Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mayya Azarova.

This paper addresses the question of the place of Belizean Maya jade artifacts within a broader Mesoamerican context. More specifically I examine the similarities between Belizean jade and other jade finds in different Maya areas. I discuss why a significant number of major jade finds have occurred in Belize while it is often considered to be on the periphery of Maya culture as well as examining the variations in the iconography of carved images on jade. I draw on evidence of recent finds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Railey.

Bell-shaped storage pits are a global phenomenon, and most (but not all) of these features were used for grain storage. Native Southwesterners’ use of bell-shaped pits began well back in pre-ceramic times. Both highly mobile hunter-gatherers and less mobile farmers dug and used them, and in a very general sense storage pit sizes track variation in settlement-subsistence patterns. Specifically, mobile hunter-gatherers dispersed small caches throughout their foraging ranges. This was a sort of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Railey.

Control and manipulation of stored food was an important force driving human social evolution. Among the more distinctive forms of storage facilities are bell-shaped pits, which have a global distribution and were common in ancient north-central China. In this paper, size variation of 86 bell-shaped pits, spanning the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in China’s Yuanqu Basin, are examined in relation to other evidence of sociopolitical complexity and change. The data show a significant increase in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Carr.

A summary of prehistoric circular earthworks in the Lake Okeechobee and northern Everglades is provided. Their forms and their relation to the area's wetlands is discussed, and a hypothesis as to their function is provided.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Davenport.

Some of the densest concentrations of prehistoric monumental construction in Florida are located within the Kissimmee River valley/ Lake Okeechobee basin areas. Based on 1930s-1940s aerial images and limited field investigations archaeologists have created typologies for the various circle ditch and linear earthworks. However, these studies did not examine the intra-relationships of the subcomponents that comprise the individual mound complexes, nor the intersite relationships to the physical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesper Nielsen. Christophe Helmke.

Whereas the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) has long been recognized as a period characterized by increased conflict and warfare between the dominant city-states of central Mexico, concrete evidence for actual military actions has been rather limited. Here we discuss epigraphic and iconographic evidence that suggest that two of the major Epiclassic powers, namely Cacaxtla and Xochicalco, were involved in a violent conflict, and that Cacaxtla succeeded in capturing several prominent individuals from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Simmons.

Payson Sheets has influenced the work of a great number of archaeologists over the years, particularly researchers interested in the nature of households and the quotidian aspects of domestic life, lithic production and use, and in the field of ‘disaster archaeology.’ This paper highlights some of those influences in the work of the Maya Archaeometallurgy Project and, more recently, the Ambergris Caye Archaeological Project II, both of which are in Belize. This paper focuses on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Lofaro. George Kamenov. Jorge Luis Soto Maguino. John Krigbaum.

Built in AD 1605, La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesus de Huamanga is the earliest Jesuit church in modern-day Ayacucho, Peru. Archaeological excavations underneath the church floor uncovered human and faunal remains dating to the 17th and 18th centuries CE. Only indigenous individuals appear to be buried underneath the church floors. Despite significant forced labor practices (mita) at the time, few individuals buried in the church show signs of bodily stress or disease prevalent in those engaged...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Law Pezzarossi.

This is an abstract from the "Recognizing and Recording Post-1492 Indigenous Sites in North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In her recent book, "The White Possessive," Aileen Moreton-Robinson details the way in which Western Nationhood hinges upon the possession of property. Consequently, the mechanisms by which Indigenous people become "propertyless," are crucial for the state’s denial of Indigenous sovereignty. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hollis Miller.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historian Tiya Miles argues for an abundant approach to history, in which researchers learn to excavate absences in the historical record instead of allowing those silences to stand. Belongings (a.k.a. artifacts or objects) are additional archives that contain the stories, energies, and contexts in which they were made and used. As part of my work with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Seyler.

This poster examines belt fragments recovered from the mortuary site of Uraca in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru. The textiles utilized in this analysis were recovered during excavations in Sector I to the south, where interments were placed on a high bluff, and Sector II to the north, where interments were placed closer to the valley bottom. These sectors are not only defined by their geographical separation but also the variation in artifact and skeletal assemblages present between the two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen O'Brien. Sheldon Smith. Nicole DeFrancisco.

Archaeologists have argued for numerous functions of the bench features found throughout the Maya world ranging from utilitarian to ritual. During the 2017 field season at the Late Classic site of La Obra, excavations of a centrally-located structure revealed a bench standing approximately 50 centimeters from the structure floor and extending out approximately 150 centimeters from its northern wall. La Obra is a hilltop production site located approximately one kilometer northwest of the central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Rönnlund.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The urbanization of human settlements is commonly seen as a relatively linear development beginning in the earliest sedentary communities of the Neolithic and ending with the international megalopolises of the present day. A closer scrutiny of the archaeological record, however, clearly shows that this narrative has little bearing on the factual situation....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Montgomery. Jaime Awe.

