) have been excavated in a high mountain valley in central Colorado. These prehistoric residences show temporal changes in architecture and artifact assemblages which hint at variability in social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Ahlrichs.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research presents the results of an analysis of a large privately curated collection of Archaic period (Old Copper Complex) copper from the Western Great Lakes. Results from metric, LA-ICP-MS chemical characterization, and radiometric dating analyses will be presented. The data set is drawn from a collection of over 2000 formal copper tools recovered by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roger Colten. Brian Worthington.

The broad patterns of Archaic or pre-ceramic subsistence adaptations are not well known for the broader Caribbean region partly due to the ecological variability among the islands and limited quantified faunal data from sites of appropriate age. The state of knowledge for Cuba is hampered by a limited number of radiocarbon dated archaeological sites. In this paper we present quantified vertebrate faunal data and radiocarbon dates from three Cuban sites, Las Obas, Vega del Palmar, and Los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Elquist.

Models of estuarine resource use in the Lower Hudson Valley, particularly fishing, have typically been based on a limited set of archaeological materials and ethnohistoric information. Key issues include early evidence of estuarine resource use, the range of resources exploited, and their role in settlement and subsistence patterns. Recent investigations at the Old Place Neck Site involved using various residue analyses that contributed important new information beyond what artifacts and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Peres. Renee Walker. George Crothers.

The Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group brings together researchers and nearly sixty faunal datasets representing twenty-one sites from four major sub-regions of the Eastern Woodlands. In this paper, we focus on resource availability and the potential causal relationship to cultural choice. The Archaic Period archaeological sites in our study are located in the Mid-South and Ohio River Valley regions, and are well known for their composition of shell in the form of middens or mounds. In a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Voorhies. Douglas J. Kennett.

Insights concerning human lifeways during the Archaic Period on the South Pacific coast come principally from archaeological investigations in Chiapas and Guerrero. These data are supplemented by coring programs that permit independent reconstructions of human-plant interactions. We present an overview of what we know and what compelling questions remain.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart. Éloi Bérubé.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rich cuisine of contemporary Oaxaca sprouted from deep roots. Archaic Period plant remains recovered from the MRG-6 rockshelter enhance prior work at Guila Naquitz and grant us insight into some of the managed and wild food plants still used in contemporary Oaxacan dishes. Over 70 different botanical taxa were identified from samples excavated at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Rachel Reckin.

This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In comparison to other Archaic sites in the eastern portions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), the Dead Indian Creek site (48PA551) has an unusually high number of obsidian projectile points (N=29). Geochemical source characterization of 23 of the 48PA551 obsidian points...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Deter-Wolf. Tanya Peres.

The Fernvale archaeological site in Williamson County, Tennessee, is a multi-component site that includes a significant Late Archaic cemetery and occupation dated ca. 1600 BC. Although the site was excavated in 1985, it was not fully analyzed or published for nearly three decades. Formal analysis of zooarchaeological materials from Fernvale took place from 2007-2012 as part of an overall effort to reassess the site assemblage. In this paper we describe findings generated by combining traditional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu.

All-male hunting parties of the Middle Holocene are an important concept in the archaeology of America’s western mountains. The dichotomy of later high mountain family villages (repeat occupations of high density and diversity) versus specialized hunting sites and ‘man caves’ (sensu Thomas) are cited to argue that Archaic women never saw, or ventured into, remote high mountain landscapes. Yet the ethnographic literature of mobile foragers contains interesting evidence of women, usually young...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matt Peeples. Robert Bischoff. Daniel Hruschka.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological data are complicated and rarely highly standardized between projects. Using data from multiple sources often requires a time-consuming and difficult process of mapping data ontologies, categories, recording schema, and contextual information among projects manually. This work is error prone and it is difficult to document substantive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hruschka. Robert Bischoff. Matt Peeples.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many of archaeology’s biggest questions require the aggregation of numerous datasets. Often the main stumbling block is the time-consuming matching of different categories and domain-specific ontologies between datasets. Even when this complex challenge is completed, there is rarely a record of how the datasets were merged (i.e., translated). Push for open...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Russo.

