Society for American Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Nicolas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aim of this project is to understand the processes of jade stone manufacture of the Lingling-o, an ancient jade ornamental artifact found in Southeast Asia. As a favored body decoration in prehistoric societies, its distribution through a sea-based trade network in South China Sea, and the manufacture of jade stone materials influence the development of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bernardo Arriaza. Juan Pablo Ogalde. Leonardo Figueroa. Vivien Standen. Sian Halcrow.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Chinchorro people of northern Chile used manganese as part of their mortuary rites (7000–3000 BP). Chinchorro artifacts (n = 12) reveals the presence of manganese up to 64% measured with portable X-ray fluorescence. In addition, bone chemistry analysis from Chinchorro mummies (n = 68) using atomic absorption spectrometry reveals for the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Recent studies on ancient Maya agriculture address differences in farming methods used within the Maya area, and the implications these differences have for larger issues within Maya studies. Excavations conducted during the Actuncan Archaeological Project 2015/2016 field seasons examined GPR anomalies in the Northern Neighborhood region of the Actuncan, Belize site; the proposed poster will discuss evidence of terracing obtained from these excavations, including how these probable terraces were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc.

El Mirador (Peten, Guatemala) is among the largest Preclassic settlements in the Maya lowlands. The site has attracted attention due to its size and antiquity, but also for its location within a region containing few permanent or perennial water sources. This study presents a preliminary analysis of the site’s faunal remains to assess diet, ritual, habitat use and exchange. Comparison of the El Mirador data with other Preclassic faunal assemblages allows us to assess the degree to which animal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Sullivan. Jaime J. Awe.

Archaeological investigations during the last 20 years in Western Belize has recorded considerable evidence of craft specialization in this lowland Maya sub-region. Much of this information, however, has never been synthesized, thus providing us with a foggy lens through which to view the complexity of craft production, distribution and interaction at the intra- and inter-regional level. In an effort to address this situation, this paper examines different types of craft specialization in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Schnell.

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya are often highly regarded for their skill in dentistry—evidenced by longstanding traditions of filing and inlaying teeth. These procedures had a considerable success rate suggesting a pervasive knowledge of dental anatomy among practitioners. However, this study of aesthetic practices has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Thornton. Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc-Ley.

The site of El Mirador (Petén, Guatemala) is among the largest Preclassic settlements in the Maya lowlands. The site has attracted attention due to its size and antiquity, but also for its location within a region containing few permanent or perennial water sources. This study summarizes current zooarchaeological evidence from the site to assess past diet, habitat use, environment, and exchange. Comparative analysis demonstrates that the inhabitants of El Mirador conformed to certain widespread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Heller.

Archaeological research has increasingly revealed the role of elite labor and influence in ancient Maya political economies. Rising awareness of the complexity of ancient Maya socioeconomic organization and attention to households as loci of production has led to new understandings of the structures and practices of production within elite households and the position of elite individuals in relations of production that extend beyond their households. Status-enhancing material goods of elite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Horvey Palacios. Tanvi P. Honap. Douglas J. Kennett. Keith M. Prufer. Cecil M. Lewis, Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Oral microbial ecologies are shaped by an interaction among environmental and cultural factors, including wealth and status inequalities, which were pervasive throughout ancient Maya society. Few studies have directly integrated the oral microbiome of ancient individuals with a detailed analysis of their status from archaeological contexts. To interrogate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Heindel.

Research conducted during the 2015-2017 Actuncan Archaeological Project field seasons revealed several land use strategies utilized during the Late and Terminal Classic periods, including terracing, agricultural plots, and cobble mounds. Excavations conducted in the Northern Neighborhood of Actuncan exposed two terracing methods: 1) terraforming, in which earthen berms created to facilitate water drainage and 2) two small agricultural plot systems filled with a large amount of redeposited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Hester. Harry J. Shafer.

Beginning in the Middle Preclassic, the rise of small centers in the agricultural area of Northern Belize gave impetus to the intensive manufacture of stone tools at Colha. Craft specialization, mass production and export of stone tools and symbols were deeply entrenched by Late Preclassic times. Examples will be provided on the use of certain tool forms in agriculture and construction through out the region. Additionally, some artifacts were made mainly for caches, lithic symbols, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisol Cortes-Rincon. Jeremy McFarland. Jonathan Roldan. Cady Rutherford. Spencer Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss investigations of two sacbeob in the hinterlands in northwestern Belize. These features connect ancient Maya household groups, aguadas, quarries, terraces and ritual features. The study of ancient causeway systems is crucial to the understanding of mobility, sociopolitical, and economic networks in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angelina Locker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migrations are a key feature of human populations past and present, and people moved across landscapes regardless of cultural affiliation, hierarchical structures, or place of birth. But, what does it mean when individuals and/or pieces of their remains are moved elsewhere posthumously? This paper builds upon discourse centered around social memory and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Friedel.