The Upper Belize River Valley hosted a high density of ancient Maya settlement from the Early Preclassic Period onward, supported by abundant fertile alluvial floodplains. In addition to the handful of major civic-ceremonial centers spread along the valley, the region also sustained numerous middle-tier administrative, ceremonial, and residential loci. The site of Yaxox, strategically situated at the confluence of the Macal and Mopan rivers, provides an intriguing example of a minor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schweikart.

This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Vicksburg National Cemetery, established in 1866, and Vicksburg National Military Park, established in 1899, were created to commemorate the 1862–1863 siege, to honor those who had fought and died here and to preserve these significant places on the very grounds on which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessie Hoover.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Little is known about the Mary Rinn Site’s cultural affiliation. The site is surrounded by better defined cultural groups such as the Monongahela and the Fishbasket complex. Limited excavations and research revealed evidence of possible housing structures and the trace of a stockade line. Surface collected materials from the Boyer Collection, and field school...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Mayoral. Teegan Boyd. Michele Bleuze. James Brady.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cueva de Sangre is a 3.5-kilometer cave that is a highly complex, multi-cave system, in Dos Pilas, Petén, Guatemala, that includes riverine environments, seasonally inundated passages as well as dry areas. Use of the cave has been dated ceramically from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic (400 BC – AD 800). This study examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayeleigh Sharp.

Understanding the role of the widespread yet under-recognized art style known as Gallinazo, its persistence alongside the more conspicuous Mochica art style, and the social factors that facilitated their long-term coexistence on Peru’s North Coast during the first millennium, are primary concerns of this work. Investigation of the Songoy-Cojal site in the mid-Zaña Valley shows that Gallinazo-Mochica coexistence persisted at least until the 8th century CE (based on new C-14 dates). Many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendon Asher. Heather Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Blackwater Draw Locality 1 is one of few archaeological sites in North America open to the public with exposed cultural deposits on permanent display and protected by an enclosed structure. With deposits spanning the last 13,000 years, the locality provides a unique opportunity to interpret in situ past human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Ashley. Chris Webster. Ruth Tringham.

Within the slender margins of academic archaeology, our funding options are extremely limited. The accepted pathways to sustainability have been institutional support (the academy) or starting a nonprofit. In both cases we all must battle over an ever shrinking grant and philanthropic pool. The alternative is to go for-profit, which has historically meant to become a CRM firm. In the past few years, Benefit corporations (B Corps) have become an international movement for individuals and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sanna Lipkin. Titta Kallio-Seppä. Annemari Tranberg. Erika Ruhl. Sirpa Niinimäki.

CT-scanning has for long been utilized in the research of mummified individuals, and has been a crucial method used to analyze also northern Finnish mummified human remains. Within Church, Space and Memory -project at the University of Oulu in Finland, eight individuals, mostly children, buried under floor planks of churches have been lifted up with their coffins, and taken for CT-scanning at the Oulu University Hospital. The CT-scans have proved to be suitable also for studying coffins,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dylan Davis. Carl Lipo.

The use of multispectral imagery is particularly effective for studying the archaeological record of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) due to the lack of vegetation and the fact that record is composed of surface distributions of rock features. Flaws (2010) has demonstrated that WorldView-2 multispectral imagery that includes the NIR band can be used to identify "lithic mulch gardens," a key component of prehistoric Rapa Nui subsistence strategies. Recently, the availability of WorldView-3...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hendrik Poinar.

Our laboratory focuses on the preservation and degradation of organic signatures in archaeological remains. We devise and use state-of-the art genetic techniques to pull DNA sequences from tooth and bone remains to address questions of ancestry, origins, extinctions and evolution. Currently the lab is focusing on the evolution of infectious disease, namely plague, using full genomic evidence garnered from victims of past pandemics. I will speak about the centre, the overarching questions we are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theron Isensee. Christopher Webster. Roger Werner.

In today's day and age, we have created technology to help benefit our interaction, our communication, streamline our workload and increase our work output. The need to be in person or in house all the time as a business has changed. A company is able to save resources by allowing employees to work on their own schedule, but yet still accomplish all of the tasks, workload, and exceed deadlines by being virtual. This form of business leads to a more relaxed and happier lifestyle for those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Kroot. Matt Peeples. Jessie Kortscheff.

