Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bettina Arnold. Manuel Fernandez Goetz.

Walls are assumed to serve as systems of containment and protection in response to social divisiveness but they may also serve to reduce or mask conflict within a society. Their physical form may be entirely expedient, largely symbolic, or some combination of the two. Early Iron Age settlements in west-central Europe were often situated on promontories with wall and ditch systems encircling portions of the occupied terrain but because of the daunting task of excavating such hillfort sites, which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Fernanda Boza Cuadros.

Social control, central to Spanish colonial rule, was exercised through the regimentation of everyday life, the design and construction of space, and the imposition of practices such as sleeping on beds and mode of dress. In this paper I examine the built space at Santa Cruz de Lancha, an eighteenth century Jesuit hacienda in the Pisco valley, and elucidate on the ways in which the site architecture structured everyday life at the estate. Further, I pose and evaluate questions for future...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Braun. Tyler Faith. Benjamin Davies. Mitchell Power. Matthew Douglass.

This is an abstract from the "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although the past thirty years has witnessed tremendous advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we still know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Are there events in human evolution that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Bond Reis. Lucas Bueno.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we discuss the expansion process of southern Jê groups since 1400 BP until today. Working with Zedeño´s proposal of territorial history (Zedeño 1997), we explore the available archaeological and ethnographic data to propose phases of establishment, maintenance and transformation of territories occupied by Southern Jê groups since, at least, 1400...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gráinne Malone. Meredith Chesson. Tommy Burke. Meagan Conway. Ian Kuijt.

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. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries under British rule, tax assessors, census takers, and Church personnel routinely recorded key aspects of the lives of Inishark and Inishbofin islanders. This research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryn Letham. Andrew Martindale. Thomas Brown.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some of the most immense anthropogenic shell-bearing archaeological sites in North America are located in and around the Prince Rupert Harbour, on the northern coast of British Columbia. The largest ancient villages have shell deposits upward of 10 m deep and over a hectare in area, resulting from a combination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Spenard.

This presentation offers an analysis of the architectural modifications made to the limestone karst landscape in the Classic period Maya polity of Pacbitun in the Cayo District, Belize. The Maya concepts ch’een (hole in the ground for communication with the supernatural world), and k’aax (wilderness) provide the overall framework for this paper. Through two case studies, I explore the range of karst features the Pacbitun Maya used as ch’een, the variety of ways the landmarks were modified for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Brown. Galen Miller-Atkins.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spatial analysis of settlement patterns have traditionally focused on hierarchical city states. Seldom do settlement pattern studies use spatial statistics to characterize hunter-gatherer settlement systems. Through the application of nearest neighbor analysis this paper characterizes the settlement patterns for four sub-regions of the Northwest Coast of North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Reitze. Amy Schott.

In 2004 Congress authorized Petrified Forest National Park to more than double in size, in part to protect unique cultural resources. This poster introduces the preliminary results of three seasons of pedestrian survey in these new lands. So far this research has recorded archaeological resources dating across the spectrum of the human habitation of North America, beginning with Paleoindian lithics and extending through the historic period. Sites ranging from lithic landscapes covering hundreds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Vidrine. Nicholas Laluk.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ndee Place-based understandings of the past, present, and future are ageless and enduring. In his book Wisdom sits in Places (1996) Keith Basso explains the moral and social underpinnings of Ndee ties to place through topography and storytelling. However, in reference to present and future intersections with Ndee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carla Hadden. Sarah Bergh.

Mollusc shell is often the most conspicuous component of coastal archaeological sites in southeastern North America. The shear abundance and bulk of the material presents logistical challenges during all stages of investigation, from excavation and recovery to analysis and curation. These challenges, combined with the assumption that molluscs were low-ranked resources, result in the tendency for zooarchaeological analyses of the coastal Southeast to focus on vertebrate remains, and to exclude...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Arnold. Lourdes Budar.

Discussions of Classic Period (ca. AD 300-900) architecture in southern Veracruz, Mexico generally emphasize patterning in mound-plaza arrangements, with an array of configurations vying for preeminence across the coastal lowlands. Often lacking from these analyses, however, is a more nuanced consideration of the built environment's ideological implications. This paper examines palaces as important reflections of power's materialization in southern Veracruz. Specifically, we consider the palace...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eve Hargrave. Aimee Carbaugh. Krystiana Lee Krupa.

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first NAGPRA Community of Practice, established in 2019 through the University of Denver, illustrated the vital role communication, listening, and learning plays among institutions and tribal partners as we move forward in fulfilling our NAGPRA...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Boger.

