Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Ur.

A variety of evidence has been used to suggest that the Assyrian kings and their planners made dramatic changes to the landscape of the imperial core, and these changes were deliberate. This evidence mostly consists, however, of anecdotal observations and uncritical readings of propagandistic royal inscriptions. The hypothesized planned Assyrian landscape also conflicts with the results of systematic archaeological research on preceding Bronze Age landscapes, which were largely self-organized....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Carroll.

Sennacherib’s destruction of Tel Lachish, Judah (now Israel) in 701 BC was accomplished using state-of-the-art technologies and tactics. We know through the Lachish reliefs once located at Nineveh and now housed at the British Museum, that the Assyrians used a siege ramp to conquer the city. Unfortunately, the ramp was partially destroyed by archaeologists in the 1930’s and comparatively little is known about its original dimensions and use in the siege. Computational technologies including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bob Benfer.

This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hearths from over 50 domestic structures at the stratified Middle Archaic fishing villages of Paloma, Chilca Valley, Peru, were found within circles of house poles. Domestic structures were burned and abandoned, sometimes with an old male burned on top. Burials in the last occupation were placed with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy MacKinnon. Eric J. Bartelink. Nicholas V. Passalacqua.

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from 104 individuals from eight sites was used to reconstruct the diets of Medieval and Early Modern (AD 600-1750) individuals from Asturias, Spain. Asturias is a coastal region located in northern Spain that remained one of the last Catholic kingdoms when the Moors ruled Iberia. Asturian society was structured hierarchically and divided into clergy, nobility, and peasant classes. Each socioeconomic group buried their own according to status and wealth....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jana Veleminska. Jan Dupej. Jaroslav Bruzek. Lumir Polacek. Petr Veleminsky.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to the archaeological and written sources Great Moravian Medieval society was highly socially stratified. Recorded differences in facial cranial morpholology were partly interpreted as a result of different masticatory load, and thus of different dietary habits in various socioeconomic classes. In this study we present a detailed analysis of cranial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Eckert. Deborah Huntley.

The Goat Spring Archaeology Project explores late Pueblo period (A.D. 1300 - 1680) cultural continuity and transformation in south-central New Mexico. Goat Spring Pueblo was occupied periodically: initially during a period of demographic reorganization and expansion of regional networks in the 1300s, again during the early Spanish Colonial period, and possibly during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This highland village was strategically located along the trail connecting Western Pueblo and Rio Abajo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willeke Wendrich.

In the years of willful destruction of cultural heritage as part of an extremist obliteration of the past, there have been several instances in the news of local populations taking stance against these destructive forces. In some cases protection of cultural heritage has become a voice against suppression and the reconstruction of destroyed monuments, e.g. through 3D printing and resurrecting lost parts, an act of defiance. Most destruction of cultural heritage, however, takes place much more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Tudor Elliott. Thomas Origer. Katherine Dowdall.

One of the most unique, enigmatic, and intriguing artifacts of the Western United states is the flaked-stone crescent. Crescents are tools that have been bifacially reduced into a crescent shape, although in some, referred to as "eccentrics," this form is extensively modified with multiple notches or extensions to their inner and outer margins. These lithics capture the imagination of both professionals and the public, reflected in the 1991 designation of a "bear-shaped" eccentric crescent as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Prieto.

This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent progress in the refinement of absolute dates recovered at the ceremonial and pilgrimage center of Chavín de Huántar helps to reconsider the regional effects of the Chavín Sphere of Interaction in the north coast of Peru. These new data suggest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angus Mol. Lesley-Gail Atkinson. Hayley Mickleburgh.

This paper presents a new study of archaeological sites, collections and historical documents to bring to light a poorly known chapter in the Caribbean colonial encounters: the interactions of Jamaican Amerindians with the Spanish, and later British and Maroons. The island of Jamaica held a special position in the Spanish colonial empire, due to its peripheral position in in the global shipping and trade networks that emerged in the early Spanish main and a lack of the precious metals that were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Dalton.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subterranean chambers known as chultuns or chultunob exist in great numbers in sites throughout the Maya world, with over 300 being found in the city site of El Mirador alone. Although seemingly ubiquitous, the function of these structures has yet to be fully understood, with a variety of uses having been proposed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Moriarty. Ellen Moriarty. Rosy Kirk. Bryant Garrow.

In 2016, the South Champlain Historical Ecology Project (SCHEP) initiated investigations at the Galick Site as part of a regional study focusing on long-term human-environment interaction within the South Lake Champlain area. Situated at the confluence of long-distance trade routes and within an area of remarkable ecological diversity, the Galick Site constitutes a key setting for examining historical ecology at the southern end of Lake Champlain. To date, SCHEP has conducted two field seasons...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Hodgetts. Laura Kelvin.

