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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Haney.

Residential burials are useful tools that help archaeologists better understand domestic ritual practices at the household level. With the household acting as a unit of social identity, funerary practices help archaeologists relate said practices to prominent trends of the time. These include, but are not limited to social and religious structures, identity, power, and social reproduction. One of the many types of artifacts that often appear in Classic Maya burials that are significant to burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Kirk. Michael J. Kolb.

In the summer of 2007 an elaborate, colonnaded gypsum-plaster floor was discovered outside of the Salemi Castle in western Sicily. Believed to date sometime between the 10th and 12th centuries, this feature was constructed during a period when the island of Sicily was repeatedly invaded and conquered by a series of expanding political entities. As such, interpretation of this feature has proved to be somewhat difficult. However, its orientation in an eastward direction may suggest that this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Newsom. Julie Woods.

Archaeological research on aboriginal ceramics in New England has been limited in content and scope since its beginnings in the late 19th century. Few studies have attempted to connect aboriginal ceramics research with contemporary Native peoples, either through past-to-present identity connections or through Indigenous community engagement. Additionally, there have been few efforts to integrate research across New England’s contemporary geopolitical boundaries. Recognizing these deficiencies in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Kassabaum.

The practice of building earthen mounds has tremendous time depth in the American South, and the variation in these monuments across time and space continues to spark debates regarding their functions and social significance. A great deal of attention has been focused on the shifting functions of mounds during Terminal Woodland / Emergent Mississippian times, when platform mound-and-plaza complexes become commonplace, corn agriculture becomes the norm, and higher levels of institutionalized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Cooper.

During the 18th century, European-Americans created a myth regarding the earthen mounds found throughout the eastern United States. This myth indicated that a western people, possibly the Lost Tribe of Israel, had inhabited North America and established cities throughout this region. They then succumbed to Native American savagery and brutality and were eradicated. Over time, archaeologists disproved the myth by conducting excavations and demonstrated the cultural similarities between the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ralf Vogelsang.

Although high-altitude mountain habitats are often regarded as unfavorable for human occupation; on the other hand tropical highlands in Africa are suggested as potential refugia during times of environmental stress. The presentation gives a review of new evidence of human occupation in the tropical highlands of Ethiopia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene period. A first correlation of the archaeological data with the climate record suggests a complex interplay between humans and their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Cromartie.

This poster investigates how Bronze and Iron Age communities around Mount Aragats, in central Armenia, managed their grassland environment through their subsistence strategies. I suggest that these distinct social and political societies not only participated in constructing a landscape of domestic cereal grains, such as barley and wheat, but also were participants in the ecology of this open mountain steppe environment dominated by Poaceae, Chenopodiaceae, and Artemisia. I investigate how the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Steere. Ashley Schubert.

The Appalachian Summit is the southernmost and highest part of the Appalachian Mountain system, extending across western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Beginning in the early 1300s, evidence for Mississippian practices appear within Late Pisgah phase communities in the central portion of the Appalachian Summit. These settlements include small farmsteads, palisaded villages, and sites with platform mounds. In addition to the Pisgah culture, the late Mississippian Qualla phase (1450 -1838...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Rutecki.

Informed by ethnographic accounts, iconography has helped clarify how people materialized otherwise intangible aspects of their realities. In this paper, I examine the use of raccoons in imagery from Mississippian archaeological contexts. By considering placement of independent raccoon motifs in iconographic scenes, as well as raccoon motifs associated with figures, I identify use patterns of raccoon imagery. Considering these iconographic data alongside faunal data generated from Spiro,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Hicks. Árni Daníel Juliusson. Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir. Astrid Ogilvie. Viðar Hreinsson.

In the early modern Atlantic World, core/periphery mercantile economics ascribed a marginal place for Iceland. The island's role in trade involved the production of low-cost bulk goods destined for markets mostly via Denmark into the 19th century. The focal area of this paper, the rural and upland Mývatn region, was in some ways socially and ecologically marginal even within Iceland. The growing environment was affected by unpredictable cold weather while volatile erosion zones hemmed local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brianna Herndon. Sara Becker.

Previous studies regarding femoral fossa morphology center on risk levels and variables associated with non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Increased risk of ACL injury is associated with smaller femoral fossa size. While fossa size is influenced by many variables, biologically "plastic" responses to early life experiences, such as traversing local topography or cultural factors, are appearing to emerge as perhaps the most impactful. Due to the crucial nature of the knee, it is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Birge.

When the Inkas encountered them, the Carangas ethnic group in western Bolivia were highly mobile through lifestyles that relied on camelid pastoralism, caravanning, and ritual movement. Examples of Inka sites are known in the region, but it is not fully understood how they impacted movement through the Sajama lines--a network of ritual pathways that stretches over 16,000 kilometers. This poster compares new data from 2017 to previous work in the Sajama region to examine how movement along the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Lash.

Movement is fundamental to bodily perception and to the formation of the archaeological record. Histories of movement shape our perceptual apparatus and generate embodied knowledge. This recursive constitution of bodies, movements, and materials simultaneously defines the challenge and opportunity of phenomenological approaches within sensory archaeology. Explicitly or not, most researchers use their own bodily experiences of movement as analogies for making inferences about the material and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Israel Hinojosa-Balino. Gerardo Gutierrez.