The island of Barbuda, West Indies has a relatively unique history, land tenure and geography. Despite its arid climate and thin soils, the enslaved and eventually free people of Barbuda developed a complex herding ecology and built historic wells that are strategically located around the island to support their sustainably resilient agricultural practices. Now, these wells are largely abandoned and people are increasingly dependent on external food and water. An interdisciplinary team of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Shapiro.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analyses of lidar datasets have allowed archaeologists to expand the study of archaeological landscapes to study extensively human-modified environments at regional scales with more advanced geospatial methods. In Sāmoa, lidar reveals networks of ditches, terraces, and other earthen- and stone-monumental architectural features which extend from the coast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Fedoroff.

This is an abstract from the "Crucial Issues in United States Department of Defense Cultural Resources Management " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many challenges exist to keep training and operations on military installations viable over time. Environmental and cultural stewardship programs are part of a military planner’s strategic approach to ensuring Department of Defense (DoD) managed lands remain healthy and active use areas for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ethan Watrall.

As digital methods have become more ubiquitous in archaeology, the challenge of teaching those methods has become important. Beyond the question of how and what we teach, however, there is an equally important challenge - how do we build communities of practice populated by scholars who are connected through a shared perspective on both the methods and the thoughtful application of those methods. In is within this context that this paper will explore an approach developed at Michigan State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cuauhtémoc Vidal-Guzmán. Victor Salazar Chávez. Jeffrey Blomster.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Construction materials such as earthen fills have frequently been an afterthought for many archaeologists interested in understanding past social relations in Mesoamerica. In this paper we reconcile this situation by assessing how the relationship between humans and materials, in regard to the use of construction fills, may have played out a significant role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Robrahn-Gonzalez.

This paper aims to analyze the implementation of integrative project designs developed with local communities in Brazil, in a bottom-up strategy. The objective is deliver relevant outcomes and outputs to society incorporating local social values to the process. This strategy is also aligned to the development of UNESCO’s Sustainability Science goals, from which archeology cannot be isolated. It considers the development of Cultural Environment Projects, where archeology research has more...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Chirinos Ogata.

Wari expansion across the Central Andes involved the construction of colonies, serving as nodes in the state network from Cajamarca to Moquegua. Each colony, even considering local adaptations, was built following a precise sequence and setting up predetermined types of spaces. Monumental architecture exhibiting Wari features and design became an expression of power by itself, a symbol of Wari hegemony physically inscribed in the local social landscape. Large amounts of work were invested in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Hrynick.

This is an abstract from the "Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Architectural history relies on the idea that the human-built environment reflects and reinforces cultural ideas about how people view the world. Architecture therefore permits cultural changes to be tracked through time. Despite this, a literature review of past considerations of hunter-gatherer-built environments reveals remarkably little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Domeischel.

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In early 2017 a human skull was left outside the front door of the Blackwater Draw Museum in Portales, New Mexico. No one saw it arrive; it was simply there when the museum opened that morning. Facilities that curate or display archaeological materials encounter situations such as this more frequently than one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Campbell.

The East Palisade Project at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is an ongoing investigation with the main goal of fully determining the path of the multiple construction phases of the palisade walls surrounding the core of the site. Located in Ramey Field, just east of Monks Mound, excavations have occurred intermittently in this area since the 1960s. The study of the area has helped in the understanding of the construction of the palisade walls as well as the varying types of bastions used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Schulenburg.

The Fort Ancient Period (AD 1000-1700) saw the introduction of formal villages to the peoples of the Middle Ohio Valley. To help understand the transition to full time sedentary villages, this paper explores how these new villages operated as communities. This allows for an examination of the relationship between communities and villages as concepts and as organizational units. This paper uses the Guard Village site (12D29), an Early Fort Ancient village, as a case study to examine this new form...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Nelson. Tamira K. Brennan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With their consistent themes of mantle construction, summit use, burning, and burial, earthen monuments of the Mississippi period conveyed shared meanings between people across wide geographical areas. Exceptions to these broader patterns, however, convey meanings that are steeped in local histories and the communities that create those histories. Drawing on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Powis. George J. Micheletti. Kaitlin Crow. Sheldon Skaggs. Peter Cherico.

Archaeological research in the Upper Belize River Valley has recently produced information that dramatically improves our knowledge of the earliest Maya. Investigations, particularly at the site of Pacbitun, has revealed evidence of radiometrically and ceramically dated cultural stratigraphic deposits for the early and late Middle Preclassic subperiods (900-300 BC). Excavations were undertaken in the site core, principally Plazas A and B, to determine the nature and extent of these communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Clark.

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. Hunter-gatherers are mobile because their resources shift based on season or by ecological zone. This mobility means that their built environments are ephemeral and their mark on the land is light. Many of the traces of structures or land modifications are therefore invisible within the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald.