For several years, we have been working with Inuvialuit community members from Sachs Harbour in Canada’s Northwest Territories, developing a research partnership called the Ikaahuk Archaeology Project (IAP). Many Inuvialuit connect with the past through "doing"; engaging in a range of traditional and non-traditional activities. Through them, they come to know the past physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. While archaeologists primarily engage with the past intellectually,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin. Ramón Carrasco. Rogelio Valencia.

The metropolis of Calakmul has a pre-eminent place in Classic Maya history that is best understood from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining the study of its extensive archaeological remains with that of its monuments, both in terms of inscriptions and imagery. This paper focuses on a hundred-year span, from the seventh and eighth centuries CE, which covers the reign of three of its best-known rulers. Representing the highpoint of the Snake kingdom’s “international” influence, this small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erina Perez. Thomas Banghart. Hope Loiselle. Kevin Gibbons.

Historical ecology has become one of the most relevant research paradigms in understanding the long-term relationships between humans and their environments. Its multidisciplinary approach dissolves the boundaries between the social and natural sciences to bring together disciplines such as archaeology, ecology, biology, anthropology, ethnohistory, and geography toward the conservation and restoration of natural and cultural heritage. This paper specifically explores archaeology’s unique...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Striebel MacLean.

Guided by contemporary humoral theory, 18th-century Europeans believed climate and bodily humors to be mutually influential and correlated in their effect on human temperament, appearance, and behavior. Resettlement to a new climate was understood to create humoral imbalances fundamentally affecting an individual’s character and even physical appearance including skin color. Subject to the effects of tropical climate British settlers to the West Indies thus transformed were viewed as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Jonsson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1970s, tribal archaeology programs and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) have served a significant and positive role in supporting tribal sovereignty in heritage management. The increasing application of Indigenous and collaborative archaeologies has contributed towards both this goal and deepening our knowledge of past and present...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shuicheng Li.

After 4,000 BC, prehistoric populations in southern Kazakhstan and the western side of the Urals in Central Asia began to migrate towards southwestern Siberia. At the same time, Yangshao culture began to spread, and the scale of their expansion towards the northwest was the greatest. The causes are likely multifold. Firstly, the emergence of agriculture in Holocene leaded to the increases in population pressure. Secondly, the arrival of the Copper Age increased the demand for metals such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dmitri Beliaev. Monica De Leon Antillon. Sergey Vepretskiy. Camilo Luin.

This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Encanto is a peripherical site (frequently classified as a 'minor center') northeast from the Ancient Maya metropolis of Tikal. It is famous because of the stela with hieroglyphic inscription dated to AD 305-308 and mentioning the king Siyaj Chan K'awil I. Previously Simon Martin suggested that the stela originally stood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Arthur Demarest.

Excavations at the Late Classic Maya site of Cancuen (Petén, Guatemala) uncovered small-scale hydraulic systems including stone-lined canals and reservoirs within the site’s architectural core. The abundance of other nearby potable water sources, along with the elaborate form of the system demonstrate that it served an ideological rather than practical function. This interpretation is supported by the artifactual material deposited in the reservoirs, as well as by the fact that the hydraulic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Cross.

This is an abstract from the "First Floridians to La Florida: Recent FSU Investigations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Schott and Ballenger’s (2007) work analyzing the expended utility of Dalton bifaces looked at the difference between the potential utility of an artifact and its residual utility to understand the use-wear and resharpening processes that shaped the artifact, and applied their findings to reconstructing the population-level use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins.

From the placement of objects in household offerings, to monumental works of art and architecture, it is well known that the ancient Maya commemorated their cosmological center in a variety of ways. Even at the settlement level, quadripartite divisions of space are observed branching out from a central core giving modern researchers insight into the way ancient Maya peoples may have understood their world. At the Maya site of Yaxuná, Yucatan, Mexico investigations have made it apparent that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas E. Levy. Margie Burton.

Recent current events have dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of the world's material cultural heritage. Funded by a University of California (UC) Office of the President’s Research Catalyst grant beginning in 2016, the At-Risk Cultural Heritage and the Digital Humanities project catalyzes a collaborative research effort by four UC campuses (San Diego, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Merced) to use cyber-archaeology and computer graphics to document and safeguard virtually some of the most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Curtis. Peter Biehl.

UNESCO has long set the example for heritage practice, with site practitioners worldwide motivated to achieve the nearly universally desired World Heritage Site (WHS) status to help preserve and sustain their sites. However, the idealized goals espoused by UNESCO, a global organization, are inherently universalizing, which can render them incompatible with the particularities of each local setting. One illustrative example is Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Since being granted UNESCO WHS status in 2012,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delaney Cooley.

