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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Reaux. Geoffrey Smith.

During the 2016 field season, the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (GBPRU [University of Nevada, Reno]) began investigating Guano Valley, Oregon for evidence of Paleoindian occupations. Our initial work revealed a rich record of Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH) archaeology that appeared strongly associated with an extensive delta system that brought fresh water into Guano Lake from the south. This past field season, the GBPRU returned to Guano Valley and recorded numerous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Jamaldin.

The Fort Rock Basin’s (FRB) caves and rock shelters hold an important place in the history of Great Basin archaeology. Excavations at Fort Rock Cave by Luther Cressman in the late 1930’s led him to argue for a long-standing presence of humans in the region. The subsequent development of radiocarbon dating confirmed his ideas, providing firm evidence for a considerable human population in the FRB during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH). Although most caves and rock shelters...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kurt Carr.

Paleoindian studies in the Middle Atlantic region have been at the forefront of Paleoindian research in the Eastern Woodlands. William Gardner’s research in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the 1980s emphasized a focus on micro-cryptocrystalline lithic sources in the settlement system; smaller territories on the order of 40 to 150 km in diameter and a flexible social organization during the seasonal round involving a pattern of changing micro- and macro-bands. These issues continue to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Scott Jones. Mark Norton.

The Paleoindian occupation of the unglaciated eastern woodlands has generally been characterized by distributions of projectile points and few true sites. While this perception has begun to change in recent history, the Late Pleistocene archaeological record beyond projectile points including sites and settlement patterns remain poorly studied and reported. This paper provides an evaluation of the natural and cultural formation processes associated with Paleoindian occupation in the Tennessee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Letícia Correa. Astolfo Araujo.

Bastos site, located in central São Paulo State, provided ages between 7,600 and 12,600 cal BP.The lithic industry is composed by flakes on silicified sandstone, with rare unifacial retouch, without formal artifacts. The site probably represents a habitation area in a river terrace, later covered by acolluvial fan. Refitting pieces attest the overall integrity of the spatial positioning of the archaeological materials. The site is the oldest found in São Paulo, and is contemporaneous to sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Gonzalez. David Huddart. Isabel Israde Alcantara. Gabriela Dominguez Vazquez.

During the last 20 years we have studied systematically several important Paleoindian sites from Central Mexico doing detailed stratigraphic studies, paleoenvironmental reconstructions (pollen, diatoms, tephra studies) and radiocarbon dating. The sites include: Peñon Woman III skeleton, Santa Isabel Iztapan Mammoths with associated lithics, Tlapacoya Man Skull, Tocuila Mammoths, Tequixquiac Late Pleistocene Fossils and Tepexpan Man Skeleton. We present here a general model of strong...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliet Morrow. Chris Gillam. Brandy Dacus.

In the past two decades, advancing methodologies and the recovery of new cultural materials have expanded our knowledge of the earliest peopling of the Ozarks, Ouachita Mountains and Mississippi Valley of Arkansas. In the late 1990’s, GIS analyses in the Mississippi Valley of northeastern Arkansas highlighted the significant association of early cultures to the lithic resources of the landscape and subsequent collaboration with PIDBA in the past decade has put this state-level record in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pablo Arias.

Caves provide a privileged context for the study of Prehistoric ritual activity. Inside them, we enjoy the unique possibility of directly observing and analyzing spatial features that have hardly changed (and in some cases have not changed at all) since the Paleolithic. However, the poor preservation of the archaeological evidence during the earliest years of the research, and particularly the enormous cultural gap between the Paleolithic codes and systems of beliefs and the modern observers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Milligan. Eric Bartelink. Sarah Hall. Maria Cox. Alexandra Perrone.

Traditional studies of health and stress in archaeological samples use several categories of skeletal alterations: linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH), adult stature, scars of anemia, dental disease, osteoarthritis, trauma, and infection. Skeletal remains from a late 19th century military hospital at Point San Jose (PSJ), San Francisco, represent a commingled assemblage, complicating paleopathological observations on the bones. Unlike bony changes, dental pathologies are often studied by individual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Broehl. Colleen Milligan. Kelsie Hart. Karin Wells. Vanessa Reeves.

Paleopathology encompasses the understanding of disease processes that affect skeletal remains as well as the timeframe and context in which they occur. Although most such studies focus on changes observed at an individual level, the Point San Jose assemblage provides a challenging perspective on paleopathology because it consists of separate skeletal elements lacking association with whole individuals. Consequently, our focus is on the types of bony changes seen rather than specific diagnoses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Gillreath-Brown. Kyle Bocinsky. Simon Goring. Tim A. Kohler.

While paleoclimate reconstructions have improved across the last decade, the data and models are often still difficult to access, process, and interpret. However, improvements in these techniques, and the increasing breadth of paleoclimatic proxies available have furthered our understanding of the effects of climate-driven variability on past societies. Here we introduce a model being implemented by the SKOPE Project—Synthesizing Knowledge Of Past Environments. This application (openSKOPE.org)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anya Gruber.

The local environment at LA 20,000 played a major role in influencing what kinds of activities could take place at the ranch built by Spanish colonizers in the 17th century. Palynological analysis is used here to understand how the environment changed over the course of the colonial era and, in turn, inform what types of activities were performed at the site. My research identifies and quantifies plant taxa using palynology in order to understand land use at LA 20,000, a 17th century rancho site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Kamp.

