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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Peres. Aaron Deter-Wolf.

The Neolithic Revolution of the 9th millennium BC marks the period when forager groups independently experimented with the management and, in some instances, the domestication of terrestrial plants and animals. However, global evidence for human consumption and management of gastropods predates the Neolithic Revolution, indicating that terrestrial and aquatic snails were an important resource for human societies during the Holocene. Abundant deposits of aquatic snails are reported from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Nolan. Jerald Ek.

With regional occupational continuity from the Middle Formative through Postclassic Periods, the Río Champotón drainage provides an ideal case study to examine long-term change in ancient Maya subsistence strategies and human/environmental interactions during two and a half millennia of human occupation. This poster presents the results of analysis of an assemblage of over 13,000 shell artifacts generated by the Champotón Regional Settlement Survey during seven seasons of research in the Río...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Woo.

The East Alligator River Region has undergone considerable environmental change throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene, with changing sea levels dramatically altering the ecosystems of this region.  Current archaeological models for this area indicate that people adapted their economic activities to successfully exploit these shifting environments.  Throughout these changes molluscs have played an important role in the economic activities of these groups and often comprise large portions of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Kathryn Brown. Jason Yaeger.

The Mopan River valley of Belize is home to five closely spaced Lowland Maya ceremonial centers with extensive settlement occupying the landscape between. From south to north, the ceremonial centers are Arenal, Early Xunantunich, Classic Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo. Archaeological evidence suggests that each of these centers was initially occupied by the Middle Preclassic, but they had distinct histories, evolving into ceremonial/political centers at different times, from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fitzhugh.

In the early 1970s Clifford Evans created a "Paleoindian Program" at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Clovis was well-established in the literature, but its origins and antecedents were mysterious. Dennis Stanford had just received his PhD on Thule culture studies in Barrow, Alaska, but his real love was Paleoindians. After arriving at the SI he picked up the mantle of the Institution’s pioneering Paleoindian researcher, Frank Roberts, and instituted large-scale projects at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Harry.

Lava Ridge Ruin, located on the Shivwits Plateau near the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, is a late Pueblo II period site associated with the Virgin Branch Puebloan culture. Excavations at the sixteen-room pueblo suggest that its inhabitants used natural and cultural objects to maintain historical connections with their ancestors and with previously occupied settlements, as well as to signify their connection to important places on the landscape. These connections are reflected in the very...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Hayward. Michael Cinquino. Frank Schieppati. Don Smith.

There is some suggestion in the literature, most explicitly developed by Espenshade (2014) for Puerto Rico, that major enclosures, particularly with rock art, at some point in their life cycle could be considered shrines or special religious places that increasingly attracted visitors or pilgrims from non-local on- and off-island locations. Pilgrimage rounds are well-established components of religious systems both past and current in various parts of world, including the incorporation of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Knaf. Joanna Ostapkowicz. Gareth Davies.

Project SIBA (Stone Interchanges in the Bahamas Archipelago) brings together the largest corpus of Bahamian/TCI stone artefacts ever assembled - over 300 artefacts from eight international museums, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History. In an entirely limestone environment like the Bahamas/TCI, all hard stone had to be imported: our objective is to determine the source of these exotics. Integrating studies that combine the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Cervantes.

Cities which become capitals of large states provide unique information on the sociopolitical political organization and the nature of power, as they are home to a society’s leaders and central institutions. In the Andes, scholars have highlighted the existence of cities dominated by a centralized single governing institution, like the Moche capital of Pampa Grande; while others have drawn attention to the empty ceremonial centers, such as Cahuachi, main settlement of the Nazca society. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Skeens.

Woodpecker Cave (13JH202) provides a unique opportunity to study variation in ceramic technology and resource allocation during the ceramic production process at a Late Woodland East-Central Iowa site. Excavations by the University of Iowa field school spanning six seasons have recovered hundreds of ceramic pottery sherds from Woodpecker Cave, including a modest amount of decorated rim pieces and a large number of undecorated body sherds. Previous typological analyses of the ceramic assemblage...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marilyn Masson.

Debt was important to late Maya societies in religious and political terms. This paper explores the many facets of debt that tied together household and regional economies, including bottom-up mechanisms employed by families and communities, as well as top-down institutions that garnered support for religious and political bureaucracies. Graeber’s distinction between moral and impersonal economies outlines a comparative continuum with profound implications for issues of human rights in the past....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giles Spence-Morrow.

As architectural interventions on the landscape, structures considered to have ceremonial or ritual significance provide a means to regulate the temporalization of practice in material form. As built objects, monumental huaca structures in the Andes served to mark the longue dureé, as their existence mediated and legitimized political order linked to the deep cosmological history framing mythic time, ordering the present and planning for the future. As physical and subjectified artifacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Gilman. Jakob Sedig.

Although both the Mimbres and the Gila valleys are within the Mimbres region and are not far apart, they seem to have rather major differences in the numbers of rooms per room block, the numbers of room blocks per site, and the designs painted on Mimbres black-on-white pottery. In this poster, we report similarities and differences between Mimbres Valley (MV) and upper Gila/western Mimbres (UGWM) pottery designs. We start by defining and quantifying style elements seemingly more common in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vanessa Sullivan.

