Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Holly.

Archaeologists have long been interested in understanding and modelling subarctic hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies. Traditionally, much of this work has relied on the ethnographic record for analogy and sought to situate forager decision making processes in terms of the calculus of optimal foraging and adaptations to the natural environment. While useful, these approaches risk flattening pre/historic subsistence strategies to the point of timelessness and minimizing the social and cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Gaggioli.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, geoarchaeological and soil micromorphological analyses have aided in reconstructing the complex histories of funerary burial and ritual in the Mediterranean. For the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project in Greece, geoarchaeological work has investigated a burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Welch. Paul Tosa. Francis Vigil. Rachael Loehman.

In addition to substantive findings about changing relations between Jemez communities and forest ecologies, our multidisciplinary project is suggesting some promising strategies for enhancing research engagements with American Indian tribes. In spite of due diligence in consulting with Jemez Pueblo leaders in the course of project planning and in engaging Jemez people and interests in project processes, we are concerned that the project’s scientific contributions outweigh its beneficial effects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Sutton.

Dispersal of human populations is often perceived as synonymous with abandonment and collapse. Alternatively, cross-cultural studies of historic and contemporary dispersal suggest it should instead be considered a strategic adaptation to external pressures. I argue that strategic dispersal represents a conscious, purposeful transformation of social and cultural structures in the face of bifurcation, resulting in cultural continuity and the selective adoption of external cultural traits and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lubkemann. Paul Gardullo. Jaco Boshoff. Yolanda Pinto Duarte. David Morgan.

This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on work in Mozambique and South Africa undertaken over the last five years this paper examines how the Slave Wrecks Project’s field research program and its stakeholder engagement initiatives have come to inform each other in profoundly transformative ways. Our investigations of specific slaver shipwrecks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guy Hepp. Marc Levine.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we present a preliminary typology, description, and discussion of ceramic figurines from Late Postclassic period (CE 1100–1522) Tututepec, a regional capital located on the coast of Oaxaca. The figurine sample is primarily drawn from household excavations carried out in 2005 and 2022 but also includes material curated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Overholtzer.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of its two excavation field seasons in 2017 and 2022, the community-collaborative Proyecto de Arqueología Cotidiana de Tepeticpac has shifted its focus from the Postclassic period, when the Tlaxcallans formed a state that maintained its independence from the Aztec empire, to the early colonial period, when residents allied with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Forrest Follett. Adam Barnes. Katie Simon. Carla Klehm.

This paper is an effort to create a predictive model for archaeological sites in an area of Eastern Botswana. With a rather arid climate, much of Botswana’s ground surface (and archaeology) is easily visible to airborne and spaceborne sensors. Without sufficient training data for supervised classification, an iterative spectral clustering method was used to group spectrally similar pixels from multispectral imagery into a large number of spectrally distinct but unknown classes. By visually...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Morucci.

This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sarcoptic mange is a highly infectious, zoonotic disease endemic to modern Andean camelid populations. Severe infection can result in the loss of wool and death of the animal. Rapid spread can lead to significant economic losses and population instability. Despite widespread awareness and preventative measures taken by modern camelid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rincon Mautner.

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. As a cultural adaptive strategy, ritual sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica has had multiple purposes including providing a sense of control over the forces of nature aimed at attaining desired outcomes, especially those related to agricultural production. When human sacrifice was involved, such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Henderson. Kathryn Hudson.

Framing the lower Ulúa valley and adjacent regions as part of a southeastern Mesoamerican frontier has always entailed an interest in external relationships, especially those connecting frontier regions with the Maya world to which they were supposedly peripheral. The belief that the periphery was occupied by simple non-Maya societies, lightly "influenced" by their more civilized western neighbors, appeared early in the development of orthodox frameworks and continues to influence archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José-Miguel Tejero. Reuven Yeshurun. Omry Barzilai. Israel Hershkovitz. Ofer Marder.

The Early Upper Palaeolithic in the Levant plays an important role in understanding the emergence, dispersal, and adaptations of the first anatomically modern human populations in Eurasia. The exploitation of osseous raw materials for technical and conceptual behaviours is recognized as one of the several innovations that have occurred both in the Levant and in Europe during this time. Previous works demonstrated that the complex and innovative working of osseous materials in Europe is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily C. Taber. Virginia L. Butler.

Considerable research has been conducted on archaeofaunal food remains as a proxy for consumer practices in Euro-American historical archaeology. Such research often incorporates price-driven meat rankings, in which the historical cost of a meat cut determines its rank. Archaeological fish remains also present an opportunity to examine how historical communities engaged with fish that could be acquired through subsistence practices, leisure activities, or market purchases. However, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Kyle Bocinsky. Keith Kintigh. Timothy A. Kohler. Margaret C. Nelson.