This is an abstract from the "Training a New Generation of Heritage Professionals in the Valley of the Sun: The ASU Field School at S’eḏav Va’aki" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2021 the City of Phoenix’s Archaeology Office invited Arizona State University instructors and students to assist in the development of a management plan for a parcel of land within the S’eḏav Va’aki Museum and Archaeological Park lands via a field training program in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Williamson.

This is an abstract from the "Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of interior Newfoundland is a poorly understood subject, and yet, there are more than 70 Beothuk housepits in the Exploits River Valley, comprising the majority of these features. The topography of these features has been recorded using traditional survey methods, producing poor data for spatial and morphological studies. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Faught.

I challenge the belief of biological and archaeological anthropologists that Beringia is the only place people have come into the Americas, even if along the coast. I show how researchers affirm their consequent, don't show direct historical continuity in areas where gene samples are modern, can't find any other than Dyuktai/Denali/Dene cultures archaeologically, nor have evidence of north to south, or west to east propagation after intrusion. In its place, I propose South America as the locus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Rondeau. Chris Carleton.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When and how people first arrived in the Americas remains one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries. The earliest archaeological evidence suggests that people migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, Beringia, and into Alaska around 14,000 years ago. Where they went from there is still unclear! One hypothesis is that these First...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Reuther. Ben Potter. Nancy Bigelow. Charles Holmes. Francois Lanoe.

The middle Tanana Valley of interior Alaska, an unglaciated region of Eastern Beringia, holds a high-resolution record of human-environment interaction that extends over 14,000 years. The Late Glacial and early Holocene landscapes of this region were dynamic with considerable ecological restructuring. Aeolian deposits accumulated in lowland areas and adjacent foothills at relatively high rates, soils were relatively underdeveloped, river down-cutting prevailed across the valley, and wild fires...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Chicoine. Gabriel Ramón. Martha Bell.

This paper explores the legacy of the "Berkeley School of Andean Studies" and its relations to the eponymous "Berkeley School of Geography." We examine the relationships between the key founding figures of both schools including John H. Rowe and Carl O. Sauer, but also their students, disciples, and other scholars influenced by their seminal research. Through a review of the interactions between members of the two schools, as well as academic genealogies and writings, our paper has three main...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Schneider.

In 2013, a group of Harvard graduate students launched ComSciCon—a science communication workshop for graduate students—with the goal of empowering young scientists to share research in their field with broad and diverse audiences. Each year since, 50 graduate students have come together every summer to spend three days undergoing intensive science communication training, interacting with expert panelists, and composing original pieces for publication. This paper provides an overview of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Thomin.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network has created a variety of unique projects throughout the past decade of its existence. Two of these projects called Unearthing Florida and DARC Geotrail used “airwaves” through the medium of radio and the technology of GPS satellites as a way to educate the public about Florida’s archaeological heritage and to promote archaeotourism. Unearthing Florida is a radio program broadcast Florida public radio NPR member stations designed to enhance the public’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Clark.

Since its inception, the Florida Public Archaeology Network has relied on partnerships with other organizations to help meet our goal of public awareness and education. Throughout the years we have partnered with various organizations to offer training, workshops, youth and adult programs and other opportunities for the public to learn about Florida’s archaeological heritage. Each of these partnerships is unique and bring with them their own challenges and successes. This paper will discuss some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Della Scott-Ireton. Jeffrey Moates. Nicole Grinnan.

FPAN’s development of the Submerged Sites Education & Archaeological Stewardship (SSEAS) program targeted to sport divers and the Heritage Awareness Diving Seminar (HADS) targeted to diving leadership has led to gains in the appreciation and protection of the underwater cultural heritage, in Florida and elsewhere. In presenting these programs, FPAN staff have worked with divers ranging from newly certified to long-time educators, in the process learning as much as we teach. This paper describes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Neller. Lourdes Henebry-DeLeon.

The 20 year journey to repatriation of the Ancient One was long, arduous, frustrating, eye opening, and an education in the NAGPRA law. Over the years we have discovered how poorly understood the law can be. In the case of the Ancient One, the ownership or control of his remains falls under Section 3 of NAGPRA for inadvertent discoveries on federal lands after 1990. An overview of the evidentiary standard applicable to cultural affiliation determinations under NAGPRA will be presented. All...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Witelson.

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock paintings of cattle raids are common in South Africa's southeastern mountains. Traditionally, such scenes are thought to illustrate some degree of conflict between two groups. The postures of the cattle depicted in the same scenes have been interpreted as showing movement such as walking or being driven from one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter White. Robin Torrence. Vince Neall.

