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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Austin. Courtney Hofman. Sabrina Sholts.

Technological and analytical advancements of biomolecular techniques allow scientists and museums to explore and assess archaeological collections from a new perspective, revealing new insights into past peoples, health, and the environment. One of the major challenges for biomolecular research on archaeological remains are uncertainties surrounding biomolecule preservation. Information on how samples were collected, washed, preserved, and maintained are valuable for generating and interpreting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Cleary.

This project examined evidence of stress in 469 excavated human skeletons of the pre-Hispanic Lima population from Huaca 20 in the Maranga Complex in modern day Lima, Peru dating to the end of the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 200-600 AD) and the beginning of the Middle Horizon (ca. 600-900 AD). This period saw the movement of the populations on both the North and Central Coasts of the Andes inland to areas with greater access to the critical water supply (Shimada, 1994). While the majority...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Josie Newbold.

Many studies have discussed the first century BC to first century AD Nabataean rock-cut monuments in the Nabataean city of Petra, Jordan. These surveys provide information about proposed chronologies for the façade tombs and limited data about burial customs of the Nabataeans themselves. One neglected topic is the Nabataean tomb placement in relation to the structural geology of the Petra region. During the 2014 field season of the BYU Ad-Deir Monument and Plateau project, it was discovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Todd. Kyle Wright.

As the first National Forest that abuts Yellowstone Park, the Shoshone National Forest, northwestern Wyoming has a rich and diverse history of changing use and management. Over the last several years several projects that highlight this history have been conducted by the Shoshone and several partners. Two projects at Anderson Lodge (constructed ~1890) and Simpson Lake Lodge (1926) represent stabilization efforts at cabins representing both administrative and private uses of the back county...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Turner.

Once the British Parliament abolished the trans-Atlantic trade in African captives the Bahamas became a primary locale for the re-settlement of these persons. Between 1811 and 1860 some 6,000 liberated Africans, as they were called, were re-settled in the Bahamas. These Africans served apprenticeship periods of six to sixteen years, at the end of which they were to be free. Archival documents and archaeological evidence suggest that these indentured Africans were able to maintain a stronger...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Smith.

Unfluted lanceolate point types in the Southeast United States, including Suwannee, Simpson, Quad, and Beaver Lake, are poorly understood. A lack of robust unfluted point assemblages found in secure context in association with radiocarbon datable material has made interpreting these types difficult. However, a few sites in the Southeast contain unfluted lanceolate points within relative stratigraphic sequences or associated with extinct fauna. Based on this evidence from these sites, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karly Law.

When people of color pursue college educations, safety is often a priority. Colleges and their respective departments, become their home, faculty become mentors, and their fellow students become their family. An enormous amount of trust is placed in our departments and we are often left feeling alone. As graduate students and Teaching Assistant’s, we are required to receive orientation and training that address procedures within federal and institutional guidelines yet we receive no orientation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amalia Perez-Juez. Ricardo Elia. Meredith Langlitz.

Boston University’s field school in Menorca, Spain, started 17 years ago as a traditional field school experience. Over the years, we incorporated the study of archaeological heritage management—both theoretical and practical—as an integral part of the curriculum. In the last decade, the increasing number of students interested in cultural heritage management inspired us to move to a heritage management-only field school. This poster will present the results of our first season. Menorca is a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Feltz.

3D photogrammetry is the process of creating a manipulable 3D model using only photos from a high-resolution camera that are then processed through computer software to extract 3D data and create a wireframe and mesh. This process can be accurate enough to measure a hairline fracture along the surface of prehistoric pottery with .1mm accuracy. Analyze the benefits of such methods, a study was conducted using Oneota ceramic artifacts of the La Crosse, Wisconsin locality that have been curated at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Broughton Anderson. Annie He. Bianca Godden. Samantha Sise. Alicia Crocker.

Imaging is a critical part of the archaeologist’s toolkit. Likewise, the capture, manipulation, enhancement, and interpretation of images has been the subject of significant research in computing over the past 20 years. This project brought together five students studying archaeology and computing to collaborate on fieldwork—and the hardware and software that supports that fieldwork—to engage in an exploration of the life of George White, a freed slave and property owner in Madison and Jackson...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Baaske. Kevin Austin.

The presentation of heritage sites is critically important to the perception of historical narratives. A key goal is to help both scholars and the general public to see heritage as dynamic and living. This project explores the visualization of archaeological excavations through preservation technologies, specifically photogrammetric data. Our study focuses on a patio group at the Maya site of Xno’ha (occupation dates range from the Late Preclassic to the Terminal Classic) in northern Belize, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Minmin Ma. Lele Ren. Xin Li.

We analyzed the baseline for dietary study through stable isotopes in the Gan-Qing (Gansu and Qinghai provinces) region in prehistory. Total 283 animal samples from 4 sites were collected and analyzed. We found that herbivorous δ15N values did not change much in the Hehuang region between 3200 BCE and 2000 BCE, indicating that the range of nitrogen isotopic baseline was relatively stable in different time. The range of herbivorous δ15N values from the Hehuang region around the 2000 BCE is from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Blank. Matt Chmura. Sarah K. Gilleland.

