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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Staci Willis.

The inclusion of pollen analysis into the excavations of shipwreck sites has improved our understanding of the cargoes these vessels carried, the timing of the wrecking event, and, in some cases, the processes of ship construction. Vaughn Bryant spearheaded many of these advances in the palynology of nautical archaeology through his mentorship of nautical archaeologists at Texas A&M, of which, the author here is one. This paper will highlight the important steps Bryant and his students have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chase Beck. Vaughn Bryant. Dennis Jenkins.

In studying the early inhabitants of North America, some of the frequently revisited questions involve how they lived, what they ate, and what their world was like. Archaeological Palynology is a well understood method for addressing these questions. Because of the constant pollen rain and the purposeful and incidental ingestion of pollen and spores, well-preserved pollen is repeatedly found in association with human habitation sites and human artifacts. Paisley Caves, Oregon, established itself...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Uzi Baram.

Before every hurricane season, the myth and popular belief that Sarasota, a medium-sized city on Florida’s Gulf Coast, is safe from hurricane gets repeated in the local newspaper. Like many folktales, the story that pre-Columbian Native American burial mounds or Ringling Brother Circus performers knew of a special quality to the region or their spirits protect it comforts the ever growing population living on the Gulf of Mexico coastline. With the majority of the residents having no long-term...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Wholey.

Middle Atlantic archaeology is unique due the tremendous ecological and cultural diversity present within a relatively small, compressed region. The ecological transect model has been widely applied in regional archaeological research for the past thirty years. It is essentially a landscape approach that traverses several major physiographic provinces to encompass the range a discrete and interconnected cultural activities across a broad region. This work employs the transect model to explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Betti.

Children comprised a large portion of the enslaved population on plantations in the American South, but their lives are often overlooked or ignored in archaeological studies of plantation life and discussions of changes in how children were viewed in American society. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a shift in how children and play were viewed, from miniature adults for whom play was utilitarian, to a separate life-stage where play was children’s primary purpose and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Castañeda. Charles Koenig. Karen Steelman. Marvin Rowe.

Painted pebbles are the primary mobiliary art found in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico. Previous studies of these artifacts have focused on stylistic variation of the imagery and interpretation of the role these artifacts played within Lower Pecos societies. The focus of this study is the use of portable X-ray fluorescence on Lower Pecos painted pebbles to conduct elemental analyses, providing insight into the chaîne opératoire of painted pebble production....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Ligman. Tina Hart. Michael Terlep.

Although portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) has routinely been used successfully to identify the geochemical source of lithic materials across North America, comparatively few studies apply pXRF to compositional and geochemical sourcing studies of rock art pigments. Logan Simpson conducted exploratory in situ analyses using non-invasive pXRF to analyze the elemental composition of manufactured rock art pigments used to produce prehistoric pictographs at several rock art sites across the Great...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Myster. Brian Hoffman. Rikka Bakken. Steve Goranson. Camille Warnacutt.

A historic maritime ruins site located on Plum Island off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula was acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2007. The Porte des Morts Lighthouse (47DR497) operated briefly from 1849 to 1858 until replaced by a more substantial lighthouse on nearly Pilot Island. In partnership with Hamline University, excavations took place between 2013-2015 to uncover evidence as to both the architecture of the building and domestic life on the maritime frontier. Spotty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Jordan.

Classic Maya stelae have been proposed as precursors for the Early Postclassic stelae at Tula and the relief pillars of Pyramid B at the site in previous scholarship. While suggested Maya connections for the Tula stelae are often overstated, and local central Mexican stela traditions as well as ideas from Oaxaca and Guerrero also probably contributed to the genesis of these monuments, the role of Maya contacts remains plausible. Here I explore possible Maya analogs, including stelae, for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Nuevo Delaunay. Juan Belardi. Flavia Carballo Marina.

The history of the different indigenous hunter-gatherer groups that inhabited Patagonia since the Pleistocene was profoundly affected by the arrival of Europeans during the sixteenth century. This resulted in significant changes in various aspects of their lifeways, both archaeologically and ethnographically recorded. We integrate the available archaeological data of the post-contact period in southern Patagonia, along with ethnographic and historical data; showing the heterogeneous and complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Wolff.

Whole ceramic vessels and sherds incised after firing are known from Middle Horizon sites in the Wari heartland and periphery, associated with offering, burial and ceramic production contexts. Incisions include a wide variety of forms and have been interpreted as graffiti, makers or owners marks, and score marks to control breakage. The presence and forms of post-fired incisions were recorded during inventory of all ceramics excavated at Huari by the Huari Urban Prehistory Program in 2017. Their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noemi Procopio. Anna Williams. Andrew Chamberlain. Mike Buckley.

The estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI) and the age-at-death (AAD) are both important aspects of forensic anthropology for which numerous methods have been developed, each with different limitations. As proteins represent biomolecules that carry out a wide range of functions, many of which structural to the tissues undergoing decomposition, and the collection of these (i.e., the proteome) is dynamic not only throughout life, but also post-mortem, proteomic methods have great potential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Smeeks.

Following the collapse of the Wari empire (ca. AD 1000), a widespread demographic and settlement change occurred in the Ayacucho Region of Peru. People were moving away from the rich farmlands and ritual centers of the flatlands to settle on hilltops and ridges. Many scholars point to strategic defense as a cause of settlement shift during this period—the Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000-1450), suggesting warfare was endemic, while others suggest the sites facilitated agro-pastoralism and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Pyburn.