Archaeologists have used metal probes for centuries, and, more recently, their digitized descendant, the penetrometer, to locate artifacts and features that yield greater resistance in the soil. Most recently, geological miners and agricultural technologists have added additional instrumentality to the penetrometer to measure both resistance and friction. To determine if archeological soils and other midden features could be distinguished using a penetrometer employing both resistance and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Barba.

During field seasons 2008 – 2011 a large set of archaeological prospection techniques were applied in large areas surrounding present town of Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca in a joint project carried on by University of Georgia and the National University of Mexico. This project attempted to put together the large experience of Kowalewski in archaeological survey in Oaxaca’s valleys and the experience of the Archaeological Prospection Laboratory using geophysical techniques in Mexico. These approaches are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Gardiner.

This is an abstract from the "NPS Archeology: Engaging the Public through Education and Recreation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project, conducted between summer and fall of 2018, was part of a larger NPS initiative to use archaeology as an educational tool. The project’s main objective was to use this interdisciplinary field to teach concepts stemming from various academic subjects, ranging from history to chemistry. To achieve this goal,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social expectations regarding normative abilities, behavior, and bodies have changed through time. Archaeology lends itself well to the study of disability because social expectations about normative ability and behavior are embedded into the built environment, landscape, artifacts, material culture and daily practices. Archaeologists are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rangel. Juan Julio Morales Contreras. José Luis Punzo Díaz.

The archeological site of Tingambato, located in the municipality of the same name, is situated between the towns of Pátzcuaro and Uruapan, in the Mexican State of Michoacan. It is located at the south of the Tarascan plateau, at the boundary between the "tierra caliente" and the cold coniferous mountain land. In order to address the issue of occupational temporality of the site, we carried out absolute archeomagnetic dating of seven ceramic potsherds found at the site, taking advantage of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez. Samantha Lorenz.

Chultunes, man-made subterranean chambers excavated into limestone bedrock, are ubiquitous features encountered throughout the Maya cultural region. Although studies in the Northern Lowlands have demonstrated that chultunes in that locale functioned as water cisterns, the ascription of them as purely utilitarian within the Southern Lowlands is under much debate. One issue that hinders dialogue is lack of a commonly accepted understanding of what constitutes a chultun. The first aim of this paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Spenard.

Archaeological investigations of the Nohoch Tunich Bedrock Outcrop Complex (NTC) located near the pre-Hispanic Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, revealed a karst landscape that was heavily, yet subtly modified during the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 700-900). Analysis of construction techniques reveal that the modifications were made to conform to a purposefully crude aesthetic aimed at maintaining and enhancing the wilderness essence of the outcrop, while transforming it into a cultural space....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ema Perea. Ilana Johnson. Luis Jaime Castillo.

Archaeological research in Cerro Chepén started with the purpose of characterizing the cultural manifestations in the Jequetepeque valley, especially the political and social relationships of the inhabitants of these sites and the activities related to the regional center of San José de Moro. The poster includes the results of the research conducted in Sector 2 of Cerro Chepén, which is one of the most important sites for the Late Moche and Transitional periods in the Jequetepeque Valley. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonieta Rivera.

There exists a vast literature examining every aspect of Aztec culture. Despite this, few studies focus specifically on Aztec architecture and its implications for understanding broader aspects of Aztec cosmology. This paper contributes to our knowledge of Aztec society through an exploration of architectural and urban design principles that guided the building of their cities and ceremonial precincts. By examining ethnohistoric and archaeological sources, and drawing on evidence from several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Giron-Ábrego.

Natural and man-made caves are clearly attested to in myth, iconography and the glyphic corpus as powerful features for the ancient and contemporary Maya. Caves are paramount for they function as entrances into the sacred earth, the most powerful entity of the sacred Maya universe. A third and less explicit category of these subterranean features, although extensively documented (Brady 2011; Rivera Dorado 1993; Tate 1992) in the Maya area, are architectural caves. This latter category, due to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Ryan.

