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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mike Makin.

The Hatch site in Prince George County, Virginia is arguably among the most significant precolonial sites in the region. After it was excavated in the 1980s, the collection was stored away and went largely unstudied for the last thirty years. When I first began my research on this ‘orphaned’ site, I was struck by the large pit features containing evidence of ritual feasting and a wide variety of ceramic types. Adhering to the old trope that ‘pots equal people’, I initially assumed that this site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Kaplan.

The use of portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) for in-situ elemental analysis is becoming widespread in archaeology and cultural heritage studies. Archaeologists and conservators routinely use pXRF instruments in the field and many museums use them in-house for identification of pigments, metals, and inorganic pesticide residues, characterization of minerals and determination of alloy composition. The NMAI Conservation Department has been using pXRF for over fifteen years for a variety of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Travis Stanton.

Maya potters in the towns of Muna, Mama, and Ticul have historically used a calcite crystal to temper cooking pots due to its perceived role in mitigating the negative effects of thermal shock. When a clay cooking pot begins to be used it is exposed to extreme temperature variations which lead it to experience catastrophic failure are a higher rate than many ceramic vessels used for other activities. In this paper we discuss the results of experimental archaeology using calcite crystals in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriel Wrobel.

The Maya Cranial Photogrammetry Project aims to create a large digital repository for the purpose of comparative shape analyses to test hypotheses relating to ethnic and political distinctions among ancient Maya groups. The shape of skeletons reflects a combination of genetic and environmental influences on development and thus comparison of skeletal variability provides an important means to reconstruct microevolutionary processes. In particular, because of its complex morphology the skull has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown. Shawn Morton.

In the 1980s, archaeological investigations by the Point Placencia Archaeological Project (PPAP) noted the rapid, single-phase development of monumental construction at the Maya site of Alabama in the Stann Creek District. Though never fully investigated by PPAP, this rapid, ‘boom-like’ development during the late facet of the Late Classic to Terminal Classic periods is being pursued in current investigations by the Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project (SCRAP). This presentation, by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Horvey Palacios. Traci Ardren. Julie Wesp. Travis Stanton.

The allocation of space for the deceased is an integral component of understanding the relationship between a community and its mortuary practices.  This paper explores how Maya ossuaries, or deposits with the commingled remains of multiple individuals, form a distinct body processing method that increases in frequency during the Terminal and Postclassic period in the Northern Maya lowlands. Data from salvage excavations of a Terminal Classic disturbed ossuary in the archaeological zone of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fash. Nawa Sugiyama. Barbara Fash. Mariela Pérez Antonio. Alexis Hartford.

Two distinct excavation contexts from Front D in the Plaza of the Columns Complex yielded pictorial representations in different artistic media that strongly suggest the presence of Maya artists in Plaza 50, decades prior to the famous Teotihuacan "Entrada" of 378 C.E. in the Petén. Excavations at this civic-administrative structure at the heart of the ceremonial core of Teotihuacan have revealed a sequence of numerous plaster floors in Plaza 50 associated with Structure 44, whose form is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Melgar. Reyna Solís.

Across Mesoamerica and outside the Maya Region, archaeologists have found different greenstone lapidary objects with glossy appearance and particular iconography and aesthetics that were considered as jadeite and crafted by the Maya. Unfortunately, their detailed analysis to confirm these assumptions is scarce. In this paper, we will show the study of Mayan style lapidary items from different sites, like Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, Teteles, Tula, Tamtoc, and Tenochtitlan. We employed Micro-Raman...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Valdez.

The fringes of the eastern Andean slopes that conform Ecuador’s Ceja de Montaña are a steep transitional zone between the cordillera highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, where altitude varies from 1800 to ca.-400 masl, The ceja is covered by a dense humid tropical forest that has been traditionally seen as unfit for the development of social complexity. In spite of the apparent adverse ecological conditions this region became an important cultural area around 5000 years ago. A precocious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alfredo Saucedo.

Tradicionalmente en la arqueología de la costa del golfo y en específico, dentro de la zona nuclear olmeca se había propuesto que uno de los principales productos que se consumieron durante el preclásico por la sociedad olmeca fue el maíz. Aunado a esto las contantes representaciones de esta planta dentro del sistema de registro olmeca, sugerían una tendencia muy marcada y una preferencia inminente a la producción de este alimento, ya sea con fines ceremoniales o para consumo. Sin embargo,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Braje. Matthew Lauer.

Despite opposition by a number of anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and other historical and social scientists, a proposal to designate a geologic epoch of humans, the Anthropocene, is moving forward with a proposed starting date sometime in the last 50 years. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) and other, mostly, geological scientists have focused on the stratigraphic signatures for the boundary marker in lieu of understanding the long-term processes that have resulted in human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Sload.

Ceramics and radiocarbon dates indicate that Teotihuacanos ceased using the cave beneath the Sun Pyramid around the middle of the third century CE, at a time when the city was only just entering its "Classic" period florescence. A reverential termination seems quite likely. Evidence also indicates that post termination use of the cave occurred. As there were approximately 1700 years in between cessation of initial use and modern discovery of the cave in 1974, this paper explores the question of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Rainville. Asa Randall.