Contemporary trends in mass media communication indicate serious confusion in the public consciousness about the nature of science and the status of evidential reasoning. Archaeologists, in an effort to make esoteric research programs interesting to the public have contributed to this problem by providing over-simplified stories and "lessons from the past" based on sketchy evidence and mystified analysis. We have allowed public intellectuals from other disciplines to speak for us, and we have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kehoe.

Formal dissolution of European empires following WW II, as they transformed into transnational financial powers, allowed subaltern standpoints and "traditional knowledge" (TEK) to be voiced. American archaeology shifted into CRM becoming the dominant field, reflecting in part the rise of tourism as a principal global industry, with local histories a selling tool. Then NAGPRA put American archaeology into a postcolonial position. While much of NAGPRA negotiations still falls into colonialist...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Donop.

Most of the ceramic vessels interred in Palmetto Mound (8LV2), were "killed" for reasons that are not adequately explained. These include biomorphic ceramic effigy vessels that depict or embody living things, or their characteristics. Using ethnohistorical and archaeological data, I suggest that the ceramics vessels in Palmetto Mound were considered to be animate, non-human persons with souls that were ritually killed, dismembered, and interred in the mound.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Carr.

It is well established that the ancient Maya favored certain orientations for the buildings in their major urban centers. In the southern Maya lowlands, an orientation of 14° clockwise from the cardinal directions is particularly common. How did the ancient Maya find this orientation? What was their surveying technique? Lidar from many sites shows that this orientation was not limited to major constructions. The smallest residential structures and patio groups, structures spread throughout the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Bedell.

The Potomac Gorge is a canyon through which the river passes through the Falls Zone from Great Falls down to Washington, D.C. Ever since John Smith met Indians fishing below Little Falls in 1608, it has been widely assumed that the Potomac Gorge was a prime Native American fishing spot. The numerous prehistoric archaeological sites along this stretch of the river have often been interpreted as fishing stations. However, re-examination of the archaeological record in the Gorge, carried out as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Neill Wallis. John Krigbaum. George Kamenov. Michael D. Glascock.

Populations across northern Florida during the first millennium CE were highly interconnected as evidenced by shared patterns of mortuary practices, material culture, and settlement patterns. Social networks evidently were predicated on common ritual practices that found purchase in diverse and far-flung communities, especially those associated with "Swift Creek" and "Weeden Island" archaeological cultures. Through time, and with an expanding suite of religious practices and paraphernalia,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Kosakowsky.

Early work in the 1970’s by Joe Ball on Northern Belize ceramics from the site of Aventura highlighted its geopolitical location between multiple spheres of interaction. These spheres, reflected in the ceramics of the Classic Period, demonstrate that Aventura’s intermediary position between the cities of the Petén to the west, and the Yucatan to the north no doubt contributed to its success and long occupation. My own research on the Aventura ceramics, begun in 2015 as part of the Aventura...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Allen.

Previous analyses at two early contact period Haudenosaunee village sites in the Cayuga region of central New York State (Parker Farm and Carman) have provided evidence for differences in the intensity of occupation and in the distribution of activities. Interpretations of site activities have included a more intensive focus on pottery production and utilization at Parker Farm and greater emphasis on hunting and shell bead production at Carman. Although differences in the reasons for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Makaela O'Rourke. Scott Thomas.

Prehistoric pottery is rare in Oregon, and the presence of pottery at the Skull Creek Dunes site in Catlow Valley of Southern Oregon is potentially important. This paper builds on the previous excavation and research by Scott Thomas of the Burns BLM and describes the pottery and work done on it since. These sherds represent one of the oldest pottery traditions in Oregon, and were likely made on site. Initial dating places the site around 1250 CE. In addition to the sherds, small possible gaming...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Aimers. Jaime Awe.

During the Belize Tourism Development Project (2000-2004), Awe excavated dense on-floor deposits on the stairs and stairside outsets of Structures A2 and A3 at Cahal Pech. These deposits were mainly pottery sherds but included a variety of other materials including whole and partial vessels, projectile points, obsidian blades, deer antlers, figurines and ocarinas, spindle whorls, and jade pendants. A standard interpretations of such deposits is that they represent garbage left behind by Terminal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaclyn Eckersley.

I present my completed thesis research hypothesizing that the chronology and culture of the prehistoric occupation in Beef Basin is reflected in ceramics and architecture. Beef Basin is located west of Monticello, Utah and south of Canyonlands National Park. Archaeologically it is located within the fluid boundary space between the Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont archaeological cultures. Although there has been a surge of recent research in the north periphery of the Ancestral Puebloan area,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bartusewich.

On the island of Cyprus, the first millennium BCE was a period of change in politics and culture brought about by new people, new governance, and new technology. This paper attempts to analyze these changes using one site. Idalion is located in the east-central part of the island. The polity went through many changes from its founding, c. 1200 BCE, through the first millennium BCE and I have begun to investigate some through petrographic analysis of pottery. Pottery production can represent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Schleher. Emma Britton. Donna Glowacki. Jeffrey R. Ferguson. Robin Lyle.

