Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Augustus Lovett.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An examination of the relationships between food and identity is explored among middle-class African Americans in Albany, New York through four periods (early to middle 19th century, middle 19th century, late 19th century, and late 19th to early 20th century). This research synthesizes zooarchaeological data collected from the Stephen and Harriet Myers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominik Lukas. Claudia Engel.

Since its beginnings, the Çatalhöyük project has stood out as an early adopter of latest innovations in information technology and digital recording solutions. Consequently, a considerable effort went into keeping the technology infrastructure on site up to date, incorporating new developments, and ensuring compatibility of applications. A core component of the Çatalhöyük technology infrastructure is a central database which hosts textual and numeric records of the excavation. Excavation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Friedrich Lueth.

This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Avebury and Stonehenge, two iconic prehistoric sites in the heart of England, both listed on UNESCO’s list of world heritage have undergone intensive research during the past century. Nevertheless, evolving technologies open access to new data on a landscape scale, thus adding more and surprising information helping to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Michael Garbellano.

This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Consistent demonstration of patience and fortitude are characteristics of the most revered pioneers in human history. These qualities were seen in many individuals blazing new paths for others to follow. Directly or indirectly, those who created these paths helped improve the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Kate Schnitzer.

The Ogeechee River Valley is an archaeologically under-studied region of southeastern Georgia, but the intensive survey of a state owned wetland mitigation property changes this insufficiency. The recently completed Pierpont Tract survey, commissioned by the Georgia Department of Transportation, identified sites with intact deposits from multiple precontact occupations, spanning from the Late Archaic to the Middle Mississippian periods. Many of these resources lie in seasonally inundated areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kassandra Rippee. Stacy Scott.

This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology on Oregon’s Coast has been largely limited in scope and lacks a holistic viewpoint of coastal history. Archaeological investigations began in earnest around 1930 with avocational archaeologists like Marcus Seale interested in expanding their "trophy item" collections. The heavily male dominated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadya Prociuk.

The Iberian Peninsula has been a rich source of metallic ores for millennia, and the quest for control of those resources has profoundly impacted the history of the Peninsula. Iberia has followed a unique trajectory in the development of metallurgy, with a case for the independent invention of copper smelting in the southwest, and small-scale production of bronze and other metals across the Peninsula until Roman occupation. The advent of Roman imperial control of labour and mines constituted a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatsuya Murakami. Shigeru Kabata. Julieta López.

It is likely that Formative urban centers and their interactions with one another provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet their urbanization process remains poorly understood. Our research over the last six field seasons indicates that some residential groups were settled at Tlalancaleca towards 800 BC and the settlement was urbanized with a significant population growth during the later Middle Formative period (ca....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Immacolata Valese. Davide Domenici.

The paper summarizes the results of six field seasons since 2011 by a joint Italian/American archaeological project on the Merrell Tract 300 meters west of Monks Mound. The extensive excavations, expanding upon the area of Wittry’s 1960 salvage work on Tract 15B, revealed a complex sequence of occupations covering the entire sequence of Cahokia’s history spanning the Edelhardt through Sand Prairie phases. Throughout its history the Merrell Tract experienced important changes: first as a domestic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joao Cascalheira. Nuno Bicho.

Lithic industries from the European Late Pleistocene archaeological record are marked by the presence of one of the most numerous and diverse set of artifacts identified as projectile weaponry tips. Variability in the morphology and technology of these tools has long been used for organizing the Upper Paleolithic archaeological record into distinct cultural and chronological units – the so-called techno-complexes – validating a direct association between transformations in projectile technology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsty Squires.

Throughout Britain, archaeological cemeteries and settlements are being increasingly subjected to in-depth site analyses. Large scale excavations and subsequent post-excavation work result in large bodies of osteological and artefactual data which, in turn, allow archaeologists to glean an insight into the social identity of past populations. Biocultural studies that specifically focus on the treatment and attitudes towards children living in Romano-Britain (1st-5th century A.D.) and early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Gurevitz. Danielle Kurin.

Burial sites in the Peruvian Andes, especially around Andahuaylas, Peru frequently consists of many commingled individuals. Most date from ca. AD 1000-1400 placing the individuals in a time of much turmoil as the Wari Empire collapsed and environmental constraints affected the region. This unrest resulted in an eruption of violence and a fight for resources, forcing individuals to restructure their identity. However, despite the plethora of human remains from this area, no ranges for sexing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivan Ghezzi.

This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chankillo is a large ceremonial center in the Casma Valley, northern coast of Peru, built in 250 BC to worship the sun. It contains, besides the earliest astronomical observatory known to date in the Americas, an impressive hilltop fort. Previously,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Filloy. María Olvido Moreno Guzmán.

