Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Domeischel. Jesse Tune. Christine Gilbertson. Heather L. Smith.

Remote sensing has dramatically changed the way we collect data at archaeological sites, and has added new and innovative methodologies to our fieldwork. It has also facilitated greater public engagement by making archaeology more accessible – this is especially true of sites that are considered remote or difficult to access because of challenging terrain. As part of the public outreach initiative of the new Blackwater Draw Museum and its associated website, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Hill. Andrew Petersen.

As part of the "Visualizing Qatars Past" project, drones are being used at the Islamic Period site of Ruwayda, on the north coast of Qatar, to document extant structures and investigate buried features. A Microdrone equipped with visible light, near infrared, and thermal sensors was used to document the fort and surrounding areas. By combining thermal imaging of the site with photogrammetric mapping, it was possible to identify architecture in and around the site that is difficult or impossible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jotka Verlee. Cornelis Stal. Britt Lonneville. Cameron McNeil. Alain De Wulf.

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has seen a tremendous development over the last decade. The department of Geography of Ghent University has deployed these platforms to perform high-level research on the modelling of cultural heritage. The selection of a suitable system was mainly based on compactness and flexibility in terms of transportation and deployment, as well as cost-efficiency. The platform was deployed in various international field campaigns. The first campaign’s objective...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Calkins.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or ‘drones’ are an emerging technology for use in archaeological investigation. With UAVs, it is possible to capture a series of high-resolution images capable of creating photogrammetric 3D models at a very low cost. Recently, I have undertaken two projects in Nevada that demonstrate the usefulness of UAV technology in Historic Archaeology. Using a UAV, I collected sequences of images from both Virginia City and Aurora, Nevada. Using photogrammetric software, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Rose.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the broad implications and applications of UAV or drone surveys to archaeological data sets, through a detailed case study in Nubian archaeology. The author employs drones to map and model Napatan royal necropolises, dating to the 8th century B.C.E. and located in modern day Sudan, using photogrammetry. The primary research objective of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milan Kovac.

In the beginning of the 20th Century Uaxactun was considered to be the cradle of the Maya civilization. Later, other monumental Maya centers were found and scholars lost interest for Uaxactun. The former popularity of Uaxactun was interpreted as just a coincidence because the first large excavations were carried out there. Newly identified important Maya sites were considered to be older and more interesting. The new archaeological project in Uaxactun has dealt with the Preclassic horizon of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Plank. Rafael Burgos. Scott Hutson. Yoly Palomo. Miguel Covarrubias.

In the Late Preclassic and Classic periods, several sites in the center of the northern Maya lowlands constructed buildings with distinctive megaliths. Izamal was the largest of these sites by far, and connected itself to other important sites with stone causeways that stretched up to 30 km long. Ucí, located approximately 35km to the northwest of Izamal, had its own long distance causeway which linked it to three smaller sites with monumental architecture. This paper combines data from two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynda McNeil.

In his recent analysis of petroglyphs in the Uintah and San Rafael zones east of the Wasatch Mountains, Keyser (2016) identifies a subset of Fremont style figures as "solidly pecked trapezoidal body style Fremont." In this paper, I expand upon Keyser's analysis by adding to this stylistic repertoire a set of anthropomorphic figures that are largely similar to, but lack Classic Fremont diagnostic features, such as horned or winged headdresses, or body decorations, such as necklaces. Rather than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro.

The Mouth of the Xingu River, on the Lower Amazon River, is a place of many histories. The edge of the Amazon Delta, it was the first Portuguese foothold in contemporary Northern Brazil, and later home to a "glorious" 19th-Century rubber boomtown. Centered on the city of Gurupá, the region was a major hub in the traffic of Amerindians and also marked the Western extent of African slaving networks in Luso-Amazonia. Part of the Cabanagem revolt, place of Amazonian Jewry, export center for forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dina Bakour.

This is an abstract from the "Identity, Interpretation, and Innovation: The Worlds of Islamic Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Discovered in 1936 and excavated for two years by Daniel Schlumberger, Inspector of the Antiquities Department during the French Mandate (at the time), Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi remains one of the most important early Islamic sites. In this paper, I will introduce the site and its history of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karina Jiménez. Jorge Luis Ríos Allier.

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo mostrar el trabajo realizado en el cerro Danush localizado en la comunidad de San Mateo Macuilxóchitl de Artigas Carranza, Oaxaca; el cual tuvo como eje principal conocer las características que comparten los paneles de pintura rupestre de acuerdo a su ubicación en el cerro Danush, tomando en consideración las singularidades del paisaje. La importancia del estudio de las pinturas rupestres radica en que estas son una de las primeras...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Zaragoza.