The middle St. Johns River valley in northeast Florida was occupied more-or-less continuously beginning at least 9000 years ago. Regional inhabitation by hunter-gatherers involved extensive terraforming of the landscape, including the construction of earthen and shell mounds, in addition to many non-mounded places. Many locations were repeatedly occupied over the millennia, with successive generations modifying or otherwise interacting with existing, often ancient, places. Earlier research took...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Harrington.

Archaic peoples in Pennsylvania were less mobile than their Paleoindian predecessors. One form of evidence supporting this argument is the increased use of local lithic raw materials in the Early and Middle Archaic. The utilization and retouch of unifaces and bifaces is a second form of evidence of mobility. The production of tools designed for long-term use and maintenance is associated with highly mobile groups where maximizing tool use-life reduces transport cost and reduces risk when moving...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Reid. Xinyi Liu.

Various foothills, oases and valleys along the north edge of the Tibetan Plateau played important roles in the process of food globalization in prehistory. These are the key corridors that brought southwest Asian animals along with the western grains into China and Chinese cereals to the West. Recent research demonstrates that broomcorn and foxtail millet (both C4 plants) were the key staple food in this region during the third and second millennium BC, but it remains unclear to what degree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Moses.

During the Archaic period (8th-6th cent. BCE), Rome underwent rapid urbanization with concomitant social changes. This shift from modest settlement to urban center affected how animals were raised, distributed, and consumed. Namely, large-scale animal sacrifice rituals within the city acted as a new mechanism for distributing meat to the masses, provided by centralized authorities. The increased scale of animal sacrifice in the nascent city would have created new meanings to these rites and led...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Chiou.

Camelids (i.e., llamas and alpacas) were domesticated in the Andean region of South America over 6000 years ago. Since then, camelids have occupied a place of central importance in Andean lifeways over the longue dureé. Nevertheless, while camelid pastoralism in the landscape of the highland Andes has been well documented ethnographically, ethnohistorically, and archaeologically, the intimate relationship between people and camelids in the Andean coastal valleys is less understood. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Whitlock.

During the early medieval state formation process, England’s political organization transformed from localized tribal groups to large and consolidated kingdoms. Farmers at early medieval settlements experienced a related increase in agricultural production demands, and they introduced improved agricultural technology such as replacing the light ard with the heavier moldboard plow. The midlands counties (commonly referred to as the core of the "Central Province" or "Champion" region) are often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Van Wormer.

Mary’s City of David is a millenarian commune in Michigan, founded in 1903 and re-organized in 1930. As with all intentional communities, material culture (i.e., architecture, clothing, landscapes) serves as an active medium to both reflect and reinforce social ideals, and community members are keenly aware of the symbolic meanings represented. At their peak, the Benton Harbor colony sent out preachers to spread the word, bands to spread the music, and baseball teams to spread the game. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Raviele.

The training and mentoring received by Bill’s students reflects his dedication to four-field anthropology, as well as a recognition that students may work outside academia. This paper reflects on lessons learned from Bill’s seminars, his mentorship, and a four-field anthropological approach to graduate training in the evolution of one student’s career from archaeologist to organizational anthropologist and evaluator.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Terry Brock.

In 2008, Lynne Goldstein founded the Michigan State University Campus Archaeology Program. I had the opportunity to serve as the first Campus Archaeologist, a position that I thought would give me much needed experience in conducting and leading archaeological excavations. In addition to this, I ended up learning more about becoming a complete professional and public archaeologist, the intangible skills that are so difficult to teach, but that Dr. Goldstein has bestowed upon many of her students...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marsha Sims.

Research ties Mesoamerican search for ancestors to U.S. rock art. A hero in Mexican Aztec legend fought his sister, Coyolxauhqui, and the titans, decapitating her, rolling her body down the mountain, and leaving her head on the mountain. Coyolxauhqui is a floating head on Mesoamerican murals, decapitated and dismembered on the Coyolxauhqui stone. She was the moon, queen, and an avatar of their Earth Mother. She is commemorated in Basketmaker and later rock art in Colorado and Utah at 5 Faces and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Gruver.

Quebrada Jaguay is one of the earliest maritime settlements in the New World. The southern Peruvian coastal site was occupied from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene ~13 to 8 ka and demonstrates a society highly dependent upon marine resources. Archaeological deposits excavated in the 1990’s and 2017 contained high volumes of marine faunal remains, predominantly the surf clam Mesodesma donacium, which accounts for 99% of the shell remains. M. donacium are used in this study to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Guengerich.

The Chachapoyas area has long been considered an internally coherent archaeological and sociohistorical region, one of the few associated with the Eastern Andes. Recent research, however, reveals significant environmental and cultural diversity and calls into question whether "Chachapoyas" can meaningfully be understood as a single region. There is little evidence for any practices that both unified it internally while distinguishing it from others, and ongoing research at the site complex of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gonca Dardeniz Arikan. Tayfun Yildirim.

Modern day Çorum is the homeland of the Hatti people, the culture that later formed the Hittite Empire. Resuloğlu, dated to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2500–2100 BC), is one of the few Hatti sites being systematically excavated. The site, located on a hilltop near the Delice River, consists of a cemetery area and settlement that spreads over two opposing–once connected–ridges with numerous extraordinary metal and vitreous artifacts. The settlement exemplifies well the self-sustaining pre-Hittite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyrus Banikazemi.