This paper examines a well-known Mexica chimalli (shield), possibly from the sixteenth century, currently found among the holdings of the National Museum of History, Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City. The importance of this study lies in three fundamental aspects: 1) very few Mexica shields have survived; 2) the examples found outside of Mexico have not been fully analyzed; and 3) the chimalli now residing at Chapultepec Castle was originally taken from the Basin of Mexico to Europe during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haibin Gu.

Based on the comprehensive analysis of grain shape and embryos of carbonized rice from archaeological sites, the author draws conclusions as follows: a. There is a difference in shape of spikelet base between cultivated rice and wild rice, but it is difficult to make comparable measurements. Therefore, it is possible to identify rice by using the characteristics of the spikelet base based on one’s experience, but it is difficult to make comparisons between different researchers. b. According to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Archila Montanez. Saul Torres Orjuela.

Charcoal assemblages from five different excavation units dug at the ceremonial center of Tibes, Puerto Rico, have been studied in order to get information on human use and selection of woody taxa during the past. This archaeobotanical data will be related to the archaeological information which includes different features and cultural materials such as lithic artefacts, sherds, shells, human burials, and faunal remains.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renee Kolvet.

This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The diverse ground stone assemblage at Ais Giorkis in western Cyrpus is comprised of tools typically associated with early Neolithic sites. Certain tool categories however, appear to be underrepresented. The dearth of grinding slabs, querns, large mortars, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathalie Suarez Gonzalez. Lawrence S. Owens. Gontran Sonet. Peter Eeckhout.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pachacamac is a major pre-Columbian site located on Peru’s Central Coast. Covering approximately 6 km2, the site was occupied for over a thousand years before the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. In 2012, the Ychsma Project discovered a unique Late Intermediate Period (900 to 1470 AD) multiple burial ('Cx4') made of two funerary chambers with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Glauco Constantino Perez. Astolfo Araujo. Mercedes Okumura. Ethan Cochrane.

This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, different pottery producers are described ethnohistorically, and the most expansive is the Tupiguarani Tradition. However, pre-European population relationships between the Tupiguarani and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mercedes Delgado. Paula Olivera. Eduardo Montoya. Jorge Bravo. Miriam Mejia.

Ceramic samples from the Villa El Salvador site (Early Intermediate Period, 100 BC – 100 AD), located at the Central Coast of Peru, have been analyzed. The goal is the study of production techniques and interchange patterns. The techniques of neutron activation analysis, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and Mössbauer spectroscopy were applied to characterize the ceramic samples. Multielemental composition techniques and multivariable analysis allow us the identification of group...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Castañeda.

This is an abstract from the "Reassessing Chupícuaro–Cuicuilco Relationships in Light of Ceramic Production (Formative Mesoamerica)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the last decades, the existence of stylistic similarities between Chupícuaro ceramics and those found in some Preclassic sites in the Basin of Mexico has raised questions on the nature of the interactions between these two regions. In this paper, we will present the preliminary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiao Ma. Yuli Shi. Herant Khanjian. Hui Fang. Dayong Cui.

This paper focuses on presenting the characterization of materials from fragmented pieces of an imperial lacquer plate in the Luozhuang Han tomb, which dates to the early Western Han dynasty. Various non-invasive and minimally invasive techniques were performed, including optical and electron microscopy, XRF, Raman spectromicroscopy, FT–IR, XRD and THM-Py–GC/MS. The lacquerware pieces consist of a five-layer structure, which includes (from the top): a red pigmented layer, two lacquer finish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Huster.

The Aztec Empire has been characterized as both an example of relatively indirect rule and as a case of relatively collective rule, positions which are least superficially opposed. In this paper, I use ceramic data (INAA, petrography, and type classification) from multiple contemporaneous households at the provincial capital of Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley to evaluate these two positions. I compare data from the time periods during which the site was under local rule and when it was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Navas-Méndez. Brandi MacDonald. Daniel Pierce.

This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the results of an exploratory pigment characterization of the Mendoza and Cortezo Red-Buff ceramics. These ceramic styles produced from CE 1300 until the first part of the Spanish colonization tend to appear in association (Mendoza-Cortezo complex). Mendoza, distinguished for the ceramic plates decorated with polychrome...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Bisulca. Brunella Santarelli. Nancy Odegaard.

Hohokam palettes are a unique artifact found at several important sites in southern Arizona. The Arizona State Museum (Tucson, AZ) has an extensive collection of Hohokam palettes from Gila Bend dating from the Santa Cruz and Sacaton periods (A.D. 850-1150). Most of these palettes have white lead-containing minerals on the surface. This project aimed at characterizing the composition and isotope signatures of these minerals using non-invasive and minimally destructive methods, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Deibel. Michael Deibel. Jiqiao Shi. Johnathon Hornak. Hannah Munro.

