Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Roa. Ashley Sharpe. Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional zooarchaeological methods studying trade rely on the identification of animals found outside their natural habitat ranges. More recently, strontium isotope (86Sr/87Sr) analyses have proven to be a powerful tool for studying the movement of animals found in archaeological contexts. Strontium isotopic evidence from the Maya lowlands has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Gonzalez Carretero. Dorian Q. Fuller.

Remains of archaeological cereal preparations are often recovered from archaeological Neolithic sites across the Near East and Europe through flotation. These are recognizable as seemingly amorphous charred fragments of plant material. The study of these charred fragments of ancient meals is of considerable importance because the identification of their components allows the characterization of the nature of the food types represented, and their preparation, provides insights into past culinary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Albert. Caitlin Clark. Susan Kooiman. William Lovis.

There is no recorded maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) at Laurel or North Bay Initial/Middle Woodland sites in the northern Lake Michigan-Huron or Superior basins of the western Great Lakes, despite the presence of maize microbotanicals in Michigan, New York, and Quebec as early as 400 BC. To evaluate the potential for an early maize presence in this region, samples of carbonized food residues adhering to sixteen ceramic vessels from the Laurel/North Bay Winter site (20DE17) were processed and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Buttress.

This report focuses on the northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) recovered in the 2016 excavation of Hup’kisakuu7a (Site 93T) in Pacific Rim National Park. This study combines an analysis of the data recovered through archaeological excavation and column sampling at 93T, a review of neighbouring archaeological site reports, and the collection and measurement of a modern assemblage of abalone shells. The aim was to answer three research questions: first, how ubiquitous is the presence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henny Piezonka. Enkhtuul Chadrabaal. Jonathan Ethier. Martin Oczipka. Christian Ressel.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Towns and cities have been an integral part of the Mongolian nomadic society for more than a millennium, and abandoned urban sites from various periods dot the land, inscribing memories of lost empires and long-gone alliances into the cultural landscape. The relation between sedentary urban and mobile pastoralist lifeways has constituted a key...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists are quick to connect race and class in conversations about the dead. However, in our discussions of the living—especially on BIPOC archaeologists and their work—class takes a backseat to race, an outcome I call “wealth blindness.” I argue that, as professional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tasia Scott.

The purpose of this research is to determine the manner in which site abandoned occurred in Manabí, Ecuador. The Manteño were one of many pre-Hispanic cultures exchanging local resources, engineering new technologies, and mass-producing goods along the coast of Ecuador. Successful in their chiefdom and independent from the expanding Inca Empire, the Manteño remained culturally uninterrupted for more than 800 years. The focus of this research is to understand the interruption and thus...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lattanzi.

When the Abbott Farm site was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1976, it had already been well-known for a hundred years as a significant archaeological site. Now over 40 years later, the Abbott Farm continues to baffle archaeological scholars as to the precise meaning of its importance to prehistoric and historic native peoples of the region. Past research, present trends, and future analysis are discussed providing a myriad of evidence showing that this site continues to provide and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanette Nicewinter.

Paintings on fineware ceramic vessels and spoons by the pre-Hispanic Cajamarca culture of the north highlands of present-day Peru emphasize an abstracted and expressionistic aesthetic unlike their north coast neighbors, the Transitional Moche culture, and their contemporaries, the Wari state. During the Middle Horizon (c. 600 - 1000 CE), the Cajamarca culture's paintings developed a greater emphasis on human and animal imagery while maintaining an abstraction of forms. The figures are reduced to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yue Li. Yue You. Yiting Liu. Nuo Xu. Jianxin Wang.

This research examines seven horse skeletons unearthed from the burials and sacrificial pits of the late Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty at the Shirenzigou and Xigou sites in Xinjiang. Vertebrae were observed for lesions such as hyperostosis, asymmetry, spinal fusion, horizontal fractures on epiphyses, and dorsal inter-pressing or joining of the vertebrae. Because the abnormalities are similar to those identified as the result of horseback riding in archaeological research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Bettinger.

Socio-political development in aboriginal California follows a trajectory quite different from that in much of western North America, culminating in very small socio-political units, in some places independent family groups approximating those characteristic of the Great Basin. The key development leading to this family-level organization was in both places the privatization of stored plant food, which incentivized the intensive use of plant foods (pinyon and acorn) that were abundant but costly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilie LeBrell. Geoffrey McCafferty.

A desire for art to reflect social identity is made apparent through prolific representations of human faces in Pre-Columbian ceramics. The ceramic art of Greater Nicoya and the surrounding regions demonstrates an intrinsic drive to communicate distinct group characteristics and illustrates the importance of individuals’ bodies as instruments of both personal expression and social relationships. Physical expressions of collective identity foster a sense of belonging and satisfy the human desire...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Calvo Trias.