Drone technology has become widely available, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive over the last four years, and archaeologists have embraced it eagerly. Apart from the technological breakthroughs of the UAV platform and its assortment of sensors, we need to interpret these data beyond the beautiful models and topographic measurements. In this paper, we use the concept of monumentality and compare three iconic sites in Central Mexico to understand how their architectural expression correlates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Torrens.

Studying the development of technological specialization in cultural groups has been an interest of archaeologists for many years because specialization lends itself to the development of specialized labor. Technological specialization was a necessary factor in the building of the mounds and ridges at the late Archaic site at Poverty Point. Yet most of the research done to this point has been focused on the symbolic significance of the mounds and ridges, leaving our understanding of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marta Alfonso-Durruty. Miguel Vilar. Manuel J. San Román. Flavia Morello Repetto.

Information regarding the prehistoric human migration into Southernmost Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego provides a baseline against which it is possible to compare interpretations regarding the colonization of the Americas, including its timing and rates of human dispersion. The earliest archaeological evidence in Fuego- Patagonia dates to the Late Pleistocene (c. 10.500 BP). By the Middle Holocene archaeological record (c. 8000-4000 BP) shows marked differences between the technological,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Nick Kardulias. James Torpy. Drosos Kardulias. Alina Karapandzich.

The Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has conducted multi-pronged investigations in central Cyprus over the past 27 years. The research has included excavation, survey, geophysical prospection, ethnoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, and cultural studies. The unifying thread in these endeavors has been a theoretical perspective that draws on Braudel’s concern with the central role of the environment in the Mediterranean’s historical development, world-systems analysis, and landscape archaeology....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Haller Von Hallerstein. Dorothee Drucker. Kurt Rademaker.

Expanding on a previous report, we expand the results of the analysis of stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotope analyses from collagen of three Early and two Late-Middle Holocene adult human burials with coeval fauna remains of Cuncaicha rock shelter in the Peruvian Puna. We also reconstruct important aspects of the ecology of the Pucuncho Basin, in which Cuncaicha is located, using new and published isotopic values of archaeological and modern fauna and plants. Sulfur isotope values...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Canaday. Bryan Hanks. Rosemary Capo. Patricia Smith. Benjamin Hedin.

The Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho contains numerous prehistoric archaeological sites being impacted by recreational use. Sites located along the wild and scenic portion of the Middle Fork Salmon River are especially at-risk because of the thousands of visitors who regularly camp along the river within sensitive site areas. Non-ground disturbing methods were needed to determine whether the sites retain sub-surface integrity. Eight sites have been investigated using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Koenig. Christopher Jurgens. J. Kevin Hanselka. Stephen Black. Charles Frederick.

Located in the Northeastern Chihuahuan Desert, Eagle Cave is one of the largest rockshelters in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. Archaeologists previously excavated Eagle Cave in the 1930s and 1960s; however, no evidence had been recovered indicating Paleoindian occupation of the site. From January 2015 through February 2017, the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University re-excavated a 4-meter deep trench through the center of this massive rockshelter in order to document and sample...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lane Fargher. Richard Blanton.

In small-scale societies, including territories of failed states and peripheries; regional landscapes are chaotic and rife with interpersonal violence, slaving, and social disorder, etc. Accordingly, organizing for collective defense and the management of common pool resources is vital for the survival of small communities occupying these zones. In such contexts, ethnic identities, constructed around concepts of blood, race, language, or locality, are important for achieving cooperation because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lulewicz.

The scale and structure of the relationships through which social capital is generated, amassed, and controlled must be understood if we are to evaluate the emergence and evolution of organizationally complex social, political, and economic institutions. At any one point in time however, actors or entities are undoubtedly embedded and engaged in a number of distinct, yet overlapping, relational fields. In this paper I interrogate three networks, representing three separate sets of relationships,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Figueroa.

The physical landscape of Honduras was and continues to be home to a diverse group of indigenous groups, each with distinct cultural traditions, artistic styles, and sociopolitical configurations. In prehistory, this landscape was imbued with cultural meaning in a variety of ways, from the monumental to the perishable. This paper presents and discusses what we know about the rock art of central and southern Honduras, which contains a variety of iconographic rock art styles within a very limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julian Salazar. Valeria Leticia Franco Salvi. Dana Carrasco.

New perspectives from social archaeology have recently addressed the constitution of early village landscapes in the Northwest of Argentina. These new ideas have recognized the existence of multiple temporalities rather than the unilineal historical development of cultures or settlements conceived by previous normative and processual approaches. This dissertation will discuss the relevance of multi-temporal perspectives in order to understand social and political transformations in the long...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Doris Walter. Rebecca Bria.

This paper discusses the importance of combining ethnographic, archaeological, and "hard" scientific knowledge when teaching about climate change. Archaeology courses that discuss climate change typically bring together data from the physical sciences, such as from ice or lake cores, with archaeological evidence of social change, such as shifting settlement patterns or food strategies. Though an understanding of these links is critical to scientific literacy and knowledge about the past, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Jones.