The ethnohistoric and archaeological records provide ample evidence of the ideological significance of metals and pigments in the pre-Columbian Andean world. This study explores the use of these materials in the complex decorative techniques utilized by the Inca when finishing stone vessels.This research integrates data generated from ethnohistoric sources, portable X-Ray Fluorescent (pXRF) tests, and reconstructive experimentation in order to provide a better understanding of how metals and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Lehner.

Innovations in metallurgy had and continue to have significant and transformative effects on society. From mineral exploration and mining to primary metal production, manufacturing, and consumption across a range of social contexts, metallurgy influenced a wide range of distinctly human conditions. However, while metals are particularly transmutable, they also rapidly corrode back into increasingly stable mineral compounds in processes that people tried to mitigate and often unsuccessfully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Rodríguez.

This study explores a recurrent problem in the archaeological field. How to start the analysis of archaeological material? Specifically, how to analyze a ceramic sample stylistically? Based on research carried out at the Cerro de Oro archaeological site on the south coast of Peru, the author proposes a methodology that covers identifiable aspects in most data groups. The study of decorative techniques, the identification of iconographic designs and the observation of distribution patterns will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nawa Sugiyama. Saburo Sugiyama. Adrian Chase. Tanya Catignani. Taylor Gibson.

In the 1970s, systematic and expansive survey techniques enabled Million to create the first map of Teotihuacan, establishing the limits and density of the city. In this presentation we introduce a newly developed 2.5 dimensional map based on a LiDAR landscape model overlaid with a high-precision architectural map of the city drawn in AutoCAD covering 174 km2 area that extends the Million map by 131 km2. LiDAR technologies have greatly aided archaeological research in many landscapes with high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Cowell.

Los Ojitos (LA 98907) is a Hispanic New Mexican site occupied between 1865 and 1950 on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Excavators recovered micaceous brownware sherds alongside American goods in household deposits and refuse scatters surrounding historic structures. A single ceramic type encompasses all micaceous wares found in the region: Middle Pecos Micaceous Brownware, dating AD 800–1300. A lack of typological guidelines for distinguishing prehistoric and historic micaceous sherds...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Micah Hale. Adam Giacinto. Nicholas Hanten.

A recent, large-scale archaeological investigation in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills revealed the development of a locally circumscribed steatite bead-making industry. Made from a local steatite source, these rough, thin, square beads are accompanied by the entire range of production debris and bead making tools, collectively dating to the post-Mission historic period. I argue these steatite beads represent a micro-currency developed as an energy maximizing response to decreased...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ball.

This paper presents the results of recent statistical analyses focused on relative plant species distributions among six Princess Point sites in Late Woodland Southern Ontario and explores potential markers of micro-habitat production in the region.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Foecke. Douglas Meier. Edward Vicenzi. Russell Graham. Adam Creuziger.

The geochemistry of taphonomic alterations affecting buried bone has been little studied, yet has vast implications for scientific interpretation of archaeological and paleontological specimens in a world now embracing chemical methods in geoarchaeology. This investigative study of black surface staining on mammalian sub-fossil bone excavated from the bed of the Santa Fe River in northern Florida exemplifies the need to carefully evaluate post-depositional alteration. Such stains typically are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brandi Lee MacDonald. David Stalla. Xiaoqing He. Tommi White.

Pictographs are important archaeological locales that can provide insight into histories of mineral use and pigment preparation. We present the results of a series of microanalytical explorations of a pictograph panel at Boling Point, Babine Lake, British Columbia. Examination by high-resolution microanalysis (SEM-EDS, TEM, FTIR, micro-Raman) has revealed evidence pertaining to source selection of the iron-oxides used to produce the pictographs, the weathering and condition of the panels, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bradley Parker. Gabriel Prieto.

For decades archaeologists have been trying to develop methodologies that will help them determine what activities took place in and around ancient structures. Since people tend to clean activity areas, especially those that are used repeatedly, visible artifacts are rarely discovered in the context where they were originally used. Microartifact analysis focuses on the tiny fragments (<1 cm) of ceramics, bone, lithics, shell and other microartifacts that are produced as a result of human action....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Summers. Meradeth Snow. Joshua Sackett. Duane Moser.

With implications involving health, nutrition, and even behavior, research into the human microbiome is a burgeoning field within the biological sciences. Less well understood is whether humans, both modern and past, share(d) a recognizable core microbiome. Archaeological materials represent a window into microbiome structure and function of ancient peoples. Assuming microorganisms or their DNA persist for many years under optimal conditions, coprolites should represent time capsules into the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Panagiotis Karkanas. Sharon Stocker. Jack Davis.

Results of a microstratigraphic and geochemical approach are presented here in reference to study of the Mycenaean ‘Griffin Warrior’ shaft grave at ancient Pylos. Soil and sediment micromorphology are used to address questions concerning the preparation of the tomb, the mode of corpse deposition, and taphonomy of the burial. Processes and activities such as the preparation and configuration of the floor and other earthen constructions inside the tomb are considered, as well as the rapidity of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Roscoe. Alice R. Kelley.

Although some attention has been given to the possibility that circular, semi-circular, and U-shaped piles of shell in southeastern North America represent monumental architecture (e.g., Thompson and Pluckhahn 2012), little attention has been afforded to the possibility that large shell middens of the eastern North American coast might be monumental constructions. Here, using an argument drawn from New Guinea ethnography, we hypothesize that some Maine middens were not simply rubbish heaps, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Parris.

