Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Birge. Cassandra Koontz.

Human trophy heads appear in the iconography of prehistoric Andean ceramics, weavings, and statuary as early as the Late Formative (400 BC – AD 100), and actual trophy heads are not uncommon bioarchaeological finds in south-coastal Peru. Human trophy heads were prepared by cleaving the head from the body, cutting the occipital and parietal bones to remove the brain, drilling holes in the frontal bone, and threading that hole with a carrying cord for display. At the Middle Horizon cemetery of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Monge.

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over 50 years, excavations in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, have yielded a large amount of well-preserved faunal materials, yet few zooarchaeological studies have been carried out. To explore the research potential of archaeofaunal materials in the region, I will present data from several sites around the Culebra bay area. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Joy.

During last glacial episode, a massive amount of water was locked within ice sheets, resulting in a reduction in global sea-levels by 134 meters. The reintroduction of freshwater into the oceans radically changed global sea-levels and littoral landscapes. Over the last 20,000 years, approximately 15-20 million km2 of landscape has been submerged worldwide. Sea-level rise explains the rarity of glacial period coastal archaeological sites. Understanding Florida’s Paleoindians’ interactions with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandria Oemig. Jordan Karsten.

In 1991, Milner et al. published a groundbreaking article that showed the Native American Oneota culture in a new light. Their research at the Norris Farms #36 cemetery in west-central Illinois indicated that the Oneota there were plagued by intergroup violence and small-scale tribal warfare. Milner et al. examined 264 skeletons and discovered evidence for trauma on 43 (16.29%). At least one-third of adults at Norris Farms #36 died violent deaths. However, the group at Norris Farms #36 was part...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Elizabeth Graff.

The Necrópolis de Calderia contains nearly two-hundred burials spanning from the first through fifth centuries A.D. The cemetery is located on the western edge of the ancient Roman site of Troía, which is considered the largest fish salting, garum production and distribution center in the Roman world. Among the inhumations three cases of trepanation have been identified. The three individuals are adult women. Trepanation, also known as trephination or craniectomy, is the surgical practice in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Covert. Leslie Aragon.

Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona’s 2014 Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school excavations at the Dinwiddie Site (LA106003) produced interesting and somewhat unexpected results. Dinwiddie is a Cliff Phase (A.D. 1300 – 1450) Salado site located along Duck Creek, a tributary of the Gila River, in southwestern New Mexico. It was partially excavated by avocational archaeologists in the 1960s and the remaining deposits have faced multiple sources of disturbance....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Van Der Pluijm.

Archaeological research in Nicaragua has yielded an abundance of human osteological material. Excavations at sites like Monkey point on the Caribbean coast and RURD-UNAN in Managua have uncovered impressive and extensive human inhumations. These sites are among the only four sites in Nicaragua were an extensive osteological study has been done and published. Yet many more unpublished literature mentions or has documented osteological remains. What is the real extent of the uncovered osteological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larkin Hood.

Burke 101 is a museum program developed to provide undergraduate students at the University of Washington an opportunity to share their knowledge in a particular discipline. The program is organized around a course in which students work together to create hands-on, interactive activities for visitors using museum specimens. Observations of students’ interactions with visitors as well as analysis of student oral and written reflections indicate that initially students find their teaching...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noella Wyatt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research was conducted based on artifacts in the Tryon Creek (35-WA-288) collection. It began as a study of intact projectile points (n=126) found within House 2. This enabled comparisons of points based on width, length, thickness, and base type. Material types were analyzed. The research was then expanded to include lithic artifacts that were intact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Nebbia.

This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The emergence of the largest settlements in fourth-millennium BC Europe triggered a number of questions regarding their proto- or even "fully urban" nature. For a long time scholars have been debating on this matter, focusing attention on the intrasite features of Trypillia mega-sites, thus overseeing the implication of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morley Eldridge.

Large-scale excavations at GbTo-13 and GbTo-54 near Casey Point, Prince Rupert Harbour, revealed house remains whose differential contents of exotic features, goods, and wealth or status-signalling artifacts strongly suggest that one household ranked above others. All labrets and all mountain goat horn cores were associated with a single house. Even the households lacking these prestige goods have more wealth items than at almost any regional assemblage. The extraordinary amount of bracelets...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Morgan-Smith.