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Bronze Age, the archaeological record of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea reveals a conspicuous prevalence of similarities across all the islands within the archipelago. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying this convergence phenomenon within the archaeological record, we developed a study centered on the analysis of mobility and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucas Bueno. Juliana Betarello.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several papers have discussed the role of rivers in the process of knowledge, occupation, and dispersion of human groups in unfamiliar or inhabited landscapes. Most of the time the rivers are seen as displacement axes, facilitating the connection between distant points in a short time. However, at the same time as connecting elements, rivers can play the role...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Lucet. Irais Hernández.

To study Mesoamerican architecture and urbanism, their graphic description is required. This description must be accurate, and it is traditionally expressed in coded and scaled drawings. For decades, archaeologists have produced extensive documentation of their excavations, which institutional services in charge of the registration of monuments have supplemented to obtain complete inventories in order to support conservation and restoration activities. However, this material has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Gusick. Jillian Maloney. Todd Braje. Jon Erlandson.

Methodological advances are reshaping our understanding of island colonization. Refinements in dating methods, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, and search techniques have resulted in discoveries that challenge outdated theories of islands as marginal to human migration, settlement, and subsistence. This is particularly true for research related to the initial peopling of the New World via a Pacific Coast route. Once considered irrelevant to the story of New World colonization, California’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Riede.

The Hamburgian is associated with the initial pioneer human re-colonization of northern Europe during the Late Glacial. Whilst much recent research has focused on the dynamics of initial entry, this paper addresses the end of the Hamburgian, especially in its northernmost range of present-day southern Scandinavia. The difference in cultural signature between the Hamburgian culture’s late Havelte variant and its successor in the region, the Federmessergruppen, is striking and difficult to explain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marion Coe. Edward Jolie.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excluding much younger examples of distinctive Fremont-era and Promontory Phase moccasins, footwear of any sort seems to be largely, if not entirely, absent from the archaeological record of the Eastern Great Basin during the preceding millennia. This apparent pattern stands in sharp contrast to the well attested and venerable woven sandal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Buchanan.

Archaeological studies of hypothesized regional abandonments often perform what Tim Ingold (2008) refers to as "a logic of inversion;" by drawing lines around sites, regions, and spaces we create boundaries in which life is lived, and by extension, create spaces where life is not lived. In examples of abandonments, the absence of evidence related to human living spaces is taken as the absence of (human) life. In other words, when we demarcate "abandoned" or "unoccupied spaces" (noted as such by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriella Soto.

This is an abstract from the "Chicanx Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In pursuing archaeological research on contemporary undocumented migration at the Arizona-Sonora border, it became necessary for me to address the myriad and potent absences that made the entwined processes of undocumented migration, humanitarian efforts on behalf of migrants, and border security aimed against migrants tangible to me through scales of space and time....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Chuipka.

The San Juan Basin of New Mexico is one of the most archaeologically rich areas of the American Southwest. Three years in, the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is the latest in a long history of infrastructure projects that provides the opportunity to conduct archaeological research and expand our understanding of the past. One question being addressed is when the Southern Athapaskans moved into the upper San Juan Basin and how long they occupied it before Navajo culture emerged. At the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Milosz Giersz. Alan Hogg. Branden Cesare Rizzuto.

This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Castillo de Huarmey, located on the North Coast of Peru and dated to the Middle Horizon period (ca. 650–1050 CE), was one of the most important provincial centers of the Wari Empire. Presenting the results of an extensive radiocarbon dating program, the present paper focuses on the chronological aspects of this unique...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hoopes.

In 1987, the author’s doctoral dissertation featured a comprehensive analysis of calibrated radiocarbon dates associated with the earliest ceramic complexes in the Americas towards a model for the emergence of sedentary lifeways. This resulted in a critical evaluation of James Ford’s posthumously published model for the Early Formative diffusion of pottery as well as other cultural features in a region extending from the Southeastern U.S. through Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian Area to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam King. Terry Powis. Kong Cheong. Nilesh Gaikwad.

We recently identified residues indicative of the preparation of Datura in ceramic and shell vessels dating to the Mississippian period (900-1600 CE) of the southeastern United States in the collections of the Gilcrease Museum. Datura is a genus of flowering plants whose seeds and flowers contain tropane alkaloids that produce hallucinogenic effects when consumed by people. The use of Datura for a variety of medicinal ritual practices is well established among Native Americans today and in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Price.

