Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Morgan. Chris Loendorf. Barnaby Lewis.

This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Platform mounds play a prominent role in the Akimel O’Odham creation story, but few archaeologists have considered the implications of this knowledge. The story names each of the mound leaders along the middle Gila River, and provides specific descriptions of the special abilities they possessed. The story also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adriana Sanchez.

Mensabak Lake, in the Lacandon Rainforest, is surrounded by caves that were used as pilgrimage destinations and for different rituals in the Protohistoric period. The role of Maya women in the rituals and ceremonies has been delimited to fertility and dependency stereotypes not only in the historical documents but in the archaeological research. This presentation discusses Maya women’s participation in a multi-regional pilgrimage network having Mensabak as the epicentre.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Yeske.

Ethnographic accounts of communal hunting activities in Alaska are abundant, yet archaeological evidence of this practice is scarce. The inuksuit--elaborate stacked rock cairns--that demarcate many game drives in Alaska provide evidence of these important traditional subsistence strategies. Improved documentation of these features will facilitate a better understanding of not only their function but their meaning to the original builders and implementers of game drive systems. Comprehensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annalisa Hppner.

This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alaskan "legacy collections" are housed at many American institutions outside of Alaska. These collections contain great potential for object-focused analysis, looking toward specific object classes, or even individual objects for in-depth review. This poster will present a summary of the locations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Jopshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty. Sara Eshleman.

The traditional, but yet poorly-defined, view of Classic Maya (AD 250-850) land tenure was that control was somehow vested in the royal and elite parts of society with "commoners" occupying land at royal pleasure. The exceptions to this pattern were known in "urban" cities such as Coba and Chunchucmil in the northern Yucatan and some coastal locations such as Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. However, the latter instances are commonly thought to date to the Postclassic period and were believed to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jingbo Li.

This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Bronze Age of China, alcohol practice was an integral part of rituals and the spiritual world as a social agent in hierarchical societies. Multiple types of alcoholic beverages appeared in the earliest writings of the late Shang dynasty some 3,200 years ago. However, little research has been done to characterize how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Ridge.

During the Final Neolithic (4500-3200 BCE) there appears to have been a major restructuring in the regional settlement networks of southern Greece. This included a general shift in activity from the north to the south with a significant increase in the number of of small, short lived sites in southern Greece, particularly in coastal locations. Trade and exchange also appears to have intensified, with exotic materials moved further and more frequently than in previous periods. Alepotrypa Cave,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only César Méndez. Omar Reyes. Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Héctor Velásquez. Valentina Trejo.

The hunter-gatherer occupation of the Andean forests is a major issue for understanding the variability of human adaptations in Patagonia. The paucity of sites at key locations and the incomplete understanding of the climate-human dynamics undermine the full comprehension of the exploration and colonization of such habitats. We present recent work on Alero Las Quemas, a rock shelter with occupations starting at 6110 cal BP, currently located in the forest-steppe transition of the Aisén region...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Davis.

Since its discovery more than 50 years ago, the Anangula phase has been recognized as the first known occupation in the eastern Aleutian Islands. The initial discovery of the Anangula Blade Site near Umnak Island, and the more recent find of Hog Island in the Unalaska District revealed assemblages in many ways characteristic of highly mobile terrestrial hunter-gatherers with only minimal evidence of a maritime economy. This seeming paradox of island dwellers heavily invested in terrestrial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Acevedo.

Los materiales cerámicos arqueológicos polícromos denominados "vírgulas o comas " tienen una amplia pero desigual distribución espacial y son hallados en cantidades limitadas en sitios arqueológicos de las regiones de Puna central y Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Noroeste de la República Argentina. Estas regiones mantienen límites ambientales y geográficos fronterizos. En el pasado los habitantes de ambas zonas sostenían una fluida comunicación, mantenido formas identitarias diferentes entre el...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Herlich.

This paper explores how coastal Algonquian and shell midden sites in Tidewater Virginia relate to the greater Virginia Algonquian landscape. Through archaeological plant remains (including macrobotanical, starch grains, and phytoliths), ethnographic records, and historical documents, I am exploring landscape and garden designs along the shores of the coastal plain. The project’s archaeological sites span a combined 1,600 years (early Middle Woodland period to the early Colonial era), and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gallivan.

This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and ethnohistorical studies have begun to trace the ritualized practices of Native groups as they returned to places with deep histories throughout the Southeast during the colonial era. In the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, Algonquian groups traveled across contested territories to bury ancestors, animals, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Klaus Koschmieder.

Hasta el momento dos aspectos importantes sobre los antiguos Chachapoya no fueron discutidos de manera satisfactoria. Se trata del orígen y de la organización social de este grupo prehistórico que pobló un territorio extenso al este del río Maranhon (Perú) antes de estar dominado por los inca y los espanholes. La aparición súbita de numerosas poblaciones Chachapoya durante el Intermedio Tardío deja suponer que fueron inmigrantes, los cuales dejaron su tierra natal por razones todavía...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucero Aristizabal Losada.