The accumulation of debt by Maya speaking laborers has long been understood as integral to Yucatán’s hacienda system in the 19th century. Though the contexts and nature of creditor-debtor relationships are variable and contested, evidence for debt is consistently present in documents related to large, corporate estates. But what does indebtedness look like beyond the hacienda on small-scale estates? In the absence of historical documents, or evidence of a company store, can debt be observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Gazzo. Fabio Negrino. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Personal ornaments are commonly attributed to a modern human dispersal in western Asia and Europe, representing a veritable key tool for understanding the human dispersal out of Africa. Objects loaded with symbolic meaning such as beads made from modified marine shells were largely used during the Upper Paleolithic in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Guernsey. Kathryn Reese-Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Acts of deliberate fragmentation characterize tuber cultivation. Root plants rarely produce seeds, so new tubers develop by fragmenting the stem and inserting the severed portion into the ground, from which new tubers develop. Evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Bos. Åshild J. Vågene. Jane Buikstra. Anne C. Stone. Johannes Krause.

Due to its arid climate the Atacama Desert has an exceptional preservation of ancient biomolecules. In an archaeological context, this allows for genetic analyses of both past human populations and the infectious diseases they experienced. Pre-contact Peruvian cultures are among the first New World populations to show skeletal indications of tuberculosis, and recent molecular analyses have revealed that three individuals were afflicted with a rare zoonotic form of the disease acquired from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Scott.

This paper examines the archaeology of the Weimar Joint Sanatorium, an institution which functioned as the county tuberculosis hospital for fifteen counties in California during the early twentieth-century. Field data from topographical survey, historic structures recording, geophysical survey, and surface collection are interpreted along with historical information in order to understand how the institution and people connected to it were situated within the larger landscape. Within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shanti Morell-Hart.

This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past several decades, Dolores Piperno has made broad contributions to archaeology and deep contributions to paleoethnobotany. Her published work includes studies on the origins of agriculture in the Neotropics, the presence of cooked plants in Neanderthal diets, the process of domestication, the use of wild cereals in the Upper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Fish. Paul Fish.

The variability among Hohokam platform mounds and their related architectural complexes, the predominant form of public architecture during the Classic period, has now been well documented through ongoing field studies and archival research. Recognition of that variability encompasses multiple dimensions linked to perceptions of leadership, social structure, territorial configurations, civic and ritual affairs, and external relationships. The Tucson regional sector in southern Arizona is no...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Chacon.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates the belief in Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters of wildlife in three South American indigenous societies: the Tukano of Colombia, the Embera of Colombia, and the Achuar of Ecuador. Findings show that Supernatural Gamekeepers/Animal Masters are believed to grant success to hunters who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dylan Birch.

The Proyecto de Investigación, Conservación y Mantenimiento para la Zona Arqueológica de Tula 2014, directed by Dr. Robert Cobean focused on the restoration of Ball Court 2. Today, the three major ceremonial centers exposed at Tula are the Palacio Quemado, Pyramid B and Pyramid C; these structures form an L-shape that faces the Adoratorio situated in the center of the plaza. The positioning and architectural dimensions of Ball Court 2 in Tula’s main precinct are almost exact with the largest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carmen Esposito. Richard Madgwick. Wolfgang Müller. Stefano Benazzi.

This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human mobility has played a vital role in shaping societies, both in the past and present. From the circulation of people to the biocultural integration of individuals, these population dynamics have triggered fundamental transitions in our socio-political landscape. The early first millennium BC in Italy was marked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hylkema.

Early historic accounts describe the use of tule balsa boats throughout the San Francisco Bay region. The advantages attendant to this technology, ranging from increased access to estuarine food resources and the transportation of materials and people over a large geographic area is as monumental as the many mounded sites that once surrounded the Bay Shoreline. This presentation will review descriptions of these boats and propose a possible connection between maritime travel, mounded sites and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sergei Vepretskii. Christophe Helmke.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The most extensive historical record of Caracol was produced under the reign of Tutum Yohl K’inich Tz’uutz’ II (formerly known as K’an II / Ruler V), who reigned from AD 618 to 658. In addition to outlining his life and deeds, as well as those of his father Yajawte’ K’inich Tz’uutz’ II (a.k.a. Lord Water /...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Scholl.

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 Tuners Falls Gorge region of the Connecticut River Valley is composed of a dynamic post-glacial alluvial landscape which contains extensive Pleistocene and Holocene deposits as well as an abundance of Pre-Contact archaeological sites spanning the last 12,000 years before present. This paper presents a new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frederic Dillingham. Bryan Hockett. Isabelle Guerrero.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Set in a mid-elevation pinyon-juniper woodland, Tunna’ Nosi’ Kaiva’ Gwaa (TNKG) archaeological district is located in the north Bodie Hills, Mineral County, Nevada, USA. The prehistoric component includes seven game corrals, 12 drivelines, over 170 rock rings, nine rock art sites, individual and grouped hunting blinds, and concentrations of shattered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tia Watkins. Jaime Awe. Doug Tilden.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite nearly a century of archaeological investigation, the ceremonial center of Xunantunich, Belize has yielded little insight on the center’s earliest occupants and the architectural growth of the site through time. Previous research indicated that Xunantunich was initially settled as a small village during the Preclassic period (~1000 BC-AD 250), with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Barba.