This research uses settlement area of Piedmont Village Tradition (PVT) sites from the four major river valleys in the North Carolina Piedmont to describe demographic trends on multiple scales during 1200-1600 CE. It uses surface survey results and artifact styles to establish sizes and dates. Spatial data and radiometric dates from excavated sites in each valley are used to refine these data. Given the limitations of using surface survey data for estimating demographic characteristics, this work...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee.

The Bandafassi Plateau of southeastern Senegal today defines a landscape in which ethnic identities (Bedik, Peul, and Malinke) appear to be grounded in "traditional" patterns of settlement and land use, and yet oral histories speak largely of movement at multiple scales—from the fission and fusion of villages, to the migrations of hunters and merchants, to the arrival of foreign invaders and colonial powers. Seeking to better chart the interplay between natural environment and social history...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joanna Ostapkowicz.

The 1990s, with quincentenary ‘celebrations’ and two highly influential Taino art exhibits in Paris and New York (the epicentres of the pre-Columbian art market), heralded a seismic increase of indigenous Caribbean art forgeries. But these weren’t the first indications of an emerging market: Caribbean forgeries had been circulating since at least the 1950s. The artistic heritage of the pre-Columbian Caribbean still remains largely understudied, with far smaller-scale production than seen in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Knoerlein.

With a background in forensics, David Knoerlein, vice president of Forensic Digital Imaging, is a certified evidence photographer who has developed a new and innovative process for the digital documentation of artifacts. Mr. Knoerlein will demonstrate how to capture museum quality images right out of the camera. Utilizing a customized tabletop camera station, he will demonstrate how to capture detailed diagnostic images of artifacts with pure white (shadowless) backgrounds. This combination of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Cook. Genevieve Hill.

Tech-centred courses in archaeology are becoming evermore present in university and college training programs, as demands for digital field recording, data management and analysis, and public engagement applications increase. Traditional classrooms and labs may be conducive to methodological training, however experiencing the complicated ethics, politics and logistics of applying these methods to heritage practice is limited in these settings. This paper reflects on a collaborative project that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro.

In contemporary Gurupá, a rural municipality in the Brazilian Amazon, life is largely shaped by movement of, and among, plants. Plants here are mobile, but spend most of their lives stationary. In this paper, I examine the relationship between people and plants – as living, but nonetheless spatially rooted elements of the landscape – in these agroextractivist communities. I explore the significance of planting and plant life in regulating territorial use and notions of rights, access, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dean.

The last two decades in the south central Andes have witnessed the rapid growth of "Turismo Mistico" or New Age Tourism to archaeological sites and monuments in the south central Andes. Using the Cusco Valley of Peru as a case study, this paper analyzes textual, visual, experiential, and ethnographic data in order to assess the economic and socio-political impact this industry has on the communities in which it thrives. In particular, I explore the implications New Age Tourism has on local and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Cartier.

The relationship between the Aztecs and the Huastecs is complicated and often defined by Aztec reaction to Huastec culture. The Aztecs have often dominated the landscape of Mesoamerica while the Huastecs have been seen as something somewhat separate. At first glance the difference in Aztec and Huastec sculptural tradition might seem to reaffirm this disconnect. By focusing on male figurative sculpture and how it reflects the construction of gender identity we see that despite clear differences...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Peacock.

While artifacts and grave goods remain an archaeologist’s primary tools for gathering information on past populations, document and historical archaeology increasingly look to census records, obituaries, and family records, not just to confirm information about recovered artifacts, but as artifacts themselves. This study analyzed census data, birth records, and obituaries associated with three missing individuals assumed to be buried in Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El Jewish cemetery to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Conlee.

The Middle Horizon was a period of unprecedented interaction and change in the Nasca region. Nasca was one of the earliest places where Wari influence was found, extending back to the pre-imperial Huarpa culture of the Early Intermediate Period. It is also one of the few coastal regions with solid evidence of Wari colonization. However, the relationship was not a simple, unilineal one with Wari the dominant core society and Nasca the passive peripheral society. Instead a bilateral relationship...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Rodning. Michelle Pigott.

As it did elsewhere around the world, early Spanish exploration and colonization of the American South led to diverse forms of engagement, entanglement, diplomacy, and resistance by Native American groups. Community identity persisted in some places and in some instances, and it was transformed in others. Geopolitical relationships among towns and chiefdoms were altered in diverse ways, both because of colonial exploration, trade, settlement, and missionization, and because of Native American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Schurr. Madeleine McLeester.

Archaeologists have long explored the early interactions between Native Americans and Europeans in the Great Lakes region of Eastern North America. In particular, they have prioritized investigating these relationships at late prehistoric sites containing European trade goods. However, this narrow focus has led to neglecting late precontact sites that precede this period and which are essential for fully contextualizing these early interactions. In this presentation, we summarize the second year...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oswaldo Chinchilla.

The Pacific coast of Guatemala has long been regarded as a natural corridor that facilitated travel and trade, and served as a route of migration and invasion, connecting eastern Mexico, the Guatemalan highlands, and El Salvador, with further regions of Mexico and Central America. At first glance, the natural configuration of the coast seems to provide unobstructed passage, especially when compared with the rugged terrain of the adjacent highlands. The maps in many publications feature vague...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica L. Smith.