50 jade objects from the Late Longshan period, excavated from the Shimao (25) and Xinhua (25) Neolithic sites, were characterized mineral groups using handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (hhXRF) and handheld specular reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (hhFTIR). The objects were found to belong to three types of minerals. 22 objects found in Shimao (88%) are nephrite (19 tremolites and 3 actinolites), two are calcite and one antigorite. From Xinhua, 9 objects (36 %) are nephrite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janene Johnston. Lara Homsey-Messer. Karla Johnston.

Calcitic plant ashes are a ubiquitous indicator of anthropogenic activity at archaeological sites. In conducive preservation environments, ashes may form undisturbed deposits in which individual ash crystals remain intact and identifiable. Under these conditions, ashes afford a unique opportunity to better understand both the human selection of fuel as well as to investigate changes in vegetation communities in response to climate change. This study seeks to characterize ash crystal morphologies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Skosey-LaLonde. Jonathan Reeves. Matt Douglass. David Braun. Emmanuel Ndiema.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any inference of behavior based upon the spatial distribution of archaeological material requires an understanding of site formation processes. Natural agents, such as water flow, may be responsible for post-depositional alteration of buried materials and can result in spatial patterns which mask the behavioral processes associated with the initial deposition...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Kaplan. Richard Newman. Christopher Beekman.

This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wooden objects excavated by Max Uhle and others from LIP sites in Ica, Peru, have been identified variously as *guares (steering boards for sailing rafts) and ceremonial agricultural implements. Rather than examining the function of these items, we have to date focused on their manufacturing components. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Rodriguez.

This study focuses on the analysis of the ceramic material from the archaeological site Cerro de Oro, located in the Cañete Valley. While the Cerro de Oro pottery style has been defined previously in a generic way (Menzel 1964), this study seeks to reopen the investigation and conduct a deeper analysis with recently excavated material, which allows us to characterize it in itself. The aim is to define an iconographic program that allows us to compare and contrast it with popular styles from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

The Mississippian standard jar is a specific kind of vessel form that, in tandem with maize agriculture and shell-tempering, was disseminated throughout the Eastern Woodlands during the late prehistory. As previous researchers have noted, the jar appears to be specifically adapted for slow, long-term boiling, especially when compared to earlier Woodland Period jars that are generally better suited for short-term cooking. Following the proposition that pots are tools, I characterize the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ioannis Iliopoulos. Albert J. Ammerman.

Roman roof tiles and architectural terracottas constitute an important resource for the study of the architectural development of early Rome, through the detection of different sources and perhaps workshops in the region of the Roman capital. Unfortunately, the location of possible clay sources available to the Roman tile-makers has been obscured due to the city’s extensive urbanization. However, a drilling project in the area of the Roman Forum and other sites offers important evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Valdes Herrera. José Luis Punzo Díaz.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Tingambato is located in the state of Michoacán, in a transitional zone between the highlands and the lowlands of the Balsas River. This geographical location allowed a long distance interchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Parish. Nora Franco. Dagmara Werra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The application of reflectance spectroscopy in sourcing studies of quartzite and flint illustrates the broad potential that the technique has in helping us explain human behavior using lithic provenance data. An ongoing line of research is to characterize tool stone used by prehistoric peoples in order to source artifacts back to known deposits. The large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Heath.

First described in the literature in 1962, colonowares were initially interpreted by Ivor Noël Hume as low-cost provisions to enslaved people that substituted for more costly colonial ceramics. Later archaeologists argued that they were the products of enslaved potters or represent a creolized folk pottery that mixed Native American, African and European potting traditions. Whoever made them, a growing body of evidence indicates that they were used by enslaved and free people across racial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leland Bement. Kirsten Carlson.

By describing tool cut marks on bones, Eileen Johnson elevated such incisions to the status of artifact. The size, shape, and morphology provided more than just details of cutting but also came with controversy as to whether these marks alone indicated a human presence. Building on the procedures employed by Johnson on the Southern Plains Cooper site bison bones, the Badger Hole kill assemblage is analyzed to provide a comparison of Folsom bison butchery at sites separated by only 0.7 km...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Roper.

The pottery produced by the Pawnee of the central Great Plains of North America underwent extensive modification in the eighteenth century. Although twentieth-century archaeologists described the "early" and "late" materials, they did not adequately characterize how Pawnee potters modified their craft in terms of vessel morphology or technological practice, nor did they consider pottery function. Thus, we have no satisfactory account of this change. Situated in the context of technological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Riel-Salvatore. Fabio Negrino. Marco Peresani. Martina Parise. Jamie Hodgkins.

This paper presents a description of recently studied assemblages from Middle and Upper Paleolithic levels at the site of Arma Veirana, a large cave located in the mountainous hinterland of Liguria. While one Mousterian level shows an intense occupation, all other levels indicate rather short-lived, low intensity occupations. Beyond technological and typological analyses of these assemblages undertaken to characterize them, we also report preliminary data on raw material procurement patterns...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda M. Castañeda.