GIS has become a widely utilized tool for analyzing archaeological sensitivity. The state of Rhode Island has more documented shipwrecks per square mile than any other, making it an ideal place to develop an archaeological sensitivity model for submerged sites. In 2008, the Beavertail Lighthouse Museum Association started compiling a shipwreck database. The Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission has incorporated the database findings, documented submerged archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aliénor Letouzé.

For the past eight years, the French team from the CeRAP (Paris-Sorbonne University and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris) has carried out research at the Mesoamerican site of 7 Venado, which extends over 4 ha lying 400 m south of the South Platform of Monte Albán. Directed by Christian Duverger and Aliénor Letouzé, with the support of the INAH, the project has been able to date the site, whose chronology spans 800 BC to AD 300, and has also studied its spatial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alonso Binimelis.

Durante el Periodo Intermedio Tardío en las tierras altas de Arica, las influencias altiplánicas se encontraban en la sierra y valles altos, caracterizados por arquitectura funeraria (chulpas) y la cerámica, representando relaciones de poder y estatus social dentro de las comunidades locales. Durante el Periodo Tardío, con la introducción de elementos incaicos al altiplano boliviano, el área dominada por los pueblos altiplánicos fue influenciada por la cosmovisión y tecnología incaica, lugares...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elic Weitzel. Brian Codding. Stephen Carmody. David Zeanah.

Dense human settlements often emerge following a shift to agricultural economies, yet researchers still debate the underlying cause of this pattern. One driver may be what is known in ecology as an Allee effect, a positive relationship between population density and per capita utility. Allee effects may emerge with economies of scale such as those created by some forms of intensified food acquisition and production. Thus, in an Allee-like setting, individuals belonging to larger groups enjoy the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Harris.

A Bayesian model of Distribution Regression using a Mean Embedding Ridge Regression (MERR) algorithm is developed to address two primary shortcomings of current Archaeological Predictive Modeling (APM) practice; 1) neglecting the richness of archaeological landforms by collapsing a site to a single point or observation; and 2) disregarding the implicit and explicit uncertainty of archaeological data, predictions, and model parameters. This research addresses the first hurdle by developing a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leping Jiang.

The Shangshan Culture is named after the site of Shangshan in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province, China. Multiple kinds of materials from multiple sites have been dated by several radiocarbon dating labs, indicating that the Shangshan Culture spans 10,000-8,400 BP. It can be divided into three phases: a 10,000-9,500 BP early phase, a 9,300-8,800 BP middle phase, and a 8,600-8,400 BP late phase. There are 18 sites belonging to Shangshan culture that have been uncovered so far. They are distributed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Freire. Patricia Richards. Brooke Drew.

From 1878 through 1974 Milwaukee County utilized four locations on the Milwaukee County Grounds for burial of more than 7,000 individuals, primarily paupers, the institutionalized, and the unidentified. Two archaeological excavations in 1991 and 1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from one of those cemetery locations. A comprehensive understanding of the spatial organization and use life of this site has been complicated by the cemetery’s history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ricardo Higelin Ponce De Leon. Alicia C. Gonzales. Jeffrey Blomster.

Sedentism and agriculture had major impacts on early human societies by increasing social complexity. Some scholars attributed an intensification of inequalities to a greater dependency on agriculture. This dependency, consequently lead to decreased health status of the non-elite/rulers population. Our goal is to address the overarching question of, how did agriculture impact ancient societies? And specifically, does the emergence of agriculture correlate with decreased health? Therefore, we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krzysztof Makowski. Roberto Pimentel.

The comparison of new evidence obtained from Pachacamac and Castillo de Huarmey sites sheds new light on the character of Wari presence on the Peruvian Coast. Both sites are contemporary (Late Middle Horizon, ca. 800 - 1100 AD) and most new information comes from funerary contexts. In both cases, imitations of foreign styles, originated in the south coast and highlands, as well as the local ones are present in the iconography found in the offerings. Recent analyzes lead us to the conclusion that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Strait.

The presence of dogs across burial sites in the southwestern United States and worldwide has been well noted in archaeological literature. The ubiquity of canine burials attests to their historical role as complex social actors in human society, prompting actions and performances, taboos and transgressions. To access the true depth of meaning in many canine remains, then, we must examine them with the level of precision normally reserved for human burials. This paper offers a close reading of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Liza Gijanto.

Banjul was founded in 1816 as part of the British efforts to block the slave trade on the Gambia River. A planned urban center, the city developed around a series of neighborhoods designated as colonial, merchant, and African laborer spaces. Amongst the most prominent settlers were the Aku (Liberated Africans) from Sierra Leone and French traders from Goree who were instrumental in the growth of the colonial economy. The Banjul Heritage Project seeks to highlight contributions of the different...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Reilly. Caree Banton.

"Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you" is a phrase attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre. While the French philosopher was concerned with political freedom rather than freedom in the context of slavery, Sartre’s words offer lessons for analyzing a vast spectrum of how individuals experienced the conditions of slavery and freedom. This paper explores an ambitious project of freedom and future-making initiated by a group of Barbadians one generation after emancipation in the English...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felicia Fricke.