The recent development of the "Anthropocene" as a distinct geologic era, added to a century’s worth of scholarly discussion about the role of humans in their ecosystems, has solidified an interpretive view of humans as prime mover. Yet nature has a "mind of its own" relative to human knowledge, action, and volition. In this session, presenters will discuss the ways in which natural entities, ranging in size from mega-storms to viruses, have presented challenging conditions to which humans can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirby Farah.

Immediately after the consolidation of the Aztec Empire, Itzcoatl, the king of Tenochtitlan, ordered the destruction of the ancient codices from newly incorporated territories. By erasing these alternative histories, Itzcoatl paved the way for the construction of an official imperial history that bolstered the political aims of Aztec leaders. Nearly a century later, a second wave of erasures occurred when Spanish conquerors destroyed indigenous books and idols in an effort to eradicate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Diserens Morgan.

A national narrative glorifying the deep past of Mexico was formed using archaeological sites. The government has gone to great lengths to rebuild and preserve many ancient indigenous sites and objects for use as national symbols and as a draw for tourism. However, this practice has contributed to the ‘othering’ of indigenous groups by placing the ‘mysterious Indians’ firmly in the past, and restricting the access of descendant communities. Working within a modern Maya community, the members...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Pettitt.

We know that Neanderthals used the mouths of caves for habitation, and on occasion buried their dead in such contexts. The behavioural repertoire was recently extended to include the assembly of a circle of stones deep in a cave in France. But can any evidence be taken to imply specifically 'ritual' behaviour? I build here on ongoing collaborative research on the emergence of art, and on wider Neanderthal activities in caves and their environs to address the question as to whether 'ritual' use...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Higham. Thibaut Devièse. Marine Frouin. Katerina Douka.

For more than half a century Paleolithic archaeologists have grappled with radiocarbon-based chronologies that are often contradictory and imprecise. Several key debates in the Palaeolithic have their roots in basic issues related to chronology; did the Aurignacian predate the Chatelperronian in some regions of Europe? When did Neanderthals disappear? How long did anatomically modern humans (AMH) and Neanderthals overlap, and what implications did this have for interaction, acculturation or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Colaninno-Meeks.

Over the last several decades, STEM scholars have recognized the importance of developing and integrating discipline-based education research (DBER). As outlined by the National Research Council of the National Academies, the goals of DBER are to 1) understand how students learn discipline concepts, practices, and ways of thinking; 2) understand how students develop expertise; 3) identify and measure learning objectives and forms of instruction that advance students towards those objectives; 4)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Borislava Simova.

Our understanding of the ancient Maya is informed to a great extent by the material remains of ritual performance in both domestic and public contexts. Maya populations throughout Mesoamerica were united by a shared cosmology patterning the timing, location, and material aspects of ritual performance. Yet, ritual was not a static or rigid construct, dutifully replicated across populations. At the site of Actuncan, Belize, we find that aspects of domestic ritual cycles, - including form, content,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Walden. Michael Biggie. Kyle Shaw-Müller. Anaïs Levin. Rafael Guerra.

One relatively understudied aspect of neighborhood integration in ancient cities relates to the divergent trajectories along which cities form. In some ancient cities, the urban periphery appeared as autonomous communities prior to the development of a center, representing an ‘outside-in’ model of urbanism. Such contexts provide a valuable case study for investigating neighborhood integration into cities, due to a clear comparative temporal threshold (before and after incorporation). This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lacey Carpenter.

The late Formative polity centered at the El Palenque site, near San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, Mexico was a densely populated settlement. The site was founded in the late Monte Albán I phase (300-100) during a period of hostility and violent conflict. The settlement at El Palenque consists of a 1.6 ha civic ceremonial plaza, a 28 ha core area of residential occupation, and an additional 43.5 ha with more dispersed evidence for residential occupation. There may be a number of factors influencing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Welch. Scott Hutson.

Archaeologists working on the question of integration of neighborhoods within cities or polities often begin by assuming the existence of centralized authority. Next, they move to consider the relationship between neighborhoods and such authorities. Researchers typically see this relationship as one of domination, independence, or something in between. The case of Chunchucmil, a large Maya site located in northwest Yucatan, Mexico, challenges this common approach to neighborhood integration. At...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Pacifico. Melissa Vogel.

El Purgatorio was the capital city of the Casma State, occupied from AD 700 to 1400. Neighborhoods at El Purgatorio were organized around social status, which was in turn related to a number of factors including occupation, access to and control over economic and ritual resources, and possibly length of tenure at the site. Neighborhoods were distinguished from one another by their architectural and topographical qualities, and exhibit both planned and organic elements. Neighborhoods also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fatemeh Ghaheri.

The Neo-Assyrian empire is known as one of the major empires in the Ancient Near East. Ruling in Mesopotamia during the Iron Age, they had a well-organized agricultural system. In this paper, I will utilize phytolith analyses to investigate the impact of the Neo-Assyrian empire on agriculture and land-use. I will compare the elite-controlled agriculture with the crop choices of peasant farmers. It’s likely that the peasant farmers would have chosen more resistant and reliable types of plants for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ximena Lemoine.

