Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paola Schiappacasse.

The late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century provides us with numerous examples of the acquisition of collections carried out by museums. When archaeologists talk about those collections, housed at museums worldwide, the discussions are often directed towards how the lack of context limits or nullifies their research potential. I argue that we need to go back and carefully re-examine the research prospects of these collections. This presentation considers several avenues for research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Birch. Ben Raffield.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are good reasons to problematize and theorize dimensions of military organization. Despite the wellspring of research on the archaeology of warfare over the last 30 years, conceptual gaps remain. Warfare among small-scale societies remains typified as total war, while the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Raczek.

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, archaeologists have increased their archaeology outreach and education activities as a way to engage the public, share research, and promote the discipline. However, few such programs are formally evaluated even though assessment helps archaeologists improve their programming, streamline resources, and ensure that the public learns intended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Hopwood.

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. As a unique category of socially charged material culture, beer has origins stretching back to people’s first obsession with wild grain. The deep time prehistory of beer coupled with the unique role of its psychoactive properties makes it a compelling bridge between academic archaeology and the public, allowing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Sterling. Sébastien Lacombe.

This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene in Western Europe is the origin of the idea of the "caveman," and the majority of research has historically focused on cave sites. In regions of Europe where caves are not present but archaeological evidence is, the assumption is that people used lightweight ephemeral shelters such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Janz.

This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The trajectory of diet change in Northeast Asia, is distinct from that in the Near East, whose archaeological record has shaped our most enduring models for changes in human diet. Traditional optimality models, as applied to the archaeological record, predict that small game will only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivy Faulkner.

While it is true that theoretical advancements are slow to cross disciplinary boundaries, when disciplines by necessity overlap, it seems almost willfull ignorance that perpetuates old frameworks. For example, it has been over thirty years now that anthropology and colonial studies have come to terms with the complexities of identity in colonial contexts and yet scholars in related disciplines, such as Classics, still argue over which label imposed by colonizers should be used for which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Simmons.

Why humans colonize unoccupied lands, such as islands, has always intrigued scholars. Over the past few decades, researchers working on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus have documented both a Late Epipaleolithic occupation and a more substantial early Neolithic colonization episode. The number of such sites remains limited, but is growing with continuing research. For the Neolithic, both Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and PPNB occupations are now well-documented, and are as early as mainland sites....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Simmons.

Why humans colonize unoccupied lands, such as islands, has always intrigued scholars. Over the past few decades, researchers working on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus have documented both a Late Epipaleolithic occupation and a more substantial early Neolithic colonization episode. The number of such sites remains limited, but is growing with continuing research. For the Neolithic, both Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and PPNB occupations are now well-documented, and are as early as mainland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gideon Shelach-Lavi.

This is an abstract from the "Steppe by Steppe: Advances in the Archaeology of Eastern Eurasia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report on the work done in Eastern Mongolia on walls, linear barriers contracted between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD. Our project includes remote sensing, surveys, and excavations.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Gusick. Jon Erlandson.

Islands have long been viewed as marginal habitats compared to mainland regions where terrestrial resources are generally more abundant and diverse. We examine this concept of island marginality by reviewing evidence for Paleocoastal settlement of islands off the Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California. If the islands were marginal, we should expect human settlement to occur relatively late in time and early use of the islands to be sporadic and specialized. For the Northern Channel Islands...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andres Troncoso.

The origin of rock art has frequently asked from an evolutionary and cognitive perspective to understand the dawn of making images in the Paleolithic. But in many regions of the world the beginnings of rock art production occurred later. The Central North of Chile is one of these places. In this area, the practice of marking and chipping rocks surfaces started around 2.000 BCE in coherence with the transition from the Middle to the Late Holocene and the start of many transformations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Nash. Ryan Williams.

In Moquegua the monumental provincial center of Cerro Baúl was ritually abandoned circa 1050CE. It is at this time that Wari affiliated occupation of the sacred summit ended and production of imperial Wari goods ceased in the region. This evidence does not indicate that the empire collapsed at this time, but instead suggests when Wari officials chose to withdraw from this frontier region. Why did they leave? In this paper we discuss the changing population dynamics in Moquegua at 1050CE and how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Clark.

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates the relationship between Classic Maya text, imagery, and genre when quoted speech is introduced. Quotes can be attributed to speakers through “speech scrolls,” the quotative evidential particle, or the verb meaning “say.” When the latter two are used, they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Torquato.