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. Recent interest in early Athapaskan population movements has led to the reconsideration of Dismal River sites on the Central Plains during the mid-16th to 18th centuries. Although most archaeologists recognize Dismal River people as ancestral Apache, an unclear archaeological record and outdated evidence has led...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelly Robles Garcia.

One of the major contributions of Dr. Kowalweski has been a dual impact in the development of Oaxacan archaeologists, and his model of engagement with communities where he has studied. Undoubtedly, Steve has been an example to follow in academia, his Valley of Oaxaca survey expanded on Ignacio Bernal´s pioneer study. He and his associates used the full-coverage strategy for the central valleys and replicated it in the Mixteca Alta. Steve has always been open to include Mexican archaeologists in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nelson.

The enduring myth of Atlantis is an amazing example of probable history turned fable and developing a life of its own. While the subject is vast, a careful synopsis of new tales and discoveries will be presented and contrasted with the Hall of the Ancients - a purported repository of ancient documents believed to be located at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Belief systems and archaeological data will be examined to understand the interplay between fact and fiction. SAA 2015 abstracts made available...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Whittaker. Kathryn Kamp. Chuck LaRue. William Bryce.

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Atlatl-related motifs are prominent in a limited area of the prehistoric American Southwest. The motifs include atlatls and darts and images relating to hunting and violence, all socially and symbolically important. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Loendorf.

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art researchers often claim that an oval with a vertical line through it represents an atlatl, but many of these depictions are not very convincing examples of atlatls. A better way to identify atlatls is to find examples that show anthropomorphs holding an atlatl while throwing a dart or holding an atlatl in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivonne Reyes Carlo.

Una constante en la Costa del Golfo es utilizar elementos de deidades del Altiplano (Tláloc por ejemplo) para interpretar las representaciones de seres con características sobrenaturales pertenecientes a esta área de estudio. Si bien, podrían existir rasgos iconográficos que justificaran esas semejanzas no podemos únicamente traslapar elementos similares entre unas imágenes y otras ya que sólo se obtiene una propuesta parcial sobre su interpretación y tal vez nos aleje de su significado...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Stephens.

This is an abstract from the "Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me: What Have We Learned Over the Past 40 Years and How Do We Address Future Challenges" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Passage of federal environmental laws during the 1960’s forced otherwise autonomous bureaucracies to accept professions into their ranks that previously had no place. Public lands agencies like the Forest Service were required to employ archaeologists once the National Historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane Wiegand.

When excavating archaeological skeletal remains it is not uncommon to find them disarticulated and even commingled with other sets of remains. To study these remains it is paramount to first accurately and efficiently re-associate all skeletal elements. Re-association of skeletal remains is necessary before any other form of analysis (ancestry, sex, age, stature etc.) can be performed. While analog methods have been previously applied to standardize this task the advent of digital modelling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Boeda. Christine Hatté. Michel Fontugne. Christelle Lahaye.

The research our teams are conducting in the parc of Capivara in Brazil since 2008 lead to reveal 6 new Pleistocene archaeological sequences . The sites are all located within a 20 km area and stem from different sedimentary and topographic environments including: open air, rock shelter, cave at the bottom of cuesta or in karst. Each of the sites shows different sedimentary sequences, including different archeological horizons and different typo-technical compositions. The dating that we have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Noldner. Shirley Schermer. Suzanne Buffalo. Johnathan Buffalo.

A long-standing relationship has existed between the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) and tribal entities including the Meskwaki Nation. The precedent-setting burial law established in Iowa in 1976, 14 years prior to the passage of NAGPRA, has long required equal treatment and reburial of Native American remains. The law gave the OSA statutory authority for upholding the law and established the OSA Indian Advisory Council (IAC). Maria Pearson (Yankton Sioux) and Donald...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson. Heather McKillop. Brooks Ellwood.

Witz Naab and Killer Bee contain some of the last remaining above-ground mounds of a once-thriving salt industry in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, a large salt-water system in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Documented sea-level rise during the Terminal Classic has submerged the once thriving Classic period (A.D. 300-900) Maya salt works. Excavations and magnetic susceptibility were conducted as part of the author’s dissertation research at Louisiana State University (LSU). This excavation is part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Miller.

The need for a method to determine if a lithic flake is a product of human manufacture or a product of natural forces is an essential one in archaeology. This project directly compared known geofacts with known artifacts sampled from Oklahoma and Jordan at the attribute level. The comparisons were evaluated statistically in order to determine which attribute characteristics are statistically significantly different between the sampled geofact and artifact assemblages, with the objective of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail.