This research looks at Tel Abu Shusha in the Jezreel Valley of Israel, an understudied site in a strategically important Levantine area with potential evidence of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman settlements. Surface survey was completed in nine square kilometers around the Tel, resulting in ceramic density data as well as over 2,500 mapped surface features in GIS, such as quarries, wine presses, and architecture. Additionally, four magnetic susceptibility grids were taken in this area, each one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Pnewski.

Intensively recorded, researched, and utilized historic and archaeological sites present many unique opportunities and issues in their study and interpretation. One such site is Fort Snelling National Historic Landmark. The large amounts of historic map and archival data available throughout the history of Fort Snelling allows for both more complete, and more complex understandings of the site. The use of georeferenced archival maps can highlight and visualize a timeline for the progression of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kansa.

This paper explores the challenges in recognizing and rewarding greater openness and collaboration in archaeology, given neoliberal institutional realities. After years of advocacy, governments and major granting foundations have embraced many elements of the open science reform agenda. The White House recently made open access and open data in research a policy goal, and it is exploring other policies to promote "reproducibility" in federally-funded research, including archaeology. Despite open...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Speakman. Victor Thompson. KC Jones. Isabelle Lulewicz. Carla Hadden.

Over the past three decades, competition for archaeology faculty jobs at North American colleges and universities has risen significantly. Although the numbers of doctorates in anthropology has increased by approximately 70%, the numbers of new faculty positions has remained relatively constant. The present study examines academic job market trends using data derived from the 2014—2015 American Anthropological Association AnthroGuide. We identify which universities are the most successful at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Albert Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Education and Training in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Under the directorship of Dr. Albert Gonzalez, the C. E. Smith Museum of Anthropology at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) has dedicated much of its resources and staff time to exploring creative methods by which to connect BIPOC undergraduate students and recent graduates to the CRM network and related jobs in the region....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Marsh.

Long-term cultural change can be non-linear and punctuated by brief episodes of accelerating history. Such episodes, or emergent phenomena, have been described by a diverse set of theoretical approaches such as complexity theory, complex adaptive systems, panarchy, resilience theory, "eventful" sociology and archaeology, and the Annales School of History. These episodes can result in profound, lasting changes for large groups of people, but can happen too fast to be clearly documented without...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Estrada-Belli.

Investigations in the thickly forested Peten region is complicated by lack of roads, water, communications, visibility and other things we often take for granted even in archaeology. In most cases the time it takes for results of such field work to reach a general audience can be measured in years. Many of us have turned to technology to alleviate this situation but the gains can be less than what is expected. The advent of GPS handheld devices have been useful to locate sites (and ourselves)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Brenan.

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent archaeological project on Birch Island, Labrador, highlights questions of how digital data are used to gather and convey information to stakeholder communities, in particular, Indigenous groups with limited internet access in some remote locations. This paper questions if representing the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Fladd.

Throughout its occupation, Homol’ovi I, a Pueblo IV site in northeastern Arizona, underwent continuous alteration reflecting the movement of groups both internally and externally. The constant attention to rebuilding, redirecting, and resurfacing rooms and the meticulous patterning of depositional material within structures indicate a continued endeavor to reform the built environment to better reflect the identities, needs, and memories of the current residents. In order to analyze the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Jolivette. Amanda Taylor. Sarah Van Galder.

The majority of coastal property in the Pacific Northwest is in private hands. Although laws in Washington State protect archaeological sites on private property, such sites are traditionally only assessed on a case by case basis when the landowner seeks a permit. Landscape scale assessments of coastal resources in the Puget Sound region are rare. Here we compare the results of two such projects along Puget Sound; an academic project in the San Juan Islands conducted by researchers at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John O'Hara.

Besides its rich and complex archaeological record, the Late Glacial of Franco-Cantabria is also a moment of central importance in the population history of Western Europe. This region was the principal demographic source for the post-LGM recolonization of Western Europe, and the influence of cultural trends originating here may be observed across the continent. This paper will present the goals and initial results of an ongoing research project to analyze the internal social dynamics of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Marla Toyne. Armando Anzellini. Miquel Pans. Josep Ribera Torró. Esteve Ribera Torró.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Ancestors: New Approaches to Andean "Open Sepulchers"" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The complexity in mortuary traditions across the Chachapoyas region ranges from single individual interments to large, commingled mortuary caves, as well as including constructed sarcophagi and shared open chambers high on cliff faces. Variation within sites and across funerary complexes demonstrates individuality in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Cassidy. David Robinson. Devlin Gandy.

This presentation showcases the contemporary value of Virtual Reality as a means to experience difficult to access, sensitive cultural sites for different stakeholder groups including researchers, land owners, and Native groups. Here, we show the enhanced virtual reality environment of Pleito Cave, a fragile world class rock art site with accessibility limitation. We discuss how scientific research can be translated into VR data sets to speak to diverse communities and different needs, providing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Martinez. Esther Rimer.