The foothills of mountain chains along river catchments, or "Hilly Flanks", have repeatedly been shown to be key to understanding the origins of agriculture throughout Eurasia. During the Neolithic, sites in the northern part of China’s Fertile Arc (see Ren et al. 2016)—showing the the earliest evidence of the cultivation of Chinese Millets—are situated along China's own "Hilly Flanks". In contrast, southern sites along the Arc cultivating rice, are located in a diverse array of landforms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tom Froese. Linda Manzanilla.

Experts remain divided about the nature of the sociopolitical system of ancient Teotihuacan, which was one of the earliest and largest urban civilizations of the Americas. Excavations hoping to find compelling evidence of a powerful dynasty of rulers, such as a royal tomb, keep coming away empty-handed. However, the alternative possibility of a corporate or collective government, perhaps headed by a small number of co-rulers, also remains poorly understood. A third option is that the city’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sergi Lozano. Luce Prignano. Francesca Fulminante. Ignacio Morer.

The period between the Late Bronze Age and the Archaic Age is a time of change and development in the Italian Peninsula, leading to the formation of the first city-states. In this study, we focused on the Tyrrhenian regions of Latium Vetus and Southern Etruria, by analyzing the emergence of the network of terrestrial routes as it has been inferred from archaeological evidences. Our goal was to explore the mechanisms that shaped the overall structure of these past transportation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall Hills.

Anthropological research suggests that early states and empires frequently relied on state-sponsored building projects to produce networks of state control and identity on the landscape. The production and use of monumental architecture, however, can also be influenced by local agency, resilience and/or resistance, and degrees of socio-political autonomy. Rather than a homogenous blanket of state/imperial power, the result is a mosaic of core state control and local choices across the landscape....

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle. Griselda Pérez Robles. Edwin Pérez Robles.

In 2016, a pilot project began for the conservation of sculpted monuments including stelae, altars, and panels at the site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Since then, a team in conjunction with the international Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras-Yaxchilan has constructed new platforms with roofs to house the monuments, protecting them from further weathering, moisture, and biological agents. The results of the implementation of the innovative system—platforms of powdered lime and local stones,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Sears.

The long-term exploration of Formative fluorescence within the Veracruz region of Mexico has been supported through mid-20th century archaeological excavations and collection management protocols of the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum Department of Anthropology. The Olmec site of Tres Zapotes has been a focus of archaeological investigation since 1938 by Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology Director, Matthew Stirling. Research at the site continues to explore the regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Koji Mizoguchi. Junko Uchida.

This presentation argues that the decision of the locations of the so-called royal tombs of the Anyang Hsi-Pei-Kang cemetery involved various social-strategic concerns. Although badly robbed, the excavations of the tombs yielded rich grave good assemblages, allowing archaeologists to approach to various elements of the theocratic authority of the late Shang kings. The reconstruction of the formation process of the cemetery has been attempted in the hope that the tombs can be assigned to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Stevens. Katharine Alexander. Alexander Metz.

The Green River Valley Archaic shell middens (ca. 10,000 to 3000 BP) located in west-central Kentucky have a long research history dating back more than 100 years to C. B. Moore’s work. Previous research programs have focused on mortuary analysis, subsistence, formation processes, and settlement patterns, laying the groundwork for future researchers to conduct more detailed analyses using newly developed methods (e.g., GIS, isotopic analysis). In this paper, we expand on previous research of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Dengel.

Located in western Louisiana, Fort Polk has an extensive record of cultural resource management with more than 150,000 acres of land surveyed between 1972 and 2002. Over 3,500 sites have previously been identified and 600 of these evaluated for eligibility. Recently, the Army expanded the installation by 42,000 acres of new training lands in less than four years. So a new round of Phase I surveys for cultural resources were necessary. The completion of these surveys will allow natural resources...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Rosencrance.

Comparatively few Paleoindian artifacts have been found throughout the Appalachian Highlands, especially in the uplands of West Virginia. Lack of professional research in West Virginia appears to be the leading cause for this paucity of data. A literature review and newly identified artifacts from surface collections provide a baseline for future research questions and survey strategies. Most artifacts derive from the Ohio and Kanawha river valleys, but new artifacts from the most mountainous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Cassedy. Matthew Jorgenson. Peter Sittig.

Excavations completed by AECOM documented deeply stratified Archaic deposits at the Weatherman Site (31YC31) in the Appalachian Summit Region of North Carolina. This site is located at 2,500 feet above sea level (10 miles north of Mt. Mitchell, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River) and is situated in the floodplain of the South Toe River, which flows west to become the Nolichucky River and eventually the Tennessee River. The youngest Archaic component at the Weatherman Site is a Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh.

The site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in Petén, Guatemala is the only known lowland Maya site with an urban grid. Such grids are composed of perpendicular streets forming quadrilateral city blocks. They are common elements of city planning as they increase the legibility of city space and the interconnectivity of occupants. The urban grid at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ is the earliest known in the Americas (ca. 800-500 BCE) and was built when social complexity was emerging in the Maya region. Like many Preclassic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Benden. Mara Taft.