Qualitative data are often overlooked in archaeological research in favour of quantitative data which can provide statistical results. However, there are many contexts where qualitative data (such as oral historical accounts) can provide valuable information on meaning and personal significance. This is beneficial in projects addressing topics such as inequality and colonialism. The author therefore presents qualitative data from her doctoral thesis in order to demonstrate the importance of this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Mensah Abrampah.

In 1803, Denmark and Norway abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which took effect on 1st January 1803. However, this did not end slavery itself in Africa. Intensification of cash-crop agriculture on the West African coast by the Danish colonists provoked an upsurge in the local slave trade. As the Danish plantation economy solidified, increasing numbers of enslaved people were engaged to labour in these plantations in Ghana. The research examines the documentary and the archaeological data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Troskosky. Erika Ruhl. Sarah Hoffman. Torill Christine Lindstrøm. Ezra Zubrow.

Islands are both understudied and spatially constrained, with often turbulent colonial histories. This paper reconsiders the conceptual basis of intra- and inter-island relationships in the context of archaeology. We argue that islands need not be isolated as geographic, ecologic or cultural entities and have not been so during the proto-historic and prehistoric periods. Using 21st century equilibrium theory and gateway theory we suggest that islands may be in some contexts central places. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn E. Davis.

This project centers on Plains-Pueblo interaction in the late-prehistoric and protohistoric periods. It analyzes how trade and inter-regional interactions were ritually mediated between these two culture groups, through the examination of pipes and smoking materials used in economic interactions at pueblos in the Northern Rio Grande area of New Mexico. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric literature indicates that pipe-smoking was part of rituals that cemented inter-tribal trade relationships. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Larsen.

Some archaeologists and other preservationists perceive a growing hostility in conversations about cultural heritage issues. At times it feels as though people are questioning the very foundations of archaeological work. Other times, it seems as though people just think you need to apply the technique they recently saw used on TV or the web (a la the "CSI Effect"). The implications can leave the archaeologists feeling as though the public don’t believe we know what we are doing or that they are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Pantoja. Iliana Ancona. Maria Gomez. Claudia Gongora.

In the last decade, research done by "Proyecto Arquelogico Region de Merida" (PARME) on peripheral settlements of the Ichkaantijo area has had as a main objective to recognize and interpret the social organization of these ancient communities, that according to literature have been defined as rural settlements. Therefore, how is this area and the sites that constitute it characterized? What role did they play in the political and economic system? And, which cultural elements have witnessed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Venicia Slotten. David Lentz.

The Late Classic Maya village of Joya de Ceren’s extraordinary preservation by the Loma Caldera eruption allows for a unique opportunity to not only understand what plant species the ancient inhabitants utilized in their daily lives but also how the cultivation of these plants shaped the social and economic environment. While Cerén has spectacular preservation of extensive outfields of maize, manioc, and numerous weedy species, this paper will focus on the cultivated spaces surrounding the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Barkwill Love.

Emil Haury’s excavation of Mogollon Village in 1933 helped to provide the first overview of pithouse occupation for the Upper Gila and Mimbres Valley areas as well as establishing the Mogollon culture concept. Tree-ring data from Haury’s excavation suggested that the site was occupied from at least A.D. 730 to 900; however, the stratigraphy of the site suggested that the site was occupied prior to A.D. 700. Further excavation work at the site conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s suggested...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Brooks. John Yellen.

While interest in the role of social learning in the Paleolithic has focused extensively on stone artifacts, very little attention has been paid to social learning in living forager populations. In this paper we report on many years of fieldwork among the Jun/wasi of northwestern Botswana and Namibia. We argue that most cultural transmission in relation to domains such as technology, language and food acquisition was informal, and was acquired in the context of close daily relationships between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carmel Schrire.

A central imperative in historical archaeology is to produce original information and insights that cannot be derived from historical records. Sophisticated analyses of slave burials that combine the physical elements of burial grounds, coffins, and grave goods, with the biology and chemical signatures of the human remains, can identify and source first-generation slaves, and help to infer the social bonds reflected in their burial. Orlando Patterson has defined slavery as "social death" to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Montgomery.

Over the past century, a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to Plains horse culture, particularly focusing on how horses transformed the economic practices of nomadic people and the ecology of the Great Plains. As one of the most iconic equestrian cultures of the eighteenth century, the Comanche have been a common subject of these anthropological and historical investigations. Recent studies of the Comanche have focused on the role of horses in facilitating their rise from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Scott Speal.

Cross-culturally and through time, anthropologists have found that--within hierarchical societies--elites tend to manage resources and allocate risk primarily to their own benefit. There is little reason to believe that Late Roman Imperial frontier elites would have behaved any differently. This paper examines the archaeological relationship between biological 'stress' or health--as inferred from skeletal remains--and socio-economic status / class--as evaluated on the basis of mortuary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Waters. Anthony Tricarico.