El presente estudio fue llevado a cabo combinando información arqueológica, bioantropológica y análisis químico de hueso, específicamente de isótopos estables en una muestra muisca del sur de la sabana de Bogotá. Como objetivo principal se buscó la reconstrucción de la dieta antigua de la sociedad muisca tardía asentada en Tibanica y su relación con aspectos sociales. Específicamente, la investigación estuvo orientada a comparar la relación isotópica de una muestra de 200 individuos con el fin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Issa Marengo Camacho. Judith Ruiz González. Carlos Serrano Sánchez.

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante las últimas décadas se han documentado varios conjuntos de restos humanos no reverenciales y altamente procesados en diferentes estados de manipulación dentro el territorio de Mesoamérica. En un principio se les apreció como hechos aislados hasta...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Full coverage pedestrian survey to record new sites on unknown archaeological landscapes is costly in terms of money, time, and personnel. Archaeological projects are usually limited in these resources and have to simultaneously balance data quantity with quality within their budgetary means. Researchers have experimented...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsty Squires.

This is an abstract from the "The Health and Welfare of Children in the Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children played a key role in coal mining and the pottery industry in 19th century Staffordshire (UK). The number of children that worked in this region during the study period fluctuated between 13% and 33%, and one fifth of the workforce comprised of 5-14 year olds. Long working hours and hazardous conditions had a detrimental effect on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Henderson.

This paper considers the impact of the new highland chronology proposed by Dr. Inomata on prevailing interpretations of the stone sculptures of Kaminaljuyú. The revised chronology moves the archaeological record of Kaminaljuyú approximately 300 years forward, shifting the site’s sculptures to a wholly new cultural and chronological framework. This paper begins the process of re-contextualizing the art of Kaminaljuyú by investigating the ways in which the new chronology disrupts and/or supports...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Horn.

This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For southern Scandinavia, the evidence of use-wear on weapons and of violent encounters settled the long debate over whether prehistoric warfare existed. Much of this violence was driven by waterborne raiding parties and maritime warriors and successful participation in fighting provided a path to social status. Each expedition lasted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebekah Mills.

Excavations during 2017 for Ballintober Castle in Roscommon, Ireland have uncovered the base of a wall structure and curtain wall for the early fourteenth century castle. As excavations continue to deepen, the structure of the castle reveals a complicated occupational history with cobbled floor occupation levels along with what may be a wall structure appearing underneath this area. The castle excavations can show the Anglo-Norman and Irish ownership of the castle with each owner using different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Walker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often approach the contact period in the Americas, and subsequent upheavals, with a sense of melancholy at a world supplanted in our own becoming. While contact and the ensuing centuries of colonization certainly brought trauma, significant loss, and destabilization to Indigenous cultures, the experiences of Native people of this period need...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Triozzi.

Mapping the excavations at the Fallen Tree Mortuary Complex, St. Catherines Island, GA, effectively consolidated nearly sixty burials and hundreds of features into a cohesive view of the site. Similarity of burial orientation and bodily positioning jumps out immediately. At a glance the norm is that individuals face east with their heads to the south. Examining this pattern more closely called for a more advanced utilization of GIS. Techniques used to quantify burial orientation of the large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerald Ek. Ricardo Armijo Torres. William Folan. Hubert Robichaux.

Oxpemul was one of several centers surrounding the city of Calakmul, within the region known as Uxte’tuun. Archaeological research at Oxpemul reflects occupation continuity from the Formative through Classic periods. However, hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate a late fluorescence in the mid to late eighth century. This paper explains this seeming contradiction from the perspective of broader geopolitical dynamics, particularly the rivalry between Calakmul and Tikal. Unlinke other centers in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. J. Sinensky.

Researchers have conducted archaeological investigations within the vicinity of what is now Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) for over 100 years. Although the majority of archaeological sites identified at Petrified Forest National Park consist of small habitation sites that date to the late Pueblo II (1030-1125 AD) and early Pueblo III (1125-1225 AD) periods, archaeologists have gathered little information regarding the habitation practices of people during this transitional time period....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest.

This is an abstract from the "Art, Archaeology, and Science: Investigations in the Guatemala Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to the Vanderbilt projects the Alta Verapaz was one of the least explored regions of the highlands with previous research limited to some test pits and cave explorations. With few known impressive constructions or monuments, the Alta Verapaz was assumed to be peripheral to both highland polities and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Russell.