Legacy collections—those typically generated decades ago that do not meet current professional curation standards and require a substantial resource investment for long-term preservation—are housed in nearly every archaeological repository across the country. Many are the result of under-funded university field schools or public archaeology projects that didn’t account for either the initial curation preparation or the long-term costs and maintenance of collections care. The deeply stratified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Hargrave. R. Berle Clay. Diana Greenlee. Rinita Dalan.

Magnetic survey at Poverty Point reveals new information about ritual facilities, ridge construction and use, and a complex developmental history that included both planned and organic growth. Thirty-eight circles (diameters range from 8 to 66 m with a mean of 35 m) in the plaza are interpreted as ritual facilities. Targeted excavation in four circles encountered large postholes in three but the fourth consists of pits. Magnetic images suggest closely spaced postholes in many circles, possibly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Burger. Lucy Salazar. Michael D. Glascock.

INAA analyses of ethnographic and archaeological ceramics from the Cuzco heartland yield new insights into the patterns of production and distribution of Inca pottery in the Cuzco heartland. Multiple centers of production existed in this region and significant levels of exchange in imperial pottery occurred between the Sacred Valley and the Cusco Basin. Possible centers of production are suggested on the basis of the new results.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camille Weinberg. Jo Osborn. Rachael Penfil. Kelita Pérez Cubas.

Located at the mouth of the Quebrada Topará on the Peruvian South Coast, Jahuay is a multicomponent site key to understanding the rise and spread of the Topará cultural tradition—and the Paracas decline—during the Early Horizon. Limited systematic archaeological work in the mid-20th century defined Jahuay as the type-site for Topará ceramics, and also reported the existence of tombs on the site’s upper terraces that were initially dated to the Late Horizon (AD 1450-1532). However, 2017...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Perri. Chris Widga. Terrance Martin. Dennis Lawler. Thomas J. Loebel.

While the arrival of domesticated dogs with an initial human migration has been the most reasonable explanation for their presence in the Americas, evidence for Paleoindian dogs has proven elusive. Here, we present the identification and direct radiocarbon dating of an isolated dog burial from Stilwell II, an Early Archaic site in the Lower Illinois River Valley. We also present new direct radiocarbon dates for two dogs from the nearby Archaic Koster site. These dates confirm that the Stilwell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irfan Yaman. Cevdet Merih Erek. Iraz Asli Yaman. Alper Basiran.

Kece Cave is located in Kahramanmaras - Elbistan Province in Turkey. The first excavation was carried out in 2015 and since that year, it has been continued by excavation team that includes different university experts. According to preliminary reports, first excavations were realized on terraces in front of the cave and inside. Preliminary findings have been remarkable. Although during the last season excavation, most amazing findings than before were obtained in the terrace excavation area and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Trocolli. Josh Silver.

Heritage Placemaking is a thing - embrace it! Learn from our mistakes. The DC Office of Planning received a grant from the Kresge Foundation to engage in creative placemaking by artist/curators with the goal of activating underused public spaces. The DC Archaeology Program saw this as an opportunity to engage in a novel form of public outreach funded by someone else. Despite best intentions, false starts, permitting issues, need for cultural sensitivity, and last-minute directives, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yan Pan.

Although a number of studies in recent years have contributed fresh knowledge to our understanding of the origins and development of agriculture in the Lower Yangzi, updated data have made this issue even more complicated. The empirical evidence shows very little information about any hunter-gatherers who might have lived in this area and indicates that, 10,000 years ago, humans first appeared here as successful resource managers or niche constructors. The human ecosystem characterized by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippe Dillmann. Stéphanie Leroy. Sylvain Bauvais. Maxime L'Heritier. Alexandre Disser.

The study of the production and trade of metals is one of the means to highlight the technical and social organization of societies. Among several issues, the question of the provenance of the metal is of primary importance and can lead to enlighten the organization of the production (spatial and temporal structures of the chaine opératoire) and of the supply networks. Concerning iron and its alloys, these last years have seen important developments in archaeological sciences to address the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Graham.

In the southeastern United States, as well as in North America more broadly, archaeological wood charcoal continues to be an underutilized data source. In this paper, I review previous North American studies and models of prehistoric fuelwood collection. I use these past studies to highlight how wood charcoal data might contribute new insights on the archaeological record. I also present findings from a recent analysis of wood charcoal from three sites in the North Carolina Piedmont. This new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Fernandez Diaz. Anna Cohen. Christopher T. Fisher. Ramesh Shrestha. Alicia M. Gonzalez.

In response to the widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the US Geological Survey conducted an extensive survey of 15 modern cities in Honduras. This 2000 survey was carried out by the Bureau of Economic Geology of the University of Texas, and the resultant data were used to generate flood risk maps. The survey also produced the first lidar data collection of a Maya site; however, in the early 2000s, lidar algorithms were not capable of performing the same tasks as today. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marine Frouin. Jean-Luc Schwenninger. Tom Higham.

The southwest of France is well-known for the wealth and number of sites attributed to the Middle Paleolithic. The archaeological sequences reflect an apparent heterogeneity of Neanderthal behaviors, based on the apparent variability of the lithic technological systems adopted by human groups over time. This has led to a range of different interpretations of the archaeological evidence. What is apparent is that a reliable chronology is key if we are to understand Middle Paleolithic lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yadira Chinique De Armas. Ulises Miguel Gonzalez Herrera. Megan Filyk. Roberto Rodriguez Suarez. Mirjana Roksandic.