Caribbean Sugar production during the 18th and 19th centuries expanded rapidly, fueled by increasing proletariat consumption across the globe. In response, sugar planters in 18th century Antigua, West Indies, deforested over 90 percent of the landscape, carving the island into proto-industrialized plantations defined by sugarcane monoculture and labored by enslaved Africans. New World plantation organization was once ascribed as a balance between profit and surveillance: simultaneously...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Véronique Darras. Brigitte Faugère.

Chupicuaro reached its cultural and demographic peak between 400 and 100 BCE. This Formative culture was integrated into the western Mesoamerican sphere and was characterized by its homogeneity, with diversified but still poorly understood relationships with Central Mexico, particularly in the sites of Cuicuilco and Cerro de los Tepalcates, and Tlaxcala-Puebla area. The decades before our era underwent both socio-spatial reconfigurations, probably due to rapid environmental change in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Schott.

The Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona contains extensive sand sheets and dunes. Archaeologists have long recognized the importance of the eolian landscape for prehistoric agriculture. Archaeological sites dating from c. 200-1400 A.D. correlate with eolian landscape features, which suggests that eolian soils were used for dry-farmed dune agriculture. Eolian soils are not always conducive to dry-farmed agriculture; however, dune farming is known ethnographically, and has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Kotsoglou. Samantha Krause. Luisa Aebersold. Fred Valdez. Timothy Beach.

The Maya site of Colha is located on a karstic doline that is dominated by Tertiary and Pleistocene limestone and marls. This low-lying area, known locally as the Cobweb depression, encompasses a complex wetland system that is affected by Holocene sea level rise, human-induced vegetation changes, and both natural and anthropogenic erosional sequences. The dynamic landscape, coupled with a long history of human occupation, places this site in a complex geographic and cultural position within the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Goldberg.

Soils are different from sediments. Many of these differences have been revealed by Vance Holliday during his career, through field work and numerous publications that have significantly influenced all disciplines. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to treat any soft stuff that is being excavated as "soil", and this confusion needs to be continuously corrected. Here, I present a number of examples of the use of archaeological micromorphology to highlight the distinctions between soils and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolette Meister. William Green.

Inorganic archaeological objects (e.g., stone, glass, ceramic, and metal) may require special care as a result of their archaeological context or properties of composition or manufacture. This paper reviews the agents of deterioration specific to inorganic archaeological objects and demonstrates how to identify preservation concerns and stabilize sensitive collections. Specifically, the use of silica gel storage for archaeological metal will be discussed and demonstrated.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Glenna Nielsen-Grimm.

Care of archaeological materials should begin in the field. Care and stabilizing of objects, if started in the field, will greatly increase the objects research and exhibit potential when it finally finds a home in a museum. How do you identify problems and then what do you do? Proper care and stabilization of objects can and should be a priority for all object users—excavators, lab analysts, museum staff, and researchers. In this paper, object care, conservation environments and stabilizing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chengrui Zhang. Rowan Flad.

During the 2016 and 2017 excavations at the site of Qijiaping, Guanghe, Gansu, China, the Tao River Archaeological Project excavated a large intact kiln that turned out to be a Song Dynasty roof tile kiln. The kiln is well preserved, and the first of its kind reported in an archaeological excavation in this region. Inside the flues of the kiln were many objects, deliberately disposed of, presumably at the moment when the kiln was put out of commission. Among these objects is a stone phallus in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Ward. David Robinson.

Located on the Wind Wolves wildlife preserve in South Central California, there are several spectacular rock art sites. Created by the Native Californians who inhabited the landscape, they have been the focus of a number of studies over the years, but none of these studies concentrated on the sound quality of these spaces. The correlation between the placement of rock/cave art, and the acoustic properties of the space in which it is found, is increasingly being studied under the rubric of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd.

Pecos River style rock art was produced in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico during the Archaic beginning around 2700 BC. This style is characterized by finely executed anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures arranged in highly-ordered, complex compositions. Pecos River style anthropomorphs are frequently portrayed with a series of dots emanating upwards from an open mouth. Zoomorphic figures of felines and deer are also represented with this pictographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Nash.

As permanent landmarks, waterfalls and associated plunge pools are documented among traditional peoples as liminal and sacred spaces. A review of ethnographic and archaeological literature identifies these features as sources of life and transition, requiring proper preparation in advance of approach. The symbolic and experiential character of waterfalls may be in evidence in the Virginia Blue Ridge, where a small number of Middle and Late Woodland sites near named waterfalls are outside the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Graham Goodwin. Heather Richards-Rissetto. Kristy Primeau. David Witt.

Researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine the roles of visibility and movement in archaeological landscapes around the world. However, few studies have investigated the role sound potentially played in structuring experience in ancient cities. To begin to fill this gap, this paper builds on our initial investigations to develop new geospatial and virtual reality (VR) methods to examine ancient acoustics. For the ancient Maya, sight and sound worked in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Wendt. Edgar Huerta. Hector Neff. Michael D. Glascock.

Recent compositional analyses of obsidian from Formative Period Mesoamerican sites have been used to trace obsidian to a number of Highland Mexican and Guatemalan sources, and documented shifts in sources through time. In this presentation, we report the results of a study that analyzed 401 obsidian samples excavated from the Middle/Late Formative period habitation site of Los Soldados, located 11 km from the Olmec capital of La Venta. Using three high precision techniques (LA-ICP-MS, XRF, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guoping Sun.