The Mopan River valley was home to a number of pre-Hispanic Maya polities, including both political centers and rural communities. The forests and plant products grown in the region played crucial roles in the lifeways of these Maya, providing food, fuel, construction materials, and medicine. This paper presents preliminary results from the analysis of macrobotanical remains recovered through flotation by the Mopan Valley Archaeological Project and Mopan Valley Preclassic Project. These plant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr. Jeffrey Brewer. Nicholas Dunning. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Armando Anaya Hernández.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar has dramatically expanded our view of the ancient Maya landscape. We have used lidar to study the key natural resources of limestone and chert- their location, extent, and relationship to other ancient Maya features. Limestone was a key building material and chert was the source for most chipped stone tools. Lidar-derived imagery and hydrological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Heather McKillop. Christian Wells.

Underwater excavations at Early Classic Chan b’i (A.D. 300-600) and Late Classic Atz’aam Na (A.D. 600-900) ancient Maya salt works in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, reveal activity areas associated with a substantial salt industry for distribution to the southern Maya inland inhabitants. At these sites, wooden architecture and salt making artifacts are abundantly preserved in a peat bog composed of red mangrove. We describe the excavation methods at this shallow, submerged underwater site,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pete Demarte. Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone.

The Classic Maya, with their towering jungle temples and sprawling cities have been the focus of archaeological studies since the mid-1800s. Although numerous investigations have fostered considerable insights, important questions remain regarding the circumstances in which these settlements originated, interacted, developed, and were ultimately abandoned. The organization of Maya settlements is best conceptualized as a continuum consisting of three basic, but variable types, including:...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arlen Chase. Diane Chase. Adrian Chase.

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long-term archaeological research at Caracol, Belize has revealed a sizeable city with over 100,000 inhabitants at A.D. 650 that practiced intensive agriculture within its urban boundaries. Over 160 square kilometers of the landscape within Caracol was anthropogenic, having been rebuilt to both provide agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Linda Howie. Heather McKillop.

The Paynes Creek salt works of southern Belize were a massive industry for the production of salt for trade with inland Maya consumers during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900). The salt workers lived elsewhere, perhaps at the nearby trading port of Wild Cane Cay, which was a large contemporary settlement. The infrastructure of production includes wooden buildings preserved below the sea floor. The majority of artifacts recovered from survey and excavations consist of briquetage—locally-made...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Phillips. Erin Thornton. Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and the History of Human-Environment Interaction in the Lower Belize River Watershed" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding how the ancient Maya interacted with wetland environments has been a topic of research for roughly 50 years. Previous studies suggest these resource-rich environments provided a diverse assortment of flora and fauna for the ancient Maya to utilize. Wetlands provide an ideal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Nicholas Dunning.

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of Steve Houston’s sublime volumes is The Fiery Pool, which was also a groundbreaking exhibit. These explored the themes of the Maya and their relationships with water. Here we consider the themes from The Fiery Pool from the perspectives of ancient Maya Wetland fields, "creatures", and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Harrison-Buck.

The Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project is examining the wetlands of the eastern Belize Watershed. Within this 6000 km2 study area, there exists 122 km2 of perennial wetlands (28% of all wetlands in Belize). Here we report on the beginning stages of our investigations of an expansive wetland area in the northern part of the BREA study area. Through aerial survey we have identified ditched and drained fields and other canal features that resemble ancient wetland features found elsewhere...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lozano.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cloud iconography has been present on Mesoamerican material culture since the Formative Period and often appears with iconography that is associated with water rituals and rain entities. This paper will present new perspectives on the relationships between ancient Mesoamerican rain deities through a study of rain cloud iconography. I trace the appearance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo. Cesar Valentín Hernández. Lissandra González. Mijaely Castañón.

At the Tarascan Señorío, all the metal work aspects were controlled by the uacúsecha (most important clan) leaders, from their central cities of Pátzcuaro, Ihuatzio and specially Tzintzuntzan by the Pátzcuaro Lake in central Michoacán. In this paper we present the different aspects of the metal work, and the control that the uacúsecha nobles imposed, expressed in the architecture and their most relevant adornments like metal earplugs and lip-plugs, from the mining sites in the Tierra Caliente,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only MaryAnn Kontonicolas. C. Myles Chykerda.