Mundane utilitarian ware, finely decorated polychromes, fine paste and epigraphic imports, and plates bearing idiosyncratic local designs characterize La Corona’s ceramic assemblage. The ceramic chronology of La Corona is presented with emphasis on construction phases, middens, caches, burials, and special deposits in an effort to reconcile the ceramic assemblage and the political history of the site. Polychromes bearing place names highlight La Corona’s elite regional relationships while the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Debra Walker. Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown. Shawn Morton.

Joe Ball’s seminal work on the ceramics of Becan, Campeche, Mexico, anchored two generations of research on the the ancient Maya. His analysis, for the most part, has stood the test of time, and his recent revisions to it reflect the breadth of his knowledge, and his ability to re-conceptualize a problem in light of subsequent research. One aspect of his Becan work that has proved elusive to other researchers is the definition of a Middle Classic. Although some have isolated a Middle Classic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksa Alaica. Véronique Bélisle.

The ten years of research at the Middle Horizon site of Ak’awillay in the Cusco region of Peru have attested that local elites were the main interlocutors of trade with Wari colonists (Bélisle, 2013). In the era of interdisciplinary research, zooarchaeological methods have the capacity to shed new light on patterns that are seen in other material remains. In the case of the Middle Horizon (AD600-1000) contexts of Ak’awillay, new insights into the extent of trade networks and long-distance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Pollack. A. Gwynn Henderson.

Throughout the middle Ohio Valley, archaeologists have documented ca. A.D. 1400 region-wide changes in material culture and settlement patterns that they have characterized as the Madisonville Horizon. Established ca. A.D. 1300, the three hundred year continuous occupation of Fox Farm, located in northern Kentucky, spans the Fort Ancient transformation (A.D. 1375-1425). As the site grew in size during the fourteenth century, the settlement shifted from a circular to clustered arrangement of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Parker. George J. Bey III. Tomás Gallareta Negrón.

Complex ritual deposits dating to the Middle Preclassic period are rarely encountered in Yucatan, and typically have only been recovered from disturbed contexts. Excavations along the center axes in the plaza of the Middle Preclassic village of Paso del Macho in the Puuc region of Yucatan have yielded a series of offerings spanning from the early Middle Preclassic to the cusp of the Late Preclassic. Three different floor sequences were each associated with several offerings. The forms of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Birch.

Flexibility is a defining characteristic of the Iroquoian settlement landscape. Population movement, amalgamation, coalescence, dispersal, resettlement, incorporation, and abandonment occurred at the local and regional scales throughout Iroquoian history. Even those groups that persisted within more or less the same territories from A.D. 1300 through the contact era had complex and dynamic settlement histories. This paper considers patterns of settlement relocation in Northern Iroquoia with an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Kay.

The fifth century in Britain is one of dramatic cultural, social, and economic change, transforming the late-Roman communal landscape into one dominated by Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. These changes have often been attributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire or the arrival of immigrants from the continent. This paper uses ArcGIS, isotopic studies, and multivariate statistics to investigate the relationship between where people came from, where they chose to bury their dead, and what they sent with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodie OGorman.

Migration of human populations is an ancient and persistent part of the history of humankind. In the past, as in the present, migration continues to be a solution to human problems that carries with it some degree of increased risk and challenges for group and individual security and identity. Vulnerability resulting from migration choices, and practices to mitigate risks of that vulnerability, vary between historically situated populations and within groups by age, gender, and other elements of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only R. E. Burrillo.

In 2016, SWCA Environmental Consultants conducted a limited Class II cultural resource inventory in the Bears Ears area in order to test a predictive model generated on behalf of the Monticello Field Office of the BLM for a Class I report. A historic stone-and-timber sheep corral with nearby rock inscriptions was located and mapped on the Butler Wash side of Comb Ridge during these efforts, and determined to be a historic Ute site with Navajo cultural elements. Subsequent revisits to the site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Whalen. T. L. Thurston.

Post-Medieval ethnic identities in the British Isles display similarities and differences. Across the landscape of Northern Ireland, where indigenous people were subject to English, Scottish, and Welsh colonization, a sharing of material culture is evident across all groups. For example, English fine earthenwares, locally produced coarse earthenwares and locally made tobacco pipes are equally distributed, regardless of property owners’ ethnicity. This suggests that a culturally blended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Chatelain.

Excavations at minor centers provide us not only with a wealth of information about those sites, but they can also illuminate sociopolitical shifts over time within the broader region. The minor center of La Cariba, located four kilometers southwest of La Corona, has been investigated since 2009. A broad dataset including architectural, epigraphic, osteological, and artifactual evidence has provided a detailed narrative of political and demographic changes over a millennium at La Cariba. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cory Kegerise.

Pennsylvania has a long history of human occupation and an array of community types and settlement patterns ranging from large cities to sparsely populated rural communities. This geographic and cultural diversity resulted in varying burial practices including small family plots in farm fields, religious burial grounds, as well as private and publicly-owned cemeteries. As the state grew and changed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the legislature enacted or revised laws affecting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese. Brian Yaquinto.