This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper aims to review how the Teotihuacanos took advantage of the available geological resources for the construction of the city. The study of the geological characteristics of the Teotihuacan Valley has revealed that what we presently observe is the consequence of the long-term volcanic activity produced in several steps. First, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Darras.

This is an abstract from the "Reassessing Chupícuaro–Cuicuilco Relationships in Light of Ceramic Production (Formative Mesoamerica)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of interregional social relations is a subject that has been explored extensively by Mesoamerican archaeology and has traditionally relied on similarities between their respective material productions, especially pottery. During the twentieth century, stylistic analogies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christy Winstead. Amy Hoffman. Laura Ellyson. Steve Wolverton.

The archaeofaunal remains left by the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the Goodman Point community provide a chronological record of their interaction with turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Domestication can be regarded as a co-evolutionary relationship between a plant or animal species and humans that varies in the intensity of mutual dependence. We examine how the Goodman Point residents’ relationship with turkey evolved from the late AD 900s to the 1280’s. Our research involves the analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Lena Jones. Cyler N. Conrad. Caitlin Ainsworth. Stephanie Franklin.

Domestic turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) husbandry at Chaco Canyon has been the subject of considerable debate. Previous research has argued, among other things, that turkeys were rare in the Canyon (Akins 1985); that turkeys first were a source of feathers for ritual and ceremonial activities, and only later treated as food (Akins 1985; Badenhorst et al. 2016; Windes 1977); that local wild turkeys were not present in Chaco Canyon and domestic turkeys were imported from the Four Corners region...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer. Jeffery Ferguson. Jacques Burlot. Joan Brenner Coltrain. Virginie Renson.

This is an abstract from the "Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Changes in resource acquisition patterns are important components of larger social transformations, including shifts in the source areas and transport patterns of important animal resources. In the Mesa Verde region, increasing population aggregation and shifting settlement locations from AD 750 through 1225 also increased...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Dolan.

This is an abstract from the "Birds in Archaeology: New Approaches to Understanding the Diverse Roles of Birds in the Past" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the cultural and environmental context of turkey (*Meleagris gallopavo) domestication and husbandry contribute to key issues in anthropological archaeology and social zooarchaeology. Despite recent advances in turkey studies in recent years, the extent of domestication and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Smith. Kellie Pollard. Anita Painter. Maria Ortiz. Andrew Coe.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This conversation is between archaeologists (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) and Aboriginal people from the Barunga region of the Northern Territory Australia. We present our emerging vision for reorienting archaeology so its primary purpose is as a tool for social good. We discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Ringelstein.

In the late 19th century museum collectors recovered an abundance of cultural materials from the Channel Islands and dispersed them to national museums. Although they recorded important ethnological observations, their practices were often not in the best interests of native peoples or even academics. Many of the artifacts were stored without provenience information and in many ways disregarded. However, the unique preservation of legacy collections provides an excellent opportunity to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Ziegenbein.

Since the 1990s, archaeologists have increasingly become interested in teasing apart the varied experiences of the past. Feminist and critical race frameworks have forced a reconsideration of the stories that have been told and whose viewpoints have been privileged in historical interpretation. One area that remains undertheorized and poorly understood across the discipline is the role impairment has played and its effect on people and society. This paper considers what an archaeology of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A major reformulation of the history of Maya cave archaeology has recently been proposed for the second half of the twentieth century. Jon Spenard, in his dissertation, has suggested that modern cave archaeology began to emerge during the Post War Period (1950 – 1980) based on work carried out in Belize. This paper takes a closer look at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Daehnke.

Over the course of the last few decades Indigenous and descendant communities have increasingly made calls for control of their own heritage, both in terms of material objects and historical narratives. While these efforts have resulted in at least some measure of success, these communities continue to occasionally face challenges from researchers, scholars, and other agents who are in positions of power that allow them to control and define what heritage consist of. In my paper I interrogate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimball Banks. Linda Scott Cummings. Signe Snortland. Maria Gatto.