Ground stone bedrock features are common at archaeological sites in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. These features are human-made depressions pecked, ground, or worn into bedrock or large boulders, and were used for a variety of processing activities by the indigenous peoples. Although archaeologists in the region have informally recognized different "types" of ground stone bedrock features (e.g., slicks, grinding facets, deep mortars), there have been no dedicated studies of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Sherman. Ryan Parish. Diana Greenlee.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research investigates temporal patterns of tool stone acquisition and utilization during the Archaic period in the Lower Mississippi Valley region. Chert assemblages from Middle and Late Archaic, including Poverty Point, sites are analyzed. Whereas Late Archaic and Poverty Point assemblages are known...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Trabert. Sunday Eiselt. David Hill. Jeffrey Ferguson. Margaret Beck.

Ceramic vessels made from micaceous materials appear at many Protohistoric Dismal River (Ancestral Apache; AD 1600-1750) sites in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming. Dismal River groups were participants in large social and economic exchange networks linking them to other peoples on the Plains and U.S. Southwest. Previous scholars considered the micaceous pottery recovered from these Central High Plains sites as evidence of interaction with northern Rio Grande pueblos and assumed that all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Tune.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest occupations of the greater Bears Ears area are represented by fluted, unfluted lanceolate, and stemmed projectile point technologies indicative of the Paleoindian period. Historically, this period has not been the focus of discussions pertaining to regional archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carmen Sanchez Fortoul.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Late Postclassic Maya Pottery from northern Yucatán sites, including Mayapán, was analyzed using petrographic, chemical, and surface features analyses, seeking patterns in ceramic technology and social interactions. New information was gained (Sánchez Fortoul, C.G , 2018) regarding the selection and processing of raw materials, ceramic production location and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher T. Fisher.

At the time of European contact the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) was the geopolitical core of the Purépecha (Tarascan) Empire (A.D. 1350-1520), and has long been recognized as a Mesoamerican core region . Cities were an important component of Purépecha statecraft but comparatively little is known about their general characteristics, organization, and evolution. Here I explore the use and division of space within the ancient city of Angamuco to document the development of social complexity, complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Parish.

This is an abstract from the "Case Studies in Toolstone Provenance: Reliable Ascription from the Ground Up" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sampling is crucial in characterizing variability in chert at a spatial scale meaningful for provenance data needed to explain prehistoric human behavior. Nearly four decades ago Barbara Luedtke examined the extent and kind of trace element variation in Burlington chert as a mechanism to determine sample size....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza.

In prehistory, the Peruvian highlands contained a complex array of mortuary practices through space and time. In the Ancash region at the site of Hualcayán, several funerary contexts have been excavated since 2011 that demonstrate this variation in mortuary practices between 250 BC to AD 950. This paper presents the results of a study of the archaeological materials excavated from six tombs at Hualcayán, that include the analysis of decorated ceramics, botanical and faunal remains, lithics,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Armando Muro. Nino Del Solar. Luis Jaime Castillo. Remy Chapoulie.

This paper explores from an archaeological, anthropological, and archaeometric standpoint the relationships between two early states in Andean prehistory: the Moche of the North Coast (AD 400 - 850) and the Wari of the Southern Highlands of Peru (AD 600 – 1,000.) In spite of many theoretical models that have been proposed to explain the nature of this relationship, little attention has been paid to analyzing the material expressions of such interaction. This paper focuses on one such expression...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Dombrosky. Andrew Barker. Amy Eddins. Steve Wolverton. Barney Venables.

The identification of archaeological protein residues from cooking pottery using non-targeted mass spectrometry based approaches is a promising avenue of research. A major strength of mass spectrometry in archaeological protein residue analysis is that it allows for the reliability of protein identifications to be probabilistically quantified. Though it is clear that proteins can preserve in ceramics under favorable circumstances, little is known about diagenetic processes that affect...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mijaely Castañón. Lissandra González. Alejandro Valdes. José Luis Punzo.

This poster shows the results of the petrographic characterization of the ceramics found in the basins of the Parota River and Lake Sirahuen, two archaeological areas surveyed as part of the Proyecto Arqueología y Paisaje del Área Centro Sur de Michoacán. Fluorescence techniques applied are an induction of ultraviolet light and petrographic analysis in thin sheets; the first technique was used as an experimental test to identify variances in a very large sample and thereby to reduce to a viable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrícia Monteiro. Laura Caruso Fermé. Nuno Bicho.