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A volcanic environment built up by characterised and well dated airfall tephras is paradise for landscape archaeology because in any excavation the cultural material is placed accurately in time. Shouldn’t this setting also be ideal for environmental data? With expertise provided by Steve Athens, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Herrera.

Recent work at the mid to late Formative site of El Cholo reveals that from at least the 3rd century AD, occupants of this mound complex interacted with Costa Rican Caribbean watershed social groups as well as western Panamanian Chiriquí societies. Evidence also demonstrates contact from as far north as the Guanacaste Nicoya region in place by the 10th or 11th centuries AD. Further analysis of the site suggests that interaction was likely initially predicated on trans-cordilleran ethnic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Passalacqua. Kaleigh Best. Rebecca George. Katie Zejdlik.

This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years there have been a number of high-profile cases where human remains were “discovered” resulting in media attention due to the unethical conditions in which the remains were encountered. Unfortunately, the discovery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Candice Brennan. Jennifer McElhoes. Cindi Alvitre. Carl Lipo.

Within the core of NAGPRA is a spirit of collaboration and consultation between institutions, investigators and native communities. At CSULB, we have partnered with Tongva/San Gabrielino community members and university administration to reinter cultural remains from CA-LAn-270 (Los Altos Village Site), a site excavated in the 1950s. Community interests have centered on placing the re-interment place on university campus property and at a location of CA-LAn-234, a National Register listed...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Francis McManamon. Julian Richards.

Archaeology is awash in digital data. Archaeologists generate large numbers of digital files in their field, laboratory, and records investigations. We use digital mapping, digital photography, digital means of data analysis, and our reports are drafted and produced digitally. Good curation of digital data provides easy means by which it can be discovered and accessed, as well as ensuring that it is preserved for future uses. In many ways the planning for and carrying out good digital involves...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Austin. Ixchel Faniel. Eric Kansa. Jennifer Jacobs. Ran Boytner.

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A student’s first experience with archaeological recording is frequently in a field school setting. Yet, field school data recording practices can quickly evolve as archaeological projects integrate new technology, change excavation strategies, and investigate new research questions. How do these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Snow. Lynn Kim. Steve Davis.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The *Journal of Texas Archeology and History (JTAH) has developed a comprehensive new program for recording gunflint attributes (50+ potential) and site data (40+ items) based on a set of universal standards, taxonomy, methods, and procedures that allow a cloud-based, open-access comparative database to be constructed comprised of North American artifacts. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Peterson.

This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bethel Cemetery excavation required extensive coordination with a number of agencies. Both the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology (SHPO) and the State Revolving Fund provided regulatory oversight. The scientific investigation was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Peterson. Alex Badillo. Joshua Meyers. Jeremy Wilson.

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. The Bethel Cemetery project combined the best of what the CRM and University communities have to offer, while documenting, exhuming, and relocating over 500 graves from a 19th century cemetery in Indianapolis, IN on an aggressive schedule. Over 30 professionals from the University of Indianapolis and IUPUI were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Myers. Alex Badillo.

This is an abstract from the "Towards a Standardization of Photogrammetric Methods in Archaeology: A Conversation about 'Best Practices' in An Emerging Methodology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2018, cultural resource management professionals, in collaboration with local universities, relocated a nineteenth-century cemetery from an urban setting, as a component of planned infrastructure expansion by the Indianapolis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maryann Wasiolek.

Physical evidence that ancient people manipulated their environment in order to better manage water resources for the purpose of facilitating agriculture has long been recognized. Remnants of canal systems indicate diversion of the flow of streams and springs and the direct application of surface water to irrigated fields. Terraces and check dams provide evidence of the diversion of overland runoff, while mulched fields, pumice patches, and dune fields imply that early farmers sited fields so as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Yakabowskas. Christopher Wolff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Maritime Archaic (ca. 8,000-3,200 BP) were the earliest peoples to inhabit the island of Newfoundland. As they settled the island around 6,000 years ago, their ability to maintain lithic traditions were key to their success. Finding new sources of lithic material would have been necessary and that process would have varied greatly across the island. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorie Reents-Budet. Ronald Bishop.

This is an abstract from the "A Celebration and Critical Assessment of "The Maya Scribe and His World" on its Fiftieth Anniversary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The changing relationship of US art and natural history museums and other collections-holding institutions and the field of archaeology as anthropology is examined in this presentation. We assess the past 100+ years’ amassing of archaeological objects as cultural curios, aesthetic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jody Gordon.

