Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Cvinar.

In 2016, the National Park Service celebrated its centennial anniversary thus reminding the public that places of historical significance matter to our national cognizance. Using the National Historic Landmark designation as a means for public education, this papers draws upon my Master’s thesis project, which focuses on building a bridge among CRM, research, and public education at the national level. It serves as a model for how graduate-level, archaeological training contributes to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Yaquinto.

This presentation will explore the opportunity to increase scientific driven data into the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 106 compliance process particularly relating to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) undertakings. The absence of empirical data available to the BLM to analyze how different activities’ development and/or management affect archaeological sites can result in unfounded assumptions and unnecessary complications during project planning and implementation. Using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Brooke. Curtis Marean. Jacob A. Harris. Jan A. Venter.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the ecological role of extinct large mammals is an ongoing challenging research problem. The use of species traits (physical and behavioral) to characterize functional communities is becoming common in ecological modelling and is key to understanding the ecological role that species would have filled under historic conditions. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Doershuk. John Cordell. Teresa Rucker. Stephen Lensink.

This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The University of Iowa (UI) Office of the State Archaeologist has maintained the State Archaeological Repository of Iowa since 1959. During its 60-year history, the repository’s curation strategy has modernized from strictly housing UI-generated collections to meeting the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cardoso. Benjamin Fuller. Pauline Méjean. Andre Strauss. Klervia Jaouen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of shell mounds can shed light on human occupation and adaptations at coastal environments worldwide. In South America, human groups occupied the territory close to the Atlantic Ocean for millennium (ca. 8000 to ⁓1000 years BP), building hundreds of shell mounds, some with impressive dimensions. After 2000 BP, it is assumed that these populations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weston McCool. Joan Coltrain.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-state warfare has the potential to effect myriad aspects of people’s lives. The last several decades of archaeological research have revealed that conflict has shaped much our evolutionary history and regional population trajectories. Despite the importance of prehistoric warfare, it remains a substantial challenge to elucidate the basic characteristics of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurore Val. Guillaume Porraz. Marina Igreja.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone retouchers were first recognized in European Paleolithic assemblages at the turn of the nineteenth century. They have since been documented from sites across Eurasia, from Lower Paleolithic to Neolithic contexts. Notwithstanding their abundance in the archaeological record, the association between the characteristics of the retouch on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maximilian Jewett.

Developments in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) over the past five years have allowed for their use among non-experts and the rapid development, at relatively low cost, of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) or drones. UASs use the UAV platform to carry a variety of sensors. One of the most important developments coming from this technology is the ability to collect aerial photos for photogrammetry at relatively low cost. In an effort to better understand the uses, practical issues of operation, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Vadala.

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset used alongside 3D site reconstructions provides a huge potential for a phenomenologically based landscape analysis. This presentation explores the methods and results of a study using these technologies that focuses on understanding the diachronic changes in the construction of ritual space at the Maya site of Cerros, Belize. Site maps were modeled in 3D according to each historic phase and converted for use in a highly immersive and interactive video game...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Sellen.

Since the inception of thermoluminescence dating we have known that a significant number of Zapotec effigy vessels in museum collections are fakes, manufactured sometime in the early twentieth century. Some of these forgeries are composites that combine ancient and recent materials, but it is not clear how they were assembled, or how a conservator could restore such an object. In order to fully understand how these composites were manufactured and in what way they differ from ancient ceramics,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wright. Elliot H. Blair.

In partnership with Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research (TVAR), this poster presents the results of an x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) analysis of ceramics recovered from historic Choctaw (Late 17th - Early 19th century) contexts at sites (22KE630 and 22KE718) located along Chickasawhay Creek, Kemper County, MS. In the fall of 2017, a sample of ceramic sherds was selected for chemical sourcing at the University of Alabama. XRF was used to non-destructively identify ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree. Taylor Zaneri.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origin of urbanism is one of the most significant transitions in human history. Archaeologists and historians have been interested in the origins and development of early medieval urbanism since the days of V. Gordon Childe and Henri Pirenne in the early twentieth century. While most of the early studies of medieval towns were based on historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree. Douglas Campana.

This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development of urbanism in northwestern Europe has been of interest to medieval archaeologists and historians since the days of Henry Pirenne, and these questions have been central to anthropological archaeology throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the critical features of early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Oliver. Camilla Speller. Jynnifer Zhu.

This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a large estuary off the central coast of eastern Vancouver Island lies a series of fish trap complexes, which were used for catching herring and salmon in the past. Nearby, the large Pentlatch Village site contains the zooarchaeological remains of these harvests and provides an opportunity for researchers to obtain species-level...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yige Bao. Matthew Collins. Eugène Morin. Marta Alegre. Gilliane Monnier.

