Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bridget Alex. Omry Barzilai. Elisabetta Boaretto.

Recent excavations of Manot Cave, in the Western Galilee, Israel, have revealed abundant Upper Paleolithic finds, including modern human fossils, in situ hearths, shell beads, bone and stone tools, and faunal remains. The two major Early Upper Paleolithic traditions of the Levant—the Ahmarian and the Levantine Aurignacian—are well represented at Manot Cave. The Ahmarian is thought to have developed from local Initial Upper Paleolithic traditions, while the Levantine Aurignacian may represent a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Laura Kosakowsky. Jaime Awe. Erin Ray.

The prevalence of Late Classic cultural material in ancient Maya ritual cave sites has led both researchers and lay people to characterize cave use as a Late Classic phenomenon; yet, data collected by the Belize Cave Research Project under the direction of Holley Moyes and Jaime Awe demonstrates that many if not most caves were initially used during earlier temporal periods and many sites demonstrate continued use beginning in the Preclassic period. From 2011 to 2015, the regional project has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie Webster.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cedar Mesa Perishables Project has documented almost 5,000 perishable artifacts from alcoves in southeastern Utah. As part of this research, the project has radiocarbon-dated more than 100 well-preserved textiles, sandals, baskets, wooden implements, and other perishable artifacts from Grand Gulch, Butler Wash, Allen Canyon, and Glen Canyon, creating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Stephenson. Karen Smith.

The presence of Middle Woodland period complicated stamped pottery in the lower Savannah River valley would represent the earliest examples of this type of surface treatment in the South Appalachian region, if the dating were certain. Here, we attempt to construct a chronology of complicated stamping for the lower Savannah River valley by reference to sites and assemblages for which age can be inferred by independent means. We simultaneously attempt an attribute-based analysis of complicated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaohong Wu. Ofer Bar Yosef.

Human evolution is punctuated by inventions and innovations. One of the important inventions in the development of Chinese civilization was pottery. Cooking and steaming are two of the processes that change the nature of the food. The same are parching and grilling, or chopping meat and vegetables into very small pieces. The archaeology of South China uncovered the earliest pots in the records in East Asia. In this presentation the dating of pottery bearing layers in three cave sites from this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eszter Banffy. Anett Osztás. Alex Bayliss. Alasdair Whittle.

The Alsónyék Neolithic site was found in the course of a motorway project. The earliest occupants were the first farmers arriving from the North Balkans. After a short gap two later Neolithic occupations were followed by an immense settlement and cemetery of the Lengyel culture: 120 robust houses and in sum 2400 burials could be excavated alone on the motorway track, and this size, completed with geomagnetic surveys, is left without any parallels in Central European Neolithic. In this key area,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Giomi.

The site of Goat Springs Pueblo, in Socorro County, NM, is unusual for a relatively low density of artifacts compared to a large investment in architecture at the site. Consequently, the development of a site chronology is necessary to establish whether the low density of artifacts is attributable to a short period of occupation (or series of short occupations) - despite the considerable investment in architecture - or if another explanation is necessary. Complicating the construction of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Omar Reyes. Cesar Méndez. Manuel J. San Román.

We present results of a systematic radiocarbon dating program carried out in the Chonos archipelago, the northernmost part of the channels of western Patagonia. Eighty-six samples obtained from a variety of archaeological sites, including: strata beneath organic soils, open-air shell middens, caves and rock shelters, individual burials and ossuaries, and modern industrial extraction shell middens, were analyzed. The chronological and spatial distribution of dates along with the analyzed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Beramendi-Orosco. Galia González-Hernández.

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. The moment of the collapse of Teotihuacan and the subsequent occupation of the area by other cultures are still subjects of debate concerning this important urban center in Mesoamerica. Understanding what happened after the collapse and dating the different reoccupations of Teotihuacan can be challenging due to different factors, including...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorena Becerra-Valdivia. Tom Higham.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial peopling of the Americas marks a major event in the expansion of modern humans across the planet. Questions associated with this dispersal remain, however, largely unanswered, with the previously accepted model, “Clovis-first,” effectively refuted. Considering that timing is fundamental in the study of human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Johnson.

Extant deposits at the Bear Creek site are highly compositionally variable, including fibrous peat, fluvial sands, volcanic tephra, and diatomaceous earth, reflecting a series of significant Holocene changes to the local environment. Multiple methods were used to directly date each of these sediments, including radiocarbon dating, single-grain IRSL dating of feldspar, OSL dating of fine-grained quartz, and tephra dating. Results from independent chronometric methods were then integrated with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Titelbaum. Bronwyn McNeil. Samantha Fresh. Bebel Ibarra Asencios.