Polynesian i’a makau, or fishhooks, may stand in for ceramics for the purpose of generating culture-historical units, facilitating relative dating of the three Hawaiian assemblages under scrutiny (Allen 1996). Artifact assemblages at Waiahukini, Makalei, and Pu’u Ali’i contained over 1000 intact or partial fishhooks and fragments of shaped pig bone representing unfinished manufacture. Allen’s (2015) conceptual style-function model of hook attributes necessitates a focus on stylistic shank...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mayra Carmen. Krzysztof Makowski.

Distribution analysis of provincial Inca pottery in different layers of the residences of Pueblo Viejo-Pucará, including the palace of the curaca, will serve as a starting point to define the differences in access to diverse vessel forms and observe the contexts of use in domestic, funeral, public and ceremonial areas. The excavations in residential and ceremonial architecture carried out in Pueblo Viejo-Pucará, a Late Horizon (1470-1560 A.D.) urban settlement, provided rich and varied evidence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Byron Smith. Marisol Cortes-Rincon.

Late Classic hinterland agronomy presents a compelling glimpse into the socioeconomic dynamics of production and demand in the Three Rivers region. This project focused on a prominent house-group located 350 meters east of the site of Dos Hombres which was known to exhibit intensive agricultural strategies as well as a specialized degree of stone working. Additionally, a series of four karst depressions bordered the site and likely leveraged moisture demand resulting from agricultural needs as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Caporaso. Kristine DeLong. Douglas Jones. Michael Miner.

Submerged Paleo-geologic features with probability for associated prehistoric sites on the Gulf of Mexico shelf include coastal plain and fluvial valley-fill deposits (e.g. terrace and floodplains) preserved landward of the 60-m bathymetric contour, the approximate late Pleistocene (~12,000 ka) shoreline location. A site ~15 km offshore Alabama was discovered with exposed remains of a previously-buried bald cypress forest with stumps in growth position rooted in an organic-rich paleosol. It has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Evans. Matthew Keith.

The study and management of submerged paleolandscapes is an extension of terrestrial prehistoric archaeology, but due to the location of the sites on now submerged lake margins and continental shelves, it is typically lumped into a general category of "underwater" or "marine" archaeology. Marine archaeology has been, and in many ways, still is, strongly associated with shipwrecks. In some ways, the lumping of shipwrecks and submerged landscapes into one category is beneficial, since many of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chuenyan Ng.

The long-standing subsistence model for Bronze Age Steppe Communities in the Southeastern Ural Mountains Region has been defined as a sedentary agro-pastoral strategy with dominant use of livestock. However, based on recent studies, the nature and variability of the subsistence economy, especially wild plant resource exploitation for both humans and livestock, are not well understood. As sedentary pastoral communities, the relationship between increasing livestock productivity and decreasing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hilary Hilmer.

Healy Lake Village site (XBD-00020), an important multicomponent site with occupations spanning the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene, provides an important opportunity to address fundamental issues of sub-arctic hunter-gatherers economies as they changed through time. To date, there are a limited number of sites in former Beringia with preserved faunal remains. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is an analytical method that can confirm the visual identifications of burned bone as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adrianne Daggett. Lu-Marie Fraser.

Analysis of the faunal assemblage from Thabadimasego, an Early Iron Age site in northeastern Botswana, contributes to the growing notion that hunting played a larger-than-expected role in the subsistence pattern of the area’s communities. Beyond understanding what they ate, what do the faunal remains tell us about the subsistence technology of Botswana’s Early Iron Age? Recent studies have focused on metallurgy and ceramic technology, but faunal patterns can provide information on the use of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurence Ferland.

Tells are living places continuously constructed and transformed by their inhabitants through their actions on the matter and objects constituting these places. In effect, the accumulation of clay, rubble and refuse on which houses are built and lives lived reflects daily actions, cultural events happening on longer cycles as well as environmental considerations. Therefore, the blend of things and matter that transited from the riverbed to houses, pots, and aggregated rubble and rubbish requires...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Goode. Cynthia V. Goode. Thomas J. Loebel. Daniel P. Wagner.

Construction of DC Water's new Poplar Point Pump Station in southeast Washington, D.C., led to the discovery of a buried river terrace under an I-295 interchange that contained Native American artifacts dating from the Middle Archaic period through the Late Woodland period. Archaeologists working more than 15 feet below ground in the construction footprint of a large subterranean structure recovered more than 7000 artifacts and identified the remains of a cooking hearth feature. This paper will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Logan Van Hagen. Douglas Dvoracek. Laurie Reitsema. Carol Colaninno-Meeks.

Sulfur isotope ratios in human bone collagen are used in paleodiet reconstructions to distinguish between marine- and terrestrial-based diets, because sulfur isotope ratios in marine organisms are typically higher. However, natural phenomena such as sea spray, rain, and flooding can deposit sea water sulfates on land that are bioavailable to plants and terrestrial animals. Comparing sulfur from archaeological deer and fish-eating raccoons from sites both in close proximity to the coast and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacqueline Kocer.

Chipped stone and ground stone from Room 28 backfill included fill from adjacent rooms and lends insight to the technology used during room occupation. I summarize both debitage and formal tool analyses with a special discussion on projectile point types. Most material proportions fall within the range of those in other Chaco Canyon assemblages but with a lower frequency of Narbona Pass and Zuni Spotted Chert. General types of ground stone are discussed in the analysis and jar lid metric data...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krystal Britt. Claire S. Barker. Samantha Fladd. Danielle Soza.

