Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Robinson. Julienne Bernard.

This paper presents an overview of the site structure within the confines of Cache Cave with a particular focus on excavated crevices, deposits, and features. We also present the results of 25 AMS dates so far submitted from the site. These dates include a range of material from basketry, cordage, matting, reeds, bone objects, and charcoal. In total, this program represents the most comprehensively dated Chumash cache cave assemblage yet achieved and yields important data regarding site usage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Romero.

This is an abstract from the "Local Development and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Pre-Hispanic Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Designs on Mimbres pottery have long fascinated archaeologists. These complex geometric and figurative images can shed light on daily activities, household organization, and groups of potters. Excavations at the Elk Ridge Site, a large Classic Mimbres pueblo in the northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Adler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In May 1988, reconstruction activity at the historic mission church at Picuris Pueblo by community members found a small stone box covered with a mano (grinding stone) and containing 27 items, including 18 religious medallions, four metal crucifixes, three crucifixes with inset glass beads, and three thin metal rings. This paper considers the origins and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sheldon Skaggs. Peter Cherico.

Recent investigations in a large, enclosed courtyard on the southwest corner of the ancient Maya site of Pacbitun, Belize, revealed evidence of successive emplacements of ritually important deposits. Initial analysis of the ceramic material suggests that the entire courtyard plaza has only one or two floors, with construction and use only during the Late to Terminal Classic period (600 – 900 CE). Five caches and two cyst graves were related directly to the plaza floor. The caches consisted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Ahern.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2013 and 2014, a series of excavations were conducted on Structure 9 at the Preclassic period center of Cival. Structure 9 is the western radial pyramid associated with the site’s central E-Group complex. These excavations uncovered a series of caches, termination rituals, and deliberate destruction of architectural features across five major phases of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Drexler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Caddo homeland of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas contains one of the major source areas for salt in North America. Coming to the surface as brines, this resource was an important part of local foodways, economies, and political relations for centuries, both for the Caddos and the American settlers who occupied the area beginning in the 19th...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Samuelsen.

The 352 individuals from a skull and mandible cemetery at the Crenshaw site (3MI6) in southwest Arkansas have been argued to represent non-Caddo victims of warfare from other regions. Strontium isotopes taken from 80 individuals were processed as part of a NAGPRA grant and have been used to claim they supported evidence of interregional warfare between the Caddo and the Southern Plains. This paper demonstrates that sampling small animal teeth from surrounding sites can be used to test the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Eubanks.

During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, northwestern Louisiana was known as a major hub of the salt trade. However, recent excavations at the Drake's Salt Works Site Complex suggest that this reputation may have been earned relatively late. These excavations have also raised the possibility that many of the salt producers at this saline were non-locals who visited northwestern Louisiana primarily for its salt resources. While the salt makers at Drake's Salt Works would have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

In Patricia McAnany’s influential work Living with the Ancestors, she argued that the practice of venerating ancestors by placing human burials in eastern structures originated with commoners and was appropriated by the ruling elite as potent political displays. Within the Belize Valley, sites at all levels of the settlement continuum had eastern structures that contained numerous human inhumations, suggesting ancestors may have been politically powerful for elites and non-elites. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan M. Alt.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cahokia may not be the first place to come to mind when thinking about urbanism, but given new thinking and discoveries from a series of major excavations at and around this novel kind of city, views about the causes and consequences of American Indian urbanism are substantially changing. In part this is because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corin Pursell. J. Grant Stauffer.

Cahokia’s Mound 34 was an essential component of the dramatic reorganization of the eastern portion of Cahokia’s site core at the turn of the 13th century. Since the 1990s the Mound 34 Project has included examination of a copper workshop, the exploration of a complex mound construction history, and extended study of Mound 34’s special role in the production and exchange of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art. The construction of this mound and a series of other low platforms adjacent to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Romain.

Cahokia stands as the flagship city of the ancient Mississippian world. One of the enduring mysteries concerning Cahokia has been how to account for its skewed orientation and unique layout of its mounds and plazas. What accounts for the site's orientation east of north; and why are the mounds situated where they are? In this presentation I use recently obtained LiDAR imagery together with archaeoastronomic analyses to explore the idea that Cahokia was built according to a grand master plan....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jake Pfaffenroth.

The concept of a "frontier zone" in which diverse peoples would have been equally susceptible to each others’ influences offers a dynamic and multi-scalar approach to the investigation of "Mississippianization" in Cahokia’s northern hinterland. Aztalan, a site of Mississippian and Late Woodland co-residence in southern Wisconsin (ca. AD 1100-1200), has long been interpreted as a "Mississippian town" or "Cahokian colony". Mississippian-centric interpretations have led some archaeologists to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Boles.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Cahokia female figurine recovered from Ohio in 1935 was recently brought to light. Although this example is made from limestone, it is identical in all other respects to the Cahokian flint clay suite. Additionally, the limestone was sourced to the St. Louis formation, leaving little doubt as to its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Friberg. Gregory Wilson.