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. Situated on a steep-sided mountain slope on the eastern side of the Cordillera Blanca in the Ancash region of Peru, the Late Intermediate−Early Colonial period (AD 1000–1650) site of Marcajirca consists of residential, public, and funerary areas. Interment contexts include 35 aboveground walled tombs (chullpas). While it...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Axel Nielsen.

Previous research has interpreted chullpas as open sepulchers, altars, and landmarks which participated in political projects mainly by helping to reproduce corporate identities through ancestor worship and by inscribing power hierarchies and territorial claims on the landscape. This paper builds on the premise that chullpas were not just things with a certain function, but non-human persons (wak'as) capable of acting in different ways, given the affordances of their corporeality as towers or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jeanne Arnold explored the relationship between advanced boat technology and sociopolitical complexity in her research and in many publications. She investigated the origins of the Chumash tomol (plank canoe) and emphasized its key role in facilitating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leon Natker.

Since the beginning of archeological research, style has been used to characterize and define numerous aspects of social interaction and complexity, including communities of practice which structure ways in which elements of material culture are transmitted. The persistent transmission of knowledge through time and space implies a long lived community of practice. Chupadero Black-on-white, produced in central and southeast New Mexico, was possibly the longest lived of all the Black-on-white...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Cruz Berrocal. Chenghwa Tsang.

Archaeological excavations in the setting of the former Spanish colony of San Salvador, founded in 1626 in current Hoping Dao, northern Taiwan, have uncovered remains of a European building that can be identified as the Convent or Church of Todos los Santos, founded while the Spanish colony was active and possibly preserved afterwards under Dutch rule. Several burials have also been excavated, which constitutes a formal cemetery associated to the church. The human remains in the cemetery of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jackeline Quinonez.

This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent times, sweat baths are customary within Indigenous communities of the Guatemalan highlands; specifically, in the Ixil population, in places such as la sierra de Los Cuchumatanes, San Gaspar Chajul, San Juan Cotzal, and Santa María Nebaj. This region is known for its cold climate due to its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Camacho-Trejo.

In prehispanic times, caves signified the place of origin, the underworld, or where Tlacamecayotl kingship was claimed. Cincalco, a cave located on Chapoltepēc Mountain, was first recorded in the 16th century Historia Toltec-Chichimeca (1550-1560) as being appropriated during 1156 or 1168 after the fall of Tollan. Toltec legend tells that the last king of Tollan, Huemac (Big Hand), committed suicide at the cave after failing to receive help from the gods. At the approach of the Spanish,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Pargeter.

The term “microlith” has grown to include a range of small tool technologies beyond those for which it was originally intended (small retouched geometrics). This definitional dilemma has resulted in a loss of precision in studies of technological miniaturization. Miniaturization includes the production and use of small-unretouched flakes from small cores. This paper proposes a new term for this phenomenon, Cinci-liths (Cinci: isiXhosa for small) that solves the problem of distinguishing these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camila Alday.

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plants have been used for making fabrics for thousands of years (Hardy 2007; Hardy et al. 2020; Hurcombe 2008; Kvavadze et al. 2009, Nadel et al. 1994), and many species have been gathered and eventually cultivated for this purpose (Barber 1992; Gleba and Harris 2019; Rast-Eicher et al. 2021). Evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wiley.

Through the combination of Social Network Analysis (SNA), Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper will examine the relationship between physical and social networks in the Middle Neolithic of Central Europe. This Computational Social Science approach will provide insight into social aspects of the archaeological phenomenon of circular enclosures.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Stevens.

Since its designation as a National Historic Trail in 1987, partnerships between government agencies, preservation organizations, contractors, local communities, and individuals have been essential for identifying, marking, preserving, protecting physical traces and historical landscapes as well as, recognizing, interpreting, and promoting research and recreation along the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. In southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado, these diverse partnerships have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Uribe.

This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A mediados de 1970 surgió la conocida discusión si el dominio incaico en el norte de Chile había sido directo o indirecto, a partir de la aplicación que se hizo del modelo sobre la "verticalidad" andina de John Murra. De acuerdo con esta propuesta, la situación se dirimía en términos de que cuán...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Iriarte.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a mentor, Tom Dillehay has formed and influenced me and archaeologists from the southern cone of South America on a variety of themes, including the peopling of America, plant domestication, and the arrival of monuments. In particular, Dillehay had a significant impact on how we think about the uses,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Hughes.