The northern Maya lowlands provide a rich corpus of painted texts associated with the interior and exterior walls of buildings; capstones serving to seal off vaulted chambers, which often contain burials; and painted screenfold books, or codices. In a number of cases, these texts and their associated pictorial component were painted to commemorate—or provide the template for—important rituals. Many of these rituals can be identified based on ethnohistoric sources, including Diego de Landa’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Stevens.

Auditory Exostoses (AEs), commonly called "surfer’s ear," are benign bony swellings in the external auditory canal and most often occur due to regular exposure of the ear to cold water and wind. Some of the highest frequencies of AEs encountered are found in Archaic Period populations of the Green River Valley, Kentucky. Previous measurements of sample populations have shown a range of 12.6 to 34.9 percent of adults with one or more AE, with even higher percentages existing among the male...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sally Evans.

The formation of auditory exostosis in prehistoric populations living along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay is due to participation in cold water subsistence behavior. Rates of auditory exostosis in populations from previously excavated archaeological sites located along the Bay Shore were compared with those located in the interior East Bay. A sample population of 1,291 individuals dating from the Early Period (3500 – 200 B.C.) to the Late Period (A.D. 1050 – 1769) was employed to address...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Stevens.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technologies inspire the creation of new subjectivities - changing our points of perspective and augmenting the ways in which we perceive. Through our ever-expanding applications of innovation, humans recontextualize realities. We use the tools of the present to formulate our visions of the future and our understandings of the past. Along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Carvey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are becoming essential aspects of archaeological investigation. We review past and current explorations, including the equipment and software available. Future applications for visualizing archaeological data will be investigated in keeping with the SAA Principles of Archaeological Ethics.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Bellia.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aural experience is a fundamental process in the development of human beings, which is shaped by architecture and the environment. Sensory experience has rarely been considered in the study of public spaces in antiquity. Aural architecture is that aspect of real and virtual spaces that produces a sensorial and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Davis. Omry Barzilai. Ofer Marder.

Area E of Manot Cave, Western Galilee, is found at the top of the western talus, close to the apparent natural opening of the cave, which was blocked approximately 30 kya. The area appears to be the natural end of the living surfaces, with the main living area possibly being closer to the natural entrance. Area E is composed of two sedementological Units; Unit 1, which is composed of topsoil and Unit 2, which contains the archaeological layers. Unit 2 in area E is divided into nine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only François Bon. Romain Mensan. Lars Anderson. Mathieu Lejay. Hélène Salomon.

Régismont-le-Haut (Hérault, France) counts among the rare open-air Aurignacian campsites in southwestern France having both spatially conserved activity areas and explicit traces of a constructed living space. This minimally disturbed single habitation occupies two perpendicular paleochannels, whose geometry separates the site into two main zones. Throughout its excavation numerous combustion structures (27), all being surrounded by differentially diffuse archaeological material, have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luc Doyon.

It has been argued that Aurignacian projectile points made of antler, bone, or ivory represent a proxy for the initial dispersal of Homo sapiens into Europe. Our research reassesses this claim by using geometric morphometric analysis to study 547 Aurignacian osseous implements recovered from 49 European sites. This approach allowed the identification of eight volumetric templates reproduced by Aurignacian artisans during the manufacture of split-based points. Two templates were identified for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Jarry. François Bon. Laurent Bruxelles. Céline Pallier. Lars Anderson.

Mas d’Azil cave is one of the most important karstic landmarks in southwestern France. This prehistoric research hotspot is mainly famous for evidence of Magdalenian and Epipaleolithic cultures, but recent researches were confirmed the existence of traces of the oldest occupations of the Upper Palaeolithic, poorly documented so far. In this case, the discovery of an in situ cultural sequence containing older and recent Aurignacian opens up largely new possibilities. First, because the cave...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Younger. Kenneth Brophy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stonehenge (UK) has inspired replicas on every inhabited continent, with nearly 30 in North America alone. Few could – nor are intended to - be mistaken for the real thing. We explore several contemporary Stonehenges, illustrating the range of forms, materials and motivations associated with such replicas. We focus on artworks - Deller’s inflatable Sacrilege,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney Mower. Anna Dhody. Kimberlee S. Moran. Shanan S. Tobe.

The Shuar, native to Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador, prepared shrunken heads to serve as trophies following battle, in response to their cultural beliefs. Authentic shrunken heads (tsantsas) were prepared in a precise manner and exhibit key morphological characteristics. Forgeries, including primates and inauthentic human preparations, were marketed to tourists and private collectors to profit from the "savage" image surrounding the Shuar. Inauthentic shrunken heads were prepared in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutiérrez. James Millette. Mariana Sanders. Mary E. Pye.

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. After 45 years of polemic about the Codex Grolier, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico finally decided to undertake major scientific studies on this document to evaluate its authenticity. During...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Christensen.