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. Crvena Stijena is one of the most significant Paleolithic sites in southeastern Europe. Although scientific excavations conducted here in the 1950s, 1960s, and since 2004 have uncovered several Middle Paleolithic faunal assemblages, the results of the early excavations were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Alvarez Estrada. Lilia Lizama. Guadalupe Zetina. Miguel Covarrubias.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde sus orígenes de relativamente baja tecnología, la arqueología ha evolucionado en una disciplina altamente tecnologizada, que emplea instrumentos para localizar, caracterizar y exhibir al sitios y yacimientos. Los arqueólogos con acceso a tecnología novedosa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rocio Velasco Fuentes. Marisol Reyes Lezama. Mayra León Santiago. Everardo Tapia Mendoza.

This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nopiloa y El Zapotal se localizan en una sub área cultural conocida como la Mixtequilla, en el estado de Veracruz, México. Durante las excavaciones, realizadas en los años 1940s y 1970s, en ambos lugares se recuperaron varios sahumadores y braseros, objetos cerámicos relacionados a prácticas rituales, en lo que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Mildred Talaverano Sanchez. William Mc Collum. Steven A. Wernke.

Los espacios rituales han sido desde siempre lugares importantes dentro de las comunidades humanas pues son la expresión material de sus creencias y su fe. En el caso del Virreinato del Perú, la invasión española del siglo XVI significó un cambio radical en la concepción y materialización de la religiosidad practicada, donde la construcción de edificios de carácter religioso encarnó el cambio de vida y costumbres de los pueblos conquistados. Esta ponencia explora el espacio arquitectónico de la...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassandra Atencio. Alden Naranjo. Garrett Briggs.

This is an abstract from the "Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tribes regularly fight the destruction of their cultural resources and the appropriation of their culture. But what happens when someone appropriates a cultural resource that never existed in the first place? The three Ute tribes have been regularly engaged over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Knight. Jessica Yaquinto. Nichol Shurack.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Nuche, or Ute people, have been in their homelands across Colorado and Utah since time immemorial. Southeast Utah formed part of the larger movements of the Ute bands with connections to the area, which in turn formed part of the overall Ute movements across the entire Ute homeland. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nichol Shurack. Terry Knight.

This is an abstract from the "Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Historic Preservation Office has worked regularly with archaeologists. While archaeology focuses largely on scientific understanding, the effects of this work on tribes and other stakeholders also needs to be considered. Through this talk,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Horowitz. Damien Marken. Damaris Menéndez.

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Economic studies in the Maya region have illustrated that the Classic period Maya utilized a variety of exchange networks to circulate commodities such as market exchange, redistribution, and gifting. The study of specific types of goods provides information on how different materials circulated through these exchange mechanisms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Aliya Hoff. Mike Hess. Falko Kuester.

With the emergence of low-cost multicopters on the market, archaeologists have rapidly integrated aerial imaging and photogrammetry with more traditional methods of site documentation. UAVs serve as simple yet transformative tools that can rapidly map archaeological sites with increased efficiency and higher resolution than manual measurements while contextualizing the site within the landscape at costs significantly cheaper than plane-based aerial LIDAR systems. Though structure from motion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin McBride.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Metal detectors are rarely employed in CRM research yet their utility in locating historic sites of low visibility and artifact density have been effectively demonstrated in Battlefield Archaeology studies. This paper will argue for the importance and utility of metal detector surveys in CRM through several case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asia Alsgaard.

Nestedness analysis suggests that the presence of specific ichthyofauna in assemblages from seven different sites from the northern Yucatán peninsula may be a result of the life-histories of those species or cultural preferences rather than being driven by environmental barriers. The results suggests that the assemblages may be derived from different populations suggesting that they are not coming from the same source. I argue that while trade is playing a role, it is also likely that ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kennedy. Sarah Kelloway.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Field portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) has seen an increase in use for testing potentially toxic levels of heavy metals in modern mining and industrial waste sites. Understanding the spatial variation of pollutants in soil is necessary for identifying proper prevention measures for soil contamination and long-term effects on human health. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thaddeus Bissett. Martin Walker. Sean Taylor. Michael Russo.

This paper evaluates the utility of high-resolution LiDAR-derived elevation data for remotely surveying difficult-to-access coastal areas to identify possible archaeological sites, which can then be targeted for further investigation. To determine the effective limits of the elevation data to visualize low-relief structures, locations of previously-recorded Archaic and Woodland-period shell rings along the lower Atlantic coast were examined. Thirty-four rings were identified, including two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jonathan Roldan. Cady Rutherford. Byron Smith. Walter Tovar Saldana.

Airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is an active remote-sensing technique which records the surface of the earth using laser scanning. The recent acquisition of LiDAR data for a portion of the Three Rivers regions in northwestern Belize offered the opportunity for a new way to analyze settlement and landscape utilization by the ancient Maya. This paper will focus on the systematic analysis of the dataset, ground verification, and post-processing methodologies. ArcGIS was used for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Wildenstein. Aubrey Cannon. David Burley.

Analysis of archaeological fish remains from the Hopoate site, on Tongatapu in the Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga, identified 18 different families. Significant change in relative abundance was evident in Lethrinidae (emperors) and Acanthuridae (surgeonfish, unicornfish), two families common as food fish in Tonga. Frequencies of the families were compared between the early settlement period (~2850-2900 cal BP) and the subsequent Plainware/Aceramic period. Larger-bodied Lethrinidae, which are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Sternberg. Alexander Kurota. Virgil Lueth.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research at Jornada Mogollon Sites in South-Central New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past several years, the Office of Contract Archeology has conducted fieldwork in the southern Tularosa Basin on White Sands Missile Range. This project has resulted in the documentation and testing of more than 36 sites ranging from the Paleoindian through Jornada Mogollon periods. Lithic raw materials...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Weyrich. Raphael Eisenhofer. Bastien Llamas. Keith Dobney. Scott Fitzpatrick.

This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient human migrations underpin the origin of past cultures, health, ecological interactions, and identity. However, recent or rapid migrations are difficult to track using classical demographic tools that monitor human genetic mutations over time. A new method—tracking human migrations by assessing microbial genome...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Horton. Karen Harry.

This poster will examine the variation of corrugated ceramics from the Virgin Branch Puebloan sites located on the Shivwits Plateau and in the lowland region of the Moapa Valley. Variation between these two regions is examined, as well as changes in corrugated designs over time and differences between wares. These data allow us to evaluate patterns of social interaction, trading networks and learning interactions between sites and regions. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marty Kooistra.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric habitation structures located in the Mount Trumbull region of northwest Arizona are constructed across a diverse topographic landscape. Several archaeological site records for the Mt. Trumbull region allude to the exceptional views from habitation structures despite their often non-obtrusive locations. The following...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Merwin.

Providing adequate lighting for subterranean work at a remote site in the Peten of Guatemala usually involves flashlights or gasoline generators and CFL lights on homemade power cords. Because of the cost of generators and the difficulty and cost of transporting fuel to the field site most tunnel work uses head lamps and flashlights. In an effort to be environmentally sensitive and to be more efficient the Holmul Archaeological Project has started using 12 volt LED light strips powered by a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Hartley. Lap Kwan Tang.

This poster session illustrates the effective utilization of tablet computers in archaeology using a cultural resource management (CRM) case-study. CRM in British Columbia requires rapid turn-around times between site identification, investigation, reporting, and project development. This dynamic makes tablets ideal for generating complex datasets from archaeological sites in short periods of time. Digital data can be imported into GIS or database management systems immediately, without...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Morgan.

This paper will provide an overview of using the established Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Visual Resource Management (VRM) system to assess indirect visual effects on historic properties. Per Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the introduction of visual elements that diminish the integrity of the property’s significant historic features constitutes an adverse effect. The VRM system was designed to inventory landscapes, identify those with high scenic values worth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Marroquín. Jamie Ford.

This is an abstract from the "Polychromy, Multimediality, and Visual Complexity in Mesoamerican Art" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the arrival of Europeans to the New World, one of the most fascinating early exchanges of knowledge and technology that ensued was the introduction of the silk industry to Mexico. While in some places this was unsuccessful and/or short-lived, particularly in Oaxaca, it flourished for the better part of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregg Jamison. William Belcher. Charles Konsitzke. Brett Hoffman. Ella Axelrod.

This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2014, the University of Wisconsin Missing In Action Recovery and Identification Project (UW MIA Recovery and Identification Project) has partnered with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to help recover, identify, and repatriate the remains of missing armed services personnel. Our approach...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Horton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a wealth of historical archaeological resources in Yellowstone, and the development of the park is directly connected to larger socioeconomic changes occurring across America. Recent investigations of refuse dumps associated with late-19th to mid-20th century tourism in Yellowstone National Park provided insight into the various beverages, foods and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Alexander Bentley. William Brock. Michael O'Brien.

Under the conventional view of evolution, species over time come to exhibit those characteristics that best enable them to survive and reproduce in their preexisting environments. Niche construction provides a second evolutionary route to establishing the adaptive fit, or match, between organism and environment, viewing such matches as dynamical products of a two-way process involving organisms both responding to problems posed by environments as well as setting themselves new problems by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frankie Pack. Kathryn Kulhavy. Graciela Cabana.