Methone (located in Pieria, Greece) was a key trading hub in the prehistoric and historic North Aegean, visible in the discovery of an array of workshops, production tools, and imported artifacts, and by some of the earliest evidence for the Greek alphabet in the Mediterranean. The 2014-2016 Ancient Methone Archaeological Project aims to enrich our understanding of the settlement and situate it within the wider Mediterranean world. The principal components of the project–intensive surface...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano. Ava Godhart. Meradeth Snow. Michael Mathiowetz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While mounting evidence suggests that the Aztatlán tradition in west Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521), archaeologists have characterized items and beliefs as being culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous and exogenous material culture distribution has been interpreted as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Morales-Arce.

The genetic analysis of different periods in specific spatial territories could contribute to understand patterns of interactions for pre-Columbian populations that lived in northwest Mexico. Especially for those sites that show debated cultural traits such as Paquimé, the use of all possible bioarchaeological approaches may be key to identify their population ancestry, affinities, and to evaluate possible migrants origin. This research analyzes ancient mitochondrial DNA, HVI and HVII, of 14...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bastien Llamas. Alan Cooper. Wolfgang Haak.

Archaeological evidence indicates human presence as far as southern Chile and Argentina by 14.6-14.0 kya (thousand years ago), shortly after the Pleistocene ice sheets blocking access from eastern Beringia began to retreat. Genetic estimates of the timing and route of entry have been constrained by the lack of suitable calibration points and low genetic diversity of Native Americans. We sequenced 92 whole mitochondrial genomes from pre-Columbian South American skeletons dating from 8.6-0.5 kya,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Wellman. Rita Austin. Nihan Kilic. Madonna Moss. Courtney Hofman.

This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was nearly driven to extinction on the Pacific Coast in the 19th century due to the commercial maritime fur trade. Despite successful reintroduction efforts in North America, the Oregon sea otter population remains locally extirpated and endangered. Prior studies have used precontact and modern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Brunson. Kelsey Witt. Sloan Williams. Susan Monge. Lisa Janz.

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Societies in East Asia have utilized domesticated cattle since approximately 5,000 years ago, but the origins of East Asian cattle remain understudied. Possible experimentation with management of wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) and other bovids has been hypothesized but not explored in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Martinez-Cruzado. Juan Ortiz-Aguilú. Jennifer Raff. Andrés Príncipe. María Nieves-Colón.

The Machuca archaeological site in western Puerto Rico is found in the Añasco river flood-plain, next to one of the presumed ancient mouths of the river, less than half a kilometer east of the shoreline. The first burial was found in a fetal position together with ceramic remains of the Late Saladoid or Cuevas period. Radiocarbon dating on bone collagen placed the burial at AD 550 to 660 (2-sigma calibration) whereas that on charred material found inside one of the pots placed it at AD 650 to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corinne Hofman.

In this paper, we present multiple lines of evidence for the existence of interwoven and dynamic ancient networks in the Caribbean. This region is characterized by a long and unique history of social relationships between communities and peoples at various temporal and spatial scales. Through time, Caribbean networks of human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas were shaped by expanding and contracting group territories, fission and fusion of local communities, and variable degrees of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacie King.

This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I contend that the major gulf in Oaxaca archaeology is between Zapotec and Mixtec archaeology on the one hand and the archaeology of other regions and other language speakers on the other. The early focus on Zapotec and Mixtec archaeology stems from having codices written in these languages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Those of us who were fortunate enough to work with Willie Folan all know that he was generous to a fault. I was invited first to study obsidian artifacts excavated by his team at the great Preclassic to Classic Maya city of Calakmul, and then to continue that work with later projects, including Postclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Burns. Jelmer Eerkens.

Far from providing a bounty that obviated agriculture, the California acorn economy presented risks of secular variation more extreme than experienced by other densely populated hunter gatherers. Decentralized political organization and high ethno-linguistic diversity further complicated redistribution of spatio-temporally variant resources. In the ethnographic period, shell bead money played a key role in enabling exchange. We examine changing patterns in bead manufacture and distribution...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genome wide data from ancient microbes may help to understand mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease. Ancient pathogen genomes provide furthermore the possibility to identify causative agents of past pandemics and therefore elucidate mortality crisis such as the early contact period in the New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daiana Alves. Jose Iriarte. Denise P. Schaan.

ADEs are highly fertile soils found in association with archaeological sites all over the Amazonia that result from ancient societies’ landscape management. We present preliminary results on the research of plant consumption on Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) sites at Santarem region, Lower Amazon. To tackle questions concerning plant food production and the formation of ADEs at the region three sites are under investigation from an archaeobotanical approach: Serra do Maguari and Cedro on terra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Wildt.