Wadi Kubbaniya is the largest wadi extending from the Western Desert to the Nile in Upper Egypt. The Combined Prehistoric Expedition devoted four seasons in the late 1970s-early 1980s investigating Late Paleolithic (20,000-12,000 BP) settlement-subsistence in the wadi. The Expedition documented one of the most complete occupational sequences for this period in Upper Egypt. Because of excellent preservation, the Expedition was able to reconstruct the vegetation and identify floral resources...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hawkins. Scott Willard.

This is an abstract from the "Improving and Decolonizing Precontact Legacy Collections with Fieldwork: Making Sense of Harvard’s Turpin Site Expedition (Ohio)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The relationship between American Indian tribes and American archaeology—both its practice and its practitioners—has always been complicated and is still often fraught with a lack of consonance. Although the engagement of tribes as consulting parties in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Berger.

In 1932, Alfonso Caso and his team found a human skull decorated with turquoise mosaic tesserae during their well-known excavation of Monte Albán’s Tumba 7. To this day, this is the only artifact of this type to have been found in a documented excavation. Nevertheless, at least twenty turquoise mosaic-decorated human skulls are currently held in museums and private collections. Many of these have been considered forgeries, others are considered authentic. Within this group, there are clear...

DOCUMENT Citation Only XiaoLi Qin.

Most turquoise ornaments from early Neolithic sites are pendants with a single material. However, from the later Neolithic period such as Qijia culture, people started to use ornaments which were inlaid with turquoise and other materials by unique techniques. In early Bronze Age, turquoise production process, especially the inlays technology, reached its peak. From a Qijia culture site, we found a bone hairpin. On its tail part, small white bone rings were sticking on black jelly. From Majiayao...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Secord.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did the people of Tijeras Pueblo acquire and use non-lithic and non-ground stone mineral resources? What role did such resources play in communities in the region east of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains? Minerals addressed include turquoise, galena (lead ore), and various copper compounds....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Conlan. Dongya Yang. Camilla Speller. Claudia Kraan. Christina Giovas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Caribbean sea turtle histories are deeply intertwined with past human activities. While modern DNA offers insight into impacts of recent stressors, to fully support sea turtle recovery we must account for activities acting on populations prior to modern baselines. Ancient DNA (aDNA) research offers a novel method for identifying timing and rate of change...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Kate Kelly. Caitlin Earley. Brent Woodfill.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The adoption of 3D digital recording strategies at archaeological sites yields numerous benefits: detailed preservation of data while the original may be at risk of damage or erosion, increased visibility of small details, and precise tracking of change over time, to name a few. Additionally, there are nearly limitless...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Summer Austin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study is a multidisciplinary investigation into factors that create, enhance, and normalize demand for collecting antiquities. Using the original blockbuster, Treasures of Tutankhamun, as the case study, this doctoral research investigates the correlating antiquities markets' reaction to Tut blockbusters by gathering, quantifying, and contextualizing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps.

The burial assemblage found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty (circa 1330 BCE) of ancient Egypt, is one of the most renowned collection of artifacts to survive from antiquity. But does it fit within the normative mortuary practices of the Eighteenth Dynasty? A closer and more comprehensive examination of the material culture found in the tomb of Tutankhamun indicates that several normative patterns were followed; however, many of the artifacts suggests atypical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sherene Baugher.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tutelos were driven out of their homelands in North Carolina and Virginia by land-grabbing Europeans. The Tutelos fled to refugee settlements in Pennsylvania along with other displaced Native Americans from diverse Indian nations. In 1753, the Tutelos were offered sanctuary with the Cayugas, one of the Six Nations of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Messenger. Patrick Nunnally.

This paper will discuss hands-on uses of social media to help students engage with climate change. A central case study is an interdisciplinary design course on the Mississippi River and the city, taught in spring 2011 by coauthor Patrick Nunnally in which students confronted historic floods on the Mississippi River in real time through a series of twitter assignments. The analysis will discuss how the assignments were set up and carried out, what happened, and what the outcomes were, in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Breanna Henderson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology is the study, and by extension, the story of cultures, and everyone deserves access to their stories and those of their ancestors. The better one’s understanding of archaeology, culture, and history, the better understanding of themselves and those around them. This research seeks to answer what approaches are needed to create sustainable and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Edwards. Jeffrey Wedding.

For archaeologists, the term geoglyph typically conjures up images of enormous carved landscapes such as the Nazca Lines in Peru or the Blythe Intaglios in California’s Mojave Desert. But the creation of earth drawings is not restricted to people of the distant past. Modern populations have also been known to produce their own geoglyphs. Like their prehistoric predecessors, many contemporary geoglyphs have spiritual or ceremonial significance, but others were generated for purely functional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Gorenflo.