This is an abstract from the "World-Systems and Globalization in Archaeology: Assessing Models of Intersocietal Connections 50 Years since Wallerstein’s “The Modern World-System”" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2007, a children’s book about Cypriot history entitled “The Island that Everyone Wanted” was published. Despite being aimed at a juvenile audience, this title aptly encapsulates the history of Cyprus, i.e., as an island coveted by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Piphal Heng.

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. Highland Southeast Asia was historically the domain of ethnic swiddeners, in contrast with the wet rice farmers of lowland states. Recent scholarship has re-envisioned these upland groups as active agents who resisted lowland state domination, rather than viewing them as isolated tribal groups. Highlands located east of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yonatan Adler.

This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late Hellenistic and Roman periods were formative for the development of halakhah—Jewish ritual law. Whereas texts have traditionally served as the primary basis for tracing the evolution of early halakhah, archaeology provides evidence on aspects of this history which are entirely unobtainable from the textual record....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Whereas archaeologists continue to investigate processes of culture contact and frontier construction in hunter-gatherer and small agricultural societies using models primarily originally created and applied for ancient states and modern geopolitics, historians have recently begun investigating Indigenous borderlands. My dissertation, which includes the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yitzchak Jaffe.

The traditional narrative of the Zhou expansion (1046-771 BCE, roughly 800 before the formation of the first Chinese empire in 221 BCE), has been to view it as a military enlargement and conquest and as leading, consequently, to the establishment of a polity controlling a large territorial state. To date, most studies have viewed the finding of Zhou artifacts in a given region as indicating Zhou political control over that area or even that actual Zhou people inhabited the region. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount. Lisa J. LeCount. David W. Mixter.

This paper introduces the Lowland Maya Territories: Local Dynamics in Regional Landscapes symposium that critiques the current model of territories as stable geo-political entities. We use data from the Actuncan Archaeological Project and other upper Belize River valley projects to suggest that territories were in flux, reacting and changing to social and political relationships. Territorial dynamism is driven by at least two processes: the social construction of place and the political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Feest. Viviane Luiza da Silva.

From the Philosophical Voyage to Brazil of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira in 1791 to the Brazilian fieldwork of the young philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss from 1936 to 1938, nearly 4000 Bororo artifacts and more than 300 Kadiwéu pots were collected for museums in Europe and the United States by naturalists, anthropologists, missionaries, artists, and adventurers. What began as part of the project of the Enlightenment to catalog the world based on the principles of Linnean taxonomy turned into a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelie Manin. Antoine Dorison. Marion Forest. Grégory Pereira.

If the questions of herding or management of wild species have been regularly addressed in Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, cultural development is assumed to be essentially directed by agriculture. Indeed, the presence of only two widely recognised domesticated animals, the dog (Canis familiaris) and the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), would have limited the growth of a more complex agro-pastoralism. However, the importance of non-domesticated animals and their interactions with the agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ilean Isaza. Diana Carvajal Contreras.

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent focus on insular areas has expanded our knowledge on the abundance and diversity of insular, coastal, and pelagic habitats harvested from ca. 6200 BP. Inspired by Richard Cooke’s vision to explore the Coiba Archipelago, in 2023 the authors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Novotny.

Working at the community level is a crucial component of an engaged, socially just discipline. Advancing archaeology towards greater inclusivity is an increasingly common conversation within the discipline. The majority of literature on this topic focuses on grassroots efforts to include marginalized descendant communities or other stakeholders in research design, implementation, knowledge dissemination and curation. An ever present and often unanalyzed aspect of research (especially abroad),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Lemonnier. Céline C. Lamb. Daniel Vallejo-Caliz. Shannon Plank.

Traditionally, settlement archeology of the Classic Maya Lowlands recognizes several intermediate residential units between the house and the site. For over 50 years, the concept of neighborhood has been mentioned occasionally, but conclusive case studies are still rare. Yet the concept raises the important issue of the internal social structures of communities and their relationships. After briefly describing the methods that have helped identify intermediate units in the recently studied sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cinthya Vidal.

During prehispanic times, La Ferrería were the most importat settlement at Guadiana valley, indeed it was a place were both men and nature were linked. In this paper I make a review of burials collected at the Guadiana valley, considering that its incidence reflects certain aspects of cosmology which were shared with coastal dwellers. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Calongos Curotto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cañete Valley was of great economic importance to the Inca Empire. The presence of sites like Huacones/Vilcahuasi in the lower section of the valley or Incahuasi in the middle section, both of them having various sets of storage facilities, shows the significance of the intensive agricultural production of the valley. However, we still do not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio.

