Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary De La Garza.

Sustainable accessible data storage is as important to archaeologists as tractors are to farmers. In 2001 the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist, (OSA), was archiving 20GB of data on a 100GB server. Sixteen years later the office is serving 32TB on several server systems and plans are in place to archive 60TB over the next 4 years. In addition to space needs the office must also make this data in its many forms accessible to outside entities. In the not so distant past archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Pintar. María Fernanda Rodríguez.

The earliest occupations in the Salt Puna —a high elevation desert in the Andes Mountains — date to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary and are relevant to the discussion of the timing of the first exploration and colonization of South American elevations above 3500m, as well as the relationship between mountain environments and other ecological areas. The wooden shafts used in the extractive technologies of the earliest hunter-gatherers originated outside the Puna, in the eastern lowlands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Rivera.

Co-organized by John V. Murra and Luis G. Lumbreras, this seminar was planned as an international and interdisciplinary study on the Lacustrine Kingdoms around the Titicaca basin (Lupaqa and Paqajes), and their interaction towards the western lowlands. Murra and Lumbreras were able to gather a group of leading Andeanists and students from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, and the U.S. who worked in the field for almost three months in Southern Peru, Northern Chile, and Bolivia. The Seminar,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Quintana Ortiz.

La Puntilla-Marina is a small peninsula located south of the walled city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and west of the docks. Through the 19th century a series of projects to develop the area, consisting on the construction of colonial government buildings such as the custom’s house, armory and a military battery, as well as warehouses and dwellings, were completed. Unfortunately, part of this ward was demolished in in the mid-20th century to give way to the construction of residential units, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Whitley. Michael Konzak. Bryan Mischke. Robert Watson. Paul Engel.

Geospatial analysts are now capable of developing increasingly accurate models of past and future ‘shorelines’ and the predicted impacts they might have on archaeological sites or cultural landscapes. But GIS alone cannot realistically simulate hydrodynamic effects, terrain displacements, or changes in vegetation communities, water bodies, and atmospheres. Funded by the NCPTT, this study combines GIS analysis of LiDAR terrain and bathymetric models with the photorealistic 3D modeling...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Graf. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel.

In 2013 our team began a 3-year testing project to assess the research potential of the recently-discovered McDonald Creek archaeological site (FAI-2043). The site is located in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska south of Fairbanks. Site testing indicated a well-stratified and reasonably preserved multicomponent site situated in unconsolidated eolian sand and silt deposits atop an ancient alluvial landform. Three cultural components have been identified so far, dating to the early Allerød,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza.

Pan de Azúcar de Nivín is located 23km east to the city of Casma, in the small town of Nivín, at the right margin of the Casma River Valley in the Department of Ancash, Peru. In June and July 2017, a team of archaeologists from Louisiana State University carried out mapping and excavation operations at this important archaeological complex. Through limited excavations, architectural mapping, surface collection and the analysis of associated materials, the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Robb.

The mountains of southern Calabria above 1400 m were used throughout prehistory and history, but except for an attempt to found highland agricultural settlements in the Greek period, they were always used for special purposes rather than as primary centres of habitation. The 20th century saw a massive transformation in land use, with intensive state investment in creating new kinds of mountain landscapes dedicated to special purposes. These purposes included political control, economic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carey Baxter. Michael Hargrave. George Calfas. Samuel Vance. Andrew Hamblin.

Archaeologists managing cultural resources on military installations have increasing opportunities to leverage unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), LiDAR, ground-based 3-D scanning, near-surface geophysics, and other remote sensing methods into their Cultural Resource Management (CRM) practices. These techniques are being integrated into CRM work under controlled conditions where adequate time and technical expertise is available. Military archaeologists are also developing Cultural Property...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dirk Rieke-Zapp. Elisabeth Trinkl.

Several hundred attic head vases are known worldwide and stored in museums and collections. In 1929, Beazley has categorized twenty groups based on stylistic properties and historic methodology. Head vases are assembled in several steps, most important for our comparison is the moulding of the head area. Since moulds were used to shape the heads, our initial hypothesis was to perform a quantitative comparison of head shapes based on digital scan data. Comparison of scan data is straight forward...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jurgen Schulze. Connor Smith. Philip Weber. Thomas DeFanti. Thomas E. Levy.