The Dillard site (5MT10647)-the earliest community center identified in the Mesa Verde region-may contain among the oldest examples of multi-household pottery production during the Basketmaker III period. A thorough understanding of how pottery was produced and obtained at this early large pithouse village, which is centered on a great kiva, provides important insights on village organization and interpersonal relationships. In this poster, we explore compositional variation in pottery...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Masucci.

The Colonche Valley of coastal Ecuador represents an east-west corridor as well as the apex of north-south interconnected valleys. Hilltop sites of the Manteno-Guancavilca (AD 800-1532) have been reported across the high flat ridgetops of these valleys since the early 20th century. Recent comparative analysis of surface vessels at newly discovered sites in the eastern Colonche Valley demonstrates the coalescence of examples of all types found at sites throughout the valleys. Mineralogical and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Louise Stone.

Religion bonded Andean societies across centuries (Moseley 1992; Kolata 1995) and archaeologists request greater focus on religious ideologies to evaluate the Andean past (Kolata 2000; Hastorf 2007)—gaping silence in the scholarship surrounds the so-called "female, spiritual" side of society. From this hurin moiety (Rostworowski 2007; Silverblatt 1987), particulars of an overarching hegemonic strategy of power-as-nurture emerged among the Inkas (and with different details among their Tiwanaku...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mini Sharma Ogle.

Portland General Electric has embarked on a cultural management stewardship program to elevate its responsibility towards its historic resources, including hydro-electric plants, traditional cultural properties, and even a company town. This poster will discuss some of the creative solutions PGE has developed in an effort to balance its needs to generate safe and reliable electricity while protecting cultural resources in its service territory.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Bauer.

This paper interrogates the pragmatics of heritage in two ways. First, what are the discourses and rhetorics of heritage—how is heritage invoked and talked about, like a sign of history, in making statements about the world? How has that shifted over time, as the term is increasingly invoked to explain and defend a wide range of actions and attitudes, and how do the different discursive communities who speak about heritage engage (or not) with one another? Most importantly, why have these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Mrozowski.

This paper outlines the continuing development of the Hassanamesit Woods Project – a ten-year collaboration between the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Drawing inspiration from the writings of pragmatic philosophers such as Fredrick Peirce, John Dewey, Henry James, Richard Rorty and Patrick Baert, this paper outlines the benefits of working collaboratively with indigenous groups such as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Agbe-Davies.

At the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls in Chicago, and at Pauli Murray’s childhood home, in Durham, NC, black women were in motion, actively reshaping their social worlds. Pragmatism, a philosophy of actions, effects, and consequences is a useful framework for 1) drawing out their theoretical contributions to 20th century social thought and civic activism; 2) understanding their actions via the archaeological record; and 3) thinking through what archaeologies of their lives might mean for us...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Baert.

This paper explores the potential of a pragmatist-inspired philosophy of social science for both archaeology and social anthropology. Firstly, we explain the main tenets of contemporary pragmatism and the variations within it. Secondly, we analyse the potential methodological ramifications for both archaeology and social anthropology. Thirdly, we discuss some of the critique of this pragmatist stance.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

Pacific Nicaragua has long been noted as a cultural crossroads, especially featuring historically documented migrants from central Mexico. Following ethnohistorical accounts, Nahuat speaking groups colonized the Rivas area in the Late Postclassic Ometepe period. The most prominent diagnostic ceramic of this time was Luna Polychrome, often found in mortuary contexts. This paper presents a detailed analysis of over 50 Luna vessels from the Mi Museo collection. The overarching theme of the painted...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Jerrems.

The Winnemucca Lake basin, one of many branches of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan in northwest Nevada, is again in the headline news for early human occupation of the Great Basin. Possible horse butchering at the end of the Pleistocene, fuel storage, grasshopper caching (14,195 cal. BP) and ancient rock art add to the intrigue of an ever developing mystery behind North Americas earliest ancestry. Most familiar are Fishbone and Crypt caves, a part of the Guano Mountain cave complex, where a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalia Donner. Andrew Ciofalo. Samuel Castillo. Alexander Geurds.

Since 2007, the Proyecto Arqueológico Centro de Nicaragua, directed by Alexander Geurds, has excavated several archaeological sites in Chontales, Nicaragua, northeast of Lake Cocibolca. This papers reports on fragments of ceramic griddles recovered in layers dated to cal AD 1275 and 1290 at the Barillas site - unprecedented find challenging our views on ancient foodways in the region. The paucity of these comales has hitherto co-determined narratives on human mobility from Mesoamerica, due to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Suarez.

Based on the Spanish chronicles from the Contact period (Sixteenth century), we know that the inhabitants of what is now Southern Costa Rica were in constant violent conflict, at least during the last pre-Columbian years. On the other side, warriors, captives and trophy heads are a recurrent theme in the sculptures and other artistic representations from this archaeological area. Although the importance of warfare and conflict during the pre-Columbian period has been considered in archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Mcrostie. Eugenia M. Gayo. Claudio Latorre. Calogero Santoro. Ricardo De Pol-Holz.

Our recent research in the Atacama Desert (18-27°S) proposed that Prosopis trees, Algarobia section (Algarrobo) were introduced during the late Holocene by humans and dispersed through cultural and natural factors. At least 41 direct AMS on seeds and pods retrieved from archaeobotanical and paleoecological contexts (rodent middens and leaf litter deposits) show that the earliest presence occurred ~4200 cal BP but most dates fall over a thousand years later, during and after the Formative period....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksandra Laszczka.