Understanding coupled human and natural systems is a major research focus for the social and natural sciences. Scholars interested in historic environmental conditions (including those of deep pre-history) cannot simply extrapolate the past from the present. Instead, they need environmental knowledge specific to their spatial-temporal problem contexts. However, in accounting for environmental change they are likely to find that state-of-the-art data on past environments are difficult to discover...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Rosencrance. Geoffrey Smith. Christopher Jazwa.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Perishable Weaponry Studies: Developing Perspectives from Dated Contexts to Experimental Analyses" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The adoption of the bow-and-arrow by Indigenous peoples was a significant event that had profound social and economic effects. In the Great Basin, researchers have traditionally placed the appearance of the bow-and-arrow weapon system between ~1800 and 1500 calendar years ago...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Eric Kansa. Sarah Whitcher Kansa.

This is a pdf copy of the PPT slides used in this presentation at the SAA symposium. Digital data play increasingly prominent roles in archaeological research. However, data tend to be considered “raw materials” that fuel scholarship and not as intellectual contributions in their own right. Most attention on “research data management” focuses on “management” where data are considered mainly through the lens of Taylorism (bureaucratic compliance, standards, incentives, and metrics). Research data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaoru Akoshima.

The paper examines theoretical problems concerning characteristics of lithic micro-wear traces in the Paleolithic. Use-wear studies already experienced 40 years of research since the discovery of micro-polish varieties which reflect worked materials with wide applications to site structure analysis. However, global standardization of identification criteria still needs comparative efforts, especially on raw material variability and behavioral diversity among regional settlement and subsistence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Smith. Shawn Joy. Timothy de Smet. Michael Faught.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the inception of geophysical survey, archaeologists have longed for the ability to detect the presence or absence of artifacts in buried contexts remotely. This ability is particularly desirable underwater, where accuracy in site location and efficiency in excavation are paramount given the expense and logistical burden associated with performing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlieke Ernst. Brendan J. M. Weaver.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster we present a ceramic phenomenon occurring at two Spanish colonial sites of differing spatial and temporal provenience in the Spanish Americas. The appearance of various African influenced comb-dragged and wavy line motifs in Cotuí and Concepción de la Vega (early colonial Caribbean, 1495-1562) as well as at the haciendas of San Francisco Xavier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Quinn. Alice Wright. Benjamin Duvall-Irwin.

Copper was an important raw material throughout the prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The role of southern Appalachian copper in social, economic, political, and ideological systems across the Eastern Woodlands has received little attention from anthropological archaeologists, particularly compared with copper from more famous procurement zones in the Great Lakes region. In this paper, we present the first steps of a new collaborative research project designed to understand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hunt. Scott Ingram.

A food production calendar for the Lower Salt River Valley would amplify our understanding of the largest prehistoric irrigation system in the New World. Hunt and Ingram have assembled a food production calendar for the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Hohokam of the Middle Gila River valley (Kiva 2014). A question is whether this calendar can be extended to the Lower Salt River valley. The environmental variable for which we have the most information is air temperature. The historical records of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Quintus. Jeffrey Clark.

Star mounds, named for their star-like shape, have been an enigmatic feature class in the Samoan Archipelago. Researchers have posited several potential functions for these monumental architectural features, including grave and territorial markers, but their primary function appears to have been as surfaces for pigeon catching. But, excavations of these features have been few and data limited. Here, we review old as well as recent data on star mounds relating to their physical attributes (size,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Flexner. Mark McCoy.

Hawai‘i occupies a somewhat unique position as one of two Polynesian archipelagos thought to have been the location of "primary" or "archaic" states in the time before European contact (the other possible example being Tonga). Hawaiian people created an elaborate ritual hierarchy that accompanied the emergence of state religion, which was associated with the construction of monumental stone temple complexes known as heiau. Heiau have long been a staple of archaeological investigation in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Sánchez-Morales.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Under the precept of Historical Ecology landscapes are considered artifacts where the mediation of humans over environments accumulates over time leaving traces of these relationships in the form of sedimentological and paleobotanical records. Alluvial plains in the Neotropics are among the most important environments where humans first settled, beginning the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

Artistic evidence of interactions is among the most salient and most debated in terms of the relationships that it represents between different polities and regions. Traditionally, the focus of analysis is on stylistic and iconographic influences and a discussion of retention of original meanings or evidences of disjunctions. Based on my research on the topic of Classic Period interactions from the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, I have come to the conclusion that our perspectives are much too...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Krasinski.