For thousands of years, plazas have served as spaces for public gatherings. Modern plazas continue to serve many of the same functions as ancient plazas, providing a foundation for comparative studies. Archaeologists have begun to recognize the importance of incorporating modern studies of public spaces into their work, but in order for archaeology to remain relevant, we must engage with and contribute to studies of the modern world. It is necessary for us to work with scholars in these fields...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rodrigo Liendo.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Devin Pettigrew. Justin Garnett.

Children and adults often glaze over during abstruse discussions of the past, yet most are instantly engaged and excited on witnessing a flexible dart launched with an atlatl, or a hunting boomerang whirling towards a target. Most will try their hands at these weapons with enthusiasm. Today these are curious, antiquated devices, however, they were once the battle and hunting rifles of their day, and using them provides us with some sense of what it was like to be an ancient hunter or warrior,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seungki Kwak.

This study attempts to understand ancient human subsistence using isotope analysis on the organic residues extracted from the archaeological potsherds collected from prehistoric coastal shell midden sites in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. In Korean archaeology, shell middens are useful for isotope analysis because they provide suitable condition in terms of organic preservation. To date, the subsistence of these prehistoric coastal and island dwellers remains poorly known. However,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gallagher.

This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the evidence for Etruscan and Roman roads in the territory of San Giuliano and evolving strategies for control of the surrounding landscape. Road survey conducted as part of the San Giuliano Archaeological Project (SGARP) has problematized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Grone. Roberta Jewett. Rob Cuthrell. Gabriel Sanchez. Kent Lightfoot.

This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While extensive archaeological investigation regarding indigenous landscape management practices has been conducted in this region, little work has been done regarding shoreline management practices affecting intertidal and wetland regions, such as kelp harvesting and the exploitation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Santy.

Acorns were an essential foodstuff across prehistoric California; the transition to acorn use is currently being investigated. CA-SBA-53, a single-component Middle Holocene site on the mainland coast near Santa Barbara, contains an assemblage fairly evenly split between mortars and pestles, traditionally associated with acorn processing, and manos and metates, generally associated with seeds.; furthermore, these mortars and pestles are some of the oldest known in California. By extracting and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannes Schroeder.

The Tainos were the first people to encounter Columbus when he set foot in the New World. The Taino culture emerged in the Caribbean around 1200 CE but the ancestral origins of the Tainos remain a matter of debate. Some scholars believe that the ancestors of the Tainos originated in the Amazon Basin, while others contend that they may have spread from the Colombian Andes via a Circum-Caribbean route. Theoretically, the ancestors of the Tainos could have entered the Caribbean from, any or all...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham.

Recent investigations of minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the social and spatial organization of ancient Maya cities. Many researchers suggest that minor temples were important integrative hubs in lowland Maya settlements. Because minor temples were constructed at regular intervals around the urban epicenter of Ceibal, it appears that they were integral to city planning, and likely the centers of localized communities. Although they may have been discrete social units, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Sanger.

This is an abstract from the "From Hard Rock to Heavy Metal: Metal Tool Production and Use by Indigenous Hunter-Gatherers in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While Indigenous copper use in the Southeast United States is well documented in later Woodland and Mississippian periods, far less is known about earlier metallurgical practices and exchange. This paper documents our current state of knowledge and considers the importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Dunning. Jeffrey Brewer. Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Vernon Scarborough.

The Elevated Interior Region (EIR) of the Maya Lowlands posed especially difficult challenges for year-round ancient human occupation and urbanization. Accessible surface and groundwater sources are rare and a 5-month dry season necessitated the annual collection and storage of rainwater in order to concentrate human population. Here we review ancient Maya water storage adaptation in the EIR including urban and hinterland reservoirs as well as residential scale tanks and cisterns. Large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Donna Ruhl.

This poster is a summary of the results of a multiyear study of drought-exposed dugout canoes, oral histories, steward-preserved dugouts, and revisited extant canoe collections, coupled with many new radiocarbon dates on these heretofore unstudied canoes. Along with dugout dates, location and quantities have revealed additional insights about mobility, paleoenvironment, waterscapes, settlement change, economies, and overall significance of these underrepresented yet unique artifacts. Modern and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sonia Archila Montanez. Mónica Berón. Gabriela Musaubach. Martha Mejía. Eliana Lucero.

Empirical evidence of ancient ritual practices is not often found in many archaeological sites. This complex ideological aspect of past human societies has usually been reported in association with the presence of monuments such as sculptures, tombs, funeral mounds, temples and shrines and also with particular artefacts used during ceremonies and rituals such as ceramic, stone or metal vessels, musical instruments and so on. Archaeobotanical evidence could contribute enormously to the study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Sellen.