Researchers in a number of fields have come to recognize the vital importance of the built environment not only as material culture, but as symbolic expressions of the larger cultural framework through which social relations are produced and reproduced. Over the last half-century, studies have demonstrated how architectural characteristics—such as building size, shape, and the presence of various architectural materials, features, and furnishings—have a direct influence on human behavior and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Rock.

In 2015, Brockington and Associates conducted Phase III Data Recovery at a middle-nineteenth century field slave settlement within the Colonel’s Island Plantation in Glynn County, Georgia. Excavations at five slave dwelling footprints showed that all exhibited nearly identical dimensions and construction techniques. Dwellings appeared to be double-pen wood frame with central chimneys and wooden floors. Rather than set off the ground by wood or brick supports, each dwelling was marked by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Sereno-Uribe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most successful ways in which we adapt to the environment is through the creation of architecture. This is the reflection of our aspirations and our achievements as a species; it is in architecture where we capture part of our cultural identity. In this sense, and as part of cultural identity, architecture can help us to observe and analyze the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Manuel Gonzalez La Rosa.

This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will briefly discuss the architecture at Quilcapampa, with particular emphasis on possible patio groups at the site. We discuss these groups, the contexts found in the rooms, and the access patterns between spaces. The site appears to be arranged around a principal asymmetric plaza, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Sumano. Joshua Englehardt.

The site of Los Guachimontones, in central Jalisco state, Mexico, has long been the subject of intensive archaeological research, beginning in the 1970s with Weigand’s investigations of the site’s unique circular architectonic configurations. Nonetheless, a detailed understanding of intra–site architectonic variability eludes adequate explanation and obscures our comprehension of the internal sociopolitical dynamics of the site. To address these lacunae, this paper compares two distinct areas of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Guebard. Angelyn Bass. Doug Porter. Larry Nordby.

This is an abstract from the "The Vanishing Treasures Program: Celebrating 20 Years of National Park Service Historic Preservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will discuss a partnership between the National Park Service and the University of New Mexico for in-depth documentation of ancient architecture at the Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling and Casa Grande great house. While the project was initially developed to produce a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony DeLuca.

During the Late Formative to Classic period (300 BC – 550 AD) in the highland lakes region of Jalisco, Mexico, a number of concentric circular ceremonial monuments known as guachimontones were built by the shaft tomb culture. The largest site in the region is Los Guachimontones near the town of Teuchitlan. The site is thought to have been governed by competing familial groups within a corporate framework rather than a single powerful ruler. The platforms that are a part of a guachimonton are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LisaMarie Malischke. Ian W. Brown.

Fort St. Pierre (1719-1729), located near present-day Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a short-lived French fort on the periphery of colonial Louisiane. Data from the 1974 through 1976 excavations have recently been collated with unreported excavation data acquired in 1977; and now provides a more complete picture of the perimeter of the fort (the palisade and dry moat) and the structural remains within this perimeter. Historical maps of this fort depict an orderly layout of fort structures; but the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rafael Guerra. Claire Ebert. Jaime Awe.

The presence of shared architectural elements and configurations between major ancient Maya centers has often been attributed to socio-political affiliation and/or emulation of influential centers by their neighbors. In this paper, we examine the site plans and settlement systems for the monumental centers of Cahal Pech and Lower Dover in the Belize Valley to identify parallel trends of the growth of monumental architecture through time. Cahal Pech is one of the earliest permanently settled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanna Diederichs. Grace Erny. Aryel Rigano.

The foundations of Ancestral Pueblo community organization were codified in aggregated communities during the Basketmaker III Period (A.D. 500-725). This study compares morphological differences in public architecture and habitation pit structures at several aggregated sites in the Northern San Juan Region to reveal functional specialization of space associated with both long-term habitation and periodic communal gathering behavior. This specialization may reflect the primary social institutions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Halona Young-Wolfe.

Defining spatial organization was a key research question for the excavations at the Patipampa sector of the Middle Horizon (AD 500 – 1000) site of Huari in the Ayacucho valley of Peru. In the 2017 excavations we used methods designed to expose the upper portions of walls, in order to define architectural spaces and clarify organization of the sector. Some architectural spaces were excavated more completely, fully exposing walls and architectural features. Our excavations revealed distinct...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Pool. Michael Loughlin. Manuel Melgarejo Pérez. Gabriela Montero Mejía. Kyle Mullen.