The evolution of the genus Homo is characterized by the emergence of numerous biological and cultural traits including bipedalism, encephalization, and language. A more recent adaptation led humans to transition from a foraging subsistence strategy to one based on farming. This is significant because foraging persisted for approximately 95% of human existence until farming emerged about 12,000 years ago. For nearly a century, anthropologists have studied the foraging-farming transition and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Kocer.

I examine the behavior of emulation wherein an artisan reproduces a craft on a less valuable or precious material to mimic a desired symbolic prestige good. I present cross-cultural examples of artisans making copies of a craft using different materials. Under what circumstances do people create counterfeit objects? Examples from the Gallina area (AD 1100-1300) of the American Southwest are discussed. The Gallina occupied an area on the periphery of a more socially complex polity (Chaco) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Becker.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When past peoples congregated to form complex societies, a question arises as to under what circumstances would heterarchical, reciprocal labor be emphasized over top-down hierarchical configurations? In the Central Andes of South America, modern indigenous people practice reciprocal labor with groupings organized around family...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Loughmiller-Cardinal. James Scott Cardinal.

This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fifty years ago, what was arguably the most important paper ever written for modern work in quantitative archaeology was published in “American Antiquity.” Unfortunately for its author, and generations of archaeologists, few took notice of it at the time. With few citations, more than half of which have occurred in just...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brent Kober. Suzanne Hayden. Martin McAllister.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Heritage Protection: Accomplishing Goals" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The question posed in the paper title will be addressed by presenting arguments for the development and adoption of an American Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage similar to the existing European convention on heritage protection. Using the European convention as a model, important components of an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Lightfoot.

The spread of agriculture in the Neolithic and Bronze Age is an important topic of archaeological research, with major implications for human societies across Eurasia. The Food Globalisation in Prehistory project (FOGLIP) has furthered our knowledge of the spread of crops across Eurasia in prehistory using a variety of archaeological methods including archaeobotany, genetics and stable isotope analysis. This presentation will focus on the contribution of stable isotope analysis to our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xinyi Liu.

Scholarly interest has increasingly focused on an episode of Old World globalization of food resources that significantly predates the ‘Silk Road’. The impetus behind this growth of interest has been the expansion of bio-archaeological research in Central and East Asia over the past decade. This paper considers the agents responsible for the food globalization process in prehistory and the forms they took. One of the key aspects of the Trans-Eurasian movements of crops in prehistory was that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Wolfhagen.

This is an abstract from the "Bayesian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bayesian inference has become a popular framework for statistical analyses across scientific fields in the past several decades, thanks to the development of software for generalized or specialized Bayesian modeling. With the logistical barriers to Bayesian inference becoming less onerous, a wide variety of Bayesian applications have started to appear in scientific...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer E. Lapp.

During Pre-Columbian times, it is well-known that the societies of Mesoamerica developed monumental architecture with a high level of complexity. During this same period, much if not all of lower Central America never achieved higher complexity other than that of chiefdom level. Honduras is the one major exception. While the societies of Nicaragua had similar gods and ceramics much of this can be explained through other means. The gods that were similar were "lesser" gods and not the main gods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Sandstrom.

Pilgrimage is a "dynamic concrete isolate" found throughout the world at all levels of socio-cultural integration. Pilgrimage involves a journey to a significant geographic location and a return to the place of origin. Pilgrimage shades into tourism and a pilgrim's destination may range from the site of a miraculous appearance of a deity to Graceland. In Mesoamerica, pilgrimage has become a major focus of archaeological research. Sites with ritual associations and little evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dombrosky.

This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In prehispanic central New Mexico, small numbers of disarticulated fish remains—such as catfish, sucker, and gar—are frequently recovered from Pueblo IV (AD 1350–1600) sites in the Middle Rio Grande basin, but they are rare during earlier agricultural time periods. Increased aquatic habitat...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R.G. Matson. William Lipe.

Lipe et al. (2017) present estimates of the costs of raising maize fed turkeys. Raising a turkey required approximately one-third as much maize as a Puebloan ate in a year. Here we present the probable reason for engaging in this costly behavior. Pueblo III Mesa Verdeans had a diet heavily dependent on maize and short on other protein sources. Most importantly, it was short on two essential amino acids, lysine and tryptophan. We begin by reconstructing the height and weight of Pueblo III Mesa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Miszaniec. Paul Szpak. John Darwent. Christyann Darwent.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Saffron cod (Eleginus gracilis) are small nearshore fish distributed throughout the Pacific and Arctic oceans and were a staple to preindustrial Indigenous fisheries of Western Alaska. Fish, mammal, and bird-bone were sampled for carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from sites in Norton Sound, Alaska, spanning 2500 BCE–1850 CE. Comparing our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael E. Smith.