A study of over 50 U.S. parents of infants that included interviews and the recording of toys and living spaces shows that material culture does provide clues to both parental beliefs and behaviors, but, not surprisingly, the reflection is imperfect. The material presence of infants is considerable, but even in relatively affluent households much of it is often second hand and gifted, so may not directly reflect the espoused beliefs of parents. This is especially true of objects reflecting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Ervin.

Built by hunter-gatherers, the Poverty Point UNESCO World Heritage site is a three-square-kilometer earthwork complex of two massive mounds, several conical and flat-topped mounds, and six elliptical ridges enclosing a 17.4-hectare plaza. The Late Archaic Poverty Point culture (ca. 3800-3000 cal. B.P.) exhibited an unprecedented form and scale of social organization indicated by non-local material measured by the metric ton and the construction of extraordinary monumental architecture at a scale...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachael Lane. Sarah Lane. Ruby Kerwin.

Archaeology has the unique ability to observe how past societies’ water systems were organized and managed. Indigenous approaches to water management in pre-colonialist societies, in both a conceptual and practical sense, often differed largely from those of their colonizers. Through three case studies, we evaluate and contrast indigenous relationships with water and those imposed by colonial powers. These case studies include the draining of lake of Texcoco by the Spanish in modern day Mexico...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teara Farrow Ferman.

The Claimant Tribes worked whole-heartedly together for 20 years for the return of the Ancient One to his homelands. Throughout those twenty years, many partnerships were made with academia and federal agencies. However many challenges were encountered during the NAGPRA process. These challenges provided unexpected hurtles and trials for the Claimant Tribes in their fight for a cultural affiliation determination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The range of challenges the Claimant Tribes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Peresolak.

The objective of my Master’s thesis was to formulate a history of the Carroll Cabin and farm, a historic log house located in Fayette County, Pennsylvania on Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) land. My research focused on how archaeological and historical records could be used to answer questions about the farm's extant home and the property's history. In Pennsylvania and other states (and at the federal level) multi-use public land managers are responsible for similar...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Shott. Erik R. Otárola-Castillo.

Points were designed for use but also for repair or rejuvenation. Points accumulated in the archaeological record at stages from first use to extensively resharpened. Thus, specimens of a single type could enter the record in a range of sizes and shapes. Resharpening allometry has been documented in many studies, including geometric-morphometric (GM) ones. One hypothesis is that flintknappers designed points as separate "modules" to accommodate their overall function. This hypothesis views the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Dwyer.

For decades, paleoethnobotanical research almost exclusively concentrated on reconstructing past subsistence economies. At 2011’s SAA conference, I presented a paper entitled, Toward A Paleoethnomedicine. I suggested that paleoethnobotanical research should take inspiration from ethnomedicine (a subfield of ethnobotany) and concentrate on analyzing past people’s healing practices and performances. This paper presents a method to operationalize this concept, a technique for analyzing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason LaBelle. Kelton Meyer.

Colorado is well known for dense concentrations of Paleoindian sites found within its eastern plains and in multiple high altitude basins (Middle Park, Gunnison Basin, San Luis Valley) to the west. Prominent mountain ranges separate these clusters of sites, and the question remains, when were these mountains first crossed and/or utilized? These high altitude settings (elevations routinely topping 3000-4400 m) would have presented both challenges and opportunities for the earliest inhabitants of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dolores Piperno.

The development of agricultural societies, one of the most transformative events in human and ecological history, began independently in a number of world regions including the American tropics during a period of profound environmental change at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Plant domestication is at its core an evolutionary process involving both natural and human selection for traits favorable for harvesting and consumption. Scientists from a number of disciplines have long sought to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damian Evans.

In the last five years multiple campaigns of airborne laser scanning (or lidar) have been conducted by archaeologists over Angkor-period sites in Cambodia and neighbouring countries such as Thailand. Analysis of the lidar data is still underway and will continue for many years both in the lab and on the ground, but some key outcomes have now been published, and it is already clear that the advent of lidar represents an important milestone in the history of archaeological remote sensing. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorraine Hu. Fiona Marshall. Henry Saitabau. Angela Kabiru. Stanley Ambrose.

Mobile pastoralism was the earliest form of food production in eastern Africa. The spread of pastoralism in Kenya c. 5000-1200 BP involved peoples with diverse subsistence patterns and material culture repertoires. However, little is known about the social landscapes and mortuary practices in southern Kenya. The mosaic of Pastoral Neolithic burial traditions across Kenya is diverse, ranging from monumental pillar sites to the north to cairns and rockshelter cremations to the south. In 2016,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joy McCorriston. Mark Moritz. Ian Hamilton. Sarah Ivory. Konstantin Pustovoytov.

Despite research indicating that contemporary pastoral societies are more dynamic than previously assumed, there is a tendency to view South Arabian pastoralists as timeless heirs of a stable, ancient system or along a historical continuum of response to exogenous factors like the development of civilization, introduction of camels, or global climate change. In research triggered by NGS support, we proposal a new conceptual model for pastoral mobility regulated by dynamic feedback loops in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Becca Peixotto.