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological settlement pattern surveys in the Basin of Mexico during the 1960s and 70s capitalized on cultural behavior that seemed to share important connections with the Pre-Columbian past. The labor-intensive agricultural economy that dominated the region throughout much of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Mathews. John Gust. Scott Fedick.

Since the mid-1990s, members of the Yalahau and Costa Escondida projects have focused on historical archaeology in northern Quintana Roo. Our research has examined the remnants of the chicle (chewing gum), sugar cane and small-batch rum industries from the late 1800s. Although these sites are relatively recent, the production equipment and other artifacts have been picked through by later occupants, making it challenging to be able to reconstruct the historic record. In an attempt to overcome...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Warner. James Crandall.

This is an abstract from the "Bridging Time, Space, and Species: Over 20 Years of Archaeological Insights from the Cañoncillo Complex, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will provide a retrospective of archaeological work that has been done at the Late Formative period site of Jatanca, located in the Pampa Mojucape of the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru. Since 2004, the architecture, ceramics, and surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Golitko. Gary Feinman. Linda Nicholas.

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the first materials compositionally analyzed at the EAF were obsidian objects from the Maya site of San José, Belize. Since then, we have analyzed tens of thousands of obsidian objects from Mesoamerica (primarily from the Valley of Oaxaca) as part of our study of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffery Clark. William Doelle.

Archaeology Southwest (formerly the Center for Desert Archaeology) has been heavily engaged in studying the Salado Phenomenon through the lens of migration for nearly twenty years. Our research has been both intensive and extensive in scope: gathering new data from sites on public and private lands, reanalyzing existing collections, and scrutinizing published and unpublished reports from nearly every valley and basin in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Here we summarize this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Wiewel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Midwest Archeological Center (National Park Service) has long been at the forefront of geophysical surveys for archeological research and heritage management in the United States. Since the Center’s pioneering efforts to showcase the practicality of geophysical methods nearly 50 years ago, our use of ground-based surveys has become indispensable for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Fye. Wolfgang Whitney-Hul.

This is an abstract from the "Community Matters: Enhancing Student Learning Opportunities through the Development of Community Partnerships" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pima Community College archaeology program has conducted field work at AZ BB: 5:127 (ASM), the Twentynine Wash site, intermittently since 1997. The Twentynine Wash site is a large Hohokam habitation site that lies in the western foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sunnie Sartin. Winona Patterson. Kristen Corl. Todd Scarbrough. Angel Pena.

The Twin Pines site, located in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, is a large Mimbres site that shows signs of multiple occupational periods spanning the Late Pithouse Phase (AD 550-1000) through the Mimbres Classic phase (AD 1000-1130). On the basis of recent mapping and reconnaissance, the Twin Pines site can provide crucial information about the Mimbres culture. First, it is a large Mimbres site which lies farther north of the extensively studied Mimbres Valley and most other sites of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Camp.

This presentation is a first attempt to trace the taphonomic trajectory of specimens of Catlow Twine, an important kind of basketry technology. Catlow Twine basketry spans over ~9,000 cal B.P. years in the archaeological record of the Great Basin. The longevity of this artifact class and its appearance throughout the Northern and Western Great Basin allows for a thorough investigation of how it has been used. Catlow Twine is simple close twine technology; one of the oldest techniques in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Riley.

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cordage was vital in the daily life of Fremont farmers across the Colorado Plateau. Yet, this humble technology rarely receives the full attention of textile specialists, focused on the intricate half-rod and bundle coiled parching trays, yucca sandals, and other more impressive aspects of the perishable fiber record. This talk examines a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Sperling.

There are countless ways to interpret archaeological assemblages. One can take a purely functionalist approach. Plates are for eating and cups for drinking; fasteners keep clothing from falling. However, confronted with a range of symbolically charged artifacts from a Late Colonial through Early Republic period site in Northern Virginia, one is tempted to draw upon our anthropological origins to find meaning. A cuff link commemorating the fox hunt as well as coins and pottery bearing classical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Nagaoka.

Archaeological research using human behavioral ecology (HBE) models has significantly increased over the past decade both in number and scope. Originally most HBE research was relatively narrow, focusing on prey choice, diet breadth, and resource depression. Since then, it has expanded into areas beyond examining efficiency of foraging strategies. Driven mainly by anthropological and ethnoarchaeological research, these studies have investigated the influence of factors such as age, gender,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Woollett. Edward Flowers.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of an ongoing fieldwork program in the Nain region of Nunatsiavut (Newfoundland and Labrador), the authors worked together in 2022 on a survey of Inuit archaeological sites on Dog Island and Sculpin Island. Already-known archaeological sites were revisited and a number of new sites were documented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Iglesias. Ann Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twenty years ago, Ann Scott presented "The Historical Context of the Founding of Maya Cave Archaeology" at the SAA meetings in Montreal documenting the history of Maya cave archaeology from the 1970s to its emergence as a self-conscious field in 1997. It is fitting, therefore, that this presentation considers the expansion the field has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicola Sharratt. Patrick Ryan Williams.