The destructive nature of traditional DNA extraction techniques presents one of the primary obstacles to accessing genetic information from museum and archaeological collections. Here we assess a recently published "non-destructive" DNA extraction protocol by Bolnick and colleagues in terms of the amount and quality of DNA extracted from a set of samples of even greater antiquity than those tested in the original analysis. DNA was successfully extracted from archaic period samples from the Eva...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesús De La Rosa-Díaz. Ciprian Ardelean.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Valle de Bonanza (northeast of the Mexican state of Zacatecas) is a surface-only archaeological site located in a highly eroded desert landscape on the edges of a vast endorheic basin in Concepcion del Oro county. The site consists of a sand-and-dust surface affected by intensive deflation that caused the formation of a palimpsest of crudely made flaked stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Klokler. Fernando Almeida.

Field schools, and Methods and techniques in Archaeology classes are mandatory steps to achieve Master’s or a PhD degree in most graduate programs in Brazil. We, as instructors noticed a certain mismatch in students’ behavior in regard to decision-making in both situations: reticence during field activities, boldness during class discussions and debates. This dichotomy seemed to be related to field experiences in which the students had fewer opportunities to engage with other "more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn Cometa. Allen Denoyer.

Antelope Creek is a part of the important larger obsidian source at Mule Creek in Southwestern New Mexico. Antelope Creek contains an abundance of both poor and good quality obsidian that appears to have developed from the same volcanic event. In this experiment, a large sample of Antelope Creek obsidian was collected and tested for quality through the process of flintknapping. Results indicate that knappers can readily tell a poor quality nodule from a good quality nodule from this source by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Gould.

In an era of globally declining government funding for culture, including archaeology and heritage, the philanthropic sector will loom increasingly important to funding this discipline. Major philanthropic organizations and individual philanthropists increasingly are seeking to define and measure the impact of the causes they fund. That "impact" may be social, economic, political or cultural, but in all cases the essential element is a set of clearly defined impact metrics. This change in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Murphy.

This paper aims to explore the value of faience and glass in Bronze Age Pylos with a view to reconstructing the wealth and status of the people with whom they were buried. These beads must have been imported to Pylos as finished objects since none of the raw materials are found locally and we have no evidence for their manufacture or production at Pylos. Indeed our analysis of a sample of the vitreous beads shows that some of these beads, or at least their substance, originated in Egypt and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Talachy.

This is an abstract from the "From Collaboration to Partnership in Pojoaque, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many of my community, I grew up here, learning about the landscape by living within it and walking over it. Evidences of our long history are found everywhere and I always wanted to know more. Our older members taught us about our land too. But it was difficult to recognize Pojoaque when I read archaeology; I also noticed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children have long been considered one of the "invisible" communities of the ancient world. As they are infrequently mentioned in texts and incapable of constructing their own mortuary narratives, Egyptologists and archaeologists have contented themselves with only a basic understanding of the position of children in ancient Egyptian society; however, through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Devlin.

Archaeologies of colonialism have presented models that draw out the complex political interactions of meaning making via material practices that take place at the intersection of daily lives between populations of colonized and the colonizer. Traditional approaches to the archaeology of slavery within the Anglo-Caribbean have tended to transpose these categories onto enslaved Africans and white settlers. The result is a tendency to emphasis meaning making through material in terms of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin McAllister. Brent Kober.

Law enforcement officers working for agencies not directly involved in land management, such as county sheriff’s departments, traditionally have not been trained to recognize evidence of crimes related to resource protection, for example, artifacts and human remains stolen in the commission of archaeological crimes. In a recent class presented by our firm and cohosted by the Lake County, California Sheriff’s Department and two California tribes, sheriff’s deputies and evidence technicians...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Alvey. Evan Peacock. Joseph Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the ""Re-excavating" Legacy Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All data accumulated in field studies directed at the determination of formal variation in the archaeological record contain a source of variation that results from analytical error. This type of error, if of sufficient magnitude, may significantly affect interpretation. Recent ceramic and faunal analyses from the Southeast have identified important...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lexie Lowe. Amy Roache-Fedchenko. James Nyman. Margaret Wilkes.

This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2021–2022, the Northeast Archeological Resources Program (NARP) began partnering with five National Park units to pilot a new initiative: the design and facilitation of a region-wide volunteer archeological site monitoring program. Working with park staff and stakeholders at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Wonson.

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. Vanishing Treasures (VT) began its training program in 2014 with five trainings and 90 trainees. Today, we have trained over one thousand people and hosted 90 trainings. Our growth has been guided by A Technical Preservation Needs Assessment and Training Strategy completed in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Sutter.