Speckled with mesic islands and peat hummocks, the soggy lowlands and standing water of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina (USA) were home to thousands of African and African American Maroons ca. 1608-1863 and were a significant feature of the landscape of Indigenous Americans for many centuries prior. The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study and the Swampscapes project archaeologically investigate the landscape of resistance created by Maroons. The Dismal is far from a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Levi. Christian Sheumaker. Sarah Boudreaux.

The ancient Maya community of Wari Camp was organized into a quincunx pattern of four quarters delineated by the intersection of two inter-cardinal alignments. One was formed by a series of "temple-on-the-east" groups running northwest to southeast. The other consisted of a massive, northeast-to-southwest trending drainage modified for foot traffic. At their intersection stood an uncarved stela. Other stelae marked crossroads, while pairs of temple groups stood at entrances into the drainage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew White.

Inferences about the social networks of Paleoindian and Early Archaic hunter-gatherer societies in the Eastern Woodlands are generally underlain by the assumption that there are simple, logical relationships between (1) patterns of social interaction within and between those societies and (2) patterns of variability in their material culture. Formalized bifacial projectile points are certainly the residues of systems of social interaction, and therefore have the potential to tell us something...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitra Panahipour.

The landscapes of the Sasanian Empire have long been viewed as massive and state-sponsored development projects, in particular in politically and economically core zones. Despite these unparalleled understandings, our knowledge of peripheries and their connection with the sociopolitical organization of the time have still remained as some of the key gaps in the studies of late antiquity. To address these questions, I examine the settlement expansion, water management systems and agricultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Zavodny. Martin Welker. Sarah McClure.

Though dogs are recognized as important points of comparison for archaeologists seeking to reconstruct prehistoric human diet and lifestyles (e.g., canine surrogacy approach), less attention has focused on understanding the cultural and ecological significance of dogs themselves in these same contexts. We report new morphometric and stable isotope results from prehistoric (Neolithic-Iron Age) sites from Croatia that represent different cultural and environmental contexts that potentially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Bittner.

Recent archaeological approaches to identity emphasize landscapes as dynamic arenas in which identities are communicated, generated, and negotiated. Focusing on several Cherokee heritage sites in Georgia and North Carolina, this paper examines the role of historical memory within place-based identity construction. Spatial expressions of identity within the landscape at each of these sites are examined throughout multiple periods of occupation. I trace distinctions in the ways in which Cherokees...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Beney. Shelby Putt. Dietrich Stout.

Teaching is uniquely developed in humans and was likely critical to the emergence of cumulative culture. However, the importance of various forms of teaching, including the use of language, in transmitting Paleolithic skills like stone knapping is less understood. Here we examine the knapping behaviors of 17 subjects who learned to make Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools from watching video demonstrations either with verbal instruction or without sound. Despite intriguing differences in brain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Györgyi Parditka. Paul R. Duffy. Julia I. Giblin. László Paja.

The transition to the Middle Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement and social organization. Upon first glance, the Körös-Region was no different from its neighbours. Tell sites emerged, population increased, farming intensified, and people engaged in long distance trade. The international Bronze Age Körös Off-Tell Archaeology (BAKOTA) project has studied this area through settlements and mortuary archaeology for over 11 years. Our...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ross Owen.

Despite there being more applicants with graduate degrees than there are jobs, the CRM industry suffers from the number of people holding graduate degrees but lacking experience conducting archaeological surveys for Section 106 compliance. Additionally, conducting archaeological surveys is cost-prohibitive and can be a burden on state agencies on projects where federal funds are not involved. These two issues in the field of compliance archaeology prompted the creation of the PennDOT Highway...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare Farrow. Jessica Conway. Haley Hoffman.

In 2015, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration sponsored the development of a predictive model for prehistoric site locations in Pennsylvania. Since the development and release of the model, numerous surveys have been performed across the state, and many new prehistoric archaeological sites have been identified and mapped. During the 2016 and 2017 summers, undergraduate and graduate archaeology students participating the Pennsylvania Department of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mariah Wade.

The archaeology and socio-cultural practices of Iron Age hilltop fortified settlements (castros) in Northwest Portugal and Galicia present usual and unusual specific problems. From the recognition of the uniqueness of castro cultural practices in the late nineteenth century to the last decades of the twentieth century, castro archaeology has suffered from the inadequate methodologies of earlier excavations, poor temporal controls, a parochial stance toward entertaining unanswered questions, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Byers. José M. Capriles. Adolfo Gil. Judson Finley. Jacob Freeman.

One of the least understood aspects of paleoscience is the interplay between climate, human demography, and how changes in population influence resource management strategies. With the goal of understanding such processes, we created the PEOPLE 3000 research network to study trade-offs inherent to the climate-human population-institutional adaptation system over the last 3000 years. We propose that strategies reducing variation in food production and institutions for protecting those strategies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudio Latorre. Jacob Freeman. Erick Robinson. Eugenia M. Gayo. Mauricio Lima.

From the civilizations in Easter Island to the Mayas or to the collapse of the prehistoric populations in the Great Basin, researchers have proposed a wide range of hypotheses to disentangle the causes and drivers behind such pronounced demographic change. PeoPLE (PalEOclimate and the PeoPLing of the Earth) 3K is a new working group recently created by Past Global Changes (PAGES) to examine in detail how environmental change over the last 3000 years has affected, either by facilitating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gibbs.