Purpose of this paper is to examine our ability to model trade connections through the use of ceramics and quantitative methods. Ceramic collections from various eighteenth Caribbean sites will be examined through a statistical model for inter-island trade. I shall argue that consumptive patterns are knowable and testable through the archaeological record. Finally, the connections developed from the importation of various goods, such as ceramics, provide opportunities to test ideas about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Gunn.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of North Atlantic cultures around the margins of the Bermuda Azores Subtropical High offer opportunities to observe parallel impacts on cultures on both sides of an ocean on four continents (Americas, Eurasia, Africa) as changes in global average temperatures influence the size and position of the High. Of special interest is the influence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trent Stockton.

Recent efforts by the Corps of Engineers New Orleans District in achieving compliance with Federal laws and regulations within the Regulatory Program are reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the role(s) of stakeholders in the Section 106 process in reviewing after-the-fact applications. The role mitigation in these scenarios is also reviewed and discussed.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Sinclair.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Citation counts are a significant source of data for the evaluation of research by institutional managers and research grant providers when looking at projects and individual scholars. Raw citation counts, however, are inappropriate for this purpose except when seen in the context of comparative publications. This is usually accomplished by the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan Bemmann.

This is an abstract from the "From Campsite to Capital – Mobility Patterns and Urbanism in Inner Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2016 to 2018 the two largest cities of the Mongol Empire, 13/14th century, in nowadays Mongolia were mapped using a SQUID-(Superconducting Quantum Interference Device)-magnetometer coupled with a DGPS. Thanks to this pioneering technique it was possible to create a high precision topographic and magnetic map in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Chase. Brett Houk. Elizabeth Graham. John Morris. Amy Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists’ views of the breadth and depth of precolumbian Maya urbanism, and Mesoamerican urbanism more broadly, have been repeatedly revolutionized by archaeological researchers in Belize. The first National Science Foundation funding for Maya archaeology centered on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Arnauld.

The paper aims at enhancing the contribution by Dominique Michelet and his teams to the knowledge of sedentism and urbanization on the northern and northwestern fringes of Mesoamerica (mainly San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Mexico). Distinct processes of mobility, migration and agglomeration developed in those regions, in particular with reversibility of sedentary life related to multiple factors, among which climatic and agrarian cycles are only partly known so far. Specific community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Petrie.

This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The urban phase of South Asia’s Indus Civilization (ca. 2600–1900 BC) does not offer simple parallels to other contemporary complex societies. This paper will present new insights into Indus settlement networks and the diversity of Indus urbanism. There were apparently only four large-scale (80+ ha) Indus settlements, which were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Ostrich.

England’s coastal and intertidal archaeology is increasingly at risk from winds, waves, rising sea levels and winter storms exacerbated by climate change and can be revealed suddenly and disappear just as suddenly. However there is no statutorily informed intervention for this heritage outside of the national planning framework for this at-risk archaeology and so no infrastructure in place to systematically record these freshly exposed sites before the next storm potentially washes them away....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa-Elen Meyering. Jérôme Robitaille. Paul Pettitt. Robert Kentridge. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present findings from our Citizen Science-focused project that combines Pleistocene Archaeology, traceology, and visual psychology experimentation to offer new perspectives on Ice Age art. Our project visually explores the content and wider context of the 15,800-year-old German Gönnersdorf/Andernach Upper Palaeolithic engraved plaquettes (portable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicola Lercari. Denise Jaffke. Jad Aboulhosn. Graham Baird. Anaïs Guillem.

Bodie State Historic Park is located in the western Great Basin, near the California and Nevada border and encompasses a 2,900-acre historical landscape comprised of buildings, archaeological sites, and features related to 80 years of Gold Rush era mining. Cultural and natural resources at Bodie are at risk of being lost due to wildfires, earthquakes, and lack of funding. Discussing the application of digital heritage methods in the Bodie 3D Project, this paper focuses on community-engaged...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaye Smith. Jeffrey Clark.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015, centenarian Ray Robinson wanted to find a permanent home for thousands of artifacts he collected from numerous sites in the Safford Basin, Arizona during the late 1950s and 1960s, including items from the Bonito Creek Cave Cache. Through a collaborative effort between Archaeology Southwest, Northern Arizona University and the Arizona State Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Clayton.