The modern residents of Yucatán, Mexico blend traditional Maya beliefs in a pantheon of ancient gods and other supernatural forces with more recent Catholic traditions flowing from centuries of Spanish colonial influence. This paper compares and contrasts modern rituals from the Yucatec Maya village of Telchaquillo, Yucatán. Each rite was associated with a local cenote, limestone sinkholes that along with caves serve as accesses to the Maya underworld and homes to the gods themselves. My...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Griffith. Brent Woodfill.

Ancient Maya rulers dramatically gave offerings to the gods and ancestors on behalf of the local population, and the spectacle was central to the maintenance of the social hierarchy. Some of these public ceremonies took place in in the subterranean realm of Xibalba, from the vantage point of visible, elevated areas within cave sites. The actors using the ritual stages described in this paper, whether from large urban centers or smaller villages in the countryside, would have used the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fiona Coward.

Archaeological network research typically relies on material culture similarities over space and time as a proxy for past social networks. In many cases, a range of different types of material culture are subsumed into reconstructed connections between nodes. However, not all forms of material culture are equal. Different types of objects may be caught up in rather different forms of social relationship – crudely put, ‘personal’ items such as jewellery may perhaps have more social and cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cave archaeologists around the world are increasingly utilizing many new platforms and techniques to document subterranean artwork, including digital imaging and scanning technologies. In this presentation I "throw shade" at these high-tech approaches by revisiting and focusing upon the oldest of the old-school technologies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Malhotra.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A general trend among many societies has been the growth of political complexes, and thereby alliance formation. New studies on the Monongahela culture, such as those undertaken by Dr. William Johnson and David Anderson (2002), seek to define the growing political complexity of the Monongahela during the Late Monongahela period (A.D. 1580-1635). This research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree. R. Kyle Bocinsky. Timothy A. Kohler.

Using the experimental testbed of the Village Ecodynamics Project’s agent-based simulation "Village," we examine how population growth and resource depletion in the Central Mesa Verde landscape between AD 600 and AD 1280 set the stage for territorial conflict, and how lineage and clan membership likely affected the structure of coalitions. We take a three-pronged approach, combining models for the evolution of leadership, models for the formation of coalitions and alliances, and models for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Zborover. Veronica Pacheco. John M. D. Pohl. Darren Longman.

Straddling maritime, lowlands, and highland environments, the neighboring Chontal and Huave ethnic groups occupy one of the most diverse landscapes in southern Mexico. For over five centuries this resource-rich territory served as a junction for Indigenous and European colonial encounters, where interethnic and intercontinental political alliances and conflicts came forcefully into play. In addition to leaving material remains scattered throughout the landscape, this political history was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thulman. Michael Shott. Justin Williams. Alan Slade.

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most landmark-based geometric morphometric statistical analyses of stone tools are lifted from biological applications. The concepts are not always directly applicable, leading to unfounded interpretations of statistical results. Sometimes the problem is an imprecise definition of terms, but often the problem is an imperfect translation of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Maniery.

The results of geoarchaeological investigations at Pharo Village, a Fremont hamlet situated on an alluvial fan in central Utah, are reported in order to reveal how changes in alluvial dynamics contributed to the rise of Fremont farming there as well as the site’s eventual abandonment. Cutbanks along Pharo Creek, the meandering stream adjacent to Pharo Village, were mapped and sampled during fieldwork. Field and subsequent laboratory analysis allowed reconstruction of the alluvial geochronology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe. Christophe Helmke.

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at Xunantunich indicate that this important site in the Belize River Valley, rose rapidly to regional prominence during the Late Classic Hats’ Chaak Phase (AD 670 – 780). While the social, political, and economic reasons for this late and rapid rise are still not...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Craib. Robert L. Kelly.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alm rockshelter, located at the mouth of Paintrock Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, contains a well-stratified cultural sequence spanning roughly 11,000 years (Late Paleoindian through the Late Prehistoric). Preliminary analyses demonstrate that the site was occupied and used variably over this time, particularly in periods of population growth and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexa Rose. Michael E. Smith.

Almenas, roof ornaments comprised commonly of ceramic or stone in Teotihuacan that most archaeologists toss aside unknowing of their identity, have been a source of research in archaeology recently after Michael E. Smith and Clara Paz Bauista’s paper "Las almenas en la ciudad Antigua de Teotihuacan" in 2015. Continuing Dr. Smith’s original research, I have compiled a database of complete almenas from museums and published resources to make new categories for the artifacts. Although many whole...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian K. Madsen. Jette Arneborg. Ian Simpson. Michael Nielsen. Cameron Turley.

The medieval Norse settlements in Greenland formed the westernmost frontier of Scandinavia, and the Old World, between ca. AD 980-1450. A Norse society of perhaps only some 2500 farmer-hunters settled two subarctic niches: the Eastern Settlement in South Greenland with ca. 550 sites and the smaller Western Settlement 500 km north in the inner parts of the Nuuk fjord region and with only some 90 sites. For still not completely understood reasons, the latter was completely abandoned by AD...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Jordan.