Archaeologists are inherently limited in their understanding of the past by the quality and quantity of data available. In the US Southwest, we are fortunate to work in a region with a high degree of preservation and long history of archaeological inquiry. Because we work in a region with a dense and well-known archaeological record, we sometimes take what we know for granted and do not critically examine our assumptions. In the Mesa Verde region, extensive survey and excavation have revealed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yingfu Li.

China's southwest region has vast terrain and diverse landscape with rich mineral resources. From the bronze age to the iron age, this area existed two very obvious metallurgical technology systems, "Central Plains" and "non-Central Plains". The coexistence of two systems is not only the result of "sinification" , but also the result of the circulation of metallurgical resource and transmission of technology as social response in the mountainous environment in southwest China.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Howie. Jillian Jordan. Heather McKillop.

The rock and mineral fragments present in archaeological pottery, whether naturally occurring in the clay component or intentionally added as a temper, often serve as the primary geologic basis for provenance ascription in petrographic analysis. In certain contexts, however, the original compositional characteristics of pottery have been highly altered through technological or postdepositional processes. In these situations, accurate characterization and sourcing of original raw material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Frederic Sellet. Michael Guarino.

Among the Folsom artifacts excavated by Frank Roberts at the Lindenmeier site in Colorado are several unusually small projectile points, both fluted and unfluted. This paper explores the hypothesis that these miniature points are toys. To do so, we review the ethnographic literature on miniature weapons and contextualize the production and use of such objects. Second, we compare the small Folsom artifacts to full-size points from a typological and technological point of view. Finally, we discuss...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Leach.

Many precontact archaeological sites in New England exhibit poor preservation of organic materials but they occupy relatively stable upland landforms. Conversely, intertidal and submerged sites often contain exceptional organic preservation but exist in or near high-energy and erosive environments. This paper describes minimally-invasive geoarchaeological investigations of an Archaic to Terminal Archaic site in New Hampshire that is buried by salt marsh peat, exposed at a rapidly-eroding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Smith. Sarah Kennedy.

Drones have tremendously influenced how archaeologists can capture data, hailed as particularly "efficient" tools for our field. Such is the case, for example, in projects which aim to produce highly detailed basemaps useful for various site-level GIS analyses. However, despite radical developments within the past few years which have significantly improved accessibility and in-field usability, an under-represented reality is the unexpected challenges these technologies almost always present in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Zori.

The Inka empire directed significant resources and labor towards the extraction of metals from the provinces. Using the examples of Porco (silver), Viña del Cerro (copper) and the Tarapacá Valley (copper and silver), this poster explores Inka strategies for obtaining metallurgical wealth. These case studies show that, as suggested by ethnohistoric sources, large-scale silver extraction was directly overseen by the state. In contrast to models of more indirect state involvement typically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Burham.

Recent investigations of reservoirs associated with minor temple groups at Ceibal, Guatemala shed light on the role of water management in intermediate-level sociopolitical organization in ancient Maya society. Over the course of the Late and Terminal Preclassic periods (ca. 350BC-AD200), as Ceibal grew into an urban center, minor temples were built at regular intervals around the site core. These temples were the centers of local communities that were integrated primarily through ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Howey.

The Inland Waterway is a series of lakes, rivers, and streams that creates an inland route between Lakes Michigan and Huron. During the 1970’s, Lovis helped lead the NSF-funded Inland Waterway Project which involved survey and test excavations. The results of this research have been vital in advancing understandings of hunter-gatherer-horticulturalist social, economic, and ideological processes in the region and beyond. In a 2001 article, Lovis argued a set of clay products found at the Johnson...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane E. Buikstra. Jason King.

Lynne Goldstein has significantly advanced knowledge of ancient peoples in many theoretical and empirical domains, including her seminal studies of ancient cemeteries, especially their spatial organization and interpretation through the judicious use of ethnographic sources, critically evaluated. The senior author has had the pleasure of collaborating with Dr. Goldstein in several of these ventures, some under challenging conditions of heat and cold, which were bearable only due to Lynne’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Krus. Charles Cobb.

Bayesian chronological modeling is used to investigate the chronology for a large-scale human depopulation event during the Mississippi period (A.D. 1000–1700) known as the Vacant Quarter phenomenon. The Middle Cumberland Region (MCR) of Tennessee is within the Vacant Quarter area and six villages from the final phase of Mississippian activity in the MCR have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Complete radiocarbon datasets from these sites are presented within an interpretative Bayesian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

By A.D. 1120 in the Black Warrior Valley of west-central Alabama, a Mississippian identity, predicated on the dissemination and subsequent adoption of maize, had firmly begun to take root at what would become the ritual-ceremonial center of Moundville. Traditionally, researchers have modelled the origins of Moundville within a political-economic lens: the growing aspirations of elites, who are implied to be male, are supported and fueled by stores of and feasts of maize, which is treated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Ollendorf. Chad Donnelly. Brady Woodard. Kyle Volk.

Under the terms of a Memorandum of Agreement, a professional archaeologist and land-survey crew annually visit 16 historic properties within the Area of Potential Effects of the Maple River Flood Control Dam to document site conditions. All are archaeological sites that could be subjected to seasonal temporary inundation during spring runoff and/or periodic non-winter storm events. Since the "dry dam" first became operational during spring melt in 2007, extreme flood events occurred in 2009 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Javier I. Alcalde Gonzales.