Definir una región tan antigua y compleja como la Huasteca, implica conocer las características de los grupos humanos que la habitaron; en ella existen diversas manifestaciones culturales a través del tiempo; en esta ocasión presento un primer acercamiento al mundo simbólico que encontramos durante el período Posclásico. Inicié el estudio utilizando cuatro indicadores arqueológicos: Vasijas de cerámica, Concha labrada, Pintura Mural y Escultura. Lo primero que hice fue reconocer los símbolos que...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carito Tavera-Medina.

This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ¿Ha sido el estudio del género un campo de estudio sistemático dentro de la arqueología peruana? ¿Cuáles han sido los enfoques teóricos y metodológicos empleados? Y ¿qué tipos de contexto arqueológico se han empleado para dichos estudios? Por medio de la siguiente ponencia planteamos hacer un recorrido analítico sobre cómo ha sido abordado...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Un basurero es parte de la vida cotidiana de una familia, allí se va depositando todos los desechos que en un tiempo fueron de utilidad, tanto restos de comida como utensilios. Por ello el hallazgo de un basurero prehispánico en un contexto habitacional es de gran importancia para reconstruir parte de la vida cotidiana de una familia: que tipos de vasija...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Ort. Lilia Lizama.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La ciudad de Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo se ha convertido recientemente en un municipio y se esfuerza por promover el turismo sostenible en función de sus activos naturales y culturales y evitar el turismo de masas que ha afectado a otras partes de la Riviera Maya....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hirokazu Kotegawa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio arqueológico de Estero Rabón fue uno de los centros secundarios de San Lorenzo y probablemente también de La Venta durante el Preclásico Inferior y Medio. Según los estudios previos de la cultura olmeca, los centros secundarios de estas capitales tenían su propia finalidad para sostenerlas. Así, Estero Rabón también se ubicó en un punto estratégico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pablo Fernando De Jesús Pérez.

El presente estudio trata sobre trabajos realizados en la Sierra Sur de Oaxaca, localizado en los márgenes del río Tehuantepec, región en donde se establecieron grupos humanos dedicados a la caza, pesca, recolección de frutos y agricultura, con recursos naturales que fueron explotados, haciendo posible su establecimiento permanente, dejando plasmada su historia a través de elementos arquitectónicos, que para el año de 2015 fueron explorados arqueológicamente. El desarrollo de esta investigación...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Rivera.

Los huesos humanos grabados, encontrados como ofrenda en depósitos funerarios, representan un marcador especial del gremio sacerdotal de la sociedad del Oaxaca antiguo. Por un lado, al ser huesos humanos, establecen un lazo con los ancestros del grupo; por otro, la imaginería que muestran permiten establecer el tipo de rituales y oblaciones a los que estaban dedicados. Más aún, estos objetos eran considerados como reliquias y en algunos casos se les ilustra en la imaginería de los códices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nobuyuki Ito.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En la Costa Sur de Mesoamérica, se han descubierto numerosas estelas esculpidas. Sin embargo, solamente una docena de estas se registró dentro de un contexto arqueológico del período Preclásico. No obstante, en esta región se localizan dos sitios que poseen estelas con las fechas calendáricas más tempranas del Bak’tun 7, como Chiapa de Corzo y El Baúl,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Rosas.

El presente trabajo versa sobre la pintura de la tapa de bóveda 1 del yacimiento arqueológico de Sacnicté, Yucatán. En ella aparecen representados un par de personajes, uno ha sido interpretado como un enano jorobado en actitud amenazante. Al respecto pongo en duda este planteamiento, ya que analizando diferentes aspectos de la imagen como la posición, la postura, el gesto y las características de cada individuo, propongo que se trata únicamente de un individuo jorobado, que señala al otro...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johny Isla. Markus Reindel.

En nuestras recientes investigaciones de la cultura Paracas en la vertiente occidental de los Andes del sur del Perú hemos encontrado un nuevo patrón arquitectónico, cuyo elemento básico lo constituye una estructura en forma de D, que se encuentra combinada en número de dos, tres y más elementos. En el caso ideal se forma un círculo perfecto, generalmente sobre una colina artificialmente modificada, y alrededor de un patio hundido. En el sitio de Cutamalla se han identificado doce complejos...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milton Luján Dávila. Carmela Alarcón Ledesma. Peter Eeckhout.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En la Costa Central del Perú, las investigaciones llevadas en el Edificio B15 de Pachacamac recuperaron materiales malacológicos que nos acercan a conocer las diferentes actividades realizadas tanto dentro de este edificio como de este prestigioso sitio durante los períodos tardíos. Los objetivos del análisis fueron identificar los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlene Murphy.

India possesses a unique Neolithic transition to sedentism and agriculture which has shaped the cultural and ecological trajectory of the subcontinent. In the early Holocene South Asia was a subcontinent of hunter-gatherers. By 2000 years ago it was mostly inhabited by farmers, supporting densely populated river valleys, coastal plains, urban populations, states and empires. South Asia appears to have been host to a mosaic of processes, including local domestication of plants and animals, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Torales Ayala. Lane F. Fargher.