A combined program of aerial LiDAR mapping and pedestrian survey is documenting significant intra-regional variation in pre-Hispanic architectural plans in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin of southern Veracruz, Mexico, reflecting the interplay of ecological adaptation, political integration, factionalism, and extra-regional influences. Consistent association of domestic mounds with small bajos in low-lying areas suggests intentional (as opposed to accretional) mounding and landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Bernstetter.

This is an abstract from the "Water and Sanitation Management in the Mediterranean " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss the methods involved in utilizing visibility analysis to understand how space was used in domestic contexts. Although visibility studies are frequently used in archaeology, and wider applications of GIS, this paper presents a unique application of visibility analysis for studies of architecture, space, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lekson. Erin Baxter. Catherine Cameron.

The architecture of Chacoan kivas was markedly unlike far more numerous non-Chacoan kivas. While Chaco is famous for its stone masonry, we focus here on wood use, and specifically on radial beam pilasters and wainscoting. Both are enigmatic and, consequently, both have often been overlooked during excavation and sometimes even removed in modern stabilization. But when the kivas were in use these features would have been dominant, eye-level aspects of kiva interiors. Using examples from Chaco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arkadiusz Maciej. Marcin Blaszczyk.

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the major objectives of the Chajul Murals Conservation Project (COMUCH) was the consolidation and conservation of murals in several houses located at the modern town of Chajul inhabited by the Ixil Maya and located in the department of El Quiché, in western Guatemala. During our research carried out between 2015 and 2022, conservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Aguero Reyes.

Terracotta figurine offerings as part of construction deposits are one of the traits that characterize the Classic period Central Veracruz culture. They are recurrent in both modest and monumental architecture, in sites of all ranks. In this they differ from ceramic figurine use in contemporary cultures, where they belong to the domestic and/or funerary sphere. This paper presents a case study on a series of figurine deposits of a palatial residence of the archaeological site of La Joya, showing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Morgan. Brian Andrews.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mountaineer Folsom site, located in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, contains evidence of at least four substantial habitation structures occupied over the course of at least one winter residence. The structures required significant energetic investment in their construction and were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick Daneels.

Investigations at several of the thousands of pre-Columbian mounded sites along the southern Gulf coast of Mexico revealed the existence of monumental earthen architecture. These supposedly "simple mounds" resulted to be sunken plazas, pyramids, palaces, ball-courts, tombs and altars that were part of an urban layout. In high-ranking sites, buildings are recurrently associated with deposits reflecting several distinct rituals involving human sacrifice. Such findings bring added evidence for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Young.

A change in architectural style is often a result of changes in power and political organization. During the Terminal Classic Period which the Cochuah region exhibited changes in the settlement pattern, in sites layout, and in architectural components. The organization of space, directions, the location and the architectural design of buildings underwent some changes during this period. All registered sites in the Cochuah region were occupied during this period. In addition to occupation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamín Ballester. Estefanía Vidal. Francisco Gallardo.

Architecture, as a material device that is perceived and experienced, involves the creation of spatial and visual signatures within a landscape, effectively connecting social groups and territories. In this paper, we explore the role of architecture and monuments in processes of territorialization, land tenure and the use of space among hunter-gatherers of the Pacific coast in the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. Between 7,000 to 1,000 BP these groups developed diverse ways of making and using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catrina Whitley. Evangelia Tsesmeli.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the variation of architectural features and abandonment processes excavated and interpreted from BaahKu (LA 37627), in Taos Valley, New Mexico. Recent discoveries indicate intra-site variation in both construction and indicating contact and exchange with communities in the greater northern Rio Grande Valley and possibly beyond. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Whitten. David Chicoine.

This poster presents architectural and spatial data from monumental urban compounds or cercaduras at the Early Horizon center of Caylán (800-1 B.C.), Nepeña Valley, Department of Ancash, Peru. Caylán is interpreted as the primary center of a multi-tiered polity that developed in the littoral portion of the Nepeña Valley and reached its peak during the second half of the first millennium BC. Recent fieldwork at Caylán revealed the existence of more than 40 cercaduras interpreted as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Poston.