From 2011-2016 the Rock Art Ranch (RAR) field school, directed by E. Charles Adams and Richard Lange, surveyed about 17 square kilometers and conducted excavations at three sites to understand how groups utilized the prehistoric landscape of the Middle Little Colorado River valley. Research at RAR, located near the modern town of Winslow, Arizona, sheds light on over 10,000 years of human settlement and contextualizes over three decades of work by Adams and Lange at the nearby Homol’ovi...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Tankersley.

During the past decade, the University of Cincinnati has offered a summer archaeological field school, which focuses on periods of rapid and profound global climatic change. Students undertake detailed excavation profile descriptions, collect samples for AMS radiocarbon and OSL dating, botanical, faunal, soil, and geochemical analyses to develop an accurate chronology and paleoenvironmental framework of the depositional history for archaeological sites, which date to the Younger Dryas and Little...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Chase. Arlen Chase.

The sub-tropical forests that once covered the ancient ruins of much of Mesoamerica are being rapidly removed due to modern subsistence practices. Yet, archaeological and ecological research shows that this is not the first time that extensive human-caused deforestation has occurred in this region, minimally representing the third iteration of such an event. Analyses of lake-cores and remote sensing imagery provide evidence for extensive land clearing around 1000 BCE and again after CE 250, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Sweeney. Kara Bridgman Sweeney. Naoki Higa. Takumi Kishimoto. Naho Ishiki.

A recent collaborative effort by Japanese and American archaeologists and environmental scientists identified and examined the historic (ca. 1897-late 1950s) Anindo Village. Located within the stream valleys and mountainous uplands of the Kanna Watershed in central Okinawa, Japan, Anindo Village was a short-lived reclaimed land settlement dependent on both agricultural and forestry-based economic practices. This paper examines the distribution of archaeological sites and the natural and cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Brinkmann.

Sustainability can be defined as meeting the needs of the present without depleting natural resources for the future. With such a time focused definition, there is no doubt that the meaning of sustainability changes over time and by culture. An examination of three of Lynne Goldstein’s field sites, Aztalan, Fort Ross, and Michigan State University, provides an opportunity to dissect our modern take on sustainability. At Aztalan, sustainability of Native American culture comes into question as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sander Van Der Leeuw.

This paper argues that much sustainability research, which sees the challenge as an environmental one rather than as a societal one, misses the fact that the societal changes that are occurring are so fundamental, as part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution, that our societies will be unrecognizable before the impact of the environmental changes hits our world most heavily, in the second half of the current century. The paper will argue that developing a societal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Maher. Jane Downes.

In addressing the problem of burning libraries, this paper focuses on sustainable heritage through public awareness and civic engagement. Political rhetoric and limited first-hand experience has created a system whereby the impacts of climate change, coastal erosion, and rising sea levels are no longer a priority; and for students, it has become but a distant concern. This paper addresses these problems through education programs designed to (i) get students involved in the archaeology of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Shane Miller. Cody Oscarson. Hunter Saunders. Jesse Tune. Derek Anderson.

The Swag Site (38AL137) was recorded during the initial survey of the Allendale chert quarries by Albert Goodyear and Tommy Charles in 1984. While subsequent work focused on the Topper and Big Pine Tree sites, the Swag site was overlooked until a systematic survey conducted in 2015 identified several localities with buried archaeological deposits. In May 2016 and March 2017, further excavations at the Swag Site produced artifacts that are comparable to Clovis components at Topper,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dockrill. Julie Bond.

The site of Swandro is on the eroding coastal fringe of the island of Rousay, Orkney and has been the focus of field training for the next archaeological generation between the University of Bradford, Archaeological Institute UHI and Hunter College, CUNY since 2010. Such sites are a finite resource, endangered by coastal erosion exacerbated by the effects of climate change. The site straddles both the shore and the land and consists of a Neolithic Chambered Cairn and a later settlement dating...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Fladd. Saul Hedquist. E. Charles Adams. Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa.

Ash provides a ritually meaningful medium through which to alter or close spaces. In the U.S. Southwest, the patterned deposition of ash in archaeological contexts has been linked to practices of purification and the preservation or suppression of social memory. Turquoise also carries important symbolic meanings in the region, with notable links to moisture, sky, and personal and familial vitality. In archaeological contexts of the Pueblo Southwest, turquoise is often associated with ash or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Earle. Magdolna Vicze. Kristian Kristiansen. Marie Louise Sørensen.

This paper documents the theories, methods, and results of SAX, an international, collaborative Bronze Age project in the Carpathian basin. Three topics are emphasized: First is the value added by international collaboration, which creates an intellectual openness to research objectives and theoretical discussion. Second are technological transfer and creative problem-solving approach to field and laboratory research. And third is an inherent comparative agenda, for which results are seem always...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Van Dommelen. Alfonso Stiglitz.

Nuraghi, the famous dry-stone walled towers of Sardinia, are usually just regarded as prehistoric monuments of the Bronze Age. They continued to be inhabited long after, however, and were transformed into often substantial settlements of later periods. Nuraghi are key sites for the investigation of the colonial encounters and cultural interactions between local Sardinians, Phoenician traders and Punic settlers, because they are the only places that were continuously inhabited before and during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

This presentation investigates the narrative context of a Tajín region deity whose diagnostic characteristics include a large hank of hair and an extended upper lip. The figure appears in narrative scenes with the major Tajín deities, often playing what seems to be a subsidiary role. The most important association in these scenes is with a liquid-filled temple that plays a key role scenes of ballcourt ritual. The same deity appears in pars pro toto representations of sacrificial scenes with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Tremain.