Studies on pottery from archaeological sites in Southeast Asia are largely orientated towards aspects of manufacturing and typology. Emphasis is on the identification of transregional similarities and differences of form, decoration, and composition to establish patterns of human migration, contact, and identity. Less emphasis has been directed towards understanding what happens to different pottery vessels between their manufacturing and disposal, as well as their actual functional use. For...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph DeAngelis.

The debate regarding early Paleoindians as megafaunal specialists or subsistence generalists has had a long and contentious history in Americanist archaeology. A quantitative reanalysis of the early Paleoindian zooarchaeological record in the continental United States is presented. Previous analyses of the faunal record focused only on taxonomic richness and have not utilized other measurements of taxonomic diversity. My analyses of the faunal record include measurements of taxonomic richness,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksander Pluskowski.

The Teutonic Order, the last of the major military orders founded in the Holy Land in the twelfth century, developed a strong, centralised hierarchy once it redirected its efforts to crusading in the Baltic. After the initial period of crusading was over, its fortified monasteries were built with consistent regularity, and the Order adopted a top-down, corporate approach to controlling the conquered territories, under the leadership of the Grand Master. However, despite this centralisation,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheila Bonde. Clark Maines.

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our paper will survey in critical fashion the last 20 years of medieval monastic archaeology in France. During that time, the new research directions of the late 1990s have confronted a changed landscape for archaeological work. The creation of INRAP has meant that fewer university-sponsored...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda. Guadalupe Sanchez. Claudia Leon.

The sixteenth century Spaniards that arrived at the Central Coast of Sonora described the region between the Río Sonora and the Río Yaqui, as a transitional territory between the Comcáac (Seri) nomadic bands of the coast, and the farmers of the river Yaqui (Yoeme) and Pima. Unfortunately, the archaeology of this region is very little known and very little is known about the prehistoric history of the area. Recent investigations at several sites in this area, have yielded a variety of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Osman Karrar. Jonathan Haws. Alvise Barbieri. Milena Carvalho. Nuno Bicho.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Nile valley, its associated drainage system, and the adjacent Sahara are thought to have been part of the Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) dispersal routes out of Africa during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Building on the pioneering prehistoric work of Marks and colleagues in the early 1960s in northern Sudan, we present the results of the 2019 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Perales.

Research on the Inca occupation in the conquered territories usually addressed the topic from a perspective that has been built on data obtained from state and local sites. The case of Jauja in the central highlands of Peru has not been the exception and much of our current knowledge about the Inca occupation of the region is based on information coming from indigenous settlements and state facilities. This paper proposes an alternative and complementary insight, trying to reach an approach to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly.

This is an abstract from the "Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. PAL’s archaeological investigations along a natural gas pipeline right-of-way in southwestern Connecticut identified a cluster of precontact Native American sites in Newtown situated along Rodericks Brook, a tributary stream to the Housatonic River. The sites include...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morehart. Angela Huster. Dean Blumenfeld. Rudolf Cesaretti. Megan Parker.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Epiclassic period (ca. 650-900 CE) in the Basin of Mexico is considered a time of social, cultural, political, and economic transformation and re-organization. Most perspectives stress that, after the collapse of the major state system centered at Teotihuacan, regional population...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Stoner. Geoffrey Cunnar.

In a 1995 study of the chronological patterning of Elko Series and Split-stemmed projectile points, Bryan Hockett concluded that neither type entirely matches the patterns of the Bonneville or Lahontan Basins; and that neither area represents good chronological analogues for northeastern Nevada. Dart points recently found in the well-dated context of an Early Archaic stratified open site in the northern Goshute Valley exhibit characteristics of both early side-notched and corner-notched types. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Atherton.

This is an abstract from the "Chicanx Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research on Hispanic-descent communities in the American West appears to be betwixt and between discussions of indigeneity and nation-building, and for good reason. Drawing on historical and archaeological research of Spanish colonial land grants from the northern and middle Rio Grande, this paper examines some of the ways "Spanish" settlers navigated the tumultuous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Loubser.

As far as can be ascertained, all documented petroglyph boulders in northern Georgia and western North Carolina occur next-to old Indian overland trails or certain river corridors, specifically at transition points on the landscape. Moreover, these transition points occur between sites with mounds and town houses at one end and certain mountain tops at the other. Whereas a few Cherokee accounts explicitly mention petroglyph boulders at such locales, the placement of some others can be inferred...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Jenkins. Lance Lundquist.

The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to consider the effects of their actions on historic properties. In contrast to many other federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Regulatory Branch does not initiate undertakings on its own behalf. Rather, it is tasked with verifying permit applications from other agencies and the public. The Regulatory Branch is neither a proponent nor opponent of the permitted action. As a neutral party, one of the more challenging...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Sawyer.