While the growth of the Internet market in pre-Columbian antiquities is of great concern to the countries of origin and law enforcement, we should also recognize that the Internet is a crucial tool in the fight to protect cultural materials. In particular, online databases that were once created for purely scholarly purposes, can be effectively used to track stolen, lost or exchanged artefacts. This talk will focus on my own experience, for over a decade now, of managing a database that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelley Hays-Gilpin.

Over a period of centuries between about AD 1000 and 1540, Ancestral Pueblo communities in what is now the southwestern U.S. developed elaborate, iconic mural painting traditions. The most detailed and best-known murals were excavated in kivas (ceremonial structures) at the sites of Awat’ovi and Kawayka’a on the Hopi Mesas, Arizona, and at Pottery Mound and Kuaua near Albuquerque, New Mexico. These murals not only express ritual and worldview in the 15th century but inspire contemporary artwork...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Guderjan. Joshua Kwoka. Colleen Hanratty.

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liz Quinlan.

This is an abstract from the "Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting Archaeological Legacies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Often mentioned as an afterthought in sentences about her more famous husband, Sally R. Binford has long been a topic of discussion for those interested in 20th century female archaeologists. Her foundational work in the early endeavors of the ‘New Archaeology’ set the stage for an academic revolution,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bettina Arnold.

"...we have been set free... by our most tireless prince, King and lord, the lord Robert... Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy... and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King" (Declaration of Arbroath April 6, 1320). The Romans in 1st century BC Gaul and the English in 14th century AD Scotland described the political...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saul Hedquist. Samantha Fladd. Vincent M. LaMotta. Nancy Odegaard.

This paper honors the anthropological contributions of the Homol’ovi Research Program (HRP) and its directors. We reflect on the conception and implementation of field and curation protocols that enabled years of innovative research into ancient Pueblo lifeways, work that continues today. Though fieldwork in the region has ceased, researchers still benefit from exceptional field recording standards, sound conservation techniques, and an explicitly behavioral project methodology. HRP was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Duane Quates. Laurie Rush. Margaret Schulz.

At Fort Drum, our responsiveness to public engagement has been a key element in creating scenarios that have benefited not only the program but the installation and the resource itself. In one example, pressure from Range Control and comments from the public resulted in the conversion of an off limits archaeological district into a training asset and further led to the site’s use in global stewardship training. In a second example, a seemingly ordinary visit from a family member of a Soldier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Staller.

Pre-Columbian Andean cultures have strong cultural and religious ties to plants and animals in their surrounding landscape. The preparation of food crops and cultigens that sustained life had strong cultural associations to ethnic identity, ritual, and religious practices in the annual cycle. Archaeologists have documented the biological complexity of the Andes and the social importance of feasting, rituals and rites in ancient and colonial societies. Indigenous perceptions and beliefs regarding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Lozada. Danielle Kurin. Enmanuel Gomez. Maria Lozada.

This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any attempt to understand indigenous anatomy and perceptions of the body from an emic perspective in the Andes is a challenging endeavor, beginning with basic definitions that differ substantially from Western traditions. Furthermore, definitions changed across space and time throughout Andean...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Ryan Williams.

Households and community structures in ancient Peru were key to developing irrigation systems and reproducing a social order. Tensions between communities and within them are often written on the landscape in the form of water distribution structures and community placement. Household level strategies may also be evident in the material structure of the house and its belongings. I undertake a cross-temporal and cross-cultural study of household and community level interfaces around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Núñez Aparcana. Jorge Rodríguez Morales. Raúl Zambrano Anaya.

One of the characteristics of ritual practices in the Andean Society is the presence of shrines in top of mountains related to local deities. These shrines formed part of ancient cultural landscapes that involved settlements, farmlands, cemeteries, and even complex road systems. Most of these ritual spaces are not regularly present in the archaeological record, yet they are frequently mentioned in etno-historical accounts. This study presents a preliminary analysis of a shrine located in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Tantaleán.

In the last decade a number of studies have been published focusing on the way Andean peoples both in the past and present, describe and define their world and its relational elements. These ontologies are derived from anthropology, ethnohistory and ethnography. Most of them intend to reconstruct the worldview of these social groups with different results. In this paper I summarize the main trends related to ontologies developed for Andean societies, especially those used to explain pre-Hispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Swenson.

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Tom Dillehay has significantly advanced Andean studies and archaeological theory and method, and a short presentation could never do justice to the extraordinary breadth of Tom’s many contributions. In my paper, I focus on Tom’s invaluable investigations of Andean ideologies of space and his pioneering...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cosimo Posth. Thiseas Lamnidis. Stephan Schiffels. Kurt Rademaker. Johannes Krause.

Present-day Andean human populations harbor a relatively high genetic diversity but a minimal population structure and differentiation among them. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome studies on pre-contact human remains suggest that both modern and ancient Andean populations derive from a single ancestral origin. However, nuclear ancient DNA (aDNA) data from the Andes in particular and South America in general are still too scarce to fully address questions on genetic continuity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giancarlo Marcone.