The identification of cutmarks has been integral to expanding the understanding of hominin behavior ranging from the origins of meat eating to megafaunal extinctions and the peopling of Australia and the Americas. However, paleoanthropological and archaeological research has demonstrated that while cutmark placement may be indicative of activity, cutmark morphology is more complex and influenced by multiple variables such as raw material, tool shape, and bone density. Further, significant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Warden. Benjamin Baaske.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part II" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large collections of culturally significant material are often at a heightened risk of destruction simply due to their collective proximity. Organizations and individuals have begun to recognize the vulnerability of the artifact. The artifact is not something that can be easily copied and reprinted. Artifacts often possess a highly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Gill.

Traditional narratives within Nicaraguan archaeology, based on primarily ethnohistoric rather than archaeological evidence, have privileged the arrival of external actors from Central Mexico at the expense of indigenous developments and have emphasized imposed change rather than situated continuity. Especially given that as archaeologists, our primary sources are material culture, we should approach mobility from a materialist engagement with the flows and hardenings of matter, sensu Manuel De...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Crellin. Mark Purnell.

Bronze axes are arguably the most important objects of study for understanding the start of metallurgy in Europe; a process of material transformation that irrevocably altered the prehistoric world. Yet we cannot accurately answer the simple question ‘what were bronze axes used for’? This paper aims to begin to establish more clearly the way that wear develops on the blades of bronze axes. Existing studies in metalwork wear analysis have relied on qualitative analysis of replicas used in a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Moots.

In 1875, archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers wrote, "History is but another term for evolution." This presentation will explore the development and trajectory of major schools of thought concerning the relevance (or lack thereof) of evolutionary theory to archaeology and examine the current debate about the nature of evolution occurring in the biological sciences. Lactase persistence, for example, has been intensively studied for nearly 30 years, yet new evidence is calling into question when and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Laguens. Benjamin Alberti.

Past ontologies of Andean worlds have been reconstructed in relation to archaeological landscapes, objects, and contexts. Relational and animated worlds build on Andean concepts such as Apu, wa’ka, and Pacha, as well as Amazonian theories. In our case, we work with Amazonian perspectivism as a broad-based Amerindian ontology to analyze a case from Andean northwest Argentina. Perspectivism provides us with a radically different ontological premise for the world: things do not need to be animated,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Melton.

This paper uses macrobotanical and microbotanical remains to investigate the impacts of developing sociopolitical complexity on the foodways of Middle Preclassic inhabitants of the Pacific coast of Guatemala. I use these datasets to explore how urbanization affected food-related practices of residents of La Blanca (900-600 BCE). Macrobotanical remains from house floors facilitate comparisons between elite and commoner foodways, while starch grains and phytoliths extracted from grinding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

Archaeological examination of the remains of the early tropical states in Central America and Asia have demonstrated that, although they exhibit a unique type of settlement pattern, they do represent large, sophisticated, and undoubtedly "urban" state formations. The unique urban footprint of these tropical states – in which settlement units of varying size and complexity are scattered across the landscape, and agricultural lands and green zones extend up to, and even into epicenters – has come...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Anderson.

The Aurignacian is considered a product of the first modern human groups in Western Europe. Nevertheless, we have approached this important moment in Prehistory with a diachronic vision, ultimately inhibiting us from investigating the synchronic organization of this archaeological culture. By enlarging our field of vision to several sites in southwestern France we hope to characterize the variability of Aurignacian lithic industries on two scales: the inter- and the intra-site. At the intra-site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Wohlgemuth.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I take a pan-regional frame of reference to address the impressive variability in more than 7,500 analyzed plant macroremains samples from the desert, coastal, and interior lowland and upland reaches of California. I focus on the effects of variation in habitat, including animal resources, especially fish and shellfish,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Lorey.

Archaeologists and researchers in heritage-based disciplines frequently study the complex interactions between human societies and natural environments. All too often, however, research proceeds from the premise that natural patterns, stressors and events promote direct cultural changes or adaptations on the part of human societies. Instead of perpetuating this linear and causal understanding of the relationships between nature and culture, this paper develops a new, holistic framework that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Mark. Justin Holcomb. David Carballo.

The diffusion and spread of material culture is a cornerstone of archaeological research, particularly understanding the variables which dictate the structure of dispersal. Recent evolutionary approaches have sought to address technological spread through mathematical modeling. One model, the reaction-diffusion model, suggests diffusion occurs at the population scale as a wave-of-dispersal. While previous researchers demonstrated the efficacy of this approach regarding the peopling of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Watrall.

The spaces we inhabit and interact with on a daily basis are made up of layers of cultural activity that are, quite literally, built up over time. While museum exhibits, archaeological narratives, and public archaeology programs communicate this heritage, they often don’t allow for the kind of interactive, place-based, and individually driven exploration so often craved by the public. In recent years, many archaeological projects, cultural landscapes, and heritage institutions have turned to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Cameron Monroe.