Research suggests non-woody resources, such as peat, can serve as unique repositories of environmental change. This paper discusses how peat serves such a role, and sheds light on the how these processes affect the archaeological record, an aspect of environmental change that has been overlooked. During the colonization of Iceland in the 9th century AD, early Icelanders (Vikings) began to affect and be affected by local environments. Viking colonization led to rapid deforestation of woodland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Singer. Peter Leach. Tiziana Matarazzo. Cosimo Sgarlata. Dawn Beamer.

2017 marks the 40th anniversary of Roger Moeller’s initial excavation of Templeton, the first Paleoindian site systematically studied in Connecticut. New excavations at Templeton were conducted in 2016 and 2017 to further document the Paleoindian component of the site. This presentation reports on the results of the new excavations and the reanalysis of the Paleoindian materials recovered Moeller.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sangtaek Lim.

Coastal foragers of southern Korean Chulmun period had actively exploited marine resources from the initial phase(6000~4500 B.C.E.), and they also have a complex network with groups of Japanese Kyushu Island from that times. Researchers usually have thought that islands served as economic patches for coastal foragers with large numbers of shell mounds. However, based on several burial sites recently excavated at some islands like gadeok, Yeondae, Yokji, we now need to reconsider islands as being...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Brin. Leigh Anne Ellison.

The future of archaeological research is dependent on our ability to synthesize data across sites and leverage both current and legacy data. Asking questions of regions or clusters of sites where data was recovered over over decades or centuries and by multiple researchers becomes difficult without significant, manually-performed normalization and standardization processes at a great impediment to synthetic research. Beyond archiving, tDAR provides integration tools to extend the lifespan of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Goodwin. Lisa Hodgetts.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is often equated with sexuality research in archaeology (Blackmore 2011), but a queering of the archaeological record actually allows us to challenge all aspects of (hetero)normativity in archaeological practice (Croucher 2005; Blackmore 2011). Queer is "whatever is at odds with the normal, legitimate and the dominant" (Halperin 1995:62), and it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kandace Hollenbach.

This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Eastern Woodlands of North America, researchers tend to discuss cooking technologies of early foragers at the close of the Pleistocene and early Holocene in terms of nut processing rather than for use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree.

Zooarchaeological data have provided much new information on Anglo-Saxon dogs including information on animal sizes, ages at death, paleopathology, and evidence for the treatment/mistreatment of dogs. However, many aspects of the relationship between humans and dogs in the Anglo-Saxon period cannot be understood on the basis of animal bones alone. This paper will explore the non-archaeozoological evidence for human-dog relationships in the Anglo-Saxon period drawing on evidence from literature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Gorden. Devlin Gandy.

Rock art research by Grant (1965) and Heizer and Clewlow (1973) revealed the prolific number of painted images that Chumash and Yokuts cultures produced in South Central California. Previous research (ibid; Lee 1991; Grant 1979) often focused on defining distinctive stylistic components and elements that characterize and differentiate these respective traditions, and define their cultural boundaries. Borderland rock art sites such as Carneros Rocks and Painted Rock have become continued points...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Harrod.

Population level analyses of violence that are focused on quantifying and comparing traumatic injuries on human skeletal remains recovered from an archaeological context are crucial for understanding violent interactions through time and across regions. However, these types of studies are also limited because, by design, they place less emphasis on individuals and their lived experience. In contrast, when researchers create what Frank and Julie Saul called an osteobiography for each set of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Roddick. Greg Braun. Kostalena Michelaki.

Dr. Kostalena Michelaki founded the laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research of Archaeological Ceramics (LIRAC) in 2006, thanks to funding by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. She established this facility to examine the relationships between technology, society and the environment, through the archaeometric analysis of technological choices made by people in the production and use of ceramics. Scholars working in LIRAC, and in associated McMaster research centres such as the Brockhouse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Litzkow.

This is an abstract from the "Outreach and Education: Examples of Approaches and Strategies from the Pacific Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Federal archaeologists are in a unique position to inform the public perception of historic issues, archaeological research, and community-specific concerns. Respecting the viewpoints of diverse, often conflicting, stakeholders forces multiple use agencies to think and act in creative ways as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Vining. Daniel Cont. Agusto Bazan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent interest in applying archaeological datasets to climate change analyses have identified issues of data interoperability and challenges aligning cultural and climatic chronologies. Archaeology on Peru’s north coast has significant potential to address paleoclimate and future climate change adaptation. Despite this potential, reliance on imprecisely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Jacobson. James Ramsey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal bone was utilized for more than subsistence purposes. Most non-subsistence use has been focused on utilitarian tools. Bone-use beyond subsistence and utilitarian tool use is rarely identified or considered for its cultural impact or implications. Often it is difficult to identify in the archaeological record, and is frequently overlooked, with its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxanne Guildford.