From the satirical website The Onion to the venerable New York Times newspaper, mason jars are receiving attention due to their current resurgence in popularity for food preparation, décor, and do-it-yourself projects. These contemporary examinations of the mason jar’s popularity tend to contrast the frivolity of today’s use with a singular utilitarian historical view. In this paper, I examine the varied discourses that they have been placed within historically and by archaeologists in order to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Johnson.

Yamasees worked as non-missionized laborers in Spanish Florida, raided for Charleston traders, fought to expand Georgia, lived with Creek Indians, and worked as diplomats and traders in Pensacola. Letters, speeches, and testimony demonstrate that this mobility— often leading them to outnumber local occupants— allowed Yamasees to dictate terms to and take vengeance against other Native Americans as well as Europeans. Despite such authority, pottery assemblages demonstrate the frequent adoption of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana De León. Jocelyne Ponce. Luisa Galo.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Exploring Gender Inequalities in Archaeological Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This intersectional study explores gender and nationality in the production and dissemination of knowledge in Guatemalan archaeology. We examine publication trends in the memoirs of Guatemala’s annual archaeology symposium between 1990 and 2019. As the country’s main venue of dissemination of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencia Pezzutti. Christopher Fisher. Conrad Albrecht. Sharathchandra Pankanti. Francesca Rossi.

Here we present preliminary results from a collaborative project between archaeologists and IBM research scientists focused on developing a cost-efficient algorithm for the automated recognition of archaeological features (objects) from LiDAR data. Our research focuses on challenges of: 1) multidisciplinary work integrating expertise from diverse disciplines, 2) identifying complex archaeological features in the context of a dense urban site in a rugged topographic setting, and 3) developing a ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Urquhart. Wesley Stoner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient peoples of Classic Period Veracruz employed a suite of strategies for agricultural intensification aimed at increasing agricultural yields and managing seasonal rainfall. One common strategy involved the construction of gridded canal networks with alternating raised field platforms which drained water in the wet season and retained it in the dry...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Bandy. David Reinhart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2014, the Carlsbad Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management acquired 372 square miles of high resolution lidar data in an experimental attempt to map archaeological features over a wide area of southeastern New Mexico. The features of interest were burned rock middens with a distinctive topographic signature. If successful, this effort would have had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mehrnoush Soroush. Alireza Mehrtash. Emad Khazraee.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a collaborative project that seeks to develop a deep learning model for automated detection of qanat shafts on CORONA Satellite Imagery. Increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and advances in computational science has created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Previous studies have applied machine learning algorithms for detection of archaeological sites and off-site features, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Castillo Flores. Francisco Javier García Ugalde. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Alfonso Gastelum-Strozzi. Dante Bernardo Martinez Vazquez.

Currently there exist several databases composed of hundreds or thousands of digital images of arrowheads made by different ancient ethnic groups around the world. Extracting information or comparing and classifying the elements of these databases in an efficient and automated way, even without the need of arrowhead’s metadata, would be of great help in carrying out a comprehensive study on this archaeological subject. This work deals with this problem by developing an image processing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jakob Sedig. Vagheesh Narasimhan. Brianna Flynn.

This is an abstract from the "Research Hot Off the Trowel in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Areas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster describes our attempt to address some long-standing questions about Mimbres pottery through convolutional neural network-based classifiers. Over the past few years the field of computer vision has made major strides in classification and segmentation tasks particularly due to the availability of rich training...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leila Character. Agustin Ortiz Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The objective of this project was to create a deep learning model that uses digital elevation data to automatically identify shipwrecks. The model uses a convolutional neural network architecture and has a F1 score of 0.92. Deep learning modeling based on remotely sensed imagery is a rapidly expanding area of research within the field of computer science, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Peck.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Satellite and aerial images are used for archaeological site prospection worldwide. However, manually detecting and mapping archaeological sites from imagery can be time consuming. This poster examines the utility of an image processing and unsupervised classification procedure for archaeological feature detection and mapping in arid settings. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryony Moody. Caitlin Buck. Tom Dye. Keith May. Gianna Ayala.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses developing prototype software for handling the relative and absolute dating evidence obtained during single context excavations as carried out in many European countries such as the UK. We seek to use mathematical graph theory to manage both stratigraphic and chronological information during Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Elizabeth Ibarrola. Lori Lee.