In 1568, 1595 and 1606 Spanish expeditions out of Peru explored the Solomon Islands (S.W. Pacific) with the intention of establishing colonies. The motivations for these voyages were an uneasy amalgam of ambitions for Imperial and familial advancement, attempts to find the gold mines of Ophir, and religious fervor for converting indigenous populations. Despite repeated historical retelling, little attention has been paid to the structures of the cross-cultural encounters described in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bianca Gentil.

The Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley in Central Mexico went through significant settlement, economic, and political shifts during the Classic-Postclassic transition, yet there is no clear picture of what happened during the Epiclassic (600-900CE) or the Early Postclassic (900-1250CE) outside of large primary sites such as Cacaxtla and Cholula. A multi-faceted study was developed to target this issue, with a particular focus on rural sites that supported known large centers. Since the early years of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Buchanan. Sarah Semple. Sue Harrington.

Early medieval Britain witnessed dramatic changes to the socio-cultural landscape due to the withdrawal of Roman authority, climatic change, and the arrival of migrants from the continent and from different regions of Britain. The analytical and scientific analysis of the burial record, from a landscape perspective, allows an investigation of key questions related to the scope and nature of this migration, the development of social identity, and how portions of Britain expanded from small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin McDonald.

The people of the Irish Iron Age are often referred to as ‘invisible’ due to their seeming absence from the archaeological record. Ceramics, so often associated with domestic activities, are not a part of the Iron Age material culture. Burials and domestic settlements dating to the Iron Age exist, but they are the exception to the generally sparse archaeological record. In the absence of sufficient material culture and settlement patterns, other means of studying the people of the Iron Age must...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich. Tsim Schneider.

A cornerstone of recent pragmatic approaches to archaeology is the notion that our efforts can be judged by their practical outcomes. This may take the form of illuminating historical silences, and for those archaeologists working in post-contact or colonial contexts this often means working with indigenous groups seeking governmental or popular recognition. In this paper, we explore our collaborative efforts to discover and characterize archaeological sites dating to the early historic era in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Stoner. Geoffrey Cunnar.

In a 1995 study of the chronological patterning of Elko Series and Split-stemmed projectile points, Bryan Hockett concluded that neither type entirely matches the patterns of the Bonneville or Lahontan Basins; and the neither area represents good chronological analogues for northeastern Nevada. Dart points recently found in the well dated context of a stratified open site in the northern Goshute Valley exhibit characteristics of both early side-notched and corner-notched types. Comparison of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Pacheco Silva.

The Lienzo of Coixtlahuaca II, also named Seler II, was brought by the German mesoamericanist Eduard Seler to Berlin, Germany in 1897. The 375 x 425 cm document, made in the first half of the XVI century in the city of Coixtlahuaca located in the modern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, is made of eight cotton cloths sewn together to form an enormous Lienzo. The history of Coixtlahuaca's cacicazgo, its territory and lineages, is depicted alongside their mythical origins and migrations. The document...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Leines.

Past and present human-animal relationships have always been shaped by culturally-based beliefs, perceptions, and treatment of nonhuman animals, which in turn influence the lives of the animals in their environments. That being said, how accurate were ancient cultures in their attempts to understand animals, and how did subsequent human perceptions influence animal realities? What might it have been like as a nonhuman animal living near ancient peoples, based on biology and culture? What of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Horowitz.

The small (1 hectare) site of Phlamoudhi-Vounari was built in Late Cypriot IA:1 and abandoned early in Late Cypriot IIA, a lifespan of c. 200 years. This paper presents a 3D model and spatial analysis suggesting that the site functioned as a stage during community gatherings (and greeting visitors). Vounari’s plan is unique on Cyprus: a likely man-made, eight-meter-high mound topped with a sequence of superimposed structures. Initially built with open access to the summit from the higher south...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Porter-Lupu.

Located in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC, the Halcyon House is one of the only archaeological sites with a documented queer inhabitant. Albert Adsit Clemons, who was purportedly a relation of Mark Twain, lived on the property with a male carpenter, and together the two filled the house with oddities and antiques. In this paper, I will analyze the way that Clemons performed a queer aesthetic through his household décor and personal adornments. Although the site was excavated in 1985, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Crowley.

Activities at large ceremonial complexes are interpreted as regional community endeavors that form group identities and reify social and political structures. Imposing monuments such as Dún Ailinne, Navan Fort, and Rathcrogan have provided tantalizing glimpses into ritual and ceremonial performances of the Irish Iron Age (500 BC-AD 500). Communal feasting has been suggested to be a key practice at these sites during the later periods of use. At feasts, social structure and identity are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Rowe.

The small country of Ecuador is sometimes categorized as part of the Andean cultural region and sometimes included in the Intermediate Area. Located as it is next door to archaeological behemoth Peru, Ecuadorian archaeology has frequently been overshadowed by that of its neighbor. Banal oversights, such as maps that show the Inca Empire stretched across the Ecuadorian coast, serve to emphasize the subordinate position of archaeology in the country to the north. Periphery, however, depends on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Mendel. Deanna Grimstead.

Research has demonstrated an independent domestication event of Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) occurred in the Southwestern USA between 200 BC—AD 500, which was separate from the domestication of turkey within the Mesoamerican world. While aDNA analyses revealed this as a separate and distinct event, we still know little about how turkey husbandry was practiced in the prehistoric Southwest, USA, Northwest, Mexico, and Four Corners regions. Our research applies carbon and nitrogen isotopes to a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Holyoke.