Castillo de Huarmey on the north coast of Peru is an archaeological site of pre-Hispanic Middle Horizon period (AD 600-900), widely known for the discovery of the first undisturbed Wari royal mausoleum. From 2012-2013 remains of fifty-eight elite female individuals were found accompanied by rich ceremonial offerings and grave goods, including textiles. The state of preservation and the condition of a large portion of the fabrics are poor, especially those coming from the primary burial contexts....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Jazwa. Chloe McGuire. David Zeanah. Douglas Bird.

Much of the archaeological research done in the interior deserts of Australia has focused on rockshelter sites, primarily because of intact stratigraphy and better preservation than in open air contexts. However, ethnographic studies of local Martu populations have demonstrated that people rarely lived in rockshelters or caves, particularly during the wet season when populations focused around reliable soaks and clay pans. Therefore, it is necessary to study the distribution of archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Vernon. Kate Magargal. D. Craig Young. David Zeanah. Brian Codding.

Despite decades of work, debate persists regarding the nature and extent of Prearchaic land use patterns in the North American Great Basin. While some archaeologists argue that Prearchaic hunter-gatherers favored a broad diet and, therefore, relied on a generalist land use strategy, others insist that they favored a narrow diet, thus relying instead on a specialist land use strategy. To help resolve these debates, here we ask the simple question: what environmental parameters drive variation in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Allgaier. Brian Codding.

Researchers propose that the first people to occupy the Great Basin preferentially settled near pluvial lakes to exploit highly profitable wetland habitats. However, a systematic evaluation of this hypothesis has yet to be undertaken. Here we test predictions from an ideal free distribution model to determine if the settlement decisions of Prearchaic foragers were indeed biased toward pluvial ecosystems. The results not only elucidate Prearchaic settlement patterns, but also establish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Acosta-Ochoa. Emily McClung de Tapia. Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales.

The period from early peopling until the appearance of pottery in the basin of Mexico is poorly known despite its importance to know the emergence of the early sedentary communities and the development of the first political centers in the area. This study summarizes the state of knowledge about hunter-gatherer communities in the basin and presents recent studies that have allowed us to expand our knowledge of this period, particularly for the so-called Archaic period. We highlight the profusion...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Ranere.

The first substantial evidence of a preceramic occupation of Greater Chiriqui resulted from the 1970 excavations of upland rockshelters in the watershed of the Chiriqui River in Western Panama. Results from these excavations were reported in a 1972 dissertation and the 1980 publication Adaptive Radiations in Prehistoric Panama. Our current understanding of the preceramic period occupations in Greater Chiriqui owes more to subsequent innovations in research methods – phytolith and starch grain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Winter. Teresa Alarcón.

Surveys and excavations during the past 12 years in the Valley of Oaxaca and the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec provide new data on lithic assemblages and settlement distributions in these Oaxaca regions and facilitate comparison with contemporaneous sites in central and southern Mexico.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlin Crow. Norbert Stanchly.

Archaeological excavations within the Belize River Valley region have produced robust faunal assemblages that have increased our understanding of the Maya use of animals during the Preclassic. At Pacbitun, located on the southern periphery of the Valley, large scale horizontal excavations are providing insights into animal utilization during the Preclassic period at the site (1000 BC – AD 300). These investigations have probed into plaza floors, residential and ceremonial platforms, as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Bracken.

A third season of fieldwork at the fortified site of Muralla de León has expanded the scope of coverage for the project by mapping and excavating nearby hilltop occupations on the shores of Lake Macanché. The work serves to contextualize the space contained by the site’s enceinte, a physical barrier that serves also as a boundary feature. Earlier investigations into the site interior and the ramparts of the enceinte itself begged for a comparative data set, as the significance of a barrier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Acuña. Carlos Chiriboga. Varinia Matute. Francisco Castañeda.

The site of El Tintal, located in northern Petén, Guatemala, provides early evidence of monumental construction, initiating with the large-scale transformation of the landscape in preparation for the site’s ceremonial core, followed by construction programs consisting of pyramids, elevated causeways, and a diversity of hydraulic features. Recent investigations at El Tintal have shed light on its Preclassic settlement, organized around what we propose was an ancient lagoon which settlers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alessandra Villarreal.

Understanding the organization of ancient ceramic production and distribution patterns can provide archaeologists a means of exploring past economies. Recent studies have shown that petrographic analysis can be operationalized to detect variability in production recipes, distribution of production groups across a landscape, and even producer-specific material choices. Ceramicists working in the Maya lowlands have demonstrated the benefit of using petrographic analysis in conjunction with other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich. Rachel Gill. Karla Cardona.

Recent research in the Maya lowlands has shown that "E-Group" architectural complexes were intricately tied to the development of complex society during the Middle Preclassic period (900 BC – 300 BC). First identified at the site of Uaxactun, Guatemala, E-Group complexes consist of a western radial platform and eastern range structure. For many years Maya archaeologists believed E-Groups functioned primarily as celestial observatories. However, recent data have shown E-groups were the locus of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Smyth.