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. A place is structured and given meaning through human experiences at both individual and group levels. Places are created through repeated human action and made tangible in the landscape by material culture. These places become part of a built environment, marked by daily routines or habitus. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Heinz.

Homosexuality’s place within the church has been a topic of considerable debate among modern theologians. However, most theologians have only focused on homosexuality, disregarding the presence of all other alternative sexual identities and have used only Biblical textual evidence to justify their views on homosexuality. This text contributes a broader scope to the sexuality debate. It considers all queer sexualities, archaeological artifacts, and uses a queer theoretical lens to deconstruct the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Yerka. R. Carl DeMuth. Kelsey Noack Myers.

The Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA) freely shares primary and detailed attribute data on tens of thousands of ancient lithic tools spanning the Paleoindian and early Archaic time periods. As technology has changed over the last 25 years, research team volunteers work diligently to continue providing access to data through ever-more accessible and stable formats. Additionally, efforts concentrate on delivering data in formats that other researchers can deploy easily in their own...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Carlson. Leland Bement. Brian Carter.

Bull Creek is one of a handful of Paleoindian camps, which has survived the taphonomic consequences of time. In this presentation we will discuss our current understanding of the site and it’s inhabitants. The topics discussed include environmental reconstruction and the broader use and reuse of the surrounding region by Paleoindian people. Snapshots of butchering techniques have been captured at Bull Creek as well as differential seasonal use of the site. After the third season of excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Puente. Sarah Kurnick.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, foreign explorers began traveling throughout the Maya area and documenting sites, structures, and monuments then unknown in the United States and Europe. In photographs, drawings, and written reports, these explorers depicted Maya ruins as deserted and lifeless, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pauketat.

Even a cursory outline of the pan-continental history of non-domestic circular architecture impels us to relate similar buildings, some of which are water shrines, in the greater Cahokia region to Mesoamerica and the Southwest. In the central Mississippi valley, standardized steam baths, rotundas, and circular platforms make a dramatic appearance in the late eleventh century CE. Explaining the big-historical patterns, of which this appearance is a part, entails theorizing the bundled transfer of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only L. Renee Hendricks.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses the inclusion of women within Classic Maya works of art, consisting of, for this purpose, private-consumption ceramic vessels and large scale public monuments. Through the use of Feminist and Gender Theory, Performance Theory, and Iconographic Theory, the roles of women in iconographically depicted ceremonial performance is assessed. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandre Tokovinine.

This presentation addresses a set of references to “sticks” in Classic Maya inscriptions, which have been traditionally interpreted as weapons. The available contexts, however, indicate that “sticks” were involved in tribute payment transactions. Although there is no archaeological evidence of these presumably perishable wooden items, the author highlights some visual and material data that support the use of tallies by the Maya. The discussion then centers on less straightforward textual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth McCarthy.

Faunal material has been recovered throughout the Casas Grandes world, from the cultural center of Paquime to the borderlands sites of Joyce Wells and 76 Draw. This study aims to compare the faunal assemblages of several Casas Grandes related sites to examine patterns of faunal utilization through time and space. Our results demonstrate that sites closer to Paquime (including Paquime itself) tend to have a more diverse faunal assemblage as well as having a higher percentage of high-ranked...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Gilstrap. Peter M. Day.

It is widely recognized that Mycenaean states varied in their structure and organisation, were linked to different types of crafting industries, a range of trade networks and a host of consumer preferences. The Saronic Gulf is a paradoxical space that physically separates Mycenaean geopolitical states/regions, while its waters facilitate the interregional movement of people, goods and ideas. The application of thin section petrography and INAA to observe the movement of pottery, the most...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Mathwich. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman.

The introduction of livestock to the Pimeria Alta (northern Sonora and southern Arizona), was one prong of Spanish imperial expansion into North America initiated largely by Jesuit missionization. Unlike other areas of North America, the missions in this region experienced an enormous bureaucratic transition following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the subsequent arrival of Franciscan missionaries. Historians and historical anthropologists debate the social and economic impacts of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Meyer.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Burgess-Williams Site on Grand Island, Michigan, is a mid-nineteenth-century homestead located on the south shore of Lake Superior. The 2009 and 2010 field seasons produced over two thousand artifacts that have provided data for the continuing study of the frontier settlement of the island. The analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Pawn.

Many aspects of St. Johns lifeways have been studied, but kinship, the most fundamental unit of human organization, has rarely been addressed beyond identifying vaguely defined "lineages" or "kin groups". Some have argued that burial mounds represent kin groups, and this paper investigates St. Johns period kinship systems using the biological affinity of individuals from Ross Hammock Mound, a burial mound at Canaveral National Seashore in Florida. Biological distances between individuals are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Muzzall.