We created a walk-up virtual reality system consisting of six large 3D TV displays with 4k resolution, for easy dissemination of spatial and three-dimensional archaeological findings. We call this system the CAVE Kiosk. The system has been placed in the campus library to make it easily accessible to the entire campus community. We currently support three types of data: regular photographs, high resolution panoramic stereo photographs, point clouds such as from LIDAR scanners, and 3D models such...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lila Jones. Eileen Johnson.

Whiskey Flats, an archaeological site on the Llano Estacado (western Texas), is dated to the mid-18th century and represents Comanche occupation. Ongoing fieldwork has produced a vertebrate assemblage that includes coyote (Canis latrans) and a larger canid (Canis spp.) of a species that remains undetermined. The species of canids that may have been present at the time of deposition are grey wolf (C. lupus), coyote, domestic dog (C. lupus familiaris), and possibly red wolf (C. rufus). The Canis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuqi Li.

Most archaeologists would agree that ancient irrigation systems preserve important information about the technology, economy, and social organization of past societies. However, considering that archaeologists generally lack training in hydraulics, it is often difficult for us to extract much information from an ancient irrigation system beyond basic description and chronology. Thanks to the recent development in drone technology and flow modeling techniques we now have the option of generating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Begley.

Ancient eastern Honduran populations utilized foreign symbols in limited elite contexts, such as site planning and architecture, but most elements of material culture reflect clear connections to Lower Central America. Iconography seen in petroglyphs appears significantly different from that seen in other media, and may yield additional information and insights into identity formation and interactions within the region. For many reasons, these petroglyphs have not been extensively studied. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron S. Griffith.

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 demonstrate a portable and cost-effective approach to digital imaging of parietal art. To this end, I used an Occipital Structure Sensor 3D scanner, mounted on an iPhone 6, to document various monumental modified speleothem sculptures in the subterranean realm of the ancient Maya of Belize,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Morrison.

Tropical environments vary significantly in terms of rainfall and seasonality; these differences make a difference in the kinds of land use strategies that work over the long term. This paper reviews some of the opportunities and constraints of tropical environments in South Asia, considering the range of land use practices deployed over the last 6,000 years in this region. I argue that some practices which could be called sustainable also come at a high cost in terms of human dignity,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tasia Scott.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Lattanzi.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanette Nicewinter.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Genevieve Lucet. Irais Hernández.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Price.

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

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

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Martinez. Esther Rimer.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Bonneau.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Riel-Salvatore. Allison Parrish.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Petraglia.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margarita Diaz-Andreu. Tommaso Mattioli.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Larry Steinbrenner.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Inskip. John Robb.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Holmberg.

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

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

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen.

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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Palmer.

Dakota Access Pipeline. Ruby Pipeline. Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility. Topock Natural Gas Compressor Station. These are just a few examples of projects where the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) failed to protect cultural resources deemed significant by Native American tribes. In these instances, why did NHPA fail? Largely because NHPA does not consider impacts to the complete suite of cultural resources. It only addresses historic properties and historic properties "of traditional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Janusek. Andrew Roddick.

While Swiss-born anthropologist Adolph Bandelier is perhaps best known for his research in the U.S. southwest, for which the Bandelier National Forest bears his name, his research in the Bolivian Lake Titicaca region during the late nineteenth century has left an indelible legacy. Based on a brief visit of scarcely three weeks to the site of Tiahuanaco in 1894, he produced an informative document that remains vital to understanding its monuments to this day. In this paper we focus on his...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thibaut Devièse. Thomas W. Stafford Jr.. Michael Waters. Tom Higham.

When humans first colonized the Americas is becoming better understood by the addition of aDNA studies; however, the absolute dating of these late Pleistocene sites is crucial and depends upon accurate 14C dating of the fossils (i.e. bones, teeth and ivory). We re-dated vertebrate fossils associated with the North American butchering sites Wally’s Beach (Canada), La Prele, also known as Fetterman (Wyoming), Lindsay (Montana) and Dent (Colorado). Our work demonstrates the crucial importance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Sternberg.

The Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS) is an international professional society of about 300 members dealing with natural science applications in archaeology, paleoanthropology, and conservation. The Society was founded in 1977, so this session commemorates the 40th anniversary of the beginning of SAS. These four decades have seen advances in techniques, applications, theories, and infrastructure surrounding the archaeological sciences. We take this occasion to reflect on some of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Searcy. Scott Ure. Michael Mathiowetz. Jaclyn Eckersley. Haylie Ferguson.

In 2017, we used UAVs (drones) to record eight archaeological sites from the air. As this type of technology becomes more refined, we have found that it is especially useful in carrying out three specific tasks: contour mapping, archiving site conditions, and identifying architecture. This paper reports our findings resulting from aerial images captured while flying archaeological sites in Nayarit and Chihuahua, Mexico.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Atifa Rawan. Jamaludin Shable. M. Hussain Ahmadzai. Jodi Reeves Eyre.

The Afghanistan Cultural Heritage Education Program (ACHEP) is a collaborative project administered by the United States National Park Service and implemented by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Arizona and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Kabul University. This international outreach effort engages Afghanistan’s educators, students, and professionals in educational programs and activities to preserve and protect the country’s rich cultural heritage and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry Lamb.

From about 15,000 to 5,000 years ago, lakes and rivers existed across now arid areas of northern Africa, accompanied by extended ranges of vegetation, animals and human settlement. In eastern Africa, lake levels were very much higher than present, with now-closed lakes overflowing into the Nile and tributary rivers. While it is widely recognised that this African Humid Period resulted from an intensified African summer monsoon linked to the early Holocene precessional increase in summer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Farnsworth.

Historical archaeologists have explored the plantation landscapes of the Caribbean for more than 50 years, and there have been archaeological excavations at historical sites on every major island. However, there are still islands where there have not been any previous excavations at historic sites, including plantations. Anguilla was one such island until June 2017 when archaeological survey and excavations began at the Wallblake Estate to understand the plantation landscape and the major...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Salwen.

Water is one of the most powerful agents of change on the planet. Flowing water can build and destroy landscapes rapidly in dramatic fashion as with flash flooding or gradually through incremental natural processes, shaping the terrain through sedimentation, erosion, and seasonal fluctuations in water flow. Within human societies, these waterways may be perceived as a source of danger, but also provide subsistence and non-subsistence resources, and serve as landscape features that alter how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kanika Kalra.

Every June through September, the inhabitants of South Asia welcome and celebrate the southwest monsoons. The monsoon winds are the lifeline of this region but also a major threat, inspiring societies to devise mechanisms to both harness their potential and subvert the damage they may cause. This paper analyzes prehistoric and historical responses to monsoons in South Asia in terms of their unpredictable nature, and examines how the monsoons both facilitate and constrict people’s actions. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Soraya Alencar.

In the past decades, new theoretical and methodological developments in bioarchaeology and archaeology of death have allowed the exploration of age categories that are very challenging to access archaeologically: infants and older adults. Although Mesoamerican archaeology has largely used evidence for representations of aging in different sources of information (textual and iconographic) to engage in a broader consideration of funerary practices, approaches of old age as an identity category has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier.

Earth system models are climate models capable of simulating land-atmosphere feedbacks and the complex biogeochemical and biogeophysical processes that drive them. These models are particularly well-suited to studying the impact of preindustrial land use on regional climate change, as they explicitly resolve the impacts of irrigation, deforestation, and agropastoral production on the flow of water and energy between the land and atmosphere. Generating realistic maps of past land use is a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae.

The decisions and consequences behind the intensification of agricultural strategies among past societies has long been a topic of debate among archaeologists. These discussions are often dominated by factors of population dynamics and production capacity. This paper will explore the less discussed factor of risk management. Controlling the variation of production in regard to fluctuating natural and social pressures was critical to past agrarian societies and undoubtedly played a role in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Neuhoff-Malorzo.