This is an abstract from the "Seeking Freedom in the Borderlands: Archaeological Perspectives on Maroon Societies in Florida" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free Black community in North America. While the direct result of petitions by self-liberated Africans seeking formal emancipation, the policy that generated the settlement reflected political, military, and religious concerns of the Spanish as well....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesus Cantoral Herrera. Ruben Manzanilla Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "Aproximaciones arqueológicas y paleontológicas en Santa Lucía, México" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Base Aérea militar de Santa Lucía, en el noroeste de la cuenca de México, tendrá dentro de sus límites al nuevo aeropuerto internacional de la ciudad de México, “General Felipe Ángeles”, en sus más de 4,000 hectáreas, se han encontrado evidencias arqueológicas que nos hablan de diversas aldeas de agricultores...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Cordova. Benno Fiehring.

El estudio de la organización política de la región de Tamtoc, tiene por objeto indagar en las relaciones que existieron entre los individuos, las formas en que ejercieron el poder político y la naturaleza y escala de su organización. Para realizar este propósito llevamos a cabo un programa de prospección arqueológica con el objeto de reconstruir los patrones de asentamientos y posible uso del antiguo paisaje. En esta ponencia presentamos los resultados de dos temporadas de trabajo en campo.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

A pesar de lo escarpado del terreno, entre montañas y valles, se asentaron grupos humanos en distintos periodos cronológicos desde el Preclásico hasta la Colonia. Algunos de esos valles permitieron la comunicación entre los poblados cercanos, otros, entre regiones geográficas más distantes como la Costa del Golfo, el Altiplano Central y la región oaxaqueña, evidenciando presencia o influencia olmeca, teotihuacana, nahua y costeñas, en los sitios hasta ahora conocidos. Por estar en un punto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Huchim.

This is an abstract from the "La Restauración de Monumentos Prehispánicos en México: Principios, Práctica, y Visión al Futuro" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sin lugar a duda Uxmal fue el sitio más importante de la región Puuc desde el siglo VIII hasta el X. Cuenta con un área amurallada de 2.6 km2, en los que se distribuyen 11 grupos de arquitectura monumental. A principios del siglo XX la lógica de conservación fue intervenir los edificios que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Robin.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Urban households anchor the first decade of research at the Maya site of Aventura, Belize, situating the daily lives of the city’s heterogenous residents. They also illuminate social, political, economic, and environmental factors that enhanced life in the community. Summarizing research results of the Aventura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Robin.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As over half of the world lives in cities today, there is perhaps no more pressing question than: how can people create cities that are sustainable? Archaeology is uniquely suited to answer questions about the longevity of cities, because archaeologists excavate long expanses of human history. The social, political,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Hoover. Maria Cunningham. Erin Niles. Cynthia Robin.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household archaeology provides a powerful lens to understand people, their daily lives, and the myriad social, political, economic, and environmental relations that link people, households, and communities to broader societies. For its first decade of research, the Aventura Archaeology Project conducted a study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kacey Grauer.

This is an abstract from the "Households at Aventura: Life and Community Longevity at an Ancient Maya City" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water was essential for the longevity of ancient Maya cities, and Aventura was no exception. The site’s watery landscape consists of pocket bajos, defined as karstic depressions less than 2 km2 in area. While they are seasonally inundated today, this paper presents data from excavation, oral histories, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much of the research and scholarship in Southeastern iconography focused on birds and avian or avian anthropomorphic imagery emphasizes connections to warfare, especially raptors and woodpeckers. While some research has discussed how birds relate to broader patterns in iconography, notable gaps in literature exist pertaining to how birds are integrated into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlena Antczak. Maria Magdalena Antczak. Andrzej Antczak. Miguel Lentino.

Abstract This paper presents the results of the analyses of an assemblage of over 3,000 bird remains systematically recovered in various late pre-Hispanic sites (c. AD 1000–1500) on the islands of the Venezuelan Caribbean. We discuss possible signatures of seasonal occupancy of the island campsites as inferred from the bio-ecology of the identified bird specimens. The data indicates that several families of birds were persistently targeted by Amerindians for food and/or feathers, and their bones...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariel Taivalkoski. Caroline Funk. Debra Corbett. Brian Hoffman.

Zooarchaeological avifauna analyses demonstrate that wing elements tend to be overrepresented in archaeological assemblages from diverse temporal and cultural contexts. There have been several explanations for this phenomenon including bone density, differential transport and more recently, Bovy’s social zooarchaeological interpretations for the overall overabundance of wing elements, as well as specifically of distal wing elements in the Watmough Bay assemblage. The avifaunal assemblage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Wolfe.

This is an abstract from the "Celebrating 20 Years of Support: Current Work by Recipients of the Dienje Kenyon Memorial Fellowship for Zooarchaeologists" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The final regression of Lake Bonneville during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition resulted in dramatic environmental changes in the Bonneville basin, followed by further environmental fluctuations throughout the Holocene. Recent research of faunal and floral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksandra Savkovic. Katarina Bogicevic. Dragana Djuric.