The Archaeology of the African Diaspora has long privileged the analysis of the everyday lives of enslaved Africans living on plantation sites in the New World. Notwithstanding the political and intellectual importance of this approach to our understanding of the emergence of the colonial world and its contemporary legacies, recent scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic has examined the new political entities that arose across the Black Atlantic World in dynamic tension with broader Atlantic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joakim Goldhahn.

This paper will explore the relationship between animated boat prows in different stone media - petroglyphs and geoglyphs - from an ontological perspective. It explores chronological changes in these media and argues for both similarities and differences in how stones participated in unfolding peoples' life-worlds or worldings during the north European Bronze Age.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw. Scott Macrae.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The IRAW@Bagan project is striving to generate an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE) across a range of significant ecological, climatic, economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Diehl.

Ostrich eggs have been a valuable resource for Sub-Saharan populations for thousands of years, offering a rich nutritional source as well as a means of transporting water. While burned ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments are common at sites, it is difficult to determine whether they were subsistence refuse or the disposed remnants of canteens. Current tools for analyzing OES burning conditions involve expensive and time consuming isotopic analysis or scanning electron microscopy. This research aims...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefanie Bautista.

This paper highlights how the study of ancient dwellings and the activities that occurred within them can help archaeologists better understand the dynamic and complex nature of people, their relationships to each other, and the broader society they live in. In the Rio Grande de Nasca Region, Perú, Andean archaeologists assume that the Nasca (A.D. 1–700) developed directly from the Paracas (800–100 B.C.) based on the continuity of some pottery traits and settlement. While there has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damon Mullen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Peopling of the Americas remains a provocative topic in both North and South American Archaeology. Speculation about who the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas were, where they came from, and how they got here, began the moment European explorers first encountered them. Current archaeological data and theory indicate humans had reached the landmass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Lansche.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New research in the northern portion of Bears Ears National Monument reveals unique forms of late 12th century Ancestral Pueblo towers that vary from nearby Cedar Mesa and Hovenweep. This poster presents a study of towers in Beef Basin, a large valley north of the Abajo Mountain Range draining into the Colorado River, and examines the unique architecture,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kassi Bailey.

The objective of this poster is to present an overview of the emergence of pest-host and commensal relationships that emerged between humans and microfaunal species over the course of approximately 1,500 years at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük. My research is focused on the investigation of the frequency and taphonomic contexts of microfaunal remains in a formative village setting. Co-evolution between humans and plants and animals occurred as feedback systems developed because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Casey Barrier.

The development of large, complex settlements and the organization of associated institutions and social groups are major topics of research for anthropological archaeologists. The realization that pre-Columbian inhabitants of the central Mississippi Valley instigated complex social arrangements at urban scales makes Native North America a site of research that can contribute to the comparative study of urbanism. In this paper, previous and ongoing work near the site of Cahokia is discussed. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower. Joseph C. Mazzariello.

The Empire of Aksum was one of the earliest and most influential African complex polities, yet remains one of the world’s most scantly documented ancient civilizations. The Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) surveyed a 196-km2 area between the ancient capital city of Aksum and the Red Sea over four field seasons from 2005-2008. This work documented 137 archaeological sites, including 7 ancient towns larger than 6 hectares, and contributes a substantial body of data on geographies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dries Tys. Barbora Wouters.

This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The central markets of medieval towns in Northwestern Europe, and more specifically the Low Countries, are considered to be the theatres of late medieval urban identity. They are often associated with the origins of these towns, or at least their glory as merchant towns in the past. In reality, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haeden Stewart.

This is an abstract from the "Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We are living through an era that has been described as “the apotheosis of waste,” a globe brimming with greenhouse gasses, mountains of tailings, lagoons of pig-shit, and hangars of acidic sludge. The massive scale and persistence of industrial waste has not only transformed the air, water, and soil that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal Dozier.

The proto-historic period within North America provides a framework for assessing the transformations brought on by contact and conflict between indigenous peoples and European colonizers. In central and south Texas, a distinct archaeological culture, Toyah, spans some 400 years, 1250-1650 CE. The hallmark projectile point and first systemic, locally-produced ceramic tradition in the area have intrigued archaeologists for over a hundred years; interpretations of the phenomena have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Etter. Robert Z. Selden. Sunday Eiselt.