The source of the Hemudu Culture has remained a key issue for more than 40 years. Recently, the coring survey at the Jingtoushan site has provided a chance to promote our understanding of this issue. Its cultural deposits are deeper than those of any other prehistoric site along the coastline of East China. It is overlain by Late Holocene marine deposits of 6 meters deep. Twenty radiocarbon dates, along with the particular depth of midden deposits and pottery sherds, indicate that the site dates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Lopez. Brian Haley.

Archaeological textiles are by nature ephemeral artifacts, leaving the development of analytical methodologies within the realm of culture history stylistic analysis until recently. Developments in geochemical sourcing methods have opened the window to new forms of analysis, including geographically sourcing the materials with which a textile is made. In particular, strontium isotope ratios with their long-term stability relating to archaeological time scales are well-suited for this type of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Pike.

From its very inception, the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens has fostered and supported the integration of geological techniques and methodologies into archaeological research programs in the eastern Mediterranean Basin. One such area of focus includes provenance studies of rocks used in architectural and sculptural programs spanning from the prehistoric to Late Antiquity. By tracing the source quarries of ancient artifacts and features, archaeologists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Joyce. Aleksander Borejsza. Jon Lohse. Luis Morett Alatorre. Brendan Nash.

Understanding of long-distance exchange during the Mesoamerican Preceramic suffers from a limited range of materials whose source locations can be determined relative to later periods. Obsidian is one of the few materials that can provide evidence for long-distance exchange through geochemical analysis, although relatively few sourcing studies have been carried out on Preceramic obsidian. In this paper, we report recent pXRF results from obsidian recovered at two Preceramic sites: Las Estacas,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tawny Tibbits.

The Maya site of Pacbitun in Belize has produced large amounts of granite ground stone tools, debitage, and debris. Determining provenance is integral to reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of ground stone tool production at the site. Portable X-Ray fluorescence (pXRF) is becoming widely used in the field for quick and accurate geochemical assessments. Most prior archaeological work has focused on fine-grained materials, rather than coarse-grained rocks like granite. This project used geologic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvana Rosenfeld. Megan Street.

In this presentation we will discuss different non-local materials recovered from the Wari site of Conchopata and the imperial capital of Huari to better understand the interactions between costa, sierra, and selva during the Middle Horizon. The mapping of the origins of exotic material recovered at these sites will help us understand and better characterize how people in these regions were interacting with each other. By exploring least-cost pathways, among other criteria, we will make...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Federica Fontana.

Thanks to the intense fieldwork carried out by different institutions since the 1970s, the south-eastern Alps represent one of the most detailed case-studies in Europe documenting the occupation of mountain areas by foraging groups. The known sites and find-spots attesting the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic occupation of this area amount to several hundred. This evidence shows that foraging groups settled in the Southern Alpine region following the melting of glaciers and the re-colonization of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juan Belardi. Flavia Carballo Marina. Gustavo Barrientos. Patricia Campan.

Results obtained through a distributional archaeology project along the north shore of the Viedma lake basin are introduced. The aim of the research is to gain knowledge about hunter-gatherer landscape use during the Holocene and to incorporate the basin within a broader discussion of the population of the western side of Southern Patagonia. Different altitudinal sectors along an East-West axis -from the steppe to the forest- were surveyed in order to understand seasonal mobility: 1) the coast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Lange.

The US Southwest has attracted numerous adventurers and researchers since the mid-19th Century, including the three individuals noted in the title. Although more than 60 years passed between their respective journeys, their approaches to understanding native Southwest cultures were remarkably similar. Their work melded data and insights from ethnology, anthropology, history and historical documents, and archaeology. The later researchers could not have known when they began their journeys that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Daehnke.

Over the course of the last two decades I have been actively involved in anthropological research along the Lower Columbia River. This includes archaeological field work conducted within and just outside of the boundaries of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Washington, as well as a heritage ethnography completed in collaboration with the Chinook Indian Nation. This research has happened on both federal and private lands and has involved multiple "stakeholders," including both federally...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Khatchadourian.

To borrow Yuri Slezkine’s formulation, "the Soviet Union was an empire—in the sense of being very big, bad, asymmetrical, hierarchical, heterogeneous, and doomed". In this it differed little from the early empires that have long held archaeology’s attention. But unlike its precursors, the U.S.S.R. was guided by a political ideology premised vigorously on the relationship between humans and things—between labor, the non-human inputs of production, and property. Imperial sovereignty rested on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Trigg. Christina Spellman.

Domestic space both reflects the social order and contributes to its construction. In early colonial New Mexico, houses and other architecture created arenas in which social interactions among Spanish colonizers and indigenous peoples played out and ethnogenesis took place. Moreover Spanish economic production was household based, occurring primarily at rural ranches and mission compounds; consequently, the built environment at households also framed economic activity. Here, we explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly.