Las formaciones sociales de carácter imperial se articulan desde sus propias dinámicas, reproducidas desde sus relaciones y su territorio. Estos mecanismos deben ir reformulándose en el proceso de expansión, integrando las dinámicas sometidas políticamente, desarrollándolas y transformándolas, originando nuevas formas políticas dentro los antiguos procesos regionales y en el propio centro imperial. El caso particular del Tawantinsuyu parece generar tres tradiciones integradoras diferenciadas, y...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Schaffer. E. Kofi Agorsah. Kalina Kassadjikova. Lars Fehren-Schmitz. Kelly Harkins.

Kormantse is an influential and celebrated place name in the African Diaspora. Some scholars estimate that more slaves were transported from Kormantse and nearby Fort William in Anamabo than most other West African ports. For the last ten years, the Kormantse Archaeological Research Project (KARP) has been studying the human skeletal remains recovered from the site. A combination of PCR-based techniques, targeted enrichment, and next-generation sequencing of Kormantse teeth has confirmed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Donner. Laura Harrison.

Pottery manufacturing in Early Bronze Age (EBA) Anatolia witnessed a host of technical innovations that transformed what had been a small-scale domestic activity into a specialist craft. At the proto-urban village of Seyitömer Höyük, dedicated pottery workshops appeared in the EBIII period (ca. 2250-2200 BCE), along with a suite of technical innovations, such as pottery molds, clay mixing pits, and clusters of pottery kilns. These advances allowed potters to manufacture more vessels with less...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Dunning Thierstein. Sabah Jasim. Eisa Yousif. Ellinor Dunning.

Mleiha in the center of the Emirate of Sharjah (UAE) presents a long archaeological history in which the natural environment plays an important role. The management of this site is complex and serves as a good practice example for the Salalah Doctrine. Our presentation will develop the challenges of management of archaeological sites in their special natural context involving the management of water resources, game and agriculture in an environment situated between the desert and the high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Frachetti.

New research in the field of aDNA has re-invigorated debates about migrations across Eurasia in prehistory. Emerging data in this field demands that we interrogate how mobility and migration from an ecological and demographic perspective, since these factors influence our interpretation of the still emerging genetic data. In this paper I present the archaeological conditions of the Eurasian steppe ca. 3000-2000 BCE applied to a spatial model with the goal of generating a more complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorelei Platz.

Mobility, as it relates to censers, can be discussed on both large and small scales; it includes the movement of iconographic concepts, the physical objects, and the material or organics burned inside the censer. Censers styles fluctuate across pre-Columbian time due to a wide variety of reasons, though the purpose remains the same, which is to burn incense. The singular function of censers makes it an exemplary artefact class for the discussion of mobility across geographical and cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Vianello. Robert H. Tykot.

The upheaval caused by the fall of the Roman Empire brought armies and new settlers in Italy in chaotic ways, producing significant changes to the socio-economic and political organization of the Empire. Material evidence has been irresolute in determining the actual significance of migratory movements due to the fast adoption of foreign customs to attain social power in the new political landscape. An interdisciplinary research using strontium isotope analyses on Late Roman and Byzantine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sofía Pacheco-Forés. María García Velasco.

Within Mesoamerica, ritual violence and human sacrifice have long been topics of anthropological inquiry. In this study, we investigate how the perception of social difference contributed to the selection of victims of ritual violence at an Epiclassic (600-900 CE) shrine site in the Basin of Mexico. The Epiclassic was a period of dramatic political upheaval and social reorganization. In such a volatile geopolitical climate, aspects of individuals’ social identities, such as their residential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erell Hubert.

The growing breadth of data coming from scientific excavations of Moche sites in different valleys along the north coast of Peru has led to major advances in our understanding of the diverse ways of being Moche as well as the complex relationship between religious and political powers. How gender relations played into these Moche experiences however remains relatively understudied. Here, I specifically focus on the place of women in Moche society through time and space. Some women have now been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph A. M. Gingerich.

At many archaeological sites, discrete concentrations of artifacts or the clustering of similar tool types are often interpreted as individual work areas or evidence of specific activities. Using sets of refitted artifacts from the Shawnee-Minisink site, representing individual knapping and tool use events, I examine the relationship between known work areas and areas with varying artifact densities, where activities are less defined. By examining the relationship between refit distance,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Egan.

The Tilarán -Arenal region of Costa Rica is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world. Despite the inherent hazard, people have occupied this region since the Paleo-Indian period (7000 B.C.). Numerous studies have explored volcanic eruptions as forcing mechanism that lead to culture; however, starting with the advent of sedentary villages during the Tronodora phase (2000-500 B.C.) until the arrival of Spanish in the 16th century, people maintained relatively small-scale,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hard. Jacob Freeman. Robert Gardner. Gabriella Zaragosa. Raymond Mauldin.

A radiocarbon database is used to model prehistoric population dynamics on the Texas Coastal Plain in the context of Holocene climate change. Hunters and gatherers participated in a multifaceted social and ecological system that appears to have been highly resilient to climatic impacts by utilizing multiple ecological zones and participating in wide-ranging social networks for over 6000 years. Climatic fluctuations include a dry middle Holocene and fluctuating but wetter late Holocene. During...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Bongers. Juliana Gómez Mejía. Colleen O'Shea.