This paper will present a method for addressing questions of prehistoric Wabanaki territories and territoriality, human movement and exchange, and how persistent places in the prehistoric landscape of the Lower Saint John River (LSJR) shaped ancient Wabanaki ontology, and so too, the archaeological record. Persistent places like bedrock lithic sources may shape human movement; however, patterning in the distribution of stone tools may provide more than just settlement and exchange information....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Shephard. Martin Gallivan.

Seventeenth-century colonial chroniclers repeatedly mention a series of places and objects that surrounded political negotiations and efforts at alliance-building by Powhatan societies. While regional scholarship has focused on competition over subsistence resources, regional trade dynamics, and the regulated exchange of "prestige goods" as central to the development of these political structures, we shift the focus toward the engagement between these societies and specific places and objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Grant.

The Faubourg Tremé is often referred to as America’s oldest African-American neighborhood and has been the site of significant social, cultural, and political developments in New Orleans for the past two hundred years. From the colonial period onward, the neighborhood fostered the growth of the city’s Creole population and displayed a distinct cultural and demographic makeup unmatched in other parts of the American South. In recent decades, scholars have considered the Tremé as a rich site of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Gibbons.

As globalization matures, environmental, social, and economic factors continue to create ever-expanding landscapes of inequality. Among these drivers, human-driven environmental degradation has, for centuries, operated as a significant producer of inequality. Anthropogenic climate change today perpetuates and strengthens these multi-generational, regional-scale phenomena of landscape change. These processes, such as sediment erosion in Iceland during the past millennium, create a ‘second nature’...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryn Tapper.

Ongoing investigation of the Algonquian rock art of the Canadian Maritimes reveals that while some sites, such as Kejimkujik Lake, are well documented as a result of longstanding conservation strategies, these and other petroglyph sites have yet to be adequately and comprehensively framed within their archaeological, ethnohistorical and ethnographic contexts. Combining a landscape archaeology approach with theoretical positions emerging from the ‘ontological turn’ in archaeology, my research...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Hirshman.

Archaeologically known ceramic pastes from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico, involved long-lived paste recipes that have been identified both visually and via neutron activation. This paper focuses upon Late Postclassic Tarascan state-period ceramics (AD 1350-1525) and contextualizes new petrographic data within the regional geology and prior research in order to assess aspects of the longevity and complexity in potter’s paste choices within the basin.

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lawrence. Cathy Costin. Kathleen Marsaglia. Michael Love. Hector Neff.

The Middle Preclassic (900-600 BCE) was a critical time of political and social centralization in the Guatemalan lowlands. Of particular interest is La Blanca, one of the first polities to rise and show signs of regional influence and potential urbanization. To reconstruct everyday life I am using excavated ceramic refuse to observe dynamics surrounding three households. This, in turn, elucidates elements of La Blanca’s political economy associated with the manufacturing and production of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Walder. Daniel Contreras. Walker Good. Alexander Woods.

In summer of 2017, CEMML archaeologists at Fort McCoy, in Tomah, Wisconsin conducted Phase III investigations of three NRHP-eligible sites 47MO054, 47MO360, and 47MO660 near a tank trail crossing Stillwell Creek. This location was continually re-occupied for the last 3,000 years, by Late Archaic to historic-era Native American (probably Ho-Chunk) communities. Bioturbation, military activities, and other cultural and natural processes easily disturb the sandy soils at Stillwell Crossing,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Mercure. Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Tanya Anaya. Traci Ardren.

Using aerial imagery in archaeological sites has been viewed as a powerful tool for site recordation. At the Maya site of Yaxuna, located 20km south of the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza and on the longest recorded Maya sacbe, we provide a case study of aerial survey work, combining altitude varying imagery from fixed wing and multirotor aircrafts. Combining such multi-scale imagery allows us to relate excavation scale to landscape wide architecture and layout. Features such as terrain,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Heizer.

Being presented here are the results from the digital work done in the cemetery. Focusing on revealing the lost inscriptions, the goals of this project have been to corroborate the list of people buried in the cemetery, and identify the names and dates of those either not listed or those for whom the records are not complete. In using photogrammetry, burial monuments in the Emanu-El cemetery in Victoria, BC are being rediscovered and assessed for cultural preservation purposes. This digital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Lo. Dominique Rissolo. Michael Hess. Dominique Meyer. Falko Kuester.

Photogrammetric techniques are increasingly being used for documenting cultural heritage sites for digital preservation and analysis, but the challenges of working in constrained spaces with difficult lighting conditions have encumbered widespread adoption in subterranean environments. The Proyecto Arquitectura Subterranea de Quintana Roo, coordinated by the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI), at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Moss.

Photogrammetry can be used to reconstruct the excavation process in a way that aids in both interpretation and education. By peeling back the layers of each excavation level, three-dimensional documentation of the excavation process reveals both the archaeological materials and their context at various stages of excavation. This interdisciplinary tool can also be georeferenced with GIS and used within 3D modeling programs to extend its visualization applications into virtual or augmented reality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reed Coil. Martha Tappen. Reid Ferring. Maia Bukhsianidze. David Lordkipanidze.