Cabeço da Amoreira is a Mesolithic shell midden located near the Tagus river, 60 km from Lisbon, central Portugal. Charcoal analyses are an important tool to identify the wood used for fuel and therefore, understand the relationships between human societies and their landscape. Charcoal is abundant in the Cabeço da Amoreira shell midden. It is present in every context of the site, being part of its occupation horizons and formation processes. Here we present the results from charcoal analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydie Dussol. Michelle Elliott.

Researchers have long considered that the relations between ancient Maya societies and their tropical forested landscape significantly affected social and environmental development throughout the Maya Lowlands. The lingering debate contrasting the hypothesis of a massive deforestation during the Classic period with a model of careful environmental management has not been resolved, and places forest resources exploitation at the center of the rise and development of ancient Maya cities. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only GeorgeAnn DeAntoni. Peter Nelson. Rob Cuthrell.

The purpose of my paper is to present a paleoethnobotanical study of a late prehistoric Central California site (located in Sonoma County) that reconstructs the pre-contact landscape via the identification of wood charcoal remains. The analysis of charcoal and the low-impact paleoethnobotancial methodologies utilized in this study provide the basis for generating hypotheses about how Native peoples interacted with the local environment while also considering how the landscape may have changed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hall. Tanner Whetstone.

This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Black Rock Desert Basin (HUC-6 160402) comprises the largest basin in northwest Nevada. Covering approximately three billion hectares, this basin contains the Quinn River drainage and the Black Rock and Smoke Creek playas. A radiocarbon database for the basin was assembled from the peer-reviewed and cultural resource...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Barrientos. Marcello A. Canuto. Joanne Baron.

The Coronitas Group at La Corona presents a unique architectural setting, consisting of five pyramidal temples aligned in a north-south row and several attached structures. Excavations in this group have been carried out since the beginning of the project, providing important data concerning the function of these temples throughout the site’s occupation. A detailed chronological analysis has shown that this architectural complex was one of the main ceremonial areas of the site, evinced by not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noa Corcoran Tadd.

With the current boom in the archaeology of the colonial period in the central Andes, we risk losing sight of the potential for archaeological investigation of the colonial aftermath. Following important work further afield in the Southern Cone, I argue for the particular relevance archaeology could have in exploring trade liberalization, emancipation, and the new commodity booms of the 19th century. Drawing on the recent investigation of a series of Republican tambos (roadside inns) in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Dillian. Charles Bello.

Charles Conrad Abbott is most well known for his participation in the "Great Paleolithic Debate" of the late 19th century, in which he used archaeological evidence to propose an independent evolution of humans in the New World and the Old World. His theories were soon dismissed as incorrect, but for a brief time, he gained scientific renown for his scholarly publications. However, his theories must be examined within the framework of scientific thought during this time. In 1859, Charles Darwin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Reitz.

Charleston (South Carolina, USA) was founded in A.D. 1670 on the southeastern Atlantic coast of North America. The city’s archaeological record can be divided into four periods: 1710-1750, 1750-1820, 1820-1850, and 1850-1900. Fishes were used by all social strata in Charleston. The minimum number of fish individuals fluctuates between 22% and 30% of the non-commensal individuals and the number of taxa ranges from 44% to 49%. A core group of estuarine fishes was used throughout the city’s history...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Kristin Hoppa. Sherri Andrews.

This poster presents information on charmstones, pendants and other specially curated objects recovered during a recent site-recording project undertaken by ASM Affiliates for the U,S. Navy on San Clemente Island, California. I report on several rare artifacts, including four pendants (two stone and two abalone), steatite effigies, a ceramic object, and several marine mammal ear bones. These finds represent rare or previously un-recorded artifact types on San Clemente Island. I discuss the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mareike C. Stahlschmidt. Christopher Miller. Susan M. Mentzer.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Middle and Later Stone caves and rockshelters in South Africa are commonly rich in organic matter. The formation history of the organic component in the archaeological deposits is still unclear and several natural and anthropogenic processes can be considered. This paper will focus on a discussion of possible anthropogenic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Stewart. Genevieve Dewar.

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. The roots of long-distance social networking run deeper than Facebook. At some point in the Pleistocene, hunter-gatherers began exchanging ‘non-utilitarian’ artifacts like beads and other ornaments over hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of kilometers. Among ethnographically documented foragers these networks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher A. Pool. Michael L. Loughlin. Ashley Whitten.

In 2014 we initiated the Recorrido Regional Arqueológico de Tres Zapotes (RRATZ) to implement the NSF-funded project, "Long-term Social Stability in the Tres Zapotes Region." The goal of this project was to better understand the resilience of a tropical lowland polity through a millennium of political, economic, and environmental challenges, to document the preconditions that gave rise to this Olmec and Epi-Olmec polity, and to document the transformations that occurred in the wake of its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Chapman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Science communication can be a daunting task for researchers who seek public engagement, especially through multimedia formats. Building from your knowledge, experience, and research will make developing multimedia skills more approachable. Creatively including scientific principles to develop aspects like storytelling and in-media citations helps to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Fiedel.