This is an abstract from the "Landscapes: Archaeological, Historic, and Ethnographic Perspectives from the New World / Paisajes: Perspectivas arqueológicas, históricas y etnográficas desde el Nuevo Mundo" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Esta presentación resume los resultados de una investigación sobre la historia del paisaje de la costa noroccidental de Yucatán. A pesar de la evidencia arqueológica prehispánica, la información sobre las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Rivera-Claudio.

Un interés personal por la historia me llevó a buscar cómo entender mejor mi presente, aprendiendo sobre los errores y los éxitos de nuestro pasado. La creación de las investigaciones de Ciudadano Científico coordinadas por Para la Naturaleza da oportunidades al público para obtener experiencia en varias áreas de la naturaleza y personalmente me abrió las puertas hacia el mundo de la arqueología. Mi experiencia en la investigación Descubriendo Nuestras Raíces y en proyectos anteriores del...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry Moore. Carolina Maria Vílchez.

This is an abstract from the "Cuando los senderos divergen: Reconsiderando las interacciones entre los Andes Septentrionales y los Andes Centrales durante el 1ro y 2do milenio AEC / When Paths Diverge: Reconsidering Interactions between the Northern and Central Andes, First–Second Millennium BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the Tumbes region has been a frontier based on environmental differences, ethnolinguistic boundaries, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantal Huckert.

La presentación se centra sobre figuras estelares de ojos emplumados, cruces, estrellas de tres o cinco puntas, y máscaras. Están pintadas y moldeadas en bajo relieve en la vestimenta y el cuerpo de representaciones humanas en barro que pertenecen a los tipos, rojo sobre crema, mayoide, sonriente y escultórico. Se identifican las variantes, procedentes de las culturas del centro de Veracruz, a la luz de formas análogas en las artes y los registros gráficos de Mesoamérica, referidos por los...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfredo Narvaez.

Nuestros trabajos en Kuélap han permitido la excavación de un centenar de estructuras circulares, densos rellenos, estructuras ceremoniales y secciones de la muralla exterior y la muralla del Pueblo Alto. Estas excavaciones han afinado una secuencia estratigráfica apoyada en una veintena de fechados de radiocarbono y permitido el hallazgo de diversos contextos que sustentan una nueva hipótesis respecto del rol del monumento. Estos estudios han concluido en lo siguiente: a) el monumento comenzó...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose May-Crespo. David Larreina-Garcia. Blanca Maldonado. Luis Ramón Velázquez-Madonado. Mario Retiz-García.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jicalán Viejo, es uno de los sitios prehispánicos donde se han encontrado vestigios de escoria metálica asociada al proceso metalúrgico del cobre. Al igual que las escorias, el barro utilizado en la manufactura de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Chiquito Cortés.

Con el hallazgo fortuito de una cámara mortuoria en Ixcaquixtla, Puebla (dentro de la mixteca). se pudieron registrar un conjunto de pinturas murales que hasta la fecha son únicas en la región. A pesar de contar ya con once años de haber sido descubiertas, los trabajos entorno a la pintura mural son escasos y los existentes se centran en determinan su contenido iconográfico. Con base en la anterior, nuestra presentación reflexiona y busca dar una propuesta estilística sobre la pintura mural,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Espejel.

El avance de los estudios arqueológicos realizados hasta el momento permiten delinear ya un panorama general de la historia prehispánica en Michoacán desde aproximadamente 1500 aC hasta 1522 dC. En esta ponencia presentaré una síntesis de dicha historia, vinculando la información de Michoacán a la de otras regiones colindantes con el fin de distintguir los rasgos particulares de diversas zonas pero identificando también las tendencias generales de desarrollo que se dieron a través del tiempo.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marieka Brouwer Burg. Meghan Howey.

This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several papers in "Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology" identified space as a critical factor in structuring diversity and called for whole landscape, regional-scale analyses to improve archaeological approaches to diversity. The capabilities of today’s geospatial technologies were unimaginable at the time but now, the desire to analyze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Reamer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The traditional definition of Indigenous villages in the Eastern Woodlands can be considered synonymous with the archaeological site. Villages are bounded discrete entities that often curiously mirror historic or current property lines. While presumed agricultural field areas may be considered in these conceptions, villages, hamlets, farmsteads, camps, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dusan Boric. Nikola Borovinic. Emanuela Cristiani. Adisa Lepic. Andrea Zupancich.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Research into the Late Pleistocene of Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper looks at the results of recent research at several late Upper Palaeolithic sites in the area of the Dinaric Alps within the Eastern Adriatic catchment zone in present-day Montenegro and Herzegovina. For the first time in this region, a long-term persistence of the phenomenon of broad spectrum dietary strategy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Randall. Marla Taylor.