Although initially developed to understand contemporary urban systems, the method and theory of settlement scaling are particularly appropriate for archaeological data. The scaling framework can be seen as an outgrowth of existing archaeological research on demography and settlement patterns. Although developed independently, the "social reactor" model that explains observed patterning is in fact well-grounded in anthropological and archaeological theory. The key process that drives change is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Weinmeister.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While both lithics and color have a long history in archaeological research, archaeologists rarely address the importance of color in lithic artifacts. The ethnography of the American Southwest indicates that both color and lithics can play a critical role in indigenous ritual and ceremony. To explore the relationship between lithic artifacts and color...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hayley Malloy. Alicia Paresi.

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. Archaeological collections and their perpetual care allow archaeologists an opportunity to right wrongs and revisit interpretations of site formation and identity. Looking at past methodologies through our twenty-first-century professional standards allows for a more objective review of both field and post-field...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James O'Connell. Jim Allen.

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human populations in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) probably numbered in the tens of thousands, two orders of magnitude below the 3-4 million estimated at time of European contact. They were also more patchily distributed than simple hypotheses grounded in an ideal free distribution...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson. Quan Hua. Stépanie Leroy. Shuhui Cai. Emmanuelle Delque-Kolic.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Phnom Dek metallurgical landscape represents the single largest iron smelting region in mainland Southeast Asia. Located 100 km east of Angkor in central Cambodia, our surveys have identified over 20 production sites and a total of 150 individual slag mounds active between the sixth and twentieth centuries. Iron...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Popp. Jarman Jarman. Hilary Close. Thomas Larsen. Terry Hunt.

Archaeology and isotopic studies have demonstrated several examples of initial colonists of Pacific Islands subsisting mainly on terrestrial diets, with exotic domesticates preferred over local seafood. Seemingly a poor adaptation to remote island environments, this appears confusing from a behavioural ecology perspective. From a culture evolutionary viewpoint, however, this could demonstrate how intergenerational transmission of human behaviour may preserve dietary traditions in long-distance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Netherly.

In the last 1000 years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532, the expansionist states of the Andean region of Peru—like those of the Old World--appear to have grown incrementally, flourished briefly, and disappeared. Despite intensive study in the 1970’s and since, the inner structure and dynamics of Chimor have eluded archaeologists because there is limited information from European observers and because there are many questions archaeologists have not yet addressed. At its maximum, Chimor...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew LoBiondo.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholarship has long recognized the significance of glass beads in postcolumbian North America. For northeastern Native Americans, beads were relationally entangled within sociopolitical relationships and the spiritual world. In the Mohawk Valley, bead types and colors have been useful temporal markers, but their social and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian McNiven. John Bradley.

Archaeological approaches to stone-walled tidal fish traps of Indigenous Australians focus on the technology and subsistence, with chronological development linked to demands of increased food production associated with demographic change and social intensification. For the Yanyuwa ‘Saltwater People’ of tropical northern Australia, old stone-walled fish traps found within the intertidal zone are associated with the creative acts of ancestral spirit beings. As such, these fish traps are imbued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Bebber. Michael Wilson.

In biology the concept of theoretical morphology has been used as a heuristic device for better understanding the evolutionary trajectories of organisms. Theoretical morphology proceeds by creating and examining hypothetical specimens not actually found in nature. So instead of asking "why does feature X exist", a theoretical morphological approach asks "why doesn’t feature Y exist?". Here, we use this approach to address the question of why ceramic technology did not evolve to replace stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlyn Stewart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The underlying goal of Public Archaeology is to make archaeology accessible to the public in engaging ways that inspire meaningful connections to the people and places of the past. By presenting archaeological facts and theories in an interactive manner, it is more likely that the information not only sticks, but is also personal, thus inspiring a more active...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shakour.

Public involvement and collaboration with communities are major concerns for archaeologists around the world. Community outreach efforts are major components of research projects and require an immense amount of resources. Further, different stakeholders have varied responses to those efforts. This paper uses data from the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project’s community outreach on Inishark and Inishbofin, County Galway, Ireland, islands five miles into the Atlantic Ocean. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Vawser.