Collection and examination of botanical remains has led to evidence of the development of agriculture in conjunction with the collection or procurement of wild resources at a number of Castro sites across the NW of Portugal and Galicia. Evidence procured to date from a number of such sites stretching from the Galician Region of Spain to the site of Monte Mozinho near the municipality of Penafiel in Portugal covers a span of time from Early Bronze Age to Roman Period and exhibits a combination...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David L. Lentz. Nicholas Dunning. Vernon Scarborough.

While it seems evident that the elites and royal personages at Tikal influenced at least some aspects of day-to-day activities of the Maya inhabitants, it has not been clear how this influence became manifest, particularly in regard to agriculture and other aspects of land management decisions. Recent paleoethnobotanical and archaeological studies at Tikal, however, bring some insight to this cultural black box. Three examples from the paleoethnobotanical record provide empirical evidence that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Cuevas. Lourdes Budar.

El corredor costero al este de Los Tuxtlas delimitado por las lagunas de Sontecomapan, y del Ostión, los volcanes de Santa Marta y San Martín Pajapan y el mar del Golfo de México, fue el escenario prehispánico de una alta densidad poblacional que entre su desarrollo contó con el emplazamiento de un complejo sistema portuario. Los recursos naturales que ofrecen los cuerpos de agua en esta zona sin duda fueron explotados para su consumo y comercio desde el Formativo Medio hasta el Clásico Tardío....

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Nathan Parrott. Carlos Peraza Lope.

This project examines an assemblage of 37 bark beaters from Northwest Yucatán, principally from the Postclassic Maya site of Mayapán. Bark beaters are stone tools used in the production of bark paper. In Mesoamerica, these tools were important in several specialized craft industries, including the manufacture of codices and clothing for religious and political ceremonies. There is still much that is unknown about pre-Columbian bark paper production, as bark paper rarely survives in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Stewart.

The Classic period (AD 1350-1598) in the Lower Chama Watershed of New Mexico was a time of rapid population growth and coalescence. Despite these dynamic population shifts, this time remains largely understudied. In this research, I examine the social dynamics of coalescence in the Lower Chama Watershed by analyzing changes in biscuit ware production at Sapa’uinge (LA 306), the largest Classic period pueblo in the region. Biscuit ware is a locally produced whiteware common at Sapa’uinge which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Humberto Nation. Leah Minc. Holley Moyes. Polly Peterson. James E. Brady.

Recent investigations in various surface and underground cave sites indicate the existence of extensive political, economic, religious and military exchanges between polities in the Maya lowlands of Belize. The occurrence of "foreign" materials at surface and cave sites have become an increasingly well-documented phenomenon (Brady et al. 1997) and are indicative of transport of speleothems during ancient Maya cave visitations. This phenomenon has raise several questions such as the spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paris Franklin. Mitchell E. McElwain. Bradford W. Andrews. Amanda K. Taylor. Dennis Lewarch.

This poster presents a technological analysis of obsidian artifacts from two Aztec-period surface collections in the Coatlan del Rio Valley, located in what is now the modern state of Morelos, Mexico. The deposits are from residential terraces collected in 4 x 4 m units. Designs on ceramics collected with the lithics indicate primary occupation after 1400 CE. This study has two primary objectives: first, we technologically classify the artifacts in the collections; second, we evaluate whether...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Galen McCloskey.

The chronology of prehistoric cultural developments within the American Southwest has been a subject of interest and debate since the archaeologists began to study the region. Although archaeologists have recognized patterns of aggregation throughout the Southwest, the degree to which the patterns are synchronous through prehistory remains uncertain. This research focuses on the development of a cultural chronology of the prehistoric Flagstaff area ranging from A.D. 600 through A.D. 1300,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Huerta. Heather Trigg. Judith Habicht-Mauche.

The pre-Revolt period (1598-1680) in New Mexico was a tumultuous time characterized by the forced making and breaking of ties between Spanish and Indigenous peoples on the Spanish Colonial settlement landscape that resulted in the circulation of cultural and economic resources. For Pueblo communities, colonial incursions significantly affected daily life through the ravages of war and disease, the privations of taxation and religious persecution, and the disruption of traditional economic and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Picard. Evan Giomi.