Using correlations between biodistance and tomb distance, this poster examines how mortuary practices of two central Italian Iron Age (1000 – 27 BC) ranked societies partially encoded responses to increasing sociopolitical instability. This time period witnessed reorganization of clan-based, transhumant, agropastoral societies immediately prior to long periods of conflict and Roman encroachment. Although they used similar mortuary arrangements, local groups had different attitudes towards these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Huster. Christopher Morehart.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The hilltop, Epiclassic period (ca. 600-900 CE) site of Los Mogotes (ZU-ET-12) sits on the boundary between the northern Basin of Mexico and the southern Mezquital valley. Hence, it is well-placed to understand local and regional transformations between the fall of Teotihuacan (ca. 650 CE) and the rise of Tula (ca. 900 CE). In this paper, we examine burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Scott. Finola O'Carroll.

This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lord of Trim, Geoffrey de Geneville, established a Dominican friary to the north of the town in AD 1263. Ongoing excavations at the Black Friary since 2010 have documented a sequence of burials that date from the 13th through the early 20th centuries. Despite this continuity in the use of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keitlyn Alcantara. Lane F. Fargher. Aurelio Lopez Corral. John K. Millhauser. Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza.

The Late Postclassic state of Tlaxcallan represents a void in Aztec hegemony that is still poorly understood. Ethnohistoric studies, extensive archaeological survey and limited excavation suggest that the social and political organization of this group diverged from the empire’s policies of rule, allowing for much local authority and cooperative governance. Fargher et al. (2010) argue that a unique form of social organization may have contributed to the state’s ability to remain autonomous from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Schurr. Erica Ausel. Della Cook.

The Angel site is a Middle Mississippian civic-ceremonial center that sat on the northeastern periphery of the Mississippian world. Excavations at the site, especially during the WPA era and a series of archaeological field schools just after World War II, created a collection representing several hundred human burials. Previous studies of this collection have emphasized relatively intact burials, either primary fleshed inhumations or easily identified secondary burials of single individuals....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Carpiaux. Alicia Boswell. Jessica Walthew. Gabriel Prieto.

The site of Pampa la Cruz, located in Peru’s northern coast in Huanchaco, is situated just north of the ancient Chimu capital of Chan Chan. A multi-component site with occupations from the Salinar, Gallinazo, and Chimu eras (400 BC – AD 1470), excavations in 2016 recovered Chimu child sacrifices. Each body was interred wearing multiple garments, including mantles, loincloths, and tunics. Environmental and soil conditions enabled the preservation of these textiles. In July 2017 students in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Ann Levine.

The multinational village of Otstonwakin was a key nexus of colonial and indigenous interaction where colonial identities were expressed as well as constituted through material remains. The sacred landscape that was used by the residents of Otstonwakin to bury their dead was disturbed by road construction projects in both the late 1800s and early 1900s. While the full extent of the cemetery associated with Otstonwakin is unknown, the burial ground is represented by four documented graves and a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. Varney. Linda Scott Cummings. Peter Kovácik. Barbara Winsborough.

Microscopic and macroscopic evaluation of samples associated with a 7570 CAL BP burial recovered on the west side of San Francisco Bay provides multiple proxy records representing the environment at the time this person was interred and possibly foods consumed by this individual. The pollen and macrofloral records indicate evidence of coastal or littoral plants, one of which, soaproot, also contributed abundantly to the macrofloral record. A wide variety of trees grew in the bay area, as did...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Charles.

Time perspectivism has been defined as "the belief that differing timescales bring into focus different features of behaviour" or "or different sorts of processes." These different behaviors and processes require different concepts and explanatory principles. Criticism of time perspectivism has ranged from seeing it as advocating environmental determinism to it simply being a version of Annales history. Research under the umbrella of time perspectivism has generally focused on processes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Connie Ericksen. Haagen Klaus. John Clark. Zachary Chase.

Spain's invasion of the Andes initiated a social drama unprecedented in the experience of the Andean natives. Spanish and Spanish-conscripted native chroniclers wrote extensively about Inca pageantry, spectacle, and ritual, and hastily attributed pagan belief to performances they witnessed or heard about. With equal haste, the Spanish appropriated performance as means of introducing and enforcing Christianity. In this paper, I treat performance as the central feature of Andean Colonial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Ripp.

Are there changes in burial practices of the Teuchitlán Tradition over time, and can any of these potential changes be identified? The data used in this analysis of burial practice was gathered from the 45 Teuchitlán Tradition burials housed at the Centro Interpretativo Guachimontones in Teuchitlán, Jalisco, Mexico. The osteology collection spans from the Late Formative Tequila II phase (350 B.C – 100 A.D) through the Late Postclassic Atemajac II phase (1400-1600). The analysis of the burials...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estela Martínez. Patricia Olga Hernández Espinoza.