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Toyah Phase has been the subject of debate since J. Charles Kelly first defined it in 1947. Known widely as the Toyah Phase Paradox, research has struggled to reconcile the homogenous expression of this protohistoric to historic archaeological record in central Texas and the high levels of ethnic diversity witnessed by French and Spanish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica MacLellan. Daniela Triadan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We analyze 253 Late and Terminal Classic (c. AD 600-950) Maya ceramic figurine whistles (ocarinas) and fragments excavated at Ceibal, Guatemala, as materials of socialization. The figurines are mold-made and represent repeating characters. Based on mortuary contexts and other evidence, we argue they were used in household performances and associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Marquardt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Miniature vessels are generally placed into one of three categories by archaeologists; children’s toys, ritual offerings, or test pots to assess clay quality. Previous studies in the Southwest have explored these small bowls and jars as introductory entries to the potter’s craft, made by small hands under the tutelage – or in emulation – of their elders (Crown...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramiro Aguayo Haro. Mijaely Castañón-Suárez.

This is an abstract from the "Ways to Do, Ways to Inhabit, Ways to Interact: An Archaeological View of Communities and Daily Life" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A partir de un nuevo análisis de los ajuares funerarios excavados en la década de los ochenta en el sitio de La Nopalera, se lleva a cabo un replanteamiento tanto de la temporalidad como los alcances sociales de este tipo de contextos funerarios en la región de la cuenca de Cuitzeo. Se...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Ibarra.

La conservación del patrimonio arqueológico en la región de la Sierra Norte del estado de Oaxaca, representa un gran reto debido entre otros aspectos a su entorno geográfico, a cuestiones del ámbito social que se relacionan con el arraigo a sus costumbres y tradiciones; y más aún, a la falta total de antecedentes sobre trabajos previos de conservación sobre el patrimonio cultural local. En esta ponencia se presentarán los trabajos de intervención para la conservación y restauración de los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Frutos. María Vasquez.

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. Se hará una revisión de los antecedentes arqueológicos en la zona, dónde el principal asentamiento corresponde al islote artificial de Xaltocan, de filiación otomí, y cuya fundación data del periodo Posclásico temprano y se reconoce por la presencia de cerámica azteca I y II, sin embargo, en el Proyecto de Salvamento...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Burchell. Natasha Leclerc. David Grant.

Stable oxygen isotope analysis of marine shells has increasingly become a common tool used to identify seasonality and reconstruct past sea surface temperatures (PSST). Oxygen isotope analysis of marine carbonates cannot, however, discriminate between freshwater fluxes and temperature changes as they both affect oxygen isotope ratios (18O/16O). The inability to discriminate the geochemical data can lead to ambiguous PSST and seasonality interpretations. Trace element ratios of Sr/Ca are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yi-Ling Lin. Yuling He. Zezhen Pan. Daniel Giammar.

Through chemical analyses of soils, bones, and organic residues, archaeologists can identify anthropogenic impacts on environment at archaeological sites. In this research, we are interested in understanding if and how bronze production had impact on the environment during Bronze Age China. Soil samples from Hanwangdu East, a Middle Shang period site at Anyang, were analyzed by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The purpose of this project is to 1) evaluate if ICP-MS is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Ruiz. Viridiana Guzmán Torres. Emiliano Melgar Tísoc.

This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sacrificio humano por medio del acceso de toracotomía bilateral transversa es una práctica ritual poco documentada a nivel osteológico en el área maya. En el presente trabajo se muestra a nivel microscópico y macroscópico tal evidencia, así como el tratamiento que se les dio a las victimas posterior al...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Toney.

The Incised and Punctate Horizon style is a widespread late prehistoric ceramic series known throughout Eastern Amazonia. A variety of subseries are known from coastal and highland Columbia, coastal Venezuela, the Orinoco, the Antilles, the Guianas, the Southern Amazon, and the Lower Amazon, including Santarém. The Incised and Punctate horizon style may represent a second wave of Carib-speaking chiefdoms spreading throughout the tropical lowlands between A.D. 1000-1500. This paper presents...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isaac Ullah.

Simulation models are explicit descriptions of the components and interactions of a system, made dynamic in software. In archaeology, they are most often used to conduct controlled experiments, in which key socio-ecological parameters are varied, and changes to system-level dynamics are observed over time. An interesting emergent property of these kinds of experiments is that they produce a range of possible outcomes for any set of initial conditions. Thus, rather than use simulations to explain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Ávila. Yalilich Miranda. Emilio Aguayo. Alfonso Gastelum.