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An early and ongoing goal of the EAF was to not only generate compositional data on archaeological artifacts but also to build comprehensive collections and elemental databases of natural materials that had potentially been used to manufacture craft objects. To date, EAF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Lyle.

Many instances of turkey and dog burials have been documented in the prehistoric American Southwest. Some are simple burials or discarded remains but some examples bear characteristics of deliberate sacrifice, arrangement and elaborate ritual interment. Excavations directed by D. M. Dove from 2008 through 2012 in Early Pueblo II period contexts at the large Champagne Spring site in Dolores County, Colorado, revealed two unprecedented examples of this latter type. On or near the floors of two pit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Martynec. Sandra Martynec.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology: How Native American Knowledge Enhances Our Collective Understanding of the Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of archaeological strategies in conjunction with traditional knowledge has produced unprecedented results from recent projects conducted in southwestern Arizona and northwestern Sonora, Mexico. The Hia C-ed O’odham have occupied this area since at least AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Zborover.

In this talk I will present a contextual and iconographic analysis of two unusual, yet almost identical, figurines of lavishly dressed warriors, reported from different sites in the Chontal Highlands of Oaxaca. While variations on mold-made solid figurines of armed individuals were common in Late Classic Oaxaca, the particular attributes of these figurines are more analogous to militaristic iconography emerging from Postclassic Central Mexico. Taking the figurines’ iconography and regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Dungan. Leslie Aragon.

The communities that surround the neighboring great houses of Kin Bineola and Kin Klizhin contain broadly similar kinds of sites—including the great houses themselves, small habitation sites, and shrines—and are both located in the "Chaco Halo," the region immediately surrounding Chaco Canyon itself. Nevertheless, the two communities differ in their composition, spatial structure, and histories. Intervisibility between habitations and public or religious architecture provides one possible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman. Carolyn Boyd.

Using two independent methods, we provide reliable age estimates for three Pecos River Style figures at Eagle Cave in Langtry, TX. To obtain direct dates for the paintings, we employed plasma oxidation of the organic binders in the paint layer followed by accelerator mass spectrometry. For minimum and maximum ages, we acid treated the overlying and underneath accretion layers to isolate calcium oxalate for combustion and 14C measurement. The radiocarbon dates for the three paint samples are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Smith. Taylor MacDonald. Tiffiny A. Tung.

The site of La Real, located in the southern, near-coastal region of Peru, was an elite burial ground where mortuary contexts reveal Wari imperial influence during the Middle Horizon (600-1000 CE). This study examines the mortuary treatment of two human fetus/neonate skeletons placed inside a decorated, ceramic urn and compares funerary treatment to Wari fetus/neonate burials and others in the Andes to evaluate the geographic reach, chronological depth, and cultural significance of this funerary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Rossen.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The long-term projects of Tom Dillehay led the discipline through quagmires of criticism that exemplify the processes of paradigm freeze and thaw. His innovative archaeology drew criticism both responsible and irresponsible. It was a prolonged and messy process, but the scientific debate played out as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Tveskov. Donald Ivy.

This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Old Town Bandon site is a large archaeological site on the Oregon Coast that lies beneath the sidewalks of a settler community. The site has been the subject of over 30 years of archaeological research guided by the Coquille Indian Tribe. This work has revealed the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wen Yin Cheng. Chen Shen.

Through the previous research on the Royal Ontario Museum’s mould fragments, three main types of moulds were identified. In order to extend our knowledge beyond the moulds themselves and associate the moulds to the bronze vessels this paper brings both the moulds and bronze vessels into the same discussion by looking at the correlation between the mould types and the bronze vessel forms they were made to produce. The correlation can further our comprehension into the reason of produce the mould...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. James Stemp. Jaime Awe.

Few lithic workshops have been found in the Belize Valley of Western Belize. This paper presents the results of surface reconnaissance and debitage collection at two newly discovered chert tool workshops near the villages of Esperanza and Teakettle in the Cayo District of Western Belize. Each of these workshops consists of a single large mound of debitage and includes tools aborted or broken at various stages of manufacture. At both locations, the main tool types produced were oval bifaces and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bretton Giles. Shannon Koerner. Eric Skov.