This is an abstract from the "Openness & Sensitivity: Practical Concerns in Taking Archaeological Data Online" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We all want to be published and want our archeological research to be relevant, useful, and available to other archeologists, but in this digital age, it may be too easy to share, and too easy for sensitive site location information to end up in places that could cause irreparable harm to the archeology that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Byron Loosle. Ranel Capron.

Tribal officials suggest the National Historic Preservation Act should more appropriately be called the National Mitigation Act. For several years we worked to develop policy to direct more effort into identification of areas of cultural concern even before projects proposals were received. We advocated production of appositely designed projects to reduce the amount of adverse effects and mitigation. This effort included encouraging the use of the planning process to assemble data and add...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Harrod.

This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Debra Martin’s work has enhanced our understanding of how different forms of violent interaction are often culturally sanctioned in society. Her work has revealed the physical and social impact on individuals who sustained violence-related trauma. My scholarship continues her work, and explores the ways human skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Costello.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists operate within a conflicted position in the commercial business of cultural heritage management. As collaborators with industry and as players within a state bureaucracy, they are beholden to regulations and complicit in the destruction of sites. While archaeologists aim to produce practical benefits for society in general, or at the very least,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Troy Lovata.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines how wickiups—light, compact wooden structures common across many times and places in the American Mountain West—reflect the conception and use of contemporary mountain landscapes. Landscape archaeology allows us to understand how people’s actions and experiences transform the physical environment from an abstract space to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatiana Niculescu.

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historical archaeological investigations of Jewish diaspora sites have often heavily relied on faunal remains, particularly the presence or absence of pig remains, as a proxy for Jewishness. Keeping kosher is not the only relevant component of Jewish diasporic identities or even the only...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yutaka Tanaka.

In Japan, pottery of various regions was transported for long distances in different directions at the same time and was incorporated into local pottery assemblages from the late second to third centuries A.D. This happened prior to the appearance of the highly-standardized keyhole-shaped burial mounds all over Japan and, in western Japan, local adoption of the type of pottery typical of the Kinki region where the central polity emerged. In eastern Japan, the type of pottery under the influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Bustos. Matthew Bennett. Daniel Odess. Tommy Urban. Vance Holliday.

This is an abstract from the "The Paleoindian Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. White Sands National Monument (WHSA) is well known for the world’s largest gypsum dunefield, but the geological elements that created this dunefield also persevered one of the largest (in area and number) assemblages of human foot prints in the world. Tracks are revealed under specific moisture conditions, linked to near-surface geophysics. Human and megafauna...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Kessler. Greg Hodgins. Matthew Guebard. Lucas Hoedl.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most radiocarbon measurements informing Bayesian models of cultural sequences are obtained from short-lived organisms such as annual plants and animal bone. Short-lived organic material from plateaus in atmospheric 14C production have a calibrated error that corresponds to the duration of the plateau. This fact hinders Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Youngpeter. Erin Benson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Stemler Site (11S1754), a small Mississippian settlement in the American Bottom, was occupied during the Late Stirling and Early Moorehead Phases (ca. AD 1150-1275), as the population at Cahokia and the broader region was decreasing. It has been theorized that an over-reliance upon maize (Zea mays) led to the dispersal of people from and collapse at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Ammerman.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Urban settings are often imagined as fully domesticated landscapes, but in fact cities are complex ecosystems where many kinds of animals, including non-domesticates, play important roles. Textual evidence from the Early Historic period of South Asia gives us a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McKillop.

A natural harbor, strategic location in the mouth of a navigable river and opposite the Paynes Creek salt works, Wild Cane Cay developed from a fishing village in the Early Classic (A.D. 300-600) to a major trading port from the Late Classic (A.D. 600-900) through the Postclassic (A.D. 900-1500). As skilled mariners, the Wild Cane Cay Maya were familiar with the shoals, storms, and other hazards of the sea, as well as the endless opportunities for travel on the sea. During the Classic period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Haslam.

The known record of tool use in the human lineage now extends back 3.3 million years. For other animals, however, we have very few clues as to how and when their tool use behaviors evolved. Study of tool use among extant primates, in particular, offers an opportunity to develop comparative models and analogies for human technologies. Here, I present the results of recent archaeological investigations into stone pounding behavior by wild bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) in Brazil....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Traci Ardren.