Cahokia was the largest and most complex pre-Columbian Native American society in North America. Its cultural influence extended throughout the Mississippian period Midwest (A.D. 1050–1400). A diachronic investigation of greater Cahokia from its western periphery provides insight into the polity’s consolidation, fragmentation, and collapse. Cahokian groups appear to have annexed portions of the Big River Valley (BRV) in southeast Missouri as part of the polity’s formational Big Bang. However, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mónica Suarez Ubillus. Iván Ghezzi.

This is an abstract from the "Casma State Material Culture and Society: Organizing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of a Re-emergent Ancient Polity" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015 Suárez reported the discovery in the high parts of Cerro Cahuacucho (Sechin Valley) of a carved algarrobo (Prosopis sp.) tree trunk, over 2 m long and 118 kg in weight. It was carved on one side with the representation in profile of 5 felines....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Toohey. Patricia Chirinos Ogata.

This is an abstract from the "Them and Us: Transmission and Cultural Dynamism in the North of Peru between AD 250 and 950: A Vision since the Recent Northern Investigations" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at the Cajamarca sites of Callacpuma and Yanaorco are shedding new light on shifting patterns and intensities of interregional interaction. Highland influence on the coast has been recognized for many years in the coastal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shinya Watanabe.

In this paper we present the excavation data from the El Palacio site, a supposed administrative center of the Wari Empire, to consider interaction between the Cajamarca culture and other areas. Kaolin ceramics are an important characteristic of the Cajamarca culture and present a tradition as long as 1600 years, but at the same time indicate gradual changes during 5 phases. El Palacio site corresponds to the period from the Middle Cajamarca Phase B, C, to the first part of the Late Cajamarca...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Solsiré Cusicanqui.

The Cajamarca Valley, located in the northern Andes of Peru, is a space of encounter and movement of material from different ecological areas since early times to the present. This is mainly due to its strategic location within Andean geography as an enclave of natural points of access to different ecological zones (coastal valleys, Amazon rainforest, southern highlands). Cajamarca culture (100 BC - 1400 AD) is characterized precisely by the mobility of its inhabitants, as indicated by their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Solsiré Cusicanqui. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.

Around 750 A.D., the Mochica societies occupying the mouth of the Jequetepeque River, in the north coast of Peru, began a brief but intensive collapse process that opened their borders to nearby societies; especially those settled in the highlands of Cajamarca. Materialized in plates made from kaolinite clays, this Cajamarca presence quickly spreads throughout the valley generating different dynamics of cultural interaction reflected in the creation of new ceramic styles (“coastal“ cajamarca),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Robinson. Marlen Garnica.

Archaeological survey of Cakhay, the largest Classic site (200-800 A.D.) in the Maya Kaq’chik’el area, was carried out in 2017 by the Proyecto Arqueológico del Área Kaq’chik’el (PAAK). The goal of the survey was to determine the limits of the site and survey its periphery. Reconnaissance of 20 sq km found that populations were nucleated on the hillside surrounding the defensive and religious center with some look out sites in the periphery. Within the center and the nucleus of the site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Folan. Joel Gunn. Ma. del Rosario Dominguez.

This paper covers, in detail, the principal characteristics of Structure II in Calakmul including its architecture, artifacts and associated activities.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Spros. Bart Lambert. Barbara Veselka. Philippe Claeys. Christophe Snoeck.

This is an abstract from the "Integrating Isotope Analyses: The State of Play and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the fourteenth century in Europe, challenges like climate change, crop failures, and the plague affected the people significantly. Such events bore great consequences for people’s health and their everyday lives forcing them to adapt. The inhabitants of Ypres, present-day Belgium, were no exception. During the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Kovacs. Eduard Reinhardt. Dominique Rissolo.

Located in the Sac Actun cave system on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Hoyo Negro pit (HN) has proven to be a very important pre-Maya archeological site as human (Naia, dated between approx. 13 000 - 12 000 calendar years ago) and faunal remains have been discovered (Chatters et al., 2014). Reconstructing the flooding history (accessibly when the cave system was dry) and water chemistry of HN is critical to our understanding of the movement of humans and fauna into and through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Bowers.