Plantations on the nutmeg-bearing Banda Islands are contemporaneous with early North American plantations and are an excellent place to investigate cross-cultural responses to colonialism. The Banda Islands were the world’s sole source of nutmeg in the 16th century and control over this spice was a major goal for European powers during the Age of Expansion. Consequently, the Banda Islands were the location of early experiments in colonialism by European powers and can provide information for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thomas.

Why did some Great Basin foraging families spend their summers atop the very highest place in their world? Julian Steward briefly considered this question in the 1930s, but the issue resurfaced with the chance discovery of Alta Toquima, a 31-pithouse residential site at 11,000 feet. More than 150 14C determinations from Alta Toquima and nearby Gatecliff Shelter permit fine-tuned comparisons of cultural and paleoclimatic change spanning the last 7000 years. The Alta Toquima residences track both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Rachel Reckin. Emily Brush. Robert Kelly. William Dooley.

The alpine archaeological record above 3000m of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has received much less research attention than the adjacent plains, basins, and foothills. We have been working in an area of NW Wyoming where dense surface stone tool scatters, stone features (including some of the highest elevation habitation stone circles in the region) are associated with dwindling ice patches that have yielded both perishable artifactual material and an array of wood and bone that provides...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Weyrich. Keith Dobney. Alan Cooper.

Interpreting the evolutionary history of bacterial communities within the human body (microbiota) is key to understanding the origin of many modern diseases. The link between humans and their microbiota can also be exploited to examine and track the extent and severity of human adaptation to the environment and impacts on health. Here, we utilize a shotgun sequencing approach to examine ancient DNA preserved within dental calculus from a wide range of ancient South Americans (n=162)....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Blatt. Amy Michael. John Dudgeon. Rebekah Rakowski. Kateea Peterson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Teeth are the most likely skeletal elements to survive taphonomic insult, but are not impervious to diagenetic changes. The bulk of dietary, migratory, and climatic studies pursued by bioarchaeologists are reliant on unaltered preservation of dental tissue. Yet, contextual value of depositional environments is often overlooked. Though study of the physical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gelenia Trinidad-Rivera.

Urban archaeology can help us understand the evolution of specific habitational spaces and shed light to investigations related to domestic life and issues related to daily life necessities. This paper will trace the modifications completed to buildings within the walled city of San Juan in the late 19th century. A selection of structures was made based primarily on the permit requests and blueprints submitted to the local government which can be consulted at the Archivo General de Puerto Rico....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haagen Klaus.

Over the last few decades, archaeological narratives have shifted towards far more nuanced understandings of colonized peoples in favor of reconstructing nuanced and integrated understandings of indigenous perception, identity, biosocial interplays, and other responses to conquest. This work merges archaeological, ecological, and bioarchaeological contexts to help understand the significance of mortuary pattern data to compare postcontact cultural outcomes in Mórrope and Eten, two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasia Szremski.

Understanding the political organization of Late Intermediate Period (1000 – 1470 CE) societies along the central coast of Peru has remained challenging. The urban/proto-urban settlements that are characteristic of groups like the Chancay, Ichma, and the Chinca (among others) have been interpreted as material manifestations of elite power, however, many of these societies don’t fit traditional models of chiefdoms or states. Using a combination of ethnohistoric data, settlement pattern analysis,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert DeBry. Kristin Corl.

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. ​Bone tools are not always recognized in a zooarchaeological analysis, and often once identified, the function or use is even more difficult to define. A modified rabbit innominate found by the authors in two Jornada-Mogollon sites presented here is one such example. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Toni Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology as an Engine or a Camera?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses ongoing archaeological investigations at the Late Classic Period (CE 600-800) Maya site of Mulch’en Witz, La Milpa, Belize. Survey and excavation at the site have revealed an unconventional geographical density of man-made subterranean spaces ("chultuns") in association with provocative architectural and geological features....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Lopez Varela.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "México Alternativo" is a mobile application for iOS and Android platforms, drawing from the need to preserve and promote contemporary heritage resources that are of great value to Mexico’s citizens. Infrastructure building and promotion of urban lifeways to modernize and strengthen Mexico’s economy, has resulted in the appropriation by its citizens of modern...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sandra L. Lopez Varela.

“Alternative Mexico” is a mobile application drawing from the need to preserve and promote contemporary heritage resources that are of great value to its citizens. After more than a century of infrastructure building and promotion of urban lifeways to become a modern country, the experience has resulted in the appropriation of modern spaces and behaviors by Mexico’s citizens, with the inevitable creation of new heritage values. These new heritage resources oppose the national definition of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a detailed analysis of architecture and spatial organization at Maukallaqta de Nuñoa, a pre-Inca site in the highlands of southern Peru. Maukallaqta was constructed at a time when societies across much of the central Andean highlands were constrained by persistent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Carney.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Camas (Camassia spp.) was among the most important foods for many cultural groups of the Pacific Northwest in the past. The Pend Oreille Valley in northeastern Washington and the Kalispel people were particularly known for their large camas fields and the archaeological record of the valley is replete with earth oven features. Archaeological site 45PO422,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alvaro Higueras.