Lynne Goldstein’s contribution to our understanding of Mississippian societies in the Midwest is still an ongoing endeavor. Her research with its roots in the greater Cahokia area and within a few years at Aztalan has an important impact on my own efforts. Her dissertation research into the Mississippian cemeteries, Schild and Moss, was methodologically rigorous and provided insights into the manner in which non-elite cemeteries some 100 km north of Cahokia were spatially and socially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holley Moyes. Kelsey Hanson. Erin Ray.

Performance theory recognizes that the boundaries between ritual and theatrical performances are often quite blurred, allowing shared methods of analysis between the two. While many have argued for a theater-state among the ancient Maya, few have ventured beyond the large ceremonies conducted in great plazas to consider the more esoteric nature of public, semi-public, and private rites taking place in the natural landscape. Ancient Maya caves were used exclusively as ritual spaces, yet there has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan Bowers.

The Cividade of Bagunte is located on a prominent hill near the confluence of the Rivers Ave and Este. During the Iron Age, there likely would have been panoramic vistas that stretched well over 15 kilometers on a clear day, though this is mostly unnoticeable at ground level in modern times due to dense foliage. From the few areas that do not have trees and in combination with technology to ‘see’ through the trees, it is clear the site’s viewshed includes several other Iron Age castros, as well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson. Stéphanie Leroy. Quan Hua. Kaseka Phon. Enrique Vega.

Iron production was a critical process in the expansion of the Angkorian Khmer Empire. Recent surveys by INDAP around the Phnom Dek region have revealed a massive industrial landscape that appears to have fueled Angkor’s expansionist ambitions between the 11th to 13th centuries. This paper presents a spatial and morphological GIS analysis of hundreds of slag concentrations mapped in this region to evaluate changes in the scale and organization of metal production. Combined with pXRF data of tap...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe.

Spatial analysis has the potential to yield substantial evidence about the organization of economic and social interactions of prehistoric archaeological sites. There is a growing body of ethnoarchaeological research that allows robust interpretations of spatial patterning in the open-air campsites of mobile peoples. The very fact that such sites may represent short-term, low density occupations means that the configuration of labor and activities may actually be clearer than in longer-term...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeff Stanley. Mariela Pérez Antonio. Nawa Sugiyama.

During the Early Classic period (250-550 CE), Teotihuacan in what is now central Mexico was the largest city in the Western hemisphere. Occupying 76,400 m2 of Teotihuacan’s ceremonial center, the Plaza of the Columns, which consists of three mounds and the surrounding area, has been posited as the site of a palatial-administrative complex. The occupational history of the Plaza of the Columns is interpreted in light of a three-dimensional distribution map of ceramics, organized according to two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Troutman.

Ancient people’s organization of their social space can inform us about the kinds of activities that take place on a site. However, before making any cultural interpretations, the site’s stratigraphic and formation processes need to be considered. The goal of this research is to examine how lithic tools are spatially arranged at Peyre Blanque to gain a better understanding of the site organization and how stratigraphic processes may have affected the artifacts. Peyre Blanque is an open-air camp...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Roache-Fedchenko.

The location of blacksmith workshops is often noted on historic maps, yet the archaeological attributes of the workshops are often not well understood within the context of the 18th century. Most knowledge of blacksmithing derives from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The various tools and techniques used to produce and repair metal objects are well documented from these later time periods, as is the spatial layout of the blacksmith shops. These depictions of blacksmiths and blacksmithing are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shawn Morton. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown.

In a 2012 article exploring the spatial structure of post-Tlamimilolpa phase Teotihuacan, Mexico, we invoked both a materialist body of method-theory known as space syntax and an interactional theory of community development. Through this framework, we discussed community structure and systems of authority expressed by the architectural masses and spaces of the city. In this paper, the authors revisit this approach, with fresh eyes and in the context of our growing knowledge of ancient urbanism....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Beaudoin. David R. Braun. Jonathan Reeves.

Despite more than a century of scholarship, our knowledge about the use of stone artifacts remains relatively sparse. Major advances in the analysis of microscopic wear have been the primary focus of much previous research. However, post-depositional processes and the logistics of microscopic analysis limit sample sizes in these studies. New approaches that quantify macroscopic damage patterns on the assemblage scale provide a robust basis for drawing behavioral inferences about hominin tool...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blair Heidkamp.

Spindle whorls, a flywheel attached to a shaft used for the production of thread, are one of the only artifacts related to the textile industry which survives in the archaeological record. At the crossroads between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the southern Levant is at the intersection of cultural and technological change, particularly throughout the chronological scope of my study: the Pottery Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze I periods. There has yet to be a comprehensive study of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Leone.

Proletarian drug foods north of the Caribbean in the Chesapeake area include spirits. Spirits include bourbon. Spirits include those of the dead, as well as the Holy Ghost. This paper attempts to introduce the concept of altered states of consciousness produced by both kinds of spirits. Can these be called proletariat drug foods? The purpose of this paper is to ask whether spirits of either kind so dull the senses that an acute perception of reality escapes the exploited or merely produces the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Blair.

This paper analyzes the role of public anthropology in socio-ecological justice movements by examining conflicts over natural resources and indigenous sovereignty through policy-oriented research. It considers the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) international projects to protect "special areas" and wildlife in the Western hemisphere, specifically rivers in Chilean Patagonia, and the boreal forest in Canada. Despite geographical, historical and cultural differences, these two priority...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elisandro Garza.