The use of cultigens and wild plants by pre-historic populations has been well established for many regions of the circum-Caribbean and Greater Antilles. However, in the case of Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, the evidence is scarce. In this paper, we examine the population of Playa El Mango (Cauto Region, Eastern Cuba), traditionally understood by Cuban archaeologists as "fisher-gatherers", to examine subsistence practices using a combination of starch evidence from dental calculus,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Kilby. Marcus Hamilton.

Bonfire Shelter (41VV218) is a nationally significant site in the Lower Pecos region of the West Texas borderlands that preserves evidence of what may be the oldest and southernmost "bison jump" in North America. At least two major episodes of bison hunting are evident at Bonfire Shelter, one associated with Paleoindian Plainview and Folsom projectile points, and another associated with Late Archaic Castroville and Montell points. The approximately 12,000-year-old layers comprising Bonebed 2...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Farrell.

This paper reports the results of new excavations of Late Pleistocene deposits at Bonfire Shelter, a stratified rockshelter in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Val Verde County, Texas. Previous excavations identified three bone deposits. Bone Bed 1, the oldest deposit, yielded a single uncalibrated radiocarbon date of 12,460 +/- 490 BP. Investigators in the 1960s and 1980s argued that the patterned distribution of megafaunal elements associated with large limestone cobbles in Bone Bed 1 suggests...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Trabert. Stephen M. Perkins. Richard R. Drass. Susan Vehik.

Deer Creek (34KA3) is one of few known fortified villages on the Southern Plains and was occupied during a critical point in Wichita tribal history. While researchers have been interested in this site for almost one hundred years, it was only two years ago that archaeologists were allowed to formally excavate the site. Following removal of dense brush cover in 2014, archaeologists with the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, and the Oklahoma...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarrod Burks.

Ohio is home to hundreds of Woodland period (ca. 300 BC- AD 400) earthwork sites. Most contain mounds and ditch-and-embankment enclosures in geometric shapes. Site size and complexity varies widely, from small, lone circles (often surrounding a mound) in the Early Woodland to the mega-large Middle Woodland Newark Earthworks. How and why earthwork construction moved from small to massive are enduring questions yet to be solved. Recent magnetic survey in southern Ohio at two sites of moderate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Quinn.

There is a recursive relationship between socio-economic institutions and the environment. Decisions about where to place settlements in a landscape were informed by existing economic institutions, but placement of sites in turn effected how social and economic institutions were organized. In this paper, I present a new GIS-based method for quantifying socio-economic organization and change in prehistoric societies. Catchment analyses, as employed in this study, define the availability of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Walsh. Alice Gorman. Erik Linstead.

Our project is the first major archaeological study of a space habitat: the International Space Station. It is a locus of intercultural interaction at the level of both individuals and states, "a microsociety in a miniworld" (National Academy of Sciences 1972). Remoteness and cost are obstacles to employing traditional archaeological techniques in Earth orbit, so we are developing new methodologies. Chief among these is the use of the millions of images generated by space agencies showing life...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi L. Martisius. Isabelle Sidéra. Teresa E. Steele. Shannon P. McPherron. Ellen Schulz-Kornas.

Use-wear analysis provides a tool for studying traces produced on animal bone during manufacture and use. Often, these analyses have been qualitative, describing the surface two-dimensionally, and have led to inconsistencies between researchers. Studies have focused on interpreting final traces and lack a foundation in understanding how the traces developed. Here, we propose a new methodology for studying bone surface traces that will reduce the problems of unreliable and unreplicable results in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ivana Ivanova.

Food is a major vehicle through which cultural identity is both formed and expressed. While foodstuffs are often consumed based on cultural practices, they are also utilized based on availability. The colonial situation in New Mexico provided a particular environment in which a new cuisine was developed, and persists to this day. The Spanish colonists brought with them both food traditions from Europe, and from Mexico, where they had been inhabitants for generations. In New Mexico, the food...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosicler Silva. Julio Cezar Rubin de Rubin. Maira Barbari. Sibeli Viana.

The GO-JA-01 and GO-JA-02 archaeological sites, located in sand stone shelters of Serranopolis excavated from the 1970s to 1990s and earliest at 10.400 years B. P., were occupied by hunter-gatherer and agricultural-ceramist groups. Recent studies have raised hypotheses regarding the appropriation and construction of the landscape by hunter-gatherer groups, based on evidences related to the paleoenvironment and the archeological site formation process in the Rio Verde river alluvial plain. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Lyons. Don Burgess. Marilyn Marshall. Jaye Smith.

Emil Haury's 1958 synthesis of the Pueblo III-Pueblo IV period (A.D. 1265-1450) archaeology of Point of Pines Pueblo, in east-central Arizona, is the US Southwest's classic case study in how to reliably infer ancient migrations. Field school excavations conducted between 1946 and 1960 uncovered compelling traces of immigrants from the Kayenta region of far northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. Noting evidence of a fire in the part of the pueblo referred to as the Maverick Mountain phase...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin McBride.