Excavations of Iron Age hillfort's in Northwestern Portugal, known as castros, have yielded many spindle whorls, but no extant fabrics due to the nature of preservation in the region. This leaves the question "what types of textile were produced?" In an attempt to answer this question, I calculate the moment of inertia (MI) for spindle whorls collected from three different sites in the Ave River Valley. MI represents the angular momentum of a whorl, allowing for the whorls various...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Nazaroff.

In the past decade, a tremendous increase in the use of portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments in archaeological provenance research has warranted several critical reflections on the analytical protocols which underpin their application in various material and regional contexts. This paper approaches the use of pXRF analysis for determining chert provenance with particular emphasis placed on tailoring empirical calibrations to best suit the dynamic properties of chert materials. In so...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Ambrose.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chronometric dating of Late Pleistocene environmental changes and archaeological sites can be refined by correlations with precisely dated volcanic isochrons, stalagmites, and marine isotope stages (MIS). Lake Malawi cores have volcanic ash from the Toba super-eruption, dated ~74 ka at levels previously dated to ~62.5...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Lewarch.

Archaeologists and geographers calibrate the flow of commodities among households and settlements to infer patterns of production, consumption, economic function, and social class. Michael Smith and his colleagues developed sophisticated measurements of wealth and social class using residential architecture attributes and domestic artifact assemblage diversity from excavations at three Aztec Period sites in Morelos. Here, data from over 4,000 surface collection units in eight Aztec Period sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Robinson. Marybeth Tomka.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aggregation of existing radiocarbon assays and tree-ring and obsidian hydration assays, combined with new linear accelerator dates, allows the potential realignment of regional chronologies in West-Central New Mexico, the Middle San Francisco River valley in particular. The WS Ranch Site Project, sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and supported...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joan Schneider.

This is an abstract from the "Public Lands, Public Sites: Research, Engagement, and Collaboration" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A partnership between Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (California) and Ikh Nart Nature Reserve (Mongolia) began in 2010 and continues through the present. Annually, a team of American archaeologists, cultural resource management specialists, and volunteers visit Ikh Nart to demonstrate and implement cultural heritage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beth Padon.

This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many ways to organize and administer site stewardship. We highlight some characteristics of California site stewardship and we discuss why they matter. CASSP is provided by Partners for Archaeological Site Stewardship, a private, nonprofit organization. Because CASSP is not a...

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

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans have unintentionally and intentionally introduced rodents to islands around the world, sometimes causing local extirpation and extinction of endemic fauna. On the northern California Channel Islands, island deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), may have arrived as stowaways on Native American canoes at least 10,000 years ago. Following this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Pryor. Michael K Youngblood.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. California Tribal Unilateral Apprenticeship Program (CTUAP) sets out to solve to fundamental problems: 1. Chronic unemployment and lack of job opportunities in Indian Country for tribal youth and 2. demand for diverse well trained archeological technicians in the field of Cultural Resource Management. CTUAP is an officially accredited California State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Torben Rick. Todd Braje. Leslie Reeder-Myers. Courtney Hofman. Jon Erlandson.

Islands around the world have served as important model systems for understanding a host of cultural and environmental issues. Here we synthesize our long-term research program on the historical ecology and archaeology of California’s Channel Islands. Drawing on zooarchaeological, paleoethnobotanical, genetic, stable isotope, and other datasets we document a 13,000 year sequence of human environmental interactions from coastal foragers to early historical ranchers and modern conservationists....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marco Meniketti.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Trace element X-ray florescence analysis is applied to ceramics from sixteenth-century shipwrecks in order to help resolve the enduring mystery of the location of Sir Francis Drake’s brief landing on the west coast in 1579. The landing site has been debated for decades. Was it California, Oregon, or Washington? Various sites have been proposed and each has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Eusebio. Philip Piper. Andrew Zimmerman. T. Elliott Arnold. John Krigbaum.

Almost nothing is known about the early development and diversity of Vietnamese cuisine, which potentially has its origin more than 2,000 years ago. This research investigates the culinary practices in southern Vietnam during the Neolithic and Metal Age (3000 BC-AD 500) by analysis of food residues recovered from earthenware pottery. To identify former food contents, organic residue analysis was conducted on sampled pottery vessels recovered from two Neolithic sites (Rạch Núi and An Sơn) and two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miguel Contreras-Sieck. Paola Everardo-Martínez. Paloma Constanza Huerta-Chavez. Alejandro Alvarado-Gonzalez. Víctor Acuña-Alonzo.

This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient DNA approaches have a long-standing history in bioanthropological and archaeological contexts in Mexico. However, we are starting to see a gap between these novel data and anthropologists; this could be the result of the mixture of the rapid advance of paleogenomics together with the lack of technological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorie Clark. Cathy Bickenheuser.

Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service manages more than 25 million acres in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North and South Dakota, with more than five million acres designated as Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas. Because of the Wilderness Act, NHPA Section 106 surveys that would identify potential archaeological sites are generally not undertaken in Wilderness areas. However, a number of known historic structures in these areas have been restored by the Northern Region Historic Preservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Fauvelle. Andrew Somerville.

The exchange of botanical subsistence resources such as nuts and seeds is well documented in ethnohistoric accounts of Chumash trade across the Santa Barbara Channel. But on what scale was such exchange carried out? Due to the perceived marginality of island environments, it has long been assumed that the need to import subsistence goods from the mainland to the islands was a central instigator for cross-channel exchange. Recent research, however, has shown that the islands were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Javier Areche Espinola.

Los estudios incas en los Andes Centrales dan cuenta sobre los mecanismos de instituciones religiosas heredadas y desarrolladas por un estado expansivo. La importancia y éxito de estas instituciones radica en justificar y legitimar la dominación de diferentes grupos a través de la captación y manipulación de creencias locales, materializado en la reocupación de sitios religiosos locales. Sin embargo, los Incas, también, transformaron lugares secundarios en centros de poder religiosos imponiendo...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fiorella Burga Gil.

¿Es posible implementar una puesta en valor sin necesidad de realizar grandes intervenciones arquitectónicas y remociones de material? Esta ponencia busca mostrar un plan de puesta en valor, que basado en el uso del sitio como espacio público sea a futuro el soporte de actividades de desarrollo social sostenible y participativo. "El Huarco" (Cañete, Perú), sitio Inca con arquitectura monumental, cuenta con un incalculable valor histórico y turístico, indudablemente representa un eje potencial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Olesch. Dr. Kylie Quave.

Although domesticated camelids seem to be an important element of the prehispanic Andean economy and social structures, they appear inconsistently in the iconography of ceramics, textiles, lithics, and other media. Recent archaeological excavations at the site of Yunkaray, Maras, Peru revealed a high frequency of local style ceramics with camelid iconography. Found in domestic areas associated with high status individuals, these ceramics were possibly used for feasting and as an avenue of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Elliott.

Excavations at Huari, the urban center of the Wari state in Peru's Ayacucho Basin, have uncovered well preserved faunal remains, with the majority belonging to native camelid species. While knowledge pertaining to camelid exploitation by the Wari people has been enhanced in recent years through excavations at sites such as Conchopata, little is known about camelid usage at the site of Huari. In this paper, I use osteometric analysis to identify specimens to the species level and to examine the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kylie Quave. R. Alan Covey.

Indiscriminate invocation of the term ayllu constrains archaeological reconstructions of community organization in the pre-contact Andean highlands. Legacies of earlier generations of anthropological scholarship encourage researchers to assume particular traits of sociopolitical organization. Archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the Cuzco region of Peru demonstrates how such assumptions can be an obstacle to developing accurate representations of social organization. As Inca elites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weronika Tomczyk.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The South American camelids had tremendous importance for basic subsistence, social life, and religion in all prehispanic Andean societies, but implications of herding domesticated llamas and alpacas for broader political systems have received less academic attention. This study uses the camelid remains as a proxy to study pastoral traditions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruoyu Zhu. Sarah Kennedy. Arturo Rivera. Sarah Baitzel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inhabitants of the Terminal Middle Horizon site of Los Batanes (Sama Valley, southern Pern) founded by Tiwanaku-descendant groups in the eleventh century CE practiced a mixed subsistence strategy. Located along a natural corridor that connects the south-central Andean highlands and coast, residents had access to and a taste for local, highland, and marine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Claudia Avila Peltroche.

In this work the author presents the preliminary results of the animal bones analyzes from the archaeological site of Huayuri. This site, located in the south coast of Peru, shows evidences of ocupations since the Late Intermediate Period to the Late Horizon. The materials were recovered during the excavations that took place in 2002 and 2005 in the Compound 03, located at the south part of the site. The analysis was primarily focused on the camelid bones, taking into consideration the cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers. Teresa Godinez. Purdeep Dhanoa. Luis Ruvalcaba. Michael Reibel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Early Classic Period (250-600 CE), the site of Los Horcones rose to become and important gateway community sitting strategically on the flanks of Cerro Bernal where it controlled the terrestrial trade route along Pacific Coast into the Soconusco region. Archaeological research of this important regional center has revealed a complex history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Willy Yepez Alvarez.