As museum object collections continue to be an important mainstay to anthropological research, collections access is in high demand, and can sometimes feel like a daunting task. This is particularly relevant when working with large museums such as the Smithsonian Institution. Knowing where collections are housed, the scope of collections, and means of access for data including collections history, images, and archival material contributes significantly to achievement of research goals. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brady Liss. Thomas Levy. James Day.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of Technical Knowledge: Cross-Craft Perspectives on Mobility and Knowledge in Production Technologies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Faynan region of Southern Jordan is one of the largest copper ore deposits in the Levant. These ores were exploited throughout history, and during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-800 BCE), copper production in Faynan reached an industrial scale. However, excavations at Khirbat...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christophe Helmke. Sergei Vepretskii.

This is an abstract from the "New Light on Dzibanché and on the Rise of the Snake Kingdom’s Hegemony in the Maya Lowlands" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Much remains unknown as to the hieroglyphic stair dedicated by 642 AD by K’an II, the great king of Caracol. Constituent panels were discovered at a number of different sites, including Caracol, Ucanal, Naranjo, and Xunantunich. The most recently discovered panels contribute greatly to our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jun Sunseri. Isabel Trujillo.

This is an abstract from the "Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Berkeley-Abiquiú Collaborative Archaeology (BACA) Project strives to serve local interests regarding heritage management and narrative control in a community often relegated to lesser authority by the ongoing processes of settler colonialism. Can the partnership be a legitimate part of a decolonizing toolkit as the community...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danii Desmarais. Lesley Howse. Mari Kleist. Letitia Pokiak.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Within Arctic archaeology, we are encouraged by community-led and partnership projects to continuously rethink our research practices. These projects have demonstrated that change is possible, it can be done successfully, and it leads to rich holistic narratives of past lifeways. However, more attention needs to be given to how current practices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Bonneau.

As of the beginning of September 2017, the remains of over 250 individuals were recovered from the building site at 218 Arch Street. While the presence of bodies in what was once the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia burial ground should not surprise us, contemporary documents and written histories of the congregation state that all burials had been moved to the Mount Mariah Cemetery in the mid-nineteenth century. The abundance of human remains left on the original site raises questions for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Riel-Salvatore. Allison Parrish.

Given how large the topic of acculturation looms in discussions of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to defining it in order to develop operational concepts that can be tested against the archaeological record. In the specific context of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, the notion of acculturation has usually been considered as a unidirectional, one-size-fits-all social mechanism to explain both the appearance of transitional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Biermann. Alison S. Brooks. David R. Braun.

Studies of stone artifacts increasingly rely upon measurements of 3D models, due to the ability to capture a larger range of volumentric and angular attributes on these models. Despite the enthusiasm for these new techniques, little research has been conducted on the efficacy of digital reconstructions for quantitative lithic analysis. The objective of this project is to quantify the advantages and disadvantages of two methods of 3D data capture (e.g. photogrammetry and laser scanning). We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Crews. C. L. Kieffer. Magdalena Wantschik.

In light of more and more museums relying upon volunteers, this study investigates the accuracy of museum volunteers taking measurements of projectile points for the purpose of documentation. Data collection was done by two archaeologists trained in lithic analysis, one anthropologist previously not trained in lithic analysis, and two retired volunteers with no previous training in lithic analysis. Volunteers received a crash course in measuring greatest length, width, and thickness prior to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wright.

Primarily located in the tropical latitudes with a diverse array of unique floral and fauna, there are unique challenges for obtaining a reliable chronology for archaeological sites on the African subcontinent. Radiocarbon dating is the most frequently employed method for gaining age control on Late Quaternary sites, however aspects affecting the accuracy of the method are rarely considered. Carbon recycling from reservoirs in old sedimentary structures may uptake into ostrich eggshell or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Zygadlo.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New archaeological survey technologies have transformed the way in which sites are mapped. Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in Petén, Guatemala, has been surveyed in a variety of ways including a theodolite with an electronic distance measurement (EDM), total station, lidar, and photogrammetry. This paper aims to compare various mapping...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Adolfo Cadena Guativa.

Las cerámicas tempranas del Caribe Colombiano (5000 a 1000 a.C.), las más antiguas del continente, son importantes en la formulación de hipótesis sobre origen y producción de alimentos en América. Esta investigación plantea un estudio tecnológico de cerámicas de Puerto Hormiga y Monsú desarrollando tres actividades. Primero, se determinaron las propiedades físicas y mineralógicas mediante técnicas de laboratorio (RX, petrografía, SEM, y DRX). Segundo, se comprobaron hipótesis sobre su función....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Mercader Florin. Robert Bird. Mariam Bundala. Fernando Diez-Martin. Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo.