This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the challenges in zooarchaeological research is to advance new methods of understanding animal husbandry within the past socio-ecological context. Intensification of wool production is typically evidenced in the archaeological record by the increase of sheep remains in species abundance and adult mortality; however,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Roscoe.

At contact, New Guinea polities were uniformly at war, either episodically or permanently, with at least one of their neighbors. As a result, they all adopted significant defensive measures, commonly some mix of advanced warning systems, settlement nucleation, and natural or artificial fortifications. These measures were crucial to survival but they had numerous social and cultural implications. In this paper, I outline some of the more important of these consequences, before focusing on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Metz.

This is an abstract from the "To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The mission of the Huhugam Heritage Center, which is both a tribal and federal repository, is to "ensure our Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh cultures flourish for future generations." This includes not just the physical remains of ancestral culture, but the cultural practices themselves. While we care for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Crane.

Hand-built, low-fired pottery from South Carolina exhibit a sometimes bewildering degree of heterogeneity. Analysis of vessel form, construction technique, temper inclusions, chemistry and surface treatment suggests a broad range of practice and potential cultural influence. Colonoware vessel forms and surface treatment display a complex blending of traditions that arose from the entangled lives of Africans, Native Americans and Europeans and reveal something of the complex cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Ryan. Rebecca Simon.

The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center was created in 1983 to advance and share knowledge of the human experience through archaeological research, education programs, and partnerships with American Indians. Since its creation, over 70,000 students and adults have participated in the Center’s innovative experiential education, research, and travel programs. Crow Canyon’s programs vary in a number of ways in order to highlight different aspects of its tripartite mission. In 2015, Crow Canyon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krista Eschbach.

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Port of Veracruz was significant not only as the landing site of Hernán Cortés, but also as a central gateway for European colonists and African slaves entering New Spain. First encounters between immigrants and natives had significant long-term consequences, but initial interactions were only a starting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Napoleon. Alyssa Hyziak. Scott Rivas. Emily Falk. Ben Ford.

During the American Revolutionary War, Carleton Island was home to the British naval base Fort Haldimand. Located on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York, the base served as an important connection between Québec and British interior forts. The Thousand Island Land Trust protects Fort Haldimand, but the area immediately outside the fort is privately owned. During June 2015, archaeologists from Indiana University of Pennsylvania implemented a variety of geophysical and archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Grooms. Edward Henry. Kelly Ervin. Tristram Kidder.

The origins of Early Woodland cultures have long been poorly understood, but recent data from sites in the Yazoo and Tensas basins, and from sites along the coast are providing new perspectives on the development of the Woodland tradition in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In this paper we summarize Steve Williams’ contributions to understanding Woodland origins and update his work with new data. In contrast to earlier thinking, recent research shows that Woodland peoples in the Lower Mississippi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Darvill.

In many parts of the world massive ceremonial centers appear at key stages in societal development, especially with the emergence of stable agricultural communities and the appearance of hierarchical or chiefdom societies. All differ in their detail, but they also share many characteristics. These include fixing key astronomical events in the structure of the monuments (solar and/or lunar); seasonal gatherings; associations with water; representations of ancestors or ancestral deities; burials;...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terence Clark.

Household archaeology has a long and fruitful history in Northwest Coast archaeology. Excavation at numerous sites has provided detailed data on living surfaces and activity areas, but the greater dynamics of household and village organization remain elusive. This paper looks at important, but neglected functional constraints of plank-house villages, namely the need for firewood, potable water, and disposal of waste. These factors, which almost certainly informed on the construction and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yukiko Tonoike. Dawn Brown.

The first step in ceramic analysis is typically to determine the age or cultural affiliation of the sherds. Traditionally, this process is done through comparisons of superficial attributes to those of sherds that are already known. This task is difficult to do without years of region-specific experience and knowledge. Using the ceramics collected from over 300 sites, ranging over 5000 years through surface collecting survey in northeastern Syria by the Yale University Khabur Basin Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Moore.

The question of whether Late Iron Age oppida in Europe were truly ‘urban’ has dominated debate over these sites since the 19th century. Oppida, however, have been surprisingly absent from comparative urban studies, despite increasingly nuanced perspectives on the nature and diversity of the urban phenomenon. In particular, Roland Fletcher’s suggestion that oppida might be examples of a range of alternative urban-like centres has been largely ignored by scholars of the European Iron Age. The...