This poster presents the results of an archaeological survey of Pitchfork Ranch, located near the Big Burro Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. The survey was conducted by staff and students of the Archaeology Southwest Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school from 2015 to 2017. There is evidence on the ranch of human activity ranging from possible Paleolithic and early Archaic sites up to 20th century sites. Using GIS and geospatial data collected during this survey it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristine Bovy. Virginia L. Butler. Sarah K. Campbell. Michael A. Etnier.

Zooarchaeologists routinely analyze assemblages that were initially sorted into major animal type (birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates) by students or lab technicians with little experience in zooarchaeology. Sorting errors are likely made, which affect taxonomic representation and understanding of human-animal relationships. Recent study of the immense faunal assemblage (over 500,000 NSP) from Čḯxwicən, a 2800-year-old Lower Elwha Klallam village located on the coast of Washington (USA), allows...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Wilson. Kevin McBride.

Several archaeological deposits along the shores of Block Island, RI were exposed by the destructive wave action of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Once exposed, these deposits were threatened by continual coastal erosion and excavated by the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center as part of the 2013 Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Grant (P13AF00176); several of the excavated sites contained significant faunal assemblages. Faunal analyses of these sites included relative abundance and Number of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Bloch. Neill Wallis. George Kamenov.

One of hallmarks of Late Woodland period Weeden Island in Florida is the proliferation of ornate ceramics associated with ceremonial contexts. Recent elemental and petrographic analyses of Weeden Island ceramic pastes have established that despite visible standardization, these wares were traveling significant distances from large production centers, but also being made locally. This widespread movement of people and pots across the landscape provides a valuable context for exploring the spread...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hans Barnard. Maria Lozada. Augusto Cardona Rosas.

The Vitor Valley is an alluvial oasis linking the Arequipa highlands to the Pacific coast of southern Peru. The northern limit of the valley hosts a dense archaeological landscape of interspersed fieldstone structures and cemeteries known as the Millo Complex. This cluster comprises three principal segments referred to as Millo 2, Millo 3, and Millo 4; each of which preserves extensive architecture. Surface ceramics from across the Millo Complex and radiocarbon analysis of charcoal samples...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Grunwald.

Prior to moving the burials within the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia cemetery to a new location in 1860, a local newspaper of the time documented that the neighboring tenement houses used the open space as a dumping ground. Artifacts recovered from this deposit include pottery sherds, pieces of glass bottles, leather shoe soles, metal objects, and the remains of shellfish and domesticated animals. Many of the animal bones show signs of butchery, indicating that the remains are from food...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Gamblin.

Bourbon has been distilled in Kentucky throughout the state’s history and has influenced how cities in Kentucky have grown over time. Throughout the 1870s, a major rise in the number of distilleries in the state grew as wealthy patrons began buying up small, family-run distilleries and expanding them into a large-scale, booming industry that aimed to answer the demand for bourbon throughout the US. In order to fit the demand, bourbon barons began crafting ways to make more gallons per day, allow...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Schroll. Jason Nesbitt. Rachel Johnson. Sadie Weber.

Canchas Uckro is a large platform situated above the Puccha River, and approximately 25 km to the north of Chavín de Huántar. Recent excavations recovered a lithic assemblage consisting of 245 artifacts from stratigraphic layers dating between ca. 1100 and 800 BC. This poster describes the analysis of this lithic assemblage, including raw materials utilized, technological organization, and patterns of tool design in relation to possible subsistence activities. Expedient flakes from locally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiangming Dai.

Taosi is one of the largest sites surrounded by the huge fortification during the late Neolithic in the middle Yellow River valley. So far the archaeologists have excavated a large cemetery, and uncovered a number of burials at Taosi. These burials can be divided into a few categories based on their scale, structure and grave goods, representing the different social ranks. The cemetery consists of several sections, which represent the different social groups. During the early Longshan period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianna Campiani. Nicola Lercari. Ashley Lingle.

In the period 2011-2017, scholars from the University of California Merced and Cardiff University recorded the fragile earthen architecture of Çatalhöyük, Turkey employing cutting-edge conservation technologies to monitor the site and gather new data. Our goal was to model and analyze the site decay and plan conservation interventions. Tools and methods for this initiative include blending site monitoring data and digital documentation data from environmental data loggers, terrestrial laser...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cayla Colclasure. Megan Belcher. Jon Russ. Stephen Carmody. Martin Walker.