In this presentation I aim to address two issues: first, the state of looting and trafficking of monumental and portable heritage in Peru today, and, second, to propose new strategies to contribute to solving the problem of looting and trafficking. The novel strategies I propose are only part of the solution: they should be compounded and should help strengthen the effectiveness of old, tried and partially successful enforcement strategies. The diversification of options is urgent amidst...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Johnson. Kenneth Hirth.

Altica’s location, in the Patlachique Range 10 km away from the Otumba obsidian source, suggests a potentially significant role in the distribution of Otumba obsidian. Altica may have served as an important middleman and processing site in Formative obsidian exchange, but a greater understanding of the nature of these exchange relationships is required to define this role. This paper combines geochemical sourcing and technological data from obsidian from nine Early and Middle Formative sites,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Carballo. Oralia Cabrera.

Craft specialization and exchange feature prominently in explanations for the development of the first complex societies in Mesoamerica. It is clear from analyses of surface collections at Altica that during the Early and early Middle Formative periods (c. 1300-850 B.C.) its inhabitants exported obsidian tools and imported pottery from long distances, including the southern Gulf Coast. Altica is one of the few early agricultural settlements located in the northern Basin of Mexico from which we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Stoner. Deborah Nichols.

The Altica Project, that began in 2014, is an important step in addressing the limited problem-oriented research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico for over two decades. Altica is the earliest-known settled village in the Teotihuacan Valley and one of the only first-farming village sites in the Basin of Mexico that has not been engulfed by the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Despite its small size and remote location, Altica was an important piece in Early and Middle Formative exchange...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madonna Moss. Amy Shannon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rice Ridge (49-KOD-363) is a deeply stratified archaeological site on Kodiak Island, with well-preserved faunal remains dated to the Ocean Bay tradition (7600–4200 cal BP; Kopperl 2003, 2012). The site contained an extensive bird bone assemblage that has not been analyzed before now. Casperson (2012) studied bird bones from Mink Island (49-XMK-030), located...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Donta.

This is an abstract from the "Changes in the Land: Archaeological Data from the Northeast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Anthony Farmstead historic site (SOM.HA.4) in Somerset, Bristol County, Massachusetts, was excavated through the data recovery level in anticipation of the construction of an electrical substation on the property. The site included remnants of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century farmstead, including a cellar hole, well,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Green. Ashley McKeown. Rosanne Bongiovanni.

Mortuary patterns and practices change over time and it is the goal of this poster to present preliminary analysis of the evolution of mortuary behavior of the Maya. This poster examines different variables pertaining to mortuary practices of the Maya throughout the Classic and Terminal Classic time periods at the core site of Cahal Pech in San Ignacio, Cayo District, Belize. The analysis focuses on burial position, orientation, presence or absence of grave goods, temporal period, burial type,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jolene Smith.

Since being one of the first State Historic Preservation Offices to adopt electronic records management in the late ‘80s, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources has worked through several iterations of databases and web applications. These systems manage basic site information, details about physical collections, and now digital media and datasets themselves. Over time, the agency’s priorities and objectives surrounding digital records and data have evolved in ways common to other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Sereno-Uribe.

Arqlgo. Pablo Sereno Uribe. INAH Guerrero. The Chimalacatlán archaeological project has focused its research in the southern section of the state of Morelos. Initially, this archaeological site was excavated by the archaeologist Florencia Müller in 1943. The first actions developed by the Chimalacatlan archaeological project centered on the conservation and restoration of the different buildings along the site, focusing on those buildings that were extremely damaged. Subsequently, several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin. Peter J. Pilles, Jr.

Archaeology in the state of Arizona has been a partnership between professionals and “amateurs,” or avocationalists, for more than a century. From an early focus on collecting “antiquities” for display, both professionals and avocationalists have followed a parallel course in the development of method and theory and the specialization of skills and interests, that today has blurred the distinction between “professionals” and “amateurs.” This paper will discuss the growth of avocational...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

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 the rescues carried out in Guatemala City, specifically between zones 7 and 11, have uncovered several deposits containing huge amounts of obsidian artifacts. During the excavations of the Lake Miraflores project located on the San Juan causeway, zone 7, a huge deposit containing thousands of obsidian artifacts was uncovered. This deposit...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Amazonia is the consummate, perpetual, wild jungle. Despite a century of archaeological research pointing to rich, complex, and culturally diverse ancient societies, and twenty years of mounting geoarchaeological evidence for densely settled Precolumbian towns, many people still imagine Amazonia as a pristine, primordial forest. In this paper, I dig deep into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro. Helena Pinto Lima.