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic reconstructions of south Florida Indigenous lifeways prior to European contact have focused primarily on the deliberate choice of these highly complex societies to rely exclusively on wild foods, even while corn agriculture was practiced in nearby parts of the peninsula....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

One of the classic ways the nature/culture dichotomy manifests itself in human interactions with the environment is through the categories of wild and domestic. Some have argued that this distinction is not helpful, and certainly the boundaries are complicated, but it seems most useful to start by asking whether it was meaningful to particular people in the past. Here I will explore whether wild and domestic were relevant concepts to the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük (Central Anatolia), and to some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe.

Perishable artifact analysis in the Great Basin has often focused on whole or complete pieces to address questions regarding broad social groupings and environmental adaptation. In the Great Basin, past populations targeted distinct ecological zones to tend and gather wild plant species for the manufacture of perishable material culture, and by focusing on technological organization and the manufacturing process, there is great potential to better understand how these activities contributed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Johnson.

In 1570, 50 years after the conquest of Mexico, King Philip II of Spain sent one of his court physicians, Francisco Hernández de Toledo, to the new colony. The goal of this venture was to compile a detailed account of the natural history of New Spain, emphasizing indigenous medicine and the uses of local plant, animal, and mineral resources. The result of his efforts was a series of volumes, describing in detail the virtues of local Mexican resources, and his own observations of Mexico. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gustavo Neme. Adolfo Gil. Miguel Giardina. Clara Otaola.

Southern Mendoza region has been considered the meridional boundary of South American farmers, which arrive at this region ca 2000 years BP. At the time of the Spanish arrival, there was coexistence among north Patagonian hunter gatherers and southern Andean farmers along Atuel and Diamante basins. However the real impact of the first domesticates (corn, squash, quinoa and beans) as well as how their latitudinal distribution could vary through time are still on debate. Different lines of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leilani Lucas.

Recent research from both the island and the mainland Near East have changed what we know of the timing and dynamics of the spread of agriculture to Cyprus. The timing of the arrival of the initial explorers and colonists by late Pre-Pottery Neolithic A cultures of the mainland Levant, and the dynamics of cultural developments in subsequent cultural phases is providing further support for the unique Cypriot prehistoric culture. One aspect that has long characterised Cyprus in prehistory is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Daniel Dalmas.

This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2002 the Greybull River Sustainable Landscape Ecology (GRSLE) project has undertaken an artifact-based, landscape-scale inventory in the eastern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, on the Shoshone National Forest in NW Wyoming. Much of the project has been conducted in the Washakie Wilderness and has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Cromartie. Chéïma Barhoumi. Guillemette Ménot. Erwan Messager. Sébastien Joannin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans today and in the past have to contend with the impacts of wildland fires. In grasslands, these fires occur frequently at annual to decadal scale. In the Kasakh valley, Armenia, recent research has revealed periods of increased fire activity during the Early Bronze and Late Iron Age and decreased activity in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (Cromartie et...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen. Rachel Loehman.

Recent wildland fires of western North America are occurring in some landscapes at intensities, severities, and extents that are far outside the historical record. These fires and their ecological and social consequences are highly-reported, and there is emerging awareness of the potential for large and severe wildfires to alter or destroy cultural legacies in fire-prone landscapes. Contemporary anthropogenic land use and management have contributed to altered wildfire regimes, but this can be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magdalena Schmid. Fiona Petchey.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Demography is a key factor in investigating the relationships between population levels, along with resource availability, environmental dynamics, social organization, and mobility. Prehistoric human activities and population levels can be modeled using summed probability distributions of calibrated radiocarbon dates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agata Kostrzewa.