The Lower Paleolithic site of Dmanisi, Georgia, is well known for its rich archaeological and paleontological deposits, which include bones from at least five individuals attributed to Homo erectus. Taphonomic analyses show that carnivores contributed greatly to the accumulation of faunal material, while contributions by hominins were present, but uncommon. Recent excavations in the hominin-bearing layers of Block 2 at Dmanisi have revealed a complex underlying basalt formation that likely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krista Dotzel.

Due to poor preservation, Woodland-era plant resources in New England, both wild and cultivated, have long been poorly understood. Previous macrobotanical analyses have suggested that Woodland subsistence strategies for plant resources in New England are unique to the region, with further intra-regional variation between coastal and interior contexts. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of phytoliths extracted from carbonized food residues found on ceramic sherds from the Early Woodland...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Jenkins. Samantha Allcock. Sarah Elliott. Carol Palmer. John Grattan.

Understanding Neolithic sites in southwest Asia is often difficult because of the lack of preservation of organic remains and the effects of various taphonomic processes that alter the original record. It is, therefore, critical that we maximise the information that can be acquired from these sites. Here, we use an ethnographic approach to test the potential of using plant phytoliths and geochemistry to aid our interpretation of southwest Asian Neolithic sites. We sampled two Neolithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lenville Stelle.

The pictographs of the Bloodvein River, Artery Lake, Ontario offer an important view of rock art design and purpose during the late prehistoric period and perhaps continuing well into the nineteenth century. All images are finger applied and utilize iron oxide based pigment. The sites appear to be of varying function. The largest and most complex consists of seven or eight panels and may reveal a narrative of healing associated with the Fourth Degree of the Midewiwin or Ojibwe Grand Medicine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Scheiber. Kirsten Hawley.

During 2016 and 2017, Bighorn Archaeology participants used on-the-ground photogrammetric methods and aerial photography to document features at archaeological sites throughout the Bighorn Basin and surrounding foothills in northwestern Wyoming. The sample includes both horizontal and vertical features such as stone circles (tipi rings), a hunting driveline, defensive rock bulwarks, and pictograph rock shelter overhang panels. In this presentation, we discuss our evolving methodology and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Gibb.

Low-density scatters of historic-era artifacts can be interpreted as byproducts of manure spreading. These are pieces of trash inadvertently mixed with food refuse that was fed to pigs. While most of these artifacts were not ingested, they became mired in the resulting manure which farmers spread on their fields as fertilizer. Whether or not a scatter of late historic artifacts represents manure spreading or some other kind of behavior can be tested archaeologically, and that is the subject of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Sperling.

Excavations at the Pig Point site have redefined our understanding of Native American history in the Mid-Atlantic. The site is located near the freshwater-saltwater interface on the Patuxent River in Maryland, an area tremendously rich in biodiversity, and radiocarbon dates from stratified deposits at the site span more than 9000 years; however, artifacts uncovered more than two meters below surface suggest people have lived in this area far longer. Features discovered at Pig Point include a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Draznin-Nagy. Jeffery Clark.

This poster presents the results of a project that attempted to replicate viable paint and clay combinations employed to make Salado and Maverick Mountain polychrome ceramics. We know from NAA and petrographic studies that both of these painted ceramics were locally produced and widely exchanged in the Upper Gila region. Local clays and pigments, from the Gila River Valley, were used to show how effectively different pigments adhere to clay. The study also provided an opportunity to explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stuart Hawkins. Sue O'Connor.

Domestic pigs play a crucial role in the socioeconomic systems of Island Southeast Asian cultures today. However, the timing of their introduction into the region during the late Holocene and details of their use by prehistoric inhabitants is not entirely clear. The introduction of domestic pigs by maritime Neolithic horticulturalists to the Wallacean island region of eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste, which has never been connected to a major landmass, appears to have been an advantageous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Valenzuela-Toro. Meghan K. Yap-Chiongco.

Actualistic studies on vertebrate taphonomy have been focused on terrestrial mammals, and little is known about the taphonomic processes affecting marine mammals. Pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, fur seals) exhibit an extensive fossil and archaeological record, the interpretation of which is often impeded by the lack of research on their taphonomic processes. We present the preliminary results of a taphonomic study performed in a modern breeding colony of Northern elephant seal (NES; Mirounga...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Blaber.

Excavations over the last four decades on St. Catherines Island, GA have recovered over 200 pipe fragments and a dozen nearly complete pipes. These pipes are both historic and native made which cover a wide range of sites through occupational periods on the island. In this paper, I will present the results of recent and previous analyses and consolidate this information to explore the island-wide distribution and temporal trends of pipes on St. Catherines Island. In addition I will examine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey McCafferty.

Ethnoshitorical sources describe migrations from central Mexico of Nahuat and Mangue speakers, known as the Pipil/Nicarao and the Chorotega, who settled along the Pacific Coast of Central America in the centuries prior to European contact. According to these accounts the new groups introduced cultural and religious traits into settlements in El Salvador, the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and northwestern Costa Rica. Beginning in 2000, archaeologists from the University of Calgary have investigated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Balco. Scott Kirk. Michael J. Kolb.

Site-specific archaeological survey of forested environments can be challenging, particularly when ground disturbance is prohibited. Site-specific archaeological survey serves as an essential component of archaeological exploration, delineating areas of past human activities on complex multi-component sites. This paper presents the preliminary results of the first season of the Alcamo Archaeological Project, a site-specific survey of the forested summit of Monte Bonifato in western Sicily. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geri Knight-Iske. Emily Swain.