This is an abstract from the "Wari and the Far Peruvian South Coast: Final Results of Excavations in Quilcapampa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Presentamos los caminos que durante el Horizonte Medio integraron al valle de Siguas, Vitor, Majes y Ocoña dentro de una dinámica de estudio de la visibilidad y ritualidad espacial. Para ello tomamos con ejemplo de discusión el sitio de Quilcapampa La Antigua, valle de Siguas, Arequipa, Perú. La...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Espino Huaman. Jo Osborn. Camille Weinberg. Brittany Hundman.

This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En los últimos años, investigaciones arqueológicas en los valles de Cañete y Chincha han avanzados nuestro conocimiento de estas regiones, sus sociedades, y sus transformaciones durante el Intermedio Tardío y el Horizonte Tardío. Sin embargo, aunque queda claro que había conexiones fuertes entre las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Torrano. Andreas Angourakis. Veronica Martinez. Josep Maria Gurt.

Pottery technology is a well-studied field of archaeological research. However, particular contributions are often limited to a partial characterization, due to the technical and theoretical backgrounds of the researchers involved. Pottery samples are interrogated separately through chemical analyses, petrographic characterization and the assignation to both decorative and functional classes. In most cases, the results of such myriad of studies remain relatively unconnected up to a general...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

El Rayo, located on the Asese Peninsula in Lake Cocibolca, continues to surprise with its archaeological resources. Initially identified as a small fishing community on the lakeshore, investigations in 2009 and 2010 revealed extensive mortuary remains as well as rich domestic refuse. In the summer of 2015, a field school by the Institute for Field Research re-opened excavations at the Locus 3 mortuary complex, uncovering additional burial urns in diagnostic Sacasa Striated ‘shoe-pot’ urns. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti.

This is an abstract from the "Exploring Long-Term Pastoral Dynamics: Methods, Theories, Stories" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pastoralism is now recognized as a smart economy for food production in drylands, especially in the current scenario of climate change, where natural resource variability is increasing globally. Outdated stereotypes about the inefficiency and irrationality of pastoralism are being reevaluated, and there is a shift in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah.

The Susquetonscut Brook Site 11 (SB-11) is a Native American campsite occupied primarily during the Archaic Period and again briefly in the Woodland Period. Data recovery excavations conducted by The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) in the summer of 2015 resulted in the recovery of thousands of artifacts and the exposure of 14 cultural features, including post-molds, pit features, fire hearths, and a roasting platform. Feature definition was attained through a variety of analyses,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Murrell. Phillip Leckman. Michael Heilen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding changes in mobility and subsistence practices among Jornada Mogollon hunter-gatherer groups remains a substantial research issue. Residents across the Permian Basin largely maintained a hunting-and-gathering cultural adaption throughout prehistoric times, although some segment of the local population practiced cultivation during the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Herron.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While it is well known that Clovis people hunted mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), there are few cases in the Paleoindian record where campsites associated with mammoth remains have been found. The La Prele Mammoth site, located near Douglas, Wyoming, is an approximately 13,000-year-old mammoth kill site with an associated camp. While mammoth remains have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerome Reynard.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ubiquity of archaeo-faunal remains and discarded bone at Paleolithic sites make these useful datasets for investigating a range of site formation processes, including anthropogenic site-use activity. Occupational intensity is a common theme in current research and is often linked to demographic changes in the past. Given its association with early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonya Atalay.

Community-based research requires systemic shifts within institutions, from the way research is funded, protection of human subjects/IRB reviews, ethical guidelines, and what is legible/valued in tenure & promotion decisions. Some of the most important yet least discussed changes must happen in the classroom, in terms of what & how we teach. For community-based archaeologists, we know that process matters. How we conduct research with community partners is essential. The relationships and trust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Riede. Russel Blong.

Extreme climatic events and natural disasters often have a recurrence periodicity beyond that of ethnographic, sociological and, at times, even historical investigation. In a deep historical perspective focused on geo-cultural heritage, however, human communities have been affected by numerous kinds of natural disasters that may provide useful data for scenario-based risk reduction management vis-à-vis future calamities. Using selected past volcanic eruptions as examples and merging Lee Clarke’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randall McGuire.

The great intellectual myth of the end of the 20th century was that the 21st century dawned in a world of "posts"; post industrial, post colonial and most importantly post capitalist. The sociologist Ben Agger has argued that we do not live in a post capitalist world but rather in a world of hyped up Capitalism or Fast Capitalism. More recently, the economist Thomas Piketty has redirected economic research back to the study of wealth and Capital. his work sustains Karl Marx's fundamental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Candice Disque.