This paper presents a model for mortuary practices associated with above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs known as chullpas, which date from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-1400) to the Colonial Period (A.D. 1532 - 1825) in the middle Chincha Valley, Peru. Mortuary practices involve living-dead interactions that transform the status of the deceased. Historical sources and archaeological research suggest that chullpas in the south-central Andean highlands featured protracted living-dead...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Anklam. Dan Wendt.

Since 2009 the Knife Lake siltstone quarries in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota U.S. quarry district have been the focus of archaeological and geoarchaeological research. A recent survey conducted in 2014 and 2015 identified several relic beach features at varying elevations above the current water line of Knife Lake. GIS was used to model and predict these proglacial lake shoreline features to better understand the procurement patterns of Knife Lake siltstone, a prominent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bulent Arikan.

Agent-based modeling of land use not only illustrates how ancient production mechanisms evolve, but such models also have the power to reconstruct changes in spatio-temporal changes in the dynamics of surface processes in relation with the changes in climatic conditions and varying type and intensity of human land use. Early Bronze Age-I at Arslantepe represents a time period when the paleoclimatic dynamics changed towards more arid conditions while the economy of the site shifted from intensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Napolitano. Robert DiNapoli. Geoffrey Clark. Ester Mietes. Lauren Pratt.

In recent decades, increased research on the early human settlement of islands in western Micronesia (northwest tropical Pacific) has resulted in a relatively clear picture of the Palau and the Mariana Islands being settled between ca. 3200-2800 years cal BP. Despite an increased understanding of when the two major archipelagos were settled, human arrival in Yap, a group of four small islands situated between the two other islands groups, remains unclear. New radiocarbon dates from the southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ioana Dumitru. Joseph W. Lehner. Michael Harrower.

With over 5000 years of production history, Oman was a major ancient source of copper, participating in a trade network that supplied a large part of the ancient world, the extent of which has yet to be fully mapped. As part of the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ArWHO) Project, we have been working since 2012 in the Ad-Dhahirah Governorate of Oman to clarify the structure of ancient copper production networks. Methodologically, our investigations employ satellite imagery analysis to map...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Marwick. Erik Gjesfjeld.

The history of archaeology is often told as a sequence of prominent individuals and their publications. Due to the focus on big names and big papers, the diversity of archaeological publications is often underestimated. Here we introduce a quantitative method that illuminates historical trends in archaeological writing by investigating a large number of journal articles. We use a Bayesian framework developed for estimating speciation, extinction, and preservation rates from incomplete fossil...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leobardo Pacheco Arias.

El Campamento de investigación del Conjunto Monumental de Atzompa, en Oaxaca, México, fue desarrollado con la participación de fondos federales y sectores privados como la Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú Oaxaca. Este espacio, que busca rescatar la arquitectura tradicional, ha permitido la práctica de estudios especializados del patrimonio arqueológico, el resguardo de objetos y el intercambio de conocimientos con los artesanos de Santa María Atzompa que han colaborado en el taller de restauración,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clay Mathers.

For more than 170 years, archaeologists and historians have offered a range of arguments in an attempt to locate the site of the 1541 siege of Moho. Although historical records of the Vázquez de Coronado entrada provide tantalizing clues about the whereabouts of this major battle, generations of scholars have often used an odd amalgam of description, assertion, and evidence to postulate the geographic location of this significant historical site. Carroll Riley’s interest in the deep history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dietrich Stout. Justin Pargeter. Nada Khreisheh. Katherine Bryant. Erin Hecht.

Although commonly glossed as social "transmission," the acquisition of knapping skills requires extended interactions between social inputs and individual practice better termed social "reproduction." Individual differences in learning aptitude during this process provide both the raw material for neurocognitive evolution and a potentially significant source of variability in the lithic products used to infer patterns and mechanisms of Paleolithic social learning. Here we present results from an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Luley.

The Roman conquest of Mediterranean Gaul between 125-121 B.C. significantly altered the Celtic societies living in the region. Two of these dramatic transformations were the increasing use of coins in economic transactions, and a marked rise in socio-economic inequality within the conquered province. This paper examines the connections in Roman Mediterranean Gaul of the first century B.C. through the first century A.D. between the emergence of a monetized economy, debt, and increased...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clara Steussy.

From 1942 to 1945, the third largest city in the state of Wyoming was the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, one of ten camps where Japanese immigrants and their Japanese American descendants had been forcibly relocated from their homes along the West Coast for the duration of World War II. During their residence, the incarcerees did everything they could to make the camps their home, establishing gardens and fields, building swimming pools and root cellars, and otherwise trying to make life...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Levine. Alex E. Badillo. Scott Hammerstedt. Amanda Regnier. Marcus Winter.

Ongoing scholarly debate concerning the function, meaning, and history of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza have important ramifications for our understanding of sociopolitical, economic, and religious life at the Zapotec capital. Although previous investigations have targeted many of the buildings that surround the plaza, none have focused explicitly on the plaza itself. This paper presents the preliminary results of the Proyecto Geofísico de Monte Albán (PGMA), a non-invasive study of the entire Main...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Pugliese. Roberto Ventura Santos. Carlos Zimpel. Eduardo Neves.