Infrastructures like the Qhapaq Ñan or Inka roads can be viewed as social institutions that are the result of a complex network of social interactions between populations and their environments and fulfill several local social needs. This vision opposite the ones that understand that centralized government is necessary for local level communities to maintain certain infrastructure, like irrigation canals and roads. The Inka road system is an intricate network of Tambos, administrative centers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only T. L. Thurston.

Anecdotal evidence for rural gender and age-based divisions of labor are known for Medieval and Post-Medieval Sweden, and a handful of historians have discussed their implications in terms of the ‘slices of time’ they represent. Other more continuous geographic and archaeological data address the status of agricultural populations through increased or diminished affordances, economic opportunities, taxation and laws, as well as climate change and demographic transitions. How were these varying...

DOCUMENT Citation Only João Cascalheira. Nuno Bicho. Celia Goncalves.

A recent survey project is documenting new Stone Age sites in various regions of Mozambique, including the areas of Niassa in the north and Limpopo in the south. Most of this work involves the identification and characterization of hundreds of surface lithic scatters among which thousands of stone tools must be analyzed. A digital recording system was required that would allow to: 1) register information of each scatter, including context description and geographical coordinates; 2) do on-site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Mentore.

In honor of the innovative contribution by Peter Roe to the ethno-archaeological research on Amazonia, my paper will focus on the indigenous knowledge forms which invert our own logics about material objects. Roe’s early willingness to allow indigenous thought to impact our scientific interpretations was well ahead of its time. Today, we on the ethnographic side of Amazonian scholarship, have little difficulty speaking in terms of the "social life of things." Yet, even beyond, the legitimacy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiyas Bhattacharyya. Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Sophorn Kim.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exploration of residential spaces through the study of household archaeology helps create a better understanding of society from multiple perspectives. Previous work on Angkorian households has focused on sites that were within the capital. There has been a record of archaeological occupation within Battambang...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiyas Bhattacharyya. Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Peter Grave. Lisa Kealhofer.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Incorporation into and connectivity within the Angkorian state (ninth–fifteenth centuries CE) has been studied through the construction of large temples and road/water networks across sites in mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Hendrickson 2008, 2010; Pottier et al. 2012). However, few scholars have examined how areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Miriam Stark. David Brotherson. Damian Evans. Martin Polkinghorne.

The 9th – 15th century Angkorian state was Southeast Asia’s largest ancient polity; its 1000 km2 core was among the world’s largest preindustrial urban centers. The Angkorian state’s mid-15th century CE “collapse” moved the polity’s rulers and their populations south to a series of new capitals that were closely linked to the Early Modern Southeast Asian economy. Angkor as a capital collapsed, but the Angkorian civilization continued. We use field excavations, surface survey, and remote sensing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Piphal Heng. Rachna Chhay.

One of the defining features of the great temples of Angkor is the pattern of enclosed space that surrounds many major monuments. The outer limits of these enclosures are frequently bounded by masonry walls and moats. Although more than a century of research has been devoted to understanding the temples that lie at the center of these enclosures, the structure and function of the vast rectilinear spaces that surround them remains very poorly understood. This paper draws on recent fieldwork by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Piphal Heng. Miriam Stark. Peter Grave. Lisa Kealhofer. Darith Ea.

The Middle Mekong Region played a crucial role in the formation of the pre-Angkorian and Angkor states. Most Angkorian centers are concentrated within the open plains with favorable access to rice cultivation and interconnected by landroutes. Settlements of the Middle Mekong Region are predominantly located within a narrow strip of fertile land between the rivers and the highlands historically associated with different groups of minorities. This paper combines multiple datasets including site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meagan Shirley. P. Nick Kardulias.

This study compares the funerary practice of ship burials in Anglo-Saxon and Viking societies. The custom of ship burial is an expression of rank and wealth held by an individual during their lifespan. In addition to common outward appearance of rank shown through such funerary treatment, similar artistic traditions are evident from grave goods and hoards. Items such as jewelry, furniture and boats are crafted in related styles that also express their owner’s rank through the materials and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Ammerman.

Humans’ increasingly close relationship to animals constitutes one of the most important cultural, social, and economic developments of the past ten thousand years of our history, as well as being a key factor in the changes in climate referred to as the Anthropocene. Animals are important resources of food, labor, and secondary products in many societies, as well as symbolically important features of the ritual landscape. As relationships with animals intensify, processes such as domestication...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Cootsona.