Over the past two decades, migration of Paleoindian ancestors along the Pacific coast has become the dominant origin hypothesis mainly because: 1) arrival at Monte Verde by 14,300 cal BP (or even 19,000 cal BP, as recently claimed) requires a still earlier emigration from Beringia and 2) the alternative "ice-free corridor" ostensibly was not habitable by large herbivores before 13,000 cal BP. However, the coastal hypothesis cannot account for many inconvenient facts. These include: absence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karin Larkin. Michelle Slaughter.

Eighty years ago, Cragmor Sanatorium in Colorado Springs, Colorado was a celebrated asylum for wealthy tuberculars and one of the premier facilities in the West. In its heyday, Cragmor housed some of the wealthiest patients in the United States. In the 1950s, the sanatorium contracted with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to treat Navajo women with tuberculosis. Once it became part of the University of Colorado system in 1965, much of the original history was subsumed under the growing campus but a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Romero. Barbara Roth. Darrell Creel.

Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures were common design elements on Classic Mimbres ceramics. However, certain forms and motifs were more widely used than others. During the 2016 field season at the Elk Ridge Ruin, a bowl with a Tlaloc figure was recovered from a burned ramada area, and a sherd with a partial dragonfly was found in one of the pueblo rooms. While both of these figures were included on rock art panels, they were infrequent on ceramics. This paper examines the presence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Peeples.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archeology at Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA) has primarily focused on areas where the Section 106 process has required survey such as areas subject to inundation from Lakes Mead and Mohave, as well as developed areas. This has led to only 5% of the 1.5 million acres that make up Lake Mead NRA being surveyed. Included in the previously surveyed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dane Williams.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chatelaines suspend multiple items to be employed for such purposes as grooming, tools, or keys and have been widely used from before the Roman occupation of England to well after the Ninth Century. Additionally, they have been used to determine gender identity within Anglo-Saxon Burials. By examining the chatelaine’s use as a diagnostic measure of gender...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasia Szremski.

As a region of high ethnic and ecological diversity, the ancient Andes can be viewed as a collection of ecological, cultural, and political frontiers. Studying the processes that occurred along these frontiers is vital to understanding the indigenous political and economic systems that developed throughout the region prior to Spanish contact. As a transitional zone between the coast and the highlands, as well as a geographic bottleneck through which people and goods had to pass, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Rodriguez-Sama.

This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the unique gallery system at Chavín de Huántar has been one of the PIACCh’s primary goals over the past 30 years. Research objectives that began in the mid-1990s with the challenge of simply making accurate maps of these internal spaces, evolved to address broader...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Mesia-Montenegro.

This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper evaluates 113 radiocarbon dates of 11 Formative sites located in Lima and assesses them considering the existing Chavín chronological framework. All dates were modeled using Bayesian statistics through Oxcal to reassess the chronological range of the Formative period in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Younger. C. Reid Ferring. Steve Wolverton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The chaíne opératoire approach to lithic analysis has rarely been imported from the Old World and applied to analysis of New World lithic assemblages. However, that approach is appropriate for virtually any lithic technology, providing a structured methodology that shifts attention from typological studies to explicitly behavioral analyses, complimenting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yadi Wen.

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since Wu Da-cheng’s Catalogue of Ancient Jades in the Qing Period, research of Chinese jades has largely focused on analyses of their social and ritual significances. In latter half of the 20th century, excavations in Liangzhu, Hongshan, and Xinglongwa culture sites discovered many prehistoric jades. These important discoveries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Turley. Steve Wernke. Manuel Mamani.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the sixteenth century the Spanish introduced new building technologies such as masonry arches, ceramic roof tiles, and quicklime-based products to Andean architectural traditions. The incorporation of these technologies changed the day-to-day experience of building construction, as local laborers created new routines in order to source, produce, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo De La Fuente.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aguada Portezuelo ceramic style (ca. AD 600 – AD 900) from Northwestern Argentine region, presents a highly stylistic variation and complexity in the forming techniques used by ancient potters, concerning surface treatments and the decoration applied to ceramic vessels. One of the most important features in these ceramics, is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirk French.

Although arriving early to an event and consuming food and beverages outside of an arena arguably has its origins in ancient Rome and Greece, the popular and ritualized tailgating associated with American college football is a behavior that warrants archaeological investigation. The Tailgating Behavior Project is attempting to better understand these communal events through ethnographic interviews and garbological/archaeological surveys at Penn State’s Beaver Stadium at University Park,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Earle.