Recent research has confirmed that the some of the oldest ceramics of the Americas are associated with Amazonian shellmounds. Excavations at Monte Castelo site produced a representative assemblage of these early technologies, and has also demonstrated a long history of ceramic production and use, with significant changes during the Middle Holocene that accompany the intensification of landscape management and the emergence of several other cultural innovations in that period. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nissen.

Previous research suggests that the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize thrived during the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic periods (800 – 1100 CE). During this period, occupants of the city constructed up to 27 buildings within the confines of the site’s A plaza. This paper presents the results of the 2017 test excavations of a sample of the A plaza buildings. Maya plazas are typically conceived of as large open places for ritual and political performance. However, these excavation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julieta Lopez. Shigeru Kabata. Tatsuya Murakami. Manuel Ramirez.

Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and has been known for the presence of early talud-tablero facades (a combination of sloping walls and vertical panels) and other cultural elements inherited by Teotihuacan. This paper presents preliminary results of excavations, which were carried at monumental structures at Tlalancaleca. It examines the construction techniques used for monument building (including talud-tablero facades), the degree...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaroslaw Zralka. Bernard Hermes.

Yaxha and Nakum are two important Maya centers located in northeastern part of Guatemala. Recent research carried out by different projects at both sites indicate that during the Preclassic period Yaxha and Nakum rose to power and became important polities that had many examples of monumental architecture such as E-Groups, triadic complexes, ballcourts, causeways and other constructions. The scale of monumental architecture documented at Yaxha indicates that it was one of the largest Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zoe Rawski.

The site of Early Xunantunich in modern day Belize provides the opportunity for a uniquely detailed case study in Preclassic Maya architecture. Thanks to a lack of Classic Period overburden, the Mopan Valley Preclassic Project has been able to conduct extensive excavations of early architecture at the site, documenting important ritual activities from this early time period which likely played a key role in the development of sociopolitical complexity in the region. This paper focuses on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Reese-Taylor. Atasta Flores Esquivel. Nicholas Dunning. Armando Anaya Hernandez. Debra Walker.

During the Preclassic, the inhabitants of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico constructed more than 13 civic architectural complexes, each at least 20 m in height. These civic complexes were situated throughout roughly a 36 km2 area in a carefully planned quadripartite arrangement. Alongside these imposing structures, the early Maya also built massive platforms for public gatherings, large centralized reservoirs, a radial network of inter- and intra-city roads, and extensive agricultural features. In...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Hansen. Edgar Suyuc. Carlos Morales. Beatriz Balcarcel. Stanley Guenter.

Archaeological investigations in 51 ancient sites within the geographical confines of the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have identified an extraordinary emphasis on monumentality in art and architecture dating well into the Middle and Late Preclassic periods of Maya occupation. The structure and format of this phenomenon is replicated in early complex societies in other parts of the world, and suggests a consistent human behavior of predictable characteristics. The analyses and forms of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Franco Rossi.

With recent events in the United States, monuments and their powerful implications have been widely covered across media outlets. Less often considered, however, are the monuments that were never built in the first place. This paper grapples with these questions archaeologically, ethnographically and historically by considering monuments and memory through extremely well-explored cases in Bavaria and through other far less discussed cases in the Northeastern U.S. It considers the historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Spurr.

The Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is collaborating with the National Park Service to complete a comprehensive survey of Navajo National Monument in northern Arizona. The spectacular cliff dwellings of Keet Seel and Betatakin have been known to science since the early 1900s, but no comprehensive inventory has been conducted of the entire monument. Survey in 2016 focused on the mesa top and canyons in the vicinity of Betatakin, resulting in the discovery of two smaller contemporaneous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Bengtson. Amy Michael.

In her chapter in the 2006 volume "Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains", Lynne Goldstein considered the intersection of mortuary analysis and bioarchaeology through a survey of articles from eight prominent archaeology journals (1995-2000). She concluded that significant work remained to be done to appropriately integrate the two fields. In our paper, we summarize Goldstein’s critiques and examine more recent publications in these same journals (2006-2016) to characterize...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Marquardt. Alexis O'Donnell. Karen Price. Katie Williams. Heather Edgar.

In 1984-1985 several sets of human remains were inadvertently discovered at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These remains were excavated by the University of New Mexico and the Office of Contract Archaeology. In all a total of 12 individuals were excavated from this previously forgotten cemetery. St. Joseph’s Hospital was established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1902 as a tuberculosis sanitarium for well-heeled clients to rest and recuperate in what was then thought of as one of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annie Riegert. Lucy Gill.

Traces of veneration are sedimented within the landscape and the collective memory of its occupants, transforming these spaces into places. Such palimpsests become potent, which, in the case of mortuary landscapes, can manifest in increasingly complex burial rituals through time. The 2017 excavations at Colha revealed a series of 9 interments in the main plaza of the 2000 sector, yielding a minimum number of 13 individuals. This mortuary area initially utilized during the Middle Preclassic was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Neill J. Wallis. Ann Cordell.

Mortuary spaces often served as gathering points for disparate communities in the pre-Columbian past. The deep temporal associations of many burial mounds across the southeastern United States linked living societies to the ancestral landscape, thus creating a sense of social memory that penetrated both quotidian and ritualized social practice. Safford Mound (8PI3), a burial mound located near modern Tarpon Springs, Florida, embodies some of these characteristics. In this study, we qualitatively...