Archaeology-centered education is typically relegated to throw-away curricula in elementary school classrooms, often not to be discussed again until post-secondary education. The Peabody Museum strives to break this pattern by actively engaging high school students and teachers in ways that connect archaeology to their everyday lives. This is done through a work study program focusing on hands-on interaction with artifacts, as well as teaching traditional subjects with archaeology. This model...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein. Robert Littman. AbdelRahman Medhat.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient sources reference the quality and importance of perfume manufactured in the Mendesian nome through the periods of Hellenistic and Roman control of Egypt. Archaeological evidence has identified areas of manufacture for Greek-style lekythoi, Roman Unguentaria, and possibly a location to produce incense at the site of Tell Timai that dates to the period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Craib. Martin P. Walker. David G. Anderson. Derek Anderson. Stephen Yerka.

Multiple features, ranging from the Woodland through Historic periods, were uncovered and excavated at the Topper Site (38AL23) by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, summer 2015 field school. This paper presents the results of a contextual and spatial analysis of these features utilizing excavation and GPR data from the field and the flotation analysis of the feature fill, which was conducted at UTK during the Fall of 2015. This analysis further illustrates the range of human activity at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Hundtoft. Christopher W. Schwartz. Adrian Chase. Ben Nelson.

This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Connections Project is a long-term research venture focused on documenting material indicators of interregional interactions amongst people that inhabited an area ranging from the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest (SW/NW) to Central America from 800-1540 CE . Data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donald Blakeslee.

In 1601 CE, Juan de Oñate visited a large community in southern Kansas that natives described as taking two or three days to walk through. The location of the remains of the town was first clearly demonstrated in 2015. Since then, surface survey and work with collectors continues to document the scale of the community. Excavation in 2017 by Wichita State University and the University of Colorado in what was thought to be a midden mound instead encountered a dense concentration of features...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Wyatt. Clelie Cottle Peacock.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2017, the Bass Street Community Archaeology Project has been conducting excavations at the site of one of the earliest African American neighborhoods in post-Civil War Nashville. The Bass Street Community was located on the north side of Saint Cloud Hill, the site of Fort Negley, a Civil War era fort constructed by the Union forces in Nashville....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Panagakos. Amanda Paskey.

There is a perception that community colleges offer few practical opportunities to students interested in archaeology. Through an agreement with California State Parks and the support of our college, we established the Cosumnes River Archaeological Working Lab (CRAWL) to provide community college students hands-on training with artifacts. This paper discusses the project and findings, logistics of starting a community college lab, and benefits of exposing novice students to archaeological lab...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey Camp. Ben Akey. Levi Webb. Duane Quates.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In May 2023, Michigan State University (MSU) construction workers installing hammock poles hit what they believed was a foundation or rock. They immediately contacted MSU's Campus Archaeology Program (CAP), directed by Dr. Stacey Camp. Ben Akey, the Campus Archaeologist at the time, examined historic maps and aerials, which revealed that the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Bernstetter. Michael Kolb. William Balco, Jr..

Sicily has long been a hotbed of archaeological activity. During the Late Iron Age, Greek, Roman, Punic, and indigenous Elymi groups were involved in a complex network of trade and exchange. At the site of Salemi in western Sicily, there is evidence of participation in a widespread Mediterranean sphere of exchange. For this research, sourcing studies were conducted on transport amphorae to measure the degree of foreign influence on the local economy of Salemi. Preliminary data collected in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Hall.

For decades, stamped and plain clay objects recovered from post-contact Native American sites between the 1950s and 1990s in the Florida panhandle have puzzled researchers. The objects are believed to have been produced by the Apalachee Indians living in the region. However, little is known about the techniques used to manufacture them or what purpose they served. These artifacts are generally referred to as Lamar clay balls owing to some having stamped patterns similar to Lamar-like stamped...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Rutkoski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic microwear analysis provides important insights into stone tool function by identifying various polishes, residues, and striations that ultimately represent microscopic evidence of how these tools were used. However, recent archaeological analyses have recognized an interesting pattern: burned lithic specimens do not appear to preserve microwear traces...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenn Ogborne. Erin Crawford.

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological collections at Historic St. Mary’s City span some 50 years of continuous research resulting in approximately 6.5 million artifacts, thousands of pages of field records, paper catalogues, and related documentation. In 2016 the entire collection was moved from multiple storage locations into one single...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sylvia Cheever. María Cecilia Lozada. Danny Zborover. Erika Simborth. Hans Barnard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster details the results of cranial modification typology research conducted at Jarana, a Late Intermediate and Early Inca administrative site located in the San Juan de Churunga river valley of southern Peru. Cultural cranial modification was particularly widespread among pre-Hispanic societies in the Andes. The practice is commonly interpreted as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich. Monica Arellano.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The façade of Mission Santa Clara de Asís features the All-Seeing Eye of God, a symbol that serves as a reminder of the omnipotence of the Christian God. This symbolism reinforces ample archival evidence that the Franciscan missions of Alta California—like Spanish missions elsewhere in the Americas—were strictly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Koller. Stephen Acabado.