Ancient Maya polychrome vases, especially those that are decorated with elaborately painted scenes, fill the display cases and collection drawers of museums and galleries around the world. Unfortunately, the majority of these are unprovenienced and many also lack clear provenance. Furthermore, modern restorations and/ or falsifications further muddy our understanding and blur the line between authentic and inauthentic. In order to learn more about these ceramics, and help to restore some of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomás Gallareta Cervera. Brett A. Houk.

Research on ancient Maya cities is generally modeled after large sites with massive architecture, dynastic burials, and written records documenting the activities of divine rulers. However, the development of these cities is the exception, rather than the norm, since the majority of Maya sites did not reach such enormous proportions, yet many of them likely qualified as cities from a functional standpoint. Hence, a research on non-massive cities, "from the bottom up," is crucial to understand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Wingfield.

The art and structures of the ancient Central American sites of Quelepa in El Salvador and Guayabo de Turrialba in Costa Rica both suggest influence from afar by the late first millennium CE. Quelepa was restructured from what was likely a Lenca foundation to reflect possibly invasive Veracruz tastes, yet some Lenca elements were retained. Did both Lenca and Veracruz immigrants live together peacefully? What can art and architecture tell us of this possible merger, an instance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Cutright. Carlos Osores Mendives.

Studies of Andean urbanism have often focused on contrasts: between elite and lower-class compounds or neighborhoods, between rural and urban communities, or between the "true" cities in regions like Mesopotamia and the "special case" of the Andes. Recent work at Ventanillas, a large Late Intermediate Period site in the middle Jequetepeque Valley at the frontier of coastal Lambayeque and Chimú polities, was initially designed to contrast what were presumed to be an elite coastal residential...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Lopez Bravo.

Research focused on El Lacandon, a rural community in the outer hinterland of the Late Classic Palenque polity, has allowed the understanding of shifting patterns of relationships between the urban and the rural realms in two specific times: 1) at the end of the Late Preclassic period, when Palenque developed from a rural village into a dynastic capital; and 2) at the end of the Late Classic period, when the ruling dynasty developed new political strategies for hinterland integration.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikael Fauvelle.

Fracción Mujular is a modest residential site located on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Long known for the Central Mexican iconography found on its carved stelae, investigations conducted during the winter of 2017 represent the first excavations of the site. This paper presents the results of these excavations, as well as subsequent laboratory analysis. We now know that Fracción Mujular has a history that covers over one thousand years of occupation, from the Early Classic to the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Markert.

In this paper, I discuss an archaeological approach to place-making that incorporates elements of linguistic anthropology, drawing from narrative analysis and Bakhtin’s chronotope to analyze oral histories from a small town in southwest Texas. D’Hanis originated as an Alsatian colony on the Texas frontier, one of four settled by empresario Henry Castro in the 1840s. By the 20th century, the town had not simply transformed but moved – the railroad had caused a rupture in the settlement that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carrie Tucker. Jeffrey B. Glover. Dominique Rissolo.

Coastal communities in the Maya Lowlands played a myriad of roles in the ebb and flow of political, economic, and social formations over the past 3000 years, yet these roles have remained along the periphery of Maya studies. Though ever present, Maya coastal sites were atypical – perhaps even idiosyncratic – in terms of how they were imagined and lived-in by the Maya. Critical to our understanding of these coastal settlements is the material culture traded and utilized by the occupants of these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Peacock. Sheeji Kathuria. David S. Nolen.

Applied zooarcheology has been on an apparent upward swing, gaining practitioners and seeing an increasing number of publications in natural science journals. Whether the intended consumers (conservation biologists, land managers) are receiving the message remains uncertain. We used a two-phase process to survey the literature pertaining to applied zooarchaeology: 1) keyword searching for highly cited applied zooarchaeology publications in Google Scholar; and 2) tracking of specific articles...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Mathews.

Starting in the nineteenth century, industries like henequen, chicle, hardwoods and sugarcane required the installation of narrow-gauge railroads across the Yucatán Peninsula. Mules, horses or people pulled low and flat, four-wheeled wooden carts along these rails, which connected haciendas, ports, and remote jungle camps. These rails brought supplies from "civilization" or commodities out of the forest for distribution. This paper will explore the role that railroads played during this period....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristram Kidder. Yijie Zhuang.

The Anthropocene is now commonly defined as a geological event, or "golden spike" that begins in the later twentieth century with the detonation of nuclear weapons. While this event-based characterization serves a useful purpose in providing a formal geological definition, it tells us nothing of how humans developed the social, economic, technological, and moral capacities that allow us to affect natural processes at a global scale. Using archaeological and environmental data from China between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camila Figueiredo.

From the 10th until the 18th century, the Tapajó Indians inhabited the present city of Santarém and the surrounding region. The material culture associated with this group is distributed between the Trombetas and Xingu rivers - west/east - and Almeirim until the middle Tapajós Rivers – north/south. Archaeological and ethnographic data demonstrate that the Tapajó produced the elaborate Santarém pottery. This particular region is characterized by a rich and varied archaeological modified landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Phillips. Jonathan Reeves. Matthew Douglass. David Braun.