Several compendia have illustrated the reach of conventional approaches to exploring the origin of omnivorous diets. Included are the cost of developing large brains and bodies; tooth size/shape, enamel thickness, wear; and the chemical signal from diet on bones/teeth. Over the last decade, new interpretations of human origins have proposed a long history of fire dependence, suggesting humans are biologically adapted to cooked food. However, these studies have not provided direct indication of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

The dispersal of Acheulean hominins outside of Africa is one of the most important research areas in human evolutionary studies, having been the topic of paleoanthropologists and archaeologists for many decades. Yet, precise knowledge about the timing and geographic movement of archaic hominins across Eurasia is still in its infancy. The aim of this presentation is to discuss what we currently know about the distribution of Acheulean hominins, and to report on new field work findings in southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Herr. Susan Stinson.

This is an abstract from the "Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we will take a three-part approach to examining and achieving safe workspaces in cultural resource management (CRM), considering demography, reports of harassment and assault in the workplace, and solutions. First, we will provide a snapshot of the participation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Galvan. Betsy Kohut.

Excavations in the main plaza of Kiuic in Yucatan, Mexico, revealed the presence of a dismantled stucco façade south of the temple it once adorned. The façade dates to the temple’s initial Late Classic construction (600-800 AD) and is thought to have been stripped from it during a second construction phase in the Terminal Classic (800-1000 AD). Preliminary analysis of the deposit provided insight into the methods used to sculpt the stucco revealing its theme to have been a historic-narrative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Sabo. Daniel Koski-Karell. William Pestle.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1930s, scholars have examined variation in early lithic assemblages across the Caribbean archipelago. Long-held explanations for the genesis of these assemblages (and the differences among them) include cultural/stylistic factors, aspects of raw material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Aguilar-Moreno.

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The monastery of Acolman founded by the Augustinian order is located near Teotihuacan. The most astonishing tequitqui (Amerindian-Christian art of the sixteenth century) monument in Acolman is the atrial cross made in 1550. Although open-air crosses existed in Europe, the Mexican crosses have a different iconography...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carly Whelan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Though food storage is a crucial tool for avoiding subsistence shortfall in environments with seasonal resource disparities, it is costly relative to immediate consumption. Food stores are vulnerable to theft by animals and other people, and are susceptible to incremental loss from vermin and mold. To compensate for these anticipated losses, people must...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Hanson. Paula Bryant. James Skibo.

Recent research in the Upper Great Lakes region has demonstrated the importance of acorns as a dietary staple. As a plentiful and easily storable source of carbohydrates and fats, acorns provide an excellent dietary complement. Organic residue analysis of pottery sherds and fire-cracked rock from Grand Island, Michigan yielded lipid profiles consistent with nut oil, suggesting that the vessels may have been used to process acorns through boiling or simmering. In order to make many species of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margarita Diaz-Andreu. Tommaso Mattioli.

The site of Las Cuevas (western Belize) has been identified as a mid-sized, Late Classic ceremonial and administrative center. Interestingly, given the importance of caves in Maya religion, the underneath part of the site has a large cave system. Research so far on this cave has focused on aspects that are common in cave archaeology: 1/ structures - in this case on the one hand the series of platforms built around a central, sunk cenote and on the other the walls subdiving the narrow part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meisha Hunter Burkett. Allan Ceen. Mattia Crespi. Augusto Mazzoni.

This is an abstract from the "Water and Sanitation Management in the Mediterranean " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aquedotto Vergine is the only ancient aqueduct still functioning in Rome. Commissioned under Emperor Augustus, and privately financed by Agrippa as part of a larger urban water infrastructure improvement program, the aqueduct was dedicated on June 9, 19 BCE and supplied water for both public structures and private concessions....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Cipolla. James Quinn. Jay Levy.

This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Allotment was a world-changing institution that forever altered the course of North American history; through this process, Indigenous lands were broken up into lots, “owned” by individuals and families rather than collectively held. Allotment placed an unprecedented amount of stress on Indigenous traditions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerardo Gutierrez.

In this paper I examine the context and performance of acrobatic games in Mesoamerica using archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic representations of contorsionists, tightrope walkers, equilibrists, dancers on stilts, jugglers, and participants in rotational devices, like the Palo Volador and the Huahua. I underline the importance of acrobatic games in ritual festivities and secular events where improvisational and professional performers staged spectacles and played tricks designed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Lena Jones.