In this paper I discuss the urban decline and political breakdown of Teotihuacan from the vantage of Chicoloapan Viejo, an agrarian settlement situated in the Basin of Mexico hinterland, 40 km south of the capital city. Fieldwork in the southeastern Basin, including settlement survey led by Jeffrey Parsons in the 1960s and excavations at Chicoloapan in 2013 and 2014, shows that population numbers in this area grew dramatically in the years surrounding the state’s dissolution. As a settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nan Gonlin. Meghan Strong.

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. In the modern world, we are constantly surrounded by natural and artificial light that blends day into night. As a result, the contrasts between day and night, and their associated activities, have been deadened in our contemporary urban environments. This blurring has also bled over into our examination of cities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Doug Mooney.

Philadelphia’s many unmarked cemeteries and burial grounds have been repeatedly disturbed by construction activities in a string of incidents that stretches back more than 200 years. Incredibly, despite the regular discovery of these unmarked graveyards, City officials and local government agencies still make no effort to proactively protect these resources, and profess a wide-eyed bewilderment each time another one is impacted. Likewise, those responsible for disturbing burial grounds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrian Espinosa-Valdor.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The inevitable rise in sea level has drawn the City of Miami into the focus of many studies aimed at understanding future impacts on coastal cityscapes. Local archaeological organizations and professionals are interested in understanding the impact that climate change will eventually have on the region’s archaeological landscape. Miami’s most incredible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken. Keith Eppich. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Juan Carlos Perez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part I of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Eppich. Damien Marken. Olivia Navarro-Farr. Juan Carlos Pérez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Part II of II. The Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) has conducted over a decade of archaeological investigations documenting the modification, layout, use, and chronology of monumental and residential landscapes of the Classic lowland city of El Perú-Waka’. These papers will evaluate current theoretical and methodological perspectives of ancient Classic Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

The temporary (at least physically) community of Black Rock City, which is constituted for one week each year in the Nevada desert at the Burning Man festival, is made up of hundreds of camps. Many of these camps create architecture, or create reference to architectural style and history, that helps cement a sense of identity to that particular camp. The architectural referents are generally not obscure, as they are intended to be read by both camp members, and others who are not members of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Feltz. Patrick Mullins. Brian Billman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July of 2018, the archaeological site of Ciudad de Dios, located in the Moche Valley of the north coast of Peru, was surveyed using a drone. The digital map was then used to not only analyze the settlement’s organization, but also the natural and unnatural destruction that has affected the preservation of the site. Excavated by MOCHE Inc. in 1998, Ciudad de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Alexandrino Ocaña.

This is an abstract from the "Current Dynamics of Heritage Values in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In an archaeologically rich country like Peru, theoretically all people have access to archaeological sites. However, parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable and traditionally marginalized populations are disproportionally affected by archaeological sites (as well as by coronavirus). This presentation asks: What has changed in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Duncan Hurt.

It is generally accepted that the Castro Culture in northwestern Portugal exhibits a fairly consistent architectural tradition, characterized by the presence of certain construction techniques, structural forms, and organizational schemes. Despite this consensus, there is a pressing need for further research on the topic. Publications dedicated to the study of castro architecture are few, and they have mostly taken a broad approach that focuses on apparent commonalities between sites from across...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Brochado De Almeida.

The Cividade de Bagunte is the most publicized archaeological site of the Municipality of Vila do Conde and is classified as a Portuguese National Monument. Located on a mound with great visibility over the territories to the north and south of the Ave River, approximately 30km north of Oporto city, it called the attention and interest of various archaeologists such as Ricardo Severo and Martins Sarmento, in the end of the 19th century, and F. Russell Cortez in the 1940s. F. Russell Cortez...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Brochado De Almeida.

This is an abstract from the "The Iron Age of Northwest Portugal: Leftovers of Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The work of excavation and reconstruction of the Cividade de Bagunte’s Iron Age extant structures has revealed traces of earlier structures and refuse pits that provide new evidence and challenge previous interpretations. Similarly, the work of reconstruction and conservation has confronted us with ethical and practical dilemmas....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krysta Ryzewski. Tareq Ramadan. Aaron Sims.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An unassuming 800-square-foot home in working-class Inkster, Michigan, was, in some sense, the birthplace of Civil Rights leader Malcolm X in 1952. While living there he changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X and assumed the leadership roles in the Nation of Islam that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Gavette. Leo Barker.