Recent bioarchaeological and archaeological research regarding the environmentally influenced demise of the Moche (AD 200 – 800) of the Jequetepeque Valley, Perú, indicates a variety of responses, including population dispersals, political fragmentation, cultural hybridization, and new political alliances with recently arrived foreigners at ceremonial centers. Biodistance analyses suggest that adjacent highland Cajamarca peoples from the adjacent highlands arrived in the Jequetepeque and likely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lewis. RE Burrillo. Joan Brenner Coltrain.

Recent stable isotope and phytolith studies suggest that desert succulents (in particular Yucca sp. and Opuntia sp.) were a non-trivial component of Ancestral Puebloan diets. However, isotopic variability in such resources is poorly documented. We present 𝜹C13 and 𝜹N15 values for fruits and seeds of thirty modern Banana Yucca (Yucca baccata) specimens from Cedar Mesa, Utah. Experimental roasting and simulated mastication of yucca ‘crowns’ allow separate assays of whole tissue, fiber, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Smith. Brendon Asher.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Blackwater Draw Locality 1 site provides one of the most unique perspectives of Paleoindian behavior in North America. Spatial evidence surrounding faunal and lithic assemblages have inspired researchers to hypothesize site function to represent kill, scavenging, caching, or domestic activities. Its setting relative to other localities of resource...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarrod Burks.

Many Ohio Hopewell earthworks present an interesting challenge to archaeological geophysics: they are very large and contain vast amounts of what seems to be empty space. Both have limited our understanding of the breadth of the archaeological record at these complex sites; that is, until very recently. Large-area surveys at three Hopewell earthwork complexes in Ross County, Ohio (Hopewell Mound Group, High Bank Works, and Hopeton Works, ca. 30 ha each), have uncovered a wealth of new features,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Berman. Ieva Juska. Perry Gnivecki.

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. We compared molluscan faunal assemblages from two neighboring Lucayan sites, the Pigeon Creek dune 1 (Late Lucayan) and the Pigeon Creek dune 2 (Early Lucayan) sites located on San Salvador, Bahamas. Two species, Lombatus gigas (Queen Conch) and Codakia orbicularis (Tiger Lucine), demonstrated the most significant temporal change in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Homko.

The Orkney archipelago, at the northern end of Scotland, has a rich and well preserved record of Neolithic settlement. Radiocarbon dates from northern Scotland indicate the establishment of farming communities quite soon after those in southern England. However, the process by which agriculturalists reached these far northern territories is still not well understood. Faunal analysts (Watson 1931, Noddle 1983) have drawn attention to an apparent distinction in morphology between the cattle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Malpass.

Lomas formations in coastal Peru form when moisture off the Pacific Ocean condenses on hill slopes that rise between approximately 400-800 masl. These formations are distributed over broad regions in the southern part of Peru, but become more dispersed as one moves north. Depending on their extent, lomas formations can support a broad range of plant and animal life. As a major resource zone prior to the advent of agriculture, lomas were exploited by hunters and gatherers throughout this period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only A. Dudley Gardner. William Gardner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Formative period in the upper Colorado Drainage has been variously defined but broadly extends from 2000 B.P. to 400 B.P. Recent investigations indicate there was a high degree of variability in the cultural assemblage during this period. Specifically, habitation structures, maize storage facilities, and maize types show a great deal of variability. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice LEPLONGEON. Erella Hovers. David Pleurdeau.

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is traditionally defined by flake, point and elongated blank production associated with retouched tools (e.g. scrapers and retouched points). However, a great cultural variability is observed, whether it is linked with spatial (e.g. Brandt 1986, Clark 1988), or temporal (Early vs Late MSA, e.g. Douze 2011) variability. Here we present results from a comparative analysis of the lithic assemblages from Porc-Epic Cave (e.g. Clark and Williamson 1984, Pleurdeau, 2005) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sánchez-Morales.

This is an abstract from the "Variability: A Reassessment of Its Meaning, Afforded Range, and the Relation to Process" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Clovis populations have been traditionally characterized as wide ranging, highly mobile foragers, as reflected most notably in the intense utilization of high quality, nonlocal cryptocrystalline lithic raw materials. However, in Sonora, Mexico, local non-cryptocrystalline tool stones dominate Clovis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Woollett. Céline Dupont-Hébert. Paul Adderley. Guðrun Alda Gísladóttir. Natasha Roy.

Recent studies have identified an important reorganization of the Svalbarð estate, north-east Iceland around AD 1300. The initial coastal-focused settlement of the region was followed by the founding of new farms in the deep interior. Most were not sustained and some farm sites on the coast were also reduced. Initially, the magnate’s farm of Svalbarð had a herding economy supplemented by fishing while Hjálmarsvík, its coastal neighbor, exploited a diversity of marine resources. Around AD 1300...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Gregory Smith. Charles L. F. Knight.