This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In August 1540 Hernando de Alvarado, a member of the Coronado expedition, entered what he termed “the province of Tiguex” (today known as the Middle Rio Grande Valley of Central New Mexico), kicking off several centuries of socioeconomic transformation. As a case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Louise Tizzard. Claire Mellett.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last 20 years have seen a massive increase in offshore development around the UK that has provided archaeologists the opportunity to find and examine new sites from areas of seafloor, in deeper waters and further from the coastline than was previously possible. Through the interpretation of geophysical and geotechnical data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meng Zhang.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The spread of microblade technology has been explained using human migration and cultural transmission under the culture-historical paradigm of a "refugium model" that illustrates movements of foraging societies from Transbaikal eastward to the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kurile (PSHK) Peninsula and to North China in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Steinbrenner.

Despite being the largest country in Central America, Nicaragua’s archaeological record remains the least explored and most ignored. One consequence of this is that reconstructions of Nicaragua’s prehistory have tended to rely overmuch on rather sparse (and not necessarily reliable) ethnohistoric accounts in which migration from Mesoamerican homelands is heavily emphasized, generally to the detriment of other kinds of cultural phenomena, including indigenous developments that are not explicitly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara L. Juengst. David Hansen. Sergio Chavez. Stanislava Chavez.

Tiwanaku, the first expansive state in the southern Andes, established colonies in many parts of the Andes (Moquegua, the Atacama Desert, Cochabamba) and exerted influence over the southern Titicaca basin. Archaeologists have recreated daily life for people living in these places, producing many insightful studies of Tiwanaku diet, cultural bodily modifications, disease, and occasional incidents of trauma. Many colonists living far from the Tiwanaku heartland developed hybrid lifestyles,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Tica.

The goal of this research project is to examine differences in overall health between two groups that have been characterized in the literature as Romans and “barbarians”. The research questions addressed using skeletal remains are about how the daily life of people under Roman-Byzantine control compared to that of their neighbors, the “barbarians” to the north. Comparing two contemporaneous populations from the territory of modern Romania—and dating to the 4th-6th centuries CE, the study will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland.

The Maya of northern Belize were located at the edge of the Spanish colony, far from the Spanish capital at Merida, and visited only occasionally by encomenderos and priests. How much of Maya life then was a reaction to Spanish colonization? The archaeological data from Progresso Lagoon, Belize suggest that most contact and colonial period material culture at the Maya community was shaped by ongoing Maya political and economic processes, rather than by Spanish intervention. In addition, Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Fryer. Alexander Bauer.

This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on the session co-organizers' experiences, this paper offers reflections on the state of heritage research being conducted by archaeologists, its current limitations, and its potential for greater social impact. Leaning into the notion that heritage does important work in the world, we offer thoughts on how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Ivins. Colin Quinn. Horia Ciugudean. Gabriel Balan. Lacey Carpenter.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The abandonment of mortuary spaces is an intentional social process. As a political act, the choice to abandon a cemetery is a moment in which communities manipulate memory. Most mortuary studies, however, often overlook the social processes that led to cemetery abandonment. This poster presents the results of Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When Steve Shackley informed me that over 90% of obsidian samples from Puerto Escondido, Honduras, that he had analyzed came from an unidentified source, presumably nearby, he started a process of re-education that led me to a place where he may not be comfortable, but that I deeply appreciate. This involves a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea Blackmore. Shankari Patel.

One of the strengths of prehistoric archaeology is its ability to document the full range of human variation. For Latin America, activist archaeology has the potential to inform postcolonial and Third World feminist critiques that challenge white supremacist legal systems that marginalize women of color and indigenous peoples. The false universalisms and cultural essentialisms found in human rights debates ignore the diverse experiences of women’s oppression, especially the indigenous, poor,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa LeCount. Kara Fulton. David W. Mixter. E. Christian Wells. Thomas R. Jamison.

This report describes the results of a geochemical analysis of nearly 1,000 samples from earthen and plaster surfaces at Actuncan, a prehispanic Maya city in western Belize. Studies of the social, political, and economic relationships between elites and commoners demonstrate that the lived experiences of both groups were dramatically different. However, we know little about how social roles and relationships impacted the organization and daily use of domestic and public spaces. Multivariate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mixter.

Researchers have long hypothesized that the 9th century Maya collapse resulted in the end of divine kingship as the dominant political form in the southern Maya Lowlands. In post-royal settlements, tall pyramids and labyrinthine palace spaces are deemphasized in favor of more publically-accessible open courtyards and broad platforms. Some scholars have argued for the increasing prevalence of council houses based on architectural layouts and the iconography of sculptural programs. However, little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Hackenberger. Emily LaPlante. Rylee Chadwick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. LaPlante recently led a new study of the Sanders Site (45KT315) collection. Excavated in the 1970s, the site is located within the Yakima Uplands of the Middle Columbia River. This is the sixth thesis or research scholarship study of Dr. William Smith’s legacy collection, and one of two dozen similar student projects focused on four CWU collections from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Carballo. Daniela Hernández Sariñana. Maria Codlin. Gina Buckley. Jorge Ortiz Hernández.