Architecture shapes the subjective experience of those living in it as well as those simply interacting with it. The Maya continuously changed their environments to fit their needs and desires, thus these spaces mirror their everyday practices. This paper compares the overall architectural arrangement of Xultun to other Classic Period Lowland Maya urban centers, such as Tikal and Palenque, to determine how the reciprocal relationship between urban populations and their built environments reflect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramiro Matos. Jose Alejandro Beltran-Caballero. Ricardo Mar.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The architectural and urban reconstruction of Cusco as ancient Inka capital has been a central scientific objective in Peruvian archaeology for more than a century. From the pioneering work of Squier and Uhle, continued by Uriel Garcia, Varcárcel, Chávez Ballón, and Rowe, among many others, and continuing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatsuya Murakami. Shigeru Kabata. Julieta López.

Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process and architectural traditions remain poorly understood. Our research over the last five field seasons indicates that Tlalancaleca was urbanized during the Middle Formative period (ca. 650-500 BC) and experienced large-scale urban transformations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Zelenetskaya Young.

Political leaders among the ancient Maya were actors performing for an audience with the intent to receive the people’s support to govern. These actors often used specific architecture as stages for their performances; therefore, this architecture serves as a source of information on various aspects of political organization. Architecture embodies political symbolism and has the potential to communicate type of political institution. This paper examines the distribution of architecture that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chester Walker. Nathaniel VanValkenburg. Mark Willis.

In the late 16th century CE, Spanish administrators and clergy sought to reconstitute indigenous Peruvian subjects by forcibly resettling them into planned towns called reducciones. Mapping domestic space in these new settlements (and those that preceded them) has been a crucial element of archaeological research that seeks to understand reduccion's impact on native households. However, on the Peruvian coast, where both late prehispanic and early colonial period domestic structures are dominated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Mattes.

In 2017, the postclassic settlement of Guadalupe on the north-east coast of Honduras revealed remnants of wattle and daub (bajareque) constructions. This was an important finding as information on precolonial architecture in north-east Honduras has been scant, due not only to the low number of archeological investigations in the area, but to the use of highly perishable materials in these constructions. Despite this, recent ethnographic reports have provided indispensable information about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rubén Morales Forte. Maxime Lamoureux St-Hilaire.

The regal palace of La Corona flanks Plaza A to the west and is the largest construction at the site: a complex of structures sitting atop a sustaining platform extending over ca. 80 x 55m, and 7m in height. This paper describes the architecture of the two northern groups of the regal palace during their two last phases of construction, spanning roughly 750-850 A.D. While the Northeast Group comprised elaborately decorated corbel-vaulted buildings, the Northwest Group featured a mix of sturdy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dolores Dávalos Navarro.

The pueblo tradition, located in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest, has received greater attention in the United States than in Mexico until recently. The present research evaluates how the Mexican Northwest differs from the southern portion of the American Southwest using architectural characteristics. The use of consecutive rooms at ground level characterize the architecture of the puebloan communities in the study area. These room-blocks had different construction techniques and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kye Miller.

This is an abstract from the "The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Architecture is an intimate element of material culture, and was employed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists for thousands of years throughout the Navajo-Gallup project area. The way in which individuals constructed and organized space within these structures are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard McClure. Eugene Hunn. Joana Jansen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archival collections of Native language oral histories are widely scattered among universities, museums, and tribal repositories throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Many of these oral histories are an important primary source of information relative to traditional Indigenous land-use practices, in turn critical to an understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brady Liss. Matthew Howland. Anthony Tamberino. Scott McAvoy. Thomas Levy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using photography to thoroughly document the excavation process is a common and long-standing practice on most archaeological excavations. Moreover, since the advent of digital photography, the number of photos captured of an excavation has generally increased. The Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (directed by Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar) has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Bischoff. Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological network studies use characterizations of many kinds and aspects of material culture (e.g., sourcing, style, technology) as proxies for social relations. Yet, it is often unclear what types of interactions are indicated by material culture. Social network analysis is a useful tool because it provides a set of methods and theoretical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby Anderson.