Supported by the U.S. National Park Service's Historic Preservation Fund program to identify coastal archaeological sites damaged by 2012's Hurricane Sandy in Rhode Island, archaeological surveys of Block Island were conducted in 2014 and 2015. The survey identified 163 archaeological sites of which 33 were tested and partially excavated. Previous archaeological surveys of Block Island concluded that a high frequency, density, and complexity of Woodland (2700 – 400 years before present (B.P.)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Harkleroad.

Wessex, a region of southern England, has been the subject of more study than almost any other region of the UK. While much excavation has focused on the Iron Age little work has focused on the role of warfare at that time. Discussions of warfare have led to antithetical conclusions by researchers utilizing the same material with much of the disagreement stemming from fundamentally different interpretations of equivocal evidence and assumptions about life in the period. Some of this is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Preucel.

In 2010, Steve Mrozowski and I proposed a "new pragmatism" as a way for archaeology to cut the Gordion knot of endless theory debates. We argued that this movement or spirit does not refer to the dominance of any one approach or theory, but rather to the more explicit integration of archeology and its social contact in ways that serve contemporary human needs. In my contribution, I example the relevance of some of the insights of Richard Rorty and Jurgen Habermas in developing a pragmatic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Rasic.

The Trail Creek Caves site on the Seward Peninsula in western Alaska was excavated by Helge Larsen in 1949-1950, and is among the most important archaeological sites in central Beringia. It contains a lengthy, rich and well-preserved paleoecological and archaeological record dating to the late Pleistocene, and the largest collections of mid-Holocene age organic tools from the region. However, poor chronological and stratigraphic controls have hampered the interpretive value of the site. New...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Castro. Mariano Bonomo. Lucio González Venanzi. Francisco Juan Prevosti. Silvia Cornero.

Canis familiaris has a limited record in pre-Hispanic archaeological sites of Southern South American, but in the last decade, more specimens were published. In this context, we present new remains of domestic dogs from five archaeological sites along the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers in the Northeast of Argentina, an area with few published records. We also discuss their roles within human societies. The studied sample includes seven cranial and one postcranial specimens corresponding to seven...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Palumbo.

The Bolas region presents one of the earliest steps toward the monumentality and complex social patterns that characterize later World Heritage sites in Greater Chiriquí. The forces and factors associated with these social changes remain incompletely understood. This paper shares the results from recent shovel test survey in the Bolas region and offers observations on broad social trends from the Formative period onward. Particular attention is paid to Mosca, another large and monumental site in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Lynn Cramb. Justin Cramb. Haumata Tepania. Justine Tuatai William.

The Ngake 001 site is located on Manihiki Atoll in the northern Cook Islands. In all, the site covers an area of roughly two hectars and consists of four coral-edged courts, two small coral-edged enclosures, a possible well, part of a lagoon shore path, and a mound and trench system that provides access to the islet’s Ghyben-Herzberg freshwater lens. Multiple surveys, by the authors and others, suggest that the Ngake 001 site is situated at the center of a large prehistoric village complex that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Boyer.

Over 400 pieces of bone and eggshell were collected during excavation at the Nine Gal Tavern site (11CH541) located in western Champaign County, Illinois in 1987 and 1991 by a team led by archaeologist Lenville Stelle. The majority of the remains analyzed were recovered within feature context in the immediate vicinity of the established Nine Gal Tavern structure. The purpose of this paper is to describe the identification of these faunal remains which are housed at the Anthropology Program at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney McLaren. Julie Esdale.

Fort Wainwright Training Lands in Central Alaska have been dedicated to the army mission since the early 1960s with consistent military training to support worldwide deployment. Fort Wainwright’s Donnelly Training Area encompasses over 25,000 acres of maneuver terrain specifically designed for live-fire training of the 1/25th Stryker Brigade. This training area is ideal for missions pertaining to mobilization, off road combat vehicle exercises, and excavation of maneuver positions. The terrain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aureade Henry. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel. Kelly Graf. Aleksei Teten'kin.

The use of alternate fuels such as grasses, bones or dung has often been interpreted as a typical response of Late Pleistocene (LP) hunter-gatherers to harsh environments, in which woody resources are scarce. In the context of early human dispersal from south-east Siberia into the Americas, the question of prehistoric migration and settlement is closely linked to the one of fuel availability, fire being considered, to the same extent as food, a vital element for survival. However, data regarding...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Dhody. Kimberlee Moran.

What to do when one box of bones becomes a whole cemetery? In late 2016, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that human remains were uncovered at a local construction site, 218 Arch Street, formerly a cemetery that closed in 1859, its dead supposedly having been interred elsewhere. Because the site is privately owned and the construction privately funded, no clear legal guidelines exist governing authority over human remains. Seeing a potential research project, the authors contacted the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah E. Hoffman.

During the 13th century Iceland became a major hub of the North Atlantic fishing industry sparking international conflict over fishing rights between mercantile interests from Norway, Denmark, England, the Netherlands and Northern Germany. From ca. 1200 - 1563 the Catholic Church and cemetery on the island of Haffjarðarey served as the burial place for the large geographic region of Eyjahreppur in western Iceland. The church and cemetery were closed during the Lutheran Reformation and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook Hale.

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DOCUMENT Citation Only Jane E. Buikstra.

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DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert H. Tykot.

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