Some of the earliest and largest monumental architecture in the Puuc Hills are found at the Maya center of Xcoch. Noted by John Stephens in 1841 as a large city with a deep water cave and gigantic pyramid, Xcoch is among a host of Puuc sites now dated to the Preclassic period. An interdisciplinary research program at Xcoch and vicinity from 2006 to 2013 revealed Preclassic Maya community patterns, megalithic architecture, and material culture for a developing complex society. Massive high...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Rorabaugh.

A crucial aspect for examining the production and reproduction of material culture among complex foraging societies such as those of the Pacific Northwest Coast is understanding the relationships between social networks and assemblage diversity. This model examines one small aspect of this issue, seasonal variation in social network size. The model is ethnographically informed by Coast Salish ethnographic household sizes. Assemblage richness and evenness in discrete artifact styles are examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Cross. Johnnie Sabin.

Site visibility has long been an issue for late Pleistocene/early Holocene research in the southeastern United States, partially due to modern forest cover and partially due to large portions of the Southeast having been submerged by more than 80 meters of sea level rise.  However, a large number of Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic Bolen artifacts have been discovered in Jefferson and Taylor counties in northern Florida, including dozens from underwater sites that were inundated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Sabin. Austin Cross.

Florida’s terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological sites form interesting settlement patterns when projected upon various geographic representations. Probably many unknown Paleoindian and Early Archaic sites still remain hidden and unstudied, as more than half of Florida’s landmass was inundated during these cultural periods. Due to constraints in visibility and access, the practical limits of traditional survey hinder progress in discovering additional sites around the state. With...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ken Seligson. Soledad Ortiz Ruiz. Luis Barba Pingarrón.

Burnt lime has played a significant role in daily Maya life since at least as far back as 1100 BC, and yet its ephemeral nature has limited archaeological studies of its production and distribution. The application of new surveying and remote sensing technologies in recent decades is now allowing for a more in-depth investigation of the burnt lime industries that existed in different sub-regions of the Maya area. In this talk, we present an overview of the current understanding of Prehispanic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Vargas Ruiz.

Although for northern South America it has been proposed that warfare was an important mechanism that elites used to promote their authority and the institutionalization of their leadership during precolonial times, the evaluation of the available evidence is still not systematic. This presentation offers a comparative discussion about warfare in the Llanos of the Orinoco. The archaeological evidence suggests that warfare in the Llanos played a differential role in the historical and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jixiang Song.

To understand the evolution of agricultural economy in south Tibet, a large number of flotation samples and phytolith samples were collected during 2015-2017 field seasons at Bangga site. Preliminary analysis on these samples shows clues to the subsistence strategy, the nature of the site （pastoral or agropastoral）and probably the seasonality of the occupation of the site. Comparison with Changguogou site which is earlier in time indicates changes in subsistence strategy over time in this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Birnbaum.

The Richter site (47DR80) located on Washington Island, Door County Wisconsin was excavated by the University of Wisconsin field school during 1968 and 1973. Large quantities of ceramic materials were recovered. This site was identified as belonging to the Middle Woodland North Bay culture as defined by Mason. Among the body sherds were those with smooth or cordmarked exterior surfaces. Smooth surfaced sherds exhibited breaks along coil lines, indicative of coil construction technique....

DOCUMENT Citation Only José López Mazz.

This paper presents archaeological information about domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) recovered in prehistoric sites in the southeastern lowlands of Uruguay. The presence of dog in the archaeological record is associated to horticultural activities of hunter-gatherers adapted to the very dynamic conditions of this flood ecosystem during the Holocene. Dog findings in mounds have a recurrent and unique association with burials. This context allows a starting discussion on the economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Dice. David Barrackman. Rebekka Knierim. Darren Schubert.

Lake Cahuilla is the archaeological representation of the modern Salton Sea and represents one of the largest rift lakes in the Western Hemisphere. Formed in the Salton Basin by western-trending Colorado River runoff, in-fillings and outflows from the Colorado to the Lake and thence into the Gulf of California were episodic yet constrained by the vast Colorado River Delta. Because modern agricultural development has buried many of the ancient shorelines, the Lake’s Holocene oscillation history...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert H. Tykot. Andrea Vianello.

Obsidian was a significant component of daily life in southern Italy during the Neolithic period (ca. 6000-3000 BC). Intensive surveys by Ammerman and colleagues in the 1970s identified a widespread presence of Neolithic obsidian in Calabria, generally thought to have come from the island of Lipari, mostly on the basis of its being the closest, along with general visual characteristics. While it was also thought possible to have small amounts of obsidian from the further away tiny island of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Buck. Sachiko Sakai. Cheryl Collins.

More than 20 years ago Margaret Lyneis published a thorough review of the Virgin Anasazi, summarizing what was known at the time about chronology, settlement, subsistence, spatial aggregation, exchange, and other topics. Her summary raised a number of key issues needing resolution. Among these was the nature of aggregation in the Plateau area of the Virgin Anasazi. She noted, despite evidence from other places in the Southwest of increasing residential aggregation in PII, there seemed to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Binning.

Diverse rocks of the Precambrian to the Late Cenozoic are exposed across the greater Mojave Desert Region. In the central Mojave, locations with concentrations of knapable materials are prevalent. Most of these sources are deflated alluvial fan deposits; less than five percent are outcrops. Over the last 13,000 years people have been using the area, percussion biface reduction dominated at both the material extraction sites and habitation and special activity sites. Igneous materials were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bretton Giles. Eric Skov. Shannon Koerner.