It has been argued that surface assemblages may provide insights into questions regarding large scale patterns of human behavior such as mobility and stone tool transport. However, excavated material is often preferred over surface assemblages due to concerns of potential biases introduced by the process of exposure. Here, we examine this claim by comparing measures of stone tool transport between surface and excavated assemblages. Surface and excavated lithic assemblages were collected from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alicia Gonzales. Jeffrey Blomster. Ricardo Higelin Ponce de León.

Recent excavations at the Middle Formative (850 – 400 BCE) site of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca male bearing striking red stains on the anterior cranium. These findings may suggest alteration of remains associated with burial rituals. However, human remains may be modified through several post-mortem taphonomic effects, including: trauma, rodent activity, discoloring, staining, cultural modification, interment rituals, damage throughout archaeological investigation procedures, biological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo Díaz.

For the last five years the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia set up an archaeological project in the central south portion of the state of Michoacan in the Zirahuen and Balsas river basins. A systematic survey had been made in a large area identifying dozens of sites never previously recorded, some of them with a clear Tarascan component. In spite of, in this paper we will present the results of the research made at the Tarascan sites in the limits of the highlands and the Tierra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karine Tache. Roland Tremblay.

Iroquoian groups inhabiting the Saint Lawrence valley in the 15th and early 16th centuries were agriculturalists who complemented their diet with a variety of wild plant and animal foods. The relative importance of different food sources and their methods of preparation, however, likely varied from one community to another. To further document subsistence practices and foodways at the Iroquoian site of Dawson in Montreal, organic residue analysis was carried out on foodcrust and absorbed ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Frey.

This study addresses the influences that culture and ethnicity have on dietary patterns, specifically looking at the variances in food culture amongst the myriad of ethnicities comprising the ranks of the Roman Britain auxiliary troops. The following research correlates ethnic identity with food culture by analysing the variances in archaeological food remains from 15 Roman forts garrisoned by auxiliary troops and comparing these variances to other published archaeological work from throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudine Gravel-Miguel.

Traditional research on European Upper Paleolithic social networks rely on raw material sourcing as well as the distribution of similar "artistic" styles. This project aims to improve the methods of the latter. While similar representations found in different sites have often been assumed to represent the presence of social contacts between those sites, the possibility that such representations were exchanged or even simply copied without direct contact has always loomed over researchers’ head....

DOCUMENT Full-Text Alison Shepherd. Kelly Brown. Josh Wackett.

According to 36CFR79, collections recovered with federal funds must be made accessible to the public for research and educational purposes. However, this goal is deceptively difficult to achieve. Collections can be made available to professionals and archaeology students easily enough, but is there a way that we can involve the public in the process? The Veterans Curation Program (VCP), funded by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), St. Louis District, has become well known for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Rivas. Brent Woodfill.

Although scientific consensus was reached on the issue of human-made climate change earlier this century, it continues to be a controversial subject in the public sphere. Archaeologists, as scientists interested in a longue durée approach to human society and the environment, have thus been thrust into another ideological battlefield as hard-fought as the theory of evolution by natural selection, but with perhaps graver consequences. As we move fully into the Capitalocene, it is of the utmost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia Navarro-Farr.

The year 2017 was one of extraordinary science activism. Scientists took to the streets as the overwhelming empirical evidence demonstrating humanity’s role in ushering in global warming continued to be ignored. Politicization of climate change, and science itself, has fostered a dangerous rejection of scientific knowledge prompting numerous conspiracy theories involving everything from so-called flat-earthers to anti-vaxxers, intelligent design proponents and climate deniers. Such perilous and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharine Ellenberger.

When teaching about preservation, it can be difficult to communicate the options and ethical dilemmas that inform principles of archaeological ethics. The message many members of the public get from brief exposure to digital records and virtual models often adds to the challenge, leaving them with impression that these are viable alternatives to physical site preservation. I propose employing evidence-based teaching practices to create public and university lessons which result in a properly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Carr. Julie Estis. Cecelia Martin.

Team-Based Learning (TBL), a powerful pedagogical tool, has several essential elements: forming permanent teams; flipping the classroom; a specific sequence of individual work and teamwork; and immediate feedback. As a polar opposite of the traditional "sage on the stage" pedagogy, there are advantages and disadvantages for implementation of TBL in a moderate-sized (50+ students) introductory course. Specifics of the implementation are discussed for this first time use of TBL in AN 101 and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Luis Ruvalcaba. Paulina Guzmán. Edgar Casanova. Miguel Angel Maynez. Isaac Rangel.

The discovery of numerous Maya-style mural painting fragments during the archaeological excavations in the Plaza of the Columns Complex of Teotihuacan, sprouted debates concerning if these murals were drawn by a Maya artist. In order to compare the pigments composition and the pictorial technique of these paintings with mural paintings from the Maya area from the Classic Period, a non-invasive characterization of the thin ground layer of stucco and the pigments used in the painting discovered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Kriss. Ellen Howe. Judith Levinson.