The Spanish conquest of the Philippines redesigned the indigenous landscape to adhere to the idealized orthogonal plan outlined by King Philip II’s Ordinances of 1573, centered on the church plaza. This reconfiguration facilitated the successful political, economic, and religious control of the colonial possession. An aspect of this resettlement plan is the concept of Bajo de Campana (under the bell) that implied control through the ringing of the church bell. The plaza complex, which is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Coltman.

For the ancient Maya, the landscape was wild, untamed, and dotted with caves, which were the darkest of spaces. On an empirical level, caves can reveal the ancient Maya experience of intimate darkness and nullified senses. Such experience belonged to the night, which was fraught with danger, temporally distant, and inhabited by a cast of anti-social beings. These beings belonged to the wilderness and dark forests that lacked internal order and spatial division. Much like the concept of chaos in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Belen Mendez Bauer.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In prehispanic times the tops of the mountains and volcanoes were used as natural markers of geographical spaces; many of these points served as referents in the construction of cultural landscapes based on the sacred. The valley of Quetzaltenango, in western Guatemala, is surrounded by ten prominent hills and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabella Garcia.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in archaeological microwear analysis provide new tools to examine bone “objects” created and used by past peoples. Non-destructive microscopy techniques can be employed to study bone objects, preserving the integrity of archaeological materials and minding stakeholder concerns regarding destructive analyses. This poster presents preliminary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Hladek. Molly Herron.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research presents the macroscopic and microscopic attributes of hair and feathers from the artifact assemblage of North Fork Cave #1, better known as Mummy Cave (48PA201) in Park County, Wyoming. The results of this research enable us to better understand the mammalian and avian resources exploited during the Archaic and Prehistoric periods in the Greater...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Pezzarossi.

The colonial Maya community of San Pedro Aguacatepeque, located in Pacific piedmont Guatemala, sits on the eastern flank of the Volcan de Fuego, a long-active stratovolcano. The interventions of new materialist approaches, in particular Bennett’s notion of the "vibrancy" and influence of nonhumans in the unfolding of history, are brought into relief when considering the abundant historical entanglements between the Volcan de Fuego and Aguacatepeque. The regular flows and bursts emanating from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Eldridge. John Darwent. Christyann Darwent.

Historical documents note that the Shaktoolik Peninsula, located in Norton Sound, Alaska, was a nexus of interaction among local Yup’ik, Inupiat from the north, Athabaskans from the east, and Russian and American traders in the 1800s. Yup’ik populations were displaced from the area and replaced by Inupiaq groups during this time; however, limited archival, ethnographic and oral history accounts make it difficult to disentangle the local history. The archaeological record may be able to fill in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Walker. William Marquardt. Victor Thompson. Michael Savarese. Chris Walser.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mullets (Mugil spp.), especially the striped mullet (Mugil cephalus), because of their predictable mass-schooling behavior, are obvious candidates as having been surplus food for the socio-politically complex, Calusa fisher-gatherer-hunters. Moreover, López de Velasco, writing in about 1570, stated that there was in southwest Florida waters a "great fishery of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yu Dong. Yuanyuan Wang. Fen Wang.

This is an abstract from the "Resources and Society in Ancient China" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no doubt that millet farming and pig husbandry were the dominant subsistence practices in late Neolithic northern China. However, wild resources, such as foraged fruits and nuts, shells, and hunted wild animals, also contributed substantially to people’s diet at this time. Wild resources, especially aquatic resources, are sometimes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Asher Blake. Zoe Anderson. Madison James. Mariah Smith. Catalina Terlea.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Undergraduate ceramic archaeological instruction is built around the common, and often taken for granted, categories of raw materials, functional forms, and decorative characteristics. As students, we primarily study these categories to classify materials in field and laboratory settings with little time or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Domenici.

The National Museum of the American Indian holds a lot of Mesoamerican mosaic encrusted wooden masks and shields bought in 1921 from Carl A. Purpus, who stated they were found in a cave near Acatlán, Puebla (Mexico). The presentation, besides including a brief description of the artifacts, it is aimed at reconstructing the objects’ unknown contextual information through a comparison with similar objects held in American, Mexican and European museums, some of them proceeding from scientifically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Smith.

This study presents an analysis of the architecture and spatial organization at Maukallaqta de Nuñoa, a prehispanic site within the highlands of Peru dating to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000 – 1450). Within the northern Titicaca Basin where the site is located, hillforts dominate the archaeological landscape during this time as a result of increased political fragmentation and social discontinuity. While these hillforts often display very little architectural investment other than their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Trabert.