Fort Riley Army Installation in northeastern Kansas is bordered by Wildcat Creek, a tributary of the Kansas River that has a high density of prehistoric sites, including Smoky Hill hamlets and base camps. We review the CEMML surveys and site exams along Wind Creek - a tributary of Wildcat Creek - that have produced an unexpected density of upland prehistoric sites. In this context, we discuss the prehistoric sites types found along Wind Creek and explore how they are part of settlement...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karleen Ronsairo.

During the Late Formative period, social relations were transformed due to increasing political centralization and urbanization in regions throughout Oaxaca. In the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta, Early Ramos phase (300-100 B.C.) ceramics from urban centers in the region reflect significant stylistic change from the preceding Yucuita phase (500-300 B.C.) ceramics. This presents an opportunity to explore how social change may be reflected in stylistic changes of material culture from this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bronson Wistuk.

The 2017 fieldwork at Huari, arguably the largest pre-contact city in South America, yielded in excess of 1800 lithic artifacts – excluding microliths found via soil floatation. These artifacts include whole bifaces, unifaces, tool fragments, and debitage. This analysis focuses on the morphologically distinct tool types excavated, such as bifacial points with lanceolate bodies, fluted points, and drills. These tool types offer insight into daily life at Patipampa and the city of Huari,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gligor Dakovic.

The onset of the Early Bronze Age saw increasing degrees of social inequality and institutionalized leadership in most of Europe. In the Carpathian Basin these changes are most evident in shifts in burial practices and settlements. This research aims to see if these changes are reflected in regional settlement patterns by applying spatial analyses to two periods of a regional settlement dataset. I will examine the landscape and the environmental characteristics of Neolithic and Bronze Age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. M. Adovasio. C. A. Hemmings. F. J. Vento. J. S. Duggan. J. H. Higley.

Intensive excavations and attendant analyses conducted at the Old Vero Site (8IR009) from 2014-2017 have revealed a long and complex stratigraphic succession which dates from ca. 30,000 B.P. to the present. The excavations have documented not only 195 species of plants and animals but also a human presence which extends back to at least 11,000 B.P. and, perhaps, earlier. Terminal Pleistocene extinction dates are provided on several taxa as well as observations about the environments within which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Beggen.

The site of Chullpa K’asa, located in the Potosí Department of southwestern Bolivia, covers an area of around 45 hectares and contains the ruins of dozens of Prehispanic buildings. This poster presents the results of preliminary investigations of the site based on pedestrian ground survey and an assessment of artifacts housed at a nearby Indigenous museum. Systematic survey and mapping, which included the recording of surface artifacts at 43 locations across the site, revealed two areas of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto. Luke Auld-Thomas.

Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we have also investigated the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In 2016, a LIDAR survey, funded by the Pacunam Foundation and operated by NCALM, was undertaken in a 410 square km...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dustin Wagner. Trevor Lea.

As part of the recent salvage recovery effort at the South Diamond Creek Pueblo (LA 181765), a small Classic Mimbres pueblo (1000-1150 CE) in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness of the Gila National Forest, excavation was performed on a large pit structure that appears to be associated with an earlier occupation of the area. Sample excavation was performed as part of a field school directed by Dr. Fumiyasu Arakawa of New Mexico State University under. Very few archaeological investigations have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Fenn. Brett Kaufman. Ali Drine. Hans Barnard. Sami Ben Tahar.

During the summer of 2016, preliminary geophysical prospection survey using ground penetrating radar (GPR) was conducted at the Neo-Punic and Roman period site of Zita, Tunisia. Since the time available for the fieldwork was limited to two weeks, the survey focused on examining specific areas of the site to document certain architectural features, and in several locations where industrial activities were known to have occurred based on previous limited excavations. Additionally, a region...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Leader. Kimberlee Moran. Jared Beatrice. Anna Dhody.

The material culture found in association with the skeletal remains recovered from the historic First Baptist Church of Philadelphia cemetery, which was in use from 1700-1860, provides a valuable glimpse into colonial and post-colonial burial practices in one of early America’s most important cities. The interior material culture in the form of burial goods is most often minimalistic with few exceptions while the exterior material culture (i.e. coffin hardware) assists in relative dates while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Carbone.

Skeletal weathering is rarely addressed in archaeological contexts, despite its importance to archaeology, and other fields of research. Experimental studies in taphonomy should be completed on regional scales, because changes in the microclimate will cause taphonomic agents to express differently on skeletal remains. This research quantifies and calibrates the skeletal weathering cycle for the southwest Llano Estacado region of eastern New Mexico, by placing faunal remains in full sun, shade,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Kate. J. Heath Anderson. Douglas J. Kennett. John Krigbaum.

In this poster, we present preliminary mobility data for ten individuals recovered from the summit of Cerro Magoni, an Epiclassic (ca. AD 600-900) hilltop settlement in Tula, Mexico. For decades it has been hypothesized that the Tula area may have experienced an influx of immigrants from northwestern Mexico during the Epiclassic period, and that these newcomers played an important role in the rise Tula Grande. Results presented here provide an important step forward towards testing the long-held...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Hurtubise.