The nature and degree of interaction between the Classic period centers of Teotihuacan and Cantona is investigated through two types of obsidian artifacts that characterize Early to Late Classic period obsidian use in the central-east highlands of Mexico: prismatic blades and bifacial dart points. At the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area in eastern Puebla, Mexico the recovery of dart point preforms next to obsidian quarries, combined with chemical analysis indicates that these points were crafted at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ainara Sistiaga. Sepideh Parkour. Mathilde Poyet. Roger Summons.

Fecal biomarkers have proven to be a valuable tool to identify the likely source of fecal matter and have successfully been applied in archaeology. They provide direct evidence of the digestive physiology and diet of the source, and critical data to assess the origin of fecal deposits. 5βstanols can be used as fecal biomarkers because they uniquely form in the gut of higher mammals during metabolic reduction of sterols. However, the actors of this microbial conversion still have to be elucidated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walsh.

Late Holocene occupants of Housepit 54 at Bridge River participated in complex strategies of food acquisition that were much more varied than the oft-cited reliance on storable anadromous fish resources practiced throughout much of the Pacific and inland/riverine Northwest of North America. While acquisition and storage of fish, particularly salmon, was (and is) a vital part of aboriginal subsistence, permeating many aspects of Native life, seasonal and spatial variations in animal procurement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Hodgkins.

The archaeological assemblage and long stratigraphic sequence at the site of Pinnacle Point 5-6 in Western Cape, South Africa affords the opportunity to explore temporal (and possibly environmentally-mediated) changes in human behavioral regimes in the late Pleistocene. Here, examination of butchering intensity is used as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that humans would have intensified the processing of terrestrial prey in times of cooler, dryer climates, when sea levels were low and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Underhill. Fengshi Luan. Fen Wang.

Recent research does not support the common view that the numerous large sites from the Longshan period of northern China ca. 2500-1900 BC represent a homogeneous type of settlement with respect to developmental process, scale, and organization. Most publications regard these large settlements as cities and expect they share specific features indicative of organizational homogeneity. The focus has been on large Longshan and later, early Bronze Age settlements in Henan province. We discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Seidita. Whittaker Schroder. Alejandra Roche Recinos. Charles Golden. Andrew Scherer.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than a decade of archaeological research has characterized the political landscape of the middle Usumacinta river valley as a tense political rivalry between the Classic period Maya (250 – 900 C.E.) kingdoms. Recent archaeological work in the kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan has sought to unravel how the internal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Hansen. John Murray. Alexa Ferrer. Hanah Edington. Kathryn Ranhorn.

This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The heat treatment of lithic raw material is a globally dispersed technology that improves the flaking quality of toolstone. While not all types of stone respond to heat treatment, many forms of microcrystalline silicates do, including jasper. Here, we aim to better understand how Perkinsville jasper responds to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Peart. Sara Watson. Hannah Keller. Naomi Cleghorn.

Fluctuating sea levels during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) resulted in radically shifting environmental zones and shoreline position along the southern African coast. Investigation of the intensity of site use and find types relative to modeled coastline proximity provides insight into early human responses to such environmental perturbations. Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (KEH1), a coastal cave site in Western Cape Province, is the only documented locality along the modern coast that preserves a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Mongelluzzo.

Ancient Maya palaces from the Classic Period exhibit a high degree of similarity in terms of architectural layout. While the significance of the similarities has been explored previously, the differences have not been understood as well. This paper attempts to explicate differences in morphology and begin to understand their meaning.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Wardle.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The configuration of the various elements of a river system can have significant impacts on the availability, abundance, and nutritional profitability of aquatic organisms utilized as food by groups of human foragers. These factors may have influenced where and when Late Archaic foragers decided to fish along the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Nowell. Anna Prentiss.

The degree of preservation of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River site located in south-central British Columbia provides a rare look at a long series of intact occupational floors within a single pithouse. As data collection continues, a vast number of opportunities emerge to examine behavioral variation at the household level. During the 2014 field season, excavation revealed a household transition that reflected shifts in the organization of space within the household. Changes included...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mechell Frazier.

Changes documented from the pre-Classic to Classic period (A.D. 475-1450) suggest that a larger social or political movement was occurring within the Hohokam regional system, but the motives behind this change are poorly understood. To fully understand this phenomenon it is necessary to examine how the change differed within the Hohokam regional system. Researchers can observe this relationship through the study of what Nelson (2006:345) calls "interaction markers", artifacts and architectural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aric Archebelle-Smith. Cassandra S. Koontz. Lisseth Rojas Pelayo. Manuel Angel Mamani.