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. Deer Creek is an eighteenth-century fortified site in Oklahoma that is featured in dozens of publications yet was not excavated until 2016. While archaeologists today acknowledge the site as a Wichita village, others have insisted Deer Creek is a European fort. Historical narratives bereft of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Horowitz. W. James Stemp.

This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Expedient flaked stone tools, generally defined as those which are produced as needed, without standardization, and with little to no investment, are less often examined in the archaeological record than formal stone tools, those which require more skill and effort to produce following a prescribed method or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

Reconstructions of ancient Maya animal use often emphasize the importance of terrestrial species, such as deer, to the overall diet. While these species played an important role, much less attention has been paid to the use of aquatic resources despite the presence of resource rich perennial wetlands in the Maya lowlands. To further understand this crucial area of the Maya-environment relationship, we investigated the site of Chulub located in the Western Lagoon Wetlands of Belize. This site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Erauw.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent decades, zooarchaeological studies have been increasing in South America. Nevertheless, combining the methods used to understand some questions related to animal and human interactions in ancient Peru seems crucial. In this paper, we will present the first results of an ongoing multidisciplinary project focused on the central coast of Peru during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Moates.

Archaeological sites face many threats in Florida. While both natural and cultural forces are at play the most destructive threat might be inaction at the local level from the professional and amateur archaeology communities. Local preservation programs began in earnest with the passage of state laws aimed at managing and regulating growth in the state and have continued largely through the implementation of the Certified Local Government Program. However, an apparent lack of a clear...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gosia Mahoney. Paul Hanson. Dawn Bringelson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The puzzling scarcity of archaeological sites on the Tolleston Beach at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore prompted an investigation into the development of this dune field in an attempt to determine whether the distribution of known archaeological sites is governed by ancient human behaviors, or influenced by its dune setting, which can affect site preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Sheets.

Lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) were a critically important dietary resource for inhabitants of the pre-contact American Southwest, where they typically dominate faunal assemblages. It is useful to examine proportions between genera of lagomorphs—specifically, cottontails (Syvilagus sp.) and jackrabbits (Lepus sp.)—to elucidate information about the past environment and how it might have changed in response to human actions. Based on habitat preferences and predator evasion strategies, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fatemeh Ghaheri.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The semi-arid region of Northern Mesopotamia has consistently encountered significant climatic variations. Therefore, human societies in the region developed innovations in environmental management and agricultural strategies, given the crucial role of agriculture in economy, trade, and politics all throughout history and in our modern world. Among all the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Fairley.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The destructive effects of large dams on upstream archaeological sites has been recognized for many decades, resulting in passage of federal legislation and numerous large-scale archaeological salvage projects in the 1940s through 1970s. Considerably less attention has been paid to the effects of large dams on downstream archaeological resources. For the past...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Bond. Julie Gibson. Stephen Dockrill. Ruth Maher. Robert Friel.

Orkney is a Scottish archipelago, with a maritime cultural landscape spanning some 6,000 years. The archaeological evidence related to this long habitation is amongst the most complete in Northwest Europe. Three-dimensional stone architecture and frequently benign soil conditions contribute to very good preservation of individual sites in their landscapes and the UNESCO inscription of The Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site recognizes this. A few sites were protected in the last...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Loven. Kye Miller.

On numerous projects, faunal analysts have speculated to the amount of rabbit (Lagomorph) remains deposited by human-related processes. Previous studies have failed to fully investigate potential differences in the treatment of Lagomorph remains between cultural and natural deposits. This project investigates evidence of human processing of Lagomorph remains from two Pueblo II/III Great Houses in the Middle San Juan region of northwestern New Mexico: Aztec and Salmon Ruins. The primary research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Ellis. John P. Walden. Kyle Shaw-Müller. Claire E. Ebert. Julie A. Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional anthropological perspectives depict feasting events as a way of promoting social cohesion, as well as reinforcing inequalities. As described by Spanish observers, Postclassic and Colonial (~AD 1280-1600) Maya elites hosted elaborate feasts to reward their followers’ loyalty. Similar events are shown on polychrome pottery, depicting Classic Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Troutman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through Funk’s (1993) research into the Upper Susquehanna Valley Region in New York, several important Early Archaic (10,000-8,000BP) archaeological sites were uncovered from Wells Bridge, New York. One of these Early Archaic sites named the Johnsen #3 site contains multiple Kirk horizon occupations in stratified deposits. Early Archaic sites are still rare in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcella Festa.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tianshan Beilu cemetery – the largest and earliest Bronze Age funerary context in Eastern Xinjiang, including 705 graves dating to ca. 2000-1300 BCE – has been widely recognized as a key-point in the early interactions system throughout Eurasia – the ‘Prehistoric Silk Road’. However, due to the failure to publish the excavation report, research has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haley Dougherty.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of the Virgin Branch Puebloan Region" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Virgin Branch Puebloan (VBP) region is pronounced by its ecological and social diversity much like other areas of the US Southwest, including Puebloan “core” areas like Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon regions. This research will examine archaeological materials from Moapa Valley (a lowland area of the VBP region, located in the Virgin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Thomas Guderjan.