Around A.D. 1300, the Chimú conducted a series of expansions south of the Moche Valley conquering the Casma, a regional group whose territory spanned from the Chao to the Huarmey Valleys. While past research has examined this event in the northern and southern extent of the Casma’s territory, there exists a void in our knowledge on the Casma’s experience during the Chimú conquest in the central Santa and Nepeña Valleys. In 2017 the Proyecto Investigación de Arqueología de Pan de Azucár (PIAPAN)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Graves. Christopher Garraty.

Recent excavations on the Arizona State University Tempe campus provide a glimpse into the early 20th-century Mexican-American neighborhoods of San Pablo and Barrio del Hoyo. Located next to the original campus grounds, San Pablo and Barrio del Hoyo were residential and commercial hubs of early Tempe. After World War II, urban development and renewal efforts by the university and land developers targeted these two neighborhoods for campus expansion and displaced their residents, quickly...

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

This paper examines settlement patterns of the late pre-Contact era (1300-1500 C.E.) in the central and upper Tombigbee River, with a focus on the Blackland Prairie portion. Mississippian and Protohistoric settlement strategies and chronologies are overviewed with an eye toward understanding the coalescence of Contact-era polities and the abandonment of the Tombigbee floodplain. Climatological, sociopolitical, and demographic factors are evaluated. Decentralization as a bottom-up response to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Hunt. Tiffany Raymond. Anna Patchen. Sarah Gilleland. Matthew Sanger.

Mound A is the largest earthen construction at Poverty Point and the second largest mound in North America. Limited excavations on the mound have documented the construction history of the deposit, but have failed to find evidence of how the mound was used. Recent geophysical surveys (including resistivity, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometry) reveal specialized use areas – including prepared floors that we interpret as dance and presentation platforms. The discovery of these platforms...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Allen. China Shelton. Calla McNamee.

Despite the increased application of spatially intensive sampling for archaeobotanical remains at large Mycenaean sites in Greece, the recovered assemblages are typically small and show poor preservation. Here, we consider the macrobotanical assemblage recovered through flotation of more than 7000 L of sediment at the site of Iklaina, in Messenia, in conjunction with microbotanical remains (starches, phytoliths) to illuminate cultural and natural site formation processes that have either...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordon Loucks. Jessica Watson.

In an era of uncertainty in the significance of cultural resources, an evaluation of the history of legislation that protects and manages effects on cultural resources is of paramount importance. At the federal level, the environmental policies that ensure evaluation of cultural resources are at risk in today’s political climate. To understand how to best maintain and improve protections and mechanisms of cultural resource investigation, the following paper evaluates the history of cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ort. Ora Elquist.

The study of Northeast pre-contact archaeology is faced with many challenges including, but not limited to preservation and impacts on the archaeological record from centuries of development. Especially concerning is the decline in academic-based research and positions. University departments once populated with individuals dedicated to Northeastern pre-contact history have traditionally been the primary means for how practitioners of the region’s archaeology reproduce themselves, now have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexis Catsambis.

The U.S. Navy maintains a program responsible for the management of its sunken military craft, which are distributed world-wide and extend temporally from the American Revolution through to the Nuclear Age. These multi-faceted submerged heritage sites are managed by the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command, which engages in archaeological field research, heritage management, artifact conservation, collections management, and outreach initiatives in furtherance...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Overholtzer.

Precisely dated household middens at the Aztec site of Xaltocan suggest that Aztec imperial matter—decorated serving vessels imported from Tenochtitlan and small spindle whorls used to produce tribute cloth, for example—often predates imperial formation and expansion by nearly a century. In this paper, I consider the analytical purchase we might get in explaining this puzzling finding by considering literature from the material turn; Khatchadourian, Bauer, Kosiba, and others have recently...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sebastian Salgado-Flores.

How did Postclassic Maya communities decide which tree species to harvest for firewood and timber in a diverse forest environment? Most studies of ancient tree selection have used the principles of optimal foraging to construct a baseline of expectations for interpreting archaeological charcoal datasets. This paper will explore the implications of such a model on the interpretation of wood charcoals from the site of La Punta in Chiapas, Mexico, while also considering how the political structure...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Jaime Castillo.

Starting in 1991, more than 20 female elite burials have been excavated among the 800+ burials dug in San Jose de Moro, Jequetepeque Valley, Northern Peru. Female burials tell us stories of the rise to power of females in the Late Moche society, of their singular power, emanating from roles in Sacrificial Ceremonies, but mostly each burial is a representation of the specific life of each one of these females, where more is singular than common and shared. Rather than a repetitive pattern, each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Prout.

Two chambers in Midnight Terror Cave, Belize show undeniable evidence of Maya child sacrifice. Operation V and Operation VIII are the deepest darkest chambers of the cave where some of the most important of ancient Maya rites were performed including human sacrifice. In 2009 Ann Scott proposed that sacrifices occurred in Operation VIII and, during ritual cleaning of this public space in preparation for a new ceremony, the bones were taken from their primary deposition site and moved to Operation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua J. Wells. David Anderson. Eric Kansa. Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Stephen Yerka.