Three pipe fragments uncovered during a 2017 University of Tennessee excavation at the Topper Site (38AL23) in Allendale County, South Carolina have opened a window into the social and ceremonial practices of the site’s Late Woodland inhabitants. Morphometric, paleoethnobotanical, and residue analyses have enabled us to explore the societal role smoking played within this community. We compare the form, design, and contents of these fragments to similar artifacts from across the region and an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Curtis.

In Akçalar, Turkey, the location of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Aktopraklık site, urban and industrial development present shocking social, cultural, and economic changes to the community. The local landscape is transforming as towering apartment complexes are quickly expanding into areas previously occupied by sprawling fields of crops. As documented ethnographically, these processes have heightened local awareness of the decline of community heritage values, like neighborliness, agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa DeLance. Jaime Awe.

Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica frequently encounter construction fill within architecture. Construction fill has been variously used as a tool for determining architectural construction sequences, as a resource for seriation dating, and occasionally as a context for radiocarbon deposits. Although much information can be gleaned from examining construction fill, material culture found within such fill is frequently mentioned in passing as little more than refuse, if it is mentioned at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cobb. Brad Lieb. Tony Boudreaux.

We describe recent investigations of Indigenous communities who vacated the Tombigbee drainage of eastern Mississippi in the mid-fifteenth century A.D. These and surrounding groups migrated into nearby uplands known as the Blackland Prairie. Populations continued to move northward within the prairie and coalesced around what is today Tupelo, MS, in the 1600s. The move from a riverine to upland setting involved a dramatic shift in practices of historical ecology. The rich soils and open terrain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Van Vlack. Jamie A. Civitello. Rory P. Gauthier. Robert Powers.

In honor of Robert Powers, Bandelier National Monument (BNM) presents research on his final project investigating agricultural potential in the arid highlands of the American Southwest. Powers’ research was conducted on behalf of the University of New Mexico’s anthropology doctoral program for archaeology. The Park is well-known for its ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites and the unique, natural ecotones throughout the Eastern Jemez Mountains. The region is topographically dynamic; the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Braeden Dimitroff. Candice Disque.

The 2017 Alkali Ridge Data Modernization Project completed an intensive survey of 10 Ancestral Pueblo habitation sites within the Alkali Ridge National Historic Landmark as part of the ongoing collaboration between NMSU and the National Park Service to modernize data and conduct research. The 2017 fieldwork season focused on recording small residential sites in close proximity to community centers to examine the role small satellite habitations played in the Pueblo II-III period landscape of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kalina Kassadjikova. Kelly Harkins. Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Georgetown County in South Carolina housed some of the largest slave plantations and rice agriculture in the New World. Today, the descendants of these enslaved laborers form the Gullah Geechee community and comprise a distinct African-derived creolized cultural praxis. This study concerns itself with the long-term trajectory of biological and cultural change experienced by the individuals living in the South Carolina Lowcountry. First, ancient DNA extraction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Barbour.

Drawing inspiration from the work of Tim Ingold, I seek to find the middle ground of phenomenology, ecology, and materiality in describing how humans dwell and make their worlds among the various other communities around them. In the Lower Suwannee River Valley, Florida, human and oyster communities have interacted and intersected with another for millennia. Like people, oysters dwell and build creating their Umwelt, a concept introduced by Von Uexküll. This resulted in communities numbering in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Crawford.

When historic Alaskans chose a settlement site, access to adequate fuel was as important as the availability of food and water. Despite its importance fuel use in the Arctic and Subarctic has received relatively little attention. Work currently underway aims to clarify the criteria used to select fuel in ancient Alaska by testing two hypotheses. The Efficiency Maximization hypothesis, derived from the prey choice model of human behavioral ecology, proposes that Alaskans ranked woody taxa...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Sholts.

Biomolecular analyses have revolutionized the field of archaeology in the 21st century. Rapid advances in technology have lowered barriers to biomolecular information by increasing the speed, affordability, and effectiveness with which researchers can extract and analyze biomolecules from ancient materials. Amid growing attention on museum collections as a source of samples for biomolecular research, the people who curate and manage these collections are faced with new challenges and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Monroe. Paul Sandberg. Rita Austin. Marc Levine. Cecil Lewis.