This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The capital of the Tarascan empire was located in Tzintzuntzan (Michoacán, Mexico), which reached its peak during the Late Postclassic (AD 1350–1525). At the time of contact, there was an almost unique continuous transition, showing a historical process of long duration, where different traditions converged. Among the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Patricia Castro Montes. Blanca Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tarascan Empire had become the most important prehispanic metallurgical center in Mesoamerica by around 1450 CE, with copper being the most commonly used metal to manufacture a variety of sumptuary objects. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Zimmermann. Anna Berim. Korey Brownstein. Barry Hewlett. Philippe Charlier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today, marijuana consumption is becoming decriminalized across the Western world. This legal change is often followed by increased research activity, specifically regarding crop ‘improvement’ and the concentration of the plant’s psychoactive compounds. This situation resembles the process characterizing the commodification of tobacco during the Colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olof Olafardottir-Hamilton. Rebecca Barzilai.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Before repatriation, NAGPRA practitioners need to track down all components of a collection to prevent their tribal partners from having to repatriate the same collections multiple times. This involves tracing often labyrinthine collection histories...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jörg Linstädter. Nikola Babucic. Sabrina Stempfle. Martina Seifert.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in Mozambique: Current Issues and Topics in Archaeology and Heritage Management" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In southern Africa, the appearance of pottery was first recognized in the context of Early Farming Communities (EFC) about 2000 BP. Increasingly, pottery can be linked to hunter-gatherers; therefore, southern Africa stands out as a place to investigate the contact between these two communities....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nikola Babucic. Jörg Linstädter. Sabrina Stempfle. Martina Seifert.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in Mozambique: Current Issues and Topics in Archaeology and Heritage Management" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In southern Africa, the appearance of pottery was first recognized in the context of Early Farming Communities (EFC) about 2000 BP. Increasingly, pottery can be linked to hunter-gatherers, therefore southern Africa stands out as a place to investigate the contact between these two communities. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Collins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Florida stands as a unique case study due to being one of the few states to include Africans who were enslaved in the mortality schedules during the 1800s. The historical backdrop of Northern Florida’s settlement and its deep rooted ties to the institution of slavery sets the stage for a rich examination of pre- and post-emancipation treatment of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cindy Hsin-yee Huang. April Nowell. Leslie Van Gelder.

Finger flutings are lines and markings drawn with the human hand in soft cave sediment in caves and rock shelters throughout southern Australia, New Guinea and southwestern Europe, dating back to the Late Pleistocene. Two decades ago, Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder developed a rigorous methodological framework for the measurement and analysis of finger flutings that allows researchers to identify characteristics of the creators, such as age, sex and group sizes. However, despite a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian McCray.

The ecological setting and the political formations located in the Ceja de Selva raise unique terminological and conceptual questions for the study of interaction networks. Specifically, how do we best recreate meaningful "archaeological regions" within a mosaic of ecological zones and groups with poorly known culture histories? Presenting results from the Proyecto Arqueológico Wimba – 2016, this paper analyzes the chronological development of the Wimba site within the Ceja de Selva of eastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu-chao Zhao. Brian Stewart.

Humans have frequented southern Africa’s highest reaches – Lesotho’s Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains – for ≥90,000 years. As with many high mountain systems worldwide, the Maloti-Drakensberg cast a rainshadow over closely neighboring arid lowlands (the eastern Karoo Desert). Based on previous archaeological and paleoenvironmental work in highland Lesotho, researchers have posited that source populations for human dispersals into the mountain zone often originated in the Karoo, particularly during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Baustian. Danielle M. Romero. Barbara Roth. Darrell Creel.

Three seasons of excavation at the Elk Ridge site in the Upper Mimbres Valley suggest close familial social structures within this Classic period community. As a part of this preservation project, excavation of endangered burials has revealed mortuary and biological patterns that renew thinking of community dynamics in the region. Previous research by Harry Shafer has proposed that Mimbres communities organized around the family unit and lineage groups. Data from Elk Ridge thus far support this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuka Shichiza. Katsunori Takase. Hiroshi Ushiro. Thomas Royle. Dongya Yang.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) was historically an important subsistence item for many Indigenous peoples along the North Pacific Rim including the Ainu of Hokkaido in northern Japan. However, relative to salmon, little archaeological research has been conducted on this taxon. Ethnographic records and oral traditions are also limited as many Ainu were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aubrey Roemer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the rediscovery and canonization of Paleolithic and precontact cave art, researchers have grappled with different ways to document and reproduce sites containing ancient artwork. Early methods utilized hand drawing in situ and, soon after, cave art reproduction included film photography. Later, digital photography became the primary mode of capturing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginie Renson. Marx Navarro Castillo. Andrea Cucina. Brendan J. Culleton. Hector Neff.

This study presents the strontium isotopic analysis of enamel, dentine and bones of four individuals recovered from two sites (Miguel Aleman and PIN7), dating respectively from the Early and Late Classic period, both located the Pacific coast of Chiapas. The enamel samples of the four individuals have a Sr isotopic composition that varies between 0.70540 and 0.70631 for the 87Sr/86Sr ratio. The results were compared to data available for human bones and teeth, as well as rock, plant, water, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Green. Ashley H. McKeown. Roseanne Bongiovanni.