This is an abstract from the "Expanding Our Understanding of the Mojave Desert: Emerging Research and New Perspectives on Old Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will discuss several sites in the southern Antelope Valley (western Mojave Desert) that were occupied in the late nineteenth century by Chemehuevi family groups. At one of these sites, a traditional circular structure—dwelling—dating from that era was photographed in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Campos Martinez. Manuel Dueñas. Guillermo Aguilar Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This interdisciplinary archaeological study centers on Cerro de en Medio (CDEM), an ancient site in the northern reaches of Mesoamerica during the late Classic period (600-900 CE). Advanced chemical analyses of occupation floors provide insights into CDEM's activities, revealing its intricate social dynamics. The research combines this chemical analysis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Martinon-Torres. Andrew Bevan. Xiuzhen Janice Li. Yin Xia. Kun Zhao.

Built in the 3rd century BC, the Terracotta Army constitutes an unprecedented investment of technological resources as well as a huge work of art. An icon of a much larger mausoleum, the army of thousands of heavily armed warriors materialised in just a few decades under the command of the man who would become China’s first emperor. This paper presents some aspects of an ongoing project that investigates this logistical feat, paying particular attention to craft organisation, quality control and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tony Fitzpatrick.

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. Cross‐over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) analyses from chipped stone artifacts have been completed to provide additional information on faunal procurement and use at Hell Gap. Results include positive reactions to dog and bovine antisera, with canid and bison bones represented in the faunal assemblage at the site. In addition to blood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Trejo.

This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present the chemical analysis of human activities in a cave occupied during the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods (AD 600–1500) at Teotihuacan. The archaeological context is formed by different cultural occupations within the same space, but during different periods of time. Due to the cultural and temporal diversity, we implemented a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Heather McKillop.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paynes Creek Salt Works were an ancient Maya Classic Period (A.D. 300-900) salt industry located in a shallow salt water lagoon in southern Belize. The rise of the Paynes Creek Salt Works mirrored the growth in population at inland communities during the Late Classic Period (A. D. 600-900) where salt—a basic biological necessity—was scarce. The demand for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilee Wood. Laure Dussubieux.

A number of potash lead silicate glass beads have been recovered from excavations at the 14th to 16th century Tanzanian site of Songo Mnara, a small but wealthy stone town on an island just south of Kilwa Kisiwani. LA-ICP-MS analysis has shown that two groups of Chinese beads are present, one that dates to the early 15th century, when Zheng He’s fleets visited the East Coast, and the other from around the turn of the 17th century when European glass beads began to be traded in that region. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Keute.

In the semi­arid climate of eastern Africa, mobile cattle pastoralism has been an essential way of life for at least the past 5000 years (Prendergast et al. 2013). On the Mbulu Plateau of northern Tanzania, Dr. Grillo of UW­La Crosse has discovered the largest "Pastoral Neolithic" site in the country, which dates to about 3000 years ago. Based on the animal bones and ceramics found at the site, archaeologists believe the site was occupied by groups of mobile people who herded cows, goats and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Lozada Mendieta. Patrick Quinn. José Oliver.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The “Cotúa Reflexive Archaeology Project” (2015–2018) directed by José R. Oliver (UCL, UK) included a ceramic research analysis in the Venezuelan Middle Orinoco area, specifically in three archaeological sites of the Átures Rapids region, to identify trading and interaction process in precolonial ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Russ. Karen Steelman. Marvin Rowe. Chris von Nagy. Mary Pohl.

The prehistoric rock paintings in the Oxtotitlán site are thought to be among the earliest of Mexico and represent the beginning of the highly influential Mexican muralism tradition. The proposed antiquity of the murals is based primarily on stylistic interpretation of the motifs represented in the paintings. Our objective was to use radiocarbon analyses of organic matter in the paint and biofilms covering paint layers to provide more direct evidence as to the ages of the artifacts. Small paint...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Abo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists widely argue that Fremont potters from the Parowan Valley, in southwestern Utah, manufactured Snake Valley pottery. For my research, I examined various properties of Snake Valley Black-on-gray (SVBG) ceramics using metric data, statistical methods, and newly obtained neutron activation analysis data. I compared my data results on SVBG sherds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Ferguson. Myles Miller. Martha Yduarte.

A sample of over 800 obsidian projectile points collected during 40 years of archaeological survey and excavation on Fort Bliss Military Reservation of south-central New Mexico and western Texas was submitted for chemical characterization and source identification using X-ray fluorescence (XRF). Obsidian projectile points representing all major temporal periods were analyzed, including Paleoindian Folsom points, several forms of dart points produced during the Early, Middle, and Late Archaic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Kebler. Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich.