Front E of the Project Plaza of the Columns Complex comprises the southern sector of this large civic-administrative complex, located in the heart of Teotihuacan. In initial project planning, its surface topography suggested the presence of open spaces and low structures that could have been used for activities of economic significance and/or as residential spaces for individuals not of high elite rank. Excavations over two seasons in Front E prioritized horizontal exposures in order to assess...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosa Ortiz Barrera. Cindy Cristina Sandoval Mora. José Luis Punzo Díaz.

The Northwest in the state of Durango is a understudied area in which it has now been possible to detect, record and describe archaeological sites and materials. The work carried out at the sites "La Peña" and "El Indio" have marked important milestones for the research of hunter-gatherer groups. The excavation of La Peña, located in a rock shelter, allowed to learn the specialization that these groups had in the development of lithic artifacts, since a lot of Toyah arrowheads were found, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Inskip. John Robb.

Epidemics are often understood both by historians and by ancient people as "acts of God" which structure human lives but originate outside systemic causation, and are simply caused by the advent of pathogens. But no simple model of unidirectional causation, whether by natural agents or humans, really does justice to the situation. Disease responds to social and biological environments (for instance, settlement distributions affecting contagion, and poverty and malnutrition compromising the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Holmberg.

The role of performance in disaster risk reduction provides the focus for evocative recent discussions of somatic experience, embodied knowledge, and climate change (e.g., Cosgrove and Kelman 2017). In this paper, I’d like to expand this perspective on the perception of dynamic environments through consideration of how material residues in caves link to large-scale transformations in the complexly entwined natural and cultural landscapes outside of the caves. I draw on four seemingly disparate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Boomgarden. Brendan Ermish. Jordin Muller. Corinne Springer. Stefania Wilks.

This is an abstract from the "Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Range Creek Field Station in east central Utah, researchers have had the unique opportunity to conduct repeated actualistic experiments, under modern environmental constraints, to better understand past human behavior related to farming and storing maize. This poster summarizes the goals, expectations, methods, results, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Velázquez-Maldonado. Berenice Pedroza. David Larreina-García. Mario A. Retiz-García. Blanca Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio arqueológico de Jicalán Viejo (posclásico tardío - colonial temprano) presenta una elevada concentración en superficie de escorias de metalurgia, relacionadas con los procesos de beneficio del cobre. El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Baer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The expansion of digital technology has allowed archaeologists to quickly adopt new techniques and digital tools for use in the field. From the early days of analog recording and hand-drawn maps to contemporary tools like photogrammetry and 3D modeling, the rapid evolution of technology has led to greater accuracy and efficiency when collecting and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lydia Michel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this poster is to develop an educational curriculum on archaeology to be used for a K-12 audience by adapting an existing program, put forward by the BLM, Project Archaeology. This new curriculum, "The Archaeology of Home," seeks to engage the public within southern New Mexico and to convey the value of stewardship and preservation. The area of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Mazow. Heidi Luchsinger. Kristen Rozier.

The arrival of foreigners to the southern Levant at the beginning of the Iron Age (1200-1000 BCE) has been recognized in the material culture, as have changes in this material culture over time. These developments, resulting from interaction with the local population, have been interpreted as assimilation, acculturation, creolization, and most recently entanglement. In this poster, we examine these transformations through the lens of technological, i.e. those aspects of pottery manufacture that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eszter Bánffy.

In the 6th millennium BC, first farmers reached the area between south east and central Europe, soon spreading into central Europe. About the character and identity of these first farmers at the boundary area, a series of new research results is available. At the boundary, harsh environmental conditions made their long well-working subsistence system unstable, as the ‘package’ of farming and mainly sheep and shifted to cattle keeping. Yet, it has hardly been investigated, what reflections of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Whitley.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Education and Training in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Graduate training in cultural resources and heritage management has evolved in the last few decades, from a focus almost exclusively on compliance archaeology, to one where descendant community outcomes and involvement take center stage. It also entails working with new, and often changing, legislation that can seem to conflict with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Fitts. Samuel Franklin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The North Carolina Office of State Archaeology has been building a database of standardized information about archaeological sites since 1977. Like most datasets that bridge the analog to digital transition, the North Carolina site file has experienced several distinctive phases of accretional development. Designed for the purposes of predictive modeling, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen.