The mouth of the Xingu River was an important Lower Amazonian crossroads in colonial-historic times, as attested to in documentary sources. However, little is known about the rich precolumbian past evinced by extensive terra preta (anthropogenic black earth) and abundant artifact deposits. Here, we present research aimed at understanding the longue durée of the spatial articulation of cultural and natural systems. Sited at the entrance to the Xingu River, Carrazedo was a prominent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eliane Faria.

Based on a historical ecology approach, this work aims to investigate interactions between indigenous societies and the natural environment expressed in landscape changes through the analyses of their long term occupation of the Middle Xingu River. My goal is to show the specificities of the indigenous settlements in the region considering the multiple aspects of this process in the human settlement of Amazonia. Although not producing great changes in the landscape, small groups of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphen Rostain.

Because the subject of the archaeological study disappears nowadays and exists only as traces, it is necessary to diversify the points of view to comprehend the past. The interdisciplinary approach helps to interpret better the human and natural components of the environment. On the basis of two Amazonian cases, from French Guiana and from Ecuador, it will be shown how cooperation between various disciplines improves considerably the interpretation. The first case concerns thousands of small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Myrtle Shock. Claide Paula Moraes. Manoel Fabiano Silva Santos.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Thirty years after its first excavations, Caverna da Pedra Pintada continues to be one of the only sites in the Brazilian Amazon that dates to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (over 12,000 cal BP). As such, understanding this site is pivotal to the interpretation of early human occupations and transformations of the tropical forest. Archaeobotanical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Zavodny.

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric cultural and sociopolitical development in the mountainous region of Lika, Croatia is still poorly understood despite over a century of archaeological excavations. Traditional cultural-historical narratives based on grave good typologies suggest that a unified regional culture, the Iapodians, emerged at the end of the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Peter Whitridge.

Part of the attraction of relational ontology is its encouragement to discard conventional epistemological hierarchies. We needn’t frame our investigations with the usual weighty themes – economy, social relations, ideology – but can begin anywhere, with any sort of question, and tug on the thread until the archaeological fabric unravels. Here I begin with dogs, and their relations with humans and other animals in the Inuit past. Inuit had an exceptionally complex relationship with the dogs that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

This paper queers archaeological interpretation by unpacking and destabilizing underlying assumptions in Southeastern iconography. While not focusing expressly on sexuality or gender in these representations, this research discusses the ways ambiguities in engraved shell iconography, more broadly, have been dismissed, glossed, and deemphasized. In part, this exclusion is unintentional and results from the amount of research that remains to be conducted on the vast body of images, but we need to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Knut Andreas Bergsvik.

Caves and rockshelters occur frequently in Norway and they were extensively used as dwelling-sites for humans in most periods of the prehistory. During the transition to the medieval period (AD 550 – 1500), however, archaeological excavations show that their use changed significantly. From then on, they mainly served as offering sites, burial sites and as workshops for metal smiths and stone masons. This change may have been related to a change in the perceptions of caves and rockshelters. One...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James D. Keyser. Linea Sundstrom.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1866 Ambrose Bierce accompanied the Hazen expedition whose tour inspected military outposts in the Department of the Platte. During cartographic work, Bierce recorded two "Indian inscriptions," one petroglyph on the Powder River near Ft. Reno, and an arborglyph on the Yellowstone River upstream from Pompey’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Rangel Rivero.

At the beginning of the twentieth century several American archaeological expeditions were made to Cuba. The Museo Antropológico Montané from the University of Havana was the mediating institution for academic exchange. They were conducted to explore, excavate and treasuring pieces. The description of these expeditions is the goal of this work. In 1900, Stewart Culin, from the University of Pennsylvania, sought descendants of Aboriginal communities in the region of Baracoa and its observations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Harris.

Harris’ 2011 Master’s thesis sourced obsidian artifacts from the Kyle Canyon Spring site (10-BT-8). Obsidian source characterization suggested a large circulation range for the prehistoric people using site 10-BT-8, with strong emphasis placed on the American Falls obsidian source. This result was unexpected, given that it is 120km from 10-BT-8 and a nearer, arguably higher quality obsidian source is only 50km away. In my thesis, I concluded that the people occupying 10-BT-8 over the last 3,000...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Veech.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (ORPI) is a vast, rugged, and remote unit of the U.S. National Park System situated in the heart of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Measuring 1,338.25 km² (517.7 mi²), the park encompasses an area half the size of the state of Rhode Island....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

An archaeological collection from finca Pompeya in the Antigua Guatemala valley provides significant information about Late Classic interaction with the adjacent Pacific coast. Excavated in 1893, the collection was eventually scattered to several museums in Germany, the United States, and Guatemala. However, it can be reconstructed from a photograph made not long after the discovery, and from newspaper reports that provide rough descriptions of the excavations. The objects themselves are still...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Schneider.