Slip, a fluid suspension of clay that is applied to the surface of a piece of ceramic, allows for increased control over the functional and aesthetic properties of the finished vessel. The potter can select a slip to provide a more appealing color, texture, and/or luster to the vessel’s surface, while maintaining the favorable functional qualities of the paste.While slip color has long been used as an attribute for classification in the Maya lowlands, only recently have the raw materials of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Mentzer. Bertrand Ligouis. Christoph Berthold. Christopher Miller. Sarah Wurz.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites contain deposits rich in anthropogenic materials whose preservation was impacted by extreme burial environments. The specific chemistries of the burial environments are evidenced by dissolution of archaeological materials and/or precipitation of secondary minerals. In sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dissemination of wall paintings from the Late Preclassic period Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, have focused on the in situ north and west walls of the buried chamber named Sub-1A. In contrast to their excellent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Hernández Sariñana. Luis Barba Pingarrón. Agustín Ortíz Butrón.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlajinga is the southernmost district of Teotihuacan, a cosmopolitan city that thrived in Central Mexico during the Classic Period. Previous research done in Tlajinga includes surface collection associated with the Teotihuacan Mapping Project and the excavation of one apartment compound, during the 70’s. Recent investigations carried out by the Proyecto...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Leal Hernandez. Luis J. Venegas de la Torre. Mario Zimmermann.

Since 2010 the "Proyecto de Restauración e Investigación Arqueológica en el Grupo Este de Kabah, Yucatán", under the direction of archaeologist Lourdes Toscano, performed explorations in the area that covers structures 1C-2, 1C-3, 1C-4 y 1C-5. The goal of these interventions is bearing out the hypothesis that the group served as a special food-processing area. Excavations resulted in the recovery of faunal remains, ceramics, as well as several types of lithic tools like prismatic blades,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez. Soledad Ortiz. Jose Luis Ruvalcaba.

San Pedro Cholul was a henequen plantation and industrial facility, a hacienda estate, situated on the northeastern part of Merida city, Yucatán, México. Its principal development was during the last decades of the nineteenth century, known as Yucatan´s Gilded Age, and it was totally abandoned by the middle of the twentieth century. In 2015 we excavated a kiln facility in order to confirm its function as a lime production structure, to obtain archaeomagnetic dates, and to extract sediment...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Pecci. Luis Alberto Barba. Agustin Ortiz.

When activities are carried on, the substances used and/or produced during the activities are poured onto the on floors and absorbed by them. Specific analyses can be performed to identify the chemical residues absorbed in porous materials, like plastered and earthen floors. As these residues are strictly related to the activities carried on, and reflect their spatial distribution, they can be considered "anthropic activity markers". A methodological approach concerning the understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Obregón. Luis A. Barba.

The results of analysis of chemical residues are presented in a set of 2469 samples of archaeological ceramic artifacts: 434 foreign vessels (Kabata 2010), 452 samples of various types of local vessels (Pérez 2002, 2009), 480 comales (Terreros 2013), 470 pots, pans, 334 cazuleas, 140 braseros and 159 sahumadores. The containers correspond to the Late Classic and Epiclasic lakeside site occupation of Santa Cruz Atizapán, in Mexico State. Residues of protein, carbohydrates, fatty acids, phosphates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Drake.

Complex societies are generally dependent on agrarian economies whose success is contingent on water and nutrient availability. For Chaco Canyon, an Ancestral Pueblo cultural center in northwestern New Mexico with monumental construction dating from the 9th to 12 centuries A.D., the role of local agriculture has been of particular interest. Here, data =are presented from three summers of fieldwork using x-ray fluorescence to identify the geochemical composition of sediments, with a focus on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Min Li.

This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large Neolithic settlements (approximately 1–4 km2 in size) surrounded by rammed earth walls or moat enclosures are frequently referred to as cheng (often translated as “the walled city”) in Chinese archaeology and analyzed as proto-urban centers through Childe’s notion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shuicheng Li. Joshua Wright. Rowan Flad. Kueichen Lin. Zhanghua Jiang.

This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey generated two complementary datasets that provide evidence of the distribution of archaeological material across the survey region: surface survey data and coring data. These datasets are combined to create “Activity Areas,” archaeological constructs that we argue...

DOCUMENT Citation Only María Laura López. María Teresa Planella.

Argentina and Chile are the most austral American countries where Chenopodium species are recovered in several archaeological contexts. In both countries from the north to central and south, various issues are addressed from these findings such as hunter-gatherers subsistence strategies and chenopod grain morphological changes. Multi-proxy methods are used based on pollen, macro and micro botanical remains analyses, and isotopic data. However scarce botanical evidence has carried an uneven depth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lance Greene.

On the eve of the Removal during the Early Republic era, most Cherokees still practiced traditional modes of subsistence farming and participated in local economies. At the same time, a small but influential segment of the Cherokee Nation was completely entrenched in the capitalist economy, operating largescale plantations, businesses, and other ventures. These Cherokees were participants in the slave society of the southeastern United States in two ways; they owned African-American slaves, and...