All depositional environments can leave complex records of environmental change over time. We consider floodplains, alluvial fans, and wetlands of the Maya lowlands at present day Neundorf, Belize. We have documented a rich history of sedimentation, water chemistry, and archaeological data that show a measurable environmental and archaeological signature that date back over 4,000 years in this region. This research uses soil geomorphology to study the chronology and processes of wetland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Geurds.

This paper argues that improving understanding of exchange in Central American prehistory is hampered by static cultural taxonomies, and traditions of thinking and publishing that are limited in terms of the 'archaeology of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama', dividing the field to the point where scholars are uncomfortable discussing Pre-Hispanic Central America as such. This has put an unsatisfactory halt to the discussion about how to understand and conceptualize this isthmian region. If ethnic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Hernández Sariñana. A. Gabriel Vicencio. Ryohei Takatsuchi.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican and Andean Cities: Old Debates, New Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan was one of the largest and most prominent ancient cities in Mesoamerica during the Classic period (150-600 CE). The city housed an estimated population of 100,000 people at its height, all in need of food, shelter, and basic necessities. Spaces dedicated to the production and consumption of foodstuffs in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Schott.

Located on the southern edge of the Tusayan Dune Field in northeastern Arizona, the Petrified Forest National Park contains abundant archaeology sites located in dune settings. Past and recent archaeological survey has shown an apparent correlation between archaeological site locations and eroded dune blowouts. It is likely that sites are located in dune settings due to their favorable environmental setting; however, it is not clear if the apparent distribution of visible sites in relation to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alissa Healy. Jana Comstock.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gallina culture is one with a fascinating history of violence, defensive environments, unique artifacts, and most importantly—the sustained habitation of pitstructures for the duration of their 200 year occupation (AD 1100—1300). This behavior is dissimilar to the surrounding pueblo period cultures. Several cultural resource management firms have conducted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth DeMarrais.

This presentation explores landscapes of heterarchy, investigating the ways that past peoples inhabited a south Andean landscape. In the northern Calchaquí Valley of Argentina, before the Inkas, power relations were predominantly decentralized and spatially extensive. As a consequence, lived experience, the built environment, and the wider landscape both constituted and reproduced a distinctive social order and cultural logic. Using data from regional survey, I argue first for a habitus that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase.

Ancient Maya cities possessed a unique urban form characterized by two factors: mixed agricultural land use within residential areas and dispersed households consisting of extended family groups. These two factors contributed to the low-density nature of Maya cities, and conditioned urban form and the structure of neighborhoods and districts. The requirements of top-down administration resulted in the creation of districts to delineate areas of provisioning for the city’s urban services....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bartusewich.

This paper will address economic and political interactions of two Cypriot polities during the Iron Age prior to political transitions in about 450 BCE. Idalion is a polity in the interior, near the copper-bearing Troodos Mountains and Kition is a port town on the southern coast. These polities are separate by 20km of rolling hills and plains. By 450 BCE, Kition had obtained political control of Idalion, but there has been little research about these two urban areas interactions prior to this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugh Radde.

The Catalina Island Museum (CIM) cares for the largest collection of Island Tongva (Gabrielino) artifacts in the world, the results of early expeditions, modern excavations as well as objects donated by Catalina Islanders. Opened in 1953, the Catalina Island Museum boasts a wealth of historic, archaeological, and archival materials that document life from the first islanders 8000 years ago to the present day, and strives to provide awareness and appreciation of the island’s rich heritage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hunter Claypatch.

This is an abstract from the "13,000 Years of Adaptation in the Sonoran Desert at La Playa, Sonora" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramics blanket La Playa’s vast landscape and include some of the earliest pottery produced in the Southwest/Northwest. Despite its high frequency and value for reconstructing occupational histories, there has been no synthetic discussion of La Playa’s ceramics. This presentation chronologically frames the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen.

This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Amongst his many intellectual contributions, Richard Redding was a leading scholar in the use of zooarchaeology, specifically the production, distribution, redistributio,n and consumption of animal products, to understand political economies. Through systemic approaches, Redding was able to explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Muntz.

This research entails the thorough analysis and comparison of two ceramic assemblages to understand whether and how ritual manifests in pottery of the Late Mississippian Southeast. The study focuses on ritual phenomena exhibited at two Late Mississippian Period (ca. late 1200s A.D. to A.D. 1500) settlements in southern Illinois, the Millstone Bluff site in Pope County (11Pp3) and the Dillow’s Ridge site in Union County (11U635). Millstone Bluff has been interpreted as a site of public ritual and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Walter Burgos Morakawa. Brent Woodfill.