Archaeological information confirms that between the second and fifteenth centuries AD Tamtoc evolved into a complex urban society that left evidence of their cultural identity through the vestiges of their ancient city. Testimony to this is the architectural complex designed for the preparation of complex funeral rituals, currently known as La Noria. In this area we have 67 burial mounds dug Postclassic (900-1500 AD), recovering 92 graves with the remains of 147 individuals of different ages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Lobato.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists think that Teotihuacan was a relatively equalitarian society. Prior research on economic inequity has focused on factors such as the size of houses and the remains of murals in residential complexes. The Burials and Society project approaches the question of inequality at Teotihuacan from a new angle, that of burial data. The project has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pestle.

The 1970s Tibes excavations of the Sociedad Guaynía unearthed the remains of well over one hundred individuals from various portions of what is currently understood to be the earliest ceremonial center in the Caribbean. Despite attempts to avoid burials, more recent (and ongoing) excavations by the Proyecto Arqueológico del Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Tibes have increased this number to a modest degree. Taken together, the resulting corpus of bioarchaeological material represents one of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shane Sparks. J. Tait Elder. Mathew Sisneros. Melissa Cascella.

ICF assisted the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) with the preparation of a buried archaeological sensitivity model in support of a client-sponsored research project in Seattle, Washington. ICF approached the model development from a statewide scale and employed geologic landform type and soil age as main model inputs. Surface geology data was not available at a large enough scale to support the entire effort so ICF combined national resource conservation soil data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Stone. Scott Fitzpatrick. Matthew Napolitano. Connor Thorud.

Remote Oceania was one of the last major regions colonized by humans prehistorically. While there has been an increasing amount of archaeological and genetic research in the region in recent years, many parts are sorely un- or understudied. This is particularly true of Micronesia, where many questions remain as to how and when these early inhabitants settled and adapted to the area. The Palauan archipelago, which comprises hundreds of smaller uplifted limestone "Rock Islands," hosts identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wiley. Joseph Schuldenrein.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoarchaeological coring provides deep and continuous samples of subsurface soils and sediments. Through analysis, dating, and interpretation of these data, we model land and site formation processes from the Late Quaternary to the near-present. GIS 3D modeling enables us to reconstruct and visualize buried landscapes and assess areas of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Von Scherrer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper delves into an in-depth archaeological investigation of the Evergreen Plantation Slave Quarters (16SJB63) in southern Louisiana. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data analysis and subsequent excavation endeavors centered around units adjoining Cabin 1 uncover a vivid narrative. The exploration of Test Units 15, 18, 20, 21, and 25 reveals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Donohue.

Evaluative test excavations were conducted at 39BE122 for the Bureau of Reclamation. One test unit and eight backhoe trenches were excavated. Six paleosols were documented in the upper 3 m of alluvium, four of which yielded evidence for cultural components. Four to five components were found from 140 to 290 cm below surface. Radiocarbon dates of 3690+/-30 B.P. from Component 2 and 5140 +/- 30 B.P. from Component 4 demonstrate a Plains Middle Archaic age for the site. The size, artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret MacMinn-Barton.

The Arizona Museum of Natural History (AzMNH) has previously unexplored perishable materials, including fifteen textile fragments of Peruvian, Mexican, and Southwestern origin. I present the results of a technological analysis and description of the manufacture of these fragmentary remains. Although this is a small sample for statistical research, it is sufficient for descriptive purposes. As these textiles have not received prior exposure, they should be described and presented. Taken together...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Stanish.

This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Peruvian coastal valley of Chincha is the largest in the south coast of Peru. Research by our team since 2011 has discovered and excavated a number of archaeological sites that date from 3200–1000 BP. The data from this research provide exciting data to test models of early social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Byron Smith. Lara Sanchez-Morales. Samantha Krause. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach.

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports on recent excavations from the Birds of Paradise wetland field complex where we studied an ancient ancillary structure situated among wetland fields along the lower Rio Bravo of northwest Belize. Here we synthesize previous studies from this broader wetland field complex that includes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Shantry.

Concentrations of burned earth, cooking stones, a shallow basin profile, and sometimes faunal remains are often associated with Puget Sound hearth features which were commonly used for open-air cooking. Discrete areas of burned earth lacking concentrations of cooking stones have not received as much cultural feature recognition or interpretation. This poster explores the function of one in situ concentration of charcoal adjacent to a dense area of cooking stones at an upland camp in the Puget...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Scarbrough. Kristin Corl. Dylan Clark. Sunnie Sartin.