Garden Canyon Village is a large multi-component formative period site located in southeastern Arizona on the Fort Huachuca military reservation. Located 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico Border and 65 miles southeast of the Tucson Basin, Garden Canyon Village was located on the frontier of Hohokam, Mogollon, Casas Grandes, and Trincheras culture areas. This poster presents the final results from an analysis of Garden Canyon Village’s ground and chipped stone artifacts. In addition to providing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Ames.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. American industry drew millions of Irish immigrants during the 19th and early 20th century, profoundly shaping the face of modern America. This research investigates how Irish communities in the U.S. responded to local conditions within different types of urban spaces, influencing the way communities and subsequent identities within Irish-America were formed....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Kaldahl.

The Amerind Foundation of Dragoon, Arizona, is a private anthropological research center with an 80 year history. The Amerind conducted foundational studies in southeastern Arizona, but is best known for the Joint Casas Grandes Project (JCCP) conducted in Chihuahua between 1958 and 1961. The Arizona collections consist of southeast Arizona sites dating from the Hohokam Colonial period to the Spanish Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate. The New Mexico collection includes material recovered at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Till Sonnemann. Menno Hoogland. Corinne L. Hofman. Eduardo Herrera Malatesta. Jorge Ulloa Hung.

The archaeological footprint of Caribbean pre-Columbian settlements is often subtle; limited to surface scatter of shell, lithic and ceramic material. In the northern Dominican Republic, slight differences in topography have been identified as additional evidence for Amerindian habitation sites. Circular platforms from 7 to 10 meters in diameter, were dug into the hill slope and levelled to form the base of round houses, as shown in recent excavations by the Nexus1492 project. The terraced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Elliott Smith. Emily Whistler. René Vellanoweth. Todd Braje. Seth Newsome.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Isotopic Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kelp forests are some of the most biodiverse and ubiquitous temperate marine ecosystems. Here, we employ d13C analysis of individual essential amino acids (EAA) from ancient top consumers to evaluate the dynamics of southern California kelp forests across a period of rapid cultural change and accelerating human impacts (~3500 ybp –...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nina Swidler. Johna Hutira. Joyce Francis.

In 2011, a portion of Amity Pueblo, located in northeastern Arizona on State land, was extensively damaged by a federally-funded development project. After heavy equipment disturbed features and burials, exposing over 40,000 cultural items, it was no surprise that Arizona permanently cancelled the project. While archaeologists previously evaluated the Pueblo as eligible for listing on the National Register under criterion d for its scientific research potential, four tribes countered that Amity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hicks.

Land tenure is a prominent theme in the study of political and economic transition during the Spanish Colonial Period (AD 1550-1824) in Peru. Previous investigations have tended to focus on the concentration of land ownership into the hands of the ethnically Spanish elite minority, first through encomienda and later through the evolution of haciendas. However, native Andean communities were just as active in engaging the legal system to delineate their holdings and defend them from encroachment....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Belem Zúñiga Arellano. Adrian Velazquez-Castro.

The anahuatl pectoral is one of the shell ornaments that have been found in the offerings of the great temple of Tenochtitlan. In paintings and sculptures, it is worn by Tezcatlipoca and deities that are stars and warriors, as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli and Mixcoatl. Inside the offerings, the anahuatl are associated to items related to the underworld, sacrifice and war. This has led to propose that these pectorals represented the stars, which were the warriors during the night. The presence of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sayre. Nicco La Mattina.

The ontological turn in Anthropology has revealed new possibilities for considering the relationships between humans, material things, and “other-than-human persons,” as well as reassessing the Western notion of a nature/culture dichotomy. One site where these insights have begun to be applied is Chavín de Huantár in Peru. The iconography of the site is well known for its mixed human/animal hybrids, a style that prompted John Rowe to consider the art figuratively as visual kennings, with certain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Kandler.

The archaeological record provides information about frequencies of different cultural artefacts in potentially time-averaged samples. The temporal frequency changes of these artefacts reflect the dynamic of the underlying evolutionary processes but the question remains whether inferences about the nature of those processes, especially about the nature of cultural transmission processes, can be made on the base of observed frequency patterns. Here we develop a non-equilibrium framework which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Chavez. Charles Frederick. Arlo McKee.