This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Avian remains from the Paleolithic site of Crvena Stijena, located near the village Petrovići, Eastern Montenegro, have been studied. The inspected material comes from the samples collected in the field during the previous three years of research (2018, 2019, and 2021)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman.

Avifaunal remains have great potential to improve archaeological understanding of the economy and subsistence of peoples who lived in the past, as well as to yield information about local ecology, environmental change, and past bird species distribution. The large assemblage of faunal remains from the three archaeological sites comprising the Seaside Collection from Seaside, OR, contains significant quantities of bird bone. Previous analyses of vertebrate remains (including birds) by Greenspan...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nyree Finlay.

Adapting contemporary archaeological techniques used in the recovery of Francis Bacon’s Reece Mews studio, this project documents the collecting practice of an avocational lithic fieldworker on the Isle of Arran, Scotland who assembled a substantial heritage archive including significant archaeological objects, prehistoric assemblages and geological specimens. Treating her abandoned artefact analysis table and intact workrooms as sites it used traditional and multi-media techniques to record her...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Desjardins. Scott Rufolo. Martin Appelt.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in the early to mid-twentieth century at the multicomponent site Avvajja (Abverdjar) (NiHg-1), northern Foxe Basin, Nunavut, produced arguably some of the most iconic Tuniit (Late Dorset Paleo-Inuit) artifacts yet found in Inuit Nunangat (the traditional Inuit territories of Arctic Canada). Avvajja is also notable for being the site of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Seltzer.

The Spanish conquistadors and missionaries created upheaval in the Pueblo world and increased interaction with external groups upon their arrival in the Rio Grande area during the 16th century. The social tensions that were exacerbated forced a blending of ideas and culture. Important concepts to the Pueblo people were often displayed through ceramic iconography. Whether the transference of ideologies exists in ceramic iconography becomes a focal question. Archaeologists have suggested that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadya Prociuk.

Unique to the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, the ceremonial baths of the Iron Age Castro Culture present an entry point for our understanding of the social and symbolic mechanisms at work in Castro society. Not found anywhere else in Iberia, the precise use and meaning of the structures remains controversial. Were they an indigenous development, or a technology borrowed from the Roman world? Was their use related to personal grooming or ritual cleansing? Located within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chrissina Burke. Magen Hodapp. Kelsey Gruntorad. Natalie Patton. Wyatt Benson.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Experimental archaeology supports our understanding of past lifeways and how artifactual materials were created. In zooarchaeology, its use in interpreting how previous populations may have crafted animal bone tools is imperative to identifying preforms and other stages of the manufacture process. The Northern Arizona University Faunal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Cullen Cobb. Emily Kaplan. Michele Austin Dennehy. Christopher Beekman.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A technical study of pre-Columbian copper-alloy axe-monies from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian and National Museum of Natural History. Research activities include stereo microscopy, digital photography (macro and micro), portable X-ray fluroescence (pXRF)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernadette Cap. M. Kathryn Brown. Whitney Lytle.

The ancient Maya formalized avenues of movement between and within urban centers through the construction of sacbeob that both defined space and connected places on the landscape. In this paper, we discuss the ways in which a formally constructed sacbe at Xunantunich functioned as an axis connecting economic and ritual activities. The architectural arrangement of Classic Xunantunich emphasizes a north/south directionality. The site’s sacbe, however, was constructed on an east/west alignment....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hernando Malca Cardoza. Alexis Mantha.

Andean scholars generally conceive the ayllu as representing a group of people who consider themselves to be related by common descent and who collectively possess and exploit resources (land and water). In many regions of the Andes during late pre-Hispanic times, ayllu members retraced their common origin and kinship ties through the celebration of a mummified founding ancestor. Ayllus could either be small or large and often the smaller units were hierarchically integrated into the larger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Birkmann. Bruce Huckell.

Although long known from surface sites, the Middle Archaic record in the Tucson Basin includes very few in buried alluvial contexts. AZ BB:13:70 is a Middle Archaic occupation site located along Brickyard Arroyo, a deeply incised tributary arroyo of the Santa Cruz River. First discovered in 1975, the site was revisited throughout the early 1980’s and investigated formally in the summer of 1984 after monsoon rains created an extensive exposure of features and artifacts along the arroyo. The site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Goldstein.

This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Aztalan is located between the modern cities of Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, and is commonly identified as Mississippian, dating to about AD 1000. The site has been known since the 1800s, and many amateur and professional archaeologists have excavated there. Much of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Mathiowetz.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the long-running debate on the nature of interaction between societies in prehispanic Mesoamerica and the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico, the acquisition of scarlet macaws and their dissemination to the SW/NW has been perplexing. Questions abound as to how and why long-distance social networks were established and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Nielsen.