American archaeology is conducted under cultural resources protection laws, but how does archaeology meet the challenge of openness? The past decade saw development of the "open government" digital information paradigm for public availability of information that underpins the functions of governance. Open government data provide a base for the interested public to offer expertise in aspects of necessary analyses, and to derive further public value from reuse of government data in novel ways. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Connolly. Elizabeth Cruzado. Natalie Kramm. Dominique Giosa.

This paper evaluates the efforts to create and implement a diversity of cultural heritage educational programs over a four-year period in the Ancash Region. The initial impetus for the development was in large part viewed as a means for obtaining community support for archaeological research projects and an increased commitment of local stewardship for cultural heritage resources. Over the four-year period, we made a decisive shift from an approach of creating products for the community to one...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trinity Schlegel.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) employs approximately 63% of archaeologists in the United States. Private consulting firms contract with federal agencies to assist in compliance with federal laws such as NHPA, NAGPRA, ARPA and AHPA, and additional state laws. As contract archaeologists, we often work extended periods within small groups in isolated areas, which lends to work environments away from support systems of family and friends. Co-workers depend on each other for safety and support in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kus. Victor Raharijaona.

Many societies archaeologists seek to understand are societies of primary orality. They are "lifeworlds" of primary subsistence. Their study demands a multiplicity of approaches. Certainly one needs a sensitive yet hardy material gaze (and touch). Further, one should seek sensuous engagement in subsistence and celebration. Additionally, one should cultivate an incitement to imagine how the poetic and philosophical, of both reflective thought and of speech, are anchored in the material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Briece Edwards. Jessica Curteman. Cheryl Pouley. Chris Bailey. David Harrelson.

Today, the increased involvement of Tribes in Cultural resources and historic preservation has resulted in culturally specific understanding and knowledge being integrated into the shared heritage of place. This emerging shift toward Tribal inclusion in policies and understanding is also reflective in Tribal inclusion of archaeological practice and methods for reconnecting with place and practice. For the past five years The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, has utilized archaeological methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Gjesfjeld. William Brown. Ben Fitzhugh.

One of the persisting challenges in archaeological network analysis is how to incorporate both temporal and spatial information into network models generated from the archaeological record. This paper tackles this issue by introducing a protocol that places probabilistic weights on potential network connections between archaeological sites, combining time-varying probabilities quantifying contemporaneous site occupation and space-dependent probabilities based on geographic distance. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Knut Bretzke.

Jebel Faya is a key Paleolithic site in Arabia. The site provides important data on the history of human occupation of desert environments during the Late Pleistocene. One central question is if the observed diachronic pattern of occupation is largely driven by climatic change, as often assumed, or if other factors such as adaptation processes play significant roles. Based on the assumption that survival in the often unpredictable environments of SE Arabia requires increased behavioral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Jones. Shannon Freire.

The excavation, reburial, and permanent curation of human remains from historic cemeteries is inherently linked to complexities of Western paternalism, medical consent, nationality, traditional cultural practice, and a too-common absence of stakeholder engagement, among other pressing concerns. These important and fundamental considerations are often ignored or glossed over in both archaeological project planning and in publications utilizing these remains. The ideal of scientific objectivity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Downs. Kyle Waller.

Historically, the sex of prehistoric human skeletal remains has been visually assessed by researchers who are (hopefully) knowledgeable about the population being examined. However, methods of assigning sex can be largely subjective and often lead to inconsistent results. In this study, we consider human skeletal remains from the Medio period (A.D. 1200–1475) from Paquimé, a site in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, that was the economic and political center of the Casas Grandes region. The sexes of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brett A. Houk.

The Chan Chich Archaeological Project has documented two types of terminal, above floor "problematic" artifact deposits in a number of different locations and contexts at the site of Chan Chich, Belize. The first type comprises light scatters of "exotic" ceramics and other artifacts on the steps to range buildings in epicentral courtyards. The second type is a dense artifact deposit in an ashy matrix at the base of a platform face in a hilltop, elite courtyard. Compositionally, the second type...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Soledad Solorzano Venegas. Olga del Pilar Woolfson Touma.

El paisaje cultural arqueológico de Urcuquí se caracteriza por la presencia de montículos artificiales circulares –Tolas-, de la época prehispánica. Sus dimensiones promedio fluctúan entre treinta y cincuenta metros de diámetro y entre dos y cuatro metros de altura. El objetivo de esta ponencia es proponer el proceso de construcción de estas estructuras, a partir de una relectura de la información obtenida del registro arqueológico de superficie y subsuelo empleando técnicas mixtas: excavación...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brittany Fletcher. Aliya Hoff. Samuel Mijal. Jason King. Jane E. Buikstra.

While archaeological engagement with the body as a locus of embodied agency has proliferated in recent years, this study is the first to rigorously apply theories of personhood to the lengthy burial rituals documented within interment facilities of Woodland burial mounds from the North American Midcontinent. This study aims to explore conceptions of the body, dividuality, embodiment, and personhood through the analysis of skeletal material from the Middle Woodland Gibson Mounds Site (n=19) and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Booher. Brett A. Houk.

Chan Chich is one of the dozen largest Maya ruins in Belize, reaching its apogee during the Late Classic period, ca. A.D. 750. The site has a number of notable site planning characteristics, including a massive public plaza, and two wide, radial causeways, that show connections to neighboring sites and suggest common ideas about city building. Some of these shared planning ideas reflect top-down design concepts related to specialized political and ritual functions for various buildings and...