This work offers a brief discussion on the importance of Spondylus princeps and Spondylus calcifer in the ceremonial, and economic life of ancient Copan. Archaeological contexts at the site indicate that the uses of Spondylus, either as non-worked valves, or finished artifacts was restricted to a small high-status sphere of Copan society. Additionally, contextual data indicate that the Spondylus was used in a least three ritual activities: as offering in burials; caches; and canceling of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eileen Johnson. Stance Hurst. John Moretti.

The Spring Creek drainage, part of the upper Brazos River system, is located along the Southern High Plains eastern escarpment breaks near Post, Texas. Steep and confined vertical channel incision typifies the breaks and the drainage is and was fed by numerous springs emanating from the Ogallala Formation. Geoarchaeological research along a 774m transect from Macy Fork to 222m below its confluence with Spring Creek proper has documented a continual depositional record spanning the latest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Della Scott-Ireton. Jeffrey Moates. Nicole Grinnan.

The growth and sustained popularity of scuba diving has resulted in increased visitation to historic shipwrecks and other submerged heritage sites. In Florida, one of the top diving destinations in the world, archaeologists and resources managers are concerned with the ongoing preservation of the state’s underwater cultural heritage, both as heritage tourism attractions and as tangible parts of our common maritime heritage. The Submerged Sites Education & Archaeological Stewardship, or SSEAS,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Vavrasek.

Pottery motifs are known to change across time, space, and group affiliation, and are something that can be observed archaeologically. Rim sherds recovered from archaeological sites in and around Jefferson County, NY, are observed in an attempt to better understand the occupation by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. Each of the observed sherds displays some form of decorative motif that can potentially inform researchers about when and where it came from. It is hypothesized that these sherds can...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kayla Worthey.

Stable isotope analysis of δ13C and δ18O in herbivore tooth enamel from the archaeological sites of Üçağızlı I and II in south-central Turkey is used to explore human responses to environmental change during MIS 3 in the eastern Mediterranean. Although changes through time in local ambient moisture are associated with changes in the local animal communities, they generally do not correlate with proxies for site occupation intensity, and thus do not indicate depopulation or shorter site stays...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Maxwell. Robert H. Tykot.

Limited isotopic research has been conducted in the Veneto, Italy during the transitional period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and arrival of the Germanic Langobards in the sixth century AD. Questions remain of the local implications of diet during this period of instability, when invasions and population decline occurred. Thus, this research compares Roman and Langobard populations from late antiquity to the medieval period using stable isotope analysis on bone collagen, apatite,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Ebert. Julie Hoggarth. Kirsten Green. Carolyn Freiwald. Jaime Awe.

The reconstruction of subsistence strategies using stable isotope analyses is integral to understanding the role of maize agriculture in the development and decline of ancient Maya society. Here we present stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur isotope data from over 230 radiocarbon dated human skeletal remains from western Belize dating from the Preclassic through Colonial periods (~1000 BC-AD 1700). Stable isotope data are also compared to paleoclimate proxy records to interpret the climatic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca B. Gonzalez Lauck.

The stone sculpture corpus originally found in La Venta is one of the most important collections of Olmec art in Mexico. It is currently exhibited in five different museums in Tabasco and Mexico City. The state of conservation of the almost 50 sculptures (whole and fragments) at the Parque Museo La Venta in Villahermosa are of particular interest because they have been exhibited in an open air museum for the last six decades. A summary of a recent and detailed study of the state of conservation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Harke.

Although the Florida Keys’ archaeological record famously made possible the seriation of south Florida pre-Columbian ceramic styles in 1949, this 356 km2 archipelago has been largely ignored by academic archaeologists ever since. Today, Keys archaeological sites and historical properties are plagued by tourism-related development, a multi-faceted issue that is exacerbated by the compounding effects of weekly tidal erosion and seasonal tropical storms. Consequently, an untold number of sites have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pei-Lin Yu. Marcy Rockman.

Across America, the National Park Service has conducted an array of vulnerability assessments for climate change impacts for cultural heritage resources, including archaeology, historic structures, cultural landscapes, and others. A project is currently underway to analyze these assessments. This process is designed to improve the practice of vulnerability assessments as well as scientific understanding of cultural resources vulnerability to climate change. In this paper we share preliminary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only P Willey.

Stature provides insights into the lives and wellbeing of individuals and populations. In living groups, stature is employed to evaluate differences associated with time (secular trend), geographic distribution, sexual dimorphism, socioeconomic differences, and from other living conditions. Poor living situations hinder growth and yield shortened statures; advantageous conditions enhance growth and result in greater heights. Similar influences are inferred for past populations and the skeletal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcy Rockman. Andrew Potts.

Archaeology has many connections to climate change: damage and loss due to the impacts of changing environments, the capacity to provide insights for policy and decision-makers about the human processes of adaptation and migration, community connections to the past and the importance of place, citizen science, media coverage, and connections between heritage and identity in conflict, to name only a few. This paper overviews this range of connections and the importance of assessing where cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Schulz. Laurie Rush.