Settlement locations and the resultant built form are an essential part in understanding the social and cultural ideals of prehistoric peoples. Vital information pertaining to intracultural diversity is lost when the ideals, beliefs, values, and identities of multiple communities within a culture are homogenized. Landscape analysis of the Sand Canyon Pueblo community, Cajon Mesa communities, and the Ten Acres Community has revealed distinct differences in site location and orientation; masonry...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Romuald Housse. Arthur Mouquet.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The construction of chullpas in the south-central Andes, and more particularly in the Lake Titicaca basin, is certainly one of the major characteristics of the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1450 CE). Building on prior research and extensive surveys coupled with spatial analysis, this presentation aims to shed new light on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chloe Sinclair.

Osteological material has historically been underexploited in archaeological research.  This is most directly true of commingled assemblages which present an exclusively difficult challenge to bioarchaeologists.  The commingled assemblage here examined is the result of the episodic usage of rock-cut tombs, advanced in post-mortem fracture, and disruption during transport and storage. The aim of this study is to reconstruct skeletal profiles, age, sex, and pathological demographics through the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. J. Mosher.

Illuminating genetic and environmental factors underlying complex traits is a daunting task. Dietary nutrients provide continuous and evolving influence on gene expression, thus affecting individual growth and development and adaptive capacities over the life course. Metabolic traits represent the culmination of many gene-by-nutrient interactions. Genes set parameters for susceptibility to environmental factors, variation in both internal and external environmental dynamics mediating the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina McSherry.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster describes results from an experiment designed to determine if there is consistency in the shell scatter patterns of the Colt 1911, Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun, M1 Carbine and M1 Garand, all common weapons of the American World War II Soldier. Forensic Ballistic evidence has proven to be a valid method of inquiry when determining the movements of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Froese. Carlos Gershenson. Linda Manzanilla.

Teotihuacan was the first extensive urban civilization of Mesoamerica and one of the largest of the ancient world. Following a tradition in archaeology to equate social complexity with centralized hierarchy, it is still widely believed that its origin and growth was controlled by a dynastic lineage of powerful individuals. However, much data is indicative of a government of co-rulers, and artistic traditions expressed an egalitarian ideology while deemphasizing individuals. Yet this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Clark.

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. Blue duiker (Philantomba monticola) is a small, forest dwelling bovid present throughout Central and southern Africa. The species remains an important source of bushmeat in Central Africa, and in southern Africa, its exploitation dates at least as far back as 77,000 years ago. At the Middle Stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrián González Gómez De Agüero. Julia McCuaig. Francesca Fernandini. Paul Szpak.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Carbon and nitrogen isotope values of plants reflect the environmental conditions under which they grew. Isotopic variation caused by environmental variation is often passed on to consumers, including humans, such that each region and time period has its own isotopic signature and variability. Isotopic paleodietary analysis in the central Andes often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Haynes. Janis Klimowicz. Piotr Wojtal.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The characteristics of human-killed and human-scavenged elephant carcasses differ in important ways. The bones of an elephant butchered immediately after humans killed it are identifiably distinct from bones taken from a "ripened" carcasses that was scavenged by humans. With newly killed carcasses, the butchering may be light to full, resulting in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigid Grund. Stephen Williams.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various methods have been used to differentiate among activity areas at archaeological sites (e.g., element and lipid analysis), but additional work in this area is needed. To our knowledge, no previous studies have attempted to classify indoor and outdoor spaces by examining soil microbial community composition. Phospholipid fatty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Colaninno-Meeks. John Chick.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For many undergraduate anthropology majors, participation in an archaeological field school is the entry point to a professional career in the discipline. Despite the importance of field schools, few scholars have investigated the learning outcomes students gain or lasting impacts, either negative or positive, from participation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chapman. Bisserka Gaydarska.

Recent geophysical investigations of Trypillia megasites created a second methodological revolution, following the first revolution (1970s) defined by the discovery of the megasites and their dating to the 4th millennium BC. So far, this second revolution comprised primarily a methodological advance based upon detailed geophysical prospection; but its potential gains may be subverted without a fundamental re-interpretation of the very nature of megasites. The prevailing view of the megasites for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Goralski. Alexis Gray.

Despite being stakeholders with many shared goals, the working relationships between forensic anthropologists, forensic archaeologists, and their colleagues in law enforcement are often strained. The authors argue that cultural differences among the groups have contributed to the underuse and misuse of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists both in the United States and elsewhere, resulting in investigations that are neither as anthropological nor as scientific as juries and the public are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Armit.

The Iron Age in Britain has traditionally been seen as a period of hierarchical, warrior-based, Celtic societies, characterised by hillforts, defended settlements and elaborate weaponry. The dominant interpretive models have emanated from Wessex – that area of central southern England where the largest and most impressive hillforts are found. In recent decades, however, archaeologists have increasingly recognised the marked regional differences inherent in Iron Age societies across different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josefina Vasquez.