In 1952, J.L. Giddings defined the Arctic Woodland Culture as a unique northwestern Alaskan inland lifeway combining elements of both Eskimo and Athabascan cultures between approximately 800 BP and the contact era. He proposed that Arctic Woodland people were closely tied to both coast and interior through seasonal movements and exchange systems, and hypothesized these ties made a semi-permanent lifeway along the river possible. Subsequent research refined local chronologies and raised new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

Gender and landscape have each proved to be such powerful archaeological tropes that thinking them together seems sure to yield interesting results. In the precontact Inuit world, gender and related dimensions of embodiment were key axes of spatial practice and place-based identification. Women’s and men’s activities were differently distributed across the landscape – in general, women occupying and managing domestic and near-community spaces, and men employing watercraft and dogs to operate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shelby Anderson. Colleen Strawhacker. Aaron Presnall. Arctic Horizons Steering Committee.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Arctic Horizons – a multi-institution collaboration funded through NSF's Arctic Social Science program – brought together the Arctic social science research community to reassess goals, potentials, and needs affecting the diverse disciplinary and transdisciplinary currents of social science research in the circumpolar North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matilda Siebrecht.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Public outreach is an essential part of Arctic archaeology, and the range of platforms available for the dissemination of data has developed significantly over the last decade. To ensure ethical accountability to Indigenous communities, policy makers, and funding bodies, the relevance of archaeological research must be shared with the wider public....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sally Lynch.

The site of Huaca Colorada, in the Jequetepeque Valley, on the North Coast of Peru, is an ideal location to examine cultural interchange and technological innovation from both a production and consumption perspective due to its occupation during the Middle Horizon (AD 600 – 1000). This period is marked by sustained cultural interaction throughout the Peruvian Andes. Evidence for this interchange at Huaca Colorada is found in the mixing of a number of different ceramic traditions within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Paige. Charles Perreault.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Observed changes in rates of technological change play important roles in many models seeking to explain or identify the greater adaptability of some hominins over others, adaptation to changing environments, and many other processes. We quantify how robust detection of a shift in the rate of technological change is to error in measuring...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Clindaniel.

Inka khipus--the knot and cord recording devices of the Andes--have been said to have recorded everything from accounting, to histories and songs. Leland Locke demonstrated in the 1920s that Inka khipu knots often have standard numerical values. However, non-numerical Inka khipu signs remain elusive and undeciphered. Recent work by Gary Urton, however, has identified Inka khipus and individual khipu cords with knots that do not obey the standard numerical rules Locke identified. May Inka khipu...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erella Hovers. Anna Belfer-Cohen.

Lithic artifacts and animal bones form the bulk of the material remains of the Paleolithic. This has led archaeologists to interpret these two types of finds as tethered components of subsistence systems. Differences observed through time and space in the lithic repertoire were considered as functional adjustments, designed to maximize gains from a diverse faunal resource base. While we do not challenge the general notion that lithic artifacts were used (also) for exploiting faunal (and other)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Marquardt.

This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal societies of the northern Pacific and southwestern Florida were once thought anomalous because they achieved sociopolitical complexity without agriculture. The Calusa are often cited as especially unusual, or as the "pinnacle" of complexity among fisher-gatherer-hunters because they achieved a tributary, state-like political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Hernbrode.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports data supporting continuity of Hohokam and O'odham occupation and use at the Cocoraque Butte Rock Art Complex by the Archaic, Hohokam, and O'odham people. Data analyzed are from a comprehensive recording of over 11,000 rock art elements completed in March 2018. Surface artifacts indicate the site was in use from 4000 to 5000 years before...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Dobereiner.

For half a century, scholars have listed Mesoamerica and South America alongside the Near East, Egypt, China, and India as independent loci of emergent social complexity. Yet, recent scholarship has placed an increasing emphasis on the role of multi-regionalism and mobility in the emergence of world civilizations. These theoretical shifts, alongside suggestive findings of agricultural, material, and ideological unity in the Formative Americas, require us to ask: were pathways to complexity in...