One of the hazards of doing archaeology on federal land is being viewed as a roadblock to training, construction and other undertakings. The normal treatment for National Register eligible sites once they are found is to set them aside as off limits to training and other activities. Naturally, this is not popular with those providing funding to keep training lands open and sustainable. The Fort Drum Cultural Resources Program has developed unique methods for protecting sites while allowing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Zovar.

As an open educational resource, this textbook has been designed to incorporate the perspectives and expertise of a variety of different scholars and stakeholders from across North America. Early in the process, a ‘steering committee’ was established to try and ensure balanced coverage, maintain a relatively consistent voice, and iron out any difficulties that may arise. The steering committee has also been responsible for some of the small but important details like hunting down copyrights,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorian Burnette. David Dye. Arleen Hill.

Stephen Williams proposed the idea of a Vacant Quarter based on the abandonment of numerous Mississippian polities throughout much of the Midsouth and Midwest. The unprecedented, large-scale depopulation of an approximately 130,000 square kilometer area has been linked with population movements as well as interpolity conflict. By taking a dendroclimatological approach we evaluate the role of climate change in this process, while also being cognizant of social processes. We postulate a staggered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Martin.

The murals of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, have long thrown the issue of Central Mexico-Maya interaction into high relief. There we find the richest evidence of interaction between these two cultural zones, though whether this amounts to citation, appropriation, fusion, or immigration is open to debate and contestation. This paper re-examines the stairway murals of the Red Temple for what they tell us about a Maya world seen through a Central Mexican lens. A particular focus falls on the link between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Hampton.

This study examines issues of cultural change/continuity as embodied within a singular multi-generational housepit (Housepit 54) located within the Bridge River site in the Mid-Fraser Canyon, British Columbia, Canada. Previous research has focused on understanding the changing social dynamics at both a village and household-level, examining shifts from a more collaborative to competitive framework in response to external environmental pressures. As interpersonal dynamics within Housepit 54 were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chester Liwosz.

Recent systematic study of petroglyphs and pictographs at select sites in the Great Basin and Mojave Desert explores archaeoacoustic connections between rock art and oral tradition. This project illustrates data collection procedures which integrate emergent, non-impacting methods, with interpretation facilitated by post-positivist thought. Research design is nonetheless framed within the scientific method. Systematic experiments incorporated into this study explore the viability of, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Brady. Tanya Peres.

The ability to manufacture and modify tools was an essential skill for the people of the past. Each tool manufactured served at least one purpose, and often multiple purposes. This includes flakes from tool modification and reworking. This poster represents the results of analysis of flakes and debitage from the Woodland period (ca. 2400 rcy BP) shell ring site of Mound Field (8Wa8), along the north Gulf Coast of Florida. Over 2,000 flakes, tools, and other modified lithics recovered from shell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Astrid Van Oyen.

The capacity for storing surplus has been a key parameter in the hierarchical rankings of socio-political evolution, with empire at the apex. With its large-scale ports and massive warehouses, the Roman empire easily fits this bill. Models of socio-political evolution, however, not only build on top-down templates of power, but also adopt a view of things (i.e. stored goods) as passive resources. But in the light of recent material culture theory, storage becomes a more complex mediation of time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paola Schiappacasse.

Around the world, there are a large number of archaeological collections in the repositories of museums, universities, foundations, government agencies and other organizations. The curation crisis has generated a great deal of debate as to how we can help to ameliorate the various problems faced in collections management. This paper will present a proposal of how collections can be used to develop academic projects, both in local repositories and those outside the country, by outlining case...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Curteman. Briece Edwards. Jon Krier.

The significance of cultural resources along Oregon’s dynamic coast continues to have a stronger presence and recognition in landscape management. As future projects look to develop off Oregon’s coast, there is a need for predictive modeling and analysis of cultural resources in a landscape that today is submerged. Paleolandscapes having high potential for a variety of cultural resources are identified using isostatic rebound adjustments and bathometric data. One such landform is off-shore of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Delaney. James T. Brewer.

California State University Channel Islands is known as the location of the former Camarillo State Mental Hospital. The campus also serves as a case study for examining changes in communities and land use in California throughout time. Archaeological surveys on campus, artifact analyses, and historic records together document shifts in human activities at this location. This presentation outlines the long term use of this area by a noteworthy variety of people: the Chumash and their ancestors,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Schollmeyer.

Bird remains are seldom abundant in archaeological assemblages in the Mimbres region of southwest New Mexico. Despite their relatively low frequency, many of the occurrences of bird remains in this area are derived from interesting or unusual archaeological contexts, and provide a wealth of information on cultural practices and local and regional environmental conditions. This study examines data from over 70 archaeological assemblages from the upper Gila area and elsewhere in the Mimbres...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arthur Anderson.

As investigations of the Protohistoric period move away from a reliance on the reliable material culture recovery found in burial contexts, our basis for investigation of protohistoric sites and landscapes in the Far Northeast often begins with European historical records. Recent excavations in the area described in 1607 by Champlain as the village of Chouacoet in Saco Bay, Maine highlight the fact that many of the equivalencies drawn between the archaeological record of the protohistoric and...