This paper explores the role of animals as social actors, namely the way natural animal behaviors influence human religious settings. The paper focuses on the case study of a floor organization of a formally closed thirteenth century Northern Tiwa kiva in the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. The worldview and beliefs of the Northern Tiwa were deeply shaped by the species and biomes with whom they co-habited. Through the synthesis of material data, ethnographic information and behavioral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Lev-Tov.

Within recent years, feasting and other forms of ritual consumption have become more frequently identified in the archaeozoological record of the ancient Near East. Reasons for more frequent identification of ritual sacrifices and feasts vary, but two driving forces certainly are archaeological context, bones found in or near special architecture, and the cultural milieu formed by the region’s ancient textual record. In contrast, I have a skeptical tale to tell of ritual production and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Elizalde Mendez. Salvador Figueroa Morales. Ximena Chávez Balderas.

After the discovery of the Tlaltecuhtli (earth goddess) monolith, the Templo Mayor Project explored an area known as the Mayorazgo de Nava Chávez, located at the foot of the Great Temple. Offering 125 was discovered west of the monolith and was deposited during the reign of Ahuitzotl (1486–1502 CE). Along with thousands of ritual items, two golden eagle skeletons were buried in this deposit. Commingled bones corresponding to at least three quail were found inside the keel of one of the eagles....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Sykes. Holly Miller.

Animal introductions are frequently equated with the introduction of new dietary ingredients; however, this paper will argue that access to 'meat' is seldom the motivation for the importation of exotic species. By examining a number of case-studies pertaining to Britain it will be proposed that many faunal introductions were both inspired by, and resulted in, social, economic and ideological change. Many species were associated with specific deities and because they were imported from beyond the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Nicodemus.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bronze Age is marked by dramatic social changes throughout much of the Old World. In Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, we see the emergence of regional hierarchies characterized by political and economic centralization and heightened status differentiation. While focus traditionally has been placed on the manufacture and exchange of metals, significant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weronika Tomczyk.

The Castillo de Huarmey archaeological expedition has been working since 2010 and so far, faunal remains from 3 different contexts were analyzed. Although the zooarchaeological analysis is still not completed, the importance of South American Camelids seems to be significant. In all of the contexts, remains of these species predominated. Formative settlement delivered small assemblage, but with high numbers of consumption patterns. Dated for Early Intermediate Period and Middle Horizon palatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damià Ramis.

The Balearic Islands were the last large islands in the Mediterranean to be settled, as late as the 3rd millennium cal BC. Currently, there is a good zooarchaeological record for the late 3rd and 2nd millennia cal BC, which allows the reconstruction of animal exploitation and management strategies in Mallorca, Menorca and Formentera. The results show that the obtainment of animal resources relied mainly on sheep, goat, cattle and pig husbandry. When this record is compared to the surrounding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Shelby Anderson. Shannon Tushingham. Andy Tremayne.

Processing and combustion of animal products including bone, fat, and oil for food and fuel was critical for human occupation of far northern latitudes. Remnant fats from these activities preserve exceptionally well in many Alaskan sites and various sources can be identified using standard techniques of lipid analysis. Combining lipid analysis with ethnographically informed experiments and high-resolution analysis of archaeological sediments, combustion features and ceramics, could help trace...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Price.

The Late Chalcolithic (4th millennium BC) in northern Mesopotamia was a period defined by an increase in social complexity and inequality. The Oriental Insitute of the University of Chicago's excavations at the site of Tell Surezha on the Erbil Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan have brought to light new information regarding the settlement of the region during this crucial period. This region is not well understood, especially when compared to adjacent regions, such as SE Anatolia and the Jezireh....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Walker. Barnet Pavão-Zuckerman.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Musgrove Cowpens (9Ch137) was a rural cowpen and trading post established along the Savannah River by the Creek/English trader and interpreter Mary Musgrove (Coosaponakeesa). This location was an ideal trading location between Charleston and Savannah, and placed the post on an estuary, providing an environment rich with natural resources. Excavated by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James A. Zeidler.