Established in 1852 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, St. Elizabeths is situated on a bluff overlooking the historic City of Washington. Charles Nichols, the first superintendent, sought to provide a therapeutic setting in a picturesque environment for mentally ill patients to recover. Originally located outside the main core of the city, the campus has witnessed massive changes over its 150 years of operation. These changes often coincided with innovative new treatment practices for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Barretto-Tesoro.

This paper will explore the idea of placemaking in Philippine towns established in the latter part of 19th century AD under the Spanish colonial period. The Spanish regime through the Laws of the Indies significantly altered the indigenous concepts of territory and space. I propose that the Europeanised local elites straddled between the European and indigenous ideas of boundaries and space. Following the colonial religious and administrative boundaries and the customary notions of interactions,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Fernanda Boza Cuadros.

In this paper I provide insight into the earliest decades of the Peruvian post-colonial state (1821-1879) from the vantage point of the Arequipa coast. The Andean south, with its center in Arequipa, had a traditional mercantile basis that favored improvements in trade, particularly those that resulted in the rapprochement of the city of Arequipa to the sea. After independence (1821-1824), new ports were established; the operation of certain coves sanctioned; and extractive activities shaped the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Aiuvalasit.

Across cultures, the ritual use of water is nearly ubiquitous, yet most archaeological studies of water focus primarily on its socio-economic importance. The large (~200-1500 person) mesa-top Ancestral Pueblo (AD 1100-1700) villages of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico are particularly good contexts for the archaeological study of water because small water storage features, often referred to as reservoirs, are found at many villages across the region. Alternative hypotheses for feature function,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jan Athenstädt. Lewis Borck. Leslie Aragon. Corinne Hofman. Ulrik Brandes.

In the course of the NEXUS1492 project in the Caribbean we are interested in potential differences in the perception of archaeological ceramic sherds. A pilot study was conducted across four states in the US Southwest, to explore how different groups of peoples cognitively sift experiential information of ceramic sherds. In different sorting exercises, participants of the study were asked to arrange the sherds according to their perceived similarity based on standardized questions. The spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katheryn Twiss. Melina Seabrook. Michael Charles.

Archaeologists have been examining the great cities of ancient southern Mesopotamia for well over a century now, but as yet we have limited understanding of their subsistence economies. For decades researchers more or less ignored the wealth of faunal and botanical remains in and around ancient Mesopotamian architecture. Over the course of the twentieth century researchers began to recover animal bones and teeth, but as few digs dry-screened or floated their soils the resulting assemblages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emuobosa Orijemie.

Palaeoenvironmental data obtained from coastal areas (wetlands) of southern Nigeria reveal three main periods of climatic changes from the Mid Holocene-Present namely (i) very wet (ca. 6,000-5,000 BP), (ii) dry (ca. 4,500-2,500 BP) and (iii) humid periods (ca. 2,500-Present). This paper explores the dynamic ways in which the culture of plant management and plant food resources in these marginal lands has been expressed within the context of environmental change. The similarities in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Smith. Karen Adams.

The plant record of Room 28 is filtered through a complex stratigraphy composed of early excavation backfill from adjacent rooms, Room 28 features and floor, and below to an older surface. Plant specimens from 11 macrobotanical, 7 flotation, 10 maize cob samples, and 13 pollen samples reveal an exceptionally rich record of the resources valued and used by Pueblo Bonito people. Their reliance on maize registers strongly, supplemented by a mix of native foods including pinyon nuts, cacti, cattail,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Dawson. Tom Hart. Arlene Rosen.

Understanding the interactions between people and the landscape has long been a concern of archaeologists working in the American Southwest. A particular emphasis of this research has focused on understanding the way pre-colonial Pueblos altered the landscape for agricultural production. More recent studies have worked to incorporate indigenous voices into scholarly understandings of the landscape. So far, less attention has been paid to the way Hispano communities in New Mexico experienced and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie V. Kirakosian.

This paper outlines how this open textbook moved from an idea to a reality over the past year. As a non-traditional project in archaeology, the infrastructure for such a project had to largely be framed from scratch, including a social media and marketing campaign as well as a process for co-authoring and reviewing chapters. Although the textbook is not yet completed, lessons learned along the way will be offered with the hope that sharing our model will inspire more open textbooks in our field.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Reamer.

Landscapes are formed by diverse human actions and interactions with their surroundings through the performance of various tasks, or what Ingold referred to as the "taskscape." Recently archaeologists have turned their attentions to a previously neglected aspect of the landscape created through quotidian tasks, the agricultural field. These studies, however, tend to focus on preserved built structures still visible in the modern landscape. Direct study of agricultural fields in Eastern North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Blinman. Marvin Rowe. J. Royce Cox.

The development of low-energy plasma oxidation as a sampling technique has created new opportunities for applying radiocarbon dating. Plasma oxidation can be carried out at energies below the threshold of carbonate and oxalate dissociation, dramatically reducing the need for pretreatment and subsequent loss of sample volume. Radiocarbon sample size can be reduced toward the minimum of the 40-100 millionths of a gram of carbon that is actually needed for standard AMS dating. This allows the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah McCurdy. M. Kathryn Brown.

