Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen. Terry Lustig. Damian Evans.

Further research to understand what makes agricultural and water management systems resilient is critical for the continued existence and growth of sustainable communities today, especially in urban contexts. Resiliency is a very useful concept for understanding how complex systems, but can be difficult to operationalize. In this paper, we argue that adaptive capacity can be used as a middle-range theory that allows archaeologists to engage in interdisciplinary discourses of system-level...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Carroll.

Archaeologists often find themselves excavating sites where previous investigations have been performed, and documentation relating to earlier work may be of varying quality. This discussion focuses on the use of a topographic mapping drone to assess error and uncertainty in archaeological site survey performed at Tel Lachish, Israel since the 1930’s. Systematic assessments of historical map datasets were performed within a Geographic Information System (GIS) allowing for an enhanced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gilbert Tostevin. Luke Premo. William Wimsatt.

Social learning is universally believed to be critical to the hominin adaptation. Yet when this becomes evident in our oldest cultural proxy, lithic artifacts, is hotly debated. Much of the variation in how archaeologists study this question is caused by differing assumptions related to the constraints on the performance, and thus the learning, of the flintknapping process. This paper explores the consequences of the physical constraints within lithic technology on its cultural transmission,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias. Robert Bischoff.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Applications of Network Analysis" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists use a wide variety of material culture and methods to construct and analyze networks. Just how these networks relate to past behavior is an open question, as we lack information on the relationship between behavior and material culture in the past. We do not have adequate datasets of people interacting with people alongside...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khori Newlander.

Minimum analytical nodule analysis is a useful tool for recognizing the variability present within a lithic assemblage. In turn, this type of analysis permits a more complete understanding of lithic technological organization. Typically, lithic analysts use macroscopic and microscopic characteristics, as well as spatial associations, to partition lithic assemblages into subgroups, or analytical nodules, that we assume reflect a limited set of production episodes or the role of a particular type...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lana Martin.

Many people recognize the need for markedly different mode of living amid a growing body of scientific evidence that the current world population is environmentally unsustainable. Exploring ancient foodways and landscape management techniques may improve our ability to imagine highly productive modes of food production and resource consumption dissimilar to that of our current global reality. Here, I show how a reconstruction of macrobotanical and faunal remains builds a narrative of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Agha.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The First Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683) was the prime motivator and mastermind behind the settlement and success of the English colony Carolina in 1670. John Locke, Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, was also Shaftesbury's friend and colleague in many affairs, one being their Fellowship in the Royal Society of London. The uniquely English...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Rogers. Scott Stull.

Archaeogeophysical and 3D laser scanning at the Old Fort Johnson National Landmark site in Fort Johnson, New York provides a case study for creation of an integrated landscape. The ability to digitally image above and below ground features creates a new way of visualizing an integrated landscape. Above ground remains of historic structures often appear out of their original context. Defensive elements, outbuildings, agricultural areas, ceremonial areas, walkways, and shape of the ground surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Moots.

The Neolithic Transition brought with it a number of changes in the relationships that people had with animals, plants and pathogens. Increasing proximity to domesticated and commensal animals, and larger, denser communities shifted the disease ecologies of these communities and resulted in an increasing number of disease vectors. I use ancient and modern DNA to look at the effects that these new dietary and epidemiological trends had on people in the past and the genomic legacies of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Lefebvre.

La conquista española conllevó importantes trastornos en el paisaje del antiguo México. En la región de Acámbaro (Guanajuato), estos cambios se reflejaron ya desde una fase muy precoz, puesto que la colonización fue temprana y los especies animales y vegetales introducidos por los europeos se adaptaron rápidamente. Por otro lado, el dominio de los conquistadores sobre el territorio se acompañó de una renovación del patrón de asentamiento, que tuvo por consecuencia liberar numerosas tierras...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Lewarch.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as a Public Good: Why Studying Archaeology Creates Good Careers and Good Citizens" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Indigenous communities often lack financial resources, technical skill sets, and expertise in regulatory processes to identify, document, protect, and enhance their cultural patrimony. Well-trained archaeologists are competent in a wide range of skills needed to collaborate and work with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rogoff.

Over the last several decades, the citizens of Punta Laguna, Mexico have developed a successful ecotourism venture in the spider monkey preserve in which they live. However, recent challenges to the usufruct agreement through which the preserve operates have jeopardized the future of the community's business. At present, the archaeological site of Punta Laguna, which lies within the preserve's boundaries, is little more than a passive backdrop to other tourist activities. We propose developing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hruschka. Robert Bischoff. Cindy Huang. Matthew Peeples.

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Center for Archaeology and Society Repository (CASR) at Arizona State University holds collections for thousands of archaeological sites. These collections are an important resource for the archaeological community, yet accessing them is difficult due to a lack of awareness of which sites are available. An exemplar of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Rubenstein.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Puuc region of Yucatán is distinguished by its architectural style, composed primarily of low, range-type structures with limestone veneers. These building surfaces, elaborately carved with iconographic content, also served as backdrops for stucco and stone sculptures, which were placed in niches, on projecting platforms, and incorporated directly into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Cannon. Carly Plesic.

As a program designed to integrate and analyze geospatial data, ArcMap has the potential for broad archaeological application. Here we employ ArcMap to create a database for research and management of the historic cemetery at Stoddartsville, a 19th century milling village built along the upper Lehigh River in northeast Pennsylvania. Specifically, we use ArcMap to integrate: (1) spatial data from a total station survey of individual grave markers and cemetery boundaries; (2) descriptive data from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terence Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster demonstrates augmented reality as a useful approach for making inaccessible collections accessible to the public. Using the mobile app Augment, highlights of the University of Saskatchewan’s archaeological collections will be virtually presented to the public for the first time. Hidden archaeological gems will be given the spotlight they deserve...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Henry. Sarah H. Ledogar. Jordan Karsten.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Expansion of agricultural communities during the Eneolithic in Europe likely had an impact on the environment due to a need for land, wood for building houses, and agricultural practices (e.g., slash-and-burn). We focus on the Trypillians (an Eneolithic, forest-steppe group) from Southeastern Europe, and how their agropastoral lifestyles impacted their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rene Vellanoweth. Amira Ainis. Santos Ceniceros. Jessica Rodriguez. Paul Collins.

This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology has a long history of applying proxy data to reconstruct past environmental conditions. Archaeological deposits, however, represent an anthropocentric view of the past, one biased by human selection and decision-making. This research focuses on excavation and analysis of owl-generated,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Hoggarth. J. Britt Davis. Christophe Helmke. Jaime Awe.

A variety of functions have been proposed for ‘problematic deposits’ across the Maya lowlands. All of the explanations have archaeological and temporal implications that have rarely been operationalized together to gain better insights into the nature of these deposits. In this presentation, we describe these features as ‘peri-abandonment deposits’, as all proposed explanations imply that the events that led to the formation of the deposits occurred around the time (or after) ceremonial centers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Pintar. Amber Johnson. Sarah Lamkin.

Hunter-gatherer lifeways dominated the Salt Puna of South America for at least 5000 years before domesticated animals and plants appear in the archaeological record. The ruggedness of the landscape (with a baseline elevation of 3300 masl), the low ET and the distribution of resources dependent on a decreasing E-W rainfall gradient surely had an impact on prehistoric landscape use and mobility of ancient hunter-gatherers. In this poster we follow Binford (2001) in arguing there is a link between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Van Alstyne. Karen Harry.

Architecture has always been a key focus in archaeological research. This is because it dominates the context where the investigation takes place. However, there is a dearth of research concerning the vernacular architecture within the built environment of the Virgin Branch Puebloan (VBP) people on the Shivwits Plateau. This stems from the sediments of the area, which have obliterated most floor features and thus have limited the amount of architectural information that can be recovered. To...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Niespolo. Warren Sharp. Christian Tryon. J. Tyler Faith. Todd Dawson.

The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in East Africa ~30-60 ka has been hypothesized as a response to increased resource risk due to cooler, drier Late Pleistocene environments with greater short-term variability. Local paleoenvironmental records are needed to test such hypotheses. Ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments are common in African archaeological sequences, are amenable to 14C and U-series dating, and their δ13C and δ15N values are known to correspond to the C isotopes of vegetation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Scott. Adam Boethius. Rebecca Macdonald. Michael Richards. Amy Styring.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we present the results of compound specific carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on amino acids from bone collagen of Early Holocene humans and contemporaneous terrestrial and marine fauna recovered from multiple sites in southern Sweden. These analyses were aimed at individuals spanning the Early Mesolithic to the Middle Neolithic Pitted...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Claudine Gravel-Miguel.

Anthropological research has demonstrated the influence of climate and environmental resources on the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. While most previous work has focused on environmental influences on hunter-gatherer economic and ecological behaviors, this research will evaluate the impact of different geographical and social environments on the social networks formed therein. This project will use an agent-based model to generate test expectations related to the processes that shaped the social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dylan Schwindt. Kari Schleher. Michelle Turner. Grant Coffey. Benjamin Bellorado.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence techniques have made much progress in the past several years. Cloud computing has rendered these tools more accessible than ever to researchers in a wide range of fields. Here we explore applications of these models to classify Ancestral Pueblo pottery types in the central Mesa Verde region of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlene Murphy.

Pulses were an important crop in human prehistory. Tracking traits of domestication in pulses has been limited in the past due to poor preservation of diagnostic features of domestication. Traditionally, morphometric techniques have focused on changes in seed size. The authors measured horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum) from South Asia, dating from the Neolithic (2000BC) to the Early Historic Period (400-700AD), which showed an increase through time with domestication. This is in juxtaposition to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pranavi Ramireddy. Jaime Ullinger. László Paja.

In well-preserved osteoarchaeological samples, traditional anthropological methods are employed to determine age at death, biological sex, differences in diet, activity level, pathologies, and genetics. Determining sex based on classical anthropological methods such as examining morphological and metric traits is often difficult or impossible with cremains due to fragmentation and post-depositional damage. A previous study conducted by Van Deest et al. in 2013 showed a correlation between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jayde Hirniak. Eugene Smith. Racheal Johnsen. Shelby Fitch. Minghua Ren.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Establishing robust and reliable chronologies at archaeological sites is essential for understanding the sequence and timing of past events. At the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic site Arma Veirana (AV, Liguria, Italy), robust chronologies are especially important for answering questions regarding the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe. Because the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Snyder. Kathryn Whalen. Douglas Perrelli.

Recent CRM fieldwork in western New York by SUNY Buffalo Archaeological Survey has afforded the opportunity to address questions of how people, technology, and the environment related from newly discovered sites which span thousands of years. One of the most fruitful avenues of research is in the examination of the transition from the Late and Transitional Archaic to the Early Woodland, a period in which it is suggested there was dramatic linked cultural and environmental change, where multiple...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Gregory. Lauren Walls.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fort Campbell has a robust dataset for cultural resources following decades of survey, testing, and monitoring projects. Recent surveys of thousands of acres have included the collection of digital data. Coupled with the complete survey coverage of large areas of the installation, this data was used for a landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Goldberg. Kevin Fogle.

This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Booker T. Washington’s birth and enslavement in Hardy County, Virginia, has been honored since 1945 when the farm was purchased to serve both as a memorial and a school. Eventually incorporated into the National Park system in the 1950s, this site has been the focal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua J. Wells. Mackenzie Edmonds. Eric Kansa. Sarah Kansa. David Anderson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) now contains citations to professional journal articles which mention specific archaeological sites in tens of thousands of instances across the United States and Canada. DINAA researchers have developed methods to identify Smithsonian Trinomial (USA) and Borden Grid (Canada) archaeological site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Comer. David Reich. Douglas Owsley. Henry Louis Gates. Kari Bruwelheide.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2023, “The Genetic Legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace” was published in Science, demonstrating that it is possible to wed the power of massive direct-to-consumer ancestry databases with ancient DNA technology. Using the first reliable approach for identifying identical-by-descent (IBD) connections between present-day and historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Whitehead.

The use of drone based photogrammetry is now well established in archaeology for surface modeling and mapping of archaeological sites. The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (AZDEMA) is sponsoring a number of longterm projects on their properties. One project will be using traditional drone photogrammetry to create high resolution maps to assess plant communities, plant health, and canopy structure as a way of exploring links between vegetation and other survey methods. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Shirazi. Courtney Hofman. Torben Rick. Jesus Maldonado.

Conducting aDNA analyses can be limited by the preservation and availability of biological remains at archaeological sites. Soil can contain DNA (environmental DNA [eDNA]) from the animals and plants that were present In the landscape and provide a record of prehistoric plant and animal distributions. We designed and tested a protocol to capture DNA from several extinct and extant taxa from soil on the California Channel Islands as a potential tool for understanding the biogeography of island...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew O'Brien. Todd Surovell. Randy Haas.

Domestic dogs (Canis familaris) are a common presence in nomadic cultures, but archaeology still struggles to identify them in the absence of their faunal remains. What we lack is a means to identify behaviors that manifest themselves in the archaeological record that are in clear association with domestic dogs. One avenue is carnivore modified bone. What experimental studies indicate is that we can isolate patterns of feeding associated with particular carnivores, but what has not been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip De Barros.

Philip de Barros, Palomar College. A 2013 study of the ethnoarchaeology of the blacksmithing village of Upper Bidjomambe in the ironworking region of Bassar in northern Togo provided invaluable data to help archaeologists interpret archaeological smithing sites. Oral traditions document the village's occupation from ca. 1870 to 1970 when it was abandoned leaving it virtually intact with little disturbance or tool recycling. An 80+-year-old informant formerly from Upper Bidjomambe, who was a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Shakour.

This is an abstract from the "Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Community archaeology brings people from different backgrounds together to investigate the past, and each group contributes to the project in unique ways. While many articles discuss best practices, generic, formulaic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Scholnick. Viviana Amati. Jessica Munson.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Diffusion of innovation describes the way novel cultural traits or information spread in a population. Understanding the specific factors that account for the spread of these innovations calls for a multivariate approach. Event history analysis provides a set of statistical methods to explain and predict the occurrence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Rathgaber. Jared Pebworth. Michael Evans.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Pedagogies: Teaching through Experimental Archaeology Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One aspect of the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s mission is “to share what we learn with the people of Arkansas.” But how do we share and explain larger concepts such as innovation and technique changes in hunting or gardening when all we have archaeologically is a broken spearpoint or a resharpening flake from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jake Morton.

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. This paper looks at addressing specific pedagogical questions in an experimental archaeology classroom using the case study of a lab with a group of 25 students from a variety of majors. The lab explores the development of three ancient Mediterranean military technologies that defeated and replaced each other over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Barvick.

This is an abstract from the "Emerging Voices in Mogollon Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern archaeology is constantly seeking innovative, nondestructive ways to learn new things about the past from existing collections. One powerful tool in the modern arsenal is Geometric Morphometrics (GMM), a method of quantitative shape analysis that can be applied to study technological style and communities of practice through material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Morales. Jelmer Eerkens. Jeffrey Rosenthal. Andrew Ugan.

Isotopic studies of faunal remains provide an ecological framework from which to interpret human behavior, including diet, subsistence, settlement, and mobility. In this study, we present isotopic analysis of four well-dated sites that span a 3500-year record along the Feather River, the biggest tributary of the Sacramento River located in Northern Central California. Through carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur stable isotopes we explore the effects of human population growth on the type(s) of browse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Lubinski. Virginia Butler. Deanna Grimstead. Dennis Jenkins. Dongya Yang.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paisley Caves holds some of the earliest evidence for human occupation in North America. The site’s fish remains have received only limited attention before now. Our pilot study sought to assess the potential for using a sample of the fish remains to help reconstruct lake level history, better understand regional paleoenvironments, and gain insights on forager...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Cook. Mark Schurr.

Examining the formation histories of houses within prehistoric villages is difficult in cases with coarse resolution of radiocarbon dates and lack of stratigraphic relationships. Here we examine this problem by using two relative dating techniques, accumulation studies of artifacts and fluoride dating of animal bone, at the Guard site, an early (ca., AD 1000-1300) Fort Ancient village located in southeast Indiana. The sampling strategy involved excavating test units in all houses to assess the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree.

Archaeological studies benefit from rich ecological data, yet linking ecological data to narratives of the past can be difficult. Here I use trophic network modeling to understand both Ancestral Pueblo and Australian Aboriginal food webs, comparing these systems for a greater understanding of human and environmental resilience. Here I show that Ancestral Pueblo people connected themselves into a greater environmental web and use network analysis to examine how the changing network properties of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Winter. Michael Frachetti. T.R. Kidder.

Dali, a site located in the Bayan-Zherek Valley in Semirech'ye, Southeastern Kazakhstan, is a multi-phase Bronze Age pastoralist settlement (3rd-2nd millennia B.C.). Recovered artifacts include combustion features, bones, ceramics, lithics, bronze metals, and potentially in situ wall constructions. Radiocarbon dates cannot conclusively suggest that the stratigraphic sequence is in situ due to geological unconformities and high energy colluvial system, so geoarchaeological methods were employed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Rankin. Erin Benson. Michael Kolb.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Geoarchaeology and Environmental Archaeology Perspectives on Earthen-Built Constructions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mitchell site is a major Mississippian (1050–1400 CE) mound center located roughly 10 km north of Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, the largest mound center in North America. At a minimum, Mitchell consisted of 11 earthen mounds; however, only one mound is visible today. In 1960, salvage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Jenkins. Sarah Elliott. Samantha Allcock. Carol Palmer. John Grattan.

Our understanding of Neolithic sites in southwest Asia is often impeded by the lack of preservation of biological evidence. As a result, they often consist of a series of structures, the construction and function of which, remains elusive. In order to address this problem we conducted a study which used phytoliths and geochemistry from an ethnographic site in Jordan, Al Ma’tan, to determine if certain building construction techniques and anthropogenic activities leave specific phytolith and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarrod Burks.

This is an abstract from the "Fulfilling a Nation’s Promise: The Search, Recovery, and Accounting Efforts of DPAA and Its Partners" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1944, on separate occasions, three US military airman died while interned at the Stalag Luft VI German prisoner-of-war camp in what is now the Village of Macikai, Lithuania. All three were interred in a small burial area, along with at least one other (a Canadian airman), located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Lowry. Gabriel Griffin.

This is an abstract from the "Application of Geophysical Techniques to Military Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cemeteries and burial grounds are a common feature of the historic landscape, and mapping cemeteries is a consistent and pressing land management need for DOD cultural resource managers. When a cemetery is involved, stakeholders may be diverse and the results can be emotionally charged. Land managers and the public may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennie Sturm.

In American archaeology, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has enjoyed its longest use in the Southwest. While this method has long been used to locate features of archaeological interest, much of the focus has now shifted from using this technique as a prospection tool to one that can be used directly in the study of archaeological sites. This reflects an increasing sophistication in the ways practitioners process, interpret, and visualize GPR data, which capitalizes on this method's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Celia Goncalves. João Cascalheira. Jonathan Haws. Mussa Raja. Nuno Bicho.

The central topic of this poster focus on the conversion of archaeological survey data to a GIS format for the identification of settlement patterns by communities that inhabited the Elephant river region, a tributary of the Limpopo River (southern Mozambique), from c. 300 to c. 20 thousand years ago. Specifically, we tried to identify and characterize the settlement dynamics of each cultural phase (MSA and LSA), in order to understand the choices related to the selection of site location in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra Rodgers.

Place, space, and movement are core concepts for analyzing how cultural behaviors of traditional hunting societies shape a landscape. Sites mark the use of a landscape and connect people to particular events, movements, or places on this landscape. Analysis of rock art must consider who created and used this art and the roles it played in shaping landscape use. Panels depicting hunting scenes have been recorded at communal hunting sites, in rockshelters that served as habitation areas, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maryann Calleja. Debra Martin.

The archaeological site of Tell Abraq (UAE) has been the subject of multiple studies since its original excavation by Dan Potts. For five seasons between 1989 and 1998 a team of archaeologist excavated the Bronze Age site. The analysis of mortuary context and taphonomy can provide invaluable insights into past biological and cultural conditions. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can facilitate bioarchaeologists in the further investigation of mortuary placement of human remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Junge. Shelby Anderson.

Changing Arctic coastal settlement patterns are often linked to late Holocene environmental change. In northwest Alaska, archaeologists hypothesize that environmental variability was a major factor in both growing coastal population density between 1000 and 500 ya, and subsequent decreasing population density between 500 ya and the contact era. After 500 ya people dispersed to smaller settlements in coastal areas, and perhaps, upriver. This hypothesized pattern is based on older research that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Barry. Gyles Iannone. James Conolly. Dan Savage.

Settlement patterns studies in archaeology have shown that a myriad of environmental, political, social, and ideological factors influenced where ancient people chose to settle on the landscape. In efforts to better understand these complex behaviors, archaeologists have increasingly turned to GIS-based modeling approaches including viewshed and least cost path analyses. This study draws upon these techniques to explore visibility and movement across the north Vaca Plateau of west-central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Hicks.

This paper focuses on the use of a geographical information system (GIS) as a tool to identify the distribution and association of mortuary artifacts and skeletal remains within the Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults (ca.1820–1846). The GIS study presented here is one component of a microhistorical approach to exploring a 19th century neighborhood in New York City’s 8th Ward during a period of rapidly changing urban, social, and economic landscapes. Viewing the city through the lens...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Voeller. Ann Ross.

One problem forensic archaeologists have encountered during the investigation of mass graves is the commingling of human remains. Commingling can consist of disarticulated body parts, and can be more complex when remains are skeletonized or fragmented. Methods exist to address this problem; however, some are costly while others are time consuming. It has been shown that mapping the three dimensional location of body parts in a mass grave is useful for re-association based on proximity of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Scholnick. Matthew Looper. Jessica Munson. Yuriy Polyukhovych. Martha Macri.

This study uses Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions to trace the evolution of alternative writing conventions during the Classic period (ca. 250-900 CE). The third person ergative pronoun u- is represented by up to a dozen different graphemes in Classic Maya writing. These glyphs are also the most common set of signs found in the corpus of hieroglyphic inscriptions, regardless of media. The variation and frequency of these signs provide data to model cultural forces that shaped this writing system....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennie Sturm.

Recent geophysical remote sensing investigations conducted in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico have included studies at the "Chetro Ketl field" complex. This area is widely interpreted as gridded agricultural fields, though a lack of other gridded fields in the canyon have led some to question whether the Chetro Ketl "field" served an agricultural function. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys conducted here resulted in the unexpected identification of a complicated series of buried features at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Mark.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry models can be used to visualize petroglyphs that are otherwise difficult to see in photographs. Three techniques require a high-quality model that has captured the surface geometry in the point cloud and mesh. 1) Online and free software permit viewing a model surface with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariah Walzer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1930s and 40s, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews built many fire lookout towers and trails on the Willamette National Forest and across the nation. Some of these structures and trails still exist today, but others have been lost to time. Digitizing historic trails from old maps may help cultural resource crews to relocate and protect them....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Deeley.

This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In exploring how archaeologists can apply concepts and practices from Black Studies in our investigations of the materiality of daily life in the past, the easiest theories to see archaeologically may be those promoted by theorists who were contemporary to the people we are studying. The forerunners of Black Studies today, scholars...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginie Renson. Maria Verde. Alberto De Bonis. Wesley Stoner. Hector Neff.

This is an abstract from the "Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The provenance of ceramics assessed through chemistry is most commonly approached through a comparison of ceramics with other ceramics of known origin. More rarely are chemical analyses employed to relate objects to their geological context. This problem derives from the inherent limitations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hunt.

This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) spanned as much as 5,000 years in the Great Basin. However, due to deflationary erosion, more refined control within this wide temporal range remains elusive. Thus, temporally sequencing WST sites, subtypes, and their diagnostic artifacts is currently difficult, often unattainable, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kacey Grauer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dividing the landscape into the categories of natural and cultural clouds an understanding of the relationship between humans and their ecological environment. Humans are not separate from or above the landscape they inhabit, and landscape archaeology is well-situated to address arbitrary binaries that reinforce problematic notions about human-environment...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terance Winemiller. J.J. Ortiz-Aguilú. María Isabel Silva-Iturralde. Jaime Andrés Velázquez-Mora.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, LIDAR has gained popularity among archaeological researchers for its capability to reveal ancient settlement features hidden beneath dense vegetation coverage in heavily forested areas. More often, these studies have revealed undocumented monumental architecture and in some cases modified landscapes such as agricultural terraces, canals, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Stanton. Aline Magnoni. Jessica Wheeler. Nicolas Barth.

The first research performed by the Proyecto de Interaccion Politica del Centro de Yucatan centered on understanding the impact of Chichen Itza in the region to the southwest of this Terminal Classic city. Working in an area of roughly 500 square kilometers around the site of Yaxuna we performed traditional ground reconnaissance and mapping at numerous centers in the region from 2007 to 2013 to better understand regional settlement patterns and how they changed with the establishment and growth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Sparks. Elder James Tait. Daniel Stratten. Grant Novak. Crilly Ritz.

Alluvial landforms are highly sensitive areas, with the potential to contain both surface exposed and buried archaeological deposits, but systematic analysis and identification of these landforms has proved problematic in the past. Although large alluvial terraces can be identified visually on topographic maps, high resolution LiDAR, and Digital Elevation Models; smaller, subtler terraces, and other complex alluvial landforms can be problematic due to stream gradient issues and resulting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Jeffrey Brewer. Nicholas Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

Airborne lidar presents a valuable tool to investigate water management in a water-scarce region of the Maya lowlands. We analyze 25 sq-km of lidar elevation data for the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah in Campeche, Mexico. Using the hydrologic tools in the GIS software ArcMap we identified hundreds of closed depressions (many extremely small). These features may have a natural origin (e.g. a sink hole) or may be anthropogenic (e.g. from quarrying), or may be data artifacts. We used a series of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nick Simpson. Christopher T. Fisher.

Recent applications of LiDAR technology at the Late Postclassic city of Angamuco, located in the heartland of the ancient Purépecha Empire in modern day Michoacan, Mexico are allowing for the identification and analysis of urban features in innovative ways. A complex system of constructed water management features consisting of reservoirs, sunken plazas, and connective canals were a vital form of infrastructure that were required for the movement of water across the dynamic landscape upon which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Khori Newlander.

Archaeologists commonly use the geographic patterning of sourced artifacts to understand how prehistoric cultures used their landscapes, yet exactly what this patterning indicates remains unclear. The Paleoindian literature reflects a tendency to assume that toolstone conveyance reflects direct acquisition (i.e., mobility) motivated by subsistence and technological concerns, rather than acquisition (i.e., exchange) motivated by social concerns. Yet the challenge of actually distinguishing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Herzog. Liz Dolinar. Anna Marie Prentiss.

This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the Absaroka Mountains of northwest Wyoming site 48PA51 is unique for its pithouse, rock pile surrounded by deer skull caps with antlers, abundant hearths and pit features, large number of dart points and groundstone, and substantial faunal assemblage. These features and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harley Burgis. Lara Homsey-Messer.

Microartifacts - generally considered to be artifacts measuring less than 6.35 mm (¼ inch) - have traditionally received little attention in North American archaeology. We argue that microartifacts are not simply smaller versions of larger artifacts, but rather provide different and complimentary data. This study investigates microartifacts from the archaeological site of Dust Cave (10,650-3,600 BCE), located in northwest Alabama, in order to better understand prehistoric diet and cooking...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McNeill. Bryna Hull. Teresa Steele.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell (OES) is common in archaeological sites throughout Africa and Asia and is often recovered with evidence of pre- and postdepositional burning. The physical nature of OES protects some isotopic data that remain locked away in the crystalline shell matrix, allowing researchers to use these data thousands of years later to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina M. Giovas.

For some time archaeologists have speculated that non-native mammals introduced to the prehistoric Caribbean may have been managed in captivity, but direct evidence for this practice has been wanting. The question of management is complicated by ambiguous and conflicting data from ethnohistory, animal behaviour, and archaeology, as well as potentially unwarranted assumptions about human interaction with synanthropic animals. I examine this issue for introduced agouti (Dasyprocta sp.) and opossum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Ryan.

Management and dissemination of data has long been a challenge for archaeologists, and this challenge has increased in recent years with demands from various funding agencies for data management plans. Additionally, querying the complex datasets generated often results in iterative rounds of SQL code creation as each answer raises further questions. Online analytical processing (OLAP), a tool for multi-dimensional analysis used by many private companies for reporting, management, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Hamilton. Kerry Sayle. Gordon Cook.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the ongoing results on isotopic research on Middle Iron Age (~400–200 cal BC) populations in Wessex and East Yorkshire. The multi-isotopic approach has been employed to infer population mobility for both the inhumed human population at a series of sites and the faunal assemblages from either the associated settlements or directly recovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Mitchell. Dave Cowley.

This paper will show how using multiple techniques will refresh our understanding of cropmark sites, which is imperative for their protection and preservation. This work comes out of a research project looking at barrow cemeteries in north and east Scotland, the wealth of aerial archive was reviewed and explored through multiple methods. Rectifying and transcribing the aerial APs was one aspect, but ground survey picked up newly identified upstanding barrows at multiple sites. The results extend...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul R. Duffy. Péter Czukor.

A variety of new groups emerged during the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin —some had powerful rulers holding feasts and controlling the trade in commodities, and some were egalitarian peoples leaving little evidence for social differentiation outside of age and gender. This paper uses a comparative and multi-scalar perspective to study two different social trajectories in the Carpathian Basin during the second millennium BC: the Lower Körös Basin in Eastern Hungary, and the Danube and its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Ore Menendez. Steven A. Wernke.

In recent years, the use of multispectral satellite imagery has become an increasingly viable option for archaeological site detection and classification. Nevertheless, the high costs and relatively low resolution of multispectral data present challenges for local-scale archaeological feature detection. In this presentation, we will examine the advantages and limitations of using UAV aerial multispectral imagery as a means of local-scale feature detection. We compare results of remote sensing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher. Marc N. Levine. Flor Arcega-Cabrera.

Historically, the application of petrographic techniques and NAA to the compositional analysis of archaeological ceramics in the New World emerged from two very distinct intellectual foundations. Initially, petrographers focused on studying temper to characterize the types of materials used, their geological sources, and their coarseness in an effort to reconstruct the cultural development of potting traditions and interaction among cultures. NAA, on the other hand, was originally used to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fiona Coward.

This paper will illustrate the potential of methods derived from network science and especially social network analysis can be used to investigate the social interactions and relationships within and between the earliest village sites in the Near East across the shift from a mobile hunting-and-gathering way of life to a more sedentary, village-based and ultimately agricultural lifestyles. This approach provides a new perspective on the question of social change at the time as it views social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Georg Meyer. Natalie Uomini.

A big question in cognitive archaeology is whether complex tool-making and language co-evolved in the human lineage. There is considerable overlap in the brain structures that support complex body actions, including pantomiming and tool use, but also making music and using language. The activation of shared brain areas for separate skills is the basis of this popular theory. The aim of this talk is to review some of the difficulties - and possible solutions - to measuring the degree of overlap...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Lacy.

Oral pathology prevalence can be used to make inferences about the behavioral and environmental factors that contribute to individual and population health. Late Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasian human groups were expanding geographically as well as increasing in density, and the major climatic oscillations that define this period stressed these pioneering humans. Evidence of this strain includes temporal differences in oral pathology prevalence, namely caries, periodontal disease, tooth loss,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio. Philip Piper. Fredeliza Campos. Andrew Zimmerman. John Krigbaum.

Recent advances in isotopic analysis have enabled archaeologists to move beyond subsistence and diet toward the full chaîne opératoire of foodways that includes inference of past culinary practices. Together with faunal identification, isotopic analysis of organic residues derived from ancient pottery helps to create linkages between material culture (i.e., pottery) and how animals were prepared and consumed, which, in turn, may be used to infer aspects of identity. Isotopic databases of modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Taieb. Camille Mayeux. Claire Alix. Owen Mason.

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. To precisely contextualize and date climate variations and practices related to living spaces at the onset of the Little Ice Age, archaeoenvironmental analyses were conducted within a winter dwelling (Feature 21) at the Rising Whale site, Cape Espenberg. Two high-resolution datasets were employed: tree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margot Serra. Jakob Hanschu. Amandine Flammang. Danielle Kurin.

Previous studies of crania showing recurrent trauma suggest high rates of violence in the Andahuaylas province of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period. Through an assessment of direct blow fractures to radius and ulna bones (lower arm bones), we further examined violence in the region, anticipating a high rate of parry fractures. The skeletal remains assessed come from Sonhuayo, a fortified habitation sector of Cachi, a Chanka site in the west-central portion of the Andahuaylas province....

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Hill.

Petrographic analysis has been commonly used to identify trade in ceramics and stone tools. At the Raven’s Nest site petrographic analysis was used to characterize the compositional variation in the ceramic assemblage recovered during excavation. The homogeneous nature of the ceramic pastes of the assemblage prompted additional petrographic study of local soils and geologic outcrops. Comparison of the local resources with the ceramics indicated the possibility for the local production of pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Cordell. Neill Wallis.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Petrographic studies of archaeological pottery from Florida have contributed to our understanding of the range of variability in pottery tempers (prominent aplastics that may have been intentionally added to clay in pottery-making) and fabrics (characteristics of clay resources themselves). From the many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Meyer. Jamie Hodgkins. Caley Orr. Fabio Negrino. Matthias Czechowski.

Archaeological excavations are increasingly using digital surveying techniques for better documentation and visualization. Using high resolution imaging systems and UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), photographic surveys were completed of the interior and exterior of the Arma Veirana Cave in Liguria, Italy. The aim is to contextualize the excavation within its environment for accurately geo-referencing the excavation trenches and to better understand how Neanderthals lived with respect to their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Forste.

The contents of archaeological features targeted for the recovery of botanical remains, such as hearths, ovens, pits, and floor surfaces, are more often than not the cumulative residue of multiple episodes of cooking, cleaning, or other activities that deposit and preserve plant parts. The actions responsible for this deposition can be illuminated when the patterns within the assemblage are interpreted within the framework of practice theory, which is well-suited for such applications due to its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Bradley. Geoffrey Smith. Kenneth Nussear.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Great Basin underwent considerable environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, such as lower precipitation, increased temperatures, and the diminishment of lakes and wetlands. Archaeologists have long hypothesized that people responded by altering their settlement-subsistence strategies. Some models outlining these responses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shevan Wilkin.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biomolecular analyses (proteins, stable isotopes, lipids, and DNA) have been integral in identifying the economic roles of domesticated animals in archaeological contexts. Materials such as human remains, dental calculus, ceramic matrices, and archaeological residues can provide valuable information on which animals were used for primary and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Richards. Catherine Jones.

Excavation and analysis of human remains from the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (MCIG) provided an opportunity to test the effectiveness of portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) as both a field and laboratory tool. During the fieldwork portion of the project, excavations exposed soils that visual inspection suggested might harbor a concentration of toxic materials. PXRF was used on site to determine the nature of the potential toxins and determine the risk factor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Seidita. Lucas Martindale Johnson.

This poster discusses the levels of access to various obsidian sources and source regions as a prerequisite to testing a market exchange model for the distribution of obsidian during the Postclassic period (A.D 1150 - 1530) at Santa Rita Corozal, Belize. A sample of 247 obsidian artifacts dating to the Postclassic period were assayed using portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) to determine the obsidian sources being exploited. Five sources were identified in the assemblage, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodora Moutsiou.

This poster presents the preliminary results of an extensive geo-chemical fingerprinting program using pXRF that was undertaken on a large and diverse lithic collection that included three different raw materials, namely obsidian, carnelian and picrolite. Specifically, the project investigated the use of these three raw materials in Early Holocene lithic assemblages - stone tools and ornaments - from the island of Cyprus, eastern Mediterranean. Obsidian, carnelian and picrolite have been defined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of the dynamics and stability of human systems cannot be uncoupled from their environmental and ecological contexts. Archaeological knowledge can deeply inform, enhance and transform our understanding of socio-ecological dynamics and sustainability, if we can only quantitatively assess these interactions. One...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reed Goodman. Paul Zimmerman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoarchaeological sediments represent robust archives of human-environment interactions. Given the growing importance of paleoenvironmental research in anthropology and the absence of critical chrono-stratigraphic and ecological evidence from challenging contexts/regions, opportunities to refine chronological frameworks through novel instrumentation are...