The mythological and iconographic analyses of Peter G. Roe have made seminal contributions to our understanding of Amerindian cosmology and religious thought in South America, both in the ethnographic present and in the prehispanic past. His unitary mythic model set forth in the Cosmic Zygote (1982) and explored in subsequent publications has convincingly demonstrated that this quintessentially Amazonian model has "deep-time" attributes that shed interpretive light on iconographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals are prominent in annual rituals performed at the end of the year, as seen on page 49-52 of the Codex Borgia. Animals attacking each other and scenes of struggle involving animals and anthropomorphic gods are related to sequences in the yearbearer cycle that define the Calendar Round. Yearbearer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Postclassic Maya city of Chichen Itza, buildings, planned spaces, and imagery blend with the landscape to form meta-narratives. One instance is the Sacred Cenote, a limestone sinkhole that was a major focus of rituals. The cenote rim features frogs/toads carved from the living rock, and at one time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nour Khachemoune. Aurora Allshouse. Kristine Richter. Christina Warinner.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late nineteenth century, Harvard Peabody Museum excavations at the Classic Maya site of Copán, Honduras, identified a large deposit of animal bones in structure 10L-36, a platform located in the El Cementerio area of Copán’s Late Classic Palace Complex. Primarily associated with the eighth–ninth-century CE reign of Yax Pahsaj, 10L-36 is thought to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail. Allen Christenson.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have long recognized that certain Mesoamerican deities appear in animal as well as anthropomorphic form. The Maya creator Itzamna, for example, has aspects corresponding to a bird, a turtle, and an alligator, while the aged "God L" may be linked to the opossum in its anthropomorphic form (Pawah-Ooch),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Dye.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation I discuss beliefs that focus on "supernatural" animals and associated charter myths, regalia, and ceramic effigies. Three forms of transcendental animals are evident in eastern North America: animal masters, guardian animals, and masters of animals. Animal masters control the availability and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer.

This is an abstract from the "Research Hot Off the Trowel in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Areas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster examines contextual patterns in deposits of animal bones from the Mimbres and upper Gila areas of southwest New Mexico from the Mimbres Classic through Cliff phase Salado periods (AD 1000–1450). Remains of common animal species in contexts like sheet middens and room fill are often interpreted as food remains....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mylène Bourdely.

The Naachtun Project has collected a large faunal assemblage since the first field campaign. This material is analyzed as part of doctoral research focusing on the site's subsistence economy. The analysis is based on specific archaeozoological methods, through which it is possible to identify the different animal remains and draw up a list of the species that were used by the site's ancient inhabitants. Many preliminary issues must be resolved: Which were the acquisition strategies of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only François Lanoë. Charles Holmes.

Bone technology is often omitted from discussions about technological variability and functionality in eastern Beringia, where recovered organic artifacts are rare. However, based on discoveries in Northeastern Eurasia with good organic preservation, it can be surmised that bone technology was similarly important to Beringian hunter-gatherers during the Final Pleistocene. Here we present the results of faunal and spatial analyses of the site of Swan Point CZ4b, the oldest known archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yifan Wang. Yu Dong. Fen Wang. Fengshi Luan.

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The long-term excavations at Dinggong, a late Neolithic site in northern China (c. 2600-2000 cal. BC), have uncovered extensive human and faunal remains with clear contextual information. We carried out stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of faunal remains to investigate the animal resources utilization and management of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Redding.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in various functional areas of the Workers’ Town and other settlement sites at Giza, Egypt, have provided a nuanced understanding of the distribution of animal taxa and body parts to dependents of the king. The residents of most of the areas excavated consumed sheep, goat, cattle, various birds, and fish. Young cattle and Nile perch were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

Abstract In this paper we propose a line of interpretation referred to the symbolism attributed to the zoomorphic figures, present in the rock art of the Sonoran Desert. We confront the results of rock art analysis and classification with a systematic study of the myths and legends of the Uto-aztecan cultural groups that lived in the region, when Europeans arrived. We pay special attention to the traditions of the O’odham, who inhabited the Sonoran Desert where we can find the rock art that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Neusius.

Excavations at the Johnston site (36IN2), a Middle Monongahela village located in western Pennsylvania, have generated a large, generally well-preserved assemblage of faunal remains. Between excavations in the 1950s and those conducted since 2005 by IUP, a significant portion of this large ring village has been sampled. Thus, this assemblage provides a rare opportunity to document the use of animals by the Monongahela. Initial faunal analysis was undertaken by John Guilday of the Carnegie Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Austin. Carolyn Freiwald. Melissa Quartarone. Hali Niles. Timothy Pugh.

A number of general trends characterize changes in Maya animal use over time. Previous studies have found that remains of dogs are most common in Preclassic contexts, while Classic period elite deposits typically consist mainly of large game, such as whitetail deer. Native species remained important even after the introduction of European domesticated species during the Contact and Colonial periods. Unfortunately, large faunal deposits that span multiple time periods are absent at most Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gavin Wisner. Katie Tappan. Dylan Wilson. Chrissina Burke. Norbert Stanchly.

Zooarchaeological materials from terminal deposits in the Belize Valley have the potential to assist archaeologists with understanding if terminal deposits represent ritual activities. This poster presents the results of zooarchaeological investigations of terminal deposits at the sites of Lower Dover and Baking Pot. While archaeologists from the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project (BVAR) have focused on the pottery and lithic materials in these deposits a thorough comparative...