The United States Army reactivated Point San Jose, a military base established by Spanish in 1776, during the Civil War to protect the San Francisco Bay from Confederate threats. In 2010, the Nation Park Service undertook rehabilitation of several historic buildings dating back to the late nineteenth century. This paper examines a significant feature discovered during the refurbishment of the army hospital that was active from 1863 to 1903. Archaeological monitors discovered an ossuary pit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Autumn Cool. Rebecca Schwendler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1934, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp DPE-203-C/SCS-7-C was established along McMurdo Gulch near Castle Rock, Colorado. Over the next seven years, CCC enrollees dramatically transformed the surrounding landscape with diverse water and erosion control features. The conservation techniques the CCC shared with local farmers and ranchers overhauled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Schelberg. Carla Van West.

In 1937, a unique Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) sponsored "Indian Mobil Unit" was established in Chaco Canyon. The camp was located east of Pueblo Bonito and the goal was to train Navajo men and a woman in stone masonry, ruins stabilization, drainage control, archaeological excavation, and associated administrative tasks. In 1939, under the direction of National Park Service (NPS) archaeologist Gordon Vivian, men from the Indian Mobile Unit excavated a small village site in advance of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gidusko. Rachael Kangas. Kassie Kemp. Nigel Rudolph.

The Communities of Lake Apopka Artifact Survey Project (CLAASP) is an attempt by several regions within the Florida Public Archaeological Network (FPAN) to preserve information about the many unprovenienced collections of artifacts hailing from this area in Central Florida. Relative to several other areas in the state, the Lake Apopka region is under-represented in the archaeological record. This is in part due to the long term use of much of this area for agriculture prior to the creation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Blumhardt. Colin Grier.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, mariculture has been the focus of numerous anthropological and archaeological studies across the Northwest Coast. Clam gardens (also sea gardens) were utilized by Salish peoples to provide food security, sustainability, and resilience. As elements of the built environment they also represent significant engagements with coastal landscapes....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Smith. Skye Augustine. Dana Lepofsky. Christina Neudorf. Keith Holmes.

Clam gardens are rock-walled, intertidal terraces constructed by the coastal First Nations of British Columbia (Canada) and Native Americans of Washington State and Alaska (USA) to enhance the shellfish productivity of beaches and rocky shorelines. This presentation highlights recent work in the Salish Sea by members and partners of the "Clam Garden Network", a community of First Nations, academics, researchers, and resource managers interested in the cultural and ecological importance of clam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cody Dalpra. Brian Harmon. R. J. Sinensky.

Late Archaic, Basketmaker, and Pueblo I time period projectile point types are problematic in the greater Southwest because many exhibit considerable morphological overlap. The sizable collections from Petrified Forest National Park represent an excellent test case where all of these time periods are well represented. To characterize their considerable morphological range we analyze over 80 projectile points from cross dated surface finds and the excavated sites of the Basketmaker-era Flattop...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooks Lawler.

Archaeologists have had difficulty agreeing upon uniform designations of certain kinds of toolstone that are not easily distinguishable visually. There are occasions when the archaeological definition of toolstone material and the geological definition of the same toolstone material do not match. A situation where this discrepancy might arise is when archaeologists give a more specific name to a cryptocrystalline silicate that is difficult to identify based on visual analysis. An understanding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Vogel.

Efforts to recover and protect indigenous sacred sites in the United States by framing conflicts over them in adversarial terms that employ the vocabulary of conventional legal doctrine on religious liberty and property rights have failed to succeed despite the creative efforts of many advocates. One cannot understand these failed efforts and move toward the development of a more hopeful approach to these conflicts without taking seriously the contrast between Indigenous views of the land and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Warner.

Excavations of two brothels in the northern Idaho town of Sandpoint presented a unique opportunity to explore the nuances of economic differences in the lives of two groups of prostitutes. Over 100,000 artifacts were recovered, providing a rich accounting of a brothel that catered to local mill workers and a brothel whose clientele was more affluent. Further, such a large volume of materials resulted in the recovery of relatively esoteric materials such as douching nozzles and a variety of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Genord. Kaitlyn Davis. Olivia Sage Grunewald. Breeanna Charolla. Alan Salacain.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Research by PaleoWest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we present the findings of PaleoWest’s Class III survey of Island Mesa in Montrose and San Miguel Counties of Colorado at the end of the 2021 field season. This project posed challenges in access and interpretation because the survey area was located on a steep, rugged mesa and the project area was considered a lithic landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Olivia Ellis. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Classic Maya polities of the Upper Belize River Valley were situated in an especially rich alluvial environment, which may have served as a breadbasket for surrounding regions. The region was also one of the most densely settled regions of the Maya lowlands, showing evidence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Williams-Beck.