The Paracas culture and its impressive pottery tradition developed along the south coast of Peru in the Early Horizon period (approximately 800-100BC). A scientific study of manufacturing techniques and materials of post-fire painted Paracas ceramics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) found a correlation between changes in material use and iconography and vessel form across time. Differences between colorant composition in the Formative/Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Emerson. Nancy Hoffman.

Managing collections means ensuring the data about them are useful, available, and accurate. In addition to the technical aspects of data management, there are layers of political and social structure that direct the construction and use of collections data. The Minnesota Historical Society employs a set of data standards that allows us to gather electronic cataloging data from a wide community of archaeology researchers depositing collections at MNHS. Though met with initial resistance, these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yukitsugu Tabata.

This paper will discuss several aspects of premodern stoneware industry in Cambodia. Based on the results of resent excavation of the stoneware kilns in Angkor area, traits of the kiln structure, fuel strategy, forming techniques, glazing, and loading method of the Khmer stoneware will be discussed.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thania Ibarra. Aurelio López Corral.

Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariel Taivalkoski.

New theoretical attitudes in zooarchaeology have begun exploring the social dimensions of human-animal relationships. As representative of both human-environment and human-material interactions, the dynamics between people and animals go well beyond household economics. This paper presents preliminary results of the analysis of avian remains from the Aleutian Islands as part of a study characterizing the complex relationship between the Unangan people and birds as it changes over time. Here,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ingrid-Morgane Gauvin.

Know-how is an archaeologically observable counterpart of the knowledge of technological agents, as it is the material capacity of an agent to apply known techniques. Both elements are not necessarily in exact equivalence, as an agent’s aptitude and willingness to apply techniques may not reflect their full knowledge. Know-how is identifiable by the stigmata left by applied techniques on artifacts and materials. Separating aptitude (or "skill") from the examination and interpretation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Agostini.

In the mid-late Classic period (AD 1250 - 1400), Ancestral Pueblo people living on the Pajarito Plateau of New Mexico experienced cultural change due to difficulties in farming during periods of drought. As a result, communities abandoned pre-contact plateau villages to join their Tewa-speaking relatives at the earliest historic period Rio Grande settlements. Oral histories from descendant communities from the 19th and early 20th centuries recount how the remaining members of these communities...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Bradshaw. Martijn Kuypers. David Zeanah. Robert Elston.

The research presented here works from the proposition that patterns in lithic assemblages reflect human organizational strategies. Preliminary investigations of 26La4434, a single component Prearchaic site in Grass Valley, reveal a pattern of large game exploitation in proximity to a Pleistocene shoreline. Standard metric, morphological, and edge-wear analysis of the flaked stone assemblage is used to evaluate whether the site facilitated access to local wetland resources and large game...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Estefanía Vidal-Montero. Itací Correa. Liz Vilches. Francisco Gallardo. Mauricio Uribe.

In the Atacama Desert, pottery is one of the main technological changes of the Formative Period (ca. 2700 BP). The initial industry (LCA type) is characterized by a stylistic homogeneity coupled with a wide geographical distribution. Compositional analyses, however, have shown a significant regularity in pastes, suggesting the use of localized sources of raw materials and/or specific production centers—indicative of a well-defined recipe and style. Provenance studies have identified a locus of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cathy Costin.

Drawing on nearly three decades of inspiration from and collaboration with Rita Wright, this paper explores the relationship between craft technologies and social identities on the North Coast of Peru over the longue durée. The technologies used to manufacture goods were themselves meaningful, often considered to be divinely inspired and certainly a key element in determining the value and significance of both everyday and esoteric objects. As transformative processes, the methods and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Acevedo.

Los materiales cerámicos arqueológicos polícromos denominados "vírgulas o comas" tienen una amplia pero desigual distribución espacial y son hallados en cantidades limitadas en sitios arqueológicos de las regiones de Puna norte, central y Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy, Noroeste de la República Argentina. Estas regiones mantienen límites ambientales y geográficos fronterizos. En el pasado los habitantes de ambas zonas sostenían una fluida comunicación, mantenido formas identitarias diferentes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Delande Justinvil. Jessica Leonard. Hannah Plumer. Thomas Harold Guderjan. Colleen Hanratty.

In 2013 a rescue mission to salvage and preserve details of the shrine complex at Tulix Muul, a Classic Maya site in northwestern Belize, yielded a Maya mural. While the arrangement of the mural at the shrine echoes notions of nobility, this rare landmark discovery lies in contrast to what we can infer about the social status of exhumed remains from the Tulix Muul archaeological site. This poster will address the multifaceted insights we can glean from certain aspects of the past life histories...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Delgado.

Advances in robotic and satellite technology have shifted ocean exploration into an interactive forum that links scientists and the public via "telepresence." Working with this paradigm, archaeologists have joined the ranks of ocean explorers on a variety of projects ranging from surveys to excavation in depths ranging from a few hundred to thousands of meters deep. The process has encouraged wider scientific integration, provided access to sites at depths previously not considered "workable,"...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Garay-Vazquez. Michele Wollstonecroft. Dorian Fuller.

There is little archaeobotanical data from Ethiopia, in this presentation, we will be comparing samples from two historic domestic archaeological sites spanning from late seventeen centuries to the late eighteen century A.D. within the same environment (Gamo highlands in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia) with the intention of examining status differences through subsistence remains. The food habits of past human societies are of importance because the act of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Lau.