Cranial vault modification was a prevalent type of body modification practiced throughout the ancient Andes. It was achieved by binding the head during childhood, which left the crania permanently altered into adulthood. Different methods of binding led to visually different forms of modification, which likely marked membership in different ethnic groups. Researchers have documented three major modification styles in the Andes: tabular oblique, tabular erect, and circumferential. Recent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Nesbitt.

The Caballo Muerto Complex is well known for the presence of numerous Initial Period platform mounds thought to have functioned as temples. What is less known, is that some of the mounds, including Huaca Herederos Grande and Huaca Cortada were associated with smaller-scale buildings that also seem to have functioned as religious structures. In this paper, I discuss investigations of a square abode building found at the base of Huaca Cortada. Excavation of the structure demonstrated that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Urban.

Research conducted in the adjoining Naco and Middle Chamelecon and Cacaulapa River (MCC) valleys of northwestern Honduras has revealed a wide array of ceramic firing facilities and implements used in fabricating pottery vessels during the Late (AD 600-800) and Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000). The diversity of manufacturing processes is especially well represented at two major workshops, one located at the Naco valley center of La Sierra and the other at the site of Las Canoas in the MCC. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Boswell. Ellen Howe. Joanne Pillsbury. Deborah Schorsch.

In the last thirty years, archaeological investigations on the north coast of Peru have produced a wealth of new information leading to nuances in our understanding of Moche sociopolitical organization (AD 200-800). These discoveries have included excavations of intact tombs of Moche male and female elites, interred with their ritual regalia and other grave goods. Metal ornaments made up an important part of this regalia, yet our understanding of Moche metallurgy technology and its relationship...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Helmer. David Chicoine.

This paper examines forms of proto-urban settlements in coastal Ancash, north-central Peru, centered on the Nepeña Valley. During the Early Horizon (800-100 BC), the region witnessed the development of culturally and economically interrelated settlements with varying degrees of architectural density and complexity. Most of these centers were organized around clusters of walled enclosures with duplicate domestic facilities interpreted as multi-functional residential complexes, or compounds....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wanda Raschkow.

This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Site stewardship programs enlist volunteers to monitor for and report disturbances at archaeological sites. The majority of stewards are older, often retired, with flexible schedules that allow them to visit remote sites on a regular basis. In order to expand participation, and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lissette Jimenez.

Throughout the Roman Period in Egypt, decorated shrouds with images of the god Osiris were used in mortuary rituals and wrapped around the mummified body of the deceased. Full-length painted images of the dead in the guise of Osiris, flanked by Egyptian funerary scenes, were effective modes of representation that reveal how gender was used to facilitate the transfiguration of the deceased and aid his or her journey in the afterlife. This paper examines gendered expressions of self-presentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Barna.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in the late 18th century CE, the Hawaiian archipelago's sustained interaction with foreigners transformed the islands from independent kingdoms at the center of their world to a globalized frontier, trade entrepôt, military outpost, and, ultimately, an economic and political colony. At the same time, the seats of power and settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) are one of the extremely rich and varied crop genetic resources of the Americas. The independent domestication of five chili pepper species (C. annuum, C. baccatum, C. chinense, C. frutescens, and C. pubescens) across the Neotropics beginning around 10,000 BP was an intricate co-evolutionary process between these piquant...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Payson Sheets.

Research at the Ceren village archaeological site in 2013 and 2014 has made a variety of discoveries. The plant casts, made by pouring dental plaster into the voids, reveal much about agriculture in the middle of the rainy season some 1400 years ago. The maize plants were doubled over to dry the mature ears, but the Loma Caldera eruption occurred just before planting squash and beans. So what was that single mature squash plant doing in the milpa? What are the limits of preservation of weeds,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pierre De Maret. Serge Bahuchet.

A large scale comparative research project on the state of the peoples living in the Rain Forests of Central Africa, the Guyana’s in South America and in Melanesia, has highlighted the anthropic character of tropical rain forests. It has particularly underlined the strong correlation between biodiversity and cultural diversity and how domesticated and wild resources interact in the various subsistence systems. Activities associated with shifting cultivation contribute to man-made biodiversity in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miquel Molist. Josep Bosch. Anna Gómez. Sílvia Calvo. Mònica Borrell.

This paper presents a synthesis regarding the exploitation of the variscite mineral in the prehistoric mines of Gava, Spain, as well as the manufacturing of ornaments and their dissemination during the Neolithic period. Special emphasis will be given to the results of the latest research in both the mineralogical characterization and archaeological interpretations derived.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Caretta. Finn Ole Nielsen. Michael Thorsen. Poul Otto Nielsen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Vasagård site is located on the southern side of the island of Bornholm, Denmark. Vasagård is separated by the 100m Læså valley from two nearly identical Neolithic sites and consists of a tomb system where a dolmen and a passage grave can be found close to the settlement. The grave system and causewayed enclosures are dated from 3500 BC., and constitute the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McCray.