In 2016, we discovered a sage’s chamber in the El Castillo acropolis at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize. In the Late Classic Tut Building on the east side of El Castillo, all interior and exterior plaster walls are incised with "graffiti." The total number of elements documented is nearly 300 with themes ranging from human and animal forms to glyphs and multi-figure scenes. We expect to encounter more in future field seasons. Based on a variety of factors, we view this as practice...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda. John Carpenter.

Recent interdisciplinary investigations have revealed that the Sonoran Desert region is not only one of the earliest regions occupied by humans on the American Continent but also has one of the longest occupation records. The earliers Sonorans were proboscidean hunters in the Late Pleistocene, Archaic foragers and hunters in the Early and Middle Holocene and maize farmers in the Late Holocene. Several sites in the state of Sonora, Mexico have a well-preserved archaeological record with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Kennedy. Bradley Parker. Matt Edwards.

The immense size of most Wari Imperial administrative centers has limited the breadth of our understanding of the social, political, ritual and economic activities that may have occurred within these large rectilinear compounds. In order to address these limitations, the 2017 Nasca Headwaters Archaeological Project excavation season at Incawasi attempted to apply a more traditionally North American methodology to six 50x50 meter Wari patio groups in order to draw broad conclusions about the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Wismer.

The Rainbow site (13PM91) is a multi-component Middle to Late Woodland period site situated within the tallgrass prairie of northwest Iowa. Excavated in the late 1970’s, the site remains an important example due to its well excavated and substantial faunal collection. The current study focuses on the reanalysis of a concentration of pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) remains found within the Early-Late Woodland horizon C (AD 550-620). The surprising number and spatial concentration of pocket...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

An archaeology of the senses expands the understanding of physical, tangible aspects of place to include qualities that are unseen, silent, or otherwise not readily perceptible. My paper analyzes acoustics at the late Maya capital of Chichen Itza. Sound—especially the human voice, animals, music, ritual, and dancing—were part of Chichen Itza’s atmosphere. An analysis of soundscapes, along with the intersection of architecture, planning, and acoustics, augments what is known about the site’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only W. James Stemp. Jaime Awe.

Sixteen small chert bifaces are part of a Terminal Classic (AD 800-900) peri-abandonment "problematic deposit" recovered just above the surface near the western base of Structure A2 at the ancient Maya site of Cahal Pech, Belize. The results of stylistic, technological, and use-wear analyses performed on these chert artifacts indicate: 1) production from locally available stone; 2) five different tool styles; 3) evidence for some tool curation/re-sharpening; and 4) wear patterns on some of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mario Giron-Ábrego.

This poster addresses an understudied area relevant to the initial peopling of the Americas: what are the earliest indications of human activity in Mesoamerica (particular emphasis on Guatemala)? Its geographic location and its relatively narrow expanse make the southern half of Middle America the natural stage to funnel terrestrial and coastal/riverine routes of early human migrations. Despite this consideration, archaeological research targeting Paleoamerican horizons [pre-12,800 BP] in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Georgia Fox.

The deep history behind what anthropologist Sidney Mintz refers to as the "stimulant or drug foods" reflects collective choices that transformed the socioeconomic fabric of early modern life. The archaeological record can reveal the physical manifestation of such choices through the myriad assemblages of artifacts that bear witness to the adoption of stimulant foods and also the tragic outcomes from the production of these commodities. In this paper, I will discuss my long-term archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Sabloff.

Royal women—queen consorts and princesses—were pawns in rulers’ marriage game. But once established in their husbands’ courts, they exhibited political agency through several means, e.g., spying, ruling in their husbands’ or sons’ stead, participating in the usurpation of the throne, etc. They were able to do so partly because of their position, which gave them access to power, and partly because of their ability to accumulate wealth, which enabled them to become patrons in their own right. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Demarest. Paola Torres.

Joe Ball’s research, his ceramic studies, his insistence on material culture as basis for work, and his honesty in critique of poorly grounded interpretation together provide a standard of building culture-history on solid ceramic studies, chronology, and material culture analyses. Many recent interpretations of Classic Maya society have not met that standard. Here we aspire to his bottom-up, material culture approach to interpretation in recent collaborative research in the western Peten and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kurnick.

Over the last several decades, scholars have reexamined the importance of spatiality to human life and argued that space is social, relational, and that it produces and is produced by social relationships. This reconceptualization of space has highlighted the ways in which the production of landscapes is integral to the creation, maintenance, and negation of social inequality and political authority. Recent archaeological approaches to studying inequality through landscape have taken a variety...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner.

The Aztec North great house is a monumental Chaco-era building at Aztec Ruins National Monument, in northern New Mexico. Its size, its shape and its dramatic hilltop siting all echo construction norms for other great houses at Chaco Canyon and its outliers, but excavation revealed a surprising set of architectural features. In addition to a fairly typical great house artifact assemblage, we found Chaco-style wall foundations and masonry veneers, but non-Chacoan adobe wall cores. Drawing on ideas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashleigh Breske.

This theoretically-oriented project engages discussions of historical arguments for the repatriation of indigenous cultural property that ultimately led to the creation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990. I will investigate how institutions and cultural values mediated changes in repatriation policy both nationally and internationally. By examining ownership paradigms and institutional power structures, it is possible to understand the ramifications of...