The Upper Amazon has been considered a place of weak socio-political integration, along with poor agricultural production, mostly sustained on fishing and hunter-gathering. However, during the last decade, archaeological research carried out in Quimi Valley (Zamora-Chinchipe) has demonstrated the presence of social complexes of about thousands of inhabitants around the valley. While discussion about the existence of sedentary communities during the Integration Period (700 – 1420 AD) has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason O'Donoughue.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological predictive models, whether formal or informal, are commonly used on compliance-driven projects, but their efficacy is rarely tested. Too often, we assume that models are “good” or “successful” when more sites are discovered in “high-probability” than in “low-probability” zones. In Florida, state...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Fernstrom.

This is an abstract from the "The Role of Rock Art in Cultural Understanding: A Symposium in Honor of Polly Schaafsma" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Polly Schaafsma’s extraordinary body of rock art publications allows us to return repeatedly to the images to ask different questions as our knowledge expands. Rock art informs my studies of pre-European Native American murals and 3-dimensional human figures because murals are compositions on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Kissel.

Discerning what makes Homo sapiens distinctive among the rest of the species on the planet has been a difficult task. One suggestion has been our use of symbolic culture, the use and transmission of symbols intergenerationally. There is much discussion, however, about who the first ‘symbol users’ were, partly due to debates as to what actually makes something ‘symbolic.’ In this paper, I discus how anthropologists first came to use symbol as the sine qua non of modern human behavior. Then, using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Whiteman. Morgan Zedalis.

The Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness is an area that allows its visitors to experience solitude in the nation’s largest wilderness in the lower 48. Often unrealized, is that historically, this rugged landscape had quite an extensive communication network while it was managed as the Idaho Primitive Area. One related historic feature managed by the Payette National Forest is the Coyote Springs Telephone Booth. Telephone communications were developed in the area from the late 1920’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Watson.

This paper will outline the processes and decisions that the Louisiana Division of Archaeology made to create an efficient, comprehensive GIS system that could be utilized by both professionals and the citizenry of Louisiana to help promote both progress and preservation. I will discuss how we partnered with La Department of Transportation & Development, La Governor’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness, the New Orleans Corp Engineers, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andre Costopoulos.

Every archaeological modeler, whether generalist or particularist, eventually gets asked whether "their model" can help reconstruct a particular past. Could a general archaeological simulation engine be built that can be customized to answer specific questions about specific archaeological contexts, or is simulation a tool that must remain largely general and heuristic? I will argue both that it is useful to work toward a general archaeological simulation engine, and that such an engine could...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Cercone.

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While geometric morphometrics (GMM) roots are in biology, there has been an increase of studies applying GMM to archaeological material in recent years. Archaeologists have utilized morphometrics to determine the level of craft specialization at prehistoric sites, test the symmetry of stone tools, classify ceramic sherds, examine the level of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John W. Ives.

This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ruthann Knudson had an abiding interest in the later Paleoindian world and an affinity for Canadian research, keeping in regular touch with colleagues across the 49th parallel. Geneticists consistently identify three clades in the early prehistory of the New World: an ancient Beringian population in Alaska, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hackbarth.

Recent excavations at Pueblo Patricio and La Ciudad have uncovered Pioneer Period components that provide new insight about early Hohokam chronology, settlement, and irrigation in Phoenix. Red Mountain phase occupation at Pueblo Patricio began before the fifth century A.D. with seasonal use of small structures exhibiting highly variable architectural forms and small groupings of structures. A dramatic change in Pueblo Patricio settlement patterns occurred by the middle of the mid-sixth century...

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

In 2016 the Northwestern Belize Lidar Consortium acquired nearly 300 square km of LiDAR imagery that covers large areas of ancient Maya agricultural systems, including ditched and raised fields, reservoirs, terraces, and sacbeob. This new imagery allows us to map beneath the canopy and shows that over nearly 20 years without LiDAR we studied only a small spatial sample of these complex systems. We have tested these systems with multiple excavations, and used multiple proxies such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Miller Wolf. Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría. Kristin De Lucia. Meagan Pennington.

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood is paradoxically the most precarious yet vital period of a person’s life. It is when children form their biological and social self, embodying everything around them. However, what surrounds them may not be safe, stable, or congruent with a healthy, long life....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bill Sillar.