This paper revisits Classic Maya free-standing towers and portal vaults, some of which were first reported as isolated structures in the Chenes Region during the late 19th Century. Recent research highlights not only formal attributes, but also their particular architectural compound and urban contexts not mentioned by previous studies. More complete architectural compound and urban layout data suggest new temporal and functional interpretations for these unique masonry features at Tabasqueño,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaylee Spencer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient Maya artists fashioned ceramic cache vessels that bear a rich array of painted imagery and iconography, making them popular subjects for scholarly investigation. Themes focusing on bloodletting and burning rites are emphasized in many of these discussions, and these themes form the foundations for interpreting the meanings and uses of this class of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harper Dine.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya utilized a range of landscape modifications for agricultural production, including terraces and raised fields. These agricultural strategies were tied into food systems that also included taxation and tribute, all significant components of a political economy that may have reflected autonomy, exploitation, or both. Using a paleoethnobotanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson. Gary Feinman. Keith Prufer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inequality is present in all forms of human societies, but the degree of inequality within a single city or region varies. Recently in archaeological contexts, inequality has been quantitatively evaluated based on house size using the Gini coefficient and Lorenz Curve, thus enabling the comparison of wealth measures and inequality between ancient cities of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Morales-Aguilar.

The Northern Peten is composed by a complex network of monumental sites that proliferated in the Preclassic during a time period that witnessed the maximal centralization of power in the area. Afterward, during the Classic period, this region experimented a cultural shift and a reoccupation forming a different political panorama. However, little is still known about the Classic Maya settlements of Northern Peten especially about their households. Recent archaeological investigations at Naachtun...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beniamino Volta. Nikolai Grube.

Settlements are both product and site of innumerable, multi-layered, and constantly changing interactions between humans and the material world. At any given moment, the quintessence of a place reflects the prevailing meanings that are associated with it. In this sense, quintessence is inextricably linked to power—over discourse, material, and space. This talk explores the role played by political power in defining the character of the Classic Maya settlement of Uxul, Campeche, Mexico. After...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Charlotte Arnauld. Eva Lemonnier. Julien Hiquet.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ideally every ancient Maya city should be characterized by its population density and its urban agricultural productivity, closely linked parameters that must be explored before tackling the issue of production/exchange relations with hinterlands. Río Bec can be characterized as a low-density urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Leight. Christina Halperin.

One of the striking features of contemporary Maya textiles is that their production techniques and aesthetics can be highly regionalized. These textiles manifest strong village, town, and community identities while simultaneously reproducing other identity formations (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Likewise, Classic period Maya (ca. 300-900 CE) political formations were highly regionalized with multiple, shifting centers of gravity. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about the variability of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Marken. Charlotte Arnauld.

Following decades of debate, most scholars accept Classic Maya cities as the hearts of spatially expansive, low-density urban settlements. This introductory paper will summarize past and current perceptions of Maya urbanism, emphasizing potentially overshadowed considerations of urban planning, mobility, and community dynamics – fundamental cross-cultural features of urbanization – and their detection in lowland settlement patterns. The recent florescence of research deriving insight from urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli. Sandra Balanzario Granados.

This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar survey of the city of Dzibanche reveals the city's settlement to be more extensive and populous than previously thought and consistent with its political reach as a hegemonic state. A closer look at the organization of public spaces within its center reveals architectural arrangements that appear to share...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanne Baron.

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Kerr cataloging project at Dumbarton Oaks is creating opportunities to re-examine iconographic motifs and hieroglyphic texts on Maya pottery. One avenue in which this has been fruitful is the analysis of vessels depicting wahy creatures. In modern communities, ways are powerful...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer. Amanda Semanko. Martin Welker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People in the ancient Southwest domesticated, tamed, or managed several species of birds. The Late Pithouse and Classic Mimbres (AD 750-1000) archaeological site of Elk Ridge provides a rare example of ancient aviculture in the Mimbres area of southwestern New Mexico. Excavations by Human Systems Research, Inc. at Elk Ridge in the upper Mimbres Valley...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Crawley. Fumiyasu Arakawa. Jared Cicchetti. Garrett Leitermann.