What is the significance of multiple burning events at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175) an El Paso Phase (A.D. 1300-1450) Mogollon village in Southwest New Mexico? What do these burning events tell us about the life history of the pueblo? When did they occur? How do they compare to burning events at contemporary sites in the American Southwest? Contextual evidence suggests they are separate ritual events. What purposes did these events serve? How do they differ from other purposeful pueblo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pryor. Shelby Jones-Cervantes.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster reports on a collaborative research project between CSU-Fresno Anthropology Department, UC San Diego, and the Santa Rosa Rancheria (Tachi Yokut). Baked clay or daub is an underappreciated piece of evidence from our past. Archeologists often find pieces or concentrations of daub in old Native American village sites that occur in California’s Central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Alveshere.

The Orendorf site (11F107), located on a bluff overlooking the central Illinois River valley, comprises a mound group and a series of Late Woodland and Mississippian habitations. The occupation of the site is characterized by a gradual migration of the community to the west through successive abandonment and rebuilding. Burned structures have been found in all Orendorf settlements, and at least two of the abandonments followed complete burning of all structures. Intensive salvage excavations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zewdu Eshetu. Tsige Gebru Kassa. Valery Terwilliger. Mitchell Power. A. Catherine D'Andrea.

The influences of Ethiopia's palaeoenvironments on its past societies may inform land management practices now. A staple for reconstructing palaeoenvironments is to record palaeovegetation changes. Botanical remains for reconstructing palaeovegetation are usually archived in lake sediments. Eastern Tigrai had the most developed ancient civilizations known to sub-Saharan Africa but no lakes. When we began research in Eastern Tigrai, the region had been deforested for so long that botanists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice R. Kelley. Jacquelynn Miller. Joseph Kelley. Arthur Spiess. Daniel Belknap.

Climate change impacts on archaeological sites are equated with the burning of the great library of Alexandria for the scale and rapidity of the loss of cultural and paleoenvironmental data (McGovern, 2016). A portion of that destruction is often in the form of sea-level rise exacerbated coastal erosion. While threatened historic sites, such as lighthouses, generate support for remediation and even relocation, coastal aboriginal sites holding records of thousands of years of coastal occupation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Quarato. Julia Giblin.

The elemental and isotopic analysis of human skeletal remains has greatly added to our understanding of diet, mobility, and social variability in prehistoric societies. For studies of this nature, it is critical to evaluate the preservation of the skeletal material prior to analysis to make sure that taphonomic processes have not affected the original chemical signatures. Calcined bone (usually produced from cremation burial practices) is generally avoided for chemical analysis due to heat...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristyn Hara.

Compared to archaeological research in other parts of the globe, the analysis of wood charcoal assemblages, or anthracology, remains an underutilized methodology for investigating aspects of the human past in Cambodia. This paper argues for the importance of anthracology as a viable scientific methodology by foregrounding its interpretive potential in addressing a diverse suite of micro- and macro-scale questions pertaining to human-environment dynamics and cultural practices over the longue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Lyons.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ogata archaeological site in modern Osaka Prefecture, Japan, has come to be seen as representative of large-scale blacksmithing sites and technology of the Middle and Late Kofun Period, and many artifacts related to ironworking have been unearthed from hearth features there. Accordingly, many of these hearth features are typically interpreted as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deniz Kaya.

The importance of understanding the use of space and the distribution of places in the household in the prehistoric setting has been recognized by the anthropological community. Unfortunately the archaeological context often does not always favor such inquiries, especially in the prehistoric setting. Thus, the extraction of information needed to make claims on how different societies distributed living areas in the house and in the greater village, can not always be examined in detail. For the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lewis. Jeremy Johnson. Dianna Wilson. Shelby Anderson. Briece Edwards.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Global heating is increasing the size and frequency of catastrophic wildfires in the American West, with the 2020 wildfires burning nearly 2% of the area of Oregon. In the year following, hundreds of new archaeological sites within the Ceded Lands of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR) were recorded. Despite decades of archaeological surveys of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd. Kim Cox.

The White Shaman Mural (~2000 BP) is a planned composition with rules governing the portrayal of symbolic forms and the sequencing of colors. Using digital microscopy we determined that all black paint was applied first, followed by red, then yellow, and last white. Complex images were woven together to form an intricate visual narrative detailing the birth of the sun and beginning of time. One of the key figures in this creation narrative is a small anthropomorphic figure bearing red antlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Tomás Gallareta Negrón. Rossana May. George Bey III.

This is an abstract from the "The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project: 25 Years of Research in the Puuc" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk will present an overview of the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project’s contributions to the study of Maya burnt lime production, drawing on a mix of excavation, archaeometric, and spatial data. As part of their extensive Kiuic-Labná intersect pedestrian survey, Tomás Gallareta Negrón and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Harris.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground stone disk beads represented a tangible signal of wealth within the Salish Sea archaeological record; they appeared continuously from 7,000 – 500 BP across the region in scattered frequencies to massive caches. The massive caches were often observed in a burial context, despite non-burial contexts being more frequent and wide-spread. The differences in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Steidl.