This is an abstract from the "Indigenous Stories of the Inka Empire: Local Experiences of Ancient Imperialism" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Borderlands, like the eastern Andean slopes between highland states and lowland complex chiefdoms, are frequently a destination for peoples fleeing from state control and characterized by complex multiethnic landscapes. Archaeological studies in northeastern Peru, however, often assume a mega-ethnic group,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Holmberg.

Prominent, recent explorations of the role of sensory data in archaeology detail the linkages of bodily senses, material objects, and remembering or forgetting to invoke the ‘vast and secret museum of historical and sensory absence’ in analyses. In this paper, I examine the residues and associations of chthonic power and senses that can cling in social memory to volcanic materials. This serves as a query for why an entirely useful material was not in use in the Chiriqui culture area that spans...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Scharf.

This paper presents pollen data as a proxy of past vegetation at Poverty Point, a large Archaic mound site in northeast Louisiana. The paleoecological focus of this presentation revolves around the rate and nature of change over time. Patterns and changes in taxonomic diversity are presented and discussed in light of environmental productivity. The rate of vegetation change is calculated and related to ecosystem stability. Additionally, changes in individual taxonomic representation are examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Dine. Traci Ardren. Chelsea Fisher.

It is difficult to pin down the objective definition of a weed; rather, the idea of a weed is constructed through a set of characteristics that are, for the most part, dependent on context and relative interactions. Doody et al (2014) use Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of performativity to describe this dynamic, ongoing construction as a product of the agency of both people and plants. Here we interpret studies on ancient Maya agricultural techniques through the lens of plant agency and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Krempel.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on specific attestations found on Maya monuments featuring human skeletal iconography and to the concave round depressions used in place of their skulls. Such characteristic representation on monuments is mostly limited to the Maya Puuc region of the western Yucatán Peninsula...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hyde. Lauri Martin.

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Data recovered from excavation of the residential Tapir Group at the Maya hinterland site of Medicinal Trail provides evidence for ancestor veneration and pilgrimage. For veneration, the Maya incorporated ancestors into their built environment through the ritual practice of physically including them in the architecture as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucianne Lavin.

The Venture Smith homestead is an important eighteenth-century rural black archaeological site with a remarkable level of integrity, associated with a person significant to American history. Born about 1729, Broteer Furro was an African prince abducted and sold into slavery when only six years old. Thirty years a slave, he purchased his and his family’s freedom and became a prosperous mariner-merchant-farmer and benefactor to fellow blacks. At his death in 1805, he owned over 100 acres of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Dungan.

Between the end of the Mimbres Classic period in the 12th century C.E. and the beginning of the 14th-century C.E. Cliff Phase, most of the Upper Gila region of New Mexico is thought to have been only sparsely populated if not entirely unoccupied. Recent excavation in Mule Creek has demonstrated a strong 13th-century presence in this area, however. Like the Gila Cliff Dwellings on the West Fork of the Gila, the settlements in Mule Creek show clear connections to contemporary sites in the Mogollon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derrick Marcucci. Susan Gade. Antonio Martinez Tunon.

In summer 2017 Landmark Archaeology, Inc. conducted data recovery excavations at four Late Archaic sites in southeastern New York within the Wallkill drainage near the town of Goshen. Excavations at the VerHage Site, a Late Archaic Lamoka Phase (ca. 3000-2500 BC) site and the largest of the four investigated sites, identified pit features, post-molds and house patterns, yielded a large lithic assemblage, and found glacial erratics used for food processing and tool production. The recovery of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only April Smith. Xiaofei Li. Laurie Reitsema.

During pregnancy, women experience lordotic posturing to compensate for the weight of the growing fetus. Biomechanical stress from lordotic posturing causes bone remodeling of the lumbar spine during pregnancy resulting in lumbar wedging, which may persist after giving birth. Persistence of lumbar wedging in skeletal samples has potential applications for estimating parity in the archaeological record. This research analyzes the possibility that lumbar wedging is observable in the skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Armitage.

Hup’kisakuu7a (93T, DfSh-43) is a small pre=contact site in Tseshaht territory. This site was excavated in 2015 and 2016 in order to determine to what extent smaller sites in Barkley Sound were being used during the late and mid-Holocene (ca 5,000-200 cal BP). Two 2x2 meter units were excavated. A column sample was taken from the north wall of each units in 2016. These column samples reached a depth of 120 cm depth below datum (DBD) in unit 1, and 137 cm DBD in unit 2. The sediment recovered...