The Candelaria Caves System, with its approximately 18 km of passageways, forms the second largest underground karstic complex in the Maya Area. As result of their location at the highland-lowland transition and close to Great Western Trade Route, it was an important pilgrimage center for people of different cultural and geographical regions. The Early Classic period (A.D. 250-500) marked the introduction of polychrome ceramics, mainly Dos Arroyos-group ceramics, which played an important role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neill Wallis. Thomas Pluckhahn.

This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While communities are often considered to be isomorphic with settlements, this equivalency is ill-suited to understanding contexts in which the structure of settlement and social organization was cyclical and nested at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In the coastal plain of the American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kerchusky. Corina Kellner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Myriad factors shaped cultural practices such as ‘trophy head’ taking in Andean prehistory. Zorropata, located in the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru, was a large domestic site with likely ceremonial function occupied relatively continuously from the Late Nasca period (c. AD 450-600) until the early Middle Horizon/Loro period (c. AD 600-1000). Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sterner-Miller. Robert Jeske. Robert Ahlrichs.

A combination of assemblage analysis, microwear analysis and blood residue analysis allows us to build a new understanding of the role of lithic material in the technological economy of Oneota groups in eastern Wisconsin. One foundation of this approach is accurate and replicable recognition of use-wear patterns. Blind tests have been an essential component of use-wear research since the 1970s. In this paper, we describe a study of 100 experimentally made and used chipped stone tools. Made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Ingram.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 1200s–1400s CE in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest, tens of thousands of people were on the move—many leaving places where knowledge of landscapes had accrued at the scale of millennia. By the end of the 1400s, population levels had declined by about 50%. What conditions led to this migration and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Mikeska.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The varied responses by Native communities within the American Southeast to European colonization resulted in a period of dynamic social, economic, and political change. One such response to the colonial encounter was the development of a robust trade in the skins of white-tailed deer. In this paper, I focus on the effects of the deerskin trade on the deer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiina Manne. Peter Veth. Fiona Hook. Kane Ditchfield. Ingrid Ward.

Barrow Island, located 50km off the modern Pilbara coast, contains the longest and richest archaeological record of Pleistocene coastal settlement in northern Australia. During lowered sea levels of the Pleistocene, the island was part of the greater Australian continent. Archaeological survey has revealed an array of sites in cave, rockshelter and open air-settings. The most diverse record has been recovered from a large limestone cave, where repeated visits began at c. 50 ka BP and continued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José L. Peña. Robert H. Tykot.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The present research focuses on the strategies in the procurement of raw material used in the production of pottery at the El Campanario site during the beginning of the Late Intermediate period (AD 1150–1280). The manufacture of pottery occurred within the domestic areas at this site and while domestic pottery was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Zeanah. Douglas Bird. Rebecca Bliege Bird. Brian Codding. Robert Elston.

Most evidence suggests that Prearchaic hunter-gatherers were highly mobile, and equipped with a hunting oriented lithic technology that lacked milling equipment. Nonetheless, they acquired a broad spectrum of prey and tended to camp near wetlands rich in small game and plant resources. Archaeologists have questioned to what degree this evidence reflects an adaptation that fundamentally differed from ethnographically observed patterns in the Great Basin, as well as whether it was shaped primarily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Jennings.

This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the papers in this session have demonstrated, the site of Quilcapampa La Antigua in a previously isolated region of southern Peru is notable for its long-distance connections, strong Wari influence, and brief occupation during the tenth century AD. In this closing paper on our excavations, I want to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Windle. Henny Piezonka. Hans Whitefield. Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal. William Taylor.

This is an abstract from the "Exploring Long-Term Pastoral Dynamics: Methods, Theories, Stories" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the innovation of reindeer transport transformed societies across Northeast Asia, tracing the prehistory of reindeer domestication and riding has proven particularly challenging. Recent cross-species archaeozoological research has built an expanded paleopathological toolkit, but to date there are few mechanisms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Barry Kidder. Céline Lamb. Shannon Plank. David Medina-Arona.

Soil chemistry in the Northern Maya Lowlands has been an effective method at a variety of sites and in a range of contexts such as households, ballcourts, causeways, and ceremonial plazas. Recent chemical analyses of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional integration Project (UCRIP) also revealed that the soils of the Yucatán, México, are testable using the in-field Olsen bicarbonate method to measure levels of extractable inorganic phosphate. When supplemented with distributional analyses of artifacts on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Langlois. Erin Riley.

This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a result of the energy requirements related to growth and development, non-adults are more susceptible to biocultural change than adults, making them ideal proxies to examine environmental stress within a population. The village of Gać and town of Dzwonowo (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) in Greater Poland provide a unique opportunity to...