Classic Mimbres sites can be seen across the Mimbres Valley and Upper Gila areas. For one tributary of the Gila River, Diamond Creek, there are several of these sites that lay alongside it. As a part of the "Northern Mimbres Project," two sites–Twin Pines Village (a large Classic Mimbres village) and South Diamond Creek Pueblo (a small four room site)–have been excavated by New Mexico State University field schools over the course of three years. Our excavations and research of these sites have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael L. Loughlin.

During the Protoclassic (A.D. 1-300) and Early Classic (A.D. 300-600) periods, the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) experienced an important reorganization. The political influence of the large center at Tres Zapotes began to wane and a series of new centers were established across an increasingly independent, but fragmented political landscape. Eschewing the architectural cannons of the Tres Zapotes polity, these new centers are characterized by diverse configurations revealed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Mullen.

The Tres Zapotes polity flourished in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB) between 400 BC and 300 AD. As Tres Zapotes’ economic and political power waned in the Early Classic, the ELPB became a political frontier (Stark 1997). Sites in the contested political landscape of the ELPB and Tuxtla Mountains strengthened their ties to both Classic Veracruz and Central Mexico (Stoner 2011; Loughlin 2012; Santley 2007). This paper broadly explores how the political and economic landscape of the ELPB...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Longstaffe. Kyle Farquharson. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Felix Kupprat. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations at the Ximbal Che group at Yaxnohcah have documented intriguing new data with implications for understanding sociopolitical and economic integration in the Bajo el Laberinto region. These data include diverse cultural assemblages that show radical changes to the built...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacy Ryan.

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. Similar projectile point types were used by people in central and southern Arizona during the Classic Period (A.D. 1150-1450), a time when considerable changes occurred within the region. An analysis of over 600 points was conducted to examine how social, technological, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Loendorf.

This paper summarizes archaeological data that show a substantial decrease in population occurred between the Sedentary (ca. 950-1150AD) and Classic Periods (ca. 1150-1500) along the middle Gila River in the Phoenix Basin. This decrease coincides with well documented increases along the lower Salt River. Extensive data suggest this pattern subsequently reversed in the Historic period, when people were again concentrated along the middle Gila, and the lower Salt River was extensively depopulated....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Adler.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1961, in collaboration with the Picuris Pueblo tribal nation, Dr. Herb Dick initiated a multidisciplinary research project that documented architecture, agrarian strategies, sacred landscapes, ethnohistory, ethnobotany, avifauna, and other lines of evidence to better understand the past millennium of Picuris's history. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Amaroli.

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning with the first formal archaeological studies nearly a century ago, findings in the territory of El Salvador have been recognized as attesting to the establishment of Nahua migrants. This has commonly been interpreted, in conjunction with ethnohistoric accounts, as resulting from a single episode of what has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

Mexican iconographer Sara Ladron de Guevara identified three distinct Classic Veracruz mural painting traditions centered at El Tajin, Las Higueras, and El Zapotal. In this paper I examine how canons of representation, color palette, and architectural planning reveal regional and inter-regional artistic preferences. Beyond aesthetic considerations I analyze these same attributes from the perspective of semiotics. I will focus on what the art and architecture at the three sites tells us about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of a larger study on Classic Veracruz fragmented bodies and sculptures, I sketch two case studies of contexts in which fragmented yokes, decapitated heads, and figurine body fragmentation come together in Protoclassic and Early Classic Tres Zapotes and Cerro de las Mesas.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tuxtlas Polychrome ceramics of south-central Veracruz, Mexico occupy a visible presence in precolumbian museum collections. Boldly rendered deities and zoomorphic figures are the focal point of bowls, plates, and vases, their images alluding to a complex supernatural world. While well represented among the corpus of Classic Veracruz artifacts, these vessels...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justyna Olko.

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nahuatl, often referred to as the “Aztec language,” is one of the languages most widely identified, both in the academy and in public awareness, with prehispanic cultures. In archaeological and historical research, it often receives the name...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maren Moffatt. Brian Codding. Kenneth Blake Vernon. Simon Brewer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic classification is central to archaeological analysis, but without systematic and objective quantification, archaeologists cannot determine the definitive number of types or what they represent, despite decades of research. Recently archaeologists have applied machine learning models to improve the effectiveness of ceramic classification and extend...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Mesia.

Recent research has expanded drastically the sample size available for performing ceramic analyses at Chavin de Huantar during the last decade. Initial efforts have showed that the ceramic complexity previously described during the end of the last century has fallen short and that it is necessary to rethink Chavin ceramics in terms of the new data available. In of In this regard this paper attempts to organize and classify the corpus of ceramics dated from the Middle Formative (1200 – 800 BCE)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Hartford.