CEMML archaeologists recently identified and tested two closely related Paleoarchaic sites, 14RY8129 and 14RY8130, on the Fort Riley Installation. These sites are positioned on the south side of Wind Creek, which is a minor perennial tributary of Wildcat Creek, and part of the larger Kansas River watershed. Survey and testing at the two sites recovered several fragmentary projectile points diagnostic of the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods, including a unifacially fluted Clovis point; a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellie Tamura.

Bagan was the political, economic, and cultural centre of Myanmar during the country’s Classical Period (c. 800 – 1400 CE). This immense empire operated primarily on two institutions: the crown and the sangha (Buddhist monkhood). Kutho (merit) was arguably one of the most important Buddhist doctrines in Bagan as it was believed to guarantee better social status upon reincarnation. Kutho, for the elite, was most commonly obtained by contributing large donations to the sangha. These donations took...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven James.

This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although this may seem surprising, there were very few women California archaeologists prior to the 1940s. This presentation discusses the lives of two pioneering women archaeologists who worked primarily in Southern California from the late 1940s to the 1960s, that of Agnes Bierman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Diehl. Deil Lundin. Homer Thiel. Robert Ciaccio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Specimens of chili (Capsicum annuum) are absent from prehistoric sites in the southwestern United States, but they are common in Spanish Colonial contexts. Building on a relatively recent review of northern Mexican prehistoric chili cultivation by Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen, we examine two recent chili finds in Arizona. The two finds may provide hints of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Marks.

The shifts in land and site use strategies that occurred over the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA to LSA) transition remain poorly understood across the full diversity of environments in Southern Africa. In the Central Namib Desert of Namibia, two rockshelters, Erb Tanks and Mirabib, provide insights into these dynamics within the context of a persistent arid to hyper-arid climate. Employing data from an ongoing lithic sourcing survey, we argue that groups equipped with MSA-type lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kostalena Michelaki. John Robb.

This poster will examine the degree to which the task of pot-making changed from the Early/Middle (ca. 5700-5000 BCE) to the Late Neolithic (ca. 5000-4000 BCE) periods in SW Calabria, Italy. We will present the manufacturing sequences of all Neolithic wares, based on the results of more than a decade of stylistic, mineralogical, and physico-chemical analyses of ceramics from the sites of Umbro Neolithic and Penitenzeria, as well as the results of laboratory and replicative experiments using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramona Harrison. Arni Daniel Juliusson.

This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk discusses the challenges of connecting the currently ongoing Two Valleys Project in Iceland to various scales of research on human ecodynamics of the past and global challenges we face in our time. This interdisciplinary project expands on previous research into human-nature interactions within various marine and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Willison.

Funerary objects from three seventeenth century burial grounds were statistically associated with biological sex categories to discern what, if any, burial items were related to the sex of an individual. A handful of material objects proved to be almost exclusively associated with either sex; what also appeared from this analysis was the discovery of two burial assemblages that possessed a mixture of what are believed to be solely male or female burial goods. Utilizing archaeological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony DeLuca.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People in the Tequila valleys region of Jalisco, Mexico constructed unique circular, ceremonial, monumental architecture. The public architecture has been previously argued to represent the Mesoamerican cosmos with the central altar representing a sacred mountain. I explore whether this public architecture shared in the Mesoamerican tradition of tying sacred...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurelien Tafani. Kewin Peche-Quilichini. Robert H. Tykot.

The construction of large stone fortresses, the casteddi, is a defining phenomenon of the Bronze Age period of the Mediterranean island of Corsica (France). However, the function and the precise chronological setting of these structures are still debated. The summer 2015 preventive intervention at the fortress of Cuccuruzzu has revealed some new information on the socio-economic context of ceramic production during the Final Bronze Age (1200-850 BC). The typological study of the material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jones. William Locascio.

Analysis of ceramic sherds collected during excavations at the Wedgworth Midden (8PB16175) permits insight into regional interactions during the Late Archaic period. Saint John's Plain, a chalky ware associated with people to the north of the Okeechobee Basin, constitutes a significant proportion of the assemblage and suggests that Late Archaic communities in the Northern Everglades maintained social interactions with people living in the St. Johns River Valley. While preliminary, these patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. George J. Bey III. Tomás Gallareta Negrón.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jade tadpole spoons and clamshell pendants represent some of the most symbolically charged items of wealth and power in formative Mesoamerica. The Tzimin jades are a newly discovered cache of these items from the Middle Preclassic (900 BC—350 BC) Maya village of Paso del Macho that offer additional context for assessing the function and significance of jade...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ricardo García Reyna.