While the achievements of the great Peruvianist Julio C. Tello and his theories about Andean civilisation are well-chronicled, much less work has addressed his engagements with archaeological illustration, its practices and desires, especially beyond his signature Chavín work. This paper examines the imagery and arguments of key publications by Tello and his student and intellectual disciple, Rebeca Carrión Cachot, on the Recuay culture (ca AD 100-700). Together, they discerned the culture’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Urton.

Studies of the extant corpus of some 1,000 khipus from different regions around the former territory of the Inka Empire – Tawantinsuyu – show evidence of contradictory forces at work in terms of the forms and degree of standardization of recording structures and techniques. While, on one hand, there are marked differences in certain features of khipus from one region to the next throughout the empire, there are, on the other hand, notable similarities in other features. This paper examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Lozano.

This paper explores Teotihuacan references found within the corpus of ancient Maya inscriptions. Classic Maya inscriptions analyzed for this investigation were derived from monumental architecture to ceramics. In the last decade more references to Teotihuacan within Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing have surfaced within the archaeological record and in museum collections. However, recently there has not been an in-depth study that analyzes the context of these recently uncovered references....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Irma Cazares.

En el año 2004 comenzó el Proyecto: "Teposcolula Viejo, Yucundaa, Oaxaca", en el sitio arqueológico de Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, una antigua ciudad mixteca sede de uno de los señoríos más poderosos de la época prehispánica en Mesoamérica, que recibió la incursión de la conquista española y tuvo que transformarse completamente; y esta transición cultural se muestra en los hallazgos arqueológicos. Este proyecto dirigido por los Doctores Nelly Robles (INAH) y Ronald Spores (Vanderbilt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn Crawford. Brigitte Kovacevich. Michael Callaghan.

Holtun, located in the central lakes region of the Maya lowlands, was occupied from the Preclassic through the Postclassic. To date the Holtun Archaeological Project has mapped approximately 13 groups in the site core and over 30 residential groups in the periphery to the north. The majority of these surface residential structures date to the Terminal Classic and Postclassic. The residential groups excavated to date vary in their proximity to the site core, number of structures, construction...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Robin. Laura Kosakowsky.

This presentation examines a series of terminal deposits at the ancient Maya farming community of Chan in Belize, Central America. We propose a contextual analysis of terminal deposits to facilitate the development of archaeological interpretations that move beyond the static category of "problematical deposits." The terminal deposits at Chan are located in its community center, primarily in two locations: in the eastern temple and southern range structure of Chan’s central group. The deposits...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Davis. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe. Chrissina C. Burke.

Throughout the Maya Lowlands, archaeologists have identified Terminal Classic deposits associated with the final activities in ceremonial and domestic spaces. These features include concentrations of cultural material deposited in the corners of plazas and courtyards. At the site of Baking Pot, Belize, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) project has identified several of these terminal deposits. This presentation will shed light on the types of artifacts that were deposited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Blong. Lisa-Marie Shillito. Dennis L. Jenkins.

There are key questions about the timing of the initial settlement of the northern Great Basin, how settlers adapted to the pluvial lake and wetland landscape they encountered upon arrival, and how these adaptations changed in response to Holocene climate change. The Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon provide a unique opportunity to investigate these questions. The caves produced the earliest evidence for human settlement of the Great Basin including coprolites containing human DNA dating to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessi Halligan. Michael Waters.

Much of the Southeastern United States suffers from poor organic preservation. Direct dating of archaeological components is often impossible, and intact paleoenvironmental sequences are very rare, especially for the terminal Pleistocene. Inundated terrestrial sites in the Aucilla River of northwestern Florida can overcome both of these difficulties, with archaeological materials buried within directly-dateable intact strata containing well-preserved paleobotanical and faunal remains. Strata...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robin Robertson.

Joseph Ball has devoted his professional career to masterfully determining how the ceramic complexes at one site related to those at another, generating models for Maya movements and prehistory from the identified similarities or differences between them. Following his example, this paper proposes to take the data from Cerro Maya in Northern Belize and correlate it with other sequences in the region to produce a carefully researched sequence for the region with specific attention to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata. Daniela Triadan.

Excavations at Aguateca and Ceibal revealed a series of dense deposits associated with the ritual destruction of buildings. At Aguateca, such deposits were found in and around Structures M7-22 and M7-32 of the Palace Group, probable royal administrative-residential buildings. Excavators also unearthed similar deposits around Structures L8-6 and L8-7, temple pyramids in the Main Plaza. These deposits date to c. AD 810 when enemies attacked Aguateca. At Ceibal, dense deposits of broken objects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Lingle. Nicola Lercari. Arianna Campiani. Manuel Duenas Garcia. Anaïs Guillem.

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is a well-established survey technique in archaeology, architecture, and earth science, which is able to deliver high-fidelity data of surfaces and structures as well as ultra-precise measurements of the morphology of stratigraphic layers. Analyzing and comparing terrestrial laser scanning point clouds captured over time, conservators utilize of an unprecedented amount of quantitative information on the rate of decay of archaeological and built heritage to be...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Fries.

In the absence of LiDAR and similar high-resolution data products, an alternative approach was developed to model and predict site location information from low-resolution, publicly available datasets such as ASTER, LANDSAT, and aerial photographs. Manipulating and combining the analyses of multiple datasets permits refinement of modeling and detection capabilities. A large database of known sites, in assorted topographic and vegetative conditions and degrees of exposure, was used as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sterner. Robert Ahlrichs. Dan Wendt. Larry Furo.