The Inca encountered the Canas and Canchis ethnic groups when they expanded out of Cuzco. Canas sites in the herding areas of Espinar show larger scale and more developed settlements than most of those in their agricultural region of the upper Vilcanota Valley. This raises questions about the scale of ‘community’ (village, kinship group, subsistence group, ethnic group). But to address this we need to consider the degree to which allegiance to leaders, ancestors and huacas as well as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Smith. Claire Ebert. Brett Meyer. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For millennia dogs (Canis familiaris) have fulfilled various biological, functional, and companionship roles, yet their use and significance in Mesoamerica varied substantially through time. Previous studies of dogs in the Maya lowlands argued that human-canid relationships involved high levels of dog consumption, though zooarchaeology and epigraphic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nora Rodríguez Zariñán. Christopher W. Schwartz. Ben Nelson.

This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of canids (members of the biological family Canidae, including dogs, wolves, coyotes, and foxes) at the archaeological site of La Quemada in Zacatecas, Mexico has been established through multiple lines of evidence, including broad representation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Bowler. Emily Jones. Cyler Conrad.

Domestic dogs were an important part of human cultures in the prehistoric American Southwest; the significance of these animals is apparent from ceramic decorations and clay figurines, as well as faunal remains. But how these animals functioned within Southwestern cultures is less well-understood. Prehistoric dogs’ roles in some cases seem to have been similar to those of modern dogs: protector, worker, and pet. However, zooarchaeological data have shown that dogs, like turkeys, were also used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Fisher. Lewanne French.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs were an important resource for many Plains peoples, especially for the transportation of materials (e.g., timber, meat, water). The use of dogs for traction may have even facilitated high mobility in early North and South American populations. This high mobility eventually decreased with the introduction of agriculture across the northern Plains. Did...

DOCUMENT Citation Only B. Sunday Eiselt.

Plains-Pueblo Exchange is the study of interregional interactions during the Protohistoric Period (ca. AD 1450 to 1700) between the people and cultures of the Southern Plains and the eastern, frontier Pueblo communities associated with the Rio Grande Valley and its tributaries. Plains-Pueblo research has focused generally on issues of culture contact, culture history, and social evolutionary trajectories leading up to European Colonization, but has skirted the increasingly obvious fact that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Faline Schneiderman.

Gail Borden was a man of persistence and a creative inventor. Were it not for his inquisitiveness and drive in the wake of numerous failures, canned milk and Elsie the cow would never have become irrevocably connected in the minds of millions. Failing to make functional his terraqueous prairie- schooner or to make his desiccated meat-bread palatable, he pursued methods of condensing and preserving milk in sealed containers at several locations in Connecticut. Before his success, bacterial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Waselkov.

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. Modern discoveries of Mississippian dugout canoes and a Middle Woodland canoe canal in coastal Alabama have prompted historical and archaeological research on water travel in the region. Applications of multi-spectral lidar and geophysical survey are proving useful in defining canal features, which have been partially obscured by changes in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Iseminger.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cahokia Birdman Tablet is the iconic example of what defines this artifact category, with engraved graphics on the obverse and crosshatching on the reverse of a rectangular stone tablet. Other tablets from Mississippian contexts have similar combinations or variations of these three features. Some may only exhibit crosshatching on one or both sides....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Inge Schjellerup.

The capac ñan from Chachapoyas to Moyobamba was used for centuries before another road was built for driving traffic and latest with the Marginal further on to Tarapoto. The capac ñan was used by the Incas in their conquest of Moyobamba and later to be used by the many Spanish campaigns in their search for Eldorado. This important highland/lowland route crossing the cordillera and continuing into the Ceja de Selva gave access to coveted resources from both sides but also facilitated war parties...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tim Spahr.

The Cape Porpoise Archaeological Partnership is an alliance between the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust and the Brick Store Museum. Its purpose is to conduct archaeological study of the islands in Cape Porpoise harbor located just off the coast of Kennebunkport, Maine. Evidence suggests that Historic and Pre-Historic Period archaeological sites are present. Sea level rise due to global climate change, however, is causing shoreline erosion damaging or potentially destroying these locations....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez.

In Yucatan at the turn of the twentieth century, industrialization of henequen production and the export of binder twine heightened socioeconomic inequality and encouraged consumption of non-local manufactured items within native communities. Yet, the official history of capitalist expansion and globalization in Latin America has been written by and for the dominant class. Often, the material record shows that new and traditional technologies were appropriated in particular ways by poor people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Roscoe.

This is an abstract from the "To Have and Have Not: A Progress Report on the Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality (GINI) Project" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The CfAS’s Inequality Project focuses on economic inequality, a feature of modern society that has attracted both increasing public concern and growing historical and social research because of its critical implications for individual, national, and global well-being. The Inequality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Gorczyk.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal husbandry was a major adaptive mechanism facilitating the spread of farming communities throughout southeastern Europe. Recent big-data syntheses have contributed greatly to our understanding of the environmental and social processes of neolithization in the region. While faunal reports often form an integral component of these studies, issues of...