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. This presentation focuses on the astronomical orientations at the Tzintzuntzan archaeological site. This research progress presents our data from fieldwork: firstly, the measurements of azimuth and elevation from architecture alignments; second, the process of date calculation; and third,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Mazzetto.

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. Sixteenth-century written sources, codices, and archaeological findings from the Templo Mayor Project have provided historians and archaeologists good tools for the study of instruments used for sacrifice and self-sacrifice among the ancient Nahuas. Frequently found among them are flint knives, maguey...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many species of plants are named in the mythical narratives of the Popol Wuj. The sixteenth-century text from the K’iche’ of highland Guatemala describes how the gods and the first people used wild and cultivated plants and plant-derived...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Brown.

For contemporary Tz’utujil Maya ritual practitioners living in the highlands of Guatemala, the night is a particularly potent time and one to which they are inherently linked. Individuals often learn of their destiny to become ritual practitioners when they are first contacted by ancestral beings, known collectively as nawales, at night during dreams. Thereafter ancestral nawales and ritual practitioners enter into mutually beneficial social relationships that are mediated through sacred objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marimar Becerra Alvarez. Marcie Venter.

This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Matacanela es componente esencia de la historia regional de Los Tuxtlas, su estudio es fundamental para la comprensión de la dinámica social diacrónica y sincrónica que se dio en la región. El sitio cuenta con una secuencia ocupacional desde el Formativo Medio hasta el Clásico Tardío...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jimmy Barrera.

This is an abstract from the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A National Perspective on CRM, Research, and Consultation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), Regulatory Program evaluates activities that require Department of the Army authorization under various legislative authorities. The most common authority managed under the Corps’ Regulatory Program is Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. This presentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Hess.

This is an abstract from the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A National Perspective on CRM, Research, and Consultation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) Regulatory Program is to protect the Nation's aquatic resources while allowing reasonable development through fair and balanced permit decisions. The Corps works with consulting parties to develop appropriate mitigation measures when adverse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Ohman. Katharine Nusbaum. Bruce Larson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. NAVFAC Atlantic (LANT) is a government agency within the Department of Defense (DoD) that acts as a quasi-headquarters providing support both within the United States and overseas. As a Navy engineering facility, accounting for environmental concerns in the planning process also requires cultural resources assessments. LANT archaeologists are the DoD’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R Doyle Bowman. Thomas Gruber. Janna Gruber. Sonya Beach. Thomas Thompson.

The identification and documentation of anthropomorphic rock art effigies on the Great Plains of North America has long been a compelling yet understudied area of research for archaeologists and anthropologists. The recent advent of new technologies, like UAS vehicles (Drones) have enabled new ways for researchers to gather data on such sites and identify locations adapting photogrammetric and remote sensing techniques alongside traditional site documentation practices. The research presented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vincent MacMillan. Mark Varien. Grant Coffey. Steve McCormack. Daryl Crites.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Research Institute at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center partnered with Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and two private companies, Routescene Inc. and Caddis Aerial, to conduct a lidar survey of Sand Canyon Pueblo. The drone-based lidar data penetrates the dense vegetation present on the site to make a highly accurate map. This allows...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitchell Grothaus. Zebulon Hart. Timothy Hare.

During our 2015 and 2016 field seasons, we mapped and created 3D models of numerous excavation sites in the region surrounding Mayapán in the Northern Yucatán. Complete horizontal excavations of several rural house groups were conducted. We used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) to carry photographic equipment to collect both vertical and oblique photos as well as videos. The resulting images were processed in photogrammetric software to generate orthorectified airphoto mosaics and 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only César Parcero-Oubiña. Patricia Mañana-Borrazás. Alejandro Güimil-Fariña. Mariela Pino. César Borie.

The paper summarizes the contribution of UAV to the documentation of a vast group of late Prehispanic agrarian elements (fields, irrigation canals) in the arid Atacama area (northern Chile). Taking advantage of the extraordinary preservation and visibility of fields, canals and other constructions, the general mapping of the area was based on a combination of visual interpretation of high resolution satellite images (GeoEye 1) and fieldwork. However, despite their high resolution, satellite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zebulon Hart. Mitchell Grothaus. Timothy Hare.

During our 2015 and 2016 field seasons, we mapped and created 3D models of numerous excavation sites in the Northern Yucatán. Several of these sites are located in Mayapan’s periphery and many were scheduled for destruction due to highway expansion. We used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) to carry photographic equipment to collect both vertical and oblique photos as well as videos. In several areas we used both visible light and a near-infrared (NIR) cameras. The resulting images were...