The Old Copper Complex represents a unique temporally and geographically bounded technological phenomenon. Binford (1962) challenged the idea that copper tools were adopted by Native Americans solely because they were technologically more efficient. He argued that Archaic copper served a primarily socio-technic function based on two assumptions. One, that copper tools were more efficient in use performance than their stone and bone counterparts. And two, that the energy expenditure required for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Collard. Brea McCauley. Chris Carleton. André Costopoulos.

The construction of shrines, tombs, and other monuments is one of the most puzzling human behaviors from an evolutionary perspective. Building monuments is costly in terms of time and energy, and yet it is difficult to see how it contributes to survival and reproduction. In the late 1980s, Dunnell argued that monument building and other apparently wasteful behaviors are in fact adaptive in environments that are characterized by severe and/or unpredictable perturbations. Such behaviors are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brady Liss. Matthew Howland. Thomas E. Levy.

Satellite imagery and remote sensing have secured a place in the archaeological toolbox, but the scale of satellite derived data often results in large datasets with individual image tiles consisting of many gigabytes. Consequently, performing complex analyses on satellite data can be computationally intensive to a prohibitive degree. Google Earth Engine (GEE), an in-development, cloud-based platform for visualizing/analyzing satellite imagery, affords a solution for researchers with limited...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Billadello. Anarrubenia Capellin Ortega.

The Copan Valley in western Honduras has been the subject of a number of studies concerning human-environmental interaction, with particular emphasis on questions of ancient sustainable practices and whether or not land-use mismanagement contributed to the end of the Maya dynasty at Copan. The current PARAC project seeks to identify the range of foods consumed by the inhabitants of the Copan Valley during the Late Classic to Postclassic period. This paper will describe analyses conducted on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Greger Larson. Laurent Frantz. Angela Perri. Ophelie Lebrasseur. James Haile.

Despite numerous investigations leveraging both genetic and archaeological evidence, the geographic origins of dogs remain unknown. On the basis of an ancient Irish dog genome and an assessment of the spatiotemporal appearance of dogs in the archaeological record, a recent paper suggested that dogs may have been domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia from distinct wolf populations. Following those independent origins, a mitochondrial assessment suggested that the Mesolithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Arianne Boileau.

Identifying formation processes of shallow archaeological sites can be difficult. At Lamanai, Belize, the main problem consists of distinguishing between pre- and post-Spanish contact deposits buried at a depth of 10 to 60 cm. Evidence of interaction with the Spanish includes a few European objects and two Christian churches. However, identifying pre-contact deposits is more challenging. Maya archaeologists typically rely on ceramic typology to establish chronology, but the main pottery type in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Allan. Moira McMenemy. Kelly Brown. Matthew Baker. David Robinson.

For decades, debates have raged over the role of trance in the origination of rock-art. However, there remains almost no direct evidence of the ingestion of trance inducing material at any rock art site world-wide. The site of Pinwheel Cave has a large element thought to represent the opening of the flowering Datura. Dozens of quid, or 'chews' - i.e. masticated fibres of unidentified plant material - are found within the ceiling of the cave. A sample of this was taken and analysed to determine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Holly Pittman.

Production of textiles rose to an industrial level in the late Uruk period of southern Mesopotamia. Iconographic sources found in glyptic art provide a detailed visual description of aspects of this industry. Gender differentiation is clearly institutionalize, with women preparing the thread and skeins while males are engaged in the actual weaving. This paper presents a close analysis of a single motif in the glyptic iconography, offering an explanation of what has previously been identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Gustas. Kisha Supernant.

Spatial modeling of early prehistoric maritime movement on the Pacific Northwest Coast is important in contemporary archaeology because it can help locate new sites in a landscape which has radically changed over the last 20,000 years. Here we present the theoretical framework used in a research project which modeled maritime movement using least cost path analysis (LCP) to determine the routes most likely to have been traveled by the inhabitants of the Dundas Islands, British Columbia over the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edith Gonzalez.

In an effort to discover the next big viable cash crop, the Codrington family of Antigua hired a botanist to implement a strategic introduction of species from the four corners of the British empire to Barbuda as an 18th-century living laboratory. This paper draws on historical documents to explore the dynamic and sometimes conflicting motives for agricultural experimentation - those of food security in times of drought or war versus finding the next "sugar."

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Meyer. Eric Lo. Danielle Mercure. Patricia A. Beddows. Dominique Rissolo.

The Maya port and site of Vista Alegre carried political and trade importance in the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic periods. Located in the Laguna Yalahau of northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, the site is built on a small and low elevation island surrounded by mangrove. Inland from the site are freshwater wetlands (sabanas), while the near-shore waters of the restricted circulation lagoon are hypersaline. A significant research question is how the inhabitants of Vista Alegre accessed potable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annette Oertle.

Tropical archaeological shell middens throughout Australasia provide valuable information about subsistence practices, environmental changes, and human occupation. One of the major anthropic processes that can occur in any midden site is burning or heating of the shell, either from cooking or heat-treating shell for working. Thermal influences on marine shell are poorly understood across all disciplines, including archaeology. Burning or heating may not always show any visual signs and rather...