Could shorter legs mean premature death? Stature is a highly complex trait which seems to be influenced by many different factors. To name a few; genetics, social status, through to environment, diet or health issues. However, it has been observed for some time that taller people live longer. For the purpose of current research, data from 10 multi-period sites were collected. The main focus of project is to explore the correlations between height and age-at-death. Additional to this, as it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Wriston. JD Lancaster. Jillian Maloney. James Futty Jr.. Loren Davis.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manages the Willamette Valley Project, a system of thirteen dams and associated reservoirs in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon. Environmental settings of these thirteen project areas vary by elevation, substrate, vegetation, and other characteristics, but all are located along major rivers draining into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Florencia Pezzutti. Naomi Brandenfels. Austin Pratt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Willamette Valley Projects (WVP) has been partnering with Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML) to create a GIS database of historic properties on the WVP lands, which include the Willamette River Basin 13 dams and their associated lakes or reservoirs. Existing USACE documentation exists from all phases of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

As both space and material are used to create interpretations or infer ancient ritual meanings concerning the Late Classic Maya, the consideration of caves and ceramic figurines provide interesting comparators as they evoke restrictions of intent and imagery within a regional setting. Opportunistic sampling of figurines from cave contexts for compositional analysis has resulted in chemically-based patterns from which one can glimpse directional patterns of movement from resource area to recovery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Gunn. Lynda Florey Folan.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We recall the moment that William J. Folan was struck by the Climate Fascination. In 1978 he had a visiting professorship at the University of Texas at San Antonio and we were sharing an office. He suggested that JDG should do an article on Maya Lowlands climate change. JDG responded that Willie was the expert who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Dewhirst.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although most recognize William Folan’s contributions to Mayan archaeology, his early career was devoted to significant national heritage projects in Canada. From 1965 to 1972, Willie carried out two unprecedented large archaeological projects for Parks Canada. It was a ground-breaking time in Canadian archaeology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allan Cobb. Jeremy Coltman.

Among the hundreds of caves I have observed in the Maya area a number stand out in possessing relatively large tunnel systems with restrictions near the entrances. When air is driven from the caves due to atmospheric pressure, the restrictions create a fast moving flow of air that is quite noticeable around the entrance to the cave. Ethnographic evidence suggests that modern Maya are quite aware of such air movements. Because rain was closely associated with caves among the ancient Maya and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Vivian.

Chaco Matters because Windes Matters. There are few subjects in Chacoan prehistory for which Tom has not contributed thoughtful analysis - from ants to Zuni spotted chert. His insights regarding agriculture in the Chaco Core are basic to understanding the long history of farming in this area. Some of those insights are reviewed. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wendy Bustard. Dabney Ford.

Documenting field work has been standard archaeological practice for over a century. Long-term preservation and continuing use of those records has been less standard. Tom Windes’ documentary record of his work in Chaco Canyon is an example of what best practices can achieve. In particular, Windes developed a style of mapping archaeological sites that has proved invaluable in relocating, monitoring, and maintaining Chaco’s World Heritage resources. Standards for archaeological site documentation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Ives.

Supported by the U.S. National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund Program, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission administered surveys of coastal archaeological sites damaged by Hurricane Sandy in Rhode Island. This paper considers, from a management perspective, some of the unique constraints and challenges of this work, including incomplete property access, bureaucratic delays, and a Tribal collaboration that fell short. The insights provided by this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Györgyi Parditka.

The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. This transition is traditionally seen as a short, war-ridden horizon reflecting the arrival of the Tumulus culture population. Recent research, however, emphasizes the complexity of these transformations, and suggests a longer, less abrupt transition, in which existing Middle Bronze Age populations play a significant role in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanora Reber.

Nahal Tillah is an Early Bronze I site in the Southern Levant with evidence for a strong Egyptian trade presence. Twenty-eight sherds from four different vessel types underwent absorbed pottery residue analysis to identify possible traded resources and to confirm vessel functions. Although wine and olive oil are believed to be the major trade resources in the region, wax was an unexpectedly important resource in the pottery sampled, particularly among the Southern Levantine styled jars. SAA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Magdalena Antczak. Andrzej T. Antczak.

Drawing from archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnohistory, ethnology, and avian biogeography, this paper aims at (re)constructing the interrelations between indigenous peoples and birds in north-central Venezuela, between AD 1000 and 1500. Amerindian narratives and premises of perspectival ontology from the South American Lowlands suggest that certain birds were more closely interrelated with humans then other beings. The analyses of nearly 3000 avian bone remains recovered in six late Ceramic Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only François Lanoë. Pierre Desrosiers. Dominique Marguerie. Daniel Gendron.

The site of Kangiakallak-1 (JeGn-2 – AKU-10-018), located near Akulivik (Nunavik, Québec), has yielded several occupations attributed to the Dorset and Thule periods. Level A corresponds to a Thulean winter house for which collapse and preservation in permafrost provides an excellent and undisturbed record of Thulean lifeway. This paper presents the results of a faunal analysis conducted on animal remains found within the Level A house. The dominant species recovered were caribou Rangifer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Cordero.