Recent research focusing on environmental change in the Belize River Valley during the Classic period provides clear evidence for deteriorating conditions during the Late Classic period. These findings help explain shifts in socio-political and religious systems, as well as fluctuations in population distributions of the Late Classic and Terminal Classic Maya. Some archaeological research suggests complete abandonment of ceremonial sites occupied by the Maya elite. Mortuary practices can be used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marina González-Varas. Antonio Pérez-Balarezo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological findings in the neotropical region of South America are central to understanding the early adaptations of Paleoamerican populations to diverse ecosystems, especially tropical areas, between 14,000 and 9,000 BP — a period marked by significant paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic shifts. This study focuses on the critical role of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Smallwood. Thomas Jennings. Charlotte Pevny.

Paleoindian projectile points occur in high incidences in the American Southeast, and compared to other regions in the East, the Southeast has the greatest projectile point diversity. One effective way to understand this diversity is by tracking broad-scale morphological variation in suites of point traits to build cultural lineages. In this paper, we take a more trait-specific approach. We trace changes in projectile point design to understand the evolution of specific point attributes that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron McNeil. Edy Barrios. Bryce Brown. Richard Terry. Shanti Morell-Hart.

During the Late Classic period, the ancient community of Río Amarillo was actively engaged in the politics of the city of Copan, whether willingly or not. Some have suggested that the fertile bajos of the Río Amarillo East Pocket may have produced food for the city to its west, ameliorating shortages that could have arisen due to its rising population. Archaeological research conducted by the Proyecto Arqueológico Río Amarillo, Copan (PARAC) since 2011 has recovered information regarding both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandy Budden-Hoskins.

Archaeologists have, until recently, tended to study pots in what I view as an outside/in or etic manner. We have looked at size, form, decoration and touched on the manner of making only insofar as a pot being hand-built, wheel-thrown or cast. However, by developing a profoundly emic understanding of potting, as performance, we have a tool that can allow us to to view the entirely social and shifting cultural nature of a particular genre of pots. In 2007 I developed a skill methodology that has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naphtalie Jeanty.

The historic archaeology of US cavalry forts in the 19th century allows for exploration of a wide range of social issues and historical questions. Using examples from Fort Davis, Texas, this study analyzes Buffalo Soldier troops stationed there from 1867-1891. It presents results of an investigation of male identified homosociality within black communities by tracing male relationships within 19th century gendered labor spaces. A queer perspective allows this research to focus on the bonds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Peters.

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on the "Paracas Necropolis" textile assemblage from the Necropolis of Wari Kayan and comparisons with contemporary artifacts has led to the development of models of artifact production and uses (*chaîne opératoire), with evident implications for models of the social relations of production....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristi Feinzig.

Studying beads and changes in use of beads in a given population provide insight into the impact of outside influences on people in a given population. This research identifies bead types that were valued by indigenous cultures in South America prior to the Spanish Conquest in the Sixteenth-Century, and compares their frequency in six geographic regions within Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia with the frequency of glass beads brought by the Spanish to the same regions. This study examines...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Von Hagen.

The art style of the people who occupied the territory called "Chachapoyas" by sixteenth century chroniclers and modern scholars reflects the region’s location straddling the eastern slope of Peru’s northern Andes and Amazonia. At various times in Andean prehistory the Chachapoya interacted with cultures to the north, east and west of their territory, while at other times they seem to have flourished in relative isolation. Given Chachapoyas’ location and apparent sporadic contacts, especially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erlend Johnson. Ellen Bell. Marcello Canuto.

In this paper we contend that Copan fundamentally transformed the political structures and social institutions of centers in outlying areas as it expanded and integrated these regions. Evidence from our areas of study, the Cucuyagua and El Paraiso valleys, suggest that these regions had long lived autocthonous populations prior to Copan’s expansion into these regions in the Late Classic period. Using evidence from other non-Maya sites in Western and Central Honduras we contend that while varied...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Heckel.

During the late-19th and early- 20th centuries, professional ethnographers/archaeologists and amateur collectors amassed more than 3,000 artifacts of dress and adornment from 17 cultural groups that are now part of the "Plains" collections at the American Museum of Natural History. These objects constitute a material record of conventions of dress that were inconsistently recorded at the time of artifact collection. Drawing on archaeological and ethnographic records, historical documents, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Helmke. Jesper Nielsen. Ángel Iván Rivera Guzmán.