More than a generation since the implementation of NAGPRA, many museums continue forward with the process of repatriation. This creates a unique opportunity for active and collaborative engagement of Native American communities in both the inception and implementation of scientific research. Biomolecular analyses of dental calculus can be an attractive research avenue because they address questions of mutual interest to tribes and scientists, and the sampling techniques are non-destructive to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Super. Meradeth Snow. Anna Prentiss. Ethan Ryan. Nathan Goodale.

There has been little research specifically designed to examine variability in how the porosity of lithic raw materials and micro-fractures from use-wear create environments that trap and preserve residues containing DNA on lithic tools. This study examines lithic tools made from a variety of raw materials to assess the effects of variability of raw material type, use-wear, and damage on preservation of ancient DNA (aDNA). aDNA analysis of stone tools can begin to address if the tools were used...

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

Sequencing ancient microorganisms using next generation sequencing approaches have truly revolutionized our view of the past. While past paleomicrobiological research was largely restricted to coprolites and sediments, the recent analyses of ancient calcified dental plaque has provided novel insights into ancient human diets, disease, behaviors, and lifestyles. Despite the benefits, obtaining DNA from diverse microbial communities is difficult and is fraught with issues for first time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Waller. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Ana Morales-Arce. Meradeth Snow. Miguel Vallebueno.

Paquimé, the political and religious center of the Casas Grandes culture, demonstrates extensive evidence of Mesoamerican influence, including macaws, architectural characteristics such as ballcourts and platform mounds, and mortuary practices in the form of modified trophy skulls and human sacrifice. The role of Mesoamerican influence on the development and florescence of the Casas Grandes culture remains an important but contentious research question for the late prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raquel Fleskes. Frankie West. Graciela Cabana. Theodore Schurr.

The Avery’s Rest archaeological site near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, represents an early phase of European colonization in North America. Previous archaeological and osteological analysis conducted by the Archaeological Society of Delaware and the Smithsonian Institution, respectively, indicated the presence of two burial clusters containing 11 excellently preserved individuals, one containing individuals of European ancestry and the other individuals of African ancestry. Ancient DNA (aDNA)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurent Frantz.

Transmissible cancers are mostly known from Tasmanian devils, soft shell clams and dogs. In dogs, the Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumors (CTVT) manifests as genital tumors and spreads between dogs (usually during mating) by the transfer of living cancer cells. This tumour first originated in the cells of an individual dog, up to 11,000 years ago, and possesses the genome of that founder dog. As such, CTVT cells contain an ancient living genome (the founder’s dog genome) that was passed along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Michell. Jennifer Marla Toyne. Alfredo Narvaez. Victor Vasquez.

This study uses isotopic analysis of fauna remains as a proxy for reconstructing the ancient Chachapoya environment of the northeastern highlands in Peru. Large middens have been excavated at the monumental center of Kuelap (900-1535 CE), yet there is little previous research focused on the fauna remains at this or other archaeological contexts in the region. The goal of this project was to reconstruct animal resource exploitation and provide insight into dietary variation and environment at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Ellis. Anna Browne Ribeiro. Filippo Stampanoni.

We analyze settlement organization and landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-Colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, within local and regional contexts. Pre-colonial land modifications dot the contemporary landscapes of Amazonia. Many such landscape features, such as anthrosols, elevated platforms, mounds, ramps, and riverine ports, are used today by contemporary inhabitants of Amazonia. New data gathered at Macurany reveals that ancient Amerindians altered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Nieves Zedeño. Francois Lanoe. Anna Jansson. Danielle Soza. Ashleigh Thompson.

The northern Rocky Mountain Front contains critical information regarding human exploration and colonization of the continent. Yet, reconstructed paleo-landscapes in the region extending from southern Alberta to northern Montana have focused almost exclusively on the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Billy Big Springs, a multi-component site located just east of East Glacier Park, provides new data on long-term natural (as old as 21,000 cal. BP) and cultural (post 14,000 to 700 cal. BP) landscape...