This is an abstract from the "Birds in Archaeology: New Approaches to Understanding the Diverse Roles of Birds in the Past" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Garden hunting is a topic that has received substantial attention in archaeofaunal research over the past 30 years. However, these studies have tended to focus on hunting in active gardens during the growing season, or in fallow fields. Consequently, these past studies have often focused on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Chechushkov.

The case study comes from the southern Urals, Russia. Since 1970’s the walled settlements of the Sintashta archaeological culture (2000-1700 BC) have been interpreted as the fortified towns and centers of social life for the religious and war leaders of the local communities. However, settlements’ primary locations on the bottoms of the rivers’ valleys, as well as lack of other evidence for the warfare, cause doubts about such interpretation. Analysis of natural environments (e.g., local wind,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sissel Schroeder. Tamara Thomsen.

This is an abstract from the "What’s Canoe? Recent Research on Dugouts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Efforts to trace 80 dugout canoes reported from Wisconsin resulted in the identification and documentation of more than 66 and the recognition that six had been destroyed or lost. Wisconsin dugouts range in age from 4,000 years old to the early twentieth century. Dugouts were made from a variety of types of wood and those that date to the last...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Green. Roland Rodell.

The social and political ferment of the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) was associated with a golden age in Wisconsin archaeology for avocationals and professionals alike. In 1901, a group of archaeological enthusiasts led by Charles E. Brown founded the Archeological Section of the Wisconsin Natural History Society. The Section soon became the independent Wisconsin Archeological Society (WAS). Its promotion of the “scientific and educational value” of archaeology was meant to engage “scientists,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeb Card.

Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray was a major figure in the creation of professional archaeology in the United Kingdom, President of the Folklore Society, and advocate for women’s rights in higher education. However, another major part of her legacy was the mainstream acceptance of the concept of the "witch-cult," a hidden ancient religion dating back to the Pleistocene but continuing until at least the seventeenth century when it was persecuted by witch-hunters. Historians have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hernandez Garavito.

This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1660, Francisca Melchora, widow of the lord of the Huarochirí people in the Viceroyalty of Peru, became immersed in a witchcraft criminal case. However, she was not accused of being a witch herself, but instead of hiding accused women and resisting a Spanish lieutenant sent to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ridge. Danielle Riebe. Attila Gyucha. William Parkinson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The expanded availability and use of radiocarbon dating by archaeologists has significantly reshaped the understanding of longstanding prehistoric narratives. These advances have also challenged the cultural-historic notion of archaeological cultures that have dominated research for over a century. In this paper, we examine recently collected radiocarbon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evelyn Billo. Robert Mark. Kelley Hays-Gilpin.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Navajo prayer ends: "with beauty all around, may I walk." Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the heart of Navajo country presented Larry Loendorf, then Professor at New Mexico State University, and his rock art recording crew with beauty in the alcoves, on the cliffs, and with every landscape view. Canyons...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sturt Manning.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent years have seen major developments in accuracy and precision for several aspects of radiocarbon dating. There is a new annual-resolution (last 5K) Northern Hemisphere calibration curve, increased focus on sample selection and processing (chronometric hygiene), and widespread application of sophisticated Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Donta. F. Timothy Barker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Anthony Farmstead (SOM.HA.4) in Somerset, Bristol County, Massachusetts, was established in 1757 and passed father-to-son through multiple generations of a prosperous New England Yankee family until the mid-nineteenth century, when the property was rented out to tenants. The longest tenant occupation of the property was by a young Irish immigrant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland. Debra Walker.

Chetumal Bay had political and economic importance for local Maya populations for more than 2000 years. When the Spaniards entered the region in the 16th century, they settled near its political capital and attempted to incorporate it into a larger colonial world system, only to be met with wide-scale resistance. This paper examines the shifting dynamics of the Chetumal Bay territory, from the Preclassic through Postclassic-Colonial Periods, with perspectives drawn from Cerros and Progresso...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Céline Lamb. Scott R. Hutson.

Long-standing research at sites like Cerén exemplifies the increased interest in rural households and settlements and the shift away from the elite-centric nature of many earlier projects in Maya archaeology. Our expanding knowledge of ancient Maya hinterlands has allowed us to consider the heterogeneity that these smaller settlements displayed and revise our western binary perspective of "urban versus rural". Recent investigations by members of the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson.