Since the 1960s, Mexicayotl communities––or communities focused on Mexican Indigenous revivalism––have pursued an Indigenous cultural recovery. In the United States, these efforts have gained traction among Danza Azteca communities who increasingly employ pre-Hispanic flutes, rattles, and other Mesoamerican instruments in their rituals and performances. Danza Azteca communities have drawn on lines of inquiry that parallel those of Robert Stevenson (1968: 17, 18), including the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

New investigations of primary source material reveal that the final days of Aztec were extensively recorded (but not published) by Earl Morris. This paper will present analyses of burial, feature, architectural and artifactual data that indicate a chaotic and tumultuous end at Aztec preceded by behaviors that differed drastically from Chaco Canyon or in other 12th century great house sites. These practices are seen in mortuary data, in room remodeling the increased frequency of habitation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Cohen.

Aztec presence in Guerrero, Mexico is documented ethnohistorically, but archaeological work can be difficult to undertake in this volatile region. The Triple Alliance provinces in Guerrero served as important sources of tribute, but also as buffers against the hostile Purépecha regime to the west. Though Aztec imperial strategies varied in different provinces, tribute policies in Tepecoacuilco were thought to have facilitated intensification of production and reorganization of economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Evans.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aztec empire existed for only ninety years, yet its structure was derived from earlier political constructs and endured after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521. It was a dendritic system, each node of power manifested in a palace -- Nahuatl tecpan (lord-place) -- that functioned as a locus of sociopolitical and sacred authority. Lord-places are as old as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

This poster will present a "new" view of Aztec Ruins -- particularly Aztec West -- which refines modern base maps with historic data. This latter includes data drawn from Morris-era excavation photos, as well as additional information from unpublished sketch maps, correspondence, and field notes. This 'new' map will include unpublished locational data on mounds, burials, floor features, wall features, remodeling, refuse, burning... etc etc. Almost no reading required. SAA 2015 abstracts made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter.

(please consider for Poster After Dark) The mounds immediately south of Aztec West were partially excavated in 1916, 1934 and 1960. These data have not yet been synthesized. Taken together, information from pottery, photographs, sketch maps and grey literature indicate the presence of masonry walls, possible staircases, and depositional patterns that are analogous to the Pueblo Bonito mounds. This poster will show these data in both traditional (2 dimensional) and augmented (3 dimensional)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Ott.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twin-temple pyramids of the Late Postclassic in Central Mexico became a distinct symbol of Aztec ideology. Nowhere is this demonstrated more than with Templo Mayor, the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire. The deities worshiped and rituals conducted at Templo Mayor made it a beacon of ideological identity for the Mexica-Aztec,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Pillsbury.

With the return of peace after the dislocations of the US Civil War, The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by businessmen, civic leaders, and artists in New York. Unlike its European counterparts, the institution had no royal collections on which to build. Its ancient American holdings grew through gifts and purchases from diplomats, philanthropists, and collectors. By 1900, with the acquisition of the Petich Collection of some 1500 "Aztec," and "Toltec" works, The American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster. Edward Jolie.

Earl Morris recovered more than 1500 perishable artifacts from the West Ruin of Aztec, but his publications provide only a glimpse of the diversity, richness, and strong research potential of this relatively well-preserved and well-provenienced perishable collection. In this paper, we discuss our recent re-analyses of these assemblages and present new insights related to Chaco-Aztec relations and the organization of ritual practice, society, and craft production at Aztec. We also highlight...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Bletzer.

This paper presents an outline of the colonial encounter between the A’tzi-em/Piros and Spaniards during the years 1581-1681. Archaeological evidence of Spanish-induced settlement changes comes from two long-term archaeological projects at the sites of the Piro pueblos of Teypana and Pilabó, Socorro County, New Mexico. Analysis of primary documents provides additional information on such issues as native accommodation and resistance, factionalism, and the ultimate disintegration of the last Piro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Bednar.

As part of the on-going research into the development of socio-political complexity at the Maya site of Yaxnohcah, the Proyecto Arqueológico Yaxnohcah has been conducting investigations in the Baalche’ Group, a large courtyard group located at the center of the site. The group sits adjacent to many prominent architectural features, including a Preclassic period E-Group assemblage, a ball court, and a water reservoir. Radiocarbon dating and ceramic analysis has revealed that the Baalche’ Group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sneh Patel.

The craft industries and trade networks of the Indus Valley are perhaps some of the most well understood and explored aspects of this early South Asian civilization. While the nature of production and spatial distribution of certain commodities are known, it is still uncertain within what form of economic structures these exchanges transpired. This paper proposes that the "bazaar" might provide a suitable framework through which to understand the exchange of these commodities. While bazaars...