In the early 1st millennium BCE, Greek communities sprang up around the Mediterranean, and the West was no exception. As the story goes, Ionian Greeks arrived in southern France and a legendary marriage to the local chieftan’s daughter ensured their acceptance as settlers. From their base at Massalia, they expanded their trading foothold to Emporion on the Catalonian coast, cementing a relationship that was long-attested by the presence of Greek goods on western shores. Whereas rapid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Malainey. Timothy Figol.

Accounts of the amount of meat consumed by First Nations who relied on bison are spectacular; but, there are also reports of plant collection and use. The challenges and successes of using lipid residue analysis to detect plants in precontact Indigenous pottery are outlined. Fatty acid compositions of fresh roots, greens and certain berries form several distinct clusters when subjected to statistical analyses. Degradation processes arising from cooking and the passage of time tend to remove...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Danis.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In January 2018 United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha visited Oakland, CA homeless encampments. Farha reportedly remarked, "every person I spoke to today has told me, 'we are human beings.’ But if you need to assert to a UN representative that you are a human, well, something is seriously wrong." The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frank Winchell.

Various ceramic-bearing groups occupied and settled in the Nile Valley during the end of the 5th millennium BC and through the 4th millennium BC, ranging from hunter-gatherers, agro-pastoralists, agriculturalists, and finally to state level societies. Some of these groups appear to have been involved with intergroup trade and cooperation at various levels, while others were not. This paper will look into the characteristic traits associated with these groups in northeast Africa and how their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Tharalson.

The Certain Site is a Late Archaic site in Western Oklahoma that contains at least five arroyo bison trap kills totaling over 200 animals. Numerous bison bones from these kills exhibit evidence of butchering – cut marks, green bone breaks, embedded tools. The butchering sequences associated with each kill was identified through thorough examination of these butchering marks from the site’s various arroyo kill localities. Combined with previously identified seasonality estimates for each kill, I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tressa Munger. Caitlyn Stellmach. Laura Peck. KC Carlson. Lee Bement.

Bull Creek, located in the panhandle of Oklahoma, is a rare late Paleoindian camp on the Southern Plains. Two separate occupation levels apparent at the camp indicate two seasons of habitation. The lower camp, dominated by bison bone, is the focus of this analysis. Bone tools and distinct butcher marks provide evidence of butchering behavior 9,000 years ago on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma. This poster describes the findings of butchering processes at the site. Large sections of bison are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damian Kirkwood.

Spatial recognition of organization at mass kill sites is often commented on in the literature but is rarely systematically investigated. The goal of this paper is to investigate social organization of butchery with the nearest neighbor test. The lack of these sorts of methods in the literature is primarily due to the ever-changing methods of archaeological excavation and limited ability to easily analyze provenience data. In the literature, observations of organization and spatial patterning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Markens.

This paper explores the meaning of butterfly imagery among Classic period Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca. Images of butterflies, or parts of their anatomy, sometimes appear on effigy vessels found in tombs. The effigy vessels represent rulers, or other individuals of high social-standing, as jaguars, owls or the Fire Serpent. I argue that rulers of Zapotec urban centers were perceived to have a number of specific naguales or alter-egos that constitute the moral basis of political power. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agapi Filini.

During the Classic period, butterfly motifs encountered throughout Mesoamerica are indicative of diverse kinds of interaction with the city of Teotihuacan. Highly standardized stuccoed and painted ceramics from the lacustrine region of Michoacán, West Mexico, were used as the principal medium to project a major iconographic theme: the Butterfly-Solar Complex, which was very likely related to a Teotihuacan solar militaristic ideology. Symbolic meanings were encoded in symmetrical panels which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ringstaff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Buttermilk Creek Ranch (BCR) is located within the upper Buttermilk Creek Valley in Bell and Williamson Counties, Texas. Across this landscape, valley incision dissects chert-bearing limestones of the Lower Cretaceous Edwards Group exposing extensive outcrops of tool quality stone. In direct proximity to BCR, are the well-known multi-component sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Huffer. Shawn Graham.

This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Today’s online human remains trade—how it operates, where remains come from, and how algorithmic amplification allows for complex networks to form between buyers, sellers, and middlemen—has seen an increasing amount of research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelton Sheridan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This multi-scalar project examines economic patterns and foodways related to Native American ceramic use on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. Engagement with local Euro-American markets by the Eastern Pequot was necessary during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Analysis of ceramic assemblages focusing on ware type, vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Bedford. Matthew Spriggs. Richard Shing.