More than four decades ago H.B. Nicholson compared the so-called Palace Stone from Xochicalco to a page in a Late Postclassic or Early Colonial manuscript. Showing numerous calendrical dates and toponymic signs connected by a path marked by footprints the monument readily recalls the mapa tradition that is so well documented in the central Mexican highlands at the time of the Spanish conquest. In this paper we explore the Epiclassic evidence of this tradition, discussing not only central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Wilshusen. Mark Tobias.

The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 and the conferring of Tom Windes’s M.A. in Anthropology in 1967 appear to be causally independent, but thereafter the arc of historic preservation and Windes’s archaeological career are intertwined. We distinguish three major stages in cultural resource management over the last 50 years, each of which tracks almost seamlessly with the changing focus of Windes’s work. The challenges of defining the intent of the act, enforcing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margherita Zona. Edouard Masson-MacLean. Carly Ameen. Camilla Speller. Keith Dobney.

This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) are important economic and subsistence resources for contemporary and past indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast of North America. The seven recognised Oncorhynchus species each occupy different ecological niches and exhibit diversity in seasonal spawning and migratory behaviours. Although salmonid remains are ubiquitous at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Kaplan.

This paper explores variability in the consumption and distribution of obsidian within imperial and local Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000) contexts in order to address regional manifestations of imperial control and the role of resource extraction and regulation within the Wari Empire in Peru. During the Middle Horizon, the Wari Empire expanded and maintained control over the Peruvian Andes, often going to great lengths to import and export critical resources obtained from distant regions throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Ellens.

In a time when global travel was fairly restricted, citrus lime consumption extended across the Atlantic, regularly appearing in British advertisements and utilized in the global perfume and beverage markets. Following abolition, in 1834, limes and lime by-products became the chief export of islands like Montserrat and Dominica. In the case of Dominica, lime production gradually developed, and by 1875, many lime estates were yielding exceptional profits. The L. Rose and Lime Company was one of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Van Keuren. Jeffrey Ferguson. Mary Ownby.

Ancestral Pueblo peoples in east-central Arizona crafted a unique type of representational-style pottery (Fourmile Polychrome) by the early AD 1300s. Questions remain about where the type was manufactured and how it circulated in the region. We present the results of a neutron activation analysis (NAA) of sherds from three villages where the type was likely produced. Building on earlier research, our analyses clarify issues of provenance and speak to the fourteenth-century social networks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Borislava Simova.

This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the earliest known examples of permanent architecture in the Maya Lowlands, a distinctive plaza-structure complex known as an E Group, is also one of the most commonly encountered architectural groups present within Preclassic sites throughout the region. The rapid adoption of permanent architecture and widespread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Watts Malouchos. Brandon "Everett" Bandy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bradley Off-Site Remediation Project remediates deep tilling that occurred during a Natural Resources Conservation Service project at the late precontact Bradley site (3CT7) in Crittendon County, Arkansas. The Bradley Project supports collections-based research important to the Quapaw Nation by exploring connections between the Mississippian Angel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Grier. Grant Keddie.

In this paper, we address the extent to which Northwest Coast societies, and specifically those of the Salish Sea, were engaged in, participated in, or were connected to an external world beyond their own perceived borders. We consider four elements of the problem. First, we examine ethnographic data pertaining to the spatial extent of the known world, and trace its borders. We then consider the flow of exogenous and exotic materials into the Northwest Coast over time, and assess the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine G. Parker.

This is an abstract from the "*SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whiteness has been an especially salient phenomenon in shaping the histories, identities, and landscapes of the US Southeast, even as social and political rhetoric have long worked to render Whiteness invisible and implicit. However, explicit archaeological examinations of Whiteness have been comparatively limited within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kim Eileen Ruf. Marie Kolbenstetter.

This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Matters of materiality and mobility across Central America have long been the subject of archaeological investigation concerning its precolonial past. In outlining the spectrum of material movements and their broader sociocultural implications beyond traditional archaeological narratives, this introductory paper seeks to explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Scott Cummings.

Dolores Piperno has addressed the origins of maize agriculture in the New World through examination of samples from MesoAmerica. Ultimately, maize diffused throughout the world. Prior to globilization, maize spread throughout the Americas. Zea mays is represented by over 100 races in North America alone. My work has focused on the spread of maize agriculture, rather than its origins. Identifying races of maize is a daunting task for any region of the Americas. The most informative remains for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Elizabeth Grávalos. Isabelle Druc.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How do ebbs and flows in regional trade relations affect village level practices of pottery production? We assess this question by tracking variability and continuity in ceramic technological traditions at the site of Jecosh, located in the Callejón de Huaylas of Ancash, Peru. Recent excavations of domestic and mortuary...