This paper assesses the relationship between elements of adaptive capacity of a water management system among six time periods. The archaeological case study, Angkor, Cambodia, was the center of the Khmer Empire for over 600 years (9th-15th centuries CE). During this time, the Khmers developed one of the largest and most complex water management systems in the pre-industrial world. In this paper, I use geographic information system analyses to quantitatively and qualitatively assess six elements...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Detlef Gronenborn. Hans-Christoph Strien. Christian Lohr. Johanna Ritter.

Simplistic scenarios of the role of climate on the dynamics of socio-political trajectories are increasingly being replaced by coupled models in which climate and societies undergo mutually influential interactions. The concepts of adaptive cycles and resilience have been particularly helpful in understanding these interrelations. Based on an extensive body of data from Early to Upper (Young) Neolithic sites in western Central Germany and adjacent regions, a model is proposed which takes into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryna Hull. Jemer Eerkens. Reba Fuller.

This study examines human dietary responses to the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA), an extended period of warmer and drier environmental conditions from AD 900-1300, in the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Stable isotope and radiocarbon analyses of human remains attributable to the Tuolumne Me-Wuk reveal individual-level dietary behaviors. Results show a region-specific "Central Sierran" pattern of resource use in the form of a distinctive isotopic signature relative to other areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna Keegan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Burren, a karstic region located in Western Ireland, has seen intensive farming practices since the Neolithic. Local proxies throughout the west coast of Ireland have indicated periods where the environment shifted to colder and wetter conditions in two key phases during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC. A comparison of the archaeological record at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Farquhar. Arlene Rosen.

This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents preliminary findings from ongoing research on the development of pastoralism in Mongolia’s semiarid desert-steppe. The project involves a multiscale investigation of human-environment interactions, specifically the relationship between climate change and land use, and how adaptive strategies impacted natural and social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Cannon. Anna Cohen.

This is an abstract from the "The Past, Present, and Future of Water Supplies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The western United States has experienced dramatic population growth for the past century and a half and fluctuating water resources even longer. For example, there is increasing evidence that people began diverting water from Utah’s streams and rivers during the Fremont period (ca. AD 1–1300). As early as 2,000 years ago, the Ancestral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Scott. Julie Wesp.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project examines the ethical landscape of the acquisition and curation of human skeletal materials for teaching purposes using the NCSU Human Skeletal Remains Collection as a case study. Lack of legislation in the United States regarding the sale of human remains, and an increase in social media, permits certain organizations and individuals to become...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Caromano. Rui Murrieta.

Research conducted in the Amazon point to the importance of anthropic fire in the history of people and the forest itself, being a common element in traditional agriculture and responsible for changes in ecosystems and soil productivity. Despite its importance, fire is not subject to systematic study in Amazonian archaeology. Few efforts are made in actively searching for evidences of its use in archaeological contexts, being such evidences documented opportunistically when casually observed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alvaro Montenegro.

This is an abstract from the "Modeling Mobility across Waterbodies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since pioneering efforts in the 1970’s, computer models that simulate vessel displacement have contributed useful information to the debate around several historical and archaeological problems. Existing models can be separated into two categories. In stochastic models, wind and current values are based on a probabilistic description of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kielhofer. Jessica Tierney. Joshua Reuther. Ben Potter. Charles Holmes.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many paleoenvironmental reconstructions from interior Alaska are based on pollen assemblages from lacustrine cores, which are sometimes challenging to relate directly to terrestrial conditions experienced by early human occupants. Here we use compound-specific stable isotope analysis of plant wax n-alkanes (δ13C wax and δDwax values) to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Karkkainen. James Brady. Guillermo de Anda.

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of its investigation of subterranean Chichén Itzá, the Gran Acuífero Maya (GAM) unsealed the entrance to Balamkú Cave in 2018. The entrance, located in a sinkhole, had been sealed and buried in an apparent act of deliberate termination. In addition, the entire first chamber of the cave including a staircase was buried with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon McPherron.

The orientations in three dimensions of clasts within a deposit are known to be informative on processes that formed that deposit. In archaeological sites, a portion of the clasts in the deposit are introduced by non-geological processes and these are typically systematically recorded with total stations during excavations. By recording a second point on elongated clasts it is possible to quickly and precisely capture their orientation. The statistical and graphical techniques for analyzing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Katz. Addison Kimmel.

The changing nature of contract and academic archaeology has led to new safety challenges that cannot be addressed simply through adherence to OSHA regulations. In this paper we move beyond the still-relevant environmental safety challenges that were the focus of earlier work on archaeology and workplace safety, and examine anthropogenic safety issues that can commonly arise during fieldwork. We address issues such as potential theft, assault, harassment, uncontrolled animals, as well as the...