Recent archaeological investigations at LA 151618 on the west side of Albuquerque exposed an extensive residential site dating to the late Developmental-to-Coalition period transition. The site contains a wide range of subterranean architectural features, including three pithouse structures, and three storage pits/middens, some of surprising depth. In partnership with Charles Frederick, consulting geoarchaeologist, Dublin, Texas and Arlo McKee, consulting geoarchaeologist, Richardson, Texas, two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer DeGraffenried. Kaylee Barkett-Jones. Andrea Brunelle-Runburg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a case study that utilizes paleoecological data to further our understanding of the archaeological record in the Bonneville basin of western Utah. We report paleoecological data from Simpson Springs, including pollen, charcoal, and elemental data. We provide the first pollen record from cultural sediments at Camels Back Cave. The data from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rudolf Cesaretti. Carlos Cordova. Charles Frederick.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico (BOM) regional surveys have been a cornerstone of archaeological inferences about Prehispanic demography, political and economic organization over the long-term. However, recent geoarchaeological fieldwork in the BOM has indicated patterned geomorphological biases in the regional surveys, notably the repeated phases of Holocene alluvial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Jarrett. Erin Hegberg.

This is an abstract from the "Historical Archaeologies of the American Southwest, 1800 to Today" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bandelier National Monument landfill site represents a historic period artifact scatter containing many diagnostic artifacts. In the 1930s, workmen belonging to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camped at this site while tuff stone was quarried from mesa top outcrops for use in the construction Frijoles Canyon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Badillo. Aaron Estes. Zachary Brown. Hannah Redlin.

This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2018, cultural resource management professionals in collaboration with local universities excavated a nineteenth-century cemetery as part of planned infrastructure expansion by the Indianapolis International Airport. Project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Leishman. Jean Pike.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present work on a methodology that sits at the intersection of architecture, archaeology, and Bayesian statistics to expand the quantity of architectural data considered in analysis of precontact architectures. Two sites are examined as possible precedents for Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, NM: the late ninth-century McPhee Pueblo in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Porter. Alison Brooks. Scott Whittaker. John Yellen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A nut cracking stone collected from a 1960s dry season occupation site at Dobe (Western Ngamiland, Botswana) shows not only evidence of cracking and pounding of mongongo nuts and other uses, but also repetitive flaking around the periphery. This flaking is reminiscent of the putative anvil stones from Lomekwi, Kenya (~3.3 Ma) and reinforces the idea that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tyler Laughlin. Anna Dean.

The Debra L. Friedkin Site (41BL1239) near Salado, Texas, is the oldest known, continually occupied site in North America. While the previous focus of excavations and analyses at the Friedkin Site has been on Paleoindian strata, this site also has extensive early and late Archaic components, and recent excavations in 2015 and 2016 uncovered a 3 m x 5 m series of five overlapping hearth features in the late Archaic strata (14C 4,000-1,250 B.P.). Projectile points, tools and organic materials...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Keeney.

The Matcharak Peninsula Site (AMR-196), located in the central Brooks Range of Arctic Alaska, contains a mid-Holocene archaeological assemblage dating between 4,000 and 7,500 calBP and assigned to the Northern Archaic tradition. Excavations between 2010 and 2014 yielded hundreds of identifiable faunal specimens preserved in permafrost, making it one of the largest and most well-preserved faunal assemblages found in a Northern Archaic context. The assemblage has great potential for elucidating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Ware Van Der Voort.

Little Steamboat Point 1 (LSP-1) is a small stratified rockshelter in Warner Valley, Oregon. It contained an early-to-mid Holocene component consisting of faunal remains, lithic tools, and debitage. My use-wear analysis of 20 Great Basin Stemmed and Cascade projectile points examines how those tools were used via macroscopic and low-power microscopic techniques. Since the shelter seems to represent a short-occupation activity site, this analysis provides insight into the hunting and processing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Brush. Lawrence Todd. Rachel Reckin.

Obsidian samples from a variety of sites across Northwest Wyoming have been sourced using X-ray fluorescence and analyzed in order to determine the importance of a relatively unheard of source from the Cougar Pass region of the Absaroka Mountain Range. Artifacts manufactured with obsidian nodules from Cougar Pass have been found in archaeological contexts across Northwest Wyoming, extending as far as a presently unknown kilometer range from their source. The wide range of specimens from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mallory Peters. Jessica Curry. Eric Bartelink.

During a 2010 National Park Service project to remove lead contaminated soils from behind a historic hospital at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason), San Francisco, a medical waste pit containing commingled human and faunal remains was discovered. From 1864-1903, several military surgeons were posted at the Point San Jose Hospital to treat military personnel. Analysis of the human remains revealed evidence of anatomical dissection indicated by numerous incised cut marks, saw cut marks, and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Deibel. Corinne Deibel. Ye Wa. Liping Yang.

Field studies were performed at the Yangguanzhai Neolithic site near Xi’an, China, using an Olympus Delta Premium portable XRF spectrometer and an Agilent ExoScan FTIR spectrometer. 932 ceramic sherds collected from nine locations across the site were selected and classified based on color (red, tan and brown), decorations (painted, rope impression - cord or thread, and plain), and time period (Miaodigou and Banpo IV). Each sherd was broken, so that the analysis could be performed on a clean...