This pilot project used petrographic analysis to examine fifteen Classic Period sherds from the site of Azcapotzalco, Distrito Federal, Mexico. These sherds had already undergone instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), which separated the sherds into two chemical groups--Azcapotzalco-B and Tenochtitlan--and left one-third of the sherds unassigned. This project aimed to compare the INAA results with results obtained through the visual analysis of the microstructure of the sherds and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Brown.

The Chumash manufactured cooking vessels using soapstone from Southern California quarries for thousands of years, especially between A.D. 1500 and 1804. These vessels have been recovered in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging fin form small cups to large ollas with small orifices that stand over two feet tall. Hundreds of Chumash soapstone cooking vessels were collected by early antiquarians in California and are curated in museums throughout North America with little information regarding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Kirkley. Jeanne Moe.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Project Archaeology is a heritage education organization dedicated to teaching scientific and historical inquiry, cultural understanding, and the importance of protecting our nation’s rich cultural resources. It is a diverse network of educators that make archaeology education accessible to students and teachers nationwide through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hard. Eva C. Wikberg. Michael L. Cepek. June A. D. Burke.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new course taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) during Fall 2022 provided early career planning information to lower division undergraduates. Titled “Anthropology Matters”, the course had the goal of enhancing the success of undergraduate majors preparing for anthropology related careers. Representing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michiko Intoh.

Pottery tradition in Micronesia was diverse in terms of technology. This relates to various factors, such as historical and/or cultural reasons and the natural environmental conditions. Above all, the nature of clay resource available to the potters has significant effect upon forming techniques and products. Thanks to William Dickinson’s wide-ranging geological knowledge and active involvement in mineralogical studies of excavated pottery from Oceania, our understanding on prehistoric pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jing Cheng.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive research on ceramic production in agricultural societies, ceramic traditions of coastal hunter-fisher-gatherer groups in southern China have been comparatively overlooked. The middle Neolithic site Xiajiaoshan, said to belong to the Xiantouling Culture (dated to 7,000 BP), excavated in recent years has yielded abundant intact pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tamra Walter. Valentina L. Martinez. Sari Turcotte.

Recent archaeological investigations at site (C4-084B) within the Rio Blanco valley in coastal Ecuador yielded significant data regarding Manteño occupation of the region during the Integration Period (A.D. 700-1500). Situated in a cloud forest in the community of El Pital, the site contains the remnants of masonry residential structures along with evidence for at least two different occupations. Phase I, the earlier occupation, is separated from Phase II, the later occupation, by a gravel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Linford.

The likelihood of endemic clays both suitable and used for local ceramic production within the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona is disputed. Researchers imply clays within the park are unsuitable for ceramic production. Ethno-archaeological studies, though, document that most traditional potting communities procure clay for ceramic production within a three to five kilometer radius of their residence (Arnold 1985). In this case, past individuals residing within the current park boundaries...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zackary Gilmore. Kenneth Sassaman.

An understanding of the raw materials available to ancient potters is essential to archaeological considerations of vessel production and provenance. Consequently, the collection and analysis of raw clay samples has become a common component of such studies. This poster presents the results of compositional analyses of clays from along the Savannah and Ogeechee Rivers in Georgia and South Carolina via petrographic point-counting and neutron activation analysis (NAA). These analyses were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simone Muhammad.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While scholars have long studied the pottery production of African peoples in the Caribbean during the colonial era, there has been minimal archaeological research on the ceramics used by enslaved African and African-descended peoples on St. Croix, USVI. This paper represents the culmination of thesis research to conclusively establish defining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Dobrov. Kari Schleher.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster will focus on my current master’s research and is in joint partnership between the University of New Mexico, Joshua Tree National Park, and the descendant communities from the California Desert. The project developed through consultation with the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and Agua...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haeden Stewart. Jason De Leon.

The growing subdiscipline of archaeology of the contemporary has stressed the importance of studying detritus to access silenced or abject aspects of the recent past. This paper takes a different approach, focusing on the ways that an archaeology of the present is not about uncovering “truths” that correct ethnographic research, but is rather a constant agitation and addition to ethnographic engagement. Following recent American pressure on the government of Mexico and changes in Mexican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Waite. Emma Vance.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sulphur Townsite is a 400-acre, NRHP-eligible historic archaeological site in northwest Nevada. The site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Black Rock Field Office within the Winnemucca District. Although originally developed into a cultural interpretive site in...