Archaeological research on the island of Aneityum, the southern-most inhabited island of the Vanuatu archipelago (the former New Hebrides) began in 1964 under the direction of Richard and Mary Shutler. It was soon after this that William Dickinson first began analysing pottery sherds from various sites across the archipelago. Since those early beginnings he has studied 100s of samples including 112 samples from the single site of Teouma. Early pottery sites remained elusive on the southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadya Prociuk.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In North America the archaeologically defined prehistoric culture of the Rio Grande Delta is essentially unknown outside of the state of Texas. Even within Texas the culture of the Rio Grande Delta is poorly understood. Adding to this obscurity is the lack of cross-border communication or collaboration between researchers regarding the material culture of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pablo Arias. Esteban Álvarez-Fernández.

Cantabrian Spain is a privileged area for a diachronic study of the relationship between human societies and the marine resources. The region can boast one of the highest densities of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites in Europe, and a long and dense tradition of archaeological research, especially in the coastal areas. Moreover, its continental shelf is very narrow, so the preserved sites are closer to the late Pleistocene shoreline than in other parts of the Continent. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Huster.

This poster examines the variation in domestic ritual practices in Postclassic Central Mexico, using data from the Basin of Mexico, the Toluca Valley, and Morelos. I use cluster analysis to identify patterning in censer and figurine use, based on the functional attributes of these artifact classes (use mechanics for censers, subject matter for figurines). These clusters are then compared spatially and temporally to identify patterns based on ethnicity and the expansion of the Aztec Empire. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 100 years the coastline of Oregon has undergone a dramatic change as Euro-American settlement has forever altered the natural shoreline. Significant changes include placement of rip rap and forced stabilization of naturally shifting dunes. Urban development has resulted in changes to natural movement and deposition of sediments and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Decker.

Byzantine Archaeologies Michael J. Decker The past twenty years have witnessed important research in the core areas of Byzantium, especially in Asia Minor, as well as in territories governed by Constantinople prior to the Arab conquests of the seventh century. Byzantine archaeology has long remained conservative and often the preserve of those interested in art history or nationalist agendas. Nonetheless, many aspects of Byzantine archaeology remain unexplored or neglected, in part because of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Shoup. Molly Fierer-Donaldson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of recent data recovery excavations at CA-ALA-11, a coastal shell midden located on San Francisco Bay. Our excavations recovered 182 burials and 262 thermal features with dates predominantly from the Early Period through Middle 2 (2500 cal BCE to 600 cal CE). The excavation sheds light on resource use, environmental change,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diogo Oliveira.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in Mozambique: Current Issues and Topics in Archaeology and Heritage Management" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Swahili Coast Civilization was a collection of independent polities that stretched across a large portion of the East African Coast from about 800 CE to the early modern period. There are several important sites that have contributed to our understanding of the wider Swahili world in northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Uribe.

A partir de nuestros estudios de la cerámica de Arica en la década de 1990, propusimos la existencia de dos tradiciones de producción local que se desarrollaron a lo largo del período Medio, en mayor o menor grado, por el impacto de Tiwanaku en los Valles Occidentales. En aquella oportunidad, definimos una Tradición Altiplánica tecnológica, estilística y contextualmente integrada a Tiwanaku, por lo que llegó a desaparecer junto con esa entidad. En gran medida paralela, aunque un poco más tardía,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Martínez Lara.

El sitio arqueológico de Cacaxtla es famoso por la pintura mural y la importancia que ésta tiene como fuente de información para el entendimiento del desarrollo prehispánico de la región. Sin embargo, esta expresión plástica en particular es la que mayor atención ha recibido y en ocasiones se desarticula de aquellas hechas en otros materiales como la cerámica o la lítica encontradas en el Gran Basamento y en su periferia. En ese sentido, esta ponencia tiene como objetivo exponer la necesidad de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Bobolinski. Anna Prentiss. Matthew Walsh.

Prehistoric households living within Housepit 54 at the Bridge River winter village in south-central British Columbia participated in complex strategies of food acquisition, storage, and food waste disposal. The storage of wind-dried salmon, smoked- and dried- meat from terrestrial animals, as well as dried and preserved roots, berries, and other plant materials were all integral to over-wintering subsistence strategies. Pits dug into the interior floors and those located at the exterior of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Wienhold. Alana Springer. Abby Viselman.

The spatial documentation at Cache Cave entailed the mapping of the cave’s interconnecting passages and shelters, its taphonomic environment, and the archaeology present at the site. Due to its complex formation and small spaces, the overall cave structure could not be recorded by more traditional mapping methods. Through the use of three-dimensional (3D) scanning during the Spring and Summer of 2014, a multi-scalar, high resolution approach was used to capture both the interior structure and...