This is an abstract from the "Underwater Maya: Analytical Approaches for Interpreting Ancient Maya Activities at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, Belize" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Witz Naab and Killer Bee mounds are some of the few remaining onshore remnants of the Paynes Creek salt works. In this presentation, we will reexamine the interpretations of two salt mounds at the Paynes Creek Salt works. These excavations are part of a larger NSF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Jamieson.

Medieval motte castles are large flat-topped earth and stone mounds, often coupled with an enclosure or bailey, and represent a characteristic component of the British landscape. Mottes often dominate their immediate surroundings, with many remaining visually impressive monuments to this day. Although their creation often involved substantial landscape change, it is becoming increasingly clear that continuity could also be maintained. Many mottes were placed at points in the landscape with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Wheeler.

In the spring of 1989 Jerry Kennedy hired me to conduct fieldwork for the first archaeological reconnaissance survey of Palm Beach County. I drove around the county in Florida Atlantic University’s late 1980s model Ford Taurus wagon with a list from the Florida Master Site File, attempting to revisit as many sites as possible. The station wagon endured a fair bit of off road driving, including an excursion into the South Florida Water Management District’s newly establish DuPuis Environmental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Morris. Severin Fowles.

The nomadic tribes of the Plains—notably, the Comanche and Apache—are typically considered the main obstacles to the northern expansion of the Spanish empire in North America. But early Spanish settlers in New Mexico found themselves up against another formidable foe that has received far less attention in the literature: the wolf. Indeed, for an expanding pastoral society, the wolf posed perhaps the biggest threat to local economic welfare. In this paper, we report on the recent discovery of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ora Elquist.

Locus 3 of the Strow’s Folly Site (19-PL-1161) in Wareham, Massachusetts represents a small, temporary camp. Archaeological investigations at the site resulted in the recovery of an unusual artifact assemblage believed to be associated with a single component dating to the Middle Woodland Period. Evidence for hunting was notably absent, and the presence of processing tools and relatively dense deposits of ceramics indicate that women were present at the site. Domestic activities associated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Women in Mesoamerican Ritual" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teotihuacan is a complex multiethnic urban metropolis whose history is slowly becoming more nuanced after more than 100 years of research. Despite the recent attention that this Mesoamerican city has received, we still have many questions, among them, about the role of women, their life histories, their identities, and their role in the ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Baustian. Claira Ralston. Maryann Calleja. Debra Martin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When examining violence in archaeological contexts, the roles of females have often been undertheorized or omitted completely. Violence research is quick to identify males as warriors and aggressors but women should not be ignored as actors in past violence. Our perception and interpretation of females as actively engaged in violent interactions in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bailey Raab. Dana Bardolph.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As Patricia Galloway aptly observed in her 1998 paper, “Where Have all the Menstrual Huts Gone?”, menstruation is rarely discussed in archaeological literature. Recent research in the Ohio River Valley has brought renewed interest to these ‘invisible’ spaces, attempting to identify potential menstrual structures in the archaeological record. It was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ángel Sánchez Gamboa. Esther Parpal Cabanes.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New hieroglyphic and iconographic evidence allows us to preliminary reconstruct women’s political hierarchy inside Tonina’s royal court during the Late Classic period. As it is well known, parentage statements are very scarce in the inscriptions of Tonina and limited to maternal ancestry. Aside from the importance of local female...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Witcher. Emily Hanscam.

This is an abstract from the "Documenting Demographics in Archaeological Publications and Grants" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recently, some academic archaeology journals have evaluated the gender distribution of authors, often finding female contributors underrepresented. *Antiquity is a journal of world archaeology with submissions from authors of many nationalities; however, we lacked data on the gender of our authors. We therefore analyzed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer French.

Demography has re-emerged as a growing research area within archaeology. Recent studies have refined archaeological demographic methods and developed models which cite demographic change as a key variable in explaining social and artefactual change. However, one aspect which has not been explicitly acknowledged is how archaeological demography is intrinsically concerned with women. In this paper I explain the importance of women to the demographic regimes of small-scale societies and discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Akin Ogundiran.

This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Women’s work and administrative leadership were essential to the running of the Oyo Empire (ca. AD 1570–1836). As wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, enslaved and free bureaucrats, traders, artisans, and laborers, women played a wide range of